ABSTRACT
Over the course of a good many years, during which an insatiable taste for reading books and talking about books has led some of my friends to suggest that I do little else but read, I have come to know a little group of books, not all that impressive as a group, but still worthy of consideration for what they can do for new readers and even non-readers. These books, a few of which I wish to call to your attention, are what I like to call “springboard books.” A springboard book is a book that, more or less against its reader’s will, or at the very least without any real awareness on the part of the reader that something has happened, tosses its reader into another book, and even into a set of books, and beyond that into a whole world of bookish interest.
