Books About Books - my kryptonite.
I love books about books - whether its the history of books and publishing, the history of printing, author biographies, collated book reviews, and of course books that fall under the broad 'bibliotherapy' heading.
2025 has started strongly in this field with the wonderful Just My Type that I reviewed a little while ago and then two splendid books about reading journeys.
The first was Read Yourself Happy by Daisy Buchanan (DK) - which is an interesting more modern approach to a bibliotherapy book. Buchanan would pick an emotion and then share details of her life to explain the choice and talk about the books she read to help with these times. What made it more than a typical self help bibliotherapy book was the personalisation and also the inclusion of all sorts of books - there was no hint of 'good' or 'worthy' books being prioritised, just books from all genres and times that gave Buchanan solace and then some similar books that might also work.
It is a book that can be read from cover to cover like any non fiction book, but is also one that you can dip in and out of as and when the mood strikes.
The second book is Bookish by Lucy Mangan (Vintage) and this is a much more of a straightforward autobiography from the author but told via the books she was reading at each stage of her life. Very much like her previous book (Bookworm) I felt like I was looking in a mirror as I was reading (at least up to the last quarter anyhow). So many of Mangan's life choices and career moves match my own and we were definitely reading a lot of the same books through the late 1990s and in to the 2000s. In fact I'm pretty sure that at some points we must have been in the same second-hand bookshops around Norfolk fighting over the same titles!
Mangan's life has diverged from mine more now, and by the end of it I was moved to tears several times - and also green with envy at her home book-nook. I also have another huge stack of titles to revisit at some point.
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