‘Charmingly provocative’ Observer
‘A smorgasbord of delights’ Irish Times
'Addictive' The Spectator
In my case, reading has always served a dual purpose. In a positive sense, it offers sustenance, enlightenment, the bliss of fascination. In a negative sense, it is a means of withdrawal, of inhabiting a reality quarantined from one that often comes across as painful, alarming or downright distasteful. In the former sense, reading is like food; in the latter, it is like drugs or alcohol.
In Autobibliography, Rob Doyle recounts a year spent rereading fifty-two books – from the Dhammapada and Marcus Aurelius, via The Tibetan Book of the Dead and La Rochefoucauld, to Robert Bolaño and Svetlana Alexievich – as well as the memories they trigger and the reverberations they create. It is a record of a year in reading, and of a lifetime of books.
Provocative, intelligent and funny, it is a brilliant introduction to a personal canon by one of the most original and exciting writers around. It is a book about books, a book about reading, and a book about a writer. It is an autobibliography.
Reader Reviews
'Enlightening, engaging and fun'
'A *superb* gift for any bookish friend or relative with an eye for the human comedy'
'A page-turner ... bright and fresh'
Publisher: Swift Press
ISBN: 9781800750524
Number of pages: 256
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
'Addictive self-portrait ... Doyle is sharp and funny as a critic, and morbidly candid about his own life ... we find a writer living and thinking his way to the frontiers of human society, rather than, as in so much contemporary writing, at its cosy core' - Nicholas Harris, The Spectator
'Maddening and beguiling in equal measure ... a brilliant writer ... absolutely essential' - Steven Long, The Crack Magazine
'A readers’ book and a writer’s dream ... Doyle’s words are touching, filled with emotion, and brutally honest ... this bookworm knows his stuff and you should be consulting him regularly, or better yet just buy Autobibliography as your Christmas guidebook for your own 52 book challenge for 2022 ... Rob Doyle is the perfect bookshop companion; he will give you a completely concise review and share why he suggested the book in the first place, and it made me genuinely excited about the prospect' - Rebecca George, Nation.Cymru
'I adore Rob Doyle. One of the great wordsmiths of our age' - Dan Stevens
'Doyle’s prose is virtuosic and exuberant ... strangely compelling' - Michael Delgado, inews
‘Charmingly provocative’ - Observer
‘A smorgasbord of delights’ - Irish Times
‘A captivating journey out of our literary comfort zones’ - Irish Independent
‘Addictive … a writer living and thinking his way to the frontiers of human society’ - The Spectator
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