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A review by trudilibrarian
1001 Books for Every Mood by Hallie Ephron
2.0
I love the idea of matching books to mood -- but I guess I just wasn't overly impressed by the choices. For example, in the category "to be afraid, be very afraid" there is no Stephen King. What!? That's just ludicrous. King is a prolific author whose writing can be placed in many categories, but he's consistently been the world's bogeyman for the past 35 years, delighting in scaring the bejesus out of people. If you're in the mood to be badly frightened, King is your man. To omit him from this section really made me doubt Ephron's selection process. The irony is, King's books appear in five other categories, just not the "be very afraid" one.
Ephron also includes Pat Conroy's Beach Music over The Prince of Tides, another dubious choice as the latter is the far better book (I've read them both and loved them both and as a Conroy fan I can say that with confidence).
Ephron labels books as being provocative, influential, humorous, brainy, challenging, as easy reads or page turners, as having literary merit or a bathroom book, she even denotes which books have been made into movies. But such labels are so subjective as to render them almost meaningless. Even if you wanted to use the labels, it's tough because they are not cross-referenced or indexed in any way. If you want to get a list of all the provocative books or the brainy reads, you have to go through each "mood" chapter book by book and look for the appropriate icon.
Disappointing overall.
Ephron also includes Pat Conroy's Beach Music over The Prince of Tides, another dubious choice as the latter is the far better book (I've read them both and loved them both and as a Conroy fan I can say that with confidence).
Ephron labels books as being provocative, influential, humorous, brainy, challenging, as easy reads or page turners, as having literary merit or a bathroom book, she even denotes which books have been made into movies. But such labels are so subjective as to render them almost meaningless. Even if you wanted to use the labels, it's tough because they are not cross-referenced or indexed in any way. If you want to get a list of all the provocative books or the brainy reads, you have to go through each "mood" chapter book by book and look for the appropriate icon.
Disappointing overall.