Books about Books

. . . and Bookstores and Libraries and Reading and Writing

“I have always imagined paradise will be
a kind of library.”
~Jorge Luis Borges

“…all [humankind] is of one author, and is one
volume; when one [person] dies, one chapter
is not torn out of the book, but translated into
a better language… God’s hand is in every
translation, and his hand shall bind up all our
scattered leaves again, for that library where
every book shall lie open to one another.”
~John Donne

“Come, and take choice of all my library,
and so beguile thy sorrow.”
~William Shakespeare

Books about (and/or riffs on) famous books and writers:

For any dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying, self-respecting book-lover, books about books (and bookstores and libraries, and about the whole business of reading and writing) hold a special place in the heart’s affections.

But for books that reference other cherished books we set the bar high: parodies and most fan fiction rarely make the cut, although the clever and well-written homage is in a league of its own.

For those who rate Jane Austen high in the firmament (zombies need not apply), there are a handful that rate gold stars, not just as literary tribute but as fine novels in their own right.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, for instance (like the delightful film of the same title) is shrewd and witty fiction at its finest: playing not just with the plots and characters of all six Austen novels and the women (and men) who love them, but with the ways and the reasons that readers engage with fiction in the first place. Prior knowledge of the Austen canon will help you catch the many clever inside jokes, but is not required to enjoy the book (which helpfully includes synopses of the Austen Six at the end for the benefit of the uninitiated or forgetful).

Death Comes to Pemberley by the late great P. D. James is similarly satisfying, in a matchless combination of James’ own signature detective writing with an almost uncanny imitation of Austen’s own voice and style, and a respectful affection (or of course an appropriately pitch-perfect comeuppance) for the characters of Pride and Prejudice. In some cases, James has so brilliantly continued the nuances of plot and character that one can’t help thinking that she and Austen somehow collaborated in the writing. At any rate, I feel sure that Austen would be delighted with the result.

Another loving homage to Austen that is also a charming romance that weaves together cleverly researched biographical details about Austen’s personal history and the history of printing methods in the 1700s is First Impressions (which was the original title given Pride and Prejudice) by Charlie Lovett. Essentially a love letter not just to Austen and her characters but to books and publishing and reading itself.

Two more books-about-books by the passionate bibliophile Charlie Lovett are The Lost Book of the Grail (an English cathedral town, a manuscript library, the quest for the Holy Grail, academic sleuthing and romance: absolutely delicious) and The Bookman’s Tale (another literary thriller about lost manuscripts and Shakespearean mysteries, that weaves past and present in a strong fabric of love for the written word).

Looking for the King: An Inklings Novel by David Downing is simultaneously an affectionate homage to Oxford in the 1940s and the literary friendship among the “Inklings” (primarily C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien), an Arthurian quest in the English countryside, and a charming romance between two appealing young people. Full of excellent period detail, good characterization, and wonderful Arthurian lore.

Abandon by Pico Iyer is an elegant literary mystery that asks the question, “what if there were whole lost cache of poems by the Sufi mystic Rumi, come to light in contemporary Iran?” This novel is also luminous with Sufi wisdom and intricate (surprising) answers to the interlocking puzzles. Iyer writes like a dream, never more so than in this, his finest, wisest novel.

The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is a clever mystery-within-a-mystery, wrapped up in a mystery about a valuable manuscript’s lost chapter: Agatha Christie homage with a twist.

And what if Sherlock Holmes had one more solution to murder up his sleeve? Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk is (like his Moriarty) another of the author’s clever twists on Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon: the voices true to Holmes and Watson, the atmosphere of Baker Street faithfully maintained, the plot more gruesome but in some ways more poignant and sharply moral than many from the master’s own pen.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is pure unapologetic Gothic, in the tradition of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: a ruined haunted house, madness, incest, ghostly twins, an elusive eccentric dying novelist and a lost last tale…if you like your eerie melodrama straight up, you’ll love this.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders is a literary tribute with a twist—a twist of the heart. Like Saunders, I grew up loving E. Nesbit’s incomparable Edwardian books for children. Saunders realized that the delightful children in Five Children and It (“it” being a Psammead, an ugly and bad-tempered magical wish-granting creature) would have been the exact age to have been caught up in the beginning of World War I, and sets her own book in those dark days. Reading here of the younger children growing up amid the hardships of the home front, of the older boys sent to the trenches in France, somehow made the horror and senselessness of war more powerfully real and personal than any adult novel has. Highly recommended, whether you are an E. Nesbit fan or not.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafón is a mystery within a mystery, and all about a book. In shadowy post-war Barcelona, eleven-year-old Daniel is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by the city’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world in hopes that they may be, one volume at a time, remembered again. By selecting, as invited, a single book from the laden shelves, Daniel is initiated into the guild and embarks on a dangerous quest for the story behind the story. As the New York Times Book Review put it, in this novel “Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show.”

Books that celebrate the and art and power of reading:

Reading in Bed: Brief headlong essays about books & writers & reading & readers by Brian Doyle is Doyle at his marvelous best: breathless, hilarious, enthusiastic, moving, wise, smart, engaging, omnivorous. It would be hard to imagine an aspect of reading or writing or books he hasn’t covered in this captivating little collection—from what books people keep in their cars to the scent of old newspapers and what makes us love our favorite writers and which ones we should read immediately if we haven’t already. Perfect of course for reading in bed—or in your car or anywhere else.

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen is possibly the most joyful and affectionate, thoughtful and generous celebration of the transforming power of books and reading that I know. Essays on all aspects of reading, and lists of her own “10 Best” books for all occasions and audiences fill this treasury. “There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books,” she writes of her early love of reading, “a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but never really a stranger. My real, true world.”

The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading by Francis Spufford resonates with my own love of and debt to the books of my childhood (mostly the same books he loved), and the way they shaped my mind and imagination and strengthened my heart and allowed me to escape from the occasional chaos and pain of my “real life.” A good reminder that, as Tolkien observed, the only people who object to escape are jailers. And a poignant companion volume to his mother Margaret Spufford’s book Celebration, a different take on the same events of his childhood, especially the catastrophic illness of his younger sister, which precipitated his need for (he calls it an addiction to) the stories that allowed him temporarily to leave that pain and sadness outside the refuge of his reading mind.

The Uncommon Reader is a charming novella by the celebrated British writer Alan Bennett. Her Majesty the Queen (an “uncommon” reader indeed, and frankly not much of a reader at all) happens upon the mobile library parked outside the palace kitchen for the benefit of the servants, and embarks upon a literary liberal education that horrifies the royal household. Witty, satiric, and at the same time fond and respectful, and all about the transforming power of reading.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff lovingly chronicles the twenty-year epistolary friendship that flourished between the author in New York City, and Frank Doel, an antiquarian bookseller in London, at the eponymous address. Hanff wrote her first letter, requesting his help in tracking down several obscure titles, in 1949, launching a volley of letters back and forth, sharing ideas and recipes and Christmas food packages from Hanff (England still feeling the pinch of post-war food shortages) that lasted until Doel’s death. An ode to friendship as much as to books and reading.

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish is historical fiction and literary detection with lashing of richly detailed atmosphere of 17th century Amsterdam and London. Two scholars—one wise elderly woman and one eager young man—discover a cache of long-lost papers, revealed during renovation of an historic London house. Exploration of the documents uncovers the luminous mind of Ester Velasquez, the woman who wrote them, chronicling the Jewish diaspora and the Spanish Inquisition and her own scholarly and rabbinic yearnings. Both thrilling and moving, this novel celebrates those who read and those who write, and those who care about them both.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a book like none other. Narrated by Death, extremely long, difficult and sad, set in Nazi Germany with a bewildering cast of characters and an intricate plot involving the reversal of expectations and norms—and language itself—it seems an unlikely choice to be marketed as a young-adult novel (as it was not in the author’s native Australia). But heavy going or not, it makes compelling reading, and sends a powerful message about the ability of reading and writing to help us endure all kinds of darkness. And Liesel, the main character, is a child so good and generous and brave in the midst of great suffering and cruelty that even Death comes to love her.

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robertson is a collection of essays on education, culture, and politics; only the title essay is explicitly about books, but it alone is worth the price of admission. Surprisingly, and some would might think refreshingly, her early reading seems bare of the classics beloved of the rest of us: no homage here to Wind in the Willows or Alice in Wonderland. “I preferred books that were old and thick and hard. I made vocabulary lists,” she remembers. She read Homer and the journals of Lewis and Clark and the Bible. Despite the daunting austerity of such early reading to those of us with fond memories of less stringent fare, she respectfully acknowledges a debt of gratitude to the librarians and teachers of her youth. These essays make good deep-background to her novels by the way.

Nemo’s Almanac: A Quiz for Book Lovers by Ian Patterson calls itself “a literary quiz full of quotes that will challenge, cheer and enlighten book buffs.” Begun by a governess (Annie Larden) to test her charges with questions like “how did Lord Bacon describe coffee?” and “did Oliver Cromwell use blotting paper?” this quiz has been published annually in Britain for 126 years. No longer a pamphlet but a slender handsome book, it no longer asks questions but presents unnamed quotations to identify. “No Googling allowed!” the editor insists, but the answers are helpfully provided at the back. A great gift for any bibliophile.

Speaking of book lovers, Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount is exactly that: a cheerfully random treasure house, a picture book of books of all kinds, with lists of libraries and favorite bookstores and writers’ rooms, a description of the physical composition of books, and even a double-page account of famous bookstore cats. One of my favorite entries is a quiz, “novel food” inviting us to name the book that features all sorts of literary edibles, from Turkish delight and madeleines to butterbeer and liverwurst-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. All lovingly and charmingly illustrated by the author.

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by cognitive neurologist Maryanne Wolf is at once fascinating, disturbing and hopeful. The author points out that unlike sight and vision, the ability to read did not evolve naturally in humans. She traces the complex ways that vision, cognition, and language work together for the learned skill of “deep reading”—a way of reading that our immersion in digital information damages. Based on her lifelong study of dyslexia and cognition, she thinks that we can learn—and teach our children—to develop what she calls a “biliterate brain” that can switch back and forth between “deep reading” and the kind of reading that media involves. But for that hope to be realized parents and teachers will need to teach children how to use technology more wisely. A call to action, but not to despair.

The “Bob” in the title My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul is not a person but a book—her B.O.B, “book of books,” a battered journal in which the author has recorded every book she has read for the last 28 years (and counting). Paul is editor of the New York Times Book Review, so that’s a lot of books. But it’s not just a list, or even a chronicle of the development of her literary taste beyond Sweet Valley High. And it’s more than a memoir, though it is that. It’s about the power of books to educate our minds and hearts, to accompany us and encourage and guide us on our journeys.

Books about or set in libraries and bookstores:

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness is the first book in the All Souls Trilogy and the author’s debut novel. Diana Bishop, a science professor (who also happens to be descended from a powerful witch family, though she has rejected that part of her heritage) in the course of her research discovers a long-lost manuscript in Oxford University’s magnificent Bodleian Library. The manuscript triggers a magical reaction in her, and alerts the whole magical community of witches, vampires and daemons—many of whom have been seeking the book for centuries—to its presence, and to hers. One of those seeking the book is (naturally) a handsome vampire. “Inter-magical-creature-species” attraction ensues. Part silly romance, part historical novel about magic, part thoughtful meditation on identity and self-discovery and tolerance of the other, the best part of this book (for me) is its setting in the Bodleian. The story lost me when they left its hallowed precincts, and the subsequent volumes lost me altogether, but as a paean to one of the greatest libraries in the world, Discovery is delightful.

Death of an Avid Reader by Frances Brody is the sixth in the series featuring plucky-widowed-war-nurse-turned-socially-superior-private-investigator Kate Shackleton, but can easily be read as a standalone mystery. It’s intricately (not to say wildly improbably) plotted for a “cozy,” set in 1920s Yorkshire, in the historic Leeds Library. There are bizarre twists in the stacks, dead bodies in the basement, a valuable book that has gone missing, an exorcism to rid the haunted library of its ghosts—again, for me, the best part was the setting, the library itself. The Leeds Library was founded in 1768, and is the oldest surviving subscription library in Britain.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean is a lively journalistic investigation of the 1986 Los Angeles public library fire, still an unsolved mystery as to its origin: also an ode to libraries, librarians, books and those who love them.

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan has a secure place among my recommendations of “books for when you need something light” but is such a sweet homage to books and libraries and bookshops that it merits a place on this list too.

The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland invites us into one of the most charming used bookstores in literature, and introduces us to some of its most endearing characters. But Loveday Cardew, who is befriended by the store’s owner and takes a job there, is hiding great pain behind her tattoos and her prickly silence. As much about violence, mental illness, and childhood trauma as about the healing power of books and words, this book walks a tightrope between sunlight and shadow in a persuasive and satisfying way.

Books about the art and craft of writing:

Eudora Welty’s brief autobiographical account, One Writer’s Beginnings, originated as three lectures she gave at Harvard in 1983. The titles of these lectures, now the three chapters in the book, reveal the shape of her development as one of the most acclaimed writers of 20th century America: “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice.” Both a magical remembrance of her childhood and a keen observation of the connections among memory, imagination, and craft, this book is a superb aid to anyone wanting to listen to one’s own life, to learn to see the world, and to find one’s own voice as a writer.

Eudora Welty’s On Writing is brisker and more concise, an invaluable handbook for any fiction writer, full of insight about ways to gather language and ideas and convey a sense of place, but also revelatory to any serious reader, pondering such questions as what exactly makes a story good, what makes a novel succeed, and what makes a writer an artist.

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee is a similarly smart and useful book of advice on the craft of writing creative nonfiction. Long a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, the author of 32 books, and professor of creative writing at Princeton, McPhee knows whereof he speaks. Deliciously confessional, gossipy, and digressive, this book contains the hard lessons of a lifetime working the craft, full of practical wisdom on how to construct an essay the way a master shipbuilder might fashion a beautiful watertight seaworthy boat.

Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing by Roger Rosenblatt is the fruit of the author’s life as a professor of English and writing as much as it is of his experience as a novelist, essayist, and playwright. Both a practical guide and a reflection on the larger processes of learning, reading, and writing, it contains much good counsel for aspiring writers, whom he urges to write with “restraint, precision, and generosity.”

Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest, edited with an introduction by William Zinsser is a conversational eclectic gathering of reflections from nine writers (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, agnostic, “spiritual but not religious”) on the mystery at the heart of their own craft and their own journeys of faith. As Frederick Buechner (one of the nine) puts it, sometimes “something outside ourselves is breathed into us.” Zinsser is the genial wise host of this party, guided by his own conviction that “writing is a form of ministry.”

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination by Ursula K. Le Guin is a collection of the celebrated author’s prose, ranging from rare autobiographical writings to reflections on reading and writing and pieces of literary criticism on writers as various as Tolstoy, Mark Twain, J.L. Borges, Tolkien and Cordwainer Smith. Always opinionated, rarely dull, Le Guin is here her usual provocative, witty, and learned self.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, award-winning writer, journalist, and editor, is sheer delight. And how often can one say that about a book largely concerned with the correct use of apostrophes and commas? Sparkling with wit and erudition, this book may persuade you to join the ranks of those who carry a marker around to correct punctuation errors on public signage. An improbable bestseller in Britain and the States.

Literary Recommendations for All Sorts of Times and States of Mind