Reading Like A Writer

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. 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 - to take 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 and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

Francine Prose is the author of fourteen works of fiction, including Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award, and of the non-fiction writing guide, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, published by Aurum. A distinguished critic and essayist, she has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at several major universities. She lives in New York City.