B & ME: A True Story of Literary Arousal ~ Book Review

Title : B & ME: A True Story of Literary Arousal
Author: J.C. Hallman
Pages : 277

About Author-
J.C. Hallman is the bestselling author of The Chess Artist , The Devil Is a Gentleman, In Utopia and other books. He studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh , the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.

I received a copy of  'B & ME: A True Story of Literary Arousal' for the review purpose. 

Synopsis:
"Nearly twenty-five years ago, Nicholson Baker published U and I, the fretful and hand wringing—but also groundbreaking—tale of his literary relationship with John Updike. U and I inspired a whole sub-genre of engaging, entertaining writing about reading, but what no story of this type has ever done is tell its tale from the moment of conception, that moment when you realize that there is a writer out there in the world that you must read—so you read them. B & Me is that story, the story of J.C. Hallman discovering and reading Nicholson Baker, and discovering himself in the process."

To be honest, I had no idea that this book is the story of J.C. Hallman discovering literary relationship with Nicholson Baker. I am not into literature and didn't know about Nicholson Baker or John Updike. I was kind of fascinated with the title of the book, B & Me sounded really different. I wanted to read the book with such an abbreviated title.

You will find it really interesting if you are into literature. First, I found it bit heavy and was not able to really comprehend. Author was telling about his personal life and about Nicholson Baker. But, as I started going through pages, the book started making sense to me. 

My favorite is when someone asked James Salter a question.
"What is the purpose of literature"
"What?" Salter said. "What's the question?"
"What is the purpose - of literature"
"What is the purpose of literature" ."What is the purpose of literature"

"You need an expert for a question like that," he said.

In this book, J.C. Hallman is discovering Nicholson Baker and in this process is also going through his own life. This is a book about self discovery. I liked Hallman's style of writing. His style of writing coupled with his real life examples has made this book completely different. I would recommend this book for literature lovers and anyone who wants to know about Nicholson Baker.

Disclaimer- I received no monetary compensation for this post. I got a copy of book for review purpose.Opinions expressed are 100% of my own and not influenced by anyone.I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.