Not everyone understands my obsession with books and reading, so it's nice when I discover kindred spirits. After reading Anna Quindlen's essay (I hesitate to call this slim volume a "book") How Reading Changed My Life, I know I've "met" one of these like-minded folks.

I'm going to go ahead and admit it right now - Quindlen doesn't say anything new about books and reading. Her words are not mind-blowing or even especially unique. I'm not even sure her observations warrant the dramatic title she gave them. Still, I enjoyed reminiscing with her as she described her lifelong love affair with the written word. It began for her like it did for many of us - as a child. Quindlen describes a big club chair that sat in the living room of her childhood home; she spent lots of time "sprawled in it, reading with my skinny, scabby legs slung over one of its arms" (5). Despite her mother's efforts to push Anna outdoors, she says, "The best part of me was always at home, within some book that had been laid flat on the table to mark my place, its imaginary people waiting for me to return and bring them to life" (5).

In subsequent chapters, Quindlen writes about the history of books, the banning of books, and the future of "real" books in our computer-dominated age. I despise reading books on the computer, so I appreciated this observation:

A laptop computer is a wondrous thing; it is inconceivable to me
now that I ever did without one ... But a computer is no substitute for a
book. No one wants to take a computer to bed at the end of a long day, to
read a chapter or two before dropping off to sleep ... No one wants to pass
Heidi on disk down to their daughter on the occasion of her eighth birthday
... (63-64)

No book on reading would be complete without a discussion of the various ways readers get lost in books. Quindlen describes how books saved her sanity after endless days of "disarray, of overturned glasses of milk, of toys on the floor, of hours from sunrise to sunset that were horribly busy but filled with what, at the end of the day, seemed like absolutely nothing at all" (31). She concludes that reading provides the same escape now that it did when she was a kid. It allows her to "escape from a crowded house into an imaginary room of [my] own" (31).

One thing I found really interesting is that although Quindlen finds reading lists "arbitrary and capricious" (71), she includes 11 at the end of How Reading Changed My Life. Their titles range from "10 Mystery Novels I'd Most Like to Find in a Summer Rental" to "10 Books for a Girl Who Is Full of Beans (Or Ought to Be)" to "10 of the Books My Exceptionally Well Read Friend Ben Says He's Taken the Most From." The lists include old favorites as well as titles of which I've never heard.

Even though the information in Anna Quindlen's essay won't move any mountains, it provides an engaging way to pass an hour or so. Readers of all ages will recognize themselves, especially in the young Anna, who lies lost in her reading while her friends play outside, oblivious to the adventures waiting between the pages of a book. Anyone who loves books will find themselves here, in Anna's.

Grade: B

(Book Image from Powell's Books)