Friday, January 16, 2009

Books on Books

After finishing my post about People of the Book, I realized that I read quite a few books that are about books, booksellers and libraries. Here are a few of the ones worth checking out (pun intended) ...

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly -- An evil fairy tale world which houses a powerful book.
The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox -- A childhood friendship goes bad with the theft of a book and turns even worse with the theft of a legacy.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde -- Thursday Next has the ability to travel into books and must save Rochester and Jane Eyre from a real world villain ... luckily this one is the first in a whole series of book travel novels.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte -- A fast-paced mystery about the ruthless worlds of book collecting and Satanism.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling -- A diary that writes back when you write in it and brainwashes Ginny Weasley into doing very bad things.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon -- A young man follows a trail of ashes and tears as he tries to discover who is burning all of Julian Carax's books.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield -- An older author invites a young author to her home and reveals her long held secrets to her in hopes of finding a sympathetic mind before the end of her life.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester -- A non-fiction book about one of the main contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary, an asylum inmate.

Do you have any recommendations for books about books?

Obsessed with books,
K

5 comments:

  1. I've read all of these but The Meaning of Night! I'm trying to think of some others, but the only ones I'm coming up with are nonfiction.

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  2. I would love any non-fiction recommendations as well!

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  3. Two fiction books about books that I liked a lot were Daphne by Justine Picardie (about Daphne Du Maurier, the Brontes, and JM Barrie) and Possession by AS Byatt (old poetry manuscripts).

    For nonfiction, I loved Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure (truly a book about books--profiles of good, sometimes unexpected classics). And on a different note, there are AJ Jacobs's books The Know It All (reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica) and The Year of Living Biblically (reading and attempting to follow the entire Bible).

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  4. I really liked Inkheart, tho I haven't read the next two in the series.

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  5. Teresa - Those are some great recommendations! I definitely need to get Classics for Pleasure because I love finding sleeper classics.

    Booklogged - I want to read Inkheart especially with the movie coming out next week. Thanks!

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