ENTERTAINMENT

There are, one may infer from Larry McMurtry's 38th solo volume, four kinds of people who love second-hand bookshops: readers, collectors, dealers and scouts. Writers, which he certainly is, do not always subscribe, for they often see a used-book store as a kind of mortuary, a place where careers often go, too soon, to be buried.

He fits the other categories, though, for he is first and foremost a bookman, and he implies that his writing has merely been a handy enabler of that more profound love.

This newest peek into the life of a Texas favorite son author is no less intriguing or less frustrating than have been previous autobiographies. Mr. McMurtry's private life is often the subject of speculation and rumor, gossip and apocryphal tales. Although notoriously reclusive by reputation (he truly is not), his casual, breezy writing style of memoir reveals a somewhat shy, naturally self-effacing but deeply intellectual and sensitively thoughtful individual.

Books is about the vital role reading has played in his life. He begins with the first 19 volumes given to him when he was a child growing up in a bookless household in a nearly bookless town and traces his growing love of reading throughout the years. He details more than four decades of book buying, selling and reading, finally bringing home, literally and figuratively, the culmination of a life's devotion to the published word, adding more than 300,000 volumes to the still nearly bookless wilderness surrounding Archer City, Texas.

There he bought five downtown buildings and stocked them floor to ceiling with second-hand volumes. Casual readers and serious dealers are welcome to roam the seemingly endless stacks and make selections. At the same time, he cultivates and enjoys his 27,000-volume personal library, books that continue to bring him special pleasure.

There is much more packed into this slender, chatty volume; not all of it is entirely pleasing. His commentary on the moneyed and the very rich, the eccentric, foolish, famous and notorious of society smacks occasionally of name-dropping or bragging. But he also offers his less-than-subtle views on the importance of reading, of books as the only meaningful maps of our culture that strike home in an Internet-dominated world.

The prose has a relaxed, disorganized feel, as if he's rummaging through his memory, randomly selecting anecdotes from his bookman's life with which to entertain and, perhaps, inform. But there's also a sharp barb or two, and here and there an insight into his personality and life as a successful author.

Fans of Mr. McMurtry's work will find familiar traits. Short chapters, some only a paragraph long, rule, as does his avoidance of strict chronology. Devotees will be frustrated because more of his personal life isn't revealed. His purpose in writing the book, though, was to "raise ghosts," and his intention was to keep it "personality free."

He has certainly done the former; as for the latter, that will have to be judged by the reader.

Novelist Clay Reynolds is Professor of Arts & Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. His latest work of fiction is Sandhill County Lines.

Larry McMurtry

(Simon and Schuster, $24)

Available Tuesday