As a true book lover, I was drawn to this book by its title. However, I found the book a little disjointed and less about the joy of reading books in general, less about the transportive effect of books, and more a literary analysis of various books thrown in amongst various autobiographical bits of the author's life.Also, I have a bit of a "pebble in my shoe" issue after reading this book. I very much dislike it when authors throw in certain "facts" to support an argument but don't provide you

I discovered a kindred spirit in Maureen Corrigan. A Georgetown professor and book reviewer for NPR’s “Fresh Air,” she is lucky enough to make a living by reading and then writing (and talking) about what she’s read. The very first lines of her book convinced me that I’d found a like-minded soul: “It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.” I couldn’t agree more...

So let's start off with a couple of things. First off, I love NPR. I love Fresh Air. I love NPR. Maureen Corrigan being the book reviewer for NPR= extreme jealously/worship. Second off, I adore books about books. I could read books about books all day forever and ever. Ok now that we have that established...forward march!I really did enjoy this memoir, I loved how she incorporated books into nearly everything and I was laughing out loud more than a few times just out of sheer disbelief. I have h...

I love this book.I love this book even though it has complicated my life by adding dozens and dozens of books to the list of books I will never have time to read, dammit.** Maureen Corrigan is related to Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan.** She once lived a part-time approximation of Harriet Vane in Gaudy Night.** Her literary loves include mysteries with hard-boiled detectives ("the ultimate independent contractors").** As a child, she read many Catholic "martyr stories" that taught a "pedagogical t...

Overall, I found this book moderately enjoyable, but for me the most transformative aspect of it was Corrigan's discussion of her own newly minted micro-genre, the "female extreme-adventure novel." This was an "Aha!" moment for me-- that throughout the history of novel writing, while men and male protagonists have been out exploring the physical landscape and challenging their physical limits, women and female protagonists have been exploring an inner landscape as jagged and formidable as any mo...

I think one reason I enjoy reading is for the opportunity to get inside another human being’s head, to connect mentally with that person’s thoughts, even if that person lived centuries ago. It’s a sort of magic, isn’t it? Maureen Corrigan understands that magic. The opening line of this book is: “It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others---even my nearest and dearest---there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.” Spoken like a true boo...

I was really excited to read this book, but I couldn't get through all of it. I liked the introduction, but then the meat of the book reminded me (in a bad way) of my brief stint at an English major. I didn't like being tricked into reading literary criticism!

Maureen Corrigan, noted book critic from NPR's "Fresh Air," has written a memoir for true book lovers who do not see their reading life as separate from real life. Growing up Irish-Catholic in New York, the daughter of a World War II Navy vet (himself a huge reader), Corrigan recounts her life in terms of the books she read along the way, studying literature at Fordham and Penn, teaching at Georgetown, and eventually marrying another passionate reader and adopting a Chinese girl. Particularly co...

This book is what happens when a book reviewer turns her critical eye to her own existence. Any avid reader should appreciate the importance of books in one's own life and how they shape those who read. Corrigan says, apologetically, that we read to find authenticity, a scrap of something that will improve our understanding of ourselves. Perhaps. She says that reading a book can be a dangerous thing sometimes. True. Peppered with examples from books she has read, this is a kind of memoir that ev...

Maureen Corrigan has spent her life doing what she loves: reading and interpreting fiction as a college professor, author, and newspaper/radio critic. Her semi-autobiography uses a lifetime's reading to explore not only her own life and those of her parents, but also the role of women in Western culture, popular vs. canonical literature, and what it means to be an American. She is most effective when describing her admiration for hard-boiled detective fiction and when drawing parallels between t...

Corrigan reviews books for NPR, and this is an interesting combination of book recommendations with parts of her own life story. I now have a longer "to read" list.

Another book for bool lovers. Talks about how we can find, and lose, ourselves in books.

Corrigan and I don't overlap much in our tastes. I don't think I've ever described a book as "luminous" including The History of Luminous Motion. That's rather more of a disincentive to me. So I'm going to give up and give it back to the library.2020 June 06

Don't be fooled -- this isn't a memoir. But it's not lit theory either... it's mostly the wishy washy area in between. Here Maureen Corrigan spoils plot after plot, stringing together a series of dubiously connected book reviews. She makes excuses at various points of the book for her "lack of methodology" and lack of direction, which are the downfall of this book. She tries to read feminist themes into a variety of crappy fiction, which might be admirable if she didn't make so many gendered com...

I love books about books or about reading. Maureen Corrigan's descriptions of herself as a reader felt so familiar to me. This book was written twelve years ago, but the feel of the book is fresh and present and relevant. It is a quiet book but well worth taking ones time to savor.

A professor of literature/NPR book reviewer discusses her readerly reflections and the intersections between her lifelong habit of reading and life experiences. For instance, one chapter discusses books she categorizes as “women extreme adventure stories” (like Jane Eyre and Villette), which are “heavy on anxious waiting and endurance” which leads to the story of the long, complicated process she and her husband went through to adopt a child from China. In another chapter, the author brings a fr...

Oh, this one was a hard one to rank. It was a three when I first picked it up, a two when I first put it down, a four when I picked it up again years later, and a three when I put it back down a second time. I was determined to knock off a lot of low-hanging almost-finished fruit from my TBR pile this weekend, and I finally read the last thirty pages. So, hey, let's average this out to a three? Ish? This is one of those books that tragically reinforces my extreme reluctance to get rid of books.

Deja vu! From her 1960's parochial school upbringing to her love of books and description of the books piled all over her house, I felt instantly at home with Maureen.Maureen weaves a narrative of her life thus far and enthusiastically delves into the books that were companions throughout. She describes the Karen books which I also had to read in school. Tom Dooley which my brother had in his room and she also gets into many great classics of literature as well as explaining her love of detectiv...

exciting title, tedious book. ugh. author works out her issues with catholic upbringing and lack-of-strong-female-role-models-in-books-by-males. she has two quotes that work against her-- "...reading good books doesn't necessarily make one a good person-- or a smarter, funnier, or more cultivated person." and "great books untouchables ... have always struck me as purring a bit too loudly over the beauty of their own sentence structure. the tone of a lot of academic literary theory repels me..."

There is a longer review at my blog.But in short, I did not like this, and I was surprised, because it seemed so much the sort of thing I would enjoy. When Corrigan talks about books as a professional, suggesting alternate readings, she is marvelous -- but when she goes into memoir I found her quite dreary.

If you need practice skimming a book, try this one. Once again, here’s a title that tantalizes more than what the book delivers. This memoir did not hold my attention as the author ruminated though chapters discussing books about catholic martyrs and women’s extreme adventures. But I did enjoy Maureen Corrigan’s asides about her life as an obsessive reader who receives fifty books a week from publishers. She lives a bookish life in a nonliterary era, Corrigan writes in her book, published thirte...

Maureen Corrigan, noted book critic from NPR's "Fresh Air," has written a memoir for true book lovers who do not see their reading life as separate from real life. Growing up Irish-Catholic in New York, the daughter of a World War II Navy vet (himself a huge reader), Corrigan recounts her life in terms of the books she read along the way, studying literature at Fordham and Penn, teaching at Georgetown, and eventually marrying another passionate reader and adopting a Chinese girl. Particularly co...

When I started reading the introduction about how she had loved reading from an early age, etc., etc., etc., I found it didn’t keep my attention. But once Corrigan started expounding on her theories about female extreme-adventure tales, using one of my favourites, Jane Eyre, as one of her main examples, I was hooked. It then made it natural to talk about her own female extreme-adventure with infertility and adoption, without turning it into a blow-by-blow agony autobiography (the correct word es...

So... I know I've read other books like this one -- the history of a reader, why that person is a reader, what books that person has read, how certain books have influenced that person's life, how certain books have paralleled that person's life, or been completely different from that person's life -- and I've enjoyed them. But for some reason, I just didn't find this one as enjoyable. I don't know if there's something else going on in my head right now so I couldn't enjoy reading it, or if I've...

I thought I would enjoy this book more. I read a lot, like Maureen Corrigan's book reviews on NPR, and I thought I might find more books that I wanted to read. I liked the memoir part of the book, but found the book sections hard to read. The book sections seemed like they were written for academic journals rather than as part of a mass market memoir. I found that if I had read the book, these sections were mildly interesting; but most of the books were not ones I had read, and the writing did n...

Corrigan sent me scurrying to the library with this one: so many great book recommendations! Her chapter on women's adventure stories is a brilliant stand-alone essay. And I wish it HAD stood alone, because her following chapter was all about the deservedly little-known Catholic guilt novels of her youth. A mixed bag, but an enjoyable one for book nerds like me.

2.5 stars.

I love listening to Maureen Corrigan, whether on a CD or NPR or in person at one of her speaking engagements.

DNFThis book was putting me to sleep. Couldn’t do it. Moving on...

As soon as I read the first sentence in the author's introduction I knew I was hooked: "It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes moment when I'd rather be reading a book." My sentiments exactly! So I figured Maureen Corrigan and I must have a lot in common – despite the fact that she’s the book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and the only book reviews I ever publish are the ones that show up here on Goodread...