I really enjoyed the chance to review Jon M. Sweeney’s new memoir, My Life in Seventeen Books: A Literary Memoir. My review is up today at Current:
If there is one thing a book lover loves, surely it is a book about the love of books. Prime examples of the genre include Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road, Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, and Emma Smith’s Portable Magic. Such books provide layers of enjoyment: the reading itself, of course, but also the contemplation of the joys of reading, the pleasurable anticipation of discovering some new book or aspect of bookishness previously unknown, and perhaps most of all, the discovery that someone else, as C. S. Lewis says, shares with us “some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).”
Jon M. Sweeney’s My Life in Seventeen Books: A Literary Memoir fits firmly into this category. In its pages one can savor the felicity of bookstore browsing (especially in a crowded used books shop), the importance of “bookhood” (that elusive quality of the individual, physical book, created by weight, smell, texture of the page, and more), the way books converse with and inform each other in the reader’s mind, the wonder of stumbling upon a book that becomes part of one’s being. My Life is a slim little volume, each chapter easily finished over a mug of something hot. Still, it offers plenty of opportunities for one of the greatest joys of reading: staring off into space, pondering some train of thought sparked by what you’ve read.
The essays that make up the book cover a far-ranging variety of texts. Sweeney has spent decades with books—reading, selling, writing, and publishing—and he wears his familiarity lightly. Some of his seventeen authors may be unfamiliar; of the more well-known, the works discussed are often not their most prominent. In addition to books and authors named in the table of contents, Sweeney draws into conversation many others, among them Victor Hugo, William Hazlitt, Stephen King, bell hooks, Bernard of Clairvaux, Ezra Pound, E. M. Forster, M. F. K. Fisher, Jean Rhys, George MacDonald, Edith Stein, and Charles Lamb. The quoted writers alone could serve as the basis of a rich personal reading list or book discussion group.
Read the rest here.
Hooray for you! 🤗🎉🤗