Lauren Leto’s book Judge a Book By Its Lover is one of the fastest reads I’ve read this year… And it’s all about books.

The book feels like it’s collected from a bunch of blog posts, which it may be I haven’t checked. The first half of the book focuses on the “social” part of books and reading. Lots of pieces in the vein of “how to pick someone in a bookshop” kind of thing or “what you’re reading says about you”.

It felt like it was aimed at female readers and I was close to putting it down and giving it a 2-star review, but I stuck it out and am glad I did.
Once I hit the single largest section of the book “How To Fake Reading An Author” the book really got good. Leto is very well read and funny as well.

That section alone of How to Judge a Book By Its Lover was worth my time with the book. It was crammed with smart conversational observations about well-known authors and their works. And then I got to the essay about leto’s family and her grandmother. It was fantastic. (Ms. Leto, if by chance the Google long-tail-search-algorithmic-gods every bring you to this site, my choppy review can be summed up simply – more like this essay please. I’d buy that.)

I’m recommending this book to my female friends who like books and reading. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.