Pat Conroy

I loved this book. Pat Conroy is a novelist from the South and toward the end of his career, he pens this delicious memoir on his love affair with reading and books. It is so fun. Any decent bibliophile will love this book.

He talks about his childhood, which was marked by an abusive Navy pilot father, and a mother who loved books. She successfully infected him with her delight.

The book was a treat from cover to cover, but especially the chapters that told of his mother’s influence on his reading, the life-altering influence of a high school English teacher who because a father figure for him, a quaint bookstore in Atlanta and his friendship with the eccentric owner, and the time he spent writing and walking in Paris.

But he also has chapter-length treatments of Gone with the Wind, Thomas Wolfe, War and Peace, and the writings of James Dickey.

Conroy is a powerful writer, and can he tell a story! The vocabulary in this book delightfully stretched me perhaps more than any other book I have ever read. This entire book was a treat, so much so that I was tempted, when I finished, to go back to page one and start over. It is definitely a book that I will want to read again.

Enthusiastically recommended!