Enjoyable read, great gift for booklovers

books:


	• How Reading Changed My Life Anna Quindlen Ballantine Books, 1998 - 96 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"...reading while they played."

Thus, Anna Quindlen quotes Charles Dickens' biographer, John Forster, in this slim and wonderful book. Apparently, Dickens, Quindlen, and I would all rather read than play or do almost anything else.

I adore this book because it reminds me that there are other people for whom reading goes way beyond a pass-time or even something that we "love" to do. In addition to life's other milestones, we can mark the phases of life with the books that we have read, devoured, and assimilated. Like Quindlen, I remember a childhood influenced by writers like Ogden Nash, Carl Sandburg, Lore Segal, Irene Smith, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, Johanna Spyri, Carolyn Keene, Judy Blume, Betty Smith, and many others who are less clear in my memory but who shaped who I have become and what I have loved to read.

Quindlen reminded me that I am not the only one who is often biding time until my next chance to read. Of course, I read in line at the post office, in a doctor's waiting room, in airports, and at professional sporting events. More telling is that from age 11 or so, I regularly took a novel to church. I sat in the back pew, out of my family's sight, so that I could read the book instead of listen to sermons and hymns. Quindlen knows that many of us have eased the tedium and discomfort of the here and now by going wherever a book will take us.

I suppose that I love this book because she puts my understanding of books, as guidance, sustenance and salvation, into words. I feel validated. My way of being in this world has been endorsed and upheld. I feel good.

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Quindlen Understands.

While this book can at times be a bit defensive, Quindlen has a right to be. Readers, she points out, have been belittled, called stuck up, and tracked down in police states. We're almost an endangered species. At times, I celebrated with her the joys of discovering a book sure to become a lifelong friend; at other moments, I found myself sniffling and holding back tears at encounters with people who do not, and never will, understand and so must belittle those of us who read.

At some points, the memoir crawls, but there isn't any part of it that isn't vital to Quindlen's overall message. This, along with Fadiman's "Ex Libris," is book I lend out with the knowledge that the borrower will insist in keeping it.

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Enjoyable read, great gift for booklovers

This delightful short book (or perhaps long essay) is filled with the insight and wisdom that characterizes Quindlen's work - touchingly personal while articulate and accessible, so much of her reminiscences resonate with the experiences of booklovers and writers. Her heartfelt adoration of the distinct pleasures reading can bring - as a child reading Nancy Drew while friends are out playing, or as an adult on an airplane traveling for business - were right on. Her praise of reading "for pleasure," not for "advancement or superiority," were especially refreshing to hear from someone so highly respected, insightful, and intelligent. I'm often sheepishly hiding my latest Jane Green novels from the faculty at the college where I work, so it was nice to feel unashamed about the sheer delight I enjoy when reading, regardless of whether I'm reading Jane Austen or Helen Fielding.

Don't expect a direct answer to the question inherent in the title - the book is a celebration of the act of reading and is much more universal than the particular ways that reading shaped or changed the life of the author. Instead, the book prompts a personal reflection on how reading affected one's own life, guided along by Quindlen's wise words. For those of you who love reading but don't always agree with Quindlen's politics, fear not: this book is much more about reading and with the exception of concerns and criticisms about book banning and burning, the focus of the book is largely elsewhere.

This book would make a great gift for the booklovers in your life - I'm giving it to my mother-in-law, an elementary school teacher who adores children's books and participates in multiple book clubs. It's a wonderful reminder of the joys of reading, and Quindlen's writing skill makes this particular read (as with all her work) that much more enjoyable.

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So true

After eighteen years of being stereotyped as "the book worm," it's good to know that there's others out there like me. I agree wholeheartedly with Quindlen about the effect of books on life and on many of her other points. Her small book is simple but true. I can't wait to explore some of the books on her reading lists that I've not yet read. I recommend this to all of the other bookworms in the world: you are not alone, and at least one person understands you.

Thoughtful, fun, and quick

Quindlen writes about her experiences with being a bibliophile, ranging from discussing why fiction is worthwhile to what makes banned books so interesting to a critique of the snobbery of the literary critics. Her tangents are insightful and resonate with the trends I see in reading; for example, she characterizes the shift from reading for pleasure to reading for purpose: "whereas an executive might learn far more from Moby Dick ..., the book he was expected to have read might be The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People [sic]". I loved and identified with her descriptions of growing up obsessed with reading, having spent most childhood afternoons among the stacks of the local public library.

This isn't as good as Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris (on the same topic), but it's thoughtful and quick. (I read it in about two hours.) She specifically deals with why she believes women read more than men. She also provides a number of interesting book lists at the end, ranging from "The 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Save Only 10)" to "10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking series where America's finest writers and most brilliant minds tackle today's most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues. Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voices on matters political, social, economic, and cultural, will enlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debate across the country.

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