Ex Libris

Enjoyed finishing one book filled with recommendations of other books. While this is not a story of any kind and is actually just a list of book recommendations, Michiko Kakutani, now-retired literary critic for The New York Times, delivers a wonderful spread of books, old and new, that are especially pertinent in today's world to either read or be reread either for the magic of reading or to learn/create a better world for tomorrow. Kakutani delivers a succinct review of each book, each filled with beautiful language and interesting connections to both historical and contemporary events.

I love reading books about books and reading. Kakutani's prologue was a love letter to books and reading from a literary critic and is one that every one–reader and non-reader alike–should read to understand what reading is and why it is so beloved and important in our world.

Quotes:

“The pleasure of reading,' Virginia Woolf wrote, “is so great that one cannot doubt that without it the world would be a far different and far inferior place from what it is. Reading has changed the world and continues to change it.' In fact, she argued, the reason we have grown from apes to men and left our caves and dropped our bows and arrows and sat round the fire and talked, and given to the poor and helped the sick, the reason why we have made shelter and society out of the wastes of the desert and the tangle of the jungle is simply this: we have loved reading.”

“Today in our contentious and fragmented world, reading matters more than ever. For one thing, books offer the sort of in-depth experience that's increasingly rare in our distracted, ADD age. Be it the sense of magical immersion offered by a compelling novel or the deep meditative thinking triggered by a wise or provocative work of non-fiction. Books can open a startling window on history. They can give us an all-access pass to knowledge both old and new
Most of all, books can catalyze empathy. Something more and more precious in our increasingly polarized and tribal world. ‘Reading,' Gene Reeves once wrote, ‘makes immigrants of us all. It takes away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.'“
[Reading] does what education and travel do. It exposes us to a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints. Literature, as the David Foster Wallace has pointed out, gives the reader, marooned in her own skull, imaginative access to other selves.”