Sasha's Reviews > Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books

Right in the first chapter of the book, Lesser drops major spoilers for virtually all of Henry James, The Leopard, Wolf Hall, The Brothers Karamazov, The Redbreast, Rosanna and Os Maias. She does driveby spoilings, just mentioning in passing the end of two books she's not even talking about. She does stealth spoiling - like this: "Sometimes the killer is even the butler, as in [name of book]", so the spoil comes before the title. It's like she has a pathological urge to spoil books for you.

And it'd be one thing if she also said interesting things about books - then this would be an okay book for people who don't mind spoilers - but she frankly doesn't. The whole thing feels like a first draft. It's rambly, self-indulgent, and never comes to a point. You know what it reminds me of? You ever start to read a Goodreads review and you're like "This is pretty well-written," but then it just keeps going on and on and you give up because you don't really care that much? It's like that. Just an overlong Goodreads review that got way off track, written by someone who likes to hear herself type.

This is a shitty book. Don't read it.