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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Anna Quindlen presents a “swift and compelling paean to the joys of books” (Booklist). “Like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, [How Reading Changed My Life] is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary, and a pleasure to read.”—Publishers Weekly “Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. . . . Yet of all the many things in which we recognize universal comfort—God, sex, food, family, friends—reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in a chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. . . . I read because I loved it more than any activity on earth.”—from How Reading Changed My Life
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Anna Quindlen presents a “swift and compelling paean to the joys of books” (Booklist). “Like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, [How Reading Changed My Life] is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary, and a pleasure to read.”—Publishers Weekly “Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. . . . Yet of all the many things in which we recognize universal comfort—God, sex, food, family, friends—reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in a chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. . . . I read because I loved it more than any activity on earth.”—from How Reading Changed My Life
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the bookThe Reading Lists from Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life:
10 Big Thick Wonderful Books that Could Take You a Whole Summer to Read (But Aren't Beach Books)
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Forstyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
10 Non Fiction Books That Help Us Understand the World
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick
Lincoln by David Herbert Douglas
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
How We Die by Sherwin Nuland
The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Power Broker by Robert Caro
10 Books that will Help a Teenager Feel More Human
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Lost In Place by Mark Salzman
What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Bloodbrothers by Richard Price
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Only Save 10)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats
The Collected Plays of William Shakespeare
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Ten Books for a Girl Who is Full of Beans (Or Ought to Be)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
The Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
The BFG by Ronald Dahl
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
Catherine Known As Birdy by Katherine Paterson
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
Ten Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie King
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham
The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le...
About the Author-
Anna Quindlen is the author of many bestselling books, including the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Rise and Shine, the #1 bestselling memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, and A Short Guide to a Happy Life. Her other novels include Blessings, One True Thing, the Oprah Book Club Selection Black and Blue, and Still Life with Bread Crumbs.
Reviews-
August 24, 1998 In this pithy celebration of the power and joys of reading, Quindlen emphasizes that books are not simply a means of imparting knowledge, but also a way to strengthen emotional connectedness, to lessen isolation, to explore alternate realities and to challenge the established order. To these ends much of the book forms a plea for intellectual freedom as well as a personal paean to reading. Quindlen (One True Thing) recalls her own early love affair with reading; writes with unabashed fervor of books that shaped her psychosexual maturation (John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, Mary McCarthy's The Group); and discusses the books that made her a liberal committed to fighting social injustice (Dickens, the Bible). She compares reading books to intimate friendship--both activities enable us to deconstruct the underpinnings of interpersonal problems and relationships. Her analysis of the limitations of the computer screen is another rebuttal of those who predict the imminent demise of the book. In order to further inspire potential readers, she includes her own admittedly "arbitrary and capricious" reading lists-- "The 10 books I would save in a fire," "10 modern novels that made me proud to be a writer," "10 books that will help a teenager feel more human" and various other categories. But most of all, like the columns she used to write for the New York Times, this essay is tart, smart, full of quirky insights, lapidary and a pleasure to read. (Sept.) FYI: This is the latest in Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought.
September 1, 1998 Readers who miss best-selling novelist Quindlen's newspaper column will welcome the return of her engaging voice in this latest addition to Ballantine's "Library of Contemporary Thought," a series of short, inexpensive trade paperback originals. Never stodgy or academic, Quindlen ties her own experience to reading habits in general and the ways they have changed over the last 100 years, including the recent influence of Oprah. She concludes with a series of arbitrary and capricious reading lists that could give librarians ideas: "10 Books That Will Help a Teenager Feel More Human," "10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like To Find in a Summer Rental," "10 Modern Novels That Made Me Proud To Be a Writer," etc. This little book for book lovers, an excellent choice for reading groups, is recommended for all libraries.--Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P.L., Lafayette, CO
August 1, 1998 Quindlen's novels, including "Black and Blue" (1997), have proved to be quite popular, but many readers still think of her as a trustworthy columnist for the "New York Times," and it is in that warm and piquant voice that she addresses the subject of reading. In her swift and compelling paean to the joy of books, Quindlen boldly declares that she has been a voracious reader all her life, not because she wants to educate or better herself, but because she just loves reading "more than any other activity on earth." She believes that many people feel this way because books both "lessen isolation" and help readers escape the demands of everyday life. Reading, she says, is an "undersung" source of pleasure and comfort that ranks right up there with "God, sex, food, family, friends." Memories of book-bliss in childhood segue into incisive discussions of why reading for pleasure is so often viewed with suspicion and why women comprise the majority of fiction readers. Quoting from the American Library Association's reports on banned books in school and public libraries, Quindlen analyzes the great power books possess and the reasons they arouse fear and loathing as well as love and devotion. Technology's effect on publishing and attendant debates over the future of the book also engage Quindlen's nimble mind, and after a thorough assessment, she concludes that while computers are wonderfully useful, there's simply nothing like reading a real book. So ardent is Quindlen, she even compiled reading lists for book lovers of all ages. ((Reviewed August 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)
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