Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

This title has been on my re-read list for a couple of years now. I originally read it when it came out in 2006, so the pages of my old hardcover are starting to get yellow around the edges and it gives off the musty smell of long neglected dreams. 

This is not so much a writing manual as a guide to reading. The first thing that every aspiring writer will be told is that you must first be a voracious reader; the advice often focusing more on the amount you read rather than how well you read. Francine Prose instead explains how to read: slowly, carefully and deliberately. Drawing on passages from some the greatest writers, she breaks down and analyzes their techniques to show how they have created certain literary effects. Starting with the simplest building blocks of words, sentences and paragraphs, she moves on to issues of narration, character, dialogue and gesture. She ends with a list of “Books to Be Read Immediately” which if I took literally would provide enough material to keep my 52 Books in 52 Weeks project running for the next two or three years.

This is a splendid guide to reading deeply and consciously and, if you are so inclined, to applying the lessons to your own work. Well worth re-reading every decade.

Four and a half smileys out of five. 🙂🙂🙂🙂