How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson

This book was described in an email from the publicist as "Juno meets Gossip Girl". After reading it, I can tell you that that statement is possibly the most egregious misrepresentation of a book that I have ever heard, in line with those who call The Catcher in the Rye "whiny".
How to Buy a Love of Reading is so far from the self-conscious hipsterizing of Juno¹ or the self-absorbed materialism of Gossip Girl that I can't even begin to imagine where the comparison came from, other than the mind of someone who is desperately trying to appeal to teenagers but who does not, for the most part, understand said teenagers.
How to Buy a Love of Reading is brilliant, if occasionally confusing—an odd sort of meta-novel told from shifting points of view, about the stories we tell, both about other people and about ourselves. It's beautiful, it's unique, it's all kinds of fantastic in ways I can't completely describe.
What it isn't, however, is YA. Though it's about teenagers (if only partly), everything about the way that it's written places it firmly and completely in the Land of Adult Fiction.
But, you know what? Read it anyway. You won't regret it.

Top of the pile.


Knowing that this review is short, but hoping that you'll understand that that's because there are some books that have to be read instead of described, and yours,


1. Don't get your pages in a bunch, guys—I liked Juno.