A Year of Passionate Reading
by Sara Nelson
ages: adult
First sentence: “Call me Insomniac.”

This book will not be liked by everyone. Contrary to what the jacket flap says, I also do not think this book will make a “passionate reader out of anybody.” In fact, I think that in order to enjoy this book one has to be a passionate reader already. Otherwise, Nelson will sound uppity (a book a week? How absurd!), snobbish, and insufferable in her blathering about books.

Admittedly, I was suspicious intially — a book a week? Bah, that’s nothing! — but, soon after beginning, I discovered that writing about reading a book a week isn’t what Nelson was trying to achieve. In fact, the book is not a record of the books that she read over the course of 2002 so much as it is an ode to book love, to those who are passionate about reading, and the process of book choosing, sharing and reading.

And, as someone who is passionate about reading, that I could love.

I have to admit that at first I felt wildly unsophisticated and un-read, since I haven’t even heard of half of the books she was writing about. But I realized, after a while, that this book in many ways is like Reading Lolita in Tehran: the author writes so much about, and with such love, the books that she is reading and thinking about that you feel like you’ve read them. And, then, you’ll either figure that was enough exposure to the book, or you’ll stick it on your to be read list, just to see what made the author so giddy about it.

I also marked so many passages; it was full of bookish truisms that I felt hit home with me. A sampling:

People notice what you read and judge you by it. Which is why if I were goig nto read Danielle Steel, I wouldn’t do it at the office. But Nine Parts of Desire speaks to anyone listening: I’m smart, it says. I’m concerned with current events, it announces. I am a serious person.

Clearly she knew that between book lovers, a novel is not a novel is not a novel. It’s a symbol, an offering, and sometimes a test.

It seems to me that rereading — or claiming to reread — is just another way for some people to trumpet their intellecutal superiority. To wit: have you ever known someont to say they’re “rereading” the oeuvre of, say, Jackie Collins?

On reviewing:

His [Anthony Bourdain] subject is food and mine is books, but the same principles apply: you have to treat your subject with fearlessness and attitude and energy. Whether your industry’s sacred cows are beef, or, say, novels that are just said to be “well-done”, you have to skewer them.

You know you’re in a bad patch when the most interesting part of the book is the acknowledgments page.

That’s probably more than you wanted. But, maybe you can begin to see the charm the book had for me. She also tackles choosing a book (or having a book choose you), that headlong falling into love, erotic scenes versus erotica, first sentences (but not book covers), and (that problem we all have?!) the embarrassing problem when an author wants you to read their book and “tell them the truth”. Yes, Nelson does come off as a New York elite (which she is), and a bit of a snob (ditto; I worried when I got to the chapter titled, “Kid Stuff”, but it turned out okay), but she’s also observant, insightful, and passionate. And those three outweighed the previous two, and made this book an absolute delight to read.