Best Non-Fiction Books About Books and Reading
3. 
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
by:
Simon Winchester
3.84 avg rating — 120,597 ratings 4. 
Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
by:
Nancy Pearl
3.77 avg rating — 3,647 ratings 
6. 
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books 4.04 avg rating — 2,254 ratings
8. 
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
by:
Francine Prose
3.77 avg rating — 11,630 ratings 9. 
So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading
by:
Sara Nelson
3.39 avg rating — 3,041 ratings 10. 
Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
by:
Susan Hill
3.65 avg rating — 4,002 ratings 
14. 
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
by:
Thomas C. Foster
3.59 avg rating — 33,002 ratings 15. 
More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
by:
Nancy Pearl
3.94 avg rating — 1,696 ratings 
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The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession 3.44 avg rating — 13,713 ratings
23. 
The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
by:
Harold Bloom
3.87 avg rating — 3,559 ratings 24. 
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books
by:
Maureen Corrigan
3.46 avg rating — 1,995 ratings 25. 
My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
by:
Pamela Paul
3.71 avg rating — 4,511 ratings 26. 
Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits
by:
Jack Murnighan
3.60 avg rating — 657 ratings 
28. 
Book Crush: For Kids and Teens--Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest
by:
Nancy Pearl
3.97 avg rating — 667 ratings 
35. 
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
by:
Nina Sankovitch
3.48 avg rating — 7,282 ratings 36. 
Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love
by:
Anne Fadiman
3.72 avg rating — 964 ratings 
39. 
Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
by:
Lizzie Skurnick
3.64 avg rating — 1,154 ratings 
41. 
At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries
by:
Estelle Ellis
4.07 avg rating — 1,053 ratings 42. 
Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks
by:
Annie Spence
3.76 avg rating — 11,056 ratings 43. 
The Writer's Spellbook: Creating Magic Systems For Fantasy
by:
Lillian Csernica
3.50 avg rating — 10 ratings 44. 
1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up
by:
Julia Eccleshare
4.10 avg rating — 547 ratings 
49. 
The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classic Guide to World Literature
by:
Clifton Fadiman
3.95 avg rating — 937 ratings 
52. 
501 Great Writers: A Comprehensive Guide to the Giants of Literature
by:
Julian Patrick
3.94 avg rating — 159 ratings 
58. 
Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education
by:
Michael Dirda
4.26 avg rating — 314 ratings 58. 
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by:
Maryanne Wolf
3.85 avg rating — 8,017 ratings 60. 
The Diary of a Bookseller (Diary of a Bookseller, #1)
by:
Shaun Bythell
3.72 avg rating — 29,986 ratings 61. 
1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List
by:
James Mustich
4.12 avg rating — 1,464 ratings 
62. 
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction
by:
Grady Hendrix
4.26 avg rating — 11,486 ratings 
65. 
Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.
by:
Jeremy Mercer
3.86 avg rating — 4,186 ratings 
67. 
The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared
by:
Alice Ozma
3.67 avg rating — 6,776 ratings 
69. 
Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult
by:
Bruce Handy
3.75 avg rating — 1,891 ratings 70. 
71. 
When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II 3.92 avg rating — 8,412 ratings
76. 
Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore 3.53 avg rating — 563 ratings
79. 
Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction
by:
Gabrielle Moss
3.76 avg rating — 4,094 ratings 
82. 
The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had
by:
Susan Wise Bauer
3.99 avg rating — 3,779 ratings 82. 
The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time
by:
Keith Houston
4.10 avg rating — 1,146 ratings 84. 
What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction & Fantasy
by:
Jo Walton
3.89 avg rating — 1,100 ratings 85. 
86. 
Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Great Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
by:
John Sutherland
3.75 avg rating — 362 ratings 
89. 
A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
by:
Alex Beam
3.35 avg rating — 347 ratings 90. 
91. 
92. 
A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose
by:
B.R. Myers
3.90 avg rating — 596 ratings 
94. 
The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
by:
Phyllis Rose
3.67 avg rating — 725 ratings 95. 
Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian
by:
Avi Steinberg
3.51 avg rating — 4,309 ratings 96. 
Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?: More Puzzles in Classic Fiction
by:
John Sutherland
3.58 avg rating — 269 ratings 97. 
I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life
by:
Anne Bogel
4.02 avg rating — 19,940 ratings 
