How to be Well Read

Ranging all the way from Aaron's Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very personal guide to the most rewarding, most remarkable and, on occasion, most shamelessly enjoyable works of fiction ever written.

He brilliantly captures the flavour of each work and assesses its relative merits and demerits. He shows how it fits into a broader context and he offers endless snippets of intriguing information: did you know, for example, that the Nazis banned Bambi or that William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying on an upturned wheelbarrow; that Voltaire completed Candide in three days, or that Anna Sewell was paid £20 for Black Beauty? It is also effectively a history of the novel in 500 or so wittily informative, bite-sized pieces.

Encyclopaedic and entertaining by turns, this is a wonderful dip-in book, whose opinions will inform and on occasion, no doubt, infuriate.

Review

Generous, enjoyable and well informed. ― Observer

A dazzling array of genres, periods, styles and tastes . . . chatty, insightful, unprejudiced (but not uncritical) and wise. ― Times Literary Supplement

500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction. ― The Times

John Sutherland has been teaching English literature to university students for half a century. Now he's put the 'common reader' in the classroom in this capacious, witty guide to all the books you should read to claim the epithet 'well-read'. . . Each book gets a potted plot summary and a lively squirt of literary analysis, plus intriguing nuggets about the way reading tastes have changed through time, all told in Sutherland's breezy, intelligent voice. ― The Times

Anyone hooked on fiction should be warned: this book will feed your addiction. ― Mail on Sunday

A glorious selection of books to tempt you - all considered in witty and elegant prose. Highly recommended. ― The Bookbag

About the Author

John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at University College London and previously taught at the California Institute of Technology. He writes regularly for the Guardian, The Times and the New York Times, and is the author of many books including Curiosities of Literature, Is Henry V a War Criminal? (with Cedric Watts), biographies of Walter Scott, Stephen Spender and the Victorian elephant Jumbo, and The Boy Who Loved Books, a memoir.