I came across Reading Like a Writer randomly last year while I was collating my TBR list for this year. I was looking for books that would help me become a better reader and writer.
I read this book from January through late February. I don’t usually take this long to read a book; Reading Like a Writer is an exception. I took my time reading the book word for word, page by page, chapter by chapter. I did this because I wanted to savor every advice or technique the author offered.
The question is: Was the book worth all the time and effort?
Let’s find out in this review.
A Little Bit More About Reading Like a Writer
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured.
Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart—to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel.
Prose is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most importantly, she cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.
Tags: reading, writing advice, literature, close reading, literary analysis.
My Review
As a writer, especially a beginner, you are always looking for ways to improve your writing. Among the myriad pieces of writing advice out there, one rings out the most: The more you read, the better your writing becomes.
In her book, Reading Like A Writer, Francine Prose emphasizes on this writing advice deeply. According to her, there’s no better way to learn to write than to read a lot of books. It was how she honed her writing skills growing up.
In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I read and re-read the authors I most loved.
Reading Like a Writer
Prose’s approach is both insightful and practical. Through examples and references from various classical literature novels, she shows her readers how writers can learn from literary masters such as O’Connors, Dickens, Woolf, and Chekhov.
She breaks down every sentence word for word and teaches us how to study the ways these writers use to pass across their messages, and emotions to ultimately tell a story.
I found it inspiring and exciting to see the similarities between Prose’s writing journey and my own. Like her, I spent most time reading books before venturing into writing. But when I did, I found writing to be a lot easier to navigate than I expected. Now, I’m much more in tune with what I write—patiently crafting each word with precision.
Prose reminds us that words are the most integral part of any work in literature. Each word moves the story forward and has an intended meaning. This approach gave me new eyes to reading the sentences in a novel and taking a closer close at the hidden meaning of each word the author chooses to use.
…but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.
Reading Like a Writer
Reading like A Writer forces its readers to pay closer attention to their reading material. It doesn’t matter whether is a novel or an essay paper. As I read the book, I found myself analyzing other books much more closely, going deeper than just having a good time or an escape from reality.
As a result, I’m able to appreciate the writer’s work much more deeply and gain even more insights from their novel.
One way to compel yourself to slow down and stop at every word is to ask yourself what sort of information each word— each word choice—is conveying.
Reading Like a Writer
The only issue I had with the book was its over-reliance on references from classical literature novels to explain or get Prose’s point across. The book uses too many quotes from different novels that it sometimes becomes too difficult and overwhelming to muck through.
For every paragraph of Prose’s expert insights, there were two to three paragraphs directly quoting from an exemplary novel. This aspect of the book occasionally made it feel more like an MFA textbook for creative writing than a typical non-fiction writing guide.
Unfortunately, not everyone is familiar with many of the authors cited in Reading Like A Writer, especially people like me who didn’t grow up around classical literature. While reading, there were times when I felt the book was out of my league because I didn’t know half of the authors that were mentioned in the book.
I wished Prose would have included modern authors from diverse genres, allowing readers like myself, who may not have been exposed to classical literature, to connect more readily with the material and feel more included in the conversation about writing.
My Overall Rating
Francine Prose is a great writer. Her book offers insightful advice that presents a multitude of ways to storytelling. She inspires and encourages book lovers to not just read a novel but go deeper than the surface level to understand and appreciate both the novel and its author.
However, the book’s myriad use of quotes and unfamiliar authors as examples prevented it from being an all-round writing guide.
Nonetheless, Reading Like a Writer is worth the read. I believe the book will be beneficial to new writers by showing them the ropes of what it entails to write a book and how they get new ideas for their novels if they are ever stuck.
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