This is one of those ‘books about books’ that I usually love, and while I loved this one as well, it also drove me a bit crazy.  First the things I didn’t love about it.  First of all, it’s terribly copy edited. There are same words back to back in error, a classic error in usage (“comprised of”), some very sloppy syntax (e.g. “A few years later, in 1905, Mann married Katja Pringsheim, and the couple had five children.”  That’s a lot of children in one year!!!!), and the complete omission of one of the books from two lists in the Afterword.  Makes one wonder about the accuracy of some of the rest of the book.  Second, for some bizarre reason, the books are presented alphabetically by title, which makes it impossible to find a book unless you remember the title.  Thankfully, there is a list by author and by date of publication in the Afterward, but really? Third, the editor has chosen to discuss each book with an outline as follows:  title, author, date of publication, publisher, edition, and page length.  This basic information is followed by the opening passage of the novel (I loved this element), a brief overview of the plot and action, a brief bio of the author, and concluding sections on why you should read it and what of the author’s work to read next.  It’s a creative approach and the brief bios are far better than the 1000 page door stop biographies of writers that seem to be the current style.  On the other hand, it also leads to Davis repeating material that logically can fit into several of these sections, and that was annoying.

Despite these reservations, this is a terrific book.  Davis has chosen 58 books (basically, one for each week of the year and an additional six for a baker’s dozen) which appeared between 1759 (Voltaire) and 2019 (Colson Whitehead).  He admits that he aimed for political correctness by having equal numbers of men and women and by seeking diversity in the chosen authors.  As a result, the 58 books don’t include some of the usual suspects of old white men—Conrad, Faulkner, Cheever, Steinbeck, Rushdie and many others didn’t make the cut.  Instead, there are 9 author that I had never heard of—-Jacqueline Woodson, Jeanette Winterson, Leila Slimani, Francois Sagan, Jenny Offill, Alberto Moravia, Yu Miri, Nella Larsen, and Charles Johnson.  Not surprisingly given my white bread education and life style, four of them are Black Americans.

I have read 14 of the 58 books and have read other books by another 12 of the authors.  So there is a rich list of over 30 short novels I’ve never read, and from that list, I will choose several books for the remainder of this month.  The timing for reading ‘short novel’s must be upon us because a recent on line Economist article suggested five other short, ‘read in a day’ works of fiction.  Interestingly, while Coetzee was in both the Economist and in Davis’s book, there was no other overlap, once again indicating the richness of these offerings.

One of the other elements of Davis’s book that I loved was his providing rare nuggets of information in his bio sections.  Here are some examples:  Charlotte’s Web is sixth on the list of books most checked on in 125 years from the NY Public Library; Robert Gottlieb who died recently and is one of my favorite editor/critics, edited Edna O’Brien’s novels; Edith Wharton (cited for a book I’ve read a dozen times, Ethan Frome) was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; Agatha Christie wrote 60 detective novels and her Hercule Poirot is the only fictional character to receive a NYT front page obituary; Doris Lessing became the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature when she won in 2007 at age 89; Clarice Lispector, a beloved Brazilian author, was born Chaya Pinkhasovna Lispector in Ukraine; there are 33 authors honored with postage stamps by the U.S. Postal Service, among them Ursula Leguin, Nella Larsen, and Katherine Ann Porter; Castle Rock on the island featured in Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” inspired the name of the Maine town where more than 15 of Stephen King’s novels are set; Jamaica Kincaid (born Elaine Potter Richardson) married Alan Shawn, the son of The New Yorker’s editor, William Shawn; Colin Whitehead’s two Pulitzer Prizes puts him aside Faulkner and Updike as repeaters; Ernest Hemingway’s middle name was Miller and he was only 61 when he committed suicide; Miss Jean Brodie was played by the recently deceased Maggie Smith in the 1969 movie; Stephen Crane, of Red Badge of Courage fame was born after the Civil War, died of TB at 28, and had his biography written by the recently deceased Paul Auster; Chinua Achebe’s classic book’s title was taken from W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”.  Whew!  Love the details about writers and their books.

Reading about 58 books also provided some broader insights.  First, most of these writers had challenging childhoods and almost all of their marriages ended in divorce.  Hemingway and Porter led the field with four marriages with Cain and a few others close behind with three. Women writers especially seemed to marry early and make bad choices.   Second, alcohol, drugs, depression, and suicide seemed to be everywhere.  Third, fine writing is recognized by awards:  11 Nobel Prize winners and lots of Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Whitbread Prizes, Guggenheim Fellowships, etc.  Fourth, magazines and publishers seem to have an endless appetite for ‘best lists’.  Some of those cited include Time’s, The New York Times, Modern Library, and the BBC’s.  Cross referencing these lists with Davis’s 58 books and the recent NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st C would be a good activity for a winter night.

Finally, in nearly all of his 58 chapters, Davis cites quotations from other critics and the two most cited critics are my own favorite contemporary commentators on literature:  the late Harold Bloom and James Wood.

In short, this is a fine and fun book for those who love ‘books about books’.  I plan to dip into it often in the future for more ideas on that age old question of “what should I read next”.