In that cobwebbed kingdom the rows of books were like rows of cupboards with rusty handles, each to be tried in turn: What's in this one, or that one?" Brainy and often convoluted, O'Brien's "meditation on reading" ranges through memory, autobiography, allegory and literary theory to try to describe the value he finds in books. Some smart readers will think it a lark and a half, while others will deem it so much navel gazing. A noted essayist, editor and poet, O'Brien has organized his topics and metaphors into 32 small units: their ideas and images hang together through the barest threads of suggestion and similarity. Children's encyclopedias, Chinese classical poetry, Virgil's Aeneid, the invention of the alphabet, a half-remembered metaphysical novel about "Doctor Tobacco" and much else give rise to gleams of language and flashes of insight, and then disappear. Originally published, in part, in magazines like Word, this slim volume can recall O'Brien's previous book-length essaysAThe Phantom Empire (on movies) and The Times Square Story; it also suggests the polymathically playful critical prose of Elaine Scarry, though without her moments of philosophical rigor. Readers familiar with academic theorists will recognize some of O'Brien's key ideas: "To move through a book from beginning to end is to advance triumphantly toward the death that waits after the last word of the last sentence." It is by no means a new point (nor does O'Brien make stringent records of his sources), but novelty of argument isn't the point. The point is the beauty and aptness of the analogy, the speed with which one context slips into the next and the momentary rightness of O'Brien's observations. Readers who care for this brand of highly associative, highbrow prose will appreciate this latest sample. (From Library Journal review) This is a clean, new copy with no shelfware or markings on the book. Loc:b1