Books : Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
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by: Francine Prose
List Price: $13.95Amazon.com's Price: $11.16 You Save: $2.79 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.02
EAN: 9780060777050
ISBN: 0060777052
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: April 01, 2007
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: April 10, 2007
Sales Rank: 4940
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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 Francine Prose.
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 their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le CarrĂ© 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 for 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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great concept. Poor execution
The concept is great. The product did not meet the promise. The presentation style was just too artsy-fartsy, like a bunch of undergraduate girls from the Seven Sisters, sitting around saying "Look how smart I am."
I couldn't finish the thing. It would be a great book to sleep to.
Rating:  - a very helpful guide to reading wisely
I'm looking to improve my writing and I came across this book and decided to give it a listen. I was surprised at how helpful and fun it was. The text was very engaging, and you can tell the author put a lot of time into making this book not only informative but also enjoyable. I now look for specific elements when I read and have discovered the things I want to improve in my own writing.
Rating: - Read Well to Write Well
Author Francine Prose's latest non-fiction book Reading Like a Writer, a Guide for People who Love Books and for Those who Want to Write Them, brings to the study to literature exactly what the study of literature needs: literature. She reads a text for what it offers as a unique assemblage of words into sentences into paragraphs into chapters into volumes. The author of a great work of literature creates carefully, deliberate placing each word for meaning and effect.
To study literature ... Read More
Rating:  - Can't finish the book
I'm sorry, but this book is incredibly dry. I can't seem to finish it no matter how hard I try. Don't buy it if you have short attention span.
Rating: - A different slant on reading books from a gifted writer
I really enjoyed Reading Like A Writer and since my son enjoys learning tips from authors, I gave this book to him after reading it.
A great gift item for those who want to, or think they would like to, write a book!
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