Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir - Couverture rigide

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. Groucho Marx Outside of a Dog is the captivating account of twenty-five books drawn from the fields of literature, psychology and philosophy, and a memoir of a reading self. Tracing the formative role books have played in his life, Rick Gekoski trains the same ironic and analytic eye on these books and their authors as he does on himself. The result is unique: a sustained, witty book dedicated to the proposition that we are what we read. Outside of A Dog might be described as an intellectual bibliomemoir, except that the author regards the noun ‘intellectual’ as a term of abuse. Gekoski’s twenty-five include: Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg; Magnus Hirschfeld Sexual Anomalies and Perversions; Allen Ginsberg, Howl; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Descartes, Meditations; David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding; W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems; F.R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit; Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; R.D. Laing, The Divided Self; Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; A.S. Neill, Summerhill; Roald Dahl, Matilda; Alice Miller, Pictures of a Childhood; A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic; Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy; Peter Wright, Spycatcher; and Rick Gekoski, Staying Up.

A charming memoir ... real intelligence and true feeling and sense of humour. That makes him [Rick] a great companion, and I would be happy, on a long train journey, to sit in between Rick and Matilda, the one very big, the other very small, but made of the same stuff. --Jeanette Winterson, The Times

A wonderful account of a life immersed in books ... which reads like a performance from a seasoned raconteur: extremely funny and seamlessly structured. --Independent on Sunday

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph

Gekoski is as witty and entertaining as he is well-read. --London Review of Books

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph

Great fun. --Penelope Lively, Daily Telegraph

This is an intelligent, consciously disarming book, packed with ideas, jokes, good stories, small triumphs and larger regrets. --Sunday Telegraph