Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bibliophobia: A Memoir

Bibliophobia: A Memoir

Chihaya, Sarah

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralLiterary CriticismMental Health

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 059359472X
ISBN13: 9780593594728
Publisher: Random House
Published: Feb 4 2025
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.86 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.--Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

Stirring and sparkling.--The Washington Post

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ELECTRIC LIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH: Time, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect Life Ruiners.

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah's deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.

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