Books that flatter us

Always be cautious with books about books! The risk is flattery,

Robin Sloan, introduction to So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid

Robin Sloan

Books about books are always popular with those who love books. Why? Because they flatter us, Robin Sloan says. They compel us to buy them. We like to read about ourselves, and books about books are, in some way, about us.

I have never in my long life seen so many novels with book-related themes. There are novels about librarians who become heroic spies during World War II. There are novels about romances set in bookstores and libraries. There are novels about writers, about book clubs and about lost books.

Among the unread novels on my own shelves are The Fiction Writer by Jillian Cantor, The Librianist by Patrick deWitt and The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Bookstores are currently filled with tempting titles that I have, so far, been able to resist.

As for nonfiction, there are almost as many books about books. So Many Books by Gabriel Zaid was published in Spanish in 1996. It was translated into English in 2003. I own the 2025 edition. In other words, we readers still want to read it because it is about what we like read about — books and the people, like us, who read them.

Consider some of the books about books I have read and written about here: 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley, Books Promiscuously Read by Heather Cass White, In Praise of Good Bookstores by Jeff Deutsch, So Many Books So Little Time by Sara Nelson, Browsings by Michael Dirda, A Reader's Manifesto by B. R. Myers, Ruined by Reading by Lynn Sharon Schwartz, The Joy of Books by Eric Burns and Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnel, among others.

So why, other than flattery, should we be cautious about books about books? It is too easy to be taken in by a title. This may especially be true of novels. Just because fiction is set in a bookstore or a library doesn't mean it will be something worth reading. This is true of genres of all kinds. Just because you like westerns (or romances or sci-fi or mysteries) does not mean that all westerns, etc. are worth reading. And it seems to me that books about books have become a genre all their own.