Book Review: "Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread" by Michiko Kakutani

When I was a lot younger than I am now, possibly around ten years’ ago, I worked my way through something called “The 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die” - and I am not going to lie when I say that alongside my reading for school and my reading for entertainment, it took me about three years or so. I was just entering university when I finished the entire list but I am pretty glad that I did not skip out on one. Unfortunately enough for me though, they keep updating the book and add new stuff to it every time. I love those books that give you reading lists of these absolute classic novels blended in with one or two, or maybe more, that you probably have not heard of before. I can honestly say that this was true for this book we have here - it is called “Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Re-read” and my gosh have I got some books out of this that have gone straight into my Amazon shopping basket! But let us be realistic here, the types of books within this book are not your usual classics. Yes, there is a “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” alongside Homer’s Epics interspersed throughout. But, there are books in here that I have never even encountered which I found absolutely fascinating. It was like walking into a library where there were familiar faces you could sit down and reread and yet, you knew you would leave with something special you had never even seen before. I know that is a weird metaphor but have you read my other reviews? Come on, I am filled with metaphors that make no sense.

From start to finish, the book has some wonderful insights into literature, takes on books I have never even heard of and takes I have never heard of on books I have read. Books such as Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” have special perspectives unlocked upon them but then, we have these books that are less popular though they require to be read by the looks of their statuses within this text: “Continental Drift” by Russell Banks, “Brother, I’m Dying” by Edwidge Danticat. But then there are also some of my personal favourites of modern literature which appear sporadically throughout the book, spoken about in some of the most beautiful ways: the novels of Bruce Chatwin, “Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson, “Ficciones” by Jorge Luis Borges, “On Writing” by Stephen King”, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, the Harry Potter Series, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the novels of Oliver Sacks. There are so many more as well, so you have a lot to look forward to when it comes to reading. Complete with incredible and alluring illustrations of the symbolic natures of some of the novels, this book is one of the many reasons why books about reading succeed. It does not only offer a list, but also offers insight and analysis and like Italo Calvino’s “The Literature Machine” gives us a reason to why we should read and re-read ‘classics’ though known or not to the masses.

I think it was Murakami who said that if you only read what everyone else is reading then you’re only thinking what everyone else is thinking - or along those lines but this book is a great example of why we should explore the wider realms of classic literature whether it be ancient, middle or modern. This book also shows us that literature captures the soul and spits it out divine under a blanket of words.