Fourth Estate
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This Fourth Estate paperback edition published in 2015
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
Copyright © Andy Miller 2014
Cover design © Leo Nickolls
The Andy Miller asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007255764
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007375257
Version: 2015-02-10
For Alex, love Dad
‘I long to reach my home and see the day of my return. It is my never-failing wish.’
Homer, The Odyssey
‘What’s the point of going out? We’re just going to wind up back here anyway.’
Homer Simpson
Contents
Exclusive Excerpts from the Blog of ‘Leonard Bast’
Appendix One: The List of Betterment
Appendix Two: The Hundred Books Which Influenced Me Most
Appendix Three: Books I Still Intend to Read
Let me begin on the back foot and linger there awhile.
This book is entitled The Year of Reading Dangerously. It is the true story of the year I spent reading some of the greatest and most famous books in the world, and two by Dan Brown. I am proud of what I achieved in that year and how the experience changed my life – really altered its course – which is why I am about to spend several hundred pages telling you about it. However, the book you are holding has not always been called The Year of Reading Dangerously. I started out with that title but then had second thoughts. For a while The Miller’s Tales seemed like it might work. After that, I briefly considered Up! From Sloth, then The Body in the Library. Other possibilities included Hunting Paper Tigers, Real Men Don’t Read Books, Memoirs of a Born-again