For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

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

William Faulkner. Great Expectations. Marcel Proust. Moby Dick. Mark Twain. War and Peace. Virginia Woolf. Ulysses. Ernest Hemingway. They all show up repeatedly in For the Love of Books, for which each of 115 writers was asked to discuss the three to six books that influenced him or her the most. But the Hardy Boys are here, too, and Archie comics, as well as the Bobbsey Twins and Harold and the Purple Crayon. We are most susceptible to the impact of literature when we are in our 20s and younger, it seems, and several of the authors included here focus their attention on those early influences--how well they hold up over time. Many of the book's contributors liken relationships with treasured books to those with loved ones. Some of Louis Begley's favorites (The Divine Comedy, Remembrance of Things Past), "like my children, are always on my mind." Mona Simpson warns that "we fall in with books the way we fall in with friends, irrationally, often permanently, not always wisely." The reading of some books, adds Guy Davenport, can even forge friendships: "A friendship lasting thirty years," he says, "began with the discovery at a dull luncheon that we had both read Hugh Miller." Narrowing down one's favorite books to a mere half-dozen would daunt any reader, but it must be particularly arduous for those who eat and breathe books. While D.M. Thomas believes that "there are just a few books that, once you've read them, flow in your bloodstream," Neil Simon complains that "pin[ning] down the three or even six books that have left the greatest impression on me ... denies the four or five hundred great books that have imperceptibly changed my outlook on life." Some writers, says David Leavitt, "one thinks of as great but cannot love"; others "one loves but cannot think of as great." What a great pleasure it is to see the great and the not great, the humbling and the inspiring, gathered under one literary roof. And what a terrific task it would be to follow all the tendrils growing and shooting off toward so many sources of light, each a promise from a renowned contemporary writer that some kind of delicious reading can be found there. --Jane SteinbergRead More

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  • Product Description

    For this ultimate book lover's guide, more than one hundred distinguished writers share their personal thoughts in response to the question: what books have left the greatest impression on you and why? The result is not a contrived list of Western civilization's "Great Books," but a heartfelt commentary on works that these lifelong readers most admire.

    "For anybody with a passion for books, this is certainly the most entertaining literary companion...quite irresistible." --Washington Post Book World

    "Luxuriate in the memories of intellectual awakening...a memory book of fond epiphanies." --Kirkus Reviews

    "If you're a book lover, this is pretty irresistible stuff." --Chicago Sun-Times

    "The authors offer surprisingly intimate glimpses of themselves." --The Miami Herald

    "Gorgeously written paeans." --The Improper Bostonian

    Contributors include
    Diane Ackerman
    Russell Banks
    Dave Barry
    Ann Beattie
    Robert Bly
    Rita Mae Brown
    Art Buchwald
    Christopher Buckley
    Bruce Jay Friedman
    Nadine Gordimer
    Doris Grumbach
    Pete Hamill
    John Irving
    Tracy Kidder
    W.P. Kinsella
    David Leavitt
    Elmore Leonard
    Doris Lessing
    Norman Mailer
    James McBride
    Elizabeth McCracken
    Thomas McGuane
    Arthur Miller
    Sue Miller
    Peggy Noonan
    Joyce Carol Oates
    Michael Ondaatje
    P.J. O'Rourke
    Amos Oz
    Cynthia Ozick
    Grace Paley
    Robert B. Parker
    Marge Piercy
    Reynolds Price
    James Purdy Mario Puzo
    Anna Quindlen
    Carol Shields
    Neil Simon
    Oliver Stone
    William Styron
    Gay Talese
    John Updike
    Kurt Vonnegut
    Wendy Wasserstein
    Tobias Wolff
    Herman Wouk
    and others

  • 0425172945
  • 9780425172940
  • Ronald B. Shwartz
  • 1 May 2000
  • Berkley Publishing Group
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 320
  • Reissue
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