My Life with Bob

Starred review from February 20, 2017
New York Times Book Review editor Paul (The Starter Marriage) takes the term bookworm to a new level in this unusual and intriguing memoir about intermingling her life with the books she’s read. Since high school, Paul has entered every book she’s read (beginning with Kafka’s The Trial) in a battered journal she named Bob (Book of Books); continuing the habit in far-flung destinations in the 1980s and ’90s (Cambodia, China, France, Thailand, Vietnam), she recorded the books that she took along with her. Unlike a diary of thoughts and events she’d like to forget, Bob contains info she wants to remember. Paul was a book-smart, unsociable child growing up on Long Island, the sole girl among seven brothers whose parents divorced when she was “three or four”; books were and remain her refuge, companions, and obsession. She worked at bookstore chain B. Dalton and then in marketing, and eventually landed a job at the New York Times Book Review. After the birth of her third child, she remained in the hospital an extra day to finish The Hunger Games, later finding breastfeeding to be a perfect opportunity for reading. Gazing back through Bob’s pages, Paul is inspired to question why we read, how we read, what we read, and how reading helps us create our own narratives. Readers will be drawn to this witty and authentic tribute to the extraordinary power of books.

March 1, 2017
The editor of the New York Times Book Review writes about a book journal begun in adolescence that unexpectedly came to chronicle her own life story.As a child, Paul (Parenting, Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children, 2008, etc.) found her greatest solace in books. They were private spaces where she could safely indulge her most intimate obsessions with and curiosities about any topic. The author's first effort at writing her own narratives ended with her feeling disgusted at the angst-ridden teen humiliations she routinely "vomit[ed]" into her diary. Her second, more successful effort consisted of a list that cataloged every book she had read, her "Book of Books," or "BOB." On this plain, gray book's unlined pages, Paul was able to "take charge of my own story and make it better" while maintaining both the objectivity and anonymity she prized. It was only much later that she realized Bob also granted access to "where I've been, psychologically and geographically," at different periods in her life. The Norton Anthology of English Literature recalled her college years and how the university was "full of lessons about just how much I didn't know." A memory of how she had mistranslated another title, The Grapes of Wrath ("what had I said? The Plums of Fury"), for her French study-abroad host family reminded her of the escape Paris would come to represent after she started her professional life. Some books, like Thalia Zapatos' A Journey of One's Own, inspired Paul to take leaps of faith that led to several years of traveling around the world and temporary residence in Thailand. Others, like Lucy Grealy's The Autobiography of a Face, helped her cope with major life crises. Intelligent, unique, and wise, Paul's book not only remembers a life lived among and influenced by books. It also reveals how the most interesting stories exist less as words printed on pages and more as "stories that lie between book and reader." A thoughtfully engaging memoir of a life in books.

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January 1, 2017

Of course you want to know what book the editor of the New York Times Book Review has been carrying around with her since high school. Actually, it's a battered journal called Bob that chronicles every book she's read.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2017

Prepub Alert editor Barbara Hoffert's December 2016 write-up for this book sent librarians scrambling in anticipation of an unparalleled book list and a love letter to reading. The actual memoir requires attention to the subtitle. Yes, there's the list and love letter, but Bob (book of books), the notebook and reading record that has accompanied Paul (editor, New York Times Book Review) since high school, is in some ways a shorthand diary. Bob is the backbone of a witty, heartfelt, deeply optimistic narrative. It's a familiar tale: the development of a die-hard reader. Paul weathers disastrous foreign exchange experiences, living abroad, travel, and relationships (personal and professional), and she does it all inspired by and accompanied by books. The plot is fine; the flawed heroine does what flawed heroines are supposed to do: learn, and make the reader laugh, cry, think, and probably learn something. VERDICT Titles about reading and books abound, but this memoir stands in a class by itself. Bibliophiles will treasure, but the addictive storytelling and high-quality writing will vastly increase its audience. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]--Audrey Snowden, Orrington P.L., ME

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2017

Prepub Alert editor Barbara Hoffert's December 2016 write-up for this book sent librarians scrambling in anticipation of an unparalleled book list and a love letter to reading. The actual memoir requires attention to the subtitle. Yes, there's the list and love letter, but Bob (book of books), the notebook and reading record that has accompanied Paul (editor, New York Times Book Review) since high school, is in some ways a shorthand diary. Bob is the backbone of a witty, heartfelt, deeply optimistic narrative. It's a familiar tale: the development of a die-hard reader. Paul weathers disastrous foreign exchange experiences, living abroad, travel, and relationships (personal and professional), and she does it all inspired by and accompanied by books. The plot is fine; the flawed heroine does what flawed heroines are supposed to do: learn, and make the reader laugh, cry, think, and probably learn something. VERDICT Titles about reading and books abound, but this memoir stands in a class by itself. Bibliophiles will treasure, but the addictive storytelling and high-quality writing will vastly increase its audience. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]--Audrey Snowden, Orrington P.L., ME

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.