Some chapters are fun, poetic and interesting. The book overall is not as good - feels rushed and a bit random. ( )

It’s ok, but really, why bother reading a book about Andy Miller reading unless you have a familiarity with Andy Miller reading books already that leads you to read about Andy Miller reading - go read a novel yourself instead. Even then Andy Miller’s book about Andy Miller reading should be 150 pages instead of 300, the conceit can be held aloft about that long fairly well before collapsing like a soufflé. ( )

Ok, right off the bat, let it be known that I do. not. like. this. author. Haha! Clarification: I like him as an author. As a person, I can't imagine lasting three minutes in conversation. Or even two. Oh but I was forewarned. He says in the intro that he is crude and profane. So I knew that going in---guess I can give him kudos for that.

I put up with giving him the benefit of the doubt for awhile, hoping it would be better (kind of like when you start a new TV series and they have to give you all the shock value stuff at the beginning to "hook" you), but no---he just kept irritating me. The thing is, he was kind of like this speaker at a recent "Bible stuff" conference I went to. When he was good, he was very very good---when he was bad, he was horrid. It was this weird rollercoaster of thinking, "yeah, he's right on" to "man, what a jerk."

The biggest (but probably not really deep) irony for me was that he spends so many words on locker room “humor”, crudity and profanity yet criticizes Dan Brown for being a lousy writer--repeatedly---throughout the entire book. To the point that you wonder if he really has some underlining issues with a guy who can be a international best seller without using hard profanity and high school boy jokes to do it.

But, it gets worse. Not only does he not like Jane Austen (but probably adores Mark Twain) —-he doesn’t get her. Everything he says about the desperate need for money Jane proved wrong in her own life. The only person who really cared about money in P&P was Mrs Bennet. He says, “Fear of poverty was the engine of the novel.” What??? Prattler.

I also really despised all his footnotes. Just put it in the paragraph, dang it.

So what did I like? Well, I'm inspired to read The Sea, the Sea now. That's probably it.

I quit 100 Years of Solitude to read this. Ironically, he quit it too…but he finished and so must I! ("Once you start to give up on books, you may lose the skill of finishing them...") I practiced that skill by finishing his obnoxious book, after all.

Good quote takeaway (and it wasn't even his): "It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them; but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents." --Schopenhaeur ( )

Some parts great, some parts really boring. ( )

This is a reading memoir by Andy Miller of Backlisted podcast fame. I love listening to him on the podcast, so I was pretty sure I would enjoy walking through some books, known and unknown, with him.

At the outset, he talked about how he had accumulated books before embarking on his plan to make a “betterment list” and how often he had acquired books he had sometimes claimed to have read (because he felt he should have), but in reality never did.

“I saw I had got it wrong. I had confused “art” with “shopping.” he said. I laughed and I knew I would be in for the ride, wherever it took me. It took me through the streets of London, to a [a:Charles Dickens|239579|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1387078070p2/239579.jpg] fair in Broadstairs, and through Andy’s everyday life. This was far more about Andy's experiences than the books he had read, themselves. I enjoyed that…because, as I have already mentioned, I already like Andy.

Some of the books he chose for his fifty were ones I had read; some are on my TBR, waiting; others were total unknowns to me. A few were my own favorites or most hated, and it was so interesting to see his reactions correspond or deviate from my own.

The chapter that compares [b:Moby-Dick or, the Whale|153747|Moby-Dick or, the Whale|Herman Melville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327940656l/153747._SY75_.jpg|2409320] to [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579621267l/968._SY75_.jpg|2982101] is hilarious and, at the same time, somewhat sad. It says a lot about the rest of us that [a:Dan Brown|630|Dan Brown|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1399396714p2/630.jpg] got fame and fortune and [a:Herman Melville|1624|Herman Melville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1495029910p2/1624.jpg] was long dead before his genius was recognized. I also enjoyed his thoughts on [a:Leo Tolstoy|128382|Leo Tolstoy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1617138673p2/128382.jpg] and the challenge of trying to read [b:War and peace|23130901|War and peace|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1409549250l/23130901._SX50_.jpg|4912783] while raising a baby.

Like everyone on Goodreads, I have my own list of books I have to get to. This was one of them, consider it done.
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