How Reading Changed My Life Summary and Reviews

How Reading Changed My Life
by Anna Quindlen

How Reading Changed My Life
List Price: $10.00
Our Price: $3.35
You Save: $6.65 (66%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


or

Book Summary Information

Author: Anna Quindlen
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-08-25
ISBN: 0345422783
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780345422781
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of How Reading Changed My Life

Book Review: "...reading while they played."
Summary: 5 Stars

Thus, Anna Quindlen quotes Charles Dickens' biographer, John Forster, in this slim and wonderful book. Apparently, Dickens, Quindlen, and I would all rather read than play or do almost anything else.

I adore this book because it reminds me that there are other people for whom reading goes way beyond a pass-time or even something that we "love" to do. In addition to life's other milestones, we can mark the phases of life with the books that we have read, devoured, and assimilated. Like Quindlen, I remember a childhood influenced by writers like Ogden Nash, Carl Sandburg, Lore Segal, Irene Smith, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, Johanna Spyri, Carolyn Keene, Judy Blume, Betty Smith, and many others who are less clear in my memory but who shaped who I have become and what I have loved to read.

Quindlen reminded me that I am not the only one who is often biding time until my next chance to read. Of course, I read in line at the post office, in a doctor's waiting room, in airports, and at professional sporting events. More telling is that from age 11 or so, I regularly took a novel to church. I sat in the back pew, out of my family's sight, so that I could read the book instead of listen to sermons and hymns. Quindlen knows that many of us have eased the tedium and discomfort of the here and now by going wherever a book will take us.

I suppose that I love this book because she puts my understanding of books, as guidance, sustenance and salvation, into words. I feel validated. My way of being in this world has been endorsed and upheld. I feel good.

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalled ImageBloomsbury Recalled
by Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.37
Price in other shops: $29.00
William Tyndale: A Biography ImageWilliam Tyndale: A Biography
by David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America ImageNeither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America
by Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops: $45.00
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics) ImageStorm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops: $16.00
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life ImageSurprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
by C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops: $18.00
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) ImageRoughing It (The Penguin American Library)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops: $16.00
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98 ImageLife Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98
by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops: $15.00
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) ImageShakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Professor and the Madman CD ImageThe Professor and the Madman CD
by Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.45
Price in other shops: $14.95
Alexander Hamilton: A Life ImageAlexander Hamilton: A Life
by Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.80
Price in other shops: $32.50
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Huntress: Year One ImageHuntress: Year One
by Ivory Madison
DC Comics; DC Comics; Published: 2009-02-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops: $17.99
Living Out Loud ImageLiving Out Loud
by Anna Quindlen
Ballantine Books; Published: 1994-03-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.58
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field ImageThe Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
by Editor Tara Masih
Rose Metal Press; Published: 2009-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.95
Price in other shops: $15.95
The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time ImageThe Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time
by David L. Ulin
Sasquatch Books; Published: 2010-10-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.16
Price in other shops: $12.95
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader ImageEx Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
by Anne Fadiman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2000-11-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.35
Price in other shops: $12.00
Good Dog. Stay. ImageGood Dog. Stay.
by Anna Quindlen
Random House; Published: 2007-11-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.50
Price in other shops: $14.95
My Reading Life ImageMy Reading Life
by Pat Conroy
Nan A. Talese; Published: 2010-11-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.40
Price in other shops: $25.00
Loud and Clear ImageLoud and Clear
by Anna Quindlen
Ballantine Books; Published: 2005-03-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Price in other shops: $13.95
Being Perfect ImageBeing Perfect
by Anna Quindlen
Random House; Published: 2005-04-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.89
Price in other shops: $12.95
A Short Guide to a Happy Life ImageA Short Guide to a Happy Life
by Anna Quindlen
Random House; Published: 2000-10-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.39
Price in other shops: $12.95