How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
Ebook
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Overview
In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you’ve never heard of to books that you’ve read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.
"Charming ... reading it may remind you why you love reading." -Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review
”Brilliant...A witty and useful piece of literary sociology, designed to bring lasting peace of mind to the scrupulous souls who grow anxious whenever the book-talk around them becomes too specific."-London Review of Books
"An amusing disquisition on what is required to establish cultural literacy in a comfortable way."-Wall Street Journal
"[Bayard] has redeemed French comic literature... very funny, in a tricky sort of way." -Jane Smiley, Los Angeles Times
“Provocative, challenging and witty... In challenging the line between reading and non-reading, Bayard actually whet my appetite to read more."-USA Today
"Humorous, insightful, and mildly unsettling, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read offers readers the rare opportunity to contradict an author’s thesis by simply opening his book and reading it."-Billy Collins, BookForum
"I read and adored Pierre Bayard’s book. It’s funny, smart, and so true-a wonderful combination of slick French philosophizing and tongue-in-cheek wit, and an honest appraisal of what it means, or doesn’t mean, to read."
- Title: How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
- Author: Pierre Bayard
- Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
- Print Publication Date: 2010
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781596917149, 9781596915435, 1596915439, 1596917148
- Resource ID: LLS:9781596917149
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T15:23:47Z
Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. He is the author of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? and many other books.