Book Review: Bibliophile by Jane Mount

Purchase on Amazon for $22!

Published: September 11, 2018

Pages: 224 Pages

My Copy Came From: Amazon

Read Via: Hard copy!

Genre: Books, Book Industry, General

My Like Level: 10 out of 5 Stars! 🙂

Perfect gift for book lovers, writers and your book club

Book lovers rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations.

Readers of Jane Mount’s Bibliophile will delight in:

Touring the world’s most beautiful bookstores

Testing their knowledge of the written word with quizzes

Finding their next great read in lovingly curated stacks of books

Sampling the most famous fictional meals

Peeking inside the workspaces of their favorite authors

A source of endless inspiration, literary facts and recommendations: Bibliophile is pure bookish joy and sure to enchant book clubbers, English majors, poetry devotees, aspiring writers, and any and all who identify as book lovers.

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If you have read or own: I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life; The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization; or How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines; then you will want to read and own Jane Mount’s Bibliophile.

My Thoughts:

I cannot begin to express how much I LOVE this book. It will forever by one of the COOLEST books I have ever purchased, and will be on my coffee table forever. My family may have to bury it with me one day. One never knows what kind of reading material we will have in the afterlife. LOL

This would make the perfect gift for anyone in your life no matter what their reading level is. By that I mean even if your friend or family member isn’t an avid reader, this will still be something they love looking through. Reading Bibliophile has increased my “To Read List” by 50 books, and I am not exaggerating. My slight OCD made me research every page before moving on to the next, so it took twice as long to get through. I learned about book stores around the world and was very excited to look them up online to see what they looked like. I loved seeing Jane’s paintings of author’s writing rooms, and bookstore pets. I feel like having this book is like having a book reference guide at my finger tips. To be quite honest, I’m a little annoyed that I had to buy this myself. I mean isn’t this an obvious gift for someone who loves books as much as I do? Ha ha!

A Few Things I Learned While Reading Bibliophile:

Maurice Sendak once received a drawing from a young Where The Wild Things Are fan, and send him a thank-you note with a picture of a Wild Thing. The boy’s mother wrote back that he loved the note so much that he ate it. Sendak felt that was one of the highest compliment he’d ever received.
Ernest Hemingway had a cat named Boise who often sat next to him while he wrote. I live very close to Boise, so that was an exciting fact to read!
While researching The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery spent many hours with several octopuses at various aquariums. When one empathetically rose from the bottom of its tank to hug a young aquarium volunteer who was feeling sad, Montgomery observed that there might be no better hug than from “someone with eight arms and three hearts.”
The first book of poetry many American children read is Where The Sidewalk Ends. Its author Shel Silverstein, was a Korean War vet, an illustrator for Playboy (and a regular at the mansion), a Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee, and a two-time Grammy winner (one for writing Johnny Cash’s song A Boy Named Sue, and one for an audio version of Where The Sidewalk Ends).
Stephen King’s works have been made into over 60 films and television shows. He has said he doesn’t like Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, feeling it to be too “cold” and “misogynistic”, and not true enough to the book.
The band Anthrax has a song that has lyrics inspired by Stephen King’s The Stand. “With some help from Captain Trips, He’ll bring the world down to his knees.”
In 1949, E.B. White saw a spider spinning an egg sac in the barn at his Maine farm (where there were also pigs). When she disappeared, he cut the sac loose and took it back to his New York City apartment. A couple of weeks later, hundreds of baby spiders crawled out, and White let them spin webs all over his dresser and mirror until, eventually, his cleaning lady had had enough. Three years later, Charlotte’s Web was published, becoming what many consider the greatest children’s book of all time.

Even if for some crazy reason you don’t purchase this book, head over to Jane Mount’s website Ideal Book Shelf. Jane is an artist who creates the most incredible pieces of art for book lovers. If you send her a list of your favorite books, she will hand paint the spines to create a unique print just for you!

Here’s an example: