A book for every mood…

Book Lust Nancy Pearl
287 pages; published 2003

Reading has always brought me pure joy. I read to encounter new worlds and new ways of looking at our own world. I read to enlarge my horizon, to gain wisdom, to experience beauty,  to understand myself better, and for the pure wonderment of it all. I read and marvel over how writers use language in ways I never thought of. I read for company, and for escape. Because I am incurably interested in the lives of other people, both friends and strangers, I red to meet myriad folks and enter their lives – for me, a way of vanquishing the “otherwise” we all experience. (ix)

Nancy Pearl, librarian, describes herself as being a “professional reader” for over thirty years, and taking one look at this book was enough to convince me of that.

Book Lust boasts ‘recommended reading for every mood, moment and reason’, with books gathered around both general and random topics such as

• Africa: Today and Tomorrow
• Armchair Travel
• Bicycling
• The Classical World
• Mothers and Daughters
• Three-Hanky Reads

For the most part it was a good read: it was well written and the books recommended were a pleasing mix of comforting regulars and never-before-seens. However, I found the format a little off-putting. The premise behind the book is, basically, a big list of books… but the format was not at all list-like, each topic being written up in prose. For some this may be a plus, for me I found that it caused me to skim a lot. 3.5/5

Teen Reads

Right Book, Right Time: 500 Books for Teenagers

Agnes Nieuwenhuizen
353 pages; published 2007


Read! Read! Read! Read for pleasure, for thrills, for escape, for ideas. Read books that make you laugh and cry and wonder and think. Read for yourself and not for others. (viii)


Yes, that’s right, it’s another list book. I have a sickness. Therapy didn’t work, I’m looking into medication. This was an early Christmas present I bought for myself and my sister, who, as a new ‘reader’ likes recommendations for books. This book was a winner, if the little post-it note taggies popping out the top are any indication.

After having read a few of these books, I’ve decided to change how I review them, focusing on just a few central points, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I iron out the kinks.


THEME: Books for Teenagers.
The premise was a book for every occasion, mood, phase, experience. As the book is aimed at teachers/librarians as well as teenagers, I thought it was a particularly good idea. Teenager or not, you often have to be in the right place for the right book.


FORMAT:
The book is broken up into twelve chapters/sections:

• Action, adventure and crime
• Been and gone
• Extreme and edgy
• Fantastic worlds
• Life, love and loss
• My place in the world
• Not such ordinary lives
• Outside the square
• This sporting life
• War and conflicts
• What if…?
• When you want to laugh

These chapters are broken up by the occasional mini essay or editorial on a variety of topics from “pink books” to graphic novels.

Within chapters are, and this was the best part, full page reviews for each novel/series with the occasional author bio/review.

Each book was classified with its country of origin and reading age:

Y = Young Reader
YA = Young Adult
A = Adult

but then goes on to show the primary audience and the audience who may be interested. For example: a book marked YA/A indicates a YA novel that may be of interest to an adult reader.

In between these reviews were shorter topical lists (“grand love stories”, “extraordinary international lives”, “recent Australian YA books with Shakespearean connections”) with shorter paragraph reviews.

This format made this book not only extremely easy to read and navigate, but also quite pleasing to look at.


SELECTION OF BOOKS:
Here’s where the list book can potentially fall down. You don’t want a generic list of books which you’ve seen a hundred times, but at the same time, you don’t want a list so out there that it’s unrecognisable or unrelatable.

Right Book, Right Time: 500 Great Reads for Teenagers focuses mainly on recent YA novels which, considering the discerning teen audience, is probably a good idea. However, it still includes (in the topical lists mostly) more traditional or enduring teenage and children’s’ classics. The range of books was impressive and very well selected, catering for all tastes and interest. 5/5

Purchase Right Book, Right Time: 500 Great Reads for Teenagers here.

Other Reviews
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Lookie, another list book...

1000 Books to Change Your Life

Jonathan Derbyshire (ed.)

280 pages; published 2007

… there are lots of books around that suggest that […] tell you both how to read and what to read; books that prescribe a canon of great works and then tell you how to go about extracting the ore of significant meaning from them.

But we’ve no intention of being anywhere near so prescriptive. Not because we’re sceptical of the existence of literary value – we’re quite sure you can tell a good book from a bad one – but more because we’re unsure that most people’s reading habits are suited to the kind of strenuous mind-expansion programmes recommended by the latter-day zealots of what used to be called ‘improving’ literature.” (7)

Any regular readers of this blog, or anyone who knows me in the slightest, is aware of my list fixation – in fact, if you do, you probably take part of the gentle but constant teasing of the same. So when I saw this book, "Time Out" 1000 Books to Change Your Life, my fingers itched till it made its way to my shopping cart. It was not, however, what I had expected.

I expected something along the lines of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die – something that was, in essence, a list of 1000 books, perhaps with some contextual information and a bit of a blurb. I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

1000 Books takes Shakespeare’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech from As You Like It as it’s basic format, breaking the book up into seven main sections – birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age, and death. Within each of these sections are various essays, recommendations from known authors, and various suggestion lists based around a topic – ‘birth and motherhood’, ‘siblings’, ‘illicit liaisons’ and ‘mid-life crises’, just to name a few.

The book was an interestingly engaging read, suited to both a long perusal or picking it up for essay or two here or there. It was well written and the suggestions of books were fresh and wide-spread. A welcome contribution to any book collectors (or list collectors) shelf. 4/5

Purchase "Time Out" 1000 Books to Change Your Life here.

Other Reviews
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So depressing...

There is nothing I love better than a good list*. Seriously, want me to do something that I hate, stick it on a list and your chances increase tenfold (how else do you think I get any housework done at all?). So, as you may imagine, books full of lists - and, even moreso, books of book lists are a huge winner with me.

I'm working my way slowly through the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (as well as the movie edition), BBC's The Big Read: Book of Books, and Voyages of Imagination: the Star Trek Fiction Companion ... oh, and a whole pile of the annual top-lists that I pick up from teh local bookstores. What can I say? I've come to terms with my obsession.

All this is my way of justifying the fact that I once again broke my self-imposed book buying ban (who am I kidding, really?) by buying yet another list/companion book: The Literature Lover's Companion.

Covering a huge range of authors, from Homer to Stephen King, each entry gives a brief bio of the author and a list of their major works. Douglas Adams, for example:

But of course, the fun in having a list (or book of lists) is in the crossing off. So - after a great deal of working myself up to it - I grabbed a hilighter and went at it.

Despite being a pretty speedy reader, I know that I'm the most well-read person in the world; I'm not even the most well-read person I know but even so, I had been maintaining the somewhat naive self-delusion that I had read reasonably widely ... I have since learnt that the quickest way to dispel this belief is to sit down with a book like this. There is a depressingly little amount of blue highlighting in this book.

Oh well.

*Every one of my friends just rolled their eyes and died from the complete understatement of that sentence.