A companion to Kaplan and Rabinowitz's A passion for books, this collection of a thousand famous and less well-known quotations about books and reading spans centuries (Seneca, Petrarch, Oprah Winfrey) and temperaments (the cranky Samuel Johnson; the chirpy Helen Hayes). Kaplan and Rabinowitz, both publishing industry veterans, have organized the quotes into 20 themed chapters (such as In Praise of Books, Good Books and Bad, the Book Trade, the Enemies of Books), with a brief introductory essay for each. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

"A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again," notes Carl Van Doren. A few pages earlier, Chaim Grade quips, "If anyone asks you if you've read all those books, it means you don't have enough books." Robert Kaplan and Harold Rabinowitz (A Passion for Books) quote hundreds of writers and bibliophiles and a few bibliophobes in Speaking of Books. Divided into chapters like "What to Read," "The Pleasures of Buying and Owning Books" and "Good Books and Bad," this book is chock-full of witticisms, advice, criticism (Ambrose Bierce's one-sentence review from 1929 goes, "The covers of this book are too far apart"), aphorisms, opinions, etc., by the eminent likes of Emily Dickinson, Walter Benjamin, Italo Calvino, Anna Quindlen and George Bernard Shaw. Ten b&w illus. ( June 26) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Kaplan and Rabinowitz have created a sequel of sorts to their previous tribute to bibliophilia, A Passion for Books (LJ 10/15/99). More a gift book than a reference resource, the current volume offers over 700 observations on books and book collecting some witty, some thought-provoking, and some ponderously long. The quotations are arranged in 20 chapters, but many of the chapter titles, such as "What Books Do and Don't Do for Us," are so vague that they do not act as subject indicators. The quotations are arranged in a loose alphabetical order by author within each chapter, and there are a few See Also references to other quotations within the same chapter. The information given about the source of a quotation varies from title and date of publication, to author and author's vital dates, to author's name only. The same author (and sometimes the same source) is frequently quoted two or three times within the same chapter. Librarians should consider Montaigne's maxim that "there are more books about books than about any other subject" and look instead at other titles, such as Ben Jacobs and Helena Hjarmarson's The Quotable Book Lover (LJ 9/1/99), which offers more pithy and contemporary quotations. Vivian Reed, California State Univ., Long Beach (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

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Introduction: Books in Our Future	p. ix
1. In Praise of Books	p. 3
2. The Pleasures of Buying and Owning Books	p. 17
3. What to Read	p. 29
4. The Influence of Books	p. 45
5. Bibliomania	p. 57
6. The Pleasures of Reading	p. 67
7. What Books Do--and Don't Do--for Us	p. 81
8. All Those Books	p. 97
9. How to Read	p. 105
10. Libraries	p. 113
11. Good Books and Bad	p. 125
12. The Comfort Found in Books	p. 139
13. Lending and Borrowing Books	p. 151
14. Books and the Young	p. 161
15. What Books Can--and Cannot--Teach Us	p. 169
16. Authors and Their Readers	p. 183
17. Collectors and Collecting	p. 195
18. The Book Trade	p. 207
19. The Enemies of Books	p. 217
20. Books Forever!	p. 227
Index of Authors	p. 245

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