Lovers of
reading tend to like biblionovels, novels which have a bibliophilic theme or
main character. Many are set in
bookstores or libraries. Some readers
would argue that the only thing better than reading books is reading books
about books! I perused Schatje’s Shelves
and found 15 authors who have written biblionovels.
Alan
Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader sends Queen Elizabeth II into a mobile
library van in pursuit of her runaway corgis and into the reflective, observant
life of an avid reader.
Katarina
Bivald’s The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend features a Swedish former
bookstore employee opening a bookstore in Iowa
Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit
451 is probably the biblionovel that springs to most peoples' minds, a
futuristic fantasy-noir in which books are verboten, but so beloved that people
memorize their favorites and recite them underground.
Geraldine
Brooks’ The People of the Book is a traipse through European, African
and Middle Eastern history as one follows the detective work of a book
conservator and her research on the illuminated Sarajevo Haggadah.
A.S.
Byatt’s Possession is a great literary puzzle wrapped inside a
passionate romance between bibliophiles that shifts between present day and
Victorian London.
John
Dunning’s Booked to Die, the first of the Cliff Janeway series, has the Denver
police detective turned book scout finding an underpriced literary treasure at
every single thrift shop and garage sale. Unfortunately, the later books in the
series focus less on his book finds and more on shoot 'em up chase scenes with
villains.
Nina
George’s The Little Paris Bookshop has a literary apothecary working
from a floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, telling readers the exact
book which will ease the hardships in their life.
Helene
Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road and its sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street,
are about a long distance friendship between a New Yorker and the head buyer of
a secondhand bookstore in London.
Bill
Richardson’s Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast and its sequel Bachelor
Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book are cozy reads about two eccentric
twin brothers, Virgil and Hector, who run a bed and breakfast for bibliophiles.
Diane
Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale has a reclusive, best-selling English
author relating her autobiography to a young antiquarian bookshop
assistant. The book is a Gothic-tinged
story with snippets of Charlotte Bronte's Jane
Eyre woven throughout.
Mary Ann
Schaffer and Annie Barrows wrote The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel
Society, an epistolary novel about the power of books, loyalty and
friendship during the German occupation of this Channel Island during World War
II.
Dai Sijie’s
Balzac
and the Little Chinese Seamstress has the transformative power of
reading at the centre of this semi-autobiographical novel of two young Chinese
men sent for "re-education" in a remote Chinese mountain village in
the late 1960s.
Carlos Ruiz
Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind has an antiquarian book dealer's son finding
solace in reading a book by Julian Carax.
But when he seeks out other Carax titles, he finds that someone has been
systematically destroying all copies of the author's work.
Gabrielle
Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has a widowed owner of a
bookstore on a Martha's Vineyard-like island whose life is changed forever by a
publisher's rep and a baby on the doorstep.
Markus
Zusak’s The Book Thief is about Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living
outside of Munich in 1939. She steals books. With the help of her foster
father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbours
during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
There are a
number of websites where you can find other titles:
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