A literary critic celebrates books that she has loved. Pulitzer Prize winner Kakutani, former chief book critic at the New York Times, has been a capacious, eclectic reader since childhood. Aiming to encourage reading and rereading, she presents succinct essays on more than 130 books that she believes "deserve as wide an audience as possible," ranging from the Odyssey to Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, "an unsparing rumination on identity" published in 2019. In the introduction, Kakutani rehearses predictable assertions about the benefits of reading. Books, she writes, "can transport us back to the past" and "forward to idealized or dystopian futures," take us to far-off places, and introduce us to beliefs different from our own. They "can surprise and move us, challenge our certainties, and goad us into reexamining our default settings." The essays themselves are more perceptive, offering fresh, inspired assessments of a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry: memoir, biography, and history; social, political, environmental, and cultural analysis; nature writing; children's books (she responds to six Dr. Seuss stories with her own, unfortunate, doggerel), and young adult fiction. Kakutani focuses on many canonical texts, including The Federalist Papers, George Washington's Farewell Address, Moby-Dick, Frankenstein, Winesburg, Ohio, The Waste Land, The Great Gatsby, and Invisible Man; and on canonical authors, such as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, George Orwell, and Toni Morrison. But surprises abound, including four books by and about Muhammad Ali ("a larger-than-life figure: not just an incandescent athlete dancing under the lights, but a man of conscience who spoke truth to power"); Richard Flanagan's "dazzling, phantasmagorical" Gould's Book of Fish; Tommy Orange's "fierce, sad, funny, and transcendent novel" There, There; the Harry Potter books ("one of literature's ultimate bildungsromans"; two "heart-stopping books" about the war on terror (David Finkel's The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service); and a sprightly biography of Frank Sinatra. A spirited, heartfelt homage to reading. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Former New York Times book critic Kakutani delivers an ebullient celebration of books and reading. She comes up with an eclectic list of titles that have shaped her life, including classics (Shakespeare, Frankenstein, Moby-Dick), biography and memoir (represented by an assortment of books on Lincoln and by Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday), sports writing (with an excellent section of books by and about Muhammad Ali), and contemporary fiction (Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah). Each selection is accompanied by a brief, elegant essay explaining her connection to the work. About Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, Kakutani writes, "Max's use of his imagination--to both liberate himself and tame his emotions--echoes Sendak's own discovery, when he was a sickly young boy who was often confined to bed, that imagination was a gift that enabled him to transform his own fears into beautiful and indelible art." Kakutani finds this same imaginative capacity in her life, as well, as she recalls the sense of escape literature afforded her in childhood, when she felt isolated by her status as "an only child, accustomed to spending lots of time alone" and "as one of the few nonwhite kids at school." Kakutani's recommendations and her "sense of the shared joys and losses of human experience" are revelations. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners. (Oct.)