“A proud and unrepentant biblio-addict”...that’s how one reviewer describes Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: a Memoir, a History. The book strolls through some very interesting bookshop aisles, as Buzbee shares his passion. Tangential discourses on the history of bookmaking and bookselling and trivia about the book business leaven this love song to the old fashioned pleasures of browsing and buying books.

Anne Fadiman, offspring of the famous literary family, speaks to all of us who enjoy a life long love affair with books and language. In Ex Libris, the books she loves become chapters in her own life, as she describes the arrangement of her bookshelves and sorting out of his and her libraries when she marries. In Rereadings, Fadiman edits seventeen writers who revisit the books they love. Even when return visits disappoint, the affection for the book lives on. Fadiman compares this to learning of our parents’ failures and still loving them.

Another devotee of the power of books, is Nicholas Basbanes. Every Book a Reader: the Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World seeks clues about famous figures from John Milton to Adolph Hitler by looking at what they have read. Contemporary authors are also profiled; they discuss the relevancy of their reading to their lives. Basbanes’ first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1995.

Have you eagerly anticipated a return to a favorite book, only to find that the thrill is gone? In Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering, Wendy Lesser presents rereading as a kind of time travel. Like the proverbial chicken and the egg, does the book affect our life or does our life change the message of the book? Returning to Anna Karenina and Middlemarch for example, Lesser finds the magic gone. She relates the circumstances of her life which gave resonance to the book and recognizes the concepts invisible at the time due to her lack of life experience. Referring to Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, Lesser says, “It’s only now that I no longer need her advice that I can hear it.”

Are you a Nick Hornby fan? The author of About a Boy & Long Way Down turns his attention to books in The Polysyllabic Spree: a Hilarious and True Account of One Man’s Struggle with the Monthly Tide of the Books He’s Bought and the Books He’s Been Meaning to Read. Telling it like it is right in the sub-title, Hornby starts each chapter and each month with lists of Books Bought and Books Read. You get a frank and personal reaction to each book in the distinct Hornby style. No classic literary terms here; just a very ta lented writer sizing up other ta lented writers with cl ever, wise-guy humor.