Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2024 Read Harder Challenge
Riot Recommendation

40 of Your Favorite Books About Books

S. Zainab Williams

Executive Director, Content

S. Zainab would like to think she bleeds ink but the very idea makes her feel faint. She writes fantasy and horror, and is currently clutching a manuscript while groping in the dark. Find her on Twitter: @szainabwilliams.

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Flatiron Books and Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence.

What would you say to the books in your life? Dear Fahrenheit 451 is librarian Annie Spence’s collection of love letters and break-up notes to the iconic and eclectic books she has encountered over the years.


There are few things in life a bookworm enjoys as much as a book about books. It appears we cannot have too much of a good thing. These are the books that are made for the bookish. We asked you to tell us your favorite books about books and you responded. Here are 40 of your favorites!

End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

The Eyre Affrair by Jasper Fford

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

The Novel by Michael Schmidt

On Writing by Stephen King

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shafer

Matilda by Roald Dahl

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

When Books Went to War by Molly Manning

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

You by Caroline Kepnes

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

Camino Island by John Grisham

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch

Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
Book by Susan Hill

Book Row by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador

A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes

Miniature Books, 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures by Julian Edison and Anne Bromer

Book Lust by Nancy Pearl

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Lesser

Sounder by William H. Armstrong

The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World and Slightly Chipped: Footnotes in Booklore both by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Save

Save

Save