For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable authors share their favorites-Title says it all!
Review: A wonderful collection of some of the most remarkable authors likes and dislikes and what books influenced them most. From childhood memories to adult appreciation, each author shares their favorite titles as well as how they came to appreciate reading and the written word.

As a fellow author, I felt like I had a window seat into the soul of many great writers. "WAR AND PEACE" won many votes as a favored choice.

Some authors distinguish between historic works and current favorites. Most agree that readers make writers! Each author seems to highly respect the written word.

Truly enjoyed the stories told about what was viewed as the catalyst to an early appreciation of books. My only negative comment would have to be on the size of the text. Personal opinion is that with so much written word on a page, you can lose the interest of the reader. These stories should be appreciated and read.

Easy to see why this would make an excellent choice for any adult book/reading group.

Rating:
Summary: Read The Books That Inspired Your Favorite Writers
Review: Anyone who has ever wanted to be a writer will hear from writing instructors all about the importance of constantly reading. Books on writing theory state the same thing as do works about writing by published authors. The importance of reading cannot be disputed, but many writers may wonder what would be appropriate to read. Fans of great writers may also wonder what would be a great next read. Ronald Shwartz has edited a book that answers these questions for all who wonder, what do great writers read and what books have inspired these writers to write?

The book includes many well known authors of both fiction and nonfiction, including notables such as Anne Bernays and husband Justin Kaplan, Robert Coles, Joyce Carol Oates, Penelope Fitzgerald, John Irving, Norman Mailer, and Anna Quindlen just to name a few. Some of the writers simply list the books, others explain why they include the books. Most of the entries are short and to the point, and all the entries are insightful. I only wish Norman Mailer had a bit more to say, but since he just published a book on writing, any questions I may have will probably be answered in that book.

Rating:
Summary: Books that were/are important to the authors that we read.
Review: I received this book as a gift; generally this method of acquisition all but ensures I will never read the work. In this particular case that generality was broken, and I was the beneficiary.

Mr. Ronald B. Shwartz has collected the thoughts of 115 writers and received an answer to the request, "Identify those 3-6 books that have in some way influenced or affected you most deeply...". The entertainment begins prior to the first author's selection as Mr. Shwartz shares some responses to the idea of the question itself. Anna Quindlen "This is a mean thing to ask someone to do."

Kurt Vonnegut "Anyone asking a writer a question like yours should own a thumbscrew and a rack."

James McBride "If the literary world, or if anyone else in the world for that matter, feels I'm smart enough to offer my two cents about anything, we're all in deep doo-doo, but what the heck, count me in..."

I would imagine the collected responses would make for an excellent read of their own. Fortunately the book leaps much further and deeper, it almost pries into the very personal thoughts of these writers who all are associated with excellence. Their work ranges from one to the other end of whatever writing genre could be listed, and their answers will generally surprise you. As these people are some of the literary legends of the 20th and now the 21st Century I expected answers both lofty and impenetrable to the average reader. I could not have been more in error. Yes there are references to poetical works that I could not find in 10 years with the same number of computers. But happily the book is very readable. And lest you think it takes itself too seriously, I offer Christopher Buckley and his opening to his answer,"Well, if you're looking for recondite works in, say, lesbian studies from the early seventeenth century, you're "___" out of luck with me." I imagined Buckley The Elder wincing with that bit of earthiness from his Son.

The books that made some wish to write or at least were influential in their work will surely fascinate. It is the only book of its kind I have read, but unless I come across another, this sets the bar.

Rating:
Summary: buy one for yourself, and 10 for your friends-extraordinary!
Review: If you're a booklover with eclectic tastes, who likes to roam the aisles of libraries and bookstores, this is a book you'll want to keep and refer back to again and again. It is greatly rewarding not only for the books that are mentioned, but for what they reveal about the writers who were influenced by them. While many of the old standards --- Melville, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Faulkner, Proust, Joyce --- are given their due by the writers, there are surprises at every turn. For example, a book that I had never heard of --- "Epitaph of a Small Winner," by Machado de Assis, was singled out by no fewer than three of the writers (Pete Hamill, John Barth, and Thomas McGuane.) Indeed, just sifting through the bibliographical index to see which authors had multiple references (e.g. Melville had eight)was most instructive. The essays are, for the most part, thoughtful and stimulating. This is a great book for random browsing...I came away from it stimulated and entertained, but also guilty and frustrated, knowing I'll never have time to read but a tiny fraction of the books that have so inspired others.

Rating:
Summary: If Reading is a Passion, Read This Book
Review: Ronald Shwartz was curious about what books writers read, how and what influenced them, so he set about to seek answers. This book contains 115 different viewpoints. Each chapter, written by a different author, begins with a brief biographical blurb followed by two or three pages describing the authors' choices. Some, like Mario Puzo or Norman Mailer, were quite terse, just itemizing their choices, but most of the other entries were a bit more revealing, giving us a feel for what the books meant to them, when they read them, etc. Their passion for books and reading were truly inspirational.

I kept a pad and pen handy as I read this book to make a list of the books mentioned that sounded interesting to me. By the end of the book I had a huge list of books that I wanted to find and read.

This book not only served as a great source for recommended reading, but provided a wonderful window into all of these authors' lives.

Rating:
Summary: If Reading is a Passion, Read This Book
Review: Ronald Shwartz was curious about what books writers read, how and what influenced them, so he set about to seek answers. This book contains 115 different viewpoints. Each chapter, written by a different author, begins with a brief biographical blurb followed by two or three pages describing the authors' choices. Some, like Mario Puzo or Norman Mailer, were quite terse, just itemizing their choices, but most of the other entries were a bit more revealing, giving us a feel for what the books meant to them, when they read them, etc. Their passion for books and reading were truly inspirational.

I kept a pad and pen handy as I read this book to make a list of the books mentioned that sounded interesting to me. By the end of the book I had a huge list of books that I wanted to find and read.

This book not only served as a great source for recommended reading, but provided a wonderful window into all of these authors' lives.

Rating:
Summary: Reading Group Pick- Martha's & Alice's "Notes in the Margin"
Review: Shwartz is a Boston trail lawyer with an unabashed love for the well-written word. In the introduction Shwartz wrote about reading, "I would read, as readers do, to tame the unfamiliar or see the familiar through new and enlightened prisms; to see how different or eerily familiar, another person's interior life could be from my own."

This is a book of short commentaries by 115 writers on the books they love most. And indeed it is hard to flip many pages without finding the word love. Shwartz set out to produce the very book he couldn't find in bookstores!

This is truly a book that your reading group could share. Buy one copy and bring it to meetings. It can give you a wealth of insights and ideas for books to read- read a book written by one of the 115 authors interviewed and then select a book to read that influenced that author. The bibliographical index is reason alone to buy this book. Shwartz has said that he always found himself asking what the authors themselves read; and here you'll find that answered both in text and in the index.

Penelope Fitzgerald, author of "The Bookshop" wrote in her commentary that "Fathers& Sons" was one of the books that made the greatest impression on her, "I still feel close to weeping when I get to the end. . . " John Irving, author of "The Cider House Rules" named "Great Expectations" and said, ". . .the intention of a novel by Charles Dickens is to move you emotionally- not intellectually . . . " And Anna Quindlen, author of "One True Thing" said, "The books I've loved most were the books I could inhabit."

Our interesting word selection was "Verity"" The quality or state of being true or real. Faithfulness to aesthetic truth.

Our favorite quote was by Anne Fadiman: "I was so ludicrously unprepared for Humanties 190 that the course nearly proved my undoing. With a doggedness born of panic, I defaced nearly every line of Aristitle's poetics with citron Hi-liter and crammed the margins with felt-tip notations."

Shwartz wrote that it was his hope that his book "might inspire people to read more. . . " Oh yes!

Rating:
Summary: a book lover's delight!
Review: the only drawback of this book is that it will rob you of precious hours devoted to reading other books! i'm being facetious, of course -- this is a wealth of reflections to (a) place by your bedside table, (b) in the glovebox of your car, and (c) dare i say, in the bathroom to savor whenever you get a spare moment -- or to enjoy simply for its own sake. it's very much like sitting down face-to-face with a garrulous, self-reflective author (or grandparent) and hearing a lifetime of wisdom squished into a few minutes. so grab a pencil -- you're going to need one! -- and mark what sounds interesting. funny how often "the brothers k" gets mentioned, "moby dick" etc. but so many wonderful surprises in store, too. thanks to kurt vonnegut's (brilliant) short essay, for example, i picked up "candide" and am much the wiser. oddly enough, no one recommends "les misérables" -- i can't imagine why not -- or "musashi" for that matter. but "the tale of genji" is recommended, so all is forgiven. "for the love of books" = beautiful!

Rating:
Summary: Even more depth than meets the eye
Review: This book is so good, on so many levels, that it's hard to know where to begin to praise it. For those whose idols are writers, there are stellar names -- Mailer, Updike, Gordimer -- who have contributed original pieces to this unique anthology. Furthermore, each essay is intensely personal, setting forth the writer's own best-loved books and authors. You can play amateur sleuth and try to deduce how the writer's own output was shaped by what s/he cherishes, or assemble a reading list of often little-known books which have deeply influenced someone who has deeply influenced you. And the essays themselves are literature. You can consider yourself well-read, I think, and never have heard of say, Guy Davenport, described as an award-winning translator, poet, and modernist fiction writer in the handy biographical notes. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be drawn to his subject matter, but his essay is so down-to-earth and engaging, I want to reach both his books and those of others whom he admires. This book has already lead me to previously unfamiliar writers, including Carol Shields, John Casey, and Elizabeth McCracken, which automatically amortizes the purchase price over the rest of my lifetime and means I could die tomorrow and still have gotten my money's worth. My one regret is that the introduction by editor Ronald B. Shwartz, who clearly spent two years of his life's blood assembling this collection, only hints at what an extraordinary experience it must start with one good idea and build it into this impressive monument to bibliphilism. I hope the full story of this accomplishment will become his next book.