How Reading Changed My Life

This book is a wonderful way for readers to understand themselves, if they don't already. Quindlen shows that we're NOT weird because we read, we're NOT escapists who can't handle the real world, and we're NOT anti-social. We're just in love with words and the power of stories. In only 84 pages, Quindlen tackles the reasons why we read, reading and technology, why classics should not be crammed down our kids' throats, and much more. Her Top Ten lists alone are worth the price of the book. As great as this book is for readers, it makes an even better gift for friends and family members who DON'T understand our need to read. A must read, a must-have.

Anna Quindlen's "How Reading Changed My Life" is a charming and inspiring blend of autobiography and informal cultural criticism. In the book Quindlen reflects on books, reading, and readers.Quindlen notes, "While we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers [...]." These, and many other insights in this book, really resonated with me. Throughout the book, Quindlen celebrates what she calls a "lively subculture" of truly serious readers.Quindlen reflects on differences in men's and women's reading practices, on book groups, on skirmishes over "The Canon" of great books, on banned books, and on other topics. She tells how reading helped her keep her sanity during the "year of disarray" after the birth of her second child, and recalls how she fell in love with John Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga." Ultimately, she explains why she believes that new technologies will not make old-fashioned books (versus online books) obsolete.HRCML is full of wonderful passages, such as a remembered epiphany over D.H. Lawrence. This short book concludes with a few reading lists: "10 Nonfiction Books That Help Us Understand the World," "The 10 Books I Would Save in a Fire (If I Could Save Only 10)," etc. If you are a serious reader, I predict that, like me, you will recognize a kindred spirit in these pages, and will rejoice.

For this reader, who is currently wading through Henry Miller's dense, challenging THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE, the short HOW READING CHANGED MY LIFE is more the comfortable touchstone for a middle-class, baby boomer whom Miller would have quickly dismissed if he had met her. Quindlen validates our common habits.Unlike many, including the nasty new breed known as aliterates, who struggle with the fear that reading might be a replacement for life and experience, she argues that reading IS experience. It amplifies life's other experiences, it helps make meaning of them. Thank you, Anna Quindlen, for settling that one once and for all. I agree wholeheartedly with her appreciation of middlebrow beginnings. As she points out, we get to the worthy stuff when we're ready and a young person struggling with MIDDLEMARCH will not easily turn into an adult who enjoys serious reading. Think of it this way: there are quite a few professional musicians out there who as eight-year-olds never played a sophisticated scherzo at their first piano recital, they played "The Old Mill Song".Yes, Quindlen includes lists but they are not haughty absolutes. This is a slim book, an extended essay really, and it could be argued that she has only begun to scrape the surface. Look at it this way, though: she lets us out of class early so we can go out and enjoy reading on our own.

I hesitated to shell out $8.95 plus tax for such a slim volume, but I am glad I did. I had recently skimmed an old copy of Mortimer Adler's How To Read A Book and found it utterly utilitarian. Ms. Quindlen's short but insightful book, on the other hand, succeeds in conveying the pleasure of reading for no particular reason other than the pleasure of reading. She gives a heart-warming account of her own history and experiences as a reader. This part of her book makes a wonderful story for young readers. (Her thoughts on technology are less convincing. Kids today are so much more at ease with computers than we are that it won't be hard for them to make the switch to electronic books-the size of which will shrink while their capacity expands within the next few years.) Definitely recommended by this reader.