Friday, March 17, 2017

Books for Living

Books for Living by Will Schwalbe.  288 pages

I found this book when I was looking for something else (actually, looking for books to pull for a manual float here in the library).  I grabbed it, figuring I'd read a few pages on my dinner break, and then put the books with the rest of the ones to travel to another location. However, once I started reading, I was enjoying it enough to check it out for myself.  Now that I've finished it, I feel like buying a copy for myself, and probably a few copies for people in my family.

For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself, but also a way to make sense of the world, to become a better person, and to generally live a better life.  In this celebration of reading, he invites the reader along on his quest for books that speak to the specific challenges of living in our modern world.  In each chapter, he discusses a particular book, the people he associates with it, and how it became a part of his understanding of himself in the world.

While I hadn't read all of the books that Schwalbe focuses on, I had read some of them; however, for me, it didn't matter if I was familiar with the book he was focusing on because overall, it was enjoyable to learn about the book from his perspective.  I found Schwalbe's writing style to be conversational, and thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it thought-provoking.  Definitely one for my personal bookshelf.

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