Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany

A beautiful effort of book-love! Jane Mount has a great gift for exciting people about reading -perhaps especially a younger audience - and brings her passion and art to bear on the many aspects of bibliophilia she explores in this well-crafted volume. While I personally enjoyed her previous effort, My Ideal Bookshelf, more than this one -that is due to my own idiosyncrasies not her lovely book. I did find certain disciplines quite under-represented or absent -like the sciences and medicine -and other areas over-represented by very new and untested by time books. Still I very much enjoyed this and have passed it on to a budding reader who is lapping it up and taking notes! Brava

A resounding 5 stars for Mount's compilation of everything a true book geek loves. Book porn to the max, a definite triple X.
Just gaze upon the cover, admire those sexy spines that the author herself had painted and made a career of customizing for her patrons. The colors and titles tease you with familiar and unknown pleasures.
Tenderly now, open the book. More tantalizing spines. The familiarity of those you've known, their names so easily roll off your tongue, luscious titles escape from your lips and bring back forgotten memories from a different time, a different place. The longing and desire to hold those who have escaped you, but don't despair, you can have them too. They are there for the asking. Where, you might ask? Gently show more separate the pages, the author has painted pictures of tantalizing book stores and striking libraries beloved by many.
More, more! Yes, there is more to satisfy your geeky needs! Jane Mount allows you to see into the creative dens of authors, their writing sanctuaries where they put pen to paper, their pets who gently caressed their ankles while they wrote.
Don't stop! You won't need to. There is so much more between the covers. Like an onion, peel away the layers of information the author offers you. You love it: Genres galore, reading recommendations and fun quizzes.
Aaaah, a most satisfying experience, indeed. You'll want to revisit this tome again and again. It will never grow old. show less

Perhaps a Bit Too Fluffy and Comfy
Review of the Chronicle Books 2018 hardcover edition

I enjoyed the front half of this miscellany tremendously and was even considering a 4 or 5-star rating at that stage. In the back half though, which is dominated by non-fiction, I was starting to get somewhat tired of the umpteenth page of cookbook/foodbook related lists and illustrations. So it was a mixed experience overall.

If you are the type of person who enjoys book lists and is intrigued by glimpses of book spines on shelves, there is a lot to enjoy here. It is somewhat of a mash-up of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die", "Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book show more Lovers", "Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks", "Bookstore Cats", World's Greatest Libraries, Writer's Rooms, Book Recommendations, Book Quizzes, and several other miscellaneous categories.

The paintings of books spines and covers are generally well done, some of the author ones perhaps less so (I laughed at another reviewer's comment: "the portraits of the authors started to scare me after awhile"). A few of the book spines looked all out of proportion e.g. pg. 40's Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" (usually about 130-150 pages) does not strike me as a larger book than D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" (usually about 600-700 pages) and pg. 77's Elena Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" does not strike me as a tinier book than Gail Honeyman's "Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine" (both about 300+ pages). Those may be minor quibbles, but are exactly the type of thing that a book obsessive will notice.

Overall, my sense was that this sticks to the popular 20th-21st century top-sellers and doesn't feature anything very much that is off the beaten path or transgressive or challenging. I didn't really spot all that much to add to my To Be Read list although admittedly I am rather set in my own quirky paths for that. I was impressed that Niviaq Korneliusen's "Crimson" aka "Homo Sapienne" aka "Last Night in Nuuk", was singled out as the example for Greenlandic literature. That at least was off the beaten path. show less

What a delight! Mount wrote and illustrated this beautiful and heavy ode to books and reading. There are recommendations organized by genre. There are drawings and bios of independent bookstores around the world, and many of the author's drawings of stacks of books. You'll have a page about Virginia Woolf's writing shed and her process, and then illustrated pages about writer-owned bookstores. If you love getting trusted recommendations or you love books on books (one of my favorite genres), you'll want this. I know, I'm gushing.

У издателя эта книга проходит как подарочная, однако, кого вы в первую очередь должны ею одарить, так это себя. Такого угощения для любителя чтения не выходило давно. В ней всё про самые лучшие книги от древности до самого до вчера. Охвачены абсолютно все жанры. Есть и детская литература, и спортивная, и научпоп, и кулинария, и фантастика, и путешествия, и даже направления, о которых большинство не особо в show more курсе, – только успевай выписывать названия. Увлекательно рассмотрены буквально все пересечения книг с жизнью – лучшая экранизация, топ-10 песен известных исполнителей, написанных в честь названий книг, советы писателей и поэтов, цитаты, самые невероятные библиотеки и книжные всего мира, питомцы любимых авторов и прочие невообразимые темы – просто масса всего, сдобренного отличными иллюстрациями в удобоваримых порциях. А отправляющимся в путешествия наверняка понравится список из единственных художественных книг, необходимых для понимания почти каждой страны. show less

This is a love story to books, authors, bookstores and readers themselves.

Vibrantly and charmingly illustrated by the author, this is either browsable at your pace or readable in a big gulp. A pleasure for anyone who loves books, you'll almost certainly come across at least a few titles that are new to you, some that have slipped down in TBR interest and will restoke curiosity and others that are familiar friends that you read awhile back and had forgotten about.

The author covers and draws what she loves from her perspective. That's vicariously interesting, but it's not exhaustive, nor could it possibly be. Book lovers get each other, yet tastes and preferences will always be highly personal.

For example, I love indie (and especially show more used) bookstores and she profiles several. There are some mentioned that I've been to and loved and others that I haven't and may never, but I still love knowing they're out there. Ditto for libraries. And creative forms of bookselling (book burros! book vending machines! bookmobiles!) the very existence of which (as well as the people manning them) makes me happy.

There are so many books out there just waiting to be (re)discovered and loved. This book is a reminder of that.

Also: this book (at least at this writing and in the U.S.) is free Prime read if you're an Amazon prime member. Recommend you borrow and see if it's one you want to buy. show less

I can't say that Jane Mount's “Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany” (2018) makes particularly good reading or has much in the way of interesting information, but that's OK. It's a book about books, but it's mainly an art book about books, more a pleasure to leaf through than to read.

Mount says she kicked off her art career when, out of ideas, she started drawing the books on her own bookshelves. Then she moved on to the books on the shelves of friends, and soon she was in business. I am another of those people who love the sight of books on shelves. I spend a moment or two practically every day just admiring the spines of my own books. I can understand why readers would be willing to spend a few bucks for a Jane Mount painting of show more their favorite books.

And that is mostly what Bibliophile amounts to — paintings of books. True, she also includes paintings of striking bookstores and libraries, writers' pets and the rooms where famous writers did their writing, but mostly it's books. She divides them into two-page groupings: choice books of short stories, choice fantasy books, cult classics, choice picture books for kids, choice cookbooks, choice graphic novels, choice mysteries, choice nature books and so on.

She tosses in a few paragraphs about some of these books and their authors and adds lists of other books in these categories that aren't pictured. You may want to read “Bibliophile” with a notepad handy to take down all those books you may want to read — or even even to acquire just to decorate your own bookshelves. show less