Another book about books, as I really enjoy seeing what others read and recommend, always happy to add another tome to my list of To Be Read.
This particular book also has the novelty of recording the thoughts and imaginings of the author (editor of the Times Literary Supplement at the time) as he reads on his daily commute (in 2019) totalling about an hour per day. This approach resonates with me, as I commuted by underground and train in the first three years and last year of my working life.
So, I enjoyed this book, especially the anecdotes and asides, but the analyses of particular works (novels, plays and poetry all read during the year) were, in my opinion, only mediocre, usually not matching the wit and learning displayed in what one would have thought of as the supporting structure of the book.
It was disappointing that Abell was not more enthusiastic about books read, such as The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox and Romola by George Eliot, although I am encouraged to get around to reading The Corrections, which has been sitting on my bookshelves for more than a decade. Also, having discovered the wonders of Penelope Fitzgerald’s books, I wolfed them all down too quickly, and Abell’s comments make me long for a reread.
The lists of books at the end of each chapter were somewhat predictable, and as they were in chronological order and as otherwise without comment, rather arid and uninspiring. However, I had read a reasonable number of the books listed, so have comfort in finding that Abell has similar reading tastes, but I don’t feel challenged by his recommendations. As an older reader, this would be my criticism of this delightful and interesting book, it didn’t challenge my reading; it played safe.

If you enjoy books about books then you will probably enjoy this one, but I would recommend that you first try A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel (erudite , but wonderful style), Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill and I would also recommend The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life by Andy Miller. Also bear in mind that the author is a British, forty-ish, professional male reading safe “classics”, however classics are defined and there was nothing that surprised me by its inclusion.

An extract, which appeals to me:
Without wishing to overstate it, reading for me is one of the central facets of existence. I cannot spend a day without a book. I have – in common with everybody – regular moments of mental unrest, roiling disquiet, uncertainty and anxiety. I manage them with a sedative, an analgesic: the escape into worlds created by other people. The invention of the novel, it seems to me, is one of the true triumphs of human endeavour. It codifies something magnificent within all of us: the act of empathy. When we read, we forge a connection with an author, and often then a common culture or tradition that is greater than us. Reading is an act of enlarging, of expansion. It makes our ‘I’ bigger than just ourselves; it stretches our sense of identity and experience.

Gripe about the Kindle version that I read is that the links to the footnotes don’t work. ( )

I've read a few reading guides: Andy Miller's Year of Reading Dangerously, which is funner than this one and covers some of the same books; Bound to Please and Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda which are pleasant and a little ponderous; Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, which is for grownups (I don't remember James discussing Harry Potter or Angela Carter). Nevertheless they're all worth a look, and usually spur new discoveries to add to the To Read list (aforementioned Angela Carter, in this one). Abell is refreshingly unsnobby, but his lists have few surprises: just exactly who you would expect to see in a list of "historical novels" or "translations". For me the pleasure was in imaging a commute where one read a book – not a phone – for 50 minutes a day, and pondering carving out that time in my life again. ( )