Just Jennifer

The Shelf: From LEQ to LES by Phyllis Rose (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 13, 2014)

Literary critic and biographer Phyllis Rose spent a year reading Proust and chronicled it in her book A Year of Reading Proust.  She decided her next Extreme Reading challenge would be to read a shelf from the New York Society Library.  As Rose perused the shelves and considered her options, she came up with a list of rules for selecting a shelf, rules she quickly discarded or amended as she needed.  The shelf she chose included books such as A Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lemontov and The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, Edwardian detective novels, novellas from an almost unknown Austrian writer and modern day authors John Lescroart and lesser known novelist Rhoda Lerman  Rose not only discusses the titles she reads, but delves into the lives of the authors, the role of women writers in history, the role of libraries and their acquisition/weeding habits and the role of readers and book buyers (mostly women) in shaping the reading taste of society.  Part social history, part literary criticism and history, this book will fascinate, inspire; you will never browse a shelf of books the same way after spending time with Phyllis Rose.