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Summary: Smart and funny quotes on books
Review: This is a clever and fun-loving compendium that successfully avoids two of the usual problems of books on bibliophilia: it neither congratulates booklovers on their hobby nor apologizes for their addiction. The collection is much bigger than that - in conception and execution.Having culled the opinions of well- and lesser-known writers, humorists, thinkers, and fictional characters, the editors have managed to put together a lively tour of bibliophilia and its satellites (education, censorship, and more). Chapters such as "What to Read," "What Books Do - and Don't Do - For Us," "How to Read," "Books and The Young," contain quotes that are by turns thoughtful, funny, sensible - and sometimes wonderfully silly. So there is James Thurber (presumably answering the query, "How do you read?") offering, "I always begin at the left with the opening word of a sentence and read towards the right, and I recommend this method." To readers who imagine that books will necessarily change their lives, George Bernard Shaw offers the tart and deflating remark that "People get nothing out of books but what they bring to them." The editors give the issue of freedom of the press plenty of room, and Terence Qualter's remark that "The weapon of the dictator is not so much propaganda as censorship," from his 1962 book "Propaganda and Psychological Warfare" is cited. Jimmy Walker, past Mayor of New York, weighs in with "No girl was ever ruined by a book." Critics everywhere can laugh at the words of Sydney Smith of "The Smith of Smiths" (1934) by Heskith Pearson, who asserted "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so." And cat lovers everywhere will be offended by Mark Twain, who wrote," I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat." There's an index of people quoted, but not a subject index (which would have been nice). It's well thought-out, there's plenty to read and to think about, and it's also a lot of fun.
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