This book is a delight! Sara Nelson is a true lover of books, and that devotion animates the pages of this witty, entertaining journal. Nelson set out with a simple plan--to read one book a week for a year and then record her reactions. Like many of our best-laid plans, this one didn't work out as she had intended, but the randomness that sometimes took over her selection process makes the book all the more human, fun...and a great journey of discovery.We learn Nelson's reactions to books that she's reading for the first time and old favorites she's chosen to revisit. She's not shy about expressing her feelings about each book vividly, whether it was a can't-put-down page turner or a selection she never could connect with. Even though her primary interest seems to be fiction, while the majority of my reading is non-fiction, I knew as I sailed through these pages that I had encountered another true bibliophile.Only people like us worry about what it means when someone urges a book upon us and we hate it. Only a true book lover will obsess over a book loaned but never given back to seek its return--even decades later. Only a true book lover wonders what her or his reading habits are saying about themselves to others.In her prologue, Nelson tells us she's trying to record on paper something she's been doing for years in her mind: "matching up the reading experience with the personal one and watching where they intersect--or don't." She succeeds admirably in this goal. Maybe those who don't have the book habit will never truly understand those of us who do...but if you have a spouse, parent, child, friend or other acquaintance who wonders why you spend so much time reading, you might tell them the answers are to be found between these pages.--William C. Hall