How to Be Well Read

Sutherland, John

£10.99

John Sutherland, the critic and professor of literature, personally selects his favourite 500 novels, and provides witty and informed essays about them. They include ‘War & Peace’, ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Charlie & The Chocolate Factory’.

Out of stock

Publish Date: 14/07/2022

Description

‘Generous, enjoyable and well informed.’ Observer

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.’ The Times
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Ranging all the way from Aaron’s Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written.

He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid £20 for Black Beauty? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces.

Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate.
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Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction.’ Mail on Sunday

‘A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes… chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise.’ Times Literary Supplement

Additional information

Weight 383 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 33 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

576

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

011.73 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K