More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  ADAPTING TO ADOPTION

  AFRICA: A READER’S ITINERARY

  ALL IN THE FAMILY: WRITER DYNASTIES

  ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

  ʺALMOST HEAVEN, WEST VIRGINIAʺ

  THE ALPHA, BETA, GAMMAS OF GREECE

  ALPHABET SOUP

  AND THE AWARD FOR BEST TITLE GOES TO...

  ANIMAL LOVE

  BARSETSHIRE AND BEYOND

  THE BEATS AND THEIR GENERATION

  THE BECKONING ROAD

  BEST FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

  BEST FOR TEENS

  BIG TEN COUNTRY: THE LITERARY MIDWEST

  Michigan

  Iowa

  Minnesota

  Ohio

  Pennsylvania

  Wisconsin

  THE BOOK LUST OF OTHERS

  BRONTËS FOREVER

  BILL BRYSON: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  BUILDING BLOCKS

  CENTRAL ASIA: CROSSROADS OF EMPIRES, CAULDRON OF WAR

  LEE CHILD: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  CHILD PRODIGIES

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  CIAO, ITALIA

  CIVIL RIGHTS AND WRONGS

  CODES AND CIPHERS

  COMMONPLACE BOOKS

  THE COMPLEX NAPOLEON

  THE CONTRADICTORY CARIBBEAN: PARADISE AND PAIN

  COZIES

  CRIME IS A GLOBETROTTER

  Russia

  Norway

  Sweden

  Bosnia

  Sicily

  China

  Japan

  Tibet

  Egypt

  Turkey

  Israel

  DEWEY DECONSTRUCTED

  000s

  100s

  200s

  300s

  400s

  500s

  600s

  700s

  800s

  900s

  DICK LIT

  DIGGING UP THE PAST THROUGH FICTION

  FANTASY FOR YOUNG AND OLD

  FATHERS, MOTHERS, SISTERS, BROTHERS: THE FAMILY OF THE CLERGY

  FICTION FOR FOODIES

  FLORIDA FICTION

  FOUNDING FATHERS

  THE FOURTH ESTATE

  FRACTURED FAIRY TALES

  FRIEND MAKERS

  GALLIVANTING IN THE GRAVEYARD

  JANE GARDAM: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  GENDER BENDING

  GIRL GUIDES, OR IT’S A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, GOOD THING YOU HAVE A FLASH LIGHT

  GONE FISHIN’

  GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

  GRAPHICA

  THE GREAT PLAINS

  The Dakotas

  Nebraska

  GROUP PORTRAITS

  GUILT-INDUCING BOOKS

  DAVID HALBERSTAM: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  RUSSELL HOBAN: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  A HOLIDAY SHOPPING LIST

  HONG KONG HOLIDAYS

  HORROR FOR SISSIES

  I AM WOMAN—HEAR ME ROAR

  IDAHO: AND NARY A POTATO TO BE SEEN

  THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

  INDIA: A READER’S ITINERARY

  History

  Armchair Travel

  Fiction

  IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NOVEL

  JERSEY GUYS AND GALS

  JOURNALS AND LETTERS: WE ARE ALL VOYEURS AT HEART

  JUST TOO GOOD TO MISS

  KRAKATAU

  LEGAL EAGLES IN FICTION

  LEGAL EAGLES IN NONFICTION

  LEWIS AND CLARK: ADVENTURERS EXTRAORDINAIRE

  LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS

  LINES THAT LINGER; SENTENCES THAT STICK

  LITERARY LIVES: THE AMERICANS

  LITERARY LIVES: THE BRITS

  A LITTLE LEFT OF CENTER

  LIVING HIGH IN CASCADIA

  LIVING THROUGH WAR

  LIVING YOUR DREAM

  MAIDEN VOYAGES

  MICHAEL MALONE: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  MARRIAGE BLUES

  ME, ME, ME: AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS

  MEN CHANNELING WOMEN

  MIDCENTURY: FROM WORLD WAR II TO VIETNAM

  WALTER MOSLEY: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  MS. MYSTERY

  NAGGING MOTHERS, CRYING CHILDREN

  NATURE WRITING

  NEAR NOVELS: LINKED SHORT STORIES

  NEW ENGLAND NOVELS

  THE 1960S IN FACT AND FICTION

  OH, BROTHER!

  OTHER PEOPLE’S SHOES

  PARROTS

  PLOTS FOR PLOTZING

  POETRY PLEASERS

  QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER TIMES

  READY, SET, LIFTOFF: BOOKS TO IGNITE DISCUSSION

  MARK SALZMAN: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  SCIENCE 101

  CAROL SHIELDS: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  NEVIL SHUTE: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  SIBS

  SMALL-TOWN LIFE

  SOCIAL STUDIES

  SOUTHERN-FRIED FICTION

  Alabama

  Mississippi

  Virginia

  SPACE OPERAS

  SRI LANKA: EXOTIC AND TROUBLED

  NEAL STEPHENSON: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  TEENAGE TIMES

  TICKLE YOUR FUNNY BONE

  TIME TRAVEL

  TRICKY, TRICKY

  TRUE ADVENTURES

  BARBARA W. TUCHMAN: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  TWO, OR THREE, ARE BETTER THAN ONE

  VIRAGOS

  VOICE

  WAYWARD WIVES

  JONATHAN WEINER: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  P. G. WODEHOUSE: TOO GOOD TO MISS

  THE WRITER’S CRAFT

  YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER

  YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: GOOD READING FROM THE GOVERNMENT (REALLY!)

  Copyright Page

  Praise for BOOK LUST and Nancy Pearl

  “Readers who travel the pages of Book Lust will be astonished at the breadth and depth of Pearl’s reading experience. It’s a book best read twice; once straight through, then kept as a reference that will forever forestall the question, ‘What should I read next?’”

  —The Seattle Times

  “She’s the talk of librarian circles.”

  —The New York Times

  “A tour de force that would thrill any listmaker. . . .This is one lusty librarian!”

  —The Los Angeles Times

  “With their own action figurines, ’zines, and websites, a new breed of librarian is closing the book on a stodgy old stereotype . . . [Nancy Pearl] has become pretty much the librarian version of a rock star.”

  —Bust magazine

  “The country’s most famous librarian (and there are no candidates for second place) . . . Pearl is cherished by bibliophile strangers who consider her a trusted friend.”

  —The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “Looking for a good book? Naturally Nancy Pearl has a few recommendations.”

  —Sunset magazine

  “Perhaps the librarian best known in popular culture . . .”

  —Library Journal

  “Just as I was ready to put the last nail in the coffin of reader’s advisory services, up pops the best book ever written on the subject. In fact, this may be the best book ever written by a librarian.”

  —American Libraries Magazine

  “Book Lust should be a hit with book clubs looking for all manner of reading.”

  —Bloomsbury Review

  INTRODUCTION

  If we were at a twelve-step meeting together, I would have to stand up and say,
“Hi, I’m Nancy P., and I’m a readaholic.” As I explained in the introduction to Book Lust, my addiction to reading (and my career as a librarian) grew out of a childhood that was rescued from despair by books, libraries, and librarians. I discovered at a young age that books—paradoxically—allowed me both to find and to escape myself. I was enthralled with the sheer glory of the written word when I read (or had read to me), for example, Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine and A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson as a child, and I’ve never looked back. Recently a friend reminded me of what Francis Spufford says in The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading: “The books you read as a child brought you signs you hadn’t seen yourself, scents you hadn’t smelled, sounds you hadn’t heard. They introduced you to people you hadn’t met, and helped you to sample ways of being that would never have occurred to you.” As a child, I lived those words, and continue to do so as an adult reader.

  I live now in a small condominium whose four rooms are piled high with books that have spilled off the bookcases that line all the available wall space, and which themselves are already double-shelved with books. (It perhaps sounds messier than it is.)

  In addition to being an addicted reader, I have to confess that I am a promiscuous reader as well. I basically read anything, as long as it’s well written and has interesting characters. And there’s no subject in which you won’t find books that meet those criteria. As I write this, stacked next to my bed are these books, waiting patiently for me to read or reread them: Collected Poems by Donald Justice; Robert Byron’s classic travel book, The Road to Oxiana; James Muirden’s Shakespeare Well-Versed: A Rhyming Guide to All His Plays; Why Didn’t. They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie; Francine Prose’s A Changed Man;Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman; Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York by Gail Parent; The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin; Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray; Mantrapped by Fay Weldon; Mrs. Daffodil by Gladys Taber; and The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. A frighteningly eclectic list, to be sure.

  Any life devoted to reading is extraordinarily rich and rewarding, but it can certainly become an unbalanced life. Because of all the time I spend devoted to reading, here are some things that I’ve, perforce, given up: gardening, cooking, Rollerblading, and cleaning house. But in return I’ve gotten so much gratification from the life that reading has allowed me to live. I’ve gotten enormous pleasure from writing Book Lust and now More Book Lust.Writing these two books has given me a chance to select from the huge assortment of books that are available at bookstores and libraries a group of books that I’ve read and enjoyed—fiction, nonfiction, old, new, happy books, dark books, books for children, teens, and adults—and that I believe that other readers will enjoy too.

  I very much wanted to call this new book Book Lust II: The Morning After because of all that happened after I finished writing Book Lust. For about a week after I turned in the final manuscript of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason, I was elated. I had done it! Here, I thought, in one manuscript were all the books I’ve ever read and loved. And then, nearly a week to the day—when everything was out of my hands and no more changes were possible—I began sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night and saying, “Oh no, did I include Marge Piercy’s Vida in the ‘Pawns of History’ section?” (Answering that question entailed getting out of bed, turning on the computer, opening up the manuscript, and discovering to my horror that I had not.) And on and on it went—how on earth had I left out the first line of Anita Brookner’s debut novel, The Debut? Where was Dorothy Dunnett? Why, oh why, had I omitted Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat? Why did I include so little poetry when poetry is one of my great loves? The regrets were beginning to outweigh the joy.

  And then—because I had included my email address in the introduction to Book Lust—I started hearing from readers from Florida to Massachusetts, from Washington State to Washington, D.C., from Michigan to Texas, asking me the same sorts of questions—had I ever read Elizabeth Goudge’s Green Dolphin Street? (Yes.) What about Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga for another good first line? (Yes, definitely.) Had I thought about including Simon Singh’s The Code Book, or had I not read it or not liked it? (Hadn’t read it but would.) Many of the books that were recommended I had read, and had either forgotten or not enjoyed as much as the sender did; but others were completely new to me. I made reading lists of the books that sounded good to me, checked them out from the library, searched my local bookstores, scoured the Internet, and made heavy use of The Seattle Public Library’s Interlibrary Loan department.

  When Sasquatch Books asked me if I was interested in writing another book about good reads, I was overjoyed. It gave me a chance to make up for my previous omissions, add books that had just been published, and come up with new categories to fit these books into. (For various reasons—you’ll have to ask them—the folks at Sasquatch decided that it would be better to call the book More Book Lust, and so it is.)

  I think of More Book Lust not as a sequel to Book Lust, and certainly not as an updating of the first book, but rather as its true companion. I picture the two sitting on someone’s bookshelf—not next to each other, but rather bookending rows and rows of books that have been discovered, or rediscovered, and thoroughly enjoyed, from reading Book Lust and More Book Lust. Only a few books in Book Lust are also in More Book Lust. When a book appeared only as part of a list in Book Lust, with no (or minimal) description, I occasionally incorporated it into More Book Lust, adding an annotation. But even when it made perfect sense to include a Book Lust book in one of the new categories I created for More Book Lust, I restrained myself. You won’t find, for example, P. F. Kluge’s Biggest Elvis under either “Friend Makers” or “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” in More Book Lust, although it clearly should be in both sections, because I wrote so much about the book in Book Lust.

  You will find that many of the books in More Book Lust (and in Book Lust, for that matter) are out of print. If that’s the case, you have a couple of options. Your first stop should be your local library. If they don’t own it, they can usually borrow it from another library, at little or no cost to you. You can check out your local used bookstores. You can search the Internet—I generally make www.bookfinder.com or www.abebooks.com my first stop—or you can just enter the author and title into Google and see what comes up.