Know it All by AJ Jacobs & Among the Gently Mad by Nicholas Basbanes

I splurged on 2 more books yesterday. Since I have been (and am still) reading Players (about Shakespeare) and The Book Nobody Read (About Copernicus) over the last 2 weeks, I decided I needed some lighter reading material. Never mind the huge pile of books on my TBR shelves. I wanted to read something about books. So I splurged.

I started reading Among the Gently Mad last night - and am already past page 120. Its an easy book to read and there are some very good ideas about book collecting. Such as making up a database and keeping accurate records of all your books, and deciding early what subjects or specialities you want to collect in.

Oh yes and I now own all 5 of Nick's Books.
A Splendor of Letters
A Gentle Madness
Patience and Fortitude
Among the Gently Mad
Every Book Its Reader
This Antiquarian craze can really sneak up on you. Four months ago, I'd never heard of Nicholas Basbanes before.






I browsed through this book at the library a few weeks ago, but did not get it out. So now I have my own copy. I read the Wikipedia article, and my impression of Joe Queenan's bad review is simply this. Joe is jealous that he didnt think up the idea of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica all by himself. Or maybe Joe is jealous that someone else actually managed to finish reading the entire encyclopedia. I'll bet Joe tried and gave up after Volume A.

Here is AJ Jacobs website

And for some silly reason this Blog will not allow me to link to Wikipedia.