I bought this expecting to learn how to improve my critical faculties and therefore make the reviews in this blog sharper, better informed, more useful, and perhaps even more entertaining. I didn't. This book is mistitled. It should be called "How to Choose which Novel you are Going to Read." He starts by noting the overwhelming avalanche of novels available to the modern reader. Then he suggests how to cut that number down by considering a wide variety of things such as the author's reputation, the bestseller lists, reviews, the blurb, the title and page 69 (among other things) and more or less concludes that none of these methods is foolproof. So you don't even get helpful advice towards what the title should have been.
Otherwise he is frequently informative, mostly entertaining and sometimes amusing.
Selected quotes:
- "Selecting one's reading matter is less important nowadays than deselecting it." (Ch 1)
- "It is not that life is too short to read carefully: the task is too great to be done attentively." (Ch 1)
- "Reading novels is not a spectator sport but a participatory activity." (Ch 1)
- "One reads, as one dreams, defecates and masturbates - alone." (Ch 3)
- "If, when you're buying a book, you feel a tender hand on your genitals, the other hand is probably feeling your wallet." (Ch 5)
- "Unlike baked beans, loaves of bread, or Fuji apples, books, once consumed, do not disappear. Despite political legend, they are extremely hard to burn." (Ch 6)
October 2022; 246 pages
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