I recently read The Book-lover: A Guide to the Best Reading (1885) by James Baldwin. This book begins with numerous quotes about reading and the love of books, before transitioning into a discussion of choosing what to read, ways of reading, and the value of libraries. The latter part of the book is a series of suggested reading lists compiled for different readers and topics.

Baldwin includes many inspiring quotes and thoughts about the importance and joys of reading. I found the lists of suggested reading to be useful, especially because they include many books that are no longer in the general consciousness, even among readers. 

As one example among many, the book Voyage in the Sunbeam: Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1878) by Annie Brassey is mentioned in a section about geography and natural history. This book, previously completely unknown to me, is a chronicle of the author’s 36,000 mile circumnavigation of the globe with her family in the 1870s. It sounds fascinating and is now a possible future read. In this way, the lists can be a useful tool to a curious reader.

“…the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,— in the cloister, perhaps with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,— but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness.” (George Eliot, as quoted by Baldwin)