Who Doesn't Love Books on Books? Here Are 60 Suggestions for You

 

Anyone who spends time blogging about books and/or reading the dozens and dozens of excellent book-blogs out there, also loves reading about actual books. And we are very lucky that there are so many of them out there: books about books, about bookstores, about booksellers, about bookmobiles, about libraries, about collecting books, about caring for books, and even about "how to read" a book. You name a book-topic, and it's probably out there somewhere.

I had several hours this afternoon during which I had to do the kind of busywork that allows a person to just let their mind wander...so I did. At some point I got to wondering how many book-related books I've read, so I decided to look into that when I got home. Below, is a listing of the ones I could identify (the year listed is the year I read the book, not the year it was published):

• The Bookshop of Yesterdays - Amy Meyerson - 2019
• A Novel Bookstore - Lawrence Cross - 2012
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robert Sloan - 2013
• Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore - Matthew Sullivan - 2019
• The Yellow-Lighted Bookstore - Lewis Buzbee - 2008
• The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald - 2019
• The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted - Robert Hillman - 2019
• Paris by the Book - Liam Callanan - 2019
• Book Case - Stephen Greenleaf - 1992
• The Bookman's Tale - Charlie Lovett - 2013
• The Bookworm - Mitch Silver - 2019
• The Bookseller - Cynthia Swanson - 2016
• The Book of Speculation - Erika Swyler - 2015
• The Book Thief - Markus Zusak - 2006
• Booked to Die - John Dunning - 1995
• The Bookman's Wake - John Dunning - 1996
• The Bookman's Last Fling - John Dunning - 2008
• The Camel Bookmobile - Marsha Hamilton - 2007
• First Impressions - Charlie Lovett - 2014
• The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -2012
• The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - 2014
• The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett - 2017

These 22 are all novels, with most of them being mysteries. I think the 34 that follow below are all nonfiction:

• The Thieves of Book Row - Travis McDade - 2013
• Books - Larry McMurtry - 2009
• So Many Books, So Little Time - Sara Nelson - 2007
• The Library Book - Susan Orlean - 2019
• A Passion for Books - Harold Rabinowitz, Rob Kaplan - 2002
• The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New - Margot Rosenberg, B. Mancowitz - 2008
• The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe - 2012
• The Clothing of Books - Jhumpa Lahiri - 2018
• Book Lust to Go - Nancy Pearl - 2010
• Modern Book Collecting - Robert A. Wilson - 1988
• So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance - Gabriel Zaid - 2017
• How to Read a Book - Adler and VanDoren - 1986
• The Man Who Loved Books too Much - Allison Hoover Bartlett - 2009
• The Maximum Security Book Club - Mikita Brottman - 2016
• Book Finds - Ian C. Ellis - 2000
• Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books - Paul Collins - 2003
• Among the Gently Mad - Nicholas A. Basbanes - 2005
• Slightly Chipped - Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone - 2001
• Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore - Suzanne Strempek Shea - 2008
• A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict - John Baxter - 2006
• My Reading Life - Pat Conroy - 2010
• The Art of Memoir - Mary Karr - 2015
• The Fiction Writer's Handbook - Shelly Lowenkoph - 2011
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading - Nina Sankovitch - 2015
• Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading - Maureen Corrigan - 2007
• A Year of Reading - Michael Dirda - 2016
• How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Thomas C. Foster - 2019
• Reading with Patrick - Michelle Kuo - 2017
• A History of Reading - Alberto Manguel - 1999
• The Year of Reading Dangerously - Andy Miller - 2015
• Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi - 2004
• The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared - Alice Ozma, Jim Brozina - 2011
• How Reading Changed My Life - Anna Quindlen - 2007
• How Literature Works - John Sutherland - 2011

Suggested Additions to the Lists:

• The Book on the Bookshelf - Henry Petroski - nonfiction -courtesy of Jeane
• A History of Books - Gerald Murnane - nonfiction - courtesy of Moshe Prigan 
• Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year Reading from Home - Susan Hill - nonfiction - courtesy of Kath
• Jacob's Room Is Full of Books: A Year of Reading - Susan Hill - nonfiction - courtesy of Kath

(The ones in bold type are my favorites of the lot.)

I know that you guys, avid readers that you are, have probably read most of these, too. I also know that I've skipped others that don't include some variation of the word "book" in their titles, so please feel free to give me more book-books in your comments. And, I hope you find something new-to-you here that you will enjoy reading.

(This post has been, and will continue to be, added to from time to time.)

More Books I Don't Want You to Miss (No. 4)

As I try to rekindle (pun intended) my reading enthusiasm, especially my enthusiasm for reading what is turning out to be the highest number of e-books I've ever read in a given year, I've been browsing through lots of bookstore lists and the like to see what's new since last time around (the July 5 list). But, maybe because my enthusiasm is so low right now, I didn't feel like jumping up and down about much of anything I found.

I'm reading a novel right now from my "Books I Don't Want You to Miss" list from mid-June by Gillian McAllister called The Choice, but after almost 80 pages of reading, I'm finding it very difficult to feel the book's rhythm and pace.  And on top of that, I've already abandoned one book this week after only 20 pages, and was disappointed by another that I thought would be so much better than it turned out to be. So the slump is real.

Who knows, maybe one of these that caught my eye in the last couple of weeks will be the very book I need to snap me out of it. I can hope.

It was probably the cover that initially caught my eye, but I've seen quite a few enthusiastic reviews of Mexican Gothic, too. It's set in the 1950s and is about a woman who goes to a family mansion in Mexico after her newlywed cousin begs for someone to save her from what she's gotten herself into. Sounds like a throwback kind of novel. 

Subtitled, The True Story of an American Outlaw, this is the story of half the "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gang" made so famous in a movie decades ago by Paul Newman (who played Butch) and Robert Redford. Robert LeRoy Parker created for himself both the Butch Cassidy name and kind of a Robin Hood image before he and Sundance were reportedly killed in South America.

This is one I've been looking forward to for a while even though I expect it will be a bit of a melancholy read because the 80-year-old Trebek is still fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Trebek, host of one of the most popular quiz shows in television history, is just one of those guys that everyone likes, a very rare commodity these days.  

Even worse than missing out on brand new books, is letting an older book slip through the crack permanently. This 2016 Stephen Harrigan book is narrated by a fictional friend of Lincoln's, and it is one of my favorite historical fiction novels published in the last few years. Harrigan is a jewel of a writer and, in my opinion, he is very underrated. 

So, keep your heads down, my friends. Keep reading, and keep telling the rest of us all about it. Readers like us are the lucky ones right now because we can travel the world, go backward and forward in time, and can teach ourselves new skills without ever having to leave home. Show a little kindness to all those poor nonreaders out there. 

More Books I Don't Want You to Miss

Here are a few more books that caught my eye in the last couple of weeks. I've read one of the four books from my June 13 list, Nothing to See Here, and still have the other three on hold at my library. I'm a little tired of reading so many e-books, but that still seems to be the quickest (safest?) way to get hold of new books for now.

So, these are the ones I'm adding to my virtual TBR list this week:

Street Music is Tim Hallinan's ninth Poke Rafferty novel, a series that has been one of my favorites for the last several years. Poke is an American travel writer (and much, much more) who lives with his Thai family in Bangkok. I am still in the denial stage of grieving the end of Poke Rafferty books, so I will probably not be reading this one for a while myself. If you don't know Poke Rafferty, book one is 2007's A Nail Through the Heart.

Katherine Hill's A Short Move is a literary novel about a professional football player - but it is not so much about what happens on the field as what happens off it. This seems to be one of those rare sports novels that focus on what happens before and after the big games, "between seasons, after the sun of youth sets." It was published in paperback on June 23 and, irritatingly enough, the e-book version cost about the same as the paperback. (Pet peeve.) 

What's Left of Me Is Yours is by Stephanie Scott. a British/Singaporean novelist. Apparently, it's a thing in Japan for one party to hire a "breaker-upper" to seduce his/her spouse in order to get the advantage in divorce proceedings. The novel is, I think, based on an actual murder trial in Japan that happened after a "breaker-upper" and the wife he was hired to seduce fall deeply in love. 

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips tells the story of two young sisters who are abducted off of a remote Russian beach. It's a mystery that doesn't focus so much on the "whodunit" portion of the story as it does on how their disappearance affects the people they left behind: "a witness, a neighbor, a detective, and a mother." It sounds very atmospheric, too.  

That's it for this time. Four more books, only one or two of which I'm very likely ever to find the time to get to. So a little help? Read one or two of these (and the previous eight I've mentioned) and tell me what you think about them and what I'm missing.

More Books I Don't Want You to Miss , Even if I Miss Them Myself

Here are a few more books that have come to my attention in the last few days that I think are worth your consideration. I've managed to get my hands on a library copy of one of the four I highlighted back on June 2, Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel, but I haven't started reading it just yet...but the old due-date clock is ticking away on it. 

So, these are some of the books that I added to my virtual TBR list this week:

Little Eyes was published in May 2020. It's said to be a little creepy, but it is set in a world not much different from the one we are living in today. "A camera-equipped pet," a little toy has become so popular that it is in millions of homes all over the world. And those homes are being virtually spied upon by the toys. As the NYT Book Review puts it, "Owning one is like inviting a mute stranger into your home."

Nothing to See Here was published last October but I had not heard of it until this week. This one sounds a little strange, but Kevin Wilson pulls it off by creating some truly memorable characters.The New York Times apparently even labeled it as one of the best books of 2019. It's about a woman who agrees to become the nanny for her friend's unusual twins, called the "fire twins" because they "burst into flames" when they become severely agitated. She becomes their stoutest protector and forms a strong bond with the children. 

The Choice was published on June 2, so I suppose it caught my attention relatively quickly. The rather clever premise of this one is that it examines "two possible futures" for a young woman faced with a difficult choice. The man who tried to assault her falls down a flight of stairs and is still barely alive. Does she call for help and face all that will consequently follow, or does she go home and keep her mouth shut? As it turns out, neither choice leaves her with an easy life. Will she risk going to jail or will she take the "easy" way out?

The Vanishing Half  is another one that was published on June 2, and considering the way that race dominates the news cycle so much today, that timing couldn't be much better for its author and publisher. In this one, twin sisters take very different paths when one of them decides to pass for white and the other does not. The novel explores the pain caused by the split and how it is not limited to the sister passing for white. Those "left behind" are left with a struggle of their own. 

There you have it. Four more books I badly want to read but am unlikely ever to get to. MyTBR list getting so long now, that I can't imagine that there are any people left in the world who say they "have nothing to read." How is that even possible?

Books I Don't Want You to Miss, Even If I Miss Them Myself

One thing never changes. 

No matter how many books I read in any given month, I can't help but wonder how many better ones are slipping through the cracks. You probably know that feeling yourself because I expect it is one that all avid readers experience to one degree or another. 

Back in the old days, before the internet was in every home and before publishers used it as their main marketing tool, I actually remember finishing a book with no idea what I would be reading next. I may even have finished a book on a Monday or Tuesday and had to wait until the weekend before I could get my hands on something new at the library or, if I had a few dollars to spare, at a local bookstore. I used to look forward to the Sunday Houston Chronicle book section because I usually spotted at least one or two books that I wanted to read that way, especially books that were finally going into paperback editions. I had no idea what a TBR list was because even if I had had one, it would have been very short. 

And then my reading world exploded with the advent of the internet. Flash forward a few years later, and I'm getting at least half a dozen emails a day telling me about new books and offering me deals on them. I keep multiple TBR lists that probably total 300 books or more, even knowing that only a small percentage of them are likely to ever be read. But I add to the TBRs constantly anyway. And that's the thing that never changes. 

That's why I'm going to start spotlighting a few books every week that have caught my eye, books I haven't read for myself and can't fully vouch for in quality or content. I'm going to do this in hopes that some of you will find something that interests you enough to read it - or that you've already read - so you can tell me what you think of it. That will help me choose the ones that I really can't afford to miss. 

Here's this week's offerings (with minimal comment on my part):

I'm curious about this one because of its author and how much I enjoyed (finally) her Station Eleven. This one seems to be more a look at unusual aspects of contemporary society. It was published on March 24, 2020.

This is one by an author whose nonfiction work I've read and enjoyed. I've even heard him speak a time or two at book festivals and he never fails to impress. Wright is, after all, a Pulitzer Prize winner. This one is billed as a medical thriller about - a virus pandemic - that decimates the world population. It was published on April 28, 2020.

Here's a debut novel that some pretty influential people have been raving about forever. It's a pre-pandemic look at contemporary society through the eyes of four sisters who remain rivals even after their parents have been happily married for 40 years. Lombardo's writing is compared to Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathon Franzen, among others. It was published on June 25, 2019.

And, finally, this one is from an author whose previous book, The Good Lord Bird, is still one of my favorites. This one takes place in a NYC black neighborhood and involves a church deacon who decides it's time to shoot the local drug dealer - so he does it himself. It was published on March 3, 2020.

There you have it, four books that I've recently added to my always-out-of-control TBR. Have you read any of these or have them on your own TBR? Let me know in either case what you think of them.