Published By: Swift
Pages: 256
Released On: 04/11/2021
Rob Doyle recounts a year spent rereading fifty-two books – from the Dhammapada and Marcuz Aurelius, via The Tibetan Book of the Dead and La Rochefoucauld, to Robert Bolano and Svetlana Alexievich – as well as the memories they trigger and the reverberations they create. It is a record of a year in reading, and of a lifetime of books.
*****
Thanks to Swift for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s something so delightful about reading a book about reading books. Books are a very personal pastime, and what books we read can tell a lot about who we are as a person, so in this book, Doyle has effectively bared his soul to us.
Doyle writes so passionately about his choice of books that I can’t help but want to read them all, even ones where the topic wouldn’t normally interest me. Thanks to this book, I have started a t of books mentioned in other books that I hope one day to read.
What is amazing is how each person understands translated and classic books. I’ve read a number of them in my time – not like Doyle in this book – and I think everyone gets a different meaning and feeling from these books, and that’s what makes a book discussion with other bibliophile so fascinating.
Books By Your Bedside 