And the stories that bind readers to one another. Reading may be solitary, but in the aggregate books unite us. Stories allow us to share other people’s experiences communally—across schools and cities, countries and languages. When a child in Uganda reads the same life-changing novel that the thirtysomething lawyer recalls reading while growing up in Illinois, a connection is established across class, culture, and time.
I’d like to think others would get as much out of a Book of Books as I have gotten out of mine. For each of us, the books we’ve chosen across a lifetime reveal not only our evolving interests and tastes, but also our momentary and insatiable desires, the questions we can’t stop asking, the failings we recognize in ourselves at the time, and the ones we can see clearly only years later. We pass our lives according to our books—relishing and reacting against them, reliving their stories when we recall where we were when we read them and the reasons we did. Most people, I’m convinced, are not just searching for cocktail-party fodder when they ask what someone else is reading. They are trying to figure someone out, to get to the bottom of him. They are looking for clues.
My clues are all here, on these pages. On the pages of my Book of Books. When I look through Bob, the actual stories between his mottled covers may have been written by others, but they belong to me now. Nobody else on the planet has read this particular series of books in this exact order and been affected in precisely this way. Each of us could say the same about our respective reading trajectories. Even if we don’t keep a physical Book of Books, we all hold our books somewhere inside us and live by them. They become our stories.
Acknowledgments
With my previous books, I had many people to thank who helped me with research and interviews. This book is different in that I only had to look inward and “interview” myself. I still needed lots of help. I want to thank everyone involved in the editing and publishing process: Paul Golob and Gillian Blake, Tracy Locke and Patricia Eisemann, Maggie Richards and Stephen Rubin. This is my fourth book with Henry Holt and they make clear why editors and publishing houses matter. I couldn’t be more grateful for the passion, intelligence, and dedication they bring to the hard work they do. Thank you to my agent, Lydia Wills, the best, who found me this editorial home.
At the New York Times, I am lucky to have a boss who loves to read and loves books. My gratitude to Dean Baquet, who always asks, “What are you reading?” and almost always has a better answer than I do. I want to thank all my colleagues at the Times, especially at the Book Review. I get to spend my days with the smartest book people I know. I feel like I have the best job in the world, and I have Sam Tanenhaus to thank for that opportunity.
Some poor souls read this book in embryonic form and I thank them for their forbearance: the extremely talented Trish Hall, my dear old friend Mindy Lewis, my mother-in-law, Debra Stern, my still best friend, Ericka Tullis, my brilliant editor friend Vanessa Mobley. I must take a moment to say that my colleagues and friends Susan Dominus and Sarah Lyall are geniuses and I feel fortunate to know them and to have persuaded them to read this book. You couldn’t ask for more precise or insightful editorial suggestions. They know how not to make you feel bad about bad writing. They also are surely responsible for any stylistic flair on these pages. Please read everything they write.
I want to thank my family, especially my late father and my brother Roger, the big galoot. Here is what I say to you: E.
Michael, Beatrice, Tobias, and Theodore: The only thing I didn’t enjoy about writing this book was the time it took away from you. I hope it gives something back to you someday, because you are my everything.