More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Nancy Pearl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 2005

The response to Nancy Pearl's surprise bestseller Book Lust was astounding: the Seattle librarian and winner of the 2004 Women's National Book Award even became the model for the now-famous Librarian Action Figure. Readers everywhere welcomed Pearl's encyclopedic but discerning filter on books worth reading, and her Rule of 50 (give a book 50 pages before deciding whether to continue; but readers over 50 must read the same number of pages as their age) became a standard MO.

Once again organized by topic, this sprightly follow-up includes an array of titles in nearly 150 eclectic categories, including Plots for Plotzing (highly unusual storylines), Animal Love (in which humans fall in love with animals), The Autobiographical Gesture (memoirs about complex lives), Child Prodigies (child characters who are called on to perform great and sometimes heroic acts), Nagging Mothers, Crying Children (true tales from the frontlines of parenting), and Libraries and Librarians. Both a valuable reference and a vastly enjoyable read, More Book Lust offers a wealth of enthusiastic, quirky reading recommendations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rarely does a member of that unjustly maligned species, the librarian, attract the kind of attention Pearl did when she founded the first citywide reading program in Seattle in 1998. Many readers will seek her advice in this companion volume to Book Lust, which offers a wealth of new reading lists. (Many of the books on them, she acknowledges, are out of print—making for a good opportunity, she suggests, to visit your library.) The upshot is that these are not all classics—they're just books she or someone else really enjoyed reading, presented in more than 100 lists covering a delightful range of topics, from the biographical or geographical (Winston Churchill, Africa) to favorite writers categorized as "too good to miss" (including classics such as P.G. Wodehouse and contemporary writers like Jonathan Weiner and Walter Mosley). More idiosyncratic recommendations for the questing reader include "All in the Family" (books by writer dynasties); "Dick Lit" (her much better term for Lad Lit, for which, she admits, Nick Hornby has set a high bar); and "Tricky Tricky" (books that pull a fast one on you). If you're clueless about what to read next, you'll find something to pique your interest here. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this sequel to her phenomenally popular Book Lust (2003), Pearl, former Seattle librarian and a continuing national book-talk host, dips further into her repertoire of have-read books (both fiction and nonfiction) and offers up another batch she is only too happy to talk about. As in the previous volume, she creatively arranges her titles into unexpected but certainly tantalizing and even provocative categories, this time presenting a whole new set of categories. From "Adapting to Adoption" to "Your Tax Dollars at Work: Good Reading from the Government (Really!)," and including "Nagging Mothers, Crying Children," "Science 101," and "Gender-Bending," Pearl suggests titles relevant to each category and gives a brief annotation for each. A self-confessed "readaholic," Pearl lets us benefit from her addiction. May she never seek recovery. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books (April 11, 2005)
• ISBN-10: 1570614350
• ASIN: B0028N73C0
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,112,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

From Nancy: My lust for books and reading began when I was a very young child, and has continued unabated for lo, these many many years. Every time I open a new book to read, it's like embarking on a voyage to an unexplored place that just might be filled with wonder and excitement.

The books I love most tend to have three-dimensional characters and be very well-written (although that definition is fluid). I read everything - mysteries, non-fiction (especially history, memoirs, and current events), literary fiction, science fiction and fantasy, andchildren's books (lots and lots, for my upcoming book, Book Crush), and anything else that looks interesting. I love first novels.

More About Nancy: Nancy Pearl is a librarian and lifelong reader. She regularly comments on books on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Among her many awards and honors are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal; the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association; the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and Users Services Association of the American Library Association; and the 2004 Women's National Book Association Award, given to "a living American woman who ...has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who Says Nobody Reads Anymore?, July 1, 2005

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Paperback)

So what's the big deal about a list of books? Anyone can jot down what they've read. The big deal is this particular list maker, who flies through her lists organized to themes and moods with an infectious enthusiasm and flashes of wit (I would repeat her hilarious recommendation for changing the categorical name of "lad lit," but that would ruin the joke).

Nancy Pearl is the Ur-general reader and the Ur-librarian who has read it all. This is a sequel to the break-out hit, BOOK LUST, offering another 1,000 recommended titles. Lest you think Pearl is throwing everything she ever read onto the heap, she says that she omits the books that did not measure up. Given her broad spectrum approach, everyone will find at least one item worth reading but also something they know they disliked, so it's best to follow up her suggestions with some homework, like trolling Amazon reviews. Of the suggestions in MORE BOOK LUST, I'd read 124 and disliked perhaps 10 of those. I found about 40 new ideas to pursue, but after flipping through Amazon postings cut that list in half. Pearl recommends the "rule of 50": give a book 50 pages before giving up on it, unless you are over 50, in which case, subtract a page for every year over 50 so you don't waste any more of the reading time you have left.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just what I needed -- more titles on my "to read" list!, September 30, 2005

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Paperback)

Avid readers tend always to be interested in anyone else's more or less qualified opinions about books -- what to read, what other writers a fan of a particular author might enjoy, and newly discovered novelists of promise. Pearl is an ex-librarian in Seattle and a regular on NPR, and her tastes are so eclectic in both fiction and nonfiction, I can't imagine not finding suggestions here to suit almost any reader. The index is thorough, so you can search for authors and titles you already like, but this volume is really meant for browsing. Whether your interested in the politics of the 1960s, or female detective characters, or small-town life, or fiction set in Florida, or even intriguing opening lines of novels, you'll find useful leads here. (I wish she had included publishing dates though, which so many books like this seem to omit.) Pearl also includes her email address so readers can send in their own recommendations -- as so many did after her first book.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book Luster!, October 20, 2005

By 

Amanda L. Addison (Gainesville, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Paperback)

Nancy Pearl is the ultimate librarian and book-nut. This book follows in the same vein as her original Book Lust, but with different lists. Pearl provides an annotated list to each book she has enjoyed in categories such as: Best for Teens, Fantasy for Young and Old, Graphica, Libraries and Librarians, and many more. It was a quick read and I kept pen and paper handy to make my own TBR list from Pearl's findings.