We are here to assist you in this crucial reading work…In the pages of this book, you will learn about many other books, every one of which is cunningly designed to be read and give pleasure at the same time. As you read them, your mind will be nourished and your spirit refreshed. Your body will be flooded with endorphins and serotonin, causing your hair to become glossy and your skin clear and firm. Friends will be impressed with the depths of your intellect. Dates will fall in love with the glossiness of your hair. (We cannot rule out the possibility that dates will fall in love with the depth of your intellect, but don’t hold your breath.) (pg. xx)
Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark, authors of Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You’ll Ever Read, have written a book of lists of books in order to give a reader choices and guidance. The lists are based on ten different themes ranging from love, war, family, history and just about everything in between. Each list contains twelve different books so if you were interested studying Memoirs, you could use the list and have a different book for each month. For each book the authors include a detailed description of the book (and sometimes the author) and a series of discussion questions.
The authors went beyond the ten detailed lists and include a number of additional lists of twelve books covering a wider, more detailed array of subjects such as fantasy, food books, Russian literature, travel, mysteries, southern gothic, and oral histories. These lists only have descriptions of the books which are brief but detailed enough to give you a sense of what the book is about.
I consider myself fairly well read; however, on a number of lists, I haven’t read any of the works mentioned. The one I found surprising was the science fiction list. In high school I studied science fiction (I went to an alternative school where we could develop our own curriculum) and have read a number of the science fiction classics. Since that time I have dabbled in the genre and yet, I have only heard of four of the twelve listed and I haven’t read any of them. That knocked me down a peg or two. Ironically the list I did the best on was the Utopia Books: six out of twelve thanks to another high school course on Utopian Fiction and Society.
The discussion questions the authors developed seem to go beyond the typical “Reader’s Guide” questions you find today. For example:
Doomsday Book (by Connie Willis) is full of death. Disease is a chaotic force that roams through the book, stealing people random, or mowing them down in groups, like the medieval representation of Death as the Grim Reaper, or the Republican representation of universal health care. Yet somehow Willis uses this to make individual life seem more meaningful rather than less. How does she do this? Does this idea – that the fragility of life makes it more precious – make sense to you? (pgs. 145-146)
In this example you go beyond plot to both the author’s process and how that motif resonates in your own life. Many of the questions in Read This Next feature the same depth so the reader is encouraged to explore the totality of the work they are reading. The example also shows what I consider the major flaw in this work.
Newman and Mittlemark frequently digress into humor. While this does make reading this book entertaining, there are times when I found myself thinking, enough just get to the point. At times I was laughing out loud and other times I was gnashing my teeth. Despite this I would recommend this book. It is obvious that the authors have done a great deal of research and put a lot of thought into these lists. The lists are eclectic containing both old and new works covering a wide variety of genres. I think any serious reader as well as someone whose book group is in a slump or the person who wants to undertake a specific road of reading would enjoy this book. I know I found books I want to read and I found questions I would want my book group to consider, if that particular work was the subject of discussion.
I was given a copy of this book as part of a giveaway on Jessica’s blog The Blue Stocking Society and she received the books for the giveaway from the publisher, HarperCollins.
Reflections from the Hinterland 
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