Books That Saved My Life

A profound, funny and uplifting collection of reminiscences about a life in books.

Here are forty texts to read at some stage in your life: forty texts that can enrich you in all manner of ways.

Some are recent, like Harry Potter; some ancient, like Homer and Lao Tzu. There are memoirs (Nelson Mandela), poetry (Les Murray) and many of the world’s great novels, from George Eliot’s Middlemarch to Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Our guide, in entertaining short essays about personal encounters with each of these works, is Michael McGirr: schoolteacher and former priest, reviewer of hundreds of novels and lifelong lover of literature. His humour and insight shine through in stories that connect the texts he has selected with each other, and connect us to them.

Never prescriptive, and often very funny, this book is an invitation to reflect on—and share with others—the extraordinary gift of reading. ‘It is a gift that is taking me a lifetime to unwrap,’ McGirr writes. ‘The excitement has never worn off.’

Great literature is thrilling. It will feed your hungry mind and take your heart on a journey. It will help you on the path of one of life’s most elusive and hard-won freedoms, freedom from the ego.

Michael McGirr is the bestselling author of Snooze: The Lost Art of Sleep, Things You Get for Free and Bypass. He has reviewed almost one thousand books for various newspapers; his short fiction has appeared in Australian and overseas publications; and he has been a publisher of Eureka Street and fiction editor at Meanjin.

He teaches at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne.

‘McGirr is an inspired synthesiser, serious in intent even while riotous in execution.’
Eureka Street on Snooze: The Lost Art of Sleep

‘His anecdotes will make you laugh out loud. If you haven’t read any books by him before, seek them out’.
Good Reading

‘Readers will come for the humour, but they’ll stay for McGirr’s haunting memories…brimming with lyrical insight and earthy humour, this debut is a rare treat’.
Publishers Weekly on Things You Get For Free

O colectie profunda, amuzanta si inaltatoare de reminiscente despre o viata din carti. Iata 40 de texte de citit intr-o etapa a vietii tale: 40 de texte care te pot imbogati in toate felurile. Unele sunt recente, precum Harry Potter; unele antice, precum Homer si Lao Tzu. Exista memorii (Nelson Mandela), poezie (Les Murray) si multe dintre marile romane ale lumii, de la Middlemarch-ul lui George Eliot la Iubitul lui Toni Morrison. profesoara si fost preot, recenzent al sutelor de romane si iubitor de literatura pe tot parcursul vietii.