Pamela Paul

Imagine keeping a record of every book you’ve ever read. What would this reading trajectory say about you? With passion, humor, and insight, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life. Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for twenty-eight years – carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk – reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul’s Book of Books, a journal that records every book she’s ever read, from Sweet Valley High to Anna Karenina, from Catch-22 to Swimming to Cambodia, a journey in reading that reflects her inner life – her fantasies and hopes, her mistakes and missteps, her dreams and her ideas, both half-baked and wholehearted. Her life, in turn, influences the books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, information or sheer entertainment. But My Life with Bob isn’t really about those books. It’s about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader. It’s about the way books provide each of us the perspective, courage, companionship, and imperfect self-knowledge to forge our own path. It’s about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It’s about how we make our own stories.

Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

My Life with Bob

Celeste Richardson

Full review now posted!

I came out of the womb with a passion for books. When I was a toddler, I didn’t sleep with my arms wrapped around a teddy bear; instead, I slept clutching a book. It didn’t matter what book. As long as there were words on the pages and the promise of a story between the covers, it was the book for me. I learned to read before I started Preschool, because I desperately wanted to be able to experience those stories for myself and on my own, even though I had a wonderful family full of people always willing to read to me. I memorized books before I could read them, reciting the lines I knew went with the pictures. So when the squiggles on the pages finally morphed into letters I could grasp and wrangle into words, I was beyond thrilled. 

“Reading time became my time and place, another dimension where events operated by my own set of rules.”

Countless worlds opened to me right around my fourth birthday, and I’ve never looked back. As a child, I was always getting in trouble for sneaking books out with me when I was told to go outside and play. I read under bushes, and up trees, and in the bath. I read under my desk at school to the consternation and amusement of my teachers. I read on the school bus, even though it made me nauseous. I read on the playground, because I was athletically challenged and klutzy and was much safer with my head in a book than with my head in the game. I read when I should’ve been sleeping. I felt like I wasn’t living life to the fullest without a book in my hands. And I never really grew out of it. Words have always been as necessary as oxygen for me.

“Books gnaw at me from around the edges of my life, demanding more time and attention. I am always left hungry.”

So I am always thrilled to come across a book memoir. I’m not a big fan of memoirs as a general rule, because I’m an escapist and prefer to be transported somewhere impossible than read about someone else’s reality. It’s why I don’t do nonfiction very often. But book memoirs are different. Book memoirs show me that I’m not alone in my addiction to words or in their ability to shape my memories. I love reading about other people’s experiences with book that I’ve read and loved or hated. I love knowing that someone who had led a radically different life than mine can share the same passion.

“Sometimes you fall so much in love with a book that you simply have to tell everyone, to spread the love and to explain the state you’re in. You read passages aloud to anyone who will listen. You wait with bated breath, watching for signs of appreciation, wanting that smile, that laugh, that nod of recognition. Please love this book too, you silently— and sometimes not so silently— urge.”

Pamela’s life is almost unbelievable. The places she’s been and the things she’s experienced are so far beyond my wheelhouse that I had a hard time remembering that what I was reading was in fact true. Also, she has every book lover’s dream job: editor for The New York Times Book Review. I loved how for each major season of her life was defined by a particular book, and that thinking about that book could bring back that season for her. The idea of linking real-life memories with works of literature is not something I’ve heard discussed much, though it’s something I’ve always done in my own life. Reading about someone else viewing life through a similar lens, even though her life looked so different from mine, was just fun. Bob, or Pamela’s Book of Books, is something that I’ve always kept in my head or sporadically in little notebooks that had a terrible habit of disappearing, but I wish I had kept track better. She recorded every single book she read since the age of seventeen in that book, and I think it’s incredible. I’d love to be able to look back and see exactly when I read something and remember what was going on in my life then, for longer than the few years I've been on Goodreads. I have vague recollections, and Goodreads helps, but it’s just not the same. I think I might start my own Bob. It’s never too late, right?

“Even if we don’t keep a physical Book of Books, we all hold our books somewhere inside us and live by them. They become our stories.”

Within this book, I found profound thoughts on both reading and writing, an ode to words well-written and well-loved. Pamela’s writing was engaging and funny and beautiful, and I loved every minute of it. Seriously, there are more incredibly quotable lines and paragraphs than I can justify putting into a review. I can’t express what exactly is keeping me from giving this book five stars instead of four, unless it’s just the intrinsic differences in our lives and my inability to relate to certain parts of her story. If you love books and love books about books, you should definitely pick this one up!

This review can be found at Booknest. You can find more of my reviews, as well as my fiction, poetry, and thoughts on life, at Celestial Musings.

Ned Summers 

Alli

"Imagine keeping a record of every book you ever read. What would those titles say about you? With humor and warmth, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life. For twenty-eight years, Pamela Paul has been keeping a diary that records the books she reads, rather than the life she leads. Or does it? Over time, it's become clear that this Book of Books, or Bob, as she calls him, tells a much bigger story. For Paul, as for many readers, books reflect her inner life-- her fantasies and hopes, her dreams and ideas. And her life, in turn, influences which books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, diversion or self-reflection, information or entertainment. My Life with Bob isn't about what's in those books; it's about the relationship between books and readers. Bob was with her when she struggled to get through the Norton Anthology of English Literature in college and when she read Anna Karenina while living abroad alone. He was there when she fell in love and much needed when she sought solace in self-help and memoirs like Autobiography of a Face. Through marriage and divorce, remarriage (The Master and Margarita) and parenthood (The Hunger Games), professional setbacks and successes, Bob recorded what she read while all that happened. The diary--now coffee-stained and frayed--is the record of a lifelong love affair with books, and has come to mean more to her than any other material possession. My Life with Bob is a testament to the power of books to provide the perspective, courage, companionship, and ultimately self-knowledge to forge our own path"--

My Life with Bob Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

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