Bloom, the great critic, offers a guide to reading deeply, not for information but for wisdom, for what Shakespeare called the augmentation of consciousness. He moves through short stories, poems, novels, plays, selecting works that change how we see ourselves. The prose is passionate and personal; Bloom reads as if his life depended on it, because he believed it did. The canon he defends has been attacked; he defended it anyway. Reading well, he insists, is a selfish pleasure that makes us more human. The book is a testament. Bloom is telling us what to read before we die. He has now died. The books remain.