My N Author

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"things go right, I read. When they go wrong, I read more.

"Sometimes subtle, sometimes striking, the interplay between our lives and our books is the subject of this unique memoir by well-known publishing correspondent and self-described 'readaholic' Sara Nelson. The project began as an experiment with a simple plan -- fifty-two weeks, fifty-two books -- that fell apart in the first week. It was then that Sara realized the books chose her as much as she chose them, and the rewards and frustrations they brought were nothing she could plan for. From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and enough infectious enthusiasm to make a passionate reader out of anybody."
~~back cover

It didn't make a passionate reader out of me. (Well, perhaps that's unfair -- I already am a passionate reader. However, if I hadn't been, this book wouldn't have converted me.) Perhaps the problem here is that I come to books with expectations about them, generally based on the title, or the descriptive blurb, or the fact that someone whose taste I share thought it was a good book.

"fifty-two weeks, fifty-two books" -- I've done that challenge for the last three years, so I was prepared for a book that talked about the fifty-two books she read, why she liked them or didn't like them, etc. Secretly hoping for some authors or titles representing the hard letters: Q, X, Y, Z. In other words, I thought this book would be about the books.

It wasn't. Well, not exactly. It was more about the author, her family life, the crises in her life, etc. And how her husband doesn't understand why she reads so compulsively. And the way she intuitively gravitates toward a book depending on her current emotional state.

I have my share of "comfort reads", don't we all? But I don't chose what to read next based on how I'm feeling at the moment -- I have genres I like, and then there's titles that catch my eye, etc. Her process of choice didn't resonate with me, and neither did most of the books she chose to read.

I lusted after her built-in bookcases, though.