Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World

Nicholas A. Basbanes

3.96 · Rating details · 342 ratings · 37 reviews

Inspired by a landmark exhibition mounted by the British Museum in 1963 to celebrate five eventful centuries of the printed word, Nicholas A. Basbanes offers a lively consideration of writings that have "made things happen" in the world, works that have both nudged the course of history and fired the imagination of countless influential people.

In his fifth work to examin ...more

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Paperback, 400 pages

Published December 12th 2006 by Harper Perennial (first published 2005)

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Every Book Its Reader, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Every Book Its Reader

Lists with This Book

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Books about Books

1,052 books — 1,425 voters

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Books on Books: Bookmaking, Biblioclasm, Bibliophilia

291 books — 329 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

3.96 ·

Rating details

· 342 ratings · 37 reviews

Filter

Sort order

Apr 04, 2018 Jenny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-with-dad

*****3.5*****
I loved most of this book. It's about the power that books have to inspire us and change our lives, that people who do important things, impressive or not, have been lovers of books. People like Hitler and Helen Keller and Thomas Edison and John Quincy Adams all loved to read, and they all talked about the influence that books had on their lives. If they were writers too, the books they read can tell a collective story. If they wrote in their books, their marginalia tells a story. I *****3.5*****
I loved most of this book. It's about the power that books have to inspire us and change our lives, that people who do important things, impressive or not, have been lovers of books. People like Hitler and Helen Keller and Thomas Edison and John Quincy Adams all loved to read, and they all talked about the influence that books had on their lives. If they were writers too, the books they read can tell a collective story. If they wrote in their books, their marginalia tells a story. I really enjoyed the connections between famous people, whether I knew them or not, and the books they read. Books are important to me, so I enjoyed seeing how and why they're important to others.
The reasons I didn't give this four full stars are three-fold. One, Basbanes is a name-dropper, which is really annoying. He'll say something like, "Harold Bloom has said this before, and he said it to me when I interviewed him." Basbanes wrote the book, so it should be obvious that when he quotes people, it's because he interviewed them. There's no need to mention all the time that he spoke directly to people. It's like he has an insecurity that people won't believe him or just needs to talk up his own importance in the literary/scholarly world. Two, Basbanes is an elitist. Almost every single person he directly interviewed wrote for The New York Times Magazine or The New Yorker and had degrees from Ivy League schools. Seriously, the only people he interviewed who didn't go to Harvard, Yale, or Columbia were the people he wrote about in the last chapter, and they were doctors at Boston Medical.
Third, and it gets its own paragraph because it's the worst one, Basbanes sided with Harold Bloom in the debate over whether books should be chosen in college curriculums for pure aesthetic value only, meaning that books should not be chosen for diversity of authors, meaning that the books we all read in school should be the books that have been read and recognized for decades. Essentially, Harold Bloom didn't like the fact that, in the seventies and eighties, the Modern Language Association among other groups wanted to represent the diversity of contemporary college students by including books outside of the Canon. Bloom even left Yale University because it bothered him that choosing texts for teaching purposes had become "political." Now, this whole chapter did spark a PowerPoint entitled "Aesthetics and Politics" through which I taught my English 102 (literature and writing) students about the debate and #ownvoices to see what they thought about this whole thing. But aside from that positive angle, which inspired some really good responses from them, this chapter just frustrated me. I even sent photos of pages to my friend who also teaches college English, and she was frustrated as well. My issue is that it's not political to want literature at the college level to do more than please people. Calling something "political" has just become a way to insult people whose views are different than yours. I want literature to be fun and entertaining but also to educate. I don't have to like a book to appreciate its value, and, in fact, I didn't like every book I read as an undergraduate and graduate student of literature, but I did learn from each of them. And I'm so glad that my college was just coming out of the need to teach the Canon, that I read books by diverse authors from diverse backgrounds. I read literature from LBGT authors, black and white, Hispanic authors, men, women, etc., and that's important. It not only gives students authors to relate to, but it also teaches students about other types of people, other cultures, and other histories. And isn't that what a degree in literature is supposed to do? If all I can tell you after receiving my Master's is that I read a lot of books that I liked and could do a close reading of any Shakespeare or Hemingway passage, then my degree is worth nothing. That's what Bloom wants, and that's what Basbanes agrees with, and I can't get behind that. That chapter bothered me so much that I had to stop reading it and finish it another day.
I forgave Basbanes and everything, and we ended on good terms, but I won't forget that argument we had.
My dad and I read this book together. He liked it, but I kept stopping to ask if he minded reading it. It's a book lover's book--if you don't love books as much as you love to read, it might not please you. It's anecdotal, and Basbane writes in long, needlessly complicated sentences, so it can take some plodding through. But it's also enlightening and entertaining. It gave me insight into people I'd heard about before in unexpected ways since it comes from a different angle. Despite the above rant, I do recommend this book to book lovers. You might agree with Bloom and Basbanes, anyway--some of my students did. ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Apr 16, 2009 Jeanette rated it it was amazing

When you read this one be prepared to add another 1000 tbr's.

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2011 Sasha Martinez added it

Shelves: 2010, yes

This is a book-lover’s dream. Or dream dictionary, to be more technically correct about it. This has always been in my “Currently Reading” pile—whenever I am plagued with that terrible hiccup I’ve dubbed Bibliophilic Purgatory, I skim the pages of this book, picking out choice anecdotes, lingering over highlighted quotations and images. It’s a book crammed with information and trivia about books, writers of books, collectors of books, readers of books, lovers of books. It made me giddy. In some This is a book-lover’s dream. Or dream dictionary, to be more technically correct about it. This has always been in my “Currently Reading” pile—whenever I am plagued with that terrible hiccup I’ve dubbed Bibliophilic Purgatory, I skim the pages of this book, picking out choice anecdotes, lingering over highlighted quotations and images. It’s a book crammed with information and trivia about books, writers of books, collectors of books, readers of books, lovers of books. It made me giddy. In some cases, it had me thinking, Hey, I’m doing something awesome with my life.

Let us skip hand-in-hand through the chapters of this wonderful book—those most memorable to me, of course. [That’s how much I adore it—I’ll talk about it at the risk of boring you to tears with my inane rambling! Wahoo!] [Re the details, corrections from those who have read this are always welcome! :p]

1. The Magic Door. A chapter on general book-loving. Basbanes gives us [tear-jerking] stories of bibliophiles—most of them displaying the lifelong attachment of people to books. One is about the woman who wrote to May Lamberton Becker (who penned a column called “Readers Guide” for New York Evening Post, among others), asking, “May I ask you to tell me of a few books that you have loved, that have made you sit up and just shout with delight? I am going to buy a four new books this winter…” Imagine stretching your budget to accommodate your love of reading—and even that having only enough for four choice ones. And then there’s the story of A. David Schwartz, owner of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, who took his time among the shelves of his stores, looking for that “good book to die with.” All of the stories are amazing.

3. Eye of the Beholder. A chapter that deals with the whole business of talking about books—on what “good” books are, what their “true value” is, on censorship. We’re given a run-through of the whole Shakespeare-Bowdler hooplah, as well as a profile of and interview with Harold Bloom [who makes many appearances in this book]. Here’s one of the quotes I went away with from this chapter (I couldn’t agree more with it):

"I learned early on that when people share their reading habits with you, what they are really granting is privileged access to their deepest interests and predilections, even their dreams, needs, and anxieties." (p.47)

5. In the Margins. No doubt my favorite chapter—it gives us a concise survey of the history of marginalia among notable personalities, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the forefront [Trivia Alert! Coleridge is “credited with bringin the word ‘marginalia’ into English usage from the Latin to describe his habitual process of writing in books.” (p.91)] It’s also the chapter that has to be blamed for the fact that I now scribble on the pages of my books. Basbanes just makes it sound awesome and historic to write on one’s books, haha. Basbanes quotes Heather Jackson, a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied the phenomena of marginalia:

“One of the most intriguing qualities of marginalia, the attitude of defiance in which they are often produced,” an altogether “elusive but important quality” of the practice. (p.93)

11. The Healing Art. Among the topics found in this chapter: 1) Where we get our love of reading—one Robert Coles relates how he grew up with bibliophiles for parents, parents who taught him the love of reading, where no book was too daunting, parents who read to each other every night; and 2) How vital books are to our lives, [if we let them]. Robert Coles talks about one Walker Percy, a Southern writer, in a way that, I suppose, applies to anyone who loves books:

“Through novels he found kindred spirits, writers who could conjure up this world, help him to understand his won world, and also make him feel less lonely, because when you read, you are in the company of another person. The other person’s words and thoughts become part of yours, and connect with you, and reading is a kind of human connection. It’s an embrace of another person’s thoughts, ideas, suggestions, premises, worries, concerns—the whole list of nouns is what I think reading enables, and prompts in a person. We are the creature of language, and through language we affirm ourselves, we find out about the world, including ourselves, through words, and we share with one another through language.” (p.263)

It’s a well-researched book, yet the language is never stilted, never boring—you can take in so much information without feeling nauseated by all of it. I suppose it’s because Basbanes’ prose is easy to follow, fluid, as fascinated by the wonders of books. And I can feel how Basbanes himself is afflicted with this “gentle madness” of bibliophilia—this is not a disaffected survey of literature and the manias associated with it. Basbanes loves what he is doing—there’s no doubt about that.

So. What does it mean to love books? [Answer: It means awesome.] How does one love books? [Answer: Awesomely.] It’s a dork-out read for sure. But it’s a book that allows you to dork-out with pride. [That is a great catchphrase, if I say so myself, haha.] Darn it, but I love this book. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Mar 23, 2007 William rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2007

A seemingly fascinating topic (judging a person by the books he/she has in their "library") made a bit tedious by Basbanes tendency to write in a stream-of-consciousness style.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 29, 2008 Amanda rated it it was amazing

I picked this up on a whim at the Harvard Book Store sometime early last spring when I was feeling like I wasn't reading enough grown-up books. I read the first half and really enjoyed it, but then got distracted by some other book that needed to be read. I picked it up again when I needed something to read while I waited for the next group of requests from the library. I picked up where I left off a year ago, and slipped right back into it.

I particularly enjoyed the first few chapters, which di ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 29, 2012 Pam rated it really liked it

Recommended to Pam by: Found in bookstore in Moab

Depending upon your reading style, you will find this book captivating or boring. For me it was captivating and exciting. I loved it! I am enthralled with books as history-makers in themselves, and that is exactly what this book is about. You will learn how books influenced America's founding fathers, Thomas Edison, Malcolm X. You will learn the effect that books have upon six month old children. You will discover the importance of the book collections that belonged to famous writers, politician ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 20, 2008 Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: bibliophilia

Since I am a reading freak, I am always enthralled by Nicholas Basbanes books about bibliophilia, bibliomania, book collectors of all ilk, and lost libraries. In this book, he enters the realm of famous readers who have left commentary in the margins of the books they read. He discusses the keeping of commonplace books and interviews well-known readers of today, including David McCullough and Harold Bloom.

It is a fascinating book. However, I could not give the book five stars because he does su ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2009 Oliver rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Bibliophiles

Shelves: misc

I really enjoyed this book at first but lost steam towards the end. The last few chapters especially. One of my favorite anecdotes from the book was a story where Abigail Adams learned that her son, John Quincy Adams, was getting a little full of himself. She quickly wrote him a letter that contained the following:

"If you are so conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the worl ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 09, 2014 Kristen rated it it was ok

Shelves: books-i-did-not-finish, best-non-fiction

I know what you're thinking - how do you give two stars and a DNF to a book that you add to your list of "best non-fiction"? Well, I'll tell you.

This is an interesting book. An important book for book lovers. A book chock-full of educational, thoughtful and challenging information about books and their importance to the world. That said, it is also a book that, at times, reads more like a text-book than anything else, and not in a good way.

I didn't so much not finish this book, as put it away fo ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2011 dusty.rhodes rated it really liked it

I enjoyed this book, even though at times it feels like forced lists of books that important folks read.

Most interesting were bits on Marginalia, the Unabomber (See Chuck Klosterman's "Eating the Dinosaur for a further treatment of this topic that is definitely interesting), Translation (Godel Escher Bach alert!), and a continuing compendium of "books to read" woven throughout the 316 pages.

This is a great book if you like to read about reading. If you like to comb books for other books to read. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 16, 2007 Diskojoe rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Emily

For my first book here at good reads, it's appropriate that it's this one. I have read the author's previous books & have found him interesting. This book was no exception. It deals with such topics such as what famous authors had in their own libraries, notes written in books and other topics relating to books and reading.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2016 Jessica Robinson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There were moments when Basbanes lost me (and one particular Bloom-filled section that riled me up) but this is an extraordinary book about books and their readers. Basbanes is a devoted and passionate bibliophile and this book is a celebration of that obsession in himself and others. I get it.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 28, 2008 Zoe rated it liked it

I don't remember much about this book except it made me want to keep at my project of reading the classics that I hadn't even started yet since I was still at the stage of reading about reading the classics. And I found good quotes for my new commonplace book.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 30, 2008 Bethany added it

Shelves: nonfiction, started-and-never-finished

This was an interesting concept for a book, but way to dense for me.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2008 Oliver rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, writing, philosophy

Well written but I found the topic rather dull.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 27, 2009 Debi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A book about reading books. What could be better than that?

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 03, 2013 Marla rated it it was ok

Shelves: perused

This is fun to flip through, but he can get bogged down in boring details. Also, I found it annoying that so many "best" lists contained only male names/writers. It gets old.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 24, 2011 BJ rated it really liked it

Fascinating information on books and people to whom books are important.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2008 Jessica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bibliophilia

A little dry.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2010 Eddie is currently reading it

The book person's book person.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2008 Alan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-about-books

I was a little disappointed. Basbanes has written several in this series, and I thought the first, A Gentle Madness was the best.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 05, 2018 Grace T rated it really liked it

Overall an interesting book for booklovers. Some passages were drier than others, but I was able to finish it in an extended reading period without taking a break, so that says something. Probably my favorite parts were the chapter on marginalia--readers, famous and otherwise, writing comments on their reading material--and the chapter talking about a devoted F. Scott Fitzgerald collector who reminded me of my passion for Tolkien's books (I currently own 3 different copies of the Silmarillion, f ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 16, 2017 Virginia Rand rated it liked it

Shelves: writing-and-reading

This book was interesting in places, but for me all the essays went on just a bit too long and they never really went anywhere.

flag Like · see review

Mar 09, 2017 Dawn Betts-Green (Dinosaur in the Library) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfic, i-must-warn-you-i-am-a-librarian, books-on-books

3.5 stars

flag Like · see review

Oct 13, 2014 Brian rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-on-books, books-on-reading, book-collecting

For all who really love books, not just reading but collecting, holding, gaining understanding, to escape to worlds of another time, to use them to whatever ends you do, you will surely enjoy this book by an author who ranks high as a bibliophile. He's written many books about all things books and this one is very fun to read to identify with great readers of the many books that have no end.

As the page turns, we are met with the experiences of reading by many great authors, politicians, rulers, ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 19, 2012 Ngaire rated it really liked it

Shelves: about-reading

Who knew that writing in books could actually be a good thing? Not me, for sure. I learned a lot from this, and it certainly made me feel good about being a reader - lots of incredibly talented and brilliant people made reading the center of their lives. Coleridge, for example, was notorious for reading like it was going out of fashion and for writing in the margins of his books, to the point where his friends were kind of reluctant to lend him books. Now, of course, there's a huge collection of ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 19, 2011 Ami rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I tried to love this book because it felt as if it should be loved. Alas, I could only 'merely' like it.
There were two problems in this book for me. First, it doesn't have a clear organization to it. Mr. Basbanes writes this book in a type of sophisticated stream of consciousness that makes it difficult to predict what topic will come next. At times I was pleasantly surprised with his choices. In fact the section of what the U.S. presidents read was probably my favorite. But the meandering did ...more

flag Like · see review

Sep 08, 2014 Siskiyou-Suzy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, books-and-reading

I had something different in mind for this book. I was hoping it would tackle the books that truly affected the world, i.e., the general population. I expected to learn about books I'd never heard about before that were very popular in their time. Instead, the book takes a far more intellectual approach -- "the world" seems to mean the scholarly world.

Another review mentioned that you'll be adding a lot of books to your to read list, but unless you haven't heard of most classics, probably not. I ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 13, 2012 Kiri rated it liked it

Shelves: library-science

I mainly picked up this book to supplement my studies of marginalia for a term paper I was writing. That occupies only one chapter from the book, and I found that the chapter was primarily a recap of Marginalia, so it didn't add a lot of new information. The rest of the book does look interesting -- focusing on how the books that people read have influenced their lives and actions -- but I didn't have time to delve deeply.

flag Like · see review

Jun 09, 2014 Jennifer rated it liked it

Shelves: nonfiction-read

This book covers a large variety of topics. One chapter is spent discussing what can be learned about historic figures by studying what they wrote in the margins of their books (aka marginalia). The author analyzes how translating a work into a different language can completely change it. One topic I found very interesting was how the meaning of a document can change based on who reads it and at what time in history. The example given is how the Bible and the Constitution have been interpreted d ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers Also Enjoyed

Genres

Writing > Books About Books

75 users

Nonfiction

50 users

History

25 users

Language > Writing

9 users

See top shelves…

About Nicholas A. Basbanes

Nicholas A. Basbanes

108 followers

Nicholas A. Basbanes is an award-winning investigative journalist and was literary editor of the Worcester Sunday Telegram. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Smithsonian, and he is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Basbanes lives in North Grafton, Massachusetts.