Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Loves Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

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Francine Prose

Reading Like a Writer

A Guide for People Who Loves Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Francine Prose

$42.95

Paperback

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English

Harper Collins
01 June 2007

Language: reference & general; Creative writing & creative writing guides

This book presents an inside look at how the professionals read and write. Long before there were creative writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says the author. In ""Reading Like a Writer"", Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov, and discovers why these writers endure. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breath-taking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's ""Middlemarch"". She looks to John Le Carre for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield who offer clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, ""Reading Like a Writer"" will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

By: Francine Prose
Imprint: Harper Collins
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 260mm, Width: 214mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 227g
ISBN: 9780060777050
ISBN 10: 0060777052
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 01 June 2007
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Francine Prose is the author of fourteen books of fiction, including, most recently, A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has taught literature and writing for over twenty years at major universities such as Harvard, Iowa, Columbia, Arizona, and the New School. She is a distinguished critic and essayist. Francine Prose lives in New York City.

Reviews for Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Loves Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

An absolutely necessary addition to the personal library of anyone who is a writer or dreams of writing. --National Public Radio Celebrates the pleasures of close reading and explores the power of well-wrought language...refreshing --Time Out New York Makes a case for the rewards of reading. --Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel Prose knows when to be funny, how to wield examples, and when to stop. --More magazine Readable and illuminating...few...advice volumes offer as much insight into writing as you will find in Francine Prose's latest book --Capital Times Reading Like A Writer is different from the rest of the pack...[Prose's] wise book serves as an ispirational reminder. --Washington Times Sensible, valuable and highly readable, Reading Like a Writer deserves perusal -- both in and out of the classroom. --Kansas City Star Prose's guide to reading and writing belongs on every writer's bookshelf alongside E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Witty...Insightful. --Washington Post Book World a jewel of a companion...engrossing...and...daringly insightful. --Los Angeles Times Prose's little guide will motivate 'people who love books'...Like the great works of fiction, it's a wise and voluble companion. --New York Times Book Review The passages are...subtle and brilliant in their capture of human complexity...Prose is...a skilled...analyst of what makes them so. --San Francisco Chronicle