Paul, Pamela. My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues. New York: Holt 2017. Print
First Sentences:
First Sentences:
When you're a child, reading is full of rules.
Books that are appropriate and books that are not, books that grown-ups will smile at you approvingly for cradling in your arms and those that will cause grimaces when they spy you tearing through their pages.
Description:
I'm attracted to books about books. You know, those books chock full of lists of great reads. The type of book that offers new (to me) titles with interesting plots by hopefully prolific authors who will stock my "To Be Read" list for months.
Such were my hopes for Pamela Paul's My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues. What could be better than spending time with the lifetime reading diary of the current editor of The New York Times Book Review? But in My Life With Bob, there is actually not much about the books themselves beyond their titles, authors, and possibly a very brief plot reference.
However, have faith! Bob is a solidly entertaining, funny, insightful memoir where books do play a pivotal role: they provided the foundation behind key life decisions and events for author Pamela Paul. You see, Paul had decided early in her life to keep track of every booksshe read, regardless of whether she liked them, hated them, or was profoundly moved by them. She recorded just the title, author, and approximate date for every book read into her notebook she nicknamed The Book of Books, aka Bob.
Paul is a wonderful writer. I had so many slips of paper marking clever expressions (do other readers do that?) that describe her and her life that it is difficult to decide which ones to share: Here are some samples:
I'm attracted to books about books. You know, those books chock full of lists of great reads. The type of book that offers new (to me) titles with interesting plots by hopefully prolific authors who will stock my "To Be Read" list for months.
Such were my hopes for Pamela Paul's My Life With Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues. What could be better than spending time with the lifetime reading diary of the current editor of The New York Times Book Review? But in My Life With Bob, there is actually not much about the books themselves beyond their titles, authors, and possibly a very brief plot reference.
However, have faith! Bob is a solidly entertaining, funny, insightful memoir where books do play a pivotal role: they provided the foundation behind key life decisions and events for author Pamela Paul. You see, Paul had decided early in her life to keep track of every booksshe read, regardless of whether she liked them, hated them, or was profoundly moved by them. She recorded just the title, author, and approximate date for every book read into her notebook she nicknamed The Book of Books, aka Bob.
My Book of Books is still a private place. It's not a traditional diary, to be sure. It's about me, and yet it isn't about me. It's impersonal and yet deeply personal....Diaries contained all kinds of things I wanted to forget - unrequited crushes and falling-outs with friends and angsting over college admissions. Bob contains things I wanted to remember what I was reading when all that happened.Bob relates chronologically the events and corresponding books that she read which influenced her during important periods in Paul's life. Chapters/situations include "You Shouldn't Be Reading That" (Brave New World), "Never Enough" (Catch-22), "Reading with Children" (A Wrinkle in Time), and "On Self-Help" (Autobiography of a Face - yay, a new title for me!). There are also chapters with their related books on topics of "Why Read?" (Les Miserables), No Time to Read" (The Hunger Games), and "Solitary Reading" (The Secret History).
Paul is a wonderful writer. I had so many slips of paper marking clever expressions (do other readers do that?) that describe her and her life that it is difficult to decide which ones to share: Here are some samples:
- Listening to Holden Caulfield moan and groan, I couldn't help but think, What a jerk. What did he have to complain about, with his privileged life and his private school and his afternoons wandering unsupervised around Manhattan?
- If you're going to be a bookish child, you had damn well beter be good at it, and I feared the prospect of being sniffed out for my lapses. Someone always has to be the person who has never read Trollope, but it damn sure wasn't going to be me.
- Sometimes you fall so much in love with a book that you simply have to tell everyone, to spread the love, and to explain the state you're in. You read pasages aloud to anyone who will listen. You wait with bated breath, watching for signs of appreciation, wanting that smile, that laugh, that nod of recognition. Please love this book too, you silently -- and sometimes not so silently -- urge. You become insistent, even messianic in your enthusiasm.
So we readers follow her life episodes and corresponding books, from her job as a "scoopeuse" counter worker for a Haagen-Dazs shop in Paris; marriage, divorce, and motherhood; living in London and Paris; and finally to her position as editor with The New York Times Book Review. She has lead a fascinating life and, of course, recorded the related titles in Bob.
It's hard not to wish that everyone ...would keep a Book of Books. What better way to get to know them? You could find out so much if you could get a read on where other people's curiosities lie and where their knowledge is found....[Otherwise] you miss a vital part of a person, the real story, the other stories -- not the ones in their books, but the stories that lie between book and reader, the connections that bind the two together.
I was completely entranced in her life and the influence books had on her. She is a self-deprecating, funny, serious, and endearing writer who treats readers as friends, privvy to her innermost thoughts, fears, hopes, and stumbles. Highly recommended for all you solitary readers and lovers of the power of books.
If [my] house was on fire. Everything bursting into flames. Only moment to decide what to save... I'd leave behind the laptop and the photo albums and even, forgive me, my children's artwork, because there is one object I'd need to rescue above all else -- my true precious, Bob.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Queenan, Joe. One for the Books
Joe Queenan, a well-published author of articles and books, reads "between 30-40 books at a time. Because he estimates at this rate, he can only read around 2,000 books before he dies. One for the Books describes the books he loves and hates in a wide variety of fields, as well as topics of e-books, the distasteful use of the word "astonishing" in a book review, and selecting books with his eyes closed. Eccentric, passionate, and outrageously intelligent and funny. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)
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