Home > Author > Nancy Pearl
41 " I just said, 'Well, the real people performing miracles every day are librarians,' and we all laughed ourselves off our chairs. "
― Nancy Pearl
42 " Reading has always brought me pure joy. I read to encounter new worlds and new ways of looking at the world. I read to enlarge my horizons, to gain wisdom, to experience beauty, to understand myself better, and for the pure wonderment of it all. I read and marvel over how writers use language in ways I never thought of. I read for company, and for escape. Because I am incurably interested in the lives of other people, both friends and strangers, I read to meet myriad folks and enter their lives- for me, a way of vanquishing the “otherness” we all experience. "
43 " Book lust forever! "
44 " Whenever I begin reading a new book, I am embarking on a new, uncharted journey with an unmarked destination. I never know where a particular book will take me, toward what other books I will be led. "
45 " If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages. "
46 " Girl discovers reading, then discovers life. "
47 " The Last Canyon by John Vernon is a beautiful retelling of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 exploration of the Grand Canyon and his and his men’s inevitable and tragic clash with a tribe of Paiute Indians who lived on the canyon’s northern edge. "
― Nancy Pearl , Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
48 " Give a book 50 pages. When you get to the bottom of Page 50, ask yourself if you're really liking the book.... And if, at the bottom of Page 50, all you are really interested in is who marries whom, or who the murderer is, then turn to the last page and find out. If it's not on the last page, turn to the penultimate page, or the antepenultimate page, or however far back you have to go to discover what you want to know… When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book…When you turn 100, you are authorized (by the Rule of 50) to judge a book by its cover. "
49 " I believe reading is about experiencing joy, and that we learn something about ourselves, and the world, with every book we read, whether a romance, biography, mass-market thriller, or a literary novel. ...We may agree, or we may not, on what's a good book; readers differ all the time on the quality of a book. When it comes to reading, the only opinion that should matter is our own. "
50 " The best place to begin is with the Library of America’s two-volume collection, Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & 40s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Together they include all the major writers as well as bring some lesser-known authors to a wider audience. In general chronological order, here are some depths to which you can lower yourself: "
