I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf

A tender love story. Intimate vignettes from relationships that all of us here will recognize because we've been or are currently involved in them. Snider captures the rewards, the satisfaction, the messiness and conflict and promise and obsession and oh-yeah-baby bliss that comprises our love affair with reading.

But... that's the first half only. The second half—and I was not expecting this—reflected on the challenges and rewards of writing. That's a world alien to me, not the comfortably recognizable one of a reader, so I felt awkward with those: like being with a new lover, one you click with, who, after you're feeling the connection, shyly brings up a kink they have... and before you know it the kink just takes over. I try to be GGG. I did my best to embrace the shift in the book, to appreciate it as insightful (which it is) and poignant and funny (which it very well may be, to other writers) ... but I just don't share that kink. I am eversothankful for those who do, for their gift of creating and their hard work, and for this small unexpected window into their world; I just can't connect with it.

Should I live that long, Goodreads will feature this book prominently in my 2021 Year In Books page: my first review of the year. That thought makes me happy. It was a sweet way to open the new year.