I think how much you enjoy The Shakespeare Thefts depends a lot on your expectations going into it. If you depend on the quotes on the back of the book, which call it “a literary detective story” or put it in the true crime genre, you’ll be misled (although I’ll be listing it under “True Crime” on my blog because I can’t think of another place to put it). What it is, is an entertaining set of essays on a very specific subject—the Shakespeare First Folios.
In 1996, noted Shakespearean researcher Eric Rasmussen and his colleague Anthony James West put together a team to continue a project that West began 10 years earlier—to find and make a thorough catalog of the distinguishing characteristics of all of the existing Shakespeare First Folios. An important impetus for this catalog was the prevalence of thefts of valuable books. Being able to readily identify a copy makes it much harder for a thief to pass it off as a recent discovery and therefore to sell it legally.
In this book, Rasmussen tells anecdotes about the fate of some of the copies, some of the thefts, experiences finding and accessing copies (a bunch are owned by the Japanese, who will not allow access to them), information about the owners, or just about the folios in general. The book is light, easy and entertaining to read, and it is especially notable for its author’s enthusiasm for the subject.
What? Me Read? 
That sounds really interesting, esp as I’ve just read a big book on the afterlife of First Folios (reviewed on Shiny New Books and my own more personal review published on my blog today).
Oh, good, I’ll have to read it!