OUR FAVOURITE BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS

Posted on March 13 2023

Who doesn’t love a book about a book? There’s something about the passion for literature on those pages that draws us right in and has us unable to put down the book. We thought it would be fun to recommend you some of our top books about books!

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is a staple of the sub-genre, a literary masterpiece of a book. Following a young boy who is brought to the very secret Cemetery of Forgotten books and allowed to pick one book of his own. This starts an obsession with this book and its author, an obsession that takes him down a very dangerous path as he uncovers a hidden mystery. Set in the streets of Barcelona, this beautiful novel is about a love of reading, family, romance, morality and the power of an author.

The Book of the Most Precious Substance, Sara Gran

This book is like a sexy version of The Shadow of the Wind. We follow our main character who is a rare book dealer living a life she feels very stuck in. When she comes across a book that could help her, she decides to embark on a journey to track it down. But this book isn’t like any other, it’s a very dark occult book on sex magic and the journey to find it isn’t an easy, or safe one. Fair warning, this book has a lot of dark and heavy topics, so please check out the trigger warnings if you feel you need to.

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, H. G. Parry

How would you like to be able to bring the characters on your pages to life… literally? This book follows a main character whose brother can bring the characters from books out of their pages and into the real world and whilst he only uses this for his own curiosity and conversation, there are others who don’t have the same intentions and a danger ensues that our main character, his brother and a series of your favourite classic characters must come together to stop. This book is THE ONE if you want to read about books that exist in our world and see the characters you know and love come to life in a whole new way.

The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean
Would you like to be able to eat a book to consume its story? Because that is very much reality for the characters in The Book Eaters. Their form of food, their nutrition and life source, is books. However this story follows a mother’s journey to protect her son, who instead of eating books, needs to eat human minds to survive. This book follows their story as they try to hide away from The Family, a clan of book eaters of see her son as a threat.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix

This starts off being about a young woman’s search for her father and quickly turns into something much grander and epic. Set in a slightly alternative London in the 80’s, we follow our main character as she discovers a world she never knew existed, of left-handed (the fighting ones) and right-handed (the intellectual ones) booksellers. They are an extended magical family who protect the modern world from the mythic and legendary Old World… oh and they also run quite a few bookshops. Queue and adventure involving our main character and a few others we meet along the way too.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

This book is for bibliophiles what Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is for gamers. A beautiful, wholesome and at times emotional story following a man grieving the loss of his wife, trying to keep the bookshop they owned together afloat when a baby is left in his shop without any sign of the parents. Queue a journey of discovery, love, family and of course, books. This is a book about books to its very core, a staple of the sub-genre!

We’d love to know which books about books are top of your list, let us know below!

• The Paper and Word Team •

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