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Summary
Summary
Since Gutenberg first began moving type around five centuries ago, the book - one of the great achievements of human culture - has been subjected to any number of indignities, from being banned to being burned to being turned into a breathtaking quantity of unspeakably appalling movies. It has managed to survive all of these, only to find itself at the dawn of the twenty-first century facing the most radical challenge to its existence from the digital tsunami that has already left the tattered remains of the music business in its wake. As bookstores disappear and readers, apparently, along with them, alarmed bibliophiles everywhere can't help but wonder- Whither the book?
That question has been weighing heavily on one of America's great humorists, Joe Queenan, as he has recounted in a series of widely read New York Times Book Review pieces and in his critically acclaimed memoir Closing Time . Having first become a voracious reader as a means of escape from a joyless childhood in a Philadelphia housing project, he has since devoted himself to a lifelong defense of the book and merciless hounding of all the forces aligned to undermine it. One for the Books is Queenan's choleric survey of the landscape of reading today, from fervently dedicated booksellers to beleaguered libraries to the everyday dilemmas faced by the avid reader (borrowing and lending, the inability to finish certain books, rereading favourites, dealing with an increasingly elephantine collection). Queenan also embarks on a series of projects to come to terms with his own eccentric reading style, which involve gauging the number of titles he will have time to read in his lifespan, reading only short books, granting library books that are about to be disposed of a respite by being the first one in years to check them out, and finally confronting the fearsome leviathan of Middlemarch .
Acerbically funny, passionate, and oddly affectionate, One for the Books is a reading experience that true book lovers will find unforgettable (and a goad to reading even more).
Author Notes
Joe Queenan was born November 3, 1950. The author of five previous books, Joe Queenan is a contributing editor at GQ and writes a column, "Good Fences," for The New York Times. He lives in Tarrytown, New York.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Humorist Queenan's (Closing Time: A Memoir) mordantly funny reflections on his relationships with books will resonate with many avid readers, particularly those burdened by guilt over the number of Great Books they never managed to complete. Many pages display his brilliant wit: "I do not listen to audiobooks, for the same reason that I do not listen to baked ziti; it lacks the personal touch." But woven around these one-liners are thoughtful musings on the importance of books in the author's life, including touching anecdotes about projects such as his effort to check out library books that no one has borrowed for five years in order to save the books from disposal. Among the book's highlights is Queenan's deft savaging of the sometimes banal "Questions for Discussion" that appear in the reading guides included in books. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A journalist shares his obsession with books, swinging his machete through the fields of literature. A national columnist and prolific writer, Queenan (Closing Time: A Memoir, 2009) is crazy about books--literally. Even other bibliophiles will likely consider his reading habits to be on the lunatic fringe: "I cannot remember a single time when I was reading fewer than fifteen booksI am talking about books I am actively reading, books that are right there on my nightstand and are not leaving until I'm done with them. Right now, the number is thirty-two." The author admits that this is "madness." Such obsession makes him a promiscuous reader, but also a faithful one, devouring everything he can find from an author he discovers, no matter how obscure or prolific. Since he's sometimes classified as a humorist, and since much of his humor lies in his outrageous assertions, it's hard to tell how seriously to take his dismissal of Middlemarch, Ulysses and all of Thomas Hardy, though plainly he takes books and reading very seriously indeed. Yet he doesn't much care for independent bookstores ("often staffed by condescending prigs who do not approve of people like me. The only writers they like are dead or exotic or Paul Auster"), or book critics ("mostly servile muttonheads, lacking the nerve to call out famous authors for their daft plots and slovenly prose), or book clubs ("I would rather have my eyelids gnawed on by famished gerbils than join a book club"). Queenan also resists the temptation of most book lovers to buy a lot of books, since he figures he won't live long enough to read (or re-read) the ones he's vowed to finish before he dies. Most will agree that "reading is intensely personal," and the author splatters his personality over every page. An amusing homage to reading that contains something to offend even (especially?) the most ardent book lover.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
BY Joe Queenan's reckoning, in his 62 years of life he has read at least 6,128 books. Should he continue to read at his current clip (100 to 200 books annually), he calculates that given natural life expectancy, he has only some 2,138 books to go. The clock is ticking, he warns, for him and for us all. If that makes you want to abandon this review immediately and grab the nearest Dostoyevsky, no hard feelings. Queenan, now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is a famously dyspeptic humorist and self-proclaimed "sneering churl." But in "One for the Books," a gathering of essays, parts of which appeared in these pages, he is mostly in celebratory mode, writing of his love of literature. It is a stalker-ish love, in which he reads everywhere (at wakes, during Jerry Garcia guitar solos) and anything (Pamela Anderson's "Star: A Novel," Geraldo Rivera's memoir), and in spare moments fetishistically rearranges his personal collection of 1,374 tomes by height, thickness and author's nationality. While hardly monogamous - he always has at least 15 books going at once - Queenan is a wholehearted lover, surprisingly vulnerable to the slightest volume, as ready to give himself to a novella about a cross-dressing Mexico City hairdresser as to "Northanger Abbey." He will slog to the end of even a turgid, minor work by a beloved author, so as not to seem ungrateful. Fortunately, given Queenan's particular skill set, he finds plenty in the book world to sneer at, too. On the cheapskates who frequent secondhand bookshops: "People should consider it an honor to pay full price for a book by Don DeLillo or Margaret Atwood." On reviews containing the adjective "luminous": "I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle." On the futility of book clubs: "Good books do not invite unanimity. They invite discord, mayhem, knife fights, blood feuds." He refuses to read novels in which the protagonist attends private school (so long, Harry Potter), or books written by fans of the Yankees, a group that turns out to include Salman Rushdie. And he reserves particular scorn for readers of e-books, who, he argues, "have purged all the authentic, nonelectronic magic and mystery from their lives." A person housebound with an infant might disagree. A person lying in the dark next to the aforementioned, now finally, blessedly sleeping infant might consider the conjuring of "Wolf Hall" on a beautifully backlighted iPad a wonder passing all wonders. And what of book reviewers? Queenan, a formidable reviewer himself, complains that we are "too darned nice." Let me note, then, that "One for the Books" is a shaggy specimen, and could have done without the mock Amazon reviews from previous centuries or the litany of fake Lincoln titles and Kinks autobiographies or the mock book-discussion questions. Nevertheless, it is hard not to be charmed by Queenan's enthusiasms. He bemoans never finding someone willing to talk about the Japanese writer Junichiro Tanizaki (I am!), and admits to never finishing - and never wanting to finish - "Ulysses," an old nemesis of mine that I once attempted to destroy by wedging it under a jack to change a flat tire. (It haunts me still, with its oil-stained pages.) When Queenan was young, books were an escape hatch from life in a Philadelphia housing project "with substandard parents," including a father who "used books the same way he used alcohol: to pretend that he was not here." Now they are a way to rage against the dying of the light. "As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last," he writes. "Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished 'Villette.'" 'Good books do not invite unanimity. They invite discord, mayhem, knife fights, blood feuds.' Ligaya Mishan writes the Hungry City column for the Dining section of The Times.
Table of Contents
| Chapter 1 Great Expectations | p. 1 |
| Chapter 2 Face Without a Name, Bag Without a Number | p. 28 |
| Chapter 3 Opening the Books | p. 58 |
| Chapter 4 Shelf Life | p. 84 |
| Chapter 5 Prepare to Be Astonished | p. 115 |
| Chapter 6 The Stockholm Syndrome | p. 153 |
| Chapter 7 Other Voices, Other Rooms | p. 193 |
| Chapter 8 Life Support | p. 221 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 245 |
