Reviews: May/June 2017

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Books for Living
Will Schwalbe ’84
Knopf, $25.95
Reviewed by Sarah Lyall ’85

Sarah Lyall ’85 is a writer-at-large for the New York Times.

“Reading is the best way I know to learn how to examine your life,” writes Will Schwalbe in the introduction to Books for Living, which is both a whirlwind tour of books that have been especially meaningful to him and an impassioned plea to unplug and slow down in a frenetic, overly device-dependent world.

Schwalbe is a big-hearted, gentle, enthusiastic, and generous guide and the sort of reader you would like to have around in person, so that you can discuss books with him. His taste is catholic and eclectic. Each chapter focuses on a particular book and the (rarely obvious) lessons he’s drawn from it. From The Importance of Living, by the Chinese author Lin Yutang: the case “for loafing, for savoring food and drink, for not striving too much.” From Anne Lamott’s classic guide to writing, Bird By Bird: the virtues of being sensitive. From The Girl on the Train, the bestselling thriller by Paula Hawkins: how, especially in an age of social media, to sort unreliable narrators from reliable ones.

It’s a meandering book, in the best sense, because each chapter takes us in a different, discursive direction. Along the way, we learn things about Schwalbe, as sympathetic a narrator as you could hope for: what he loves, what he thinks about, what has hurt him, what matters. A discussion of David Copperfield, for example, leads him to the subject of important Davids in his life, including his husband and a friend who died young.

Underlying the whole thing is an elegiac yearning for a lost time when life was simpler, when we were not addicted to iPhones and Facebook, when we ruled technology instead of technology ruling us, when we had more time. Sit quietly, Schwalbe says. Think carefully. Live well. Read.