Bluestalking: Book Lust, Book History and Everything in Between

July 25, 2006

Book Lust, Book History and Everything in Between

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

From The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop:

"It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon."

This quote could have come from my own autobiography, were I ever to feel compelled to write one. How comforting to know I'm not the only book addict on this earth, even in this age of reality TV when the average attention span is all of three seconds long.

As someone who reads books about books compulsively, I'm always on the lookout for anything new in this genre. Often I'm disappointed by either lightweight content or lack of a really interesting style, but in the case of this book that wasn't a problem.

This is a book that's both charming in style and very rich in content, something that's all too rare. Books like this need champions to proclaim their glory to the world. They're little books, from the standpoint of having to battle the heavy-hitting bestsellers, but huge books if you are anywhere near as enamored by books as Lewis Buzbee. And, if you were attracted enough to look this one up on Amazon, I can only trust you ARE enamored and I hope you'll not just read this one but comment on it wherever you can. This book deserves as wide an audience as it can get, but it's largely by word of mouth that so many small press books achieve that. So, give it a read and proclaim it to all the world!

Don't make me beg...

As countless other readers will likely find, I identified with so many aspects of this book, from the author's musing on the My Weekly Reader book orders from his grade school days through his various bookstore jobs. His wonderful sidetrips into the history of the book itself made fascinating reading, adding so much to what could have been a fine stand alone memoir of book lust and bookselling. Absolutely wonderful stuff, and a must for all the book-obsessed.

Now comes my big decision, whether to hoard this book all to myself or set it free to delight my other bookloving friends. Though I'm torn, I think I will send it on. It pains me, but as Buzbee put it, "Reading is a solitary act, but one that demands connection to the world..."

So, humbly, I send my copy of this book forth into the wide world, with the full knowledge that another copy of this book is only a One Click finger twitch away.