Francine Prose uses her experience in teaching creative writing classes to gently show the reader the art and craft and science of writing, touching on every topic that is part of any book of fiction – words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, dialogue and others. The subtitle of ‘Reading Like a Writer’ says ‘A Guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them’. I picked up Prose’s book from my shelf and started reading and after reading a page, got hooked into it. Before I knew I lost myself deep inside the book. Fortunately, the book gods worked behind the scenes, the stars got aligned and the auspicious time finally arrived.

I thought that I will get to them sometime, when I am in a bibliophilic mood, but every time I felt like reading one of them, I ended up reasoning that it is better to read an actual book rather than a book on reading. As it seems to happen often with me, all these books ended up on my bookshelf unread and uncared for. I got ‘How to Read Literature Like a Professor’ by Thomas Foster, ‘How Novels Work’ by John Mullan, ‘How to Read a Novel : A User’s Guide’ by John Sutherland, ‘A History of Reading’ by Alberto Manguel and ‘The Anatomy of Bibliomania’ by Holbrook Jackson alongwith Prose’s book.

I discovered ‘Reading Like a Writer’ by Francine Prose a few years back, when I was in a bibliophilic phase, when I was collecting books on reading.

Prose reading like a writer