Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere – Provocative and Humorous Literary Commentary for Book Lovers - Softcover

Leto, Lauren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062070142 ISBN 13: 9780062070142

Verlag: Harper Perennial, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

“Leto is as funny as she is well-read; a delight for bibliophiles and wannabes alike.”

—Wylie Overstreet, author of The History of the World According to Facebook

Lauren Leto, humor blogger and co-author of Texts from Last Night, now offers a fascinating field guide to the hearts and minds of readers everywhere. Judging a Book by Its Lover is like a literary Sh*t My Dad Says—an unrelentingly witty and delightfully irreverent guide to the intricate world of passionate literary debate, at once skewering and celebrating great writers, from Dostoevsky to Ayn Rand to Jonathan Franzen, and all the people who read them. This provocative, smart, and addictively funny tome arose out of Leto’s popular “book porn” blog posts, and it will delight and outrage literature fans, readers of  Stuff White People Like and I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar—people obsessed with literary culture and people fed up with literary culture—in equal measure.

What kind of reader are you—and what does your bookshelf say about you?

• Favorite Author Stereotypes: Find out what it really means if their favorite writer is Dostoevsky, Ayn Rand, or Jack Kerouac (and what you should assume about yourself).
• The Book Lover’s Life: Witty observations on the rules of book club, how to survive as a nerd, and why the term "bookworm" should be changed to "bookcat."
• Bookstore Behavior: A hilarious field guide to public reading, bookstore hookups, and that certain smell only a true bibliophile understands.
• How to Fake It: Can’t tell your Faulkner from your Franzen? Learn how to speak condescendingly about the most revered authors and avoid discussing the major plot points of any novel.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lauren Leto dropped out of law school to start the popular humor blog “Texts from Last Night.” She co-authored the book Texts from Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on Infinite Jest? Dying to shut up the blowhard in front of you who’s pontificating on Cormac McCarthy’s “recurring road narratives”? Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straight?

For all those overwhelmed readers who need to get a firm grip on the relentless onslaught of must-read books to stay on top of the inevitable conversations that swirl around them, Lauren Leto’s Judging a Book by Its Lover is manna from literary heaven! A hilarious send-up of—and inspired homage to—the passionate and peculiar world of book culture, this guide to literary debate leaves no reader or author unscathed, at once adoring and skewering everyone from Jonathan Franzen to Ayn Rand to Dostoyevsky and the people who read them.

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Judging a Book by Its Lover

By Lauren Leto

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright ©2012 Lauren Leto
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-06-207014-2

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Commercial Confessions

I'm a very anxious person. My guess (gathered from an unscientificsurvey of fellow readers and the uneducated opinionsof my family) is that this may be the result of years ofoverexposure to fictional worlds and underexposure to real worldactivities such as recess, school dances, and cocktail parties.I'm not very comfortable in settings and situations mostpeople take for granted as part of the comings and goings ofeveryday life. For example, traveling: traveling with me is anexperience I wouldn't want to wish on anyone— and I go togreat lengths to save friends and family the trouble. Accompanyingme on planes and in cars is nightmarish. If it weren'tfor the helpful tricks that I've come to rely on, I don't knowhow I'd get anywhere. I've developed ways to deal with myanxiety, tics that keep the pressure down and keep the terrorat bay. These quirks are my dirty little secrets. Sometimesit's just two stiff drinks at the airport TGIF before boarding;other times the situation calls for more drastic actionsto divert my attention from my mounting anxiety over theprospect of hurtling forward on a road or through the sky. Ineed something a little more potent.

I'm telling you this because I want to be as honest as possiblewith you. Janet Evanovich books are my booze; I can'tboard a plane without checking the airport bookstore to findthe newest tale of Stephanie Plum. If I've read all the availableEvanovich, I have to pick the next easiest, sleaziest thing. Istarted and finished Twilight on red-eye trips from Detroit toLos Angeles and back; I conquered New Moon before touch downfrom New York to San Francisco. I wept over Idahowhile reading the first Hunger Games. At these moments I needmy reading easy and quick; I need to turn the pages withoutknowing it. I don't have the bandwidth to wonder about theunderlying meaning of the exact word chosen to phrase howone turned around or analyze just why an object was describedin a certain way. I need distraction, not deep thoughts.

I make this distinction because most of this book isabout avoiding bad books, and I don't want a reader to thinkI'm being an elitist snob. Considering yourself a seriousreader doesn't mean you can't read light books. Loving toread means you sometimes like to turn your head off. Readingis not about being able to recite passages from Camus bymemory. Loving young adult novels well past adolescenceisn't a sign of stunted maturity or intelligence. The mostimportant thing about reading is not the level of sophisticationof the books on your shelf. There is no prerequisitereading regimen for being a bookworm.

Let's all embrace the fact that The Da Vinci Code hassold more copies than all of Saul Bellow's works combined.Dan Brown and his ilk are keeping our bookstores in semi-business.If America chooses easy escapism over dense dialogue,we should welcome that decision with equanimity.

When it comes to reading, whatever floats the boat. And ifsomeone deems your reading choice frivolous, who cares? Ifit's what you want to read, go for it.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Judging a Book by Its Lover by Lauren Leto. Copyright © 2012 by Lauren Leto. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harper Perennial
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0062070142
• ISBN 13: 9780062070142
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: HarperCollins Publishers, Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland