Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Unavailable
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Unavailable
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Ebook445 pages6 hours

The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this ebook

An editor and writer's vivaciously entertaining, and often moving, chronicle of his year-long adventure with fifty great books (and two not-so-great ones)—a true story about reading that reminds us why we should all make time in our lives for books.

Nearing his fortieth birthday, author and critic Andy Miller realized he's not nearly as well read as he'd like to be. A devout book lover who somehow fell out of the habit of reading, he began to ponder the power of books to change an individual life—including his own—and to the define the sort of person he would like to be. Beginning with a copy of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita that he happens to find one day in a bookstore, he embarks on a literary odyssey of mindful reading and wry introspection. From Middlemarch to Anna Karenina to A Confederacy of Dunces, these are books Miller felt he should read; books he'd always wanted to read; books he'd previously started but hadn't finished; and books he'd lied about having read to impress people.

Combining memoir and literary criticism, The Year of Reading Dangerously is Miller's heartfelt, humorous, and honest examination of what it means to be a reader. Passionately believing that books deserve to be read, enjoyed, and debated in the real world, Miller documents his reading experiences and how they resonated in his daily life and ultimately his very sense of self. The result is a witty and insightful journey of discovery and soul-searching that celebrates the abiding miracle of the book and the power of reading.

Editor's Note

Read more. Be more…

If your New Year’s resolution is to read more, start here with this inspiring memoir about one person’s yearlong quest to reconnect with the joy of reading. Entertaining and thoughtful, it’ll motivate you to read that book you’ve always meant to, finish one you started years ago, or actually read that title you tell everyone you’ve read to impress them.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateDec 9, 2014
ISBN9780062100627
Unavailable
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Author

Andy Miller

Andy Miller is a reader, author, and editor of books. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Esquire, and Mojo. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and son.

Related to The Year of Reading Dangerously

Related ebooks

Related articles

Reviews for The Year of Reading Dangerously

Rating: 3.533333333333333 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

15 ratings25 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I started this book I wasn’t really sure what to expect, suffice to say that it wasn’t quite what I had imagined I would be greeted with. Once I had got my head around the style of the book I found it a very enjoyable and informative read. It was interesting to see how a person’s perception of a book can be very different from the actual thing. Andy Miller discovered this on his own reading journey. He tried to interject some humour into the book along with some back story as to when he had first come across the book or what memories it evoked in him.

    Andy Miller used to work in a bookstore before he went on to become a journalist. This part of his background also featured throughout the book. On the whole the book was well written although at one spot it became a bit laboured (Andy actually gave the reader permission to skip this bit) and therefore slow. Having said that, I did enjoy his reviews of books such as Anna Karenina. Andy Miller is very honest about his thoughts on the books he read which was extremely apparent when he reviewed The Da Vinci Code probably one of his least favourite books of those he reviewed. I really appreciate Andy Miller’s honesty and openness with his reviews; the reader is never left wondering what he thought or his motivation for reading the book in the first place. This is a worth while read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this. Some of Andy Miller's 50 great books were ones I'd already read but he made me want to re read. I also now have more to add to my "to read" list. If you love reading, you'll enjoy this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A bit of a mixed reaction from me here on this one. I have a bit of an obsessive personality so books about books are right up my street. I am also drawn to this sort of writing since as a new reader any ideas and insights I can get into books that I would like to read is most welcome. Having flicked through the list of books covered in the latter pages on 'The List of Betterment' money changed hands and the book was mine. I have to say that the descriptions of a working family in the London area drudging the day away with little opportunity for relaxation, spontaneity, reflection and living had me feeling sorry for the state of humanity - we have a long way to go as a human race if in the 21st century most people are still slogging away to keep alive with very little living going on. Any hoo onto the books - Andy Miller by chance got himself back into reading during a chance encounter with a book - despite having gotten a literature degree it appears he spent most of his life in some sort of snobbish blaggery lying about his real experience of reading, I assume to fit in with his circle of friends. So the books - well there was a list of fifty and I was really looking forward to experiencing something of each and every book - that was the point right - well apparently not. To be honest I felt cheated. Each chapter listed the books covered yet some barely got a mention. I felt as though the author was a busy man rushing through a project and saying to himself that'll do. The book also read a little self-indulgently at times - and as I came to the final pages I found myself thinking ' Ok that's enough you can end it there and yet Andy Miller felt compelled to keep going like a best man at a wedding who doesn't know when to stop. The final pages of the Douglas Adams love-in just seemed to me a clumsy way to sum up. I did pick up some authors and books I would never have thought of exploring otherwise - so for me it was worth the read for that.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A joky eclecticism is set by the side by side epigraphs from Homer Simpson and Homer's Odyssey. Likewise a readiness to throw in any gag that pipes up. Thus some of the insights and discoveries seem a bit staged, but so what? There are gems and worthy snippets within, as would be in the outpourings of any literate rambler. That it is too self-referential and self-questioning might just as well be said of Tristram Shandy, of course, but one doubts that Miller's enjoyable narrative will have that kind of staying power.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    bit of a slog in the middle, redeemed at the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Andy Miller was a typical 40 year old male, living a middle class lifestyle with a wife and a child. He working as an editor, although he finds life and word dull and unfulfilling. Despite working with words, he never absorbed or appreciated them, so he decided to read 50 classic novels and two not-so-great novels over the course of a year. The Year of Reading Dangerously is Miller's chronicle of reading those 52 books.Miller's work is wonderful-- not only for bibliophiles-- but those those looking for something to rid the mundane. Miller writes with British humor that everyone will enjoy, although bibliophiles will enjoy the inside jokes even more.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I didn't care for this literary memoir. Andy Miller works in the literary field as an editor, but felt that he had gotten away from reading--his busy life with a job, a small child, a house etc. leaving no time for reading. He decides to embark on a reading program (52 books in a year) of books he felt he should read, wanted to read or had lied about reading. He called these the List of Betterment, and it included the sublime (Middlemarch) and the disgraceful (The Da Vinci Code).Here's what I didn't like:1. Everyone's busy. Not an excuse for not reading. Especially since he commuted several times a week to London on the train (1+ hours each way). Apparently he needed a "special" place to read--sometimes he traveled to London to go somewhere (like the British Museum) to read. I like the British Museum as much as the next person, but I wouldn't feel the need go there specifically to read if I lived in Kent.2. The book is more of a memoir than a discussion of the merits of specific books. His life is not all that interesting, and his thoughts on the books he reads aren't particularly sparkling. One Amazon reviewer said, "It's clear that his literary and musical tastes were arrested in adolescence."3. And that's another thing--his music references. I never heard of most of the bands/songs he discusses, and they play a prominent part in the book.(One of the books he reads is "Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmisch Musik--1968 Onwards."I can safely say "Avoid This." Unless, of course, you are a fan of Kosmisch Musik.2 stars
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very average. It got me through a train journey but that was about all. The beginning was quite enjoyable but then it got hard work - too much about him as a rather dull editor / writer and not enough about the books. And he seems obsessed by "art" and being snobbish about people who read thrillers. Notice to Mr Miller - such snobbery has a very long history. He also tries to be funny and isn't.I agreed with some things he says - actually read instead of reading or writing blogs about books etc on the Web - something of which I am as guilty as others. And his lament over the loss of bookshops and libraries. He doesn't seem to know what he makes of e-books other than thinking its another nail in coffin of print books.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    What an irritating book!This is a fine example of a very good idea that suffered from woeful execution. Andy Miller catalogues his reading for a year, recounting how he came to acquire each book and the impact it made upon him as he read. On the face of it, this should have made for a fascinating account, of particular interest to other bibliophiles. Sadly he squandered this golden opportunity for a fine book by trying (but failing lamentably) to be funny. Unfortunately he is just not a good enough writer to pull this off, and the books just ends up being deliberately quirky. I laughed until I stopped.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I very much enjoyed the first half or so of this book, which I listened to, read by the author. He has a good sense of humor and didn't seem to take himself too seriously at the start of his "project," but by the end, the whole thing had become pretentious and tiresome. I wanted to hear more about the books themselves and his experiences reading them rather than the quasi-philosophical ramblings of a smart but not particularly profound middle-aged man.Notes: His ruminations on War and Peace did give me hope that it wouldn't be the total slog I am expecting. But he doesn't like Pride and Prejudice so what does he know?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Memoir of a nearly 40 year old, rather depressed, book editor, as he finally gets round to reading his "list of betterment": classic books which he has been planning to read for years but never quite got around to it. I like books about books so this appealed to me. His definition of classic is rather personal, notably including Krautrock Sampler by Julian Cope, but the rest sound pretty good. He has the advantage of an hour long commute each way so the weightier tomes are more manageable. I've not read many of them so this has inspired me to be more adventurous in tackling some great classics.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This one took a while to read, mainly because I had a hard time getting into it at first, so distractions came easy. It ended up being one of my favorite reads ever. A very well-crafted book. A love song to readers and reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book mostly for the authorial voice: I found Andy Miller very funny and enjoyed all the asides about his family life, his inability to drive etc. (My favourite aside being the comment about how his love for his own son is counterbalanced by an antipathy towards other people's children - how true!) I found his general comments about books, libraries and reading inspiring and would recommend this book highly, despite the fact that the author clearly has entirely different literary tastes from me. After reading this memoir I have added precisely two books to my "to-read" list and (for the record) I have read only six of his fifty, and of one of those ("The Sea, The Sea"), I can remember precisely nothing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is another enjoyable, easily read, conversational book about books, reading and why it is enjoyable. I am British and slightly older than the author, so a lot of his reference points are similar to mine, which made this book delightful to read.The book wanders and meanders around its subject in a digressive way which to me is rather like The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald, to which the author does compare his book at one stage, although this is a deeply humane and humorous book, rather than the inimitable melancholy of Sebald.It is a book for people who are well read, but perhaps need reminding of the enjoyment that only good reading provides to readers.I think it unlikely that it will be as entertaining to someone who is not already reasonable well read.This is a pleasurable read and its themes resonated with my recent reading experience - after a spell of little reading, partly because of the distractions of work, other media etc, I have been really enjoying reading again.I seem to have been reading quite a few books about books recently and this compares well to the best that I have read - those by Alberto Manguel and Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill.Read and enjoy - and if you like lists, there are some good lists of books at the back too.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love books and I love books about books. If you do as well I encourage you to read this book by an English writer and editor, Andy Miller. He subtitles his book How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life. Interspersed throughout the book are autobiographical vignettes that I quite liked. He assigned himself some difficult books and I sometimes felt that he liked few of them. Often he began not liking them but did by the end. There were few books that he didn't finish. He found UNDER THE VOLCANO very difficult and boring but somehow he fell in love with it and read it three times. He said it took all those readings to understand it. I would have given up long before that. There are too many books to read to stick with one that isn't satisfying.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A book about books...reading about reading. There is something redundantly appealing about that for me. It helps that Miller is an enjoyable read and his enthusiasm comes through. Often, though, in this book, I fail to grasp the "why" of the enthusiasm. Some of his favorites I've not read, and I am challenged to understand why they evoke so much in him...Anna Karenina? Middlemarch? The droning tome Moby Dick???

    I clearly have no intention of reading many of his "Betterment" books, so I am more than happy to "read" them vicariously here. Although, The Essential Silver Surfer sounds mighty intriguing. After all, I'm currently 5/6 through The Complete Calvin and Hobbes! Still, he calls my attention to a few others.

    I used to read Jerry Pournelle's column Chaos Manor in Byte magazine because when he reviewed products, he told the reader what the reality was: difficulty with cables, drivers, installer, great/not so great customer service, function as promised or better, whatever. In some ways, Miller is similar to Pournelle, but with these books he read. Like giving up on Of Human Bondage (though he eventually forced himself to finish it.) I have a hard time giving up on a book, and feel guilty when I do, but it's a personal guilt that I can ignore. I do keep a "set aside unfinished" list, just in case I change my mind, as I have on occasion.

    My rating of this book grew in the reading of it. At first, "It was okay." Then, "I liked it." By the time I finished, I was at five stars. Why? Simply, I connected. That in itself is a very,very rare thing. I can't explain...I just did.

    Maybe because of
    How can this list be taken seriously when it finds no place for my favourite authors or at least those writers I consider indispensable?
    Or
    As a child, reading is something you do while you are waiting for life to begin. As a parent, however, if you are lucky and you seize your chance, you can be part of it too.
    Or, in response to a particularly vile sentence he read in one of his Year's books:
    What was the purpose of interrogating the total ugliness of this sentence publicly? It was transparently, self-evidently terrible. Just reading it made me feel as if I had been half-slammed, half-caressed in the brain with a gratuitously offensive and ineptly articulated metaphor.
    And, with respect to blogging, this:
    Maybe for some readers keeping a blog expedited the thought process. I’m sorry to say I found it a distraction and, as time went on, a chore.
    I, too, find it chore sometimes. But when I read this:
    Perhaps if I had encountered Dean Moriarty – another restless wanderer with grammar issues – at an impressionable age I could have been more forgiving of On the Road.
    I realized a big "whoa" moment for me...something I intuitively knew but didn't think of myself. Incongrously, I like some really bad stuff, very likely because of an encounter "at an impressionable age", and yet I am quite unforgiving of similar when encountering at my current skeptical age.

    So Miller gets five stars for making me think, making me rethink, making me chuckle, and providing a connection. I don't know that other readers will see it the same way, but this is my review, my opinion, and in the end, my enjoyment of a book. It might be the beer talking (Sierra Nevada Narwhal, a premier Imperial Stout weighing in at a more than respectable 10.2% ABV, at the moment), but I would likely argue the contrary.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A British authors experiences as he finally reads all the books he's claimed to have read over the years but never really got around to. This is not so much about the books he read as it is a look at how reading these books affected him while he was reading them. I've never understood the urge to claim to have read a book when you hadn't, sooner or later someone is going to want to talk to you about that book and then you will end up looking like quite the idiot. But after this I got a little more insight into this practice, at least for why I feel the author did it. He seems to be a Capital L literature snob who is far to concerned with coming across as a well-read reader of the “right” sort of books, and he just couldn't keep up. Or at least that is what I got from this. Overall the author has a mind set about reading and what kind of books are worth reading that I just don't get. I'm not saying he is wrong, at least not for him, just that I don't get it. That made reading this a bit of a struggle for me, I kept stopping to mentally yell at him, “why are you making this so difficult for yourself?!?!?”So in the end, I didn't really enjoy this book, but I found it a fascinating look into the mind of another reader who values reading as much as I do but in a completely different way and for that alone it was well worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Affecting, funny, quirky chronicle of a year spent reading books one’s pretended to have already read, or felt like they have. Miller peppers the text with jokey footnotes and asides, and manages to convey a good deal about himself and why some of the books worked for him while others didn't. A lovely read; I finished it in 24 hours and want to start again.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    British editor Andy Miller, fast approaching 40, was busy living life…very busy. Married and the father of a small son, Miller spent a good portion of his days just getting to and from the job that made his lifestyle possible. At home, his evenings were spent accomplishing ordinary tasks such as helping his wife put meals on the table and reading bedtime stories to his son. All in all, not a bad life, but one day Miller came to the odd realization that for a man who made his living working with words, the only reading he did for pleasure anymore came from magazines, newspapers, and websites – and most of that reading happened during his almost-daily commutes. Sadly, books were no longer a part of his life.He decided to do something about that – and he shares the results of his efforts with the rest of us in The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Books Saved My Life. Some may quibble with Miller’s choice of books, even with the word “great” in his book’s subtitle, but he made it through the year. He read the books, and his life was changed for the better for having done it. Miller’s “List of Betterment” includes many books generally considered to be among the finest ever written, but it also leaves room for a few titles that will probably bewilder most American readers (Krautrocksampler and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, for example). Not all of the rest of Miller’s reading was confined to acknowledged classics from previous centuries. The list also includes relatively recent titles such as A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, Beloved, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and One Hundred Years of Solitude (a title he pretty much despised). The Year of Reading Dangerously, though, is more than just another book about books. It is, instead, a mini-autobiography in which the author spends as much time recounting why he chose these particular books and relating them to his life experiences as he does discussing the books themselves. His choices are personal ones, and he uses a Henry Miller quote to make that clear. Miller (Henry), when speaking of “books that had remained with him over the years,” said “They were alive and they spoke to me.” It follows that simply reading the book list reveals much about Andy Miller to the rest of us. Are you wondering what the “two not so great” books Miller is hinting at in his book’s subtitle are? Well, one is Dan Brown’s rather infamous The Da Vinci Code and the second is another Dan Brown book that Miller, in the end, decides not to bother reading at all, leading to a bit of inaccuracy (he admits) in that subtitle.Upon the completion of Miller’s dangerous reading year, he said, “I am myself again. But I no longer tell lies about books.” He doesn’t have to now. And neither do the rest of us, if we decide to do our own reading as dangerously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    First, let’s make a few things clear: Andy Miller does not read dangerously. He does not save his life by reading. And he only reads fifty great books (and ONE not-so-great one). Now that the lies in the title are set aside, I can tell you what this book really is: Andy Miller is a funny guy and you will love his yearlong trip through fifty classics. (Though, for truth-in-advertising reasons, I feel compelled to warn you that I completely disagreed with his opinions on every book: War and Peace is not an easy read...Middlemarch is not daunting...and, most of all, I loathed his favorite read of the year, Under the Volcano.) Take the trip with Andy and I suspect you will organize your own Year of Reading Dangerously soon.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not reading dangerously in any way, shape or form, and it's pretty much a glorified blog, but still an entertaining, easy read that's made me really want to knuckle down and get some Tolstoy down me. Your enjoyment of the book may be aided if you're a slightly self important, anxious white man in your late 30's living in the South of England.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As the inevitable slide towards forty begins, Andy Miller realises that he needs to be better read. He has been a book lover for years, but now doesn’t really read anything, anymore. One day when browsing through a charity shop for Mr men books for his son, he comes across The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov and decides that now is time to do something about his reading habits.

    Compiling a list with his wife, his list of betterment as he describes it throughout the book, he sets about choosing fifty books that will expand his mind and his horizons. A lot of the books that he chooses are those that he had claimed to read in the past, but had never actually got round to. There are the literary classics, the door stoppers and the odd pulp fiction, that populate his reading landscape. So of these he loves, others he doesn’t…

    A reminder of why we should make some time for reading and books, Miller’s book is a wry examination of what it means for him to be a reader, and the way that his book habits affect his daily life.

    There seem to be more books about books these days, and this one was worth reading as it is an honest account of the re-discovery of books by a lapsed reader. He has a very different taste in the books that he chooses than I would, but there is a little common ground of one we have read. The writing is funny at times, and he can have a harsh tongue for the occasional author, but it is worth reading anyone who is a lapsed reader.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4.5 stars. I really loved this until toward the end.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    What a great concept. Just not very interesting execution.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A writer, publisher, English graduate and happily married father of two feels guilty about how there are so many great classic books he has not read (although he sometimes pretends to) and decides to read fifty of the most famous and greatest books in the world. It is written with great humour and intelligence and it is fun seeing his review of favourites as well as finding additions to my 'to read' list. However, there are flaws. In the beginning he reviews each book (about twelve). In the second part he lumps them all together and some interesting books are that are part of his list are barely covered in the text - Catch 22 - for instance while another Atomised is covered ad Infinitum including a fan letter to the author. It was as if he ran out of enthusiasm part way through and just published his rough notes. A personal difficulty was his taste was so different to mine. Pride and Prejudice is my favourite book; he couldn't finish it. Nor could he finish Of Human Bomdage. I downloaded it and could not put it down. He says about his wife recommending jumping to the war bits in War and Peace. When I read it (broken leg) I skipped the war and enjoyed the peace. The books he seems to really love are about anti-heroes in urban subcultures such as The Postman or Condfedracy of Dunces, a genre that with very few exceptions (Trainspotting) I find pretentious. He is brilliant on the current marketplace for books and every bibliophile with a family will smile at the tribulations he has with reading at all. But all in all I would recommend it for a skim read