It’s Got Character

I really enjoyed the way The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was written.  The author’s style was very conversational and she did a nice job of blending descriptions of her own experience with those of her two “main characters” the book dealer/detective and the thief.  I really enjoyed her attempts to understand why so many people love and collect rare books, including dabbling in collecting herself.  As she concludes, a lot of people build an identity out of the books they collect.  For that reason, I very much enjoyed her descriptions of the collectors she met, the sort of books they collected and the the reasons for their collections.    The book was definitely less of a thriller or a mystery than I though it might be, but there were a few moments of tense anticipation and certainly lots of curiosity about what might happen next.  As Erik Larson said in his own review, it really was “the author’s cozy, quiet style” which kept me turning the pages on this one.  I felt like a friend was relating a story to me.