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by: Pierre Bayard  List Price: $19.95 Amazon.com's Price: $13.57 You Save: $6.38 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 809 EAN: 9781596914698 ISBN: 1596914696 Label: Bloomsbury USA Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 208 Publication Date: October 30, 2007 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Release Date: October 30, 2007 Studio: Bloomsbury USA Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: The runaway French bestseller hailed by the New York Times as “a survivor’s guide to life in the chattering classes.” If civilized people are expected to have read all important works of literature, and thousands more books are published every year, what are we supposed to do in those awkward social situations in which we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read? In this delightfully witty, provocative book, a huge hit in France that has drawn attention from critics around the world, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that it’s actually more important to know a book’s role in our collective library than its details. Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, and even the movie Groundhog Day, he describes the many varieties of “non-reading” and the horribly sticky social situations that might confront us, and then offers his advice on what to do. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them. It’s the book that readers everywhere will be talking about—and despite themselves, reading—this holiday season. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Audio Books - Yet Another Way of not Reading a BookThere is wisdom and subtle humor in this book. There are rewards for all levels of effort, from close scrutiny, through skimming, sampling excerpts referenced in other books, to just seeing what the title brings to mind. The author stands with us, facing the grim reality that we cannot read every book we value. And he helps us cope. These points are made in the finest tradition of How to Lie With Statistics and similar books which teach responsible intellectual habits while seeming tongue-in ... Read More Rating:  - This book is satire!In spite of what some reviewers (both here and in the popular media) say, this is clearly NOT a book that recommends that we refrain from reading books. Nor is it a manual on how to maintain one's ignorance while pretending to have read a book. Readers who come to those false conclusions about this book have possibly done so because they skimmed it or read it very badly. It astonishes me to see how many reviewers here miss the point that this book is SATIRE. Bayard is satirizing foolish concepts ... Read More Rating:  - How To Talk About Books you Haven't ReadI admit it was the quirky title that hooked me. The set of 4 cds are a wonderful tongue in cheek and joyful journey of a university literature professor. I laughed often and pondered some of his statements, such as - while we don't always remember books we have read they have already become an integral part of oneself. Brief pertinent descriptions given of some major books,but this is not what it's about. The author admits not to having read many books he discussed with his students. And gives ... Read More Rating: - Open for DiscussionThis book is an interesting read whether you ultimately agree with it or not. It helps to be able to discuss books even if you haven't read them, if you find yourself in a conversation with co-workers or at a dinner party. It's a relatively quick read, so you can get the gist without actually reading it. Quite appropriate. Rating: - Funny side of sophistryThose among us who struggled with deconstruction , post structuralism, semiotics and the like in the seventies and eighties, when we found out that language in general and literary writing in particular couldn't possibly address the world as is will remember the sweetly slippery issue of inter-textuality. Promoted by Derrida and deMan, if memory serves me (and it often doesn't), this was the fancy footwork that while books fail to address the nature things and make them fixed, unchanging situations, ... Read More 
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