Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for twenty-eight years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read, from Sweet Valley High to Anna Karenina, from Catch-22 to Swimming to Cambodia, a journey in reading that reflects her inner life - her fantasies and hopes, her mistakes and missteps, her dreams and her ideas, both half-baked and wholehearted. Her life, in turn, influences the books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, information or sheer entertainment. But My Life with Bob isn't really about those books. It's about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader. It's about the way books provide each of us the perspective, courage, companionship, and imperfect self- knowledge to forge our own path. It's about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It's about how we make our own stories.
I’m a huge sucker for books about books, so it’s probably no surprise that I really like this one. Paul takes us through Bob—her “book of books”—and the life events that surround these titles. It’s a fascinating peek into someone else’s reading life and I love that voyeuristic aspect of learning about someone else’s reading habits. Also fun was hearing Paul’s take on “Kidlit,” a book club group that I’ve read [a:Gretchen Rubin|21246|Gretchen Rubin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1252934548p2/21246.jpg] talk about many times in her books.
I don’t think anything can ever top Anne Fadiman’s [b:Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader|46890|Ex Libris Confessions of a Common Reader|Anne Fadiman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435782351s/46890.jpg|1468318] for me in terms of books on books—but this was a great one, and I’d recommend it to avid readers who are fascinated by the processes and philosophies of reading.
