A Love of Reading, The Second Collection

Book excerpt: Fourteen brilliant new reviews from the author of A Love of Reading. Passionate, thought provoking, and witty. A Love of Reading, the Second Collection contains 14 new reviews of modern classics from a discriminating, highly entertaining, and prodigiously well-read guide. In a stimulating selection, ranging from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, and from Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain to Sheri Holman’s The Dress Lodger, popular literary critic Robert Adams skilfully interweaves a nimble and enlightening discussion of plot, theme, and characterization with fascinating historical, biographical, and literary context. Adams is repeatedly drawn to the spectacle of less-than-perfect humans making their way in a hostile world, and as a result his reviews are a hugely satisfying mix of rich pathos and abundant humour. In the words of the Calgary Herald, they are “a bibliophile’s dream.”