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Lewis Buzbee

Goodreads Author

Born

in San Jose, California, The United States

Website

http://www.lewisbuzbee.com

Genre

Children's Books, Nonfiction, Literature & Fiction

Member Since

October 2008

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My new novel, Diver, will be in bookstores in March of 2025.

Lewis Buzbee is a fourth generation California native who began writing at the age of 15, after reading the first chapter of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Since then he’s been a dishwasher, a bookseller, a publisher, a caterer, a bartender, and a teacher of writing. He and his wife, the poet Julie Bruck, live with their daughter Maddy in San Francisco, just half a block from Golden Gate Park. His books for adults include The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, Fliegelman’s Desire, After the Gold Rush, and First to Leave Before the Sun.

His first novel for middle grade readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, was published in 2008 by Feiwel and Friends and was selected for these honors: ...more

Combine Editions
Lewis Buzbee’s books

Average rating: 3.77 · 3,807 ratings · 792 reviews · 10 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History 3.82 avg rating — 2,832 ratings — published 2002 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Steinbeck's Ghost 3.67 avg rating — 352 ratings — published 2008 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee (Goodreads Author), Greg Ruth (Illustrations) 3.59 avg rating — 301 ratings — published 2009 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bridge of Time 3.46 avg rating — 176 ratings — published 2012 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Blackboard: A Personal History of the Classroom 3.57 avg rating — 94 ratings — published 2014 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Diver 4.79 avg rating — 19 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	After the Gold Rush 4.36 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2006	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fliegelman's Desire 3.75 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1990 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rattle #88, Summer 2025: Tribute to Food Poems by The Rattle Foundation, Alan C. Fox (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Timothy Green (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 4.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2025	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	First to Leave Before the Sun by Lewis Buzbee (Goodreads Author), Dave Tilton really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2007	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Lewis’s Recent Updates

Lewis Buzbee and 1 other person liked Michael's review of Diver: "Diver by Lewis Buzbee Published 2024 Format: print ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “You told me every single one of your stories. Whenever and wherever I asked to hear them. Though mostly when it was the two of us alone together. In your favorite bar or late at night in the f" Read more of this review »
Sep 05, 2025 10:58AM · see review
Lewis Buzbee and 7 other people liked Nathanimal's review of Diver: "I enjoyed taking this deep dive with Lewis Buzbee, a lushly descriptive but careful writer, as he plumbed the depths of his childhood, his experience of his father, his inherited family stories, in this project of near-memoir. Especially interesting " Read more of this review »
Sep 05, 2025 10:58AM · see review
Lewis Buzbee liked Jen McConnell's review of Diver: "What a great book. I loved the multiple points of view to see other sides of the characters - Mac’s actions as an adult are more understandable (not necessarily forgivable) when we see what his life was like growing up. His career as a diver and the " Read more of this review »
Apr 27, 2025 12:35PM · see review

More of Lewis's books…

Quotes by Lewis Buzbee (?)

“My bookstore obsession grew to the point where I'd search for new shops during family trips, as though that were the reason for our travel.”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

tags: books, bookstores

45 likes

“How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

tags: ebooks, passion, reading

44 likes

“The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

40 likes

See all Lewis Buzbee's quotes »

Polls

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Time to vote for July's book. The poll will stay open until June 17th. Thanks for voting and good luck to all the nominees.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle

5 votes, 33.3%

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

4 votes, 26.7%

West by Carys Davies

2 votes, 13.3%

Awake by Harald Voetmann

2 votes, 13.3%

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History by Lewis Buzbee

1 vote, 6.7%

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

1 vote, 6.7%

15 total votes

comments and details

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Lewis’s Quotes

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

tags: art, books

2330 likes

“The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years.
Roald Dahl”
― roald dahl

125 likes

“When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you see something else. Then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.”
― Roald Dahl

tags: on-writing-a-book

146 likes