Book Review: The Year of Reading Dangerously is the (great) title, with a handy subtitle of How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life. Unfortunately the reading wasn't all that dangerous, and this was not the book I expected or wanted to read. So ... disappointing ... and it's just me. Andy Miller wrote the book he wanted to write, and fair play to him, sadly, because The Year of Reading Dangerously should have been right up my street. Of the 50 books he planned to read, I've read, or have on my shelf to read, exactly half of them. And he started his year of reading because he was tired of lying to people about the books he'd read. When he saw Salman Rushdie caught out on a chat show as not having read Middlemarch by George Eliot, he decided to read the books other people expected him to have read. And I too had started a year (now almost at the end of year 2) of reading the books I need to have read to know what people are talking about. So what didn't work? Andy Miller wanted to write more about his life than about the books (which is fair), and I was reading his book to read about the books (also fair), though in fact he doesn't cover all the books on his list. So, in short, The Year of Reading Dangerously is an okay book, innocuous, humorous in parts (he works hard at being funny), nothing special but nothing bad, and when he was writing about books I was right there with him, even when we might have disagreed about one or two. But overall it's not going to change your life, or even add much to it. But I did get a tip on a book to read, Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes, a favorite of Miller's from his youth that he did convince me to find. Thanks, Andy. [2½★]
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