People Pick
Imagine keeping a record of every book you've ever read. What would this reading trajectory say about you? With passion, humor, and insight, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life.
Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for twenty-eight years – carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk – reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob.
Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read, from Sweet Valley High to Anna Karenina, from Catch-22 to Swimming to Cambodia, a journey in reading that reflects her inner life – her fantasies and hopes, her mistakes and missteps, her dreams and her ideas, both half-baked and wholehearted. Her life, in turn, influences the books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, information or sheer entertainment.
But My Life with Bob isn't really about those books. It's about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader. It's about the way books provide each of us the perspective, courage, companionship, and imperfect self-knowledge to forge our own path. It's about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It's about how we make our own stories.
- New eBook additions
- Start Something Good
- Available now
- New kids additions
- Black History Beyond February
- New teen additions
- Most popular
- Weird and Wonderful Fiction
- Try something different
- Libros de Ficción en Español para Adultos
- Libros de No Ficción en Español para Adultos
- Texas by the Book
- Kids in the Kitchen Cookbooks!
- See all
- Available now
- Start Something Good
- New audiobook additions
- Texas by the Book
- Black History Beyond February
- New kids additions
- New teen additions
- Most popular
- Try something different
- Audiolibros de No Ficción en Español para Adultos
- Audiolibros de Ficción en Español para Adultos
- Royal Drama!!
- Science Fiction Goes Beyond - BEANSTACK
- See all
- 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten: Picture Books to Read Together
- Bringing Up Baby: Books for Babies and the People Who Raise Them
- Bedtime Stories to Share
- ABCs, 123s and More: Picture books that teach basic concepts
- Board Books for Babies
- Trucks, Cars and Things That Go
- New Picture Books
- Always Available Picture Books to Share with Kids
- 5 Minute (or Less!) Stories
- Read and Listen Titles
- Sunny Days: Celebrating Sesame Street
- Clifford the Big Red Dog
- How to Catch a . . .
- See all