The Book Addict: Stories of Bibliomania

by David Christopher Lane

This text contains a number of timeless essays from several classic (and mostly out of print) works focusing on the love of books, collecting books, organizing one's library, and how books become lost over time. It is a judicious selection on bibliomania from such distinguished authors as Eugene Field, Christopher Morley, and Issac Disraeli.

Genres: Books About Books

138 pages, Paperback

Published February 25, 2016

About the author

David Christopher Lane is a professor of philosophy and sociology at Mt. San Antonio College who specializes in the study of new religious movements including cults. He is notable for his book The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar which exposed the origins of Eckankar and demonstrated the plagiarism of its founder, Paul Twitchell. He is also notable for introducing to a wider audience the teachings of Baba Faqir Chand, the Indian exponent of Surat Shabd Yoga from Hoshiapur. Among writings on Chand, he edited and published a book entitled The Unknowing Sage: Life and Work of Baba Faqir Chand.

- from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Vikas Singh · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most third grade book i have ever read.
Francis Bacon said- “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” I would add one more line- "Some books are to be shredded or destroyed so that they do not harm the sensibilities of the reader" I have been conned into buying this book by reviews posted by some. The essays have been written for pseudo book lovers and for an audience who just loves the play of words. Save your money and time. Do not even look at this book,. It is so pathetic.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four start content - two star execution.

This books fits squarely in the "books on books" genre, and it contains a series of essays, seemingly historical in nature, about the collection, care and keeping of books. I enjoyed this one from cover to cover.

However, and it's a pretty big "however," there is no introduction, no table of contents, no commentary to open each essay and no index (the last of these is the most excusable). What's more, there are typesetting challenges, especially in the last half of the book. It seems like much of the text is copied from another source and the page numbers from whatever that was have migrated incongruously into the body of the text.

What's more, without any context provided for each essay (except for the author), we are left to suppose (or find on the Internet, which I didn't do) who these people were, when and where they lived. From the (to modern eyes) stilted text one can infer that they lived 100, 150 years ago, maybe more. And from the content you can infer that most (maybe all) of them were British. Beyond that it's sort of anyone's guess.

The essays themselves are interesting and provide a series of observations on the history of books post-printing press but before true mass production. If you like books this one could be for you. Because of the production challenges (ironic for a book about the publishing and style of books) I'm guessing you might be able to find the content for free from other sources.

Recommended, with reservations.

[Doug Adamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sub-title, in my opinion, does not give an accurate description of the contents of this little book. Each chapter is a chapter by various authors concerning some aspect of book-collecting. Some of the chapters are well-written, interesting, and even humorous. Others, less so but this is to be expected in a collection of this sort. There were a number of places in the text were numbers (340, 341, etc) were inserted into the text for no apparent reason at all- a bit distracting but not unforgivable. The book would be greatly improved with an introductory chapter and/or a concluding chapter explaining why these particular chapters chosen; what works they were taken from; and even just a brief word about the authors of the chapters and about the editor. A bibliography of the source works would have been helpful if a reader wanted to track down additional writings by a given author.

In short, for the most part, the book is an enjoyable read that could be made even more enjoyable and helpful.