A Passion for Books: A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting , Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books

A collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons that celebrates the joys of reading, the feeling of spending hours browsing through a bookstore, and the people for whom buying books is a necessity. 

Booklovers will find themselves in good company within the pages of A Passion for Books, beginning with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's foreword and throughout contributions like-- Umberto Eco's How to Justify a Private Library, dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: "Have you read all these books?"; Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it; and Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, in which she shares her optimistic view on the role of reading and the future of books in the computer age. 

Interspersed throughout are entertaining lists--Ten Bestselling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More, Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels and many more-- plus select writings on bookstores, book clubs, cartoons about books and a specially prepared "bibliobibliography" of books about books. 

Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who enjoys reading, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.

• Start Here: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors
• Start Here, Volume 2: Read Your Way into 25 Amazing Authors
• The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians, and Other Remarkable People
• My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (As Remembered by Actors, Artists, Athletes, Chefs, Comedians, Filmmakers, Mayors, Models, Moguls, Porn Stars, Rockers, Writers, and Others)
• Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
• The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders
• Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
• The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity
• How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
• Books for Living