Review: My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul

My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul

Goodreads Summary:

Imagine keeping a record of every book you’ve ever read. What would this reading trajectory say about you? With passion, humor, and insight, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life.

Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for twenty-eight years – carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk – reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob.

Bob is Paul’s Book of Books, a journal that records every book she’s ever read, from Sweet Valley High to Anna Karenina, from Catch-22 to Swimming to Cambodia, a journey in reading that reflects her inner life – her fantasies and hopes, her mistakes and missteps, her dreams and her ideas, both half-baked and wholehearted. Her life, in turn, influences the books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, information or sheer entertainment.

But My Life with Bob isn’t really about those books. It’s about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader. It’s about the way books provide each of us the perspective, courage, companionship, and imperfect self-knowledge to forge our own path. It’s about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It’s about how we make our own stories.

My Review:

When I first heard about My Life with Bob I thought that it sounded interesting because I love having an insight into anyone's reading history (hello, Goodreads) and I thought a New York Times Book Review editor would have an especially interesting list of read books. Part personal memoir and part love letter to books and the act of reading, Pamela Paul's experiences were both relatable to me ("It is a teenager's lot to feel simultaneously innocent and guilty, accountable to grown-up society but not allowed in, bristling with potential yet largely powerless.") and not relatable (her numerous privileged travel experiences). I would love the concept of this book to be repeated by other editors, readers, and book lovers. Wouldn't you love to read about all the books that your favorite author or celebrity read throughout their life, which books affected them the most and why?