Fellow readers, why do we love so much to read books about books and reading? This category of books is so large that you could probably devote an entire year to it and never run out of reading material.

Just recently, I read three fairly short books back-to-back about books and reading—not intentionally, though. One was a book my son was reading for his high school English class (and I’m his teacher, so I read it, too). One was a mostly-forgotten classic that I was lucky to find even one copy of in my library’s catalog of nearly 5 million items. And one was an Amazon suggestion that I had first read 30 years ago.

Two are fiction; one is nonfiction. Two are delightful and charming (even laugh-out-loud funny); one is chillingly prescient. Their publication dates span fifty-three years, and reflect the tremendous changes of the early to mid-twentieth century. Here’s my take on each of these very different books, followed by a list of other books about books that I’ve loved … and a few that I haven’t.

continue reading