I had high hopes for this book after my sister began reading it and said she really liked it. I was disappointed.

The format of the book was a little confusing to me. Hunt didn't seem to be able to pick out just one, so it is like a strange mix of telling readers the value of reading certain kinds of books, plus book lists that are not actually straight-up lists with descriptions.

I was very frustrated that she gave spoilers for a few books! My favorite part of reading is not knowing what's going to happen next. I had a book on my to-read list and now that I know how it ends, Hunt has taken all the joy out of my reading it.

Also, this book was written by a Christian and published by a Christian publishing house, so it kind of frustrated me to see books being recommended that have content in them that is objectionable to many Christians. She did at least put a note next to those ones, but with all the many books in the world, why not just omit these reads entirely?

She has one chapter covering genre fiction (all of it) and I thought the recommendations here were quite weak. Many of them were classics in their own right and so nearly everyone has already heard of them. In my opinion, one of the points of reading a book like this is to discover lesser known gems.

However, I liked the fact that this book was published in 2002, because it means there are no current "popular" books cluttering up the text, so I did still come across many books I'm interested in reading. Hunt includes over 800 titles in the book and there is probably something every reader could take away from this. ( )

I wasn't as impressed with this book as I was with her book on children's stories. I found the recommendations to be somewhat scattered and of varying quality. It seemed like more of a "throw a bunch of stuff on the wall and see what sticks" sort of approach rather than a determined and holistic effort. The book also seems more targeted towards non-readers or people who only read fluff, rather than people who do already read a fair amount of decent literature. But still, I think I jotted down some good recommendations, and if you are someone who would like to read more, or read better books, I think this would be a good place to start. ( )