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A review by keysersuze
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books by Cathy Rentzenbrink
5.0
I smiled and chuckled all the way through this book, which I read most of sitting in the garden so I was thankful our neighbours weren’t nearby. Or at least, if they were, they were polite enough not to mention that I was giggling to myself.
I hadn’t come across Cathy Rentzenbrink's writing before, but the description of the book as ‘Dear Reader is a moving, funny and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of your life, packed with recommendations from one reader to another’ sounded perfect. I think, as we head into our eleventy hundredth week of lockdown, I’m finding it really hard to settle on a book, or a podcast, or something – I always seem to be jumping from one thing to another. I currently have no fewer than 6 half read books, which I have vowed to go back to and finish soon. Of course.
So this book, released in September this year, is an author’s ode to reading. It had such a great balance between memoir and chatty book loving friend, Cathy Rentzenbrink is clearly a book lover as well as a great writer. Her candid-ness, her gentle wit and the way she’s so upfront about devastating parts of her life reminded me a bit of Nora Ephron’s writing.
Against the backdrop of something of an unorthodox childhood which saw her and her family live in lots of different places and go to lots of different schools, she talks through her favourite books from childhood in the first section. She explains that books were her constant, her escape – not that she is saying she had a bad childhood, of course, but books allowed her to experience different things and to travel to different places. Her list includes the Narnia books, which she references a few times and always elicited a feeling of nostalgia and a desire to read them again.
There were so many books like that – memoirs, legacy sagas, love stories, mysteries – all handily broken into phases while our author and guide grows up, marries, moves to New York and loads of other amazing things. For every book I’ve read and loved, there were two that I immediately added to my Goodreads list. It might not have solved my #FirstWorldProblem of having too many books to read, but it also resurrected my love for reading and reminded me how it feels to make new friends in far away lands.
I can think of at least a dozen friends of mine I know who would love this – it’s so accessible and engaging, and impossible to put down. I had hoped it would come with an index so I didn’t have to remember all of the books, but the digital ARC didn’t. Maybe the published version will!
Rentzenbrink has written a couple of more standard memoirs before this one, The Last Act of Love and A Manual for Heartache – I’m looking forward to reading those ones, too.
As usual, a big thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher, PanMacMillan, for the ARC.
I hadn’t come across Cathy Rentzenbrink's writing before, but the description of the book as ‘Dear Reader is a moving, funny and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of your life, packed with recommendations from one reader to another’ sounded perfect. I think, as we head into our eleventy hundredth week of lockdown, I’m finding it really hard to settle on a book, or a podcast, or something – I always seem to be jumping from one thing to another. I currently have no fewer than 6 half read books, which I have vowed to go back to and finish soon. Of course.
So this book, released in September this year, is an author’s ode to reading. It had such a great balance between memoir and chatty book loving friend, Cathy Rentzenbrink is clearly a book lover as well as a great writer. Her candid-ness, her gentle wit and the way she’s so upfront about devastating parts of her life reminded me a bit of Nora Ephron’s writing.
Against the backdrop of something of an unorthodox childhood which saw her and her family live in lots of different places and go to lots of different schools, she talks through her favourite books from childhood in the first section. She explains that books were her constant, her escape – not that she is saying she had a bad childhood, of course, but books allowed her to experience different things and to travel to different places. Her list includes the Narnia books, which she references a few times and always elicited a feeling of nostalgia and a desire to read them again.
There were so many books like that – memoirs, legacy sagas, love stories, mysteries – all handily broken into phases while our author and guide grows up, marries, moves to New York and loads of other amazing things. For every book I’ve read and loved, there were two that I immediately added to my Goodreads list. It might not have solved my #FirstWorldProblem of having too many books to read, but it also resurrected my love for reading and reminded me how it feels to make new friends in far away lands.
I can think of at least a dozen friends of mine I know who would love this – it’s so accessible and engaging, and impossible to put down. I had hoped it would come with an index so I didn’t have to remember all of the books, but the digital ARC didn’t. Maybe the published version will!
Rentzenbrink has written a couple of more standard memoirs before this one, The Last Act of Love and A Manual for Heartache – I’m looking forward to reading those ones, too.
As usual, a big thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher, PanMacMillan, for the ARC.