The Kiko's House Book Club

Do you love to read books as much as I do? Probably not, because I'm a reading fanatic (as opposed to being a bibliophile, someone who fancies books for their own sake).

But if you do crack the occasional tome somewhere other than the bathroom and even read it to the very last page, then you should join the Kiko's House Book Club.

An eclectic cast of characters stop by Kiko's House. I don't know the vast majority of you by name, but I do know that you hail from some 25 countries at last count (*), so the range of your reading tastes is bound to broad.

Here's how the Kiko's House Book Club works:

Whenever you read a good book or may have read one in the past that you'd recommend to your fellow visitors, e-mail me at kikokimba@gmail.com

Include in the body of the e-mail the book's title, author and type (fiction, nonfiction, bio, advice, etc.) and a few words about why you enjoyed and would recommend it. Please identify yourself by name and country, but if you prefer to be an Anonymoose, that's quite all right.

I'm a huge believer in an endangered species known as the librarysaurus. In fact, my place of gainful employment is a subspecies known as a librarysaurus gigantus that has nearly 3 million open stacks books and another 200,000 or so in the rare book and manuscript unit where I toil. I'll run your book recommendations through a marvelous database called WorldCat, which will give visitors to Kiko's House some idea of how widely available the recommended books are at libraries around the world.

Finally, I'll post your recommendations from time to time.

By the by, my favorite book recommendation came from Albert Einstein, who besides being the patron saint of Kiko's House, famously remarked that:

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never place a hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.

(*) The countries are: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Venezuela.