Larry McMurtry is known to be reclusive and extremely private, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances. Audiences are therefore sure to be eager to read this intimate and surprisingly personal memoir of the brilliant writer's love affair with books. McMurtry writes about his life as a boy growing up in a largely bookless world; as a young man devouring the world of literature; as a fledgling writer and family man; and as one of America's most prominent "bookmen," becoming the astute and adventurous collector who would eventually open stores of rare and collectible books in Georgetown, Houston, and his hometown of Archer, Texas.
In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry gives us a lively look at the eccentrics who collect, sell, or simply lust after rare books. Books is like the best kind of diary - full of wonderful anecdotes, amazing characters, great gossip, and shrewd observations about authors, book people, literature, and himself. At once chatty, revealing, and deeply satisfying, Books is, like its author, erudite, life-loving, and full of great stories.
This memoir by one of America's most accomplished writers is not about his writing, or even writing in general. It's about his passion for books, which started with his own reading and later mushroomed into an eclectic used and rare book business in the previously bookless town of Archer, Texas. It's the dusty Texas plain that most shapes the book, and McMurtry's writing. And that's where the reading fails the listener. The author writes in a laconic yet incisive style that isn't matched by the narrator. William Dufris renders the work easy to listen to and carries it well, but his delivery just doesn't match the "Texas-ness" that permeates everything McMurtry writes. It's really a case of promise unfulfilled. The work is serviceable, but it falls short of what it could have been. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
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