1001 Books for Every Mood: A Bibliophile's Guide to Unwinding, Misbehaving, Forgiving, Celebrating, Commiserating

by Hallie Ephron

There's nothing like curling up with a good book to improve your mood, even on the worst of days. There's a book for your every mood - and you'll find it in "1001 Books for Every Mood". This... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598695851
• ISBN13: 9781598695854
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Many moods

Endlessly interesting for browsing. This was a great voluime to share with my book goroup. I appreciate the icons that let me sort by litereary merit, humorous, family friendly, provocative, challenging, etc. The "...to celebrate siblings" mood includes 14 selections, ranging from "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" to "A Thousand Acres" with a dozen varied suggestions in between.

Fantastic reference to have on the shelf !

This title will give you ideas when you are in between books, and can't find anything browsing around the aisles. It's fantastic, and the icons help to quickly choose exactly what you're in the mood for. A great gift idea as well.

More than a list

Yes, this is a list of 1001 books, but it's more than just a list, because there are unique descriptions of each book, and excerpts from some of them. There are also little just-for-fun book quizzes. At the beginning of each section is a list of the icons she uses to highlight a book's notable characteristics, a system that includes Literary Merit, Provocative, Influential, Inspirational, Brainy, Easy Reading, Page Turner, Challenging (how, exactly, is that different from Brainy?), Bathroom Book, Family Friendly, and Movie (meaning, the book has been made into a movie). As I said, I don't always understand how she assigns literary merit, and it seems to have little to do with whether she thinks a book is good, since she recommends many books with only one star for literary merit rather than all five-star books. What exactly determines that David Sedaris' 'Naked' has more literary merit than Erma Bombeck? Or that "Wicked" has more literary merit than "Steal This Book" (which are both in the same category, 'To Misbehave,' by the way)? There are several recurring features: Department of Memorable Opening Lines ("I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." - 'I Capture the Castle'); Department of Great Characters; Who played the role of ______ in the movie?; The Author Explains the Title. While I am not sure I completely understand Ephron's method of categorizing things, nor her ways of determining literary merit, she nonetheless comes up with something in every category that sounds intriguing. Some of her categories are obvious: For A Good Laugh; For a Good Cry; For Romance. Others are less so: For a Walk on The Wild Side; For Hysterical (how is that different from a Good Laugh?); To Run Away From Home (that's a mood?) And sometimes the things she includes in a category are puzzling. The category "To Be Astounded," for example, is mostly fantasy - but Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" in the same category as the Harry Potter books? And the "Action" category includes both science fiction and Rafael Sabatini's swashbucklers. One thing I might have done differently, had I been publishing the book, would be to break up the Index in the back into several indices - by author, by book title, by all the ones that have a "Memorable Opening Lines" excerpt. It would make it easier for people who define their moods differently from Ephron to find things. To give you an idea of the variety here, here's some of the list of books that I scribbled down, after reading this book, for my To Be Read list, because Ephron's descriptions made them sound far more interesting than the reviews when they were written, or the requirements of school, or the fact that I'd never have heard of them otherwise: The Physics of Christmas Watchers by Dean Koontz The Circular Staircase by M.R. Rinehart Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth A History of the World in 6 Glasses Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unw

A must-have guide for book groups

Our book group renamed this "Our Book Group Bible." We read a mix of genres and authors. In the past, we spent a lot of time scouring book shelves, book reviews, and best-seller lists for our monthly selection. Now, the work has been done for us by a pro, and it's all at our fingertips. Selections made simple. We love it. Thank you, Ms. Ephron!