About this title: This book presents an inside look at how the professionals read and write. 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 the author. In "Reading Like a Writer", Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of ...
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Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Satisfaction Guaranteed. Shipped quickly. 2006. Hardcover. Used, good. Dust jacket has small tears/bends on edges. Cover has some edge wear. read more
Description: Good. 2007-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. 0060777052 Book could have shelf wear, or a bump, or sunfade to edges. These are new unread books from the publisher with one of these conditions. See are feedback as customers are satisfied in how we grade our books. Has remainder mark. Fast shipping and customer service is our number 1 priority! read more
Description: Fine. 0060777052 Ships next business day. NEW! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on bottom/exterior edge of pages. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS INC Country = UNITED STATES
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780060777050ISBN:0060777052
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 272 pages. (272 pages) 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 the author. she aims to present an inside look at how the professionals read and write. (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 2006-09-01
ISBN-13:9780060777043ISBN:0060777044
Description: New. New Book. There is slight time wear. Otherwise looks new. Free tracking # included! International buyers are welcome. We ship every business day. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Description: Fine. Trade Paperback. Harper Perennial, 2007. Fine Book. Overall, a clean and tight, lightly read copy. Media mail packed in protective bubble lined shipping bags, Priority in a Flat Rate Envelope. Shipped quickly. Prompt response to questions. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 2007-04-01
ISBN-13:9780060777050ISBN:0060777052
Description: Like New. Never Owned Or Read! May Have Light Shelf Wear And Or Publisher Mark. NEW CONDITION OTHER THAN PUBLISHERS REMAINDER MARK! read more
Description: New. 0061256560 SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION. Great Book at a Great Value! read more
"Reading Like a Writer synthesizes Francine Prose's lifetime's experience in literature--as a reader, a writer, and a teacher. It's a splendid book because it is so learned, well-written, and insightful, presenting fiction (that's Prose's literary focus) in its component guises of words, sentences, paragraphs, narrative strategies, and telling details.
Francine Prose emphasizes close reading to best appreciate literary effects. She's not a member of a critical school; that never made sense to her. What made sense, from early on, was pondering James Joyce's diction, the rhythms of Tim O'Brien's incantatory sentences, the cunning of Isaac Babel's paragraphs, and the mastery of Chekhov's revealing details. In all cases, and many more (she cites Tolstoy, Cheever, Richard Yates, Henry Green, Kafka, Juan Rulfo, etc.) Prose illustrates her points with excerpts that go on as long as necessary. There are instances of such excerpts lasting a page or even two pages.
Yet this isn't a textbook; it's more a summary of discussions, observations, and debates that have gone on in writing workshops and literary seminars she's conducted at colleges and universities across the US for decades.
Prose excels in offering potential "rules" for writing vivid, compelling fiction, and then debunking those rules. Her penultimate chapter, focused on Chekhov, is a study in what might be called "the exceptionalism of genius."
I found Prose's defense of the sufficiency of fiction unto itself--not needing excessive theoretical interpretation--effortlessly compelling. Without belaboring the point, she frequently adverts to the ways in which fiction points in directions beyond reason and fact toward paradoxically convincing uncertainties. Fiction is best when it's definite and concrete, yet it is never a math problem with a rules-based answer to the calculations it provokes.
The final chapter focuses on how hard it has been for writers like Flaubert, Babel, and others to fulfill their sense of inspiration. Prose makes good use of their letters and diary entries to substantiate the utter uncertainty of a given story or novel, word by word, sentence by sentence.
This book will make better readers of writers, and better writers of fiction. It's written with humility and humor. A lot of fun.
As a bonus, there is a list at the very end of the book suggesting titles that must be read immediately...as if your life depended on it. This is a handy guide for revisiting Prose's observations in the context of complete works, most of them masterpieces, large and small."
"Overall very good. I tend to skim books a lot when I get to parts that bore me, and then I end up falling into the habit and skimming all the time. Reading this restored the pleasure and argued well for the necessity of careful, time-consuming reading (I have no idea how Francine Prose has had time to read everything she's read.)
My favorite chapters by far were the ones on dialog and sentences. Writing dialog is really tricky, and she doles out a lot of good advice.
(Once, in college, I brought a tape recorder with me in a pocket when I was having dinner with this girl I'd known since high school. She was and is a deft conversationalist, and I wanted to catch the nuances and rhythms of her speech and see what it looked like on paper. We sat down at the cafeteria and she started telling me about how her dad was divorcing her mom, and how she herself had been pregnant the month before and had an abortion without telling anyone. I immediately took out the tape recorder and turned it off. I'm surprised she's ever spoken to me again.)
Some of the others - particularly "Gestures" and "Paragraphs" - did not pack the same punch and excerpted too much, ending up like laundry lists of passages Francine Prose liked. (I found "Paragraphs" almost unbearably inconsequential. A summary: you can break a paragraph in different places. It affects the pacing of what you write. Revolutionary.)
Prose herself is a judicious and open-minded reader, and doesn't fall for the weird romanticism that a lot of writers bring when they give advice. (The sight of a keyboard had better give you a raging hard-on; if you ever write fewer than 93 drafts, you are completely hopeless; spend at least four hours pondering each comma; real writers don't have friends or pets or parents or plants or anything but a desk and a pen and a stack of legal pads; blah blah blah.)"
"I loved the chapter called "Sentences." It gets five stars. The rest of the chapters get three or four stars, so it's on an average.
This book is sort of dangerous to read, because knowledge, once you have it, changes you. Has this book changed me as a reader forever? I actually think so, but the damage is done."
"I really enjoyed this book and the author's focus on the finer points of writing. She references dozens of classic works and discusses word choice, sentences, paragraph structure, voice and many other fundamentals of writing fiction.
Her comments are geared to literary writers and often I felt insulted (as a lowly thriller writer). At one point she says, "Opening a mass-market thriller at random," and she quotes a horrible passage that I didn't recognize. She's telling us that mass-market thriller writers are lousy writers. I felt like a student in one of her fiction classes.
I would recommend this book for serious writers and those who love classic literature, though readers may find this book very dry."
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