How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide

by JohnSutherland (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.80

  John Sutherland takes the reader on a literary journey from the first English novels of three hundred years ago to the present avalanche of ten thousand a year. In a series of informed and intelligent conversations set around a variety of exemplary texts he shows that reading a novel is not a spectator sport, but an intense participatory activity. People of all ages, classes and nationalities read novels - Sutherland gives us new insights into what we read, new questions to pose and the means to pursue them.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.25

  People of all ages, classes and nationalities read novels for much the same variety of reasons - to escape pain or danger, to discover the past or experience the future, to look into the intimate details of other people's lives. Since classical times readers have been sharing their experiences of literature, today they often do so in the context of a book group. Using a variety of exemplary texts How to Read a Novel forms a series of intelligent conversations, supplying readers with new questions to ask about what they read and the means and confidence to ask those questions. The word 'reading', as we customarily use it, is a very blunt instrument. We assume it's rather like riding a bicycle. You can do it (you're literate) or you can't (you're illiterate). In fact, reading well is almost as difficult as writing well. This is a kind of guidebook on how to do it.