I'd been interested in this one for some time - and how could I not be, with a title like that? {grin} [I've got a rubber stamp AND a T-shirt bearing the title sentiment, with illustrations courtesy of Edward Gorey; see a sample here.] So when I found a copy at a discount price at a local Annie's Bookstop I couldn't resist...

This is a really delightful book - not so much a list of book suggestions (though I got some of those from it as well) but a chat with someone who really enjoys books. She talks about how she decides which book to read, and how often the mood changes; she describes matching books to background or contrasting them; using books to make a new place familiar or to escape from one. She describes the moment of connecting with a book - realizing that this is a good one, that you're hooked that (if you're like her - or me) you may not be able to put it down. She describes revisiting old favorites and sometimes finding that the books seem to tell a very different story now that she's reading them from the perspective of an adult.

Then: Marjorie Morningstar was a talent, a free spirit, and the only thing that held her back was her impossibly uncool parents and their bourgeouis values.
Now: Marjorie Morningstar is a self-involved twit who doesn't begin to appreciate the advantages that her long-suffering parents work hard to give her. She could have saved herself a lot of heartbreak if only she'd listened to her mother.

She talks about learning how to stop reading a book if she doesn't like it; about hype and how to ignore it; and there's a whole chapter on lending and borrowing books that made me want to email the author about BookCrossing at once!

She also mentions some fairly obscure books here and there, and I confess to being thrilled when one of them was Robert Plunket's Love Junkie, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Her comments about the "acknowledgements" pages of books are hilarious - suggesting how readers can use them to track an author's marital history, among other things, and being rather snide about who gets thanked for what.

Even her appendices - "what I planned to read" and "what I actually did read" - are entertaining, though they make me feel very guilty for being so far behind on my own what-I-actually-did-read lists, and envious that I can't describe my reasons for reading (or not reading) things as blithely and amusingly as she can.

RELEASE NOTES:

I plan to leave this propped up by the gas pumps at about 5; hope the finder enjoys it!