false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170458088m/56412.jpg 56412 4 <br>"When I have a little money, I buy books. And if any is left, I buy food and clothing."<br>--Desiderius Erasmus<br><br>Those who share Erasmus's love of those curious bundles of paper bound together between hard or soft covers know exactly how he felt. These are the people who can spend hours browsing through a bookstore, completely oblivious not only to the passage of time but to everything else around them, the people for whom buying books is a necessity, not a luxury. <b>A Passion for Books</b> is a celebration of that love, a collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons on the joys of reading, appreciating, and collecting books.<br><br>This enriching collection leads off with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's Foreword, in which he remembers his penniless days pecking out <b>Fahrenheit 451</b> on a rented typewriter, conjuring up a society so frightened of art that it burns its books. This struggle--financial and creative--led to his lifelong love of all books, which he hopes will cosset him in his grave, "Shakespeare as a pillow, Pope at one elbow, Yeats at the other, and Shaw to warm my toes. Good company for far-travelling."<br><br>Booklovers will also find here a selection of writings by a myriad of fellow sufferers from bibliomania. Among these are such contemporary authors as Philip Roth, John Updike, Umberto Eco, Robertson Davies, Nicholas Basbanes, and Anna Quindlen; earlier twentieth-century authors Christopher Morley, A. Edward Newton, Holbrook Jackson, A.S.W. Rosenbach, William Dana Orcutt, Robert Benchley, and William Targ; and classic authors such as Michel de Montaigne, Gustave Flaubert, Petrarch, and Anatole France. <br><br>Here also are entertaining and humorous lists such as the "Ten Best-Selling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More," the great books included in Clifton Fadiman and John Major's New Lifetime Reading Plan, Jonathan Yardley's "Ten Books That Shaped the American Character," "Ten Memorable Books That Never Existed," "Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels," and Anna Quindlen's "Ten Big Thick Wonderful Books That Could Take You a Whole Summer to Read (but Aren't Beach Books)." <br><br>Rounding out the anthology are selections on bookstores, book clubs, and book care, plus book cartoons, and a specially prepared "Bibliobibliography" of books about books. <br><br>Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who likes to read, <b>A Passion for Books</b> will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.<br><br><b>A Sampling of the Literary Treasures in A Passion for Books</b><br><br>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?"<br><br>Anatole Broyard's "Lending Books," in which he notes, "I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock."<br><br>Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the classic tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it.<br><br>A selection from Nicholas Basbanes's A Gentle Madness, on the innovative arrangements Samuel Pepys made to guarantee that his library would survive "intact" after his demise.<br><br>Robert Benchley's "Why Does Nobody Collect Me"--in which he wonders why first editions of books by his friend Ernest Hemingway are valuable while his are not, deadpanning "I am older than Hemingway and have written more books than he has."<br><br>George Hamlin Fitch's extraordinarily touching "Comfort Found in Good Old Books," on the solace he found in books after the death of his son.<br><br>A selection from 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.<br><br>Robertson Davies's "Book Collecting," on the difference between those who collect rare books because they're valuable and those who collect them because they love books, ultimately making it clear which is "the collector who really matters."<br> 1395803 1999 A Passion for Books : A Book Lover's Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Love and Lists on Collecting, Reading, Borrowing, Lending, Caring for, and Appreciating Books total:88|5:27|4:31|3:25|2:5|1:0| 88 344 346 20 2 0 false false Sun Oct 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 20:13:10 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 20:17:25 -0700 2009
The best ones were the tale of a friend who'd been nominated for a P...more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Apr 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 11:33:20 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 11:33:20 -0700 2009
For the uninitiated with questions such as:

Why not just check it out at the library? Is it acceptable to get drunk on porch and leave you...more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Jan 25 05:18:50 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 25 06:02:10 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sun Jun 10 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 12 16:08:32 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 24 17:46:40 -0700 2008
A Passion for Books, edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan, is a collection of essays, stories, lists, and humor about books - reading and collecting them. This is a great read for anyone who is...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Nov 14 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 03 17:04:25 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 17 20:21:44 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Jan 28 08:41:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 08:41:37 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Aug 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 06 07:04:50 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 06 07:07:02 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat May 17 11:48:34 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 14 08:08:55 -0700 2008 Sat May 17 11:48:34 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed May 14 17:55:15 -0700 2008 Wed May 14 18:03:29 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jan 13 14:58:03 -0800 2008 Wed Apr 30 16:46:29 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Thu Sep 27 20:25:06 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 20:25:06 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 04 11:42:12 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 19:35:57 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Thu Jul 10 14:51:01 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 14:53:17 -0700 2008 I am always freaked out when I walk into someone's house and can't see any books.]]> 5 0 false false Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Sat Nov 03 22:16:42 -0700 2007 Sat Nov 03 22:18:14 -0700 2007 2 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 19 19:51:57 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 19 19:53:27 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Fri Aug 08 16:28:26 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 08 16:29:15 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Tue Oct 21 07:26:59 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 26 10:18:28 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 21 07:26:59 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Sat May 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 16:39:04 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 07:40:11 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Thu Mar 13 00:48:05 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 13 00:48:23 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Wed Dec 19 04:21:51 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 19 04:22:10 -0800 2007 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=56412