I was apprehensive about finally reading this book, to tell you the truth....I'd saved it for several months and kept picking it up and admiring its cutesy title, its cartoonish cover, and its clever book concept (try to read a book a week for a year and then write about the experience)....Could the book possibly live up to the expectations I'd generated for it?

Surprisingly, yes. This book feels like it was custom cut for us, the book-obsessed in the world, with chapters on the appeal of first lines in novels, husbands who don't read, double-booking....You almost wonder---Is Nelson here, secretly, among us in our online book groups, silently listening to and writing down our book passions, our book concerns?

She is definitely one of us, in spirit. I heartily recommend this book.

A few quotes from the book:

p. 200 "So you'll understand how serious my Faber (author of The Crimson Petal and the White) flirtation was when I tell you that I could no more have double-booked on him than...well, you follow the metaphor."

p. 230 "...reading: it takes you away from, as a great writer once said, your 'proscribed little here to a vast and intriguing there.'"

p. 28 "Woody Allen once said that the advantage of bisexuality is that it doubles your chances of finding a date on Saturday night. Having a bifurcated reading brain---one part that likes 'junk' and one part that reveres 'literature'---is the same kind of satisfying."

p. 55 "Allowing yourself to stop reading a book...is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions."

Released on Sunday, January 04, 2004 at Postal System: Mailing to a friend in Alvin, Texas USA.

This is a wonderful and quick read on many aspects of books and reading. Loved it!

Release planned for Wednesday, January 14, 2004 at Postal Release in Postal release, Postal Release Controlled Releases.

Estimated mailing date, sent to a fellow member of book-a-week/yahoogroup

How could I resist reading the memoir of another book junkie who has a similar goal of reading 52 books a year? There were some good parts of this book--good first lines or "double-booking" (reading more than one book at a time) or the perils of reading friends' manuscripts. I should have loved this book throughly, but more often than not I was put off by her shallowness and snobbery. She states, apparently without irony, that it is perfectly acceptable to reconsider being friends with someone who doesn't share your taste in certain books. Not to mention that one should carry around books that will boost your self-image, while leaving other less intellectualized books at home. For example, Nelson admits "'Nine Parts' has better show-off potential that it got the exalted place in my Maria Turgeon handbag". I mean, I read what I am interested in, not what I want others to see me reading. It seems superficial and self-absorbed to use literature as a way to flaunt oneself.

All of that said, I did add several books to my TBR list including "Kitchen Confidential," and "A Million Little Pieces," and bumped "The House of Sand and Fog" up on my stack.

"A book is a way to shut out the noise of the world. It's a way to be alone without being totally alone."

"My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn't need to know that my books are the affairs I do not have."

CAUGHT IN SEATTLE WA USA

How could I resist reading the memoir of another book junkie who has a similar goal of reading 52 books a year? There were some good parts of this book--good first lines or "double-booking" (reading more than one book at a time) or the perils of reading friends' manuscripts. I should have loved this book throughly, but more often than not I was put off by her shallowness and snobbery. She states, apparently without irony, that it is perfectly acceptable to reconsider being friends with someone who doesn't share your taste in certain books. Not to mention that one should carry around books that will boost your self-image, while leaving other less intellectualized books at home. For example, Nelson admits "'Nine Parts' has better show-off potential that it got the exalted place in my Maria Turgeon handbag". I mean, I read what I am interested in, not what I want others to see me reading. It seems superficial and self-absorbed to use literature as a way to flaunt oneself.

All of that said, I did add several books to my TBR list including "Kitchen Confidential," and "A Million Little Pieces," and bumped "The House of Sand and Fog" up on my stack.

"A book is a way to shut out the noise of the world. It's a way to be alone without being totally alone."

"My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn't need to know that my books are the affairs I do not have."

I pulled this treasure of a book out of busybusybee's Slim Down in 2004 Book Box ... Thanks!!