A review by karenchase
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas A. Basbanes

4.0

It's a bit disingenuous to say I finished this, I suppose, since I ran out of time and I didn't actually read the entire thing. But I got the idea. It's basically a survey of book collectors from time immemorial, and it concludes with the story of a biblio-kleptomaniac, who stole hundreds of books from libraries. The magnitude of his thievery is staggering, and is as much a testament to the lack of security that exists in these collections as it is to his own obsessiveness. But you didn't hear it from me. I actually found this text pretty repetitive, and I honestly couldn't tell you all the collectors (legitimate ones) that Basbanes talks about throughout the book. I own his second book about libraries, and I mainly picked up this one so that I had a basis for that second book. So hopefully I'll make it through that one eventually.