Nonfiction

What to Read When You Don’t Know What to Read: A List of Books About Reading

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Chief of Staff

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky.

start here cover imageThis installment of Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Book Riot’s own Start Here: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors. Here’s the book, in a nutshell:

There are so many fantastic authors and great books out there that sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. Start Here solves that problem; it tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres–from classics to contemporary fiction to comics.

Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3- or 4-book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, and informative way to enrich your reading life.

It’s available as an ebook in the usual places: AmazonBarnes and Noble, the iBookstore, and if they’re signed up with Kobo, your local independent bookstore. And it’s just three bucks! (in the US at least.)

_________________________

Now that we’ve written a book about what to read and why, we’re even more curious than usual about other books in the genre. So last week, we asked you to tell us about your favorite books about reading. Here’s a round-up of the recommendations from Facebook, Twitter, and the comments section. Enjoy!

Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

The Anatomy of Bibliomania by Holbrook Jackson

How Beautiful It Is: And How Easily It Can Be Broken by Daneil Mendelsohn

The New Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major

The Joy of Reading by Charles Van Doren

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren

Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading by Maureen Corrigan

The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Let’s Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14 by Erica Bauermeister and Holly Smith

Reading Like a Writer by Francise Prose

How to Read Better and Faster by Norman Lewis

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

The Dancing Mind by Toni Morrison

Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust series

Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon

anything by Michael Dirda

Used and Rare by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

anything by Nicholas Basbanes

Booked to Die by John Dunning

Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You’ll Ever Read by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom

Okay, hit us: what did we miss?