It's a Hardback Life

First day of September's Book a Day, and already I'm torn about having to pick just one. But since this isn't Twitter, I'm going to cheat and go with two (even though I could easily list dozens- books about books is one of my favorite sub-genres).

The one that immediately came to mind is Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading. Deceptively comprehensive for a book under 400 pages, it manages to be both expansive and incredibly personal. It takes a very special talent (and love for your subject) to go from the first scratches on a clay tablet to CD-ROM without ever losing sight of the real focus, which is reading as "obsession, passion, and rebellion."

A close runner-up is David Denby's Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World. It was one of my first introductions to the bibliomemoir, and also one of the earliest books to prove that a book can be enjoyable even when you find yourself disagreeing with it.