For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most [Paperback]

Various (Author), Ronald B. Shwartz (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0425172945 | ISBN-13: 978-0425172940 | Publication Date: May 1, 2000

For this ultimate book lover's guide, more than one hundred distinguished writers share their personal thoughts in response to the question: what books have left the greatest impression on you and why? The result is not a contrived list of Western civilization's "Great Books," but a heartfelt commentary on works that these lifelong readers most admire.

"For anybody with a passion for books, this is certainly the most entertaining literary companion...quite irresistible." --Washington Post Book World

"Luxuriate in the memories of intellectual awakening...a memory book of fond epiphanies." --Kirkus Reviews

"If you're a book lover, this is pretty irresistible stuff." --Chicago Sun-Times

"The authors offer surprisingly intimate glimpses of themselves." --The Miami Herald

"Gorgeously written paeans." --The Improper Bostonian

Contributors include
Diane Ackerman
Russell Banks
Dave Barry
Ann Beattie
Robert Bly
Rita Mae Brown
Art Buchwald
Christopher Buckley
Bruce Jay Friedman
Nadine Gordimer
Doris Grumbach
Pete Hamill
John Irving
Tracy Kidder
W.P. Kinsella
David Leavitt
Elmore Leonard
Doris Lessing
Norman Mailer
James McBride
Elizabeth McCracken
Thomas McGuane
Arthur Miller
Sue Miller
Peggy Noonan
Joyce Carol Oates
Michael Ondaatje
P.J. O'Rourke
Amos Oz
Cynthia Ozick
Grace Paley
Robert B. Parker
Marge Piercy
Reynolds Price
James Purdy Mario Puzo
Anna Quindlen
Carol Shields
Neil Simon
Oliver Stone
William Styron
Gay Talese
John Updike
Kurt Vonnegut
Wendy Wasserstein
Tobias Wolff
Herman Wouk
and others

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ronald B. Shwartz is a Boston trial lawyer and former editor of The University of Chicago Law Review. He has edited three books of quotations and has written essays and reviews for The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and other prominent periodicals.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425172945
• ISBN-13: 978-0425172940
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,221,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book lover's delight!, October 23, 2000

By 

Andy Todes - See all my reviews

This review is from: For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most (Paperback)

the only drawback of this book is that it will rob you of precious hours devoted to reading other books! i'm being facetious, of course -- this is a wealth of reflections to (a) place by your bedside table, (b) in the glovebox of your car, and (c) dare i say, in the bathroom to savor whenever you get a spare moment -- or to enjoy simply for its own sake. it's very much like sitting down face-to-face with a garrulous, self-reflective author (or grandparent) and hearing a lifetime of wisdom squished into a few minutes. so grab a pencil -- you're going to need one! -- and mark what sounds interesting. funny how often "the brothers k" gets mentioned, "moby dick" etc. but so many wonderful surprises in store, too. thanks to kurt vonnegut's (brilliant) short essay, for example, i picked up "candide" and am much the wiser. oddly enough, no one recommends "les misérables" -- i can't imagine why not -- or "musashi" for that matter. but "the tale of genji" is recommended, so all is forgiven. "for the love of books" = beautiful!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable authors share their favorites-Title says it all!, August 9, 2000

By 

Bernadette A. Moyer (Lutherville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most (Paperback)

A wonderful collection of some of the most remarkable authors likes and dislikes and what books influenced them most. From childhood memories to adult appreciation, each author shares their favorite titles as well as how they came to appreciate reading and the written word.

As a fellow author, I felt like I had a window seat into the soul of many great writers. "WAR AND PEACE" won many votes as a favored choice.

Some authors distinguish between historic works and current favorites. Most agree that readers make writers! Each author seems to highly respect the written word.

Truly enjoyed the stories told about what was viewed as the catalyst to an early appreciation of books. My only negative comment would have to be on the size of the text. Personal opinion is that with so much written word on a page, you can lose the interest of the reader. These stories should be appreciated and read.

Easy to see why this would make an excellent choice for any adult book/reading group.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading Group Pick- Martha's & Alice's "Notes in the Margin", July 26, 2000

By 

"readinggroupnotes" - See all my reviews

This review is from: For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most (Paperback)

Shwartz is a Boston trail lawyer with an unabashed love for the well-written word. In the introduction Shwartz wrote about reading, "I would read, as readers do, to tame the unfamiliar or see the familiar through new and enlightened prisms; to see how different or eerily familiar, another person's interior life could be from my own."

This is a book of short commentaries by 115 writers on the books they love most. And indeed it is hard to flip many pages without finding the word love. Shwartz set out to produce the very book he couldn't find in bookstores!

This is truly a book that your reading group could share. Buy one copy and bring it to meetings. It can give you a wealth of insights and ideas for books to read- read a book written by one of the 115 authors interviewed and then select a book to read that influenced that author. The bibliographical index is reason alone to buy this book. Shwartz has said that he always found himself asking what the authors themselves read; and here you'll find that answered both in text and in the index.

Penelope Fitzgerald, author of "The Bookshop" wrote in her commentary that "Fathers& Sons" was one of the books that made the greatest impression on her, "I still feel close to weeping when I get to the end. . . " John Irving, author of "The Cider House Rules" named "Great Expectations" and said, ". . .the intention of a novel by Charles Dickens is to move you emotionally- not intellectually . . . " And Anna Quindlen, author of "One True Thing" said, "The books I've loved most were the books I could inhabit."

Our interesting word selection was "Verity"" The quality or state of being true or real. Faithfulness to aesthetic truth.

Our favorite quote was by Anne Fadiman: "I was so ludicrously unprepared for Humanties 190 that the course nearly proved my undoing. With a doggedness born of panic, I defaced nearly every line of Aristitle's poetics with citron Hi-liter and crammed the margins with felt-tip notations."

Shwartz wrote that it was his hope that his book "might inspire people to read more. . . " Oh yes!