Reading About Other People's Reading: Bibliomemoirs
Back in 2015 I wrote for NB about bibliomemoirs and included a small booklist. The following year I met and interviewed for NB, Rick Gekoski, the author of Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir. Last year, 2019, I presented a short talk at the University of Otago Centre for the Book Symposium* which was on the theme of Biography, Autobiography and Memoirs.
* The symposium for 2020 is called Booking Travel and will be taking place on November 20, 9.30 am-5 pm. It is free to attend, open to all. Click here to register.
My 2019 talk was on the rise of the "books about books" subgenre: bibliomemoirs. Recently, I had an article published in Script and Print (copies of which can be found in the Heritage collections) based on that talk: "The Rise of the Bibliomemoir in the Twenty-First Century". The inspiration for the talk and article came from Dunedin Public Libraries' collections, with copies of most of the books that were mentioned available to borrow from this library.
Reading about what others have read has been an enduring theme in my own reading and a very enjoyable and informative one. The booklist below is a lot longer than the previous one in NB in 2015.
Bibliomemoir Booklist
Girl with Dove: A Life Built by Books Sally Bayley
Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels Rachel Cohen
Browsings: A Year of Reading Collecting, and Living with Books Michael Dirda
How to be a Heroine: or, What I've Learned from Reading too Much Samantha Ellis
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life Samantha Ellis
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader Anne Fadiman
Bookmarked: Reading my Way from Hollywood to Brooklyn Wendy Fairey
The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite Laura Freeman
Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir Rick Gekoski
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader Vivian Gornick
Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home Susan Hill
Jacob's Room is Full of Books Susan Hill
Leviathan, or The Whale Philip Hoare On Herman Melville's Moby Dick
Morningstar: Growing Up with Books Ann Hood
By the Book: A Reader's Guide to Life Ramona Koval
Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books Wendy Lesser
More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers Jonathan Lethem
From Little House to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood Nancy McCabe
What W. H. Auden Can Do For You Alexander McCall Smith
The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie Wendy McClure
H is for Hawk Helen Macdonald On T. H. White's Goshawk
Books that Saved my Life Michael McGirr
Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading Lucy Mangan
Packing my Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions Alberto Manguel
A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books Alberto Manguel
The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot Rebecca Mead
Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer Ann Morgan
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Azar Nafisi
The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading with My Father Alice Ozma
Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books Tim Parks
My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues Pamela Paul
The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time Phyllis Rose
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading Nina Sankovitch
Books for Living: A Reader's Guide to Life Will Schwalbe
The End of Your Life Book Club Will Schwalbe
Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books Lynne Sharon Schwartz
All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf Katharine Smyth
The Child that Books Built: A Memoir of Childhood and Reading Francis Spufford
Storytime: Growing Up with Books Jane Sullivan
Reading Through the Night Jane Tompkins
The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading Edmund White
The Art of Reading Damon Young
Mini-Bibliomemoirs: Collections of Essays on Reading
The Simple Act of Reading Edited by Debra Adelaide
The Pleasure of Reading Edited by Antonia Fraser
The Library Book Edited by Rebecca Gray
Stop What You're Doing and Read This! Mark Haddon and Others
The Book that Made Me Edited by Judith Ridge
