I really tried to like this book. I read more than 100 pages which is my limit if I'm debating about continuing a book. There are lots of book recommendations, which I never lack. They are everywhere for me. I really couldn't relate with the author/speaker. I love book stores of all kinds and can spend an enormous time in them. However, I never wanted to work in one. I can appreciate how much she loves books and what solace they have provided. They have done the same for me. I'm a reader, a collector, a supporter. I'm not an author. I just didn't enjoy the story. ( )

Like Pat Conroy's [My Reading Life] or C. S. Lewis' [The Reading Life], this is a memoir through reading and books. While Conroy focused more specifically on his tour of Southern fiction and Lewis on classics, Rentzenbrink covers the gamut of possibilities, ending each chapter with a survey of recommendations in different sub-genres. Throughout, she recounts her life as a bar tender, book seller, and writer, never shying from disclosing poignant and painful memories and how books helped her process them. I won't search out all her recommendations, but she exposed me to books and authors far beyond my current reading. And the details of how she became a writer, the obstacles she overcame both micro and macro, were illuminating. A great book for any writer or reader.

Highly Recommended!
5 bones!!!!! ( )

If you are a bookworm, this book will resonate with you greatly. It really does highlight how important books are to those that love them. ( )

I love books about books and reading. I'm often slightly disappointed by them though as they are usually written by middle class people with too much money and a sad unawareness of their own privilege. This memoir is wonderfully unlike those though. The writer really does have a working class background and lived on minimum wage, yet she manages to convey an equal love of books and reading as any middle class writer. I really, really enjoyed it. I binged it on audio in about 3 days. Recommended. ( )

This is a life told by and through books. They can bring comfort, they can stretch you, they can take you off to other worlds and they can reflect life right back at you. And in here they do all of that and more. This starts with the author having just moved house looking at her book shelves and deciding what to read first, she then decides to start at the very beginning. And so the memoir begins. As a child she was entranced by books and reading; like her, I have no memory of not being able to read. Each chapter of her life is concluded by a short list of books about some element of the section of memoir that you have just read. In many cases I had read the same books and found myself nodding along. We are of an age and so I could relate, in some ways, to her story. In some ways I envied her the ability to recommend a book - that leaves me uneasy - what if someone doesn't like the recommendation, have I just badly misjudged them? However I recognise the tendency to try and see what book someone else is reading (e-readers are impossible in this regard).
Her current role as a literacy advocate is an interesting one and she is clearly passionate about books and reading - long may that continue. ( )