Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
by Francine Prose
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Book Summary Information
Author: Francine ProseEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-10
ISBN: 0060777052
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
Book Review: Admire the words!
Summary: 5 Stars
I will never read a book the same way again!
The author will introduce you to words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, and gesture, and she brings these together so beautifully that they will appear to you as building blocks in a `Lego' set.
In any book you read, the writer is the host; the reader is the guest. It is therefore important for the writer to use proper etiquette with his readers, which is to say the proper grammar and punctuation, and the accepted rules of writing. But not all writers follow these rules. For example, sentences and paragraphs should be short. Writers should write without judgment; they must be unbiased towards their characters. Balzac, on the one hand, judges all his characters. Authors like Balzac tell us that there are no rules in literature. Rules can be broken, but only masters succeed in doing so.
Writing is an art. To put words together into a sentence is an art. One should read slowly in order to enjoy this art and understand the meaning of each word. It is like walking slowly to admire the flowers and smell them. How many of us do this? How many of us read slowly and look at sentences as art?
I have a fundamental flaw in reading. I love reading; too much for my own good. I devour book after book...way to fast, eager to finish the book in order to start a new one. But Francine Prose made me aware of the importance of reading slowly, and rereading if necessary in order to absorb the full meaning of the words. And what a joy it is to do that. Like flowers, words have their particular smell and beauty.
What follows are some notes I took of this beautiful book:
The best way to learn how to write well is to read what others have written.
You might not like a book today, but don't give up on it. Read it again in a few years when your experiences and outlook on life have changed; you might just like the book. For this reason, I always keep my books, regardless of how bad I thought they were.
It is easy for us to talk to each other, with vivid and captivating words, but not that easy to put a dialogue on paper. Try it.
Every writer is a mystery; his or her talent remains forever ineffable, inexplicable, and astonishing.
Writing can drown both the author and the reader.
Dictators tend not to like authors. Many countries censor books and limit the books its citizens can read. Indeed, words are mightier than the sword!
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, "If Tolstoy lived across the street, I wouldn't go meet him." The work is the work, what exists on the page is what matters, and we need not have tea with the writer in order to understand and love the writing. The same was said about the Buddha, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him." It is the teaching, not the person that matters.
The book has a great index of books you should read immediately. I am sure many of you who will read this book will end up devouring her list of books to read! One thing is for sure: I will start reading Babel.
I highly recommend this book for all book lovers! You will never read a book the same way again! And you'll probably end up writing one too!
More Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.) reviews:
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Summary of Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (P.S.)
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 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.
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