Remarkable Reads: 34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading

By: Zane, J. Peder

Book Overview

Can books be dangerous, elegant, or sad? Can books be tempting, or smokin', or double-d-daring? Can they compel you to hitchhike to the middle of Mexico, fall in love with snakes, or question your sanity? Of course they can. Writers including Jonathan Lethem, Haven Kimmel, Charles Frazier, and Bebe Moore Campbell tell us why in this eye-opening anthology. Tapping classic works such as "The Catcher in the Rye" and "The Cat in the Hat" as well as obscure novels such as Karel Capek's "The War of the Newts," they reveal how literature tempts, enchants, and changes us. Each of these essays, which first appeared in the "Raleigh News & Observer," reminds us that reading is not a passive pastime but an action sport that seizes and shapes, renews and remakes us. Insightful and heartfelt, humorous and accessible, "Remarkable Reads" will delight anyone who has ever loved a book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393325407
• ISBN13: 9780393325409
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A must-read for any lover of books

Warning--if you are an avid book reader, your "to read" list is going to grow as you read this delightful collection of essays about writers and the most remarkable reads they've come across. Zane's anthology of essays about books covers the well-known classics as well as obscure novels. Read about the hippest, most tempting, most exotic, most unpleasant, most disappointing, most daunting, and most eloquent books, among many others. This is a must-read for any book lover or writer.

the power of books

Curious about what writers read & how books have influenced them, J. Peder Zane, a book review editor, invited 34 writers to contribute essays launched by the request that they fill in the blank: "the most ______ book I ever read." Rebeccasreads recommends REMARKABLE READS as a blog in which writers tell of what they were doing at the time they read their selected books; how their lives changed; their ideas about writing; their epiphanies & peeves. Yes, writers do read & write about what they read, quite well too!

Fantastic idea

There is so much to read in life, and if your job involves reading, like mine does, you get even less of it accomplished on your own time. This book takes you right to the heart of amazing experiences with the printed page. Good for summer reaidng lists, college classes on reading, etc. In an era when reading is said to be declining, books like this are essential.

Remarkable!

I just spent a great afternoon reading Remarkable Books, and the book is, well, remarkable. It's great fun to read other people's sharing theirpassions, even if, like Doris Betts, the passion is negative. Or reading Peder Zane remembering how, as a college student, he fell in love with Freud because Freud was hip. Or Lee K. Abbott falling in love with the language of Absalom, Absalom! though the he was daunted by the book and didn't finish it till forty years after he started it. Remarkable! The book is just a great read.

An Interesting Concept Marvelously Executed

J. Peder Zane, the book review editor of the RALEIGH (N.C.) NEWS AND OBSERVER thought it would be interesting to invite several authors (who are also often college professors) to write essays for the newspaper which discussed their favorite books and in so doing capture for the newspaper's subscribers the true adventure of reading. However, these were not intended to be a collection of "highfalutin platitudes" about the power of literature or laundry lists of worthwhile reads. Rather they were to be specific and detailed, a blend of personal experience and literary criticism/analysis. The request of each writer was very specific, "pick a single book and a single adjective to describe their encounter with it". And the results exceeded their expectations (and mine as well), which is why the collection has now been published in book form.While this collection is certainly of uneven quality, it is one of the few that I have ever read where the range is from simply interesting to truly outstanding. The selections range in length from five to eight pages, so each is easily able to be completed in one sitting; sometimes I found myself wanting to contemplate one before I moved on to the next piece, while at other times I couldn't contain my excitement and immediately wanted to proceed to the experience chronicled by the next author. Zane chose to arrange them in chronological order, but not when they were written or read but rather approximately in the order of the age of the reader when it was first read. (Indeed several have been reread multiple times; one of the interesting elements of some of the essays is how the authors' reactions to these books changed over time.) While I was familiar with several of the books and a few of the writers included in this collection, the majority were new to me and I now have numerous additional items on my "to read" list. In some instances the essay is primarily about the book, in a few the book is placed in the context of the body of the author's work, but the majority of the pieces involve the journey (sometimes intensely personal) which the book occasioned for the reader. While this was often just the enchantment which we all feel when confronted by the power of great literature, it was on one occasion the impetus for a twenty five hundred mile actual journey to the scene where the action in the book occurred. In all cases, these essays reveal some aspect of the power of literature and how it can influence our lives.In order to provide some specificity to this review, I will provide a few examples which were especially meaningful/poignant/interesting to me or in some instances where I was moved by willingness of these authors to reveal the depth of their emotional reactions to the books which they had chosen. First, Jonathan Lethem's choice of THE HAPPY VALLEY for "loneliest book", primarily because I had never considered what would make a book lonely and was intrigued both by his definitional approach and the boo