Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Reading Like a Writer
I have come across this wonderful book while on a trip to my local independently owned bookstore. (Remember to support independent booksellers!) Francine Prose has come up with yet one more book in the writing manual genre, but hers is a different kind of offering, focusing on the real craft: Reading Like a Writer covers such fundamentals as words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, details, gesture, among others and she does so in an inspiring way, providing brief quotes of exemplary writing specimens. I certainly am glad that I have come across this book, which is well worth the cost of purchase. I would recommend it to all writers, and even to those who just want to write better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I wish I had a name like "Prose." As a writer, how could that not ensure success?
(Thanks for the tip on the book.)
Though I normally shun 'how-to-write' books, I'll second your recommendation, in part because of Prose's close reading of the text, of how it works - she's particularly good on the subtleties of dialog (irony and what's not said, for example) - and in greater part because of this: 'But the advantage of reading widely, as opposed to trying to formulate a series of general rules, is that we learn there are no general rules, only individual examples to help point you in a direction in which you might want to go.'
Post a Comment