Sara Nelson

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

A Year of Passionate Reading

So Many Books, So Little Time

Sarah Sammis

I'm glad I stuck with this book. For the first couple of chapters I had trouble with it because the author seems to take her reading too seriously. She seems to want every book experience to a magical and eye opening experience and gets frustrated when she doesn't experience it or when her kith or kin don't see books or reading the same way.

I'm also glad that I had to wait longer than expected to read this book because it gave me more time to read from the list of books she refers to in her essays. It was through her book "reviews" that I began to like the book. She and I (for the most part) agree on a lot of books. She is frustrated by books much in the same way that I am (see her comments on Cold Mountain, Everything is Illuminated and Alias Grace). 

Given our affinity for certain types of books, I plan to jot down some of the more interesting titles that I haven't read and stick them in my wishlist at Cliff's for future reference.

One last note: sometimes two books will unexpectedly synchronize. In her chapter called "A Million Little Pieces" she writes about a book of the same title. She choses to describe the opening scene and just a couple weeks earlier I had read another reference to that scene in a book I was reading. I think the other book is Watermelon but I haven't been able to find the passage yet.

Sarah Escorsa

Once I started reading this book I just couldn't put it down and finished it in litlle more than a day:) I loved out it made me reflect on my own "bookaholism" and on how reading habits depend on times and circumstances. I wrote down so many quotes from the book I almost started a book of my own, but here are some of my favorite ones:
"Part time machine, part Concorde, part ejector seat, books are our salvation."
"I don't always choose the books. Sometimes the books choose me."
"It's always dangerous to reread the pivotal books of your youth."
"Now [...] I have given up my membership in the book equivalent of the Clean Plate Club. If I don't like it, I stop reading."
"We're a funny, cliquish group, we group people, and sometimes we resist liking -or even, resist opening- the very thing everybody tells us we're supposed to like."
"Emma Bovary is like Bill Clinton in a nineteenth-century French dress."

And the one quote that sums it all up:
"You'd think that after a year of [...] trying to control my reading life, I'd figured out that it is uncontrollable." Boy do I know how that feels:)

So Many Books, So Little Time A Year of Passionate Reading

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