Legendary former New York Times critic and bestselling author Michiko Kakutani once again brings her wealth of knowledge and passion about books to eager readers--but this time with her personal selections of more than 140 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that have had a profound effect on her life. "Why do we love books so much," she asks in her introduction. "These magical brick-sized objects are actually tiny time machines that can transport us back to the past to learn the lessons of history, and forward to the future, where we may be granted glimpses of more ideal worlds, or more dystopian ones that serve as dark mirrors of what we could become, should we misuse the gifts of science, or fail to protect our ideals and our planet." Books have always been her escape and sanctuary, the characters of some novels feeling so real to her childhood self that she worried they might leap out of the pages at night if she left the book