I was a little afraid to read this book as I was sure I would feel compelled to either read "her shelf" or pick a "shelf of my own" but in the end I felt neither urge. I will admit it is an intriguing idea--although if I do succumb it will consist of me reading through one of my "home composed shelves of unread books"--that idea might be worth pursuing! My "Umberto Ecco Anti-Library" currently consists of at least five such shelves. (Thanks Mr. Taleb for making me proud of this fact.) The shelf Ms. Rose read was very unappealing to me and in the end I think mostly to her as well. This book has a lot of filler--interesting filler but filler none the less and her writing about these books/filler was way more interesting than the books.
Her idea was to pick a somewhat random shelf in a New York City library (she set some ground rules for shelf selection) and read her way through. She became a little obsessed about one--a Russian "classic" that she read over and over until she could convince her mind that it was a classic. I didn't get it. There is a whole class of authors who books (like this one) have been deemed classics that glorify the macho male and their mistreatment of women or who blatantly indulge the author's "fictionalized fantasies" that usually involved forbidden lusts and/or minors. It makes me wonder living in this #metoo moment that perhaps this "classification" needs to be re-thought. I don't want to be a hypocrite though as I love a good mystery/thriller as much as the next reader, it just has me wondering about the human taste for violence in our choices of entertainment.
Ms. Rose has no problem criticizing authors and books or revealing plots twists, endings, and solutions to crimes. She is a bit harsh at times and claims at one point to not read negative reviews of her own writings. Dishing it out but not taking it. Over all though I liked this book, even though I didn't always agree with the author. In fact, the one book that she decided not to read ended up being the only one that I felt was interesting. A book called Eleanor by Rhoda Lerman--it is about Eleanor Roosevelt and I am so close to having a whole category of Eleanor books.
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