The list is all about books about books and reading. Some are about or set in bookstores, others are perhaps about literary societies or book clubs, many are about libraries, and some are just about people who really love reading — you get the point. Overflowing in fun literary references and cozy nooks to read, it’s a great list to dive into if you’re looking for something to indulge the book lover in you.
I’ll be updating this list of Books about Books over time. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to drop a comment below. Happy reading, book lovers!
First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen
What It's About: Publication Date: September 29, 2015
What It's About: Publication Date: September 29, 2015
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
What It's About: Publication Date: February 16, 2010
What It's About: Publication Date: February 16, 2010
Murder by the Book (Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery #1)
What It's About: Publication Date: October 30, 2018
What It's About: Publication Date: October 30, 2018
By Book or By Crook (Lighthouse Library Mystery #1)
What It's About: Publication Date: February 3, 2015
What It's About: Publication Date: February 3, 2015
The Case of the Missing Books (Mobile Library Mystery #1)
What It's About: Publication Date: January 2, 2007
What It's About: Publication Date: January 2, 2007
Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
What It's About: Publication Date: September 29, 2009
What It's About: Publication Date: September 29, 2009
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
What It's About: Publication Date: September 17, 2009
What It's About: Publication Date: September 17, 2009
The Bookshop on the Corner (Scottish Bookshop #1)
What It's About: Publication Date: September 20, 2016
What It's About: Publication Date: September 20, 2016
The Bookshop Book
What It's About: Every bookshop has a story.
We’re not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops...Publication Date: October 2, 2014
What It's About: Every bookshop has a story.
We’re not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops...Publication Date: October 2, 2014
The Last Bookaneer
What It's About:
book'a-neer' (bŏŏk'kå-nēr'), n. a literary pirate; an individual capable of doing all that must be done in the universe of books that publishers, authors, and readers must not have a part in
London, 1890—Pen Davenport is the most infamous bookaneer in Europe. A master of disguise, he makes his living stalking harbors, coffeehouses, and print shops for the latest manuscript to steal...Publication Date: April 28, 2015
What It's About:
book'a-neer' (bŏŏk'kå-nēr'), n. a literary pirate; an individual capable of doing all that must be done in the universe of books that publishers, authors, and readers must not have a part in
London, 1890—Pen Davenport is the most infamous bookaneer in Europe. A master of disguise, he makes his living stalking harbors, coffeehouses, and print shops for the latest manuscript to steal...Publication Date: April 28, 2015
The Jane Austen Book Club
What It's About: The Extraordinary New York Times Bestseller In California's central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing...Publication Date: April 22, 2004
What It's About: The Extraordinary New York Times Bestseller In California's central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing...Publication Date: April 22, 2004
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
What It's About: Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen...
Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books...Publication Date: September 4, 2013
What It's About: Once you let a book into your life, the most unexpected things can happen...
Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist—even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books...Publication Date: September 4, 2013
The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses)
What It's About: A whimsical, moving novel about a retirement home for literary legends who spar, conjure up new stories, and almost magically change the lives of the people around them
Alfonse Carducci was a literary giant who lived his life to excess—lovers, alcohol, parties, and literary rivalries. But now he’s come to the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly to spend the remainder of his days among kindred spirits: the publishing industry’s nearly gone but never forgotten greats...Publication Date: June 12, 2018
What It's About: A whimsical, moving novel about a retirement home for literary legends who spar, conjure up new stories, and almost magically change the lives of the people around them
Alfonse Carducci was a literary giant who lived his life to excess—lovers, alcohol, parties, and literary rivalries. But now he’s come to the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly to spend the remainder of his days among kindred spirits: the publishing industry’s nearly gone but never forgotten greats...Publication Date: June 12, 2018
The Diary of a Bookseller
What It's About: Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ...
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky...Publication Date: January 1, 2017
What It's About: Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ...
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky...Publication Date: January 1, 2017
The Princess Bride
What It's About: What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears...Publication Date: September 1, 1973
What It's About: What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears...Publication Date: September 1, 1973
The Library at the Edge of the World (Finfarran Peninsula #1)
What It's About: Publication Date: June 2, 2016
What It's About: Publication Date: June 2, 2016
The Bookshop
What It's About: In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop—the only bookshop—in the seaside town of Hardborough.
By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors’ lives, she crosses Mrs...Publication Date: September 15, 1997
What It's About: In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop—the only bookshop—in the seaside town of Hardborough.
By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors’ lives, she crosses Mrs...Publication Date: September 15, 1997
Confessions of a Bookseller
What It's About: "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?"
Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms.
Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices...Publication Date: August 29, 2019
What It's About: "Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?"
Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms.
Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices...Publication Date: August 29, 2019
The Night Bookmobile
What It's About: First serialised in the Guardian, The Night Bookmobile tells the story of a young woman who one night encounters a mysterious disappearing mobile library that happens to stock every book she has ever read. Seeing her history and her most intimate self in this library, she embarks on a search for the bookmobile...Publication Date: February 18, 2024
What It's About: First serialised in the Guardian, The Night Bookmobile tells the story of a young woman who one night encounters a mysterious disappearing mobile library that happens to stock every book she has ever read. Seeing her history and her most intimate self in this library, she embarks on a search for the bookmobile...Publication Date: February 18, 2024
The Lending Library
What It's About: For fans of Jane Green and Loretta Nyhan, a heartwarming debut novel about a daydreamer who gives her town, and herself, an amazing gift: a lending library in her sunroom.
When the Chatsworth library closes indefinitely, Dodie Fairisle loses her sanctuary. How is a small-town art teacher supposed to cope without the never-ending life advice and enjoyment that books give her? Well, when she’s as resourceful and generous as Dodie, she turns her sunroom into her very own little lending library...Publication Date: July 1, 2020
What It's About: For fans of Jane Green and Loretta Nyhan, a heartwarming debut novel about a daydreamer who gives her town, and herself, an amazing gift: a lending library in her sunroom.
When the Chatsworth library closes indefinitely, Dodie Fairisle loses her sanctuary. How is a small-town art teacher supposed to cope without the never-ending life advice and enjoyment that books give her? Well, when she’s as resourceful and generous as Dodie, she turns her sunroom into her very own little lending library...Publication Date: July 1, 2020
The Last Book Party
What It's About: A propulsive tale of ambition and romance, set in the publishing world of 1980’s New York and the timeless beaches of Cape Cod.
In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen is an aspiring writer languishing in a low-level assistant job, unable to shake the shadow of growing up with her brilliant brother...Publication Date: July 9, 2019
What It's About: A propulsive tale of ambition and romance, set in the publishing world of 1980’s New York and the timeless beaches of Cape Cod.
In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen is an aspiring writer languishing in a low-level assistant job, unable to shake the shadow of growing up with her brilliant brother...Publication Date: July 9, 2019
I love this. Thanks for putting it together!
thanks kristin! :)
Love this very much. Thanks for curating this. I have read a few from this.
You have really inspired me. I think I’ll consolidate one list as well
Thanks for compiling my favorite kinds of books!
thanks for checking it out, happy reading!
Wow, what a post… I only have a physical of the bookshop book by Jen l that my wife got me and it was signed by the author too! What is nice about that book is that we have been to about four of the many bookshops mentioned in there… So many to go to still!
oh that’s cute that you’ve been able to visit those bookshops! thank you for sharing and thanks for dropping by! :)
The Shadow of the Wind is my favorite book! It is the main reason I want to become an author! Good post :)
thank you, and yes I absolutely love that book as well!
I have ready a few already and many are on my TBR. Thanks for helping me add a few more to my never-ending TBR list.
I was scrolling and scrolling searching for the Starless Sea because I knew there was just no way it wouldn’t be on this list. Love that book. I recently bought The Library of the Unwritten too and I’m very excited to read it. This blog post popped into my awareness at the perfect time, I was just thinking of making an Instagram or blog post themed around books about books!
Thank you for such great post. I believe the 2021 book by Anthony Doerr belongs on the list. I’m sure all your readers fall in love with CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, as early as the first 10 pages!
Thanks very much for taking the time for putting this together. A book I feel is most worthy of inclusion is the book “The Door-to-Door Bookstore” by Carsten Henn. A book that has just restored some of my lost faith in humanity.