This was a fun little book. It is a great gift for any book lover and covers everything that bibliophiles are interested in. The fun fact sections were really interesting and I enjoyed this. It would not reread this again but it provided a few hours interest.

Concise but still chock-full of interesting facts and tidbits about the history of books and their authors, For the Love of Books by Graham Tarrant, is an entertaining overview that will appeal to all bibliophiles. Tarrant approaches the subject with a light touch-with humor and an attitude of wonder rather than a dry recitation or wordy analysis. He covers everything from the invention of the form to the different genres, citing examples of each with quotes and quick summaries. The book also provides insight into the interesting lives of the writers themselves- including background trivia, inspirations, feuds, substance abuse struggles, brushes with the law and even some quirky death stories. For aspiring writers, there are also passages that provide advice both serious and tongue-in-cheek. For the Love of Books perhaps relies a bit too heavily on the traditional and well-known, and the reader may be left desiring more inclusion of those outside of the usual British/American canon. Still, there is plenty of new information to discover in Tarrant’s offering to make it a fun, quick dip into the fascinating world of books.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for an objective review.

This is an engaging and entertaining book that will surely appeal to anyone who loves books.
It's full of stories, facts and will keep you hooked till the last page.
I loved the style of writing and how loved how it's well researched.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Did you know that George Washington once worked as a book salesman? Or that fewer than 4,000 copies of Herman Melville's Moby Dick sold during his lifetime? Moby Dick is now recognized as one of the greatest works of its time but Melville was so obscure at the time of his death that his obituary was printed late and it listed his first name as "Hiram".

This book is a book for and about books, targeting bibliophiles. It recounts the history and rise of eBooks and graphic novels, banned books and the rationale for their banning, and covers fun topics like famous writer feuds, literature awards and the origin of words. For example, Dr. Seuss is responsible for giving us the word "nerd".

This is a book that is perhaps most enjoyed by setting it down and coming back to it often.

Thank you to Graham Tarrant, Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For the love of books by Graham Tarrant is a book that explores the lives, feuds, loves and deaths of the great writers of the world.
It had a lot of very interesting stories of the authors that I love to read. I was fascinated by the stories of great authors who doubled as spies, flanderers, and were just plain crazy.
If you like gossip magazines or if you like biographies, this book is for you.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and read it cover to cover, though it's perhaps better designed to be dipped in and out of. I'm pretty well versed in the lesser known tidbits of literary lore and scandalous lives of writers, but there were still things in here that I have added to my mental file of bookish facts. I especially enjoyed the breadth of genres including sci fi and kid lit, not just the expected old dead white guys.

Disclaimer: I received this ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This novel is like a cheatsheet version of bookish facts! The chapters are sanctioned out by themes and there are little snippets of factoids and stories within. It was very entertaining and eye opening. Some of the authors I was not familiar with which I was shocked as I do consider myself bookish. However, there were more than enough of writers that I did know and some interesting trivia that I definitely had not heard. I think this would be a nice coffee table book.

This was a really fun book.
Pages of fun facts about your favorite authors, favorite books and interesting bits of knowledge.

For example -
Words coined by authors such as Lewis Carroll's "chortle" or Dr. Seuss's "nerd"

And first draft book titles -
Imagine reading about Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austens "First Impressions"
Or about lavish Jay Gatsby in F.Scott Fitzgerald's "Incident at West Egg"

The author also gives you reading recommendations - for example
the "Book of the month"
"Doctor January" - By Rhoda Baxter all the way to "A week In December" - By Sebastian Faulks.

This truly is a book for book lovers.

​

Reading is a really subjective thing, while I did for the most part enjoy this, I don't think mine and Tarrant's reading taste are similar.

Also noteworthy, this book is geared first to readers in the UK, resources and references cited are all English (Times Literary Supplement and others cited). And I don't know if this is a Brit thing, but Tarrant interchangeably used Gay and Homosexual to describe several authors - in my experience the use of the term homosexual has fallen out of favour and Gay or Queer are much preferred.

There were a couple errors (and these are ones that this inexperienced reader caught so there could be more...) that I hope the publishers can fix: 1) A quote attributed to Dorothy Parker about Somerset Maugham, was actually spoken by Somerset Maugham, and 2) in the pseudonym section Anne Rice is the pseudonym attributed to a man - unless there is another Anne Rice I don't know about, this is clearly wrong.

As I noted, reading is highly subjective, and perhaps this is why Mr. Tarrant seems to favour male authors (or perhaps it is because of the long standing patriarchal nature of the industry), but I found it particularly ironic that he noted the lack of female Nobel laureates, and then made a list of 10 authors he thought had warranted the award for their body of work and most were male ("Pot? It is I Kettle, calling you black" much?!).

I'm not too certain for whom this book is intended, other than us lovers of all things books. I suppose if you are one of these people, or you know of one of these people this would be a lovely little addition.

The format is quite nice with "It's a fact" and lists throughout the text that make it an easy reference guide. The sections are also nicely arranged into areas of interest making it easy to pick-up recommendations on particular genres.

All in all, I love books about books, and I love finding 'new' authors whose catalogs I can go back and explore. I also appreciate the anecdotes presented that gave authors life, which makes me think there are quite a few biographies I should also explore.

Great book broken up into literary themes. I enjoyed learning tidbits behind the first novel, printing, genres and great examples of each genre. I great book to pick up and read a few pages at a time!

For the Love of Books will educate you on the history of books, facts about authors, and interesting anecdotes on tales old and new. This book reads like a textbook with a little personality thrown in and is, by design, a scholarly undertaking. There is no story involved to capture your fancy, but if you love books and like to learn about them, then you will enjoy this book. Thanks To NetGalley for this advance copy to read.

A Fun nonfiction book for anyone who loves books and wants to read short stories about how impactful and important books can be

A bibliophile's heaven, this is a 5-star book on books for book-lovers!
I loved every single page of this splendid reference guide, took a lot of notes, highlighted a great many lines and added several dozen books to my to-read list. Best of all, I learnt so much!
This great collection gives hypnotizing information about the history of books, libraries, the act of reading and writing (an introduction to civilizations that contributed to this process), interesting facts about famous books and authors, publishing houses, literature awards. The chapters were beautifully created under several provocative titles such as banned books, writer's feuds, prison sentences and pseudonyms. It is quite obvious that the author has gone great lengths to collect this cluster of information and create this well-thought work.
Definitely recommended for everyone, who loves reading!

A light-hearted, entertaining and informative exploration of the world of books and the people who write them. It’s an excellent overview, with lots of lists (and what booklover doesn’t like a list?) and suggestions for what to read. Some readers will find it rather basic, but I think most will find something of interest here, even if it’s just the anecdotes about writers’ feuds. There’s nothing new here, perhaps, but as an introduction to the history of books and the various genres, it’s both fun and useful. And it ends with the comforting (alarming?) thought that the UK alone offers just under 200,000 new and revised titles each year (that’s roughly 20 new books every hour) so no one need fear running out of something to read.

To be put on the "preaching to the converted" shelf, this book of trivia about books, for book fans, is actually really pretty good. It certainly passed the test of teaching me things I didn't know, even to the extent I was corrected as to the gender of someone in these pages (I'll leave it to you to guess who…). Ranging from authors' pseudonyms, to literary awards, and those who won once-in-a-lifetime literary awards twice due to pseudonyms, it also splits into genre, which shows it to be a little light on fantasy, but still it's perfect for study in the smallest room. I did see a few instances of it clearly cribbing from Wikipedia, as phrasing and choice of author highlights were too similar, but it's still enjoyable for all that.

I enjoy learning facts about authors and books and if you do to this book may be something that you would be interested in. This book is chalk full of facts about authors, books, characters, and history that you may never have heard of.
I was surprised how much of these things I knew from my English degree so it was fun to return to those facts and I learned a lot of new things as well.
The only thing I didn't like about this book is because it was so fact based it would be better to pick it up randomly to read a page or two I think rather than just reading it straight through.

Such an interesting read this is the perfect gift for any book lover I loved all the facts and attention to detail put in this book you could tell the amount of research and time that went into it it was interesting and never got boring or too long winded I believe even people who aren’t non fiction fans would enjoy this one

A fun and breezy read. A lot of facts and trivia, but sometimes gets tedious. I was surprised at how little certain authors and books got discussed.

Delivers exactly what it says “A lighthearted book about books and the people who write them”. I think it is one to dip in and out of rather than sit down and read for any length of time, nevertheless is full of random anecdotes, some more known than others, this book would make an excellent gift for all bookworms out there.

This was a really fun book to read. Being a avid reader and obsessed with books this is something I just swallowed up and would recommend to anyone that really loves to read.