Post by zeldafitzgerald on May 7, 2007 6:43:14 GMT -5
I just finished "Reading Like a Writer" by Francine Prose, and I cannot sing its praises loud enough. It's incredible.
It is a must read for anyone who wants to write, and also (most important for this group) anyone who loves to read.
The books teaches us how to slow down and appreciate every element that makes for good writing - words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture, and more. She uses plenty of passages to exemplify her points, and breaks each passages down so we can see exactly why it's incredible.
It also includes a lovely list of "Books to be read immediately" - with many wonderful suggestions of books to read closely.
I love that I now know what great writing is, and how to recognize it and describe it. I love that now I can read something and know exactly what makes it amazing, rather than only that overwhelming sense of "wow."
The page for the book on Powell's has a lot of great info and reviews,
www.powells.com/biblio?show=trade+paper:sale:9780060777050:9.76
Here is a brief summary from Powell's:
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 Carré 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.
It is a must read for anyone who wants to write, and also (most important for this group) anyone who loves to read.
The books teaches us how to slow down and appreciate every element that makes for good writing - words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture, and more. She uses plenty of passages to exemplify her points, and breaks each passages down so we can see exactly why it's incredible.
It also includes a lovely list of "Books to be read immediately" - with many wonderful suggestions of books to read closely.
I love that I now know what great writing is, and how to recognize it and describe it. I love that now I can read something and know exactly what makes it amazing, rather than only that overwhelming sense of "wow."
The page for the book on Powell's has a lot of great info and reviews,
www.powells.com/biblio?show=trade+paper:sale:9780060777050:9.76
Here is a brief summary from Powell's:
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 Carré 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.
