This is a book for book lovers or, more specifically, for those whose love of books is an all-consuming presence in our lives. Bibliophobia is a book about writing and reading, but also about art and cultural criticism, imposter syndrome, and mental illness.

As a lifelong and professional reader/writer, Chihaya’s deep love of books turns on her when a spiral of a nervous breakdown leaves her with a case of writer’s block so intense that manifests into an intense fear of books’ effect on her psyche.

Chihaya presents the concept of a “Life Ruiner”: the book that takes you down a path of literary questing that you can’t ever really resurface from. For Chihaya, her first Life Ruiner was Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. From there, she revisits other “Life Ruiners” from her past, chapter by chapter. And just when I almost disengaged (only because I had not read many of these texts), Chihaya landed on a personal Life Ruiner of mine in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

This might be the most literary and elegant nonfiction book I’ve read. And I don’t think I’ve ever highlighted so many passages in a memoir before.

Read this if:
-You majored in English or have an MFA
- “The Last Samurai,” “Anne of Green Gables,” “The Blues Eye,” “Possession,” or “Glass, Irony, & God” are among your favorite books
-Your drawn to books about inpatient psychiatric stays

This is SO much darker than any other book about books I've read. WOW. Chihaya does not hold back, and while I can't truly connect with Bibliophobia, I connected with so much here. This is a can't miss for book lovers, but don't expect the warm and fuzzies like many books about books bring. Buckle up.

Wow, what a memoir. A love letter to bibliophiles but also a warning that the word may just consume you and transform you into a different creature altogether.

This memoir is told by connecting major works in the author’s life to themes that appear in her life. Have you ever felt so connected to a story that you feel the author wrote that story for you? This book is a must then.

The language is exquisite, and the relatability of the author is astounding. She puts into words thoughts and feelings from my own childhood that I didn’t even have words for. I want to sit and bask in her analysis of these works of art while relating it to my own life.

Thanks for this book—what a delight to remember all the ways I can allow a story to impact me and help me grow.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am an English professor, and so was Sarah Chihaya. We both have formed our lives and livelihoods around books, but we’ve had very different relationships to books and to academia, which I thought about a lot when reading this. Another thing we have in common is that we’ve struggled with suicidal ideation. This is primarily a memoir about living with that encoded death drive, presented through the lens of books Chihaya terms “Life Ruiners.”

I had to go slowly when reading this because it was quite heavy, and felt pessimistic for much longer than I expected it to, even though it ultimately isn’t. Chihaya begins in the psych ward and at times goes into detail about self-harm. She writes books’ overbearing role in her life. Does she have value apart from books, she wonders? As a child, she wanted to disappear into books, to annihilate herself—and yet, at the same time, for books to love her back.

Chihaya writes of searching for perfection, for the book that would make her make perfect sense. Alternatively, she thought she might write one perfect book and then end her life. Obsession with narrative closure can be dangerous. Later in life, Chihaya realizes she can take responsibility as the author of her own story, and that, in fact, she can liberate herself from the teleological ending of suicide even as suicidal ideation still runs through her brain. Teleology obscures the obvious: “I had to relearn how to read in order to see what was already there, what was in the text all along that I had allowed myself not to see, not to dwell on.”

Bibliophobia feels more like a book of my head than of my heart. I didn’t identify with it more than I did, and I found that to be incredibly productive, ripe for thinking with and against. I’m lucky that I’ve never lost my love of reading, and I’m thinking a lot about how I narrate my own relationship with books.

Thank you to Random House for this early copy. I have a feeling that this book will be on so many end of the year lists. It’s a book about books and how they can be a positive and negative in our life. I have already recommended it to all of my group chats. This might have been another life ruiner book for me.

Review posted to StoryGraph and Goodreads on 2/3/25. Review will be posted to Amazon on release date.

In Bibliophobia Sarah Chihaya has given us a deep look at the impacts of reading, books, and their ability to help her disappear in her life. Centered around a hospitalization for her mental health we’re presented multiple essay chapters focusing on different moments and texts that have impacted her view on life and death. I will say that this book was obviously quite dark. It’s hard not to be when we’re exploring the author’s suicidal ideation and previous attempts. While I appreciated the rigor with which Chihaya approached the texts that had served as guide posts and hide outs for her throughout her life, I often found parts of it to be very repetitive. I think the main thing I appreciated was the fact that Chihaya does not try to end the book as “see! I’m all better now!” but presents the very real situation individuals with mental health issues find themselves in which is the reality that while it may feel better right now it’s always there.

BIBLIOPHOBIA is a beautifully written memoir centered on the knowledge that books and reading have the ability to deeply and profoundly impact life and how you live it. Chihaya's writing style is clean and gorgeous - fitting for someone who seems to live and breathe the written word - and able to clearly convey the emotion tied to each of the works she is discussing in relation to her family, her job, and her depression.

This is arguably not a happy book, but I don't think I would call it sad either. Mostly it feels straightforward, and definitely it's one I would recommend, especially for those who can recall with little effort the books that have really and truly changed their life.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A memoir that comforts and solidifies that sneaking suspicion that books can always betray you, but how we owe so much to them, to stories. A sincere and thoughtful book of curiosity and conscientiousness in an action that we all can partake in depending how much we let reading affect us.

This memoir focuses on why we read (or don't read), on the damage and joy books can bring, on the times when they provide us with necessary refuges and what they can't always save us from. (Warning: this starts out with Chihaya in a locked ward, receiving behavior health treatment and unable to read at all. One thing this book isn't is an easy or cozy read.) Chihaya writes just as movingly about hiding in the safety of endless paperback series as a child who needed to escape from a volatile family as she does about falling in love, mind and heart fully engaged, with a complicated novel like A.S. Byatt's Possession. It feels like she is both describing the particulars of her own engagement with words and finding language for others' experiences (especially if you love literary fiction or have survived academia). It's an exciting, immersive, and sometimes harrowing read that makes me want to throw myself back into the books I love (even if/especially if they have changed as my experience of reading them has changed).

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

I wanted this book to be a memoir that people who usually don’t like memoirs would enjoy, because it’s about reading novels. But I didn’t feel like it was about reading novels. It was more about depression. My favorite parts were when she talks about specific texts—Anne of Green Gables, The Bluest Eye, etc. I would read her essays on specific books if she wrote a collection of those. When she talked generally about what reading means to her, it was so different from how I read that I needed her to be more explicit if I was going to have any chance of understanding and finding it meaningful. I know a lot of people are really connecting with it but I could not!

This is brilliant, the book I'll regret NOT writing for the rest of my life. Brilliant idea that was brilliantly executed. Read it.

Thank you, Random House and NetGalley, for giving me the opportunity to read Sarah Chihaya's BIBLIOPHOBIA early! I had been hearing a lot of hype on Bookstagram for this memoir and was intrigued by the @bibliophobiabookclub that started before the book had even been published, so I had high hopes going into reading it. I'm happy to find that the hype was worth it, and the book delivers. After just one reading, I know I've missed some things and I'm excited to go back and re-read as part of the above-mentioned book club.

I was pleased to find that although I haven't yet read the bulk of the books she highlights in her essays/memoir, as a life-long reader myself I certainly was able to related to how Chihaya feels about reading each of these works. The way she thinks about reading and being a reader was incredibly interesting to me and gave me so much to reflect upon in terms of my own identity as a 'reader.'

Additionally, as someone who loves multiple people who suffer from depression and have experienced suicidal ideation, I was incredibly grateful to the thoughtful, frank, and unblinking look Chihaya gives to her own mental health struggles. I've sometimes found it hard to understand the perspectives and experiences of melancholic characters in novels, much less my own loved ones with depression and through Chihaya's descriptions and writing I feel like I've inched closer to comprehension.

This is a text that will stay with me and that I want to add to my library and re-read with others. I also want to read all of the texts she highlights as well and will look forward to doing that as part of the @bibliophobiabookclub

This was a DNF for me. This memoir did not hit for me. There is a lot going on here and Bibliophobia is, perhaps, the least of it.

Believe it not, bibliophobia is a real thing. The fear of books, or the fear of words and reading, is a psychological condition that disrupts people’s ability to enjoy a book or even a visit to the library. Author Sarah Chihaya recounts her bout with it as well as exploring how we absorb and tell stories.

Sarah is young and successful, teaching literature at a university. She earned her degrees in English and French from Yale before completing a PhD in comparative literature at UC Berkeley. Her entire adult life (and even earlier) centered around close reading, critical thinking, and story analysis. She tore apart writing in order to see how it fit together, and then synthesized new ideas about it. And she was really good at it. Then one night, her brain stopped. She sat down on a snowy stoop and fell asleep.

She had a nervous breakdown, a collapse that required hospitalization to treat the exhaustion. She eventually returned home to begin slowly putting things back together. But there was one hurdle she hadn’t anticipated — a fear of reading. Even looking at a page, the words would swim and she couldn’t find any meaning in them. She had bibliophobia.

My doctors guessed that it was due to a new medication or an emotional decompression period after my hospital stay. But I believed then, and still believe a little, that this new disaster — the consequence of having allowed myself a breakdown — was punitively moral. I had failed, as a read and as a writer, and this was my fitting punishment. I had one task — one book to write — and I had not completed it. I had failed books, and I did not deserve them anymore. ~ Loc. 307

As she revisits the struggle in this memoir, she also considers her relationship to certain books over her lifetime. She reconsiders how we find meaning and enjoyment in reading, and writing, with insight and even humor.

Sarah has found her words again, and some balance in her life. Her memoir displays both her talent as a writer and thinker. She reminds us all of the need to take care of ourselves, even in our enthusiasms. After all, we can’t enjoy that which sustains us if we allow it to consume us.

Despite the gravity of the topic, and the scholarly nature of her expertise, this is a thoroughly engrossing, diverting, and approachable read, no matter your background. It is incredibly humble and human — the first ingredients in any good foray into writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for letting me read an e-ARC of Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya! I’ve rated the book 4.5 stars, but have rounded down to 4 for this review.

When I requested this book, it was purely based on the title and a quick scan of the content’s description. When I read this book, I found it to contain so much more than what was originally described. The author’s writing is slow-paced, but that’s not to be interpreted negatively - the slow pace allows readers to take their time with each word, sentence, paragraph, and let them languish in the meaning. However, even though the title’s subject is explored, I wish it had been a little more in-depth or that the title had been different. The description and title lead me, personally, to believe that we’d explore the concept of “bibliophobia” in relation to Chihaya’s experience with an acute aversion to books after being institutionalized. What really unfolds is a journey through the author’s history and relationship to books. She takes a deep dive on specific titles throughout her life that have deeply impacted her (considered “Life Ruiners” by the author) and the ways in which they have shaped her relationship with the world, books, and her critical interpretations of the written word.

While I have these criticisms of the way that Chihaya leads readers somewhat astray about the contents of this project, I admire the execution of this memoir. I took my time with this book, reading no more than a chapter a day, and let the structure and content of her storytelling wash over me. It’s clear that she is a talented writer, as I found myself highlighting massive sections of text where she describes her experiences while reading deeply impactful books (which is ironic considering she tears apart the way readers identify with characters and themes in books later on in the text). I’m not quite sure who I would recommend this book to, which is why I’ve lowered my rating for this review. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of reading this book, but I need to give myself more time to let the text marinate before deciding what, exactly, I got out of its contents.

All things considered, I would read more by this author, and I’m curious to see if she’ll ever churn out any fiction that is more likely to cross my path in the future.
(Be forewarned that there are a lot of references to self-harm, suicidal ideation, racism, and the harmful environments of academia.)

As someone with a very similar story to the author's, I was really looking forward to reading this memoir. Chihaya is undoubtedly a great writer, and I'm fully aware that my own personal feelings about the whole "breakdown after depression and suicidal ideation and toxic academia" thing probably affect my response to this book. But I found it hard to continue sympathizing with the author once I learn that the timeline from her hospitalization to not getting tenure to winning a prize to teaching at NYU to publishing a book is such a short span of time. She acknowledges a couple times that others pushed out of academia have it harder, but she isn't really pushed out of academia, is she, if she's still teaching at a prestigious university, even if it's for creative writing and not the literature degree she studied for. Having recently been pushed out of academia myself, after several breakdowns and one hospitalization that's well in the past and yet still haunting me - I just feel like editors could have helped Chihaya soften or amend some things.

On a separate note, I really wanted to hear more about the actual bibliophobia, the experience of not being able to read, but that episode seemed to have come and gone in a matter of months (unless I read the timeline wrong), and very little page space is spent on that phenomenon.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this ARC!!

To start I'm a little biased as someone who is also Japanese and used books to escape life.. This book is part raving about her favorite books and part memoir. While I was unfamiliar with a lot of books mentioned, I was able to replace the sentiments with *my* favorite books, so I got the gist of the stories. The memoir stories were very heavy and vulnerable. It reads pretty quickly and is great for book lovers.

This book uses a mix of the character's love of literature and how it has an impact on her growth and connection to her cultural identity as a Japanese American. She describes the specific books referenced as "life ruiners", as they provoke and reveal things about yourself you otherwise wouldn't think about consciously. I enjoyed how this book dealt with bigger issues such as race and depression.

Thank you Random House and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia. When I received the invitation to read this book, I wasn’t sure what to think. The title intrigued me, and when I read the description from the invitation, it described the book as brave and daring. This book most certainly is, and although it is listed as a memoir, Chihaya’s book transcends this kind of classification. It is also a collection of essays focused on books, reading, writing, and criticism, and Chihaya uses her own experiences in reading to question and explore why we read (or at least why she reads). I also appreciated the kind of philosophical approach to reading and literature that Chihaya explores in this book as well. However, as a memoir, the book is centered around her emotional breakdown and her battle with debilitating depression. Trigger warnings abound as the Chihaya recounts in great detail suicide attempts, starting at an early age, self-harm, and the kind of paralyzing depression that eventually led to her breakdown. I found myself wincing at some parts—wondering how she was able to recall these feelings or the description of the hospital that she ended up in after her breakdown. Although this might not be appropriate for some readers, I felt like it was important to confront these moments and emotions as a way to explore them and see how we can learn to live with them. Chihaya does not delude herself in thinking that her depression will ever go away—more like it will be in remission. However, what sets her book apart from other books and memoirs about mental illness and depression is how books factor into her struggles with depression. This was a unique perspective, and I loved how she explored the various roles that books have played in her life. In fact, upon starting the book, you’ll see a list of works (both books and films) that she refers to throughout her book. I loved seeing this list at the outset, wondering which ones I’ve read, adding some to my to read list.
Her book starts out with her breakdown, and I was really surprised with her level of recall and detail on being in the hospital. Beyond the descriptions of the floors and ceilings, she seems to capture feelings and what she did, especially how she tried to persuade staff to let her out early. I was also surprised at the kind of humor she had about her breakdown “One thing I was pretty sure about ‘nervous breakdown’ was that it was not for people like me. Nervous breakdown was not for the children of immigrants. It was something that happened to white people in independent films or in middlebrow realist novels. Breakdown was what happened when their gorgeous shell became so brittle and delicate they could be shattered with the slightest tap of the back of a spoon-- Tenderly set and ready to ooze out of their gelid whites with a hot, vividly compelling, golden violence.” It seems like this kind of experience is never something we expect or anticipate, or that we fail to really notice the problem, which is why I think Chihaya book is so important. As a successful scholar, she seemed like she had her life together, and even though someone might display outward signs of success, there may be underlying feelings and emotions that they might not know how to address or share with others. Her book and experiences are an important reminder about being empathetic towards others, as well as taking a look at our own experiences.
I loved reading about her experiences with books throughout her life, and how they served many different functions throughout her life. It seems like she started with a sense of bibliophilia, that eventually brought about bibliophobia. Reading her early literacy experiences and reflections on reading made me think about my own reasons for reading and some of the books, especially from school, that were memorable. Books have always been important in my life, and I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t reading. Even when I was younger, my parents would leave me in the library to just read and explore. As Chihaya notes, “Reading was escapism of a kind, but not in the conventional sense. It was a way to get far away from my life, and to feel—not better, but simply different.” Although Chihaya stresses the problems with trying to identify with books and writers, that was definitely a reason for my reading, especially in middle school. As a “husky” kid, books were a way for me to escape bullying. For me, there was definitely a way to feel better. I also think that when I started reading Stephen King books, his world just really appealed to me. I didn’t realize it until later on, but I loved these stories where the world was wrong, something was not right, and many times in his books, the kids were the ones who were struggling to make sense of the evil in the world and trying to battle evil to bring a sense of order back to the world. I think when I was in college and picked up a Stephen King book after not reading one for a while, it made sense that this kind of story arc, where evil is has a kind of explanation helped me better make sense of the problems I faced. But Chihaya’s experience with books changed when she read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which she describes as a completely terrifying book, yet one that she couldn’t escape. She refers to it as a “life ruiner”. I didn’t read this until later, when I was teaching, but I also remember being devasted by the book. Beloved is the book that always shakes me, and when I would teach it, it was such a wrenching experience. I was usually the only white person in the room, and trying to answer students’ questions about what was happening to Sethe, Denver, and Paul D. was always difficult. Although I do think that Morrison’s writing is filled with emotion, both dark and hopeful, I like to think of how Sethe reminds Paul D. that thin love ain’t no love at all. Love is thick, and part of that love is the kind of re-memory that Chihaya’s book engages in.

Each chapter focuses on different texts and her experiences with reading them at various points in her life. Again, I loved how Chihaya thinks about the process of reading in different ways. One of my favorite quotes was when she explains how she wants to reconceptualize reading “I want to think of reading not as productivity but as a kind of produce: something that grows in whatever unpredictable way it will, sometimes smooth and beautiful and delicious, sometimes bitter and gnarled and thorny.” She goes on to explain that this kind of produce can be both nutritious and poisonous, and that sometimes it might nourish us, but other times can send us down the wrong path. “You may have bibliophobia if you frequently experience intense reactions to books that somehow act on you, or activate you, in ways that you suspect are unhealthy or hurtful—or at times, simply bad for you. And yet, they are necessary; you would not be you without them.” I can definitely relate to this, and I think that, for me, this feeling started in college, reading books like Crime and Punishment and Madame Bovary. Probably one of the first “life ruiners” for me was Yerzy Kozinsky’s The Painted Bird, which I read in my first ever college semester. It utterly devasted me with its brutality, and I struggled to recognize that this was a book that took place in the 20th century. While I’ve scaled back on some of these strong reactions to books, I still do experience an emotional reaction to some books, and I agree that I wouldn’t be me without these books and experiences.
Beyond books, Chihaya discusses her family, and in particular the challenges of navigating the kind of high demand and high expectations of her father. As a child of immigrants who was often one of the only people of color in her classes, she often encountered racism and bullying, and her father’s constant stress on performance created a kind of tension and anxiety in Chihaya that eventually results in her first suicide attempt and self-harm. These are some of the most harrowing passages in the book. I’m usually not squeamish, but just her writing about how the self-harm brought relief, and a dream that reoccurring dream she experienced at the time, were graphic and a little hard to take at times. Nevertheless, it is a powerful and brave section of the book. Just be warned. Another chapter, towards the end, talks about Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend, from My Life I write to you in Your Life, which I have not read yet. Li is another writer who I have strong emotions from, ever since reading The Vagrants. It’s really weird because I was recently thinking about the experience of reading that book in a warm park in the spring, and yet the book took me to this brutal winter village in China. It was a book that I felt strongly about—I wouldn’t say I loved it, although I couldn’t put it down; rather, it moved me and took me somewhere new. Dear Friend is a book I’ve avoided since it talks about suicide and depression, and about Li’s own struggles with them. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for it, but I did read Where Reasons End, and it was another devastating book. I’m pushing down tears as I write about it. For Chihaya, Li’s writing presents suicide in a stark, unfiltered light, where it is plainly discussed, which is not often the case. This was another reason why I think Bibliophobia is important because Chihaya raises awareness of mental illness, depression, and suicide, and in her writing, destigmatizes it. She doesn’t really talk about this, but I think her experiences and candor in sharing them make readers recognize that these are a part of many people’s lives, and often shape their decisions and behavior, whether they are aware of it or not. Bibliophobia fosters a further understanding of these emotions, but also presents how books both help and harm them in different ways.
While this was not always an easy read (i.e. it’s not a life ruiner), Chihaya’s candor and honesty are challenging at times. I appreciated it, but I don’t think that everyone will. Like in the first chapter, Chihaya also brings occasional humor in recalling her experiences, now recognizing the obvious signs of depression. It lightens the mood for an important subject. What was also great to see is how Chiahya’s friends and colleagues supported her throughout her career, hospitalization, and recovery. It was beautiful to see that she has that kind of support—people reaching out to check in on her and make pledges with her. Bibliophobia is an important book that challenges many of our assumptions about reading, writing and creativity, books, and depression. It also made me reflect on my own experiences of reading and writing, not only what I read, but also why I read. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. However, like all bibliophobics, I’ve added to my ever-expanding “to be read” list—something that keeps me going.

Bibliophobia-Sarah Chihaya-Publishing February 4th, 2025 with Random House. (Memoir)

Following a nervous breakdown, the author develops Bibliophobia-the fear of books. Using specific books as a map, Chihaya guides the reader through depression, mental illness, and life ruiners=a book that has a hold on you forever. You never stop thinking about it. It ruins you. The author’s outlines books like Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye, (which is her Life Ruiner.), and the Anne of Green Gables series.

I liked this book, and I love books. I like talking about books. I like writing them. But I also have major depressive disorder (MDD) and a host of other issue and mental health things going on (sometimes and/or all at once). As a social worker who works in mental health, I try to balance the books that I read about the same things I deal with at work. I enjoyed it but I think I would have got more out of it if this wasn’t the second memoir I was reading in a row. Then my library hold came in and it is another Memoir.

Mental health. Books. Generational trauma. Race. Identity. Life Ruiners.

What book/piece of music is your Life Ruiner? Mine is Reasons to Live-AMY HEMPEL