Some of the essays were great, some were so booooring. ( )

Though the essays were interesting, they did not speak to me. I am not a learned reader who only wants improving books by the 'best' writers. It seemed to me that every single author of these essays was exhorting the reader to only read 'good books' or books that are 'good' for you. It is not how I read and I don't like reading writers that put me down because I don't conform to their narrow view of what reading should encompass. That I am lesser because I read 'trash'. I am not ashamed of what I read..my reading covers a spectrum and I acknowledge when a book is too highbrow and defeats me. There are classics I want to read that I might not live long enough to get to but reside on my Kindle waiting..just in case I get a brainstorm...like Gibbon's Decline and Fall. I have given up on Proust..his language is beautiful but the story bores me and the people irritate me. I loved Moby Dick but not enough to reread it and I am a rereader. So, this was an a look into the minds of people like: Thoreau, Proust, Robert L. Stevenson, Henry Miller, Emerson, Nabokov, Robertson Davies, Graham Greene...I have read at least one book by each of them and so appreciate them as writers but I do not necessarily hold with their personal opinions on reading. ( )

What do Emerson, Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino all have in common beyond the fact they were all great authors? They all wrote fascinating essays on the art of reading books. Steven Gilbar, a lawyer who is foremost a reader, selected and edited a delightful compilation of essays on books and reading for this tantalizing book, Reading in Bed. The essays range from those by classic authors like Montaigne, Hazlitt and Ruskin to modern notables like Marcel Proust, Henry Miller, Italo Calvino and Graham Greene. The entries from notable essayists include a couple of my favorites: Joseph Epstein and Sven Birkerts. The essay by Robertson Davies whose final paragraph is quoted above reminds me of the pleasure I have gained from rereading books that I love, most of which would be considered great. Some of those readings have been spaced out over my life while others have been bunched together in the several decades of my maturity. They include disparate writers and genres but all are books that I look forward to reading again. I have enjoyed rereading massive classics like War and Peace, Middlemarch and The Man Without Qualities along with smaller classics like Jane Eyre, The Razor's Edge and The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.

The one thing all the essays share is a transcendence and the ability to trigger new insights into the text and its message for my life. These essays enlarge upon the experience of reading and act as a catalyst for further reading.
The inclusion of a bibliography provides suggestions for further reading in the essays of these authors on subjects that are likely to be almost as interesting as that of reading. The compilation maintains a high level of excellence throughout without losing its entertainment value, at least for passionate and serious readers. I keep it by my bedside. ( )