How to be Well Read: A guide to 500 great novels and a handful of literary curiosities

Available
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

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
___________________________________________________________
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.
__________________________________________________

'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

Product Details

Price
£10.99  £10.44
Publisher
Cornerstone
Publish Date
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781529157291

Earn By Promoting Books

Earn money by sharing your favourite books through our Affiliate programme.

Become an Affiliate