Nancy Pearl was raised in Detroit, Michigan and, by her own account, spent much time of her childhood at the public library. Her decision to become a librarian started at the age of 10 with the inspiration of the children’s librarian at her local public library. She credits books and librarians with helping her through a difficult childhood: "It's not too much of an exaggeration...if it's one at all...to say that reading saved my life." She earned her master's in library science at the University of Michigan (1967) and became a children's librarian in her hometown library system before moving on to other libraries. As a hobby, Pearl wrote poetry as a young woman and in 1980 published a story in Redbook magazine called "The Ride to School."

Pearl moved with her husband, professor Joe Pearl, from Detroit to Oklahoma, where she raised two daughters (Eily Raman and Katie) while earning another master's degree, this one in history. She worked in an independent bookstore as well as the Tulsa City-County Library System. Craig Buthod, who worked with Pearl in Tulsa before he became the deputy director of the Seattle Public Library, recruited her to come to Seattle in 1993. She originally traveled to Seattle without her husband for four years, until he reached retirement age and joined her. Pearl said the decision to join the library was one of the few times in her life when she instinctively knew she was doing the right thing.

In Seattle, she became something of a local celebrity, founding the pioneering and much-imitated "If All Seattle Read The Same Book" project, appearing regularly on public radio recommending books, and eventually becoming executive director of the library system's Washington Center for the Book. She also taught a course at the University of Washington Information School called "Book Lust 101." The course teaches future librarians how various literary genres work and what draws people into a book.

Pearl achieved broader fame with Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason, (2003) her "Readers' Advisory" guide to good reading, and the sequel More Book Lust (summer 2005) with the same subtitle, which received much acclaim ("a sprightly follow-up"), and was chosen by the Today Show as one of their book-club selections. In March, 2007, she released a book of recommendations for children and teens called Book Crush.

Part of Pearl’s success with the public hinges on the idea of connecting with the reader without pretense. Pearl is not forgetting her academic background. However, she is finding material that engages the reader and gives the reader permission to enjoy the material of their choice even if it is not the standard reading that the academics say we should all know. Pearl states that readers become more demanding about the quality of material that they read as they read more material. For Pearl, it seems that the most important aspect of reading a book is to enjoy it. If a reader is not enjoying a book, then she has a rule for when to stop reading that book.

Pearl's approach to enjoying reading is the Rule of 50 which states "If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages." In her books, Pearl recommends 3,400 titles, grouped in chapters such as "Horror for Sissies" and "Good Reading from the Government (Really!)."

Pearl's program, "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book" was a concept to promote literacy and to encourage community. The program was hugely successful and discussed across the nation. Many other communities began to offer similar One City One Book programs based on Ms. Pearl’s success. Her appearance on local public radio fueled her popularity as her listeners began to find books that they actually enjoyed reading. Ms. Pearl’s knowledge of books and ability to recommend the right book to the right reader, led her to gather her thoughts from her own reading, writing, and speaking into a collection of book reviews. She began publishing books about books.

Pearl says that the largest problem facing librarianship today is that "we have yet to balance the three important functions a library has in a community: information access, providing people with books and material for their recreational learning and reading, and offering quality programs for our patrons. The pendulum swung way over on the information access side and has yet to right itself. We graduate people from library schools (information schools) knowing how to build a website, but not knowing how to recommend a book to someone who comes in asking for something good to read."

Pearl has had her face on an American Library Association poster and has received numerous awards. Her book reviews appear in The Seattle Times, Booklist, Library Journal, and on the radio on KUOW-FM Seattle, and KWGS Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 2003 she received an unusual honor when the Seattle-based company Accoutrements created a librarian action figure in her likeness to be sold in their Seattle store, Archie McPhee. Featuring Pearl with a stack of books and a finger to her lips, the doll's "push to shush" action was popular with some librarians and dismaying to others who felt that the doll reinforced librarian stereotypes. Pearl herself said that the shushing aspect of the action figure would determine "which librarians have a sense of humor."

A tribute band called 'The Nancy Pearls' gave their debut bluegrass performance on the Mitchell Library rooftop (Sydney, Australia) on 17 December 2004.

Awards

• 1997 Open Book Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference
• 1998 Totem Business and Professional Women's "Woman of Achievement Award"
• Library Journal's Fiction Reviewer of the Year (1998)
• Allie Beth Martin Award from the American Library Association (2001)
• Washington (State) Humanities Award (2003)
• 2004 Brava Award from Women's University Club in Seattle, recognizing "women of exceptional ability in the greater Seattle area";
• Louis Shores--Greenwood Publishing Group Award, 2004 for excellence in book reviewing
• Annual award from the Women's National Book Association (2004-2005)

Ontario Library Association Media and Communications Award (2004)