Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES. The shelf has everything Rose could wish for - a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels about a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work. In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf - those texts that accompany us through life.
"Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels," she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.
About the Author :
Phyllis Rose's many books include A Woman of Letters, a biography of Virginia Woolf that was a finalist for the 1979 National Book Award; Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages; Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time; and The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time. She divides her time between Key West and New York City.
Review :
"Simple but radical." --Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune
"Rose is consistently generous, knowledgeable, and chatty, with a knack for connecting specific incidents to large social trends." --Christine Smallwood, The New Yorker
"Immensely appealing . . . In encouraging us to be more independent thinkers, less swayed by convention and the critical consensus, more empathetic and open-minded, her book teaches us much about how to approach life as it does about how to read books . . . Irresistible." --Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
"Readers of 'The Shelf' will feel befriended." --John Williams, The New York Times
"It's thrilling to see, in The Shelf, the happenstance and whimsy that sprang from a random grab bag of books. And the vastness of possibility those books (good or bad) possess is a terrific match for the vastness of Rose's intelligence, which swerves from scholarly to oddball, and from sophisticated to fun." --Diane Mehta, Bookforum
"A seasoned, open-minded, and passionate reader, inquisitive thinker, and delectably lucid and witty writer, Rose rallies readers to affirm our love of literature and libraries." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"If the world's greatest librarian held hands with the greatest English teacher you ever had and they led you into the middle of the Forest of Literature, Phyllis Rose's The Shelf would be right there, waiting for you. The Shelf is an exceptional, goofy, erudite, deeply thoughtful, and completely enchanting foray into the world of books. As Grace Paley said in another context, you'll learn something." --Amy Bloom, author of Away
"Phyllis Rose calls her irresistibly charming journey through the LEQ-LES shelf an experiment in Off-Road Reading. But the lesson I drew from it was that no matter what bookish road you take, whether it's a superhighway or a bumpy track that requires the literary equivalent of four-wheel drive, you're bound to enjoy the scenery if you're as interesting a reader as Rose." --Anne Fadiman, author of Ex Libris and At Large and At Small
"In her brilliant and original The Shelf, Phyllis Rose proves how much you can learn about yourself and the world just by reading any book you come across and thinking seriously about it." --Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Foreign Affairs
"The Shelf is a surprising and wonderful book--a magnificent treat!" --Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series
"It's always a pleasure to read Phyllis Rose. She ignites our imagination with her own intellectual curiosity, encouraging us to read widely and take chances." --Judy Blume, author of Summer Sisters
"Exhilarating, adventurous, original--Phyllis Rose's The Shelf is a reminder of what reading and writing are all about." --Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran
