Reviews of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop
“A fascinating, detailed account of how book selling has come to be what it is, with detours to Alexandria, Classical Rome, and sixth-century China, among other places.”—San Francisco Weekly
“When [Lewis Buzbee] describes walking into a bookstore, feasting his eyes on the walls lined with stock, gravitating to the tables stacked with new issues and then discovering some volume so irresistibly beautiful he just has to buy it, you realize that he just doesn't love books, he’s besotted.” —✩Publishers Weekly
“Both anecdotal and eloquent, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is a tribute to those who crave the cozy confines of a bookshop, a place to be ‘alone among others’ and savor a bountiful literary buffet.”—✩Booklist
“A leisurely stroll with a knowledgeable but unpretentious companion through some very interesting aisles.” —Kirkus
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is a delectable feast for the reader. Like a great meal, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop provides the reader many types of pleasure. Each chapter offers its particular moments of insight and enchantment—it is difficult to pick which chapter offered the greatest satisfaction. I cannot remember when I have read a book with such delight.”—Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookstore
“Lewis Buzbee’s heartwarming book—an ode to the raptures of browsing, and a tribute to the ingenuities of vending—rekindles and rationalizes my love for bookstores, those sometimes ramshackle dream palaces. A graceful amalgam of memoir and history, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop celebrates bibliophilic pleasures that I hope will never go out of style.” —Wayne Koestenbaum
“A riveting, lurid account of the author’s first tremulous encounters with ‘book lust’ and his helpless descent into full-blown bibliomania. A cautionary tale every parent in America should heed, and a big fat naughty pleasure for book nuts everywhere.”—August Kleinzahler
“Buzbee is able to turn a somewhat obvious topic—writer’s love for books—into an enchanting read.”—TimeOut Chicago
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop serves as an inspiring celebration of browsing through the sort of cozy store that’s sadly rare these days.”—Time Out New York
"Buzbee summarizes the developing culture of literacy in passionate, readable prose."—Chronogram
“[A] warm-hearted tribute to the joys of the independent bookstore.”—Satisfaction
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is a smart survey of book lore and the book biz, but it’s also a quiet treat. You may just want to get that quilt, the cat and the teacup and curl up with it.”—The San Jose Mercury News
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop offers many pleasures when you dip inside especially the pleasure of sharing the world of books with others who share your passion.” —Grass Roots Reader
“Buzbee’s book is the story of that unending bonding which began when the first unknown scholar poured over a papyrus scroll and thus unwittingly started a tradition.”—The Telegraph (Calcutta, India)
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is a compulsively readable memoir/history about and for compulsive readers, those afflicted with book lust.”—Cheboygan Daily Tribune
