My First Book Review

 

What could be better for a person who loves to read than to be sent a book to review? I was thrilled to be asked to review The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett.

I thought it was very fitting that my first book review would be on a book based on the story of a man who loves books so much that he feels compelled to steal the ones he wants for his collection.

I’m an avid reader and have loved reading for as long as I can remember but I knew nothing about book collecting. This book helped me to understand better the reasons why some people collect books, what drives them and what impassions them.

This story is also a detective story, though, about one man and his need to catch a very clever thief of rare books.

As I was reading this story about this criminal mastermind,  I kept thinking to myself, here is this intelligent and personable man, who instead of doing something productive with his abilities,spends all of his time trying to think of ways to feed his passions illegally. How much more could he have done and how much of a boon to society would he have been if he could have put all of that effort into doing something worthwhile?

I enjoyed this book, I got caught up in the story and even felt myself feeling sorry for the “bad guy”. He was just so clueless that what he was doing was wrong.

I was also rooting for the detective that he would catch his nemesis and that the stolen books would be returned to their rightful owners.

I also collect books but these are books that I keep for my own enjoyment, books that I know will be near me at all times so that I can pick them up like an old friend and disappear into. I also collect books on the Holocaust. none of these are worth anything of value except to me, but isn’t that why we collect things sometimes?

I really want to thank Lydia Hirt  and G.P. Putnam's Sons / Riverhead for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book and I hope that people will pick up a copy and read it soon.