This book is part meditation, part literary criticism, and part defense of the reading life as self-building. The writing is deft and the structure is unconventional. Cass White starts with some assertions about the reading life in general and then goes on to a deeper analysis that uses literary works to back up her thesis. This was the strongest part of the book, looking at how reading is transgressive and an act of self-containment that rebels against the forces that would control us. She uses (among others) Dorothea Brooke and Frankenstein's monster as demonstrations of the power reading has to expand, instruct, and possibly disappoint, and has an especially rich analysis of some of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry.

Cass White also makes it clear that reading in and of itself is not morally superior to any other pursuit, yet how for some people there's a pull to depart from the immediacy of the present and enter the state of reading that can be akin to dreaming.

It's an excellent thought experiment.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced review copy of this book.

This book will be an interesting read for avid readers and those interested in the theory of reading.
Don't come to this though if you are looking for ideas of new books to read as it is more of a literary study of the actual concept of reading and putting some theological and historical context behind it.
Interesting reading but felt like more a reference and study book than a leisurely read.
Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley in allowing me to read in return for a review.

This book was not what I thought it would be. I thought it would be the author discussing the love and pleasure of reading. Most of the authors mentioned I had not read much less heard about. The only passage I identified with was the very last when she finally listed many authors I have read and enjoyed. I’m not sure I grasp the concept of This book, but it wasn’t for me.

When I saw that the book was available for request at NetGalley, I didn't doubt it and I asked for it. A book talking about readings and books in general? Yes, please! However, it has been not what I had expected.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it at all. It felt too arid, too much academic for my taste, which is funny, because I spent five years of my life only reading academic texts.

I found myself skipping whole paragraphs in search of a way of reconnecting with what the author was saying but it felt impossible and I felt I was wasting my time.

Sadly, it is not a book for me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

In the vein of Francine Prose’s How to read Like A Writer and James Wood’s How Fiction Works, Books Promiscuously Read looks at the many joys one finds in throwing oneself wholly into reading. A bit heady at times, but this book is fodder for some serious introspection in terms of why I spend so much of my free time with my head in a book. Insightful and illuminating. Thank you to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Netgalley for the advanced review copy.

A thoughtful, sometimes intriguing discourse on reading.

Ms. cass White’s book reads something like a lecture, or perhaps more gently stated, “ a talk” . . . And I enjoyed what she had to say, but was wishing I could have the experience of hearing her in person. . . Not reading it. ( and, I get it, this is a book about reading!)

Heather Cass White takes us on a lovingly curated walk through the role of books and reading in life. As a lifelong reader, her themes resonated with me and the priority of reading and books as one of my hobbies. It was reassuring to know that I am not alone in considering all that books have brought into my life, making it a deeper and richer one. While I do think that this book will resonate more with those who would consider themselves readers, it might also be able to help those casual readers develop more of a love for books.

As a reader, I am always fascinated and puzzled when people don't find the same joy that I do between the pages of a good book. I wanted to read Books Promiscuously Read because I thought that maybe I would find some answers to this question.

It started off promising with little vignettes that were similar to the book Scribbles in the Margin by Daniel Gray. However, the writing pettered off and became very claggy. Everything seemed heavy and whilst you cannot argue that author Heather Cass White had deep opinions on the matter I felt like I was wading through hoummas to try and get to her point. Ironically, a book that is supposed to be about reading as a way of life became such a dirge for me and I became exhausted by its heaviness. I spent the time reading the words to get it finished and not because I enjoyed it.

Sadly, Books Promiscuously Read was not for me.

Books Promiscuously Read - Reading as a Way of Life by Heather Cass White is available 6th July 2021.

I agree with the other reviewers on this one. I am a voracious reader who likes to even read about reading, but this book completely missed the mark for me.

Huh? I really don’t get this at all. I adore reading. I guess I do not adore reading someone else’s lamentations on reading.

So I should love this book. I didn't. Not one little bit. Reading is my favorite, and this was so hard to read. Not fun.

Thanks to publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

"The paradox at the heart of reading....". Heather Cass White probes our obsession with and passion for the written word with intelligence and feeling. A fiercely intelligent book and yet a highly personal read: there's a lot here for the reader to ponder long after the final page is turned. Highly recommended!

This book is a love letter to books and to reading. Broken up into 5 parts, Heather Cass White does a deep dive into what it is about books and the stories they contain that keep us all hooked. The language in this book is flowery and over the top, but that is how any love letter should be. The last chapter really captivated me as I (and I’m sure many, many others) can put myself into the mind of that 12 year-old girl. Definitely enjoyed reading this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What a lovely book--a weave of the author's meditations and favorite quotes, such that the form of the text follows its function; it conjures the reading brain. I don't understand the reviewers who are calling this "academic"; it's a very intimate book. The way she quick-cuts from text to text tells me more about who the author is than a standard I-did-this-I-did-that autobiography would. It's also just a very good, fast, aphoristic account of what passionate readers actually *do* and why they do it. "A life spent reading affirms the feeling it also creates, that books have 'insides.'"

White has delivered a book that will stay with me in heart and mind for years. As a writer, I'm continually confronted with the vitality of reading as a corollary to good writing and this book has enlivened my childhood love of reading 100-fold. White expertly leads her readers through examples of great prose and why we stand to miss obvious truisms in life, culture and other settings if we forgo the habit of reading and reading well.

I am wholly transfixed by the "paradox at the heart of reading...[where the] more absorbing we find it—the keener and less replicable elsewhere its joys are for us—the deeper becomes our sense that we read to get somewhere new, a place where books themselves might be unnecessary."

In this glorious text, Heather Cass White delivers much more than a solid collection of the best convictions for reading literature. Her voice carries precious treasure on every page; whimsy, intrigue and rolling delight give this book its life. White’s expert use of the creative devices of style in diction and metaphor lends more than one might imagine could be gleaned from the art of reading.

This book is like a dinner in Spain that begins at the midnight hour. A perfect scene of bliss for which one’s full attention and intrigue is rewarded. The reader who enjoys this book is the one who engages, chews and savors long all the morsels, textures and nuance that swirl together with great intentionality. Unlike any other book on the subject, these pages persuade a love for reading when the world says other things are more pressing or worthwhile.

Among many topics, history is shared and language examined. For example, the hapless alphabet—coming on the heels of oral tradition—takes on new rigor in contemplating that “It was forgotten that written marks were only ever intended to be crude arrows pointing back toward the truth of breath in body.” This gem reminds the reader how far we’ve come in human civilization and the meaning of expression.

This book uncovers the draw one feels to books and articulates the freedom found therein. White contrasts motivations and decisions about the choice to read, in light of other tasks or opportunities. The distinctive blessing of play as “hopefulness, caring, an investment in what happens next without the power or wish to control what happens next.” I could cry.

The truths of this book are an anthem for a life-long love affair with books that otherwise might never receive one’s affection. This is my favorite book of 2021 and I hope readers of all backgrounds come upon this gem with fresh optimism and wonder because in exchange they'll receive a new love for language, imagery, and ultimately, life—mightily informed by the books we read and the ones we fail to read. I cannot say enough great things about the lessons in readership that this book has provided me. Thank you.

3.5 rounded up

An illuminating edition to the "books about books" canon, Heather Cass White's Books Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life focuses on different aspects of what makes reading an enjoyable and enriching endeavour, from a more general, holistic view to an examination of writing at a sentence level -- right down to the cadence and syllables of a specific sentences from different books and the deliberate choices successful authors make in forming memorable prose - the section on DeLillo's Underworld was particularly memorable in this respect. The author uses lots of examples and quotes to demonstrate the points she is making, including Housekeeping, Middlemarch and Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, to name but a few.

More academic than I was perhaps expecting, this is nevertheless an essential and largely accessible book for the shelves of the most passionate and voracious of readers.

Why read? Here is a book that endeavors to answer the question in a delightful, engaging, erudite, and interestingly-shaped way. Reading it gave me many different perspectives, some of which felt playfully contradictory, all of which set my brain to rethinking and reimagining why I spend so much time doing it. Why read? What gain is there? What can I expect to learn or experience when I sit down with a book and what can I reasonably demand?

Voluminous use of quotations and sources make this book both interesting in itself and a great springboard for further exploration. I'm not sure that I read it the best way--from beginning to end, as I'd read most books--because it almost feels like something to be savored like a deliciously laden literary salad bar, to be sampled and enjoyed as I wish rather than in a linear way. I didn't feel the swell of a persuasive argument from page to page so much as I felt many "aha" moments that delighted me, as I read along.

Each brief section in part one begins with a declarative sentence, and #21: "The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender"...was one of my favorite "aha" moments in the book. The suggestion here that I'm meant to come to a book with open mind and open heart; to yield to what's on the page, at least at first; to enter into a dialog with the words on the pages without judgment or expectation. That's a wonderful thought and a wonderful reminder.

The playfulness, the invitation to a ruminative sort of dance, continues in part 2, aptly named "Play." There are such leaps here in this section between eras and authors and genres...and yet somehow in its particulars, its examination of specifics, it has given me a different way to enter the dialogue with any work I happen to be reading. It's really a delicious mix of things very familiar to me, and things less familiar. My own delight was heightened most by the mixing thoughts the author has about poems by Elizabeth Bishop I know well, with ruminations of the narrator in Marilynne Robinson's HOUSEKEEPING. It's a remarkable and completely new-to-me kind of literary analysis to read even though of course, OF COURSE it's what happens in my mind, as I read--whenever I read something I am the sum of all I've ever read before that present-moment act of reading, and so frequently things combine in just this way in my head. I may like these pages best in White's book because I'm so familiar with the works she's citing together....but she also gives me a method to celebrate and welcome these same synergies that rise up in my brain when I read. Permission to remember the last time I read the same book and how it affected me then; permission to remember a poem or a play or a piece of music, why not, that enters my mind as I'm reading this next thing in my lap. It was very freeing, this idea that these thoughts aren't obstructions to my concentration on the current reading experience...that this is the way I should be reading.

The next section is called TRANSGRESSION. Well, I've done a lot of thinking about transgression in fiction, and it has led me to read a great deal of -contemporary- fiction. So to me this section was interesting and alive and thoughtful, but also something of a disappointment, because the works examined are classic well-known and well-trodden works and while rethinking and recontextualizing them can be interesting that work is not as interesting to me as a look at the newly transgressive fictional and poetic boundaries of 2021 literature would have been.

Then come INSIGHT and CONCLUSIONS...and I feel I've been in such good company, and i'm so grateful to have read this book. I'm still wishing for something more contemporary in its pages but then I remember the early admonition that I loved to be reminded of: "The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender." While it wasn't the book I thought I wanted to read, it turned out to be a book I loved to read, once I surrendered to it not being my idea of what it should be about.

Deeply, heartfully recommended for anyone who loves good literature.

This book was well written and concise to the point.

It was fascinating to read about reading and have never read a book quite like it before, however I wish it was more personal and less academic- but that is my fault for not properly reading the description.

<i>All reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough. We should fight for it, especially if that fight is against our own sense of obligation to the world.</i>

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to review <i>Books Promiscuously Read</i>, a book divided into five distinct parts. The first, shortest part, "Propositions," broken into short, varied sections, deals with the desire to read, how it often conflicts with grown-up life, and how we should nevertheless view it as honorable and necessary.

<i>the opposite of play in a child isn't work. // The opposite of play in a child is reality.</i>

The second part, "Play," pivots to more conventional literary criticism, discussing the effect of constant reading on Don Quixote's sense of reality, before moving on to the relationship between reader and writer in Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, the use of language in Don DeLillo's <i>Underworld</i>, Christopher Bollas's writings on psychoanalysis, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Marilynne Robinson's <i>Housekeeping</i>, and more. It's dense, heady stuff, but its main point, about the way a reading requires the reader to enter a liminal space of interplay with the mind of the writer, was one that rang true and really appealed to me.

<i>The greater the claims a social system makes on an individual, the graver the transgression of reading will be. Where a threat to the system exists, volunteers will appear spontaneously to monitor and minimize it.</i>

As White points out, Don Quixote was able to engage in all kinds of reading-inspired shenanigans without real consequences because he was a man. In Part III of this book, "Transgressions," White explores, among other things, the effect of reading on those less privileged: How knowledge brings unspeakable pain for Frankenstein's monster, for example, and how literacy brings similar pain but also liberation for writers like Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. Dorothea in <i>Middlemarch</i>, White points out, "is as book-crazed, in her way, as Don Quixote," but because of her sex this is seen as transgressive in a way it isn't for him, and her steps out of bounds will thus be viewed more harshly. Less abstract than Part II, this chapter was probably my favorite, fully absorbing and fascinating even though (I admit it) I haven't yet read <i>Middlemarch</i>.

<i>There are times when our reading is so good it causes us to look up from the page—when our reading is so good it makes us stop reading.</i>

I've been there! In Part IV, "Insight," White further explores what the reader can get from reading: the insights that can accrue, but only as we allow the necessary time to take in the words, to remove the barriers to insight we tend to place in our own way, to return again and again to the place of receptivity reading provides. More poetry—Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, among others—illustrates her point, and this was the moment when the book fully came together for me, when I felt that sense of interplay between White's mind and my own, and when her writing became the most loose and enjoyable.

<i>What matters is staying attuned to an ordinary, unflashy, mutely persistent miracle: that all the books to be read, and all the selves to be because we have read them, are still there, still waiting, still undiminished in their power.</i>

In Part V, "Conclusions," White returns to the style of Part I, making a variety of points in a series of short sections. What most hit home for me: The portrait of the girl twelve-year-old girl reading and rereading everything in sight, fully absorbed, not yet aware that this passion will not be welcomed in many quarters, that because she is female, her interests will be seen as in need of "revamping." In the face of this, White advises that "if we are lucky, and resilient, and vigilant about respecting our instincts for what feeds us best, grown men and women can practice reading like girls. It goes like this: pick up a book and forget who you are."

So that's it! I think you can tell from the quotes above whether you might enjoy this book. As for me, I rarely read literary criticism of this sort, but the close readings White provides here were exhilarating and inspiring. In exploring the transcendence of reading, White actually tries to provide that experience for her reader, and in my estimation she succeeded.

I received this ARC via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher.

I was hoping for something less focused on specific authors and more on the delight and pleasure of reading in general. White delivers a love letter to many well-known authors and the meaning running through their works and where they crossover and complement one another.

Another reviewer compared this to a dissertation and perhaps that explains my preference for the introduction and conclusion where readers and their joy is understood and examined. Perhaps if I read or re-read the titles she discussed I would have felt more connected to the rest of the book.