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Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books
"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read , Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review , to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it." Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as "Character and Plot," "Novelty," "Grandeur and Intimacy," and "Authority," Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside quotidian tasks in favor of reading. Lesser's passion for this pursuit resonates on every page, whether she is discussing the book as a physical object or a particular work's influence. "Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different," she writes. "It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else's past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times." A book in the spirit of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Elizabeth Hardwick's A View of My Own , Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 2014
75 people are currently reading
3438 people want to read
About the author
Wendy Lesser
30books65followersWendy Lesser a critic, novelist, and editor based in Berkeley, California.
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 175 reviews
March 29, 2023
Right in the first chapter of the book, Lesser drops major spoilers for virtually all of Henry James, , , , , and She does driveby spoilings, just mentioning in passing the end of two books she's not even talking about. She does stealth spoiling - like this: "Sometimes the killer is even the butler, as in [name of book]", so the spoil comes before the title. It's like she has a pathological urge to spoil books for you.
And it'd be one thing if she also said interesting things about books - then this would be an okay book for people who don't mind spoilers - but she frankly doesn't. The whole thing feels like a first draft. It's rambly, self-indulgent, and never comes to a point. You know what it reminds me of? You ever start to read a ŷ review and you're like "This is pretty well-written," but then it just keeps going on and on and you give up because you don't really care that much? It's like that. Just an overlong ŷ review that got way off track, written by someone who likes to hear herself type.
This is a shitty book. Don't read it.
And it'd be one thing if she also said interesting things about books - then this would be an okay book for people who don't mind spoilers - but she frankly doesn't. The whole thing feels like a first draft. It's rambly, self-indulgent, and never comes to a point. You know what it reminds me of? You ever start to read a ŷ review and you're like "This is pretty well-written," but then it just keeps going on and on and you give up because you don't really care that much? It's like that. Just an overlong ŷ review that got way off track, written by someone who likes to hear herself type.
This is a shitty book. Don't read it.
December 10, 2014
I usually love books about reading because I find kindred spirits among other lovers of books. But Wendy Lesser is far too worried about what readers of "serious literature" think about her reading and opinions on books. She writes about plot and character, novelty, translation, time travel (through reading), grandeur and intimacy, but she is quick to back pedal after mentioning genre fiction or authors who surely others will judge as lesser than Henry James. (No no no, nobody is arguing that Isaac Asimov could even come close to Henry James, she says at one point. I'm summarizing, but sigh.)
The title says "Why I Read." The way this book is written, I suspect one of the main reason she reads is to maintain her reputation as a literary critic and editor. I wanted something more honest.
She makes excuses for her opinions, constantly, in the middle of statements about reading. She weakens her writing with caveats and disclaimers.
For example, one paragraph in the chapter called Grandeur and Intimacy could have been amazing. It starts with "But regular life is constructed in a way that makes true intimacy difficult," and goes on to talk about why we are so drawn to the honesty of characters in literature because we can't get or don't want that in real life. But even in one paragraph she interrupts her thoughts with "as it happens" and "quite often" and "sometimes."
I think it is a shame, because I don't believe this knee-trembling, subservient voice. I believe the woman who peeks through in her disgust at Molly Bloom's soliloquy in by James Joyce. I was angered by her opinion. I vehemently disagreed. But I was far happier reading that rant and not agreeing in the least than wading through the majority of the book where she assumes that without her referring to Proust or Dostoevsky at least once per page, we will not take her seriously.
It seems she has already earned that right. I so wish she had used her own authority to write a better book.
The title says "Why I Read." The way this book is written, I suspect one of the main reason she reads is to maintain her reputation as a literary critic and editor. I wanted something more honest.
She makes excuses for her opinions, constantly, in the middle of statements about reading. She weakens her writing with caveats and disclaimers.
For example, one paragraph in the chapter called Grandeur and Intimacy could have been amazing. It starts with "But regular life is constructed in a way that makes true intimacy difficult," and goes on to talk about why we are so drawn to the honesty of characters in literature because we can't get or don't want that in real life. But even in one paragraph she interrupts her thoughts with "as it happens" and "quite often" and "sometimes."
I think it is a shame, because I don't believe this knee-trembling, subservient voice. I believe the woman who peeks through in her disgust at Molly Bloom's soliloquy in by James Joyce. I was angered by her opinion. I vehemently disagreed. But I was far happier reading that rant and not agreeing in the least than wading through the majority of the book where she assumes that without her referring to Proust or Dostoevsky at least once per page, we will not take her seriously.
It seems she has already earned that right. I so wish she had used her own authority to write a better book.
Read
November 12, 2013Thank you very much Macmillan and Edelweiss for providing me with a copy for review!
I should have loved this book, right? I mean, I wanted to like it. Answering the question of just why we read is totally a subject that I am interested in. Heck, I work at a library and look forward to going to school to get my Master's in Library Science. Unfortunately, Lesser's writing did not grab me, even though the topic itself is one that I find fascinating. I believe my main issue was her use of examples on plot and characters. The vast majority of her references being books I haven't read or even heard of. I would have much rather read a piece on the human mind and why we read fiction or nonfiction than pages of examples of characters, even if they are being used to state an argument. I could not, unfortunately, finish this book. As much as I wish I could say I enjoyed, I found it to be rather dull.
I should have loved this book, right? I mean, I wanted to like it. Answering the question of just why we read is totally a subject that I am interested in. Heck, I work at a library and look forward to going to school to get my Master's in Library Science. Unfortunately, Lesser's writing did not grab me, even though the topic itself is one that I find fascinating. I believe my main issue was her use of examples on plot and characters. The vast majority of her references being books I haven't read or even heard of. I would have much rather read a piece on the human mind and why we read fiction or nonfiction than pages of examples of characters, even if they are being used to state an argument. I could not, unfortunately, finish this book. As much as I wish I could say I enjoyed, I found it to be rather dull.
May 29, 2014
Author Wendy Lesser is the founding editor of The Threepenny Review, an American literary magazine. Having spent her life working in the world of books, this contains an analysis of why she loves reading and what it means to her. As an avid reader, I found the introduction of this book very enjoyable. Having mused on what reading means to her, she then investigates many of the themes of reading � such as character and plot, grandeur and intimacy, literary authority, truth and imperfections.
Although much of this book has a scholarly feel and Lesser has an obvious admiration for Russian literature, she does not only examine reading from the viewpoint of the classics. Modern novels, such as “Wolf Hall,� are used as examples; as are Scandinavian crime fiction, science fiction and poetry. Other issues close to the heart of readers, such as translations and, of course, the advent of the paperless book, are all covered. Lastly, there is a list of 100 books recommended by the author. This was an enjoyable read and it has led me to add many books and authors to my wish list.
Although much of this book has a scholarly feel and Lesser has an obvious admiration for Russian literature, she does not only examine reading from the viewpoint of the classics. Modern novels, such as “Wolf Hall,� are used as examples; as are Scandinavian crime fiction, science fiction and poetry. Other issues close to the heart of readers, such as translations and, of course, the advent of the paperless book, are all covered. Lastly, there is a list of 100 books recommended by the author. This was an enjoyable read and it has led me to add many books and authors to my wish list.
July 1, 2021
Wendy Lesser expanded my read list with Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books.
Lesser talks at length about pleasurable experiences reading numerous works by identified literary greats. I found a little of this book somewhat pretentious, and very focused on a lot of popular white authors, especially Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky which seem to be her main loves. Everyone can benefit from a little diversity!
She wrote a few statements that sat in my heart and made me appreciate this book, nod and say yesssss in agreement. They are as follows: *bear with me there are more than a few!**
Yes! Yo, it's soooo true. I related to this quote so much. You can feel when truth exists in what you're reading, I think that the truth is what makes even books about nothing feel profound. There's a feeling that washes over you when you experience truthful art.
It doesn't matter what you read on, just read what you enjoy. I enjoyed this book. I did like Anne Bogel's better, but this wasn't half bad.
Lesser talks at length about pleasurable experiences reading numerous works by identified literary greats. I found a little of this book somewhat pretentious, and very focused on a lot of popular white authors, especially Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky which seem to be her main loves. Everyone can benefit from a little diversity!
She wrote a few statements that sat in my heart and made me appreciate this book, nod and say yesssss in agreement. They are as follows: *bear with me there are more than a few!**
"Reading is not a ratings game, and to treat it as one is to diminish its pleasures and powers. Very little in the world can compare with the experience of reading, or even rereading..."
"...an author who is willing to take risks can get away with almost anything, if he has enough intelligence and uses it with serious moral intent."
"I hope it is clear to you by now how much this matters to me. If there is anything I hate when I am reading a book, it is the sense that I am being lied to. One can get this sense from fictional works as well as nonfiction ones, and even with nonfiction it is not entirely a matter of factual discrepancies. Lying can be done through tone, through omission, through implication, through context. Lies, as one twentieth-century writer notoriously said of another, can inhere even in words like “and� and “the.� I do not understand why anyone would want to lie in a work of art—what is the point of giving up your most valuable privilege, in the one place where you are freely allowed to tell the truth?—but I suppose it has something to do with shame, or greed, or ambition, or some other extra-literary motive. The compulsion to lie, which is personal, has nothing to do with making good art, which must on some level be impersonal. Art needs to rest on truth, even if it does so counterfactually."
Yes! Yo, it's soooo true. I related to this quote so much. You can feel when truth exists in what you're reading, I think that the truth is what makes even books about nothing feel profound. There's a feeling that washes over you when you experience truthful art.
"This is not to say that everyone needs to get everything right all the time. One is allowed to make factual errors through a combination of negligence and good intentions—even the blinkered law permits that. And not every document that contains factual errors is a full-blown lie. (Several of my favorite novels, and many of my favorite poems, fall into this category.) But an author who self-righteously proclaims that there is no real boundary between fact and fiction is not someone you should trust regarding either."
"Pleasure reading is a hungry activity: it gnaws and gulps at its object, as if desirous of swallowing the whole thing in one sitting. But we need to slow down, and at times even come to a dead stop, if we are to savor all the dimensions of a literary work. I wouldn’t love even the longest of these books as much as I do if they didn’t sustain my interest at the level of the sentence."
"In my more broad-minded moments, I am willing to acknowledge that there is no inherent difference between reading from a printed page and reading from an electronic device. It just depends on what you are used to."
It doesn't matter what you read on, just read what you enjoy. I enjoyed this book. I did like Anne Bogel's better, but this wasn't half bad.
July 28, 2018
It's an easy, yet challenging read due to it being highly personal reflection of the author, both as a reader and a writer.
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"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review, to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it." via ŷ
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If you love to read, I highly recommend it. It's so fascinating and insightful to enter the mind of an author. She's read just about everything and is very articulate and intelligent in her writing. I admire readers like Wendy, who are able to read on a higher-level with sophisticated mind, picking up all the little nuances and articulate it into deep meanings and connections. I aspire to read on that level some day. 🤓✌️📖
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"Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review, to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it." via ŷ
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If you love to read, I highly recommend it. It's so fascinating and insightful to enter the mind of an author. She's read just about everything and is very articulate and intelligent in her writing. I admire readers like Wendy, who are able to read on a higher-level with sophisticated mind, picking up all the little nuances and articulate it into deep meanings and connections. I aspire to read on that level some day. 🤓✌️📖
December 2, 2013
While I enjoyed this book, at times I felt it read more like a textbook than a book on the joys of reading.
November 20, 2013
I tend to love books that celebrate the reading life, but this one was a little too...esoteric? It may have been because she focused on books that, for the most part, I haven't read, but I ultimately found this one just kinda boring.
January 7, 2019
Summary:Although this sometimes resonated with my experience as a reader, mostly it felt disjointed; full of unsubstantiated claims; and occasionally snobby.
Last year, one of my main goals was to read more deeply. To that end, I wrapped up the year with a number of books about how to read. Sadly, I've not had much luck with books on this topic! So far, my experience with books on reading is that they tend to be snobbier and less passionate than books on books. This particular book purported to answer the question of why we read (or at least, why the author reads). In reality, it felt more like a chance for the author to share a lot of disjointed thoughts on books and reading.
The author breaks her discussion down into six themes: character, the space between, novelty, authority, grandeur and intimacy, and elsewhere. The theme 'the space between' in particularly didn't work for me. She discussed many different ideas - a disconnect she claims exists between Dickens' characters and their exaggerated traits; a gap in our understanding of some poetry - that didn't clearly connect to one another. I came away from this section unsure what she even meant by 'the space between'.
I enjoyed the sections on the remaining themes more. Each contained some explanations of reading that resonated with me. In some cases, she eloquently put into words things I'd observed, but either not thought about or not expressed clearly. For example, shestates that language should be "a screen between us and the characters that somehow intensifies rather than diminishes our sense of felt connection with these fictional people"; "it must get in the way and get out of the way, all at once."
I have absolutely read books where bad writing has gotten in the way of my connection with the characters! I have also often found that in average books or, occasionally, in good plot-driven fiction, the writing disappears too much. There's is nothing beautiful about it. The best I can say about it is that is gets out of the way. Ideally, I'd like it to 'get in the way and get out of the way, all at once' - making me notice and love it, but not coming between me and the characters. I loved how the author expressed this concept. She's given me a new way to think about what I read and to explain what makes it work or not.
Unfortunately, these bits that spoke to me were infrequent bright spots in the book. For the most part, I felt disconnected from and unconvinced by the author. Part of this was her snobbishness about both genre fiction and technology. The rest felt like a problem of content to me as I was reading, but in retrospect, feels like a problem with tone and presentation. She wrote in an analytical tone, mostly passionless. The discussion was presented as though she was making broad claims about what makes literature good. That's a hard thing to prove and her few examples left me feeling she hadn't supported her general claims sufficiently. If she'd instead written 'this is what makes literature I love', I'd have been happy to enjoy sharing her subjective experience without feeling proof was called for. As an example, even the sentence I liked above is written as 'language should...', not 'I love it when language does...'.
At the end, she claimed that each of her themes could be put into the sentence 'I read to find...'. With the exception of 'the space between', I agree! I read for plot and character. I read for novelty, gaining new experiencesvicariously; gaining new knowledge; and gaining a fun reading experience when something feels really fresh. I read for authority, to learn from a knowledgeable author. I read for grandeur and intimacy, spending time thinking about events that are beyond daily life and spending time relishing the minutiae of daily life. And I read to be elsewhere, to escape; to learn more about other parts of the world; and to learn about experiences different from my own. I wish she had made these points in the book. Instead, the sections connected to each of these themes contained disjointed ramblings. She gave us a few thoughts on each idea, written as though her opinion was a universal truth.
What makes books on books so enjoyable for me as a reader is feeling a sense that the author shares my passion. I think that's what was most lacking here.
Last year, one of my main goals was to read more deeply. To that end, I wrapped up the year with a number of books about how to read. Sadly, I've not had much luck with books on this topic! So far, my experience with books on reading is that they tend to be snobbier and less passionate than books on books. This particular book purported to answer the question of why we read (or at least, why the author reads). In reality, it felt more like a chance for the author to share a lot of disjointed thoughts on books and reading.
The author breaks her discussion down into six themes: character, the space between, novelty, authority, grandeur and intimacy, and elsewhere. The theme 'the space between' in particularly didn't work for me. She discussed many different ideas - a disconnect she claims exists between Dickens' characters and their exaggerated traits; a gap in our understanding of some poetry - that didn't clearly connect to one another. I came away from this section unsure what she even meant by 'the space between'.
I enjoyed the sections on the remaining themes more. Each contained some explanations of reading that resonated with me. In some cases, she eloquently put into words things I'd observed, but either not thought about or not expressed clearly. For example, shestates that language should be "a screen between us and the characters that somehow intensifies rather than diminishes our sense of felt connection with these fictional people"; "it must get in the way and get out of the way, all at once."
I have absolutely read books where bad writing has gotten in the way of my connection with the characters! I have also often found that in average books or, occasionally, in good plot-driven fiction, the writing disappears too much. There's is nothing beautiful about it. The best I can say about it is that is gets out of the way. Ideally, I'd like it to 'get in the way and get out of the way, all at once' - making me notice and love it, but not coming between me and the characters. I loved how the author expressed this concept. She's given me a new way to think about what I read and to explain what makes it work or not.
Unfortunately, these bits that spoke to me were infrequent bright spots in the book. For the most part, I felt disconnected from and unconvinced by the author. Part of this was her snobbishness about both genre fiction and technology. The rest felt like a problem of content to me as I was reading, but in retrospect, feels like a problem with tone and presentation. She wrote in an analytical tone, mostly passionless. The discussion was presented as though she was making broad claims about what makes literature good. That's a hard thing to prove and her few examples left me feeling she hadn't supported her general claims sufficiently. If she'd instead written 'this is what makes literature I love', I'd have been happy to enjoy sharing her subjective experience without feeling proof was called for. As an example, even the sentence I liked above is written as 'language should...', not 'I love it when language does...'.
At the end, she claimed that each of her themes could be put into the sentence 'I read to find...'. With the exception of 'the space between', I agree! I read for plot and character. I read for novelty, gaining new experiencesvicariously; gaining new knowledge; and gaining a fun reading experience when something feels really fresh. I read for authority, to learn from a knowledgeable author. I read for grandeur and intimacy, spending time thinking about events that are beyond daily life and spending time relishing the minutiae of daily life. And I read to be elsewhere, to escape; to learn more about other parts of the world; and to learn about experiences different from my own. I wish she had made these points in the book. Instead, the sections connected to each of these themes contained disjointed ramblings. She gave us a few thoughts on each idea, written as though her opinion was a universal truth.
What makes books on books so enjoyable for me as a reader is feeling a sense that the author shares my passion. I think that's what was most lacking here.
Read
July 29, 2016This articulate book will appeal to those who love literature. Wendy Lesser, founding editor of "The Threepenny Review" navigates the reader through plays, poetry, and primarily historical literature carefully and thoroughly. Much of the tone is rather scholarly, and then suddenly she will depart from this and discuss contemporary authors with delight. This book is meant to make the reader think about what we are supposed to receive from the act of reading, and why we should consider re-reading. It affirms and confirms the role of literature. This is a book that the reader can pick up and read in bits and pieces without losing the thread. For those interested in broadening their reading experience, this is a wonderful resource. -GD
Click here to place a hold on .
There are other wonderful books on enhancing the reading experience. Try by Steve Leveen.
Click here to place a hold on .
There are other wonderful books on enhancing the reading experience. Try by Steve Leveen.
April 18, 2016
The title is apt: "Why I read," with the emphasis on I. This book reminded me why I didn't major in English. I have no patience for an authority figure (be it an author or professor or critic) telling me what I should think about a book. Or, worse yet, what the intention of a writer may be at any point during her process. I was expecting less literary criticism, more existential warm fuzzies from this one, so I dutifully let myself be lectured for a couple chapters then dropped it like a tedious sophomore elective.
January 18, 2018
I am in love with Wendy Lesser's brain. So much so I want to read pretty much every book she discusses here, even the ones I'd never heard of or that didn't previously interest me. In Why I Read, Lesser employs a technique I adore, though I can find it incredibly irritating elsewhere: she addresses the reader directly, uses "you" and "we" and "us." With other writers this can be super pedantic, annoying, even abrasive, presumptuous. But here: it just works for me, beautifully. I feel included in the conversation Lesser, in the introduction, says she hopes the book will become. (I also feel honored to be included, treated as a peer, because Lesser is so smart, so beyond well-read.) Each chapter here is a graceful spiral, reaching forward and then looping back on its central topic (Plot and Character, Grandeur and Intimacy, etc.). Lesser manages to be utterly clear and totally un-summarizable.
January 9, 2023
Lesser states her purpose and approach in the Prologue: "I aspire, in this little book, toward the qualities I have admired in novels and poetry, including the compression, the indirection, the inherent connections, the organic shape.� Her "indirection" allows for cleverness in several contexts, including chapter 7's title: "Inconclusions." Though that chapter is the final numbered section, it is not technically a conclusion (therefore, an "in-" conclusion). An afterword and a list "A Hundred Books to Read for Pleasure" follow.
August 11, 2016
Hard to imagine a title better designed to appeal to Goodreaders. Lesser's Why I Read is the latest in the genre of books about reading books � not quite literary criticism, more an excuse for genial conversation. I scanned some of the other reviews before I started typing this one and was bemused to see that some readers found this book too academic or abstruse. If anything, it's too casual, completely obvious in its arguments. Another reviewer said she'd skipped the chapter on translation, which was by far my favorite. Despite my own meager rating, Lesser deserves better readers than these.
In a book like this there's one thing I'm hoping for � news of an author or a book that I would have never discovered otherwise. On this score I was disappointed. Her list of 100 books to read for pleasure offers the usual pleasure of lists* but few surprises. I share her zest for detective fiction, and tend to agree that Sjöwall/Wahlöö's Martin Beck novels are even better than Mankell's Wallander series** � but only a dullard would forgo either. I especially appreciated her remarks on translators, particularly her preference for Alfred Birnbaum as the translator of Haruki Murakami's novels. (Thanks to her I hunted down an obscure Japanese English edition of Norwegian Wood.) But readers looking for esoteric eccentricity or strong opinions will have keep looking.
___________
* I'm a long-time fan of The Guardian's . For the true aficionado, it's impossible to beat the canonical List of Lists at the end of Bloom's book � which indeed communicates its pleasure on every page.
** Oddly, only Mankell makes her list.
In a book like this there's one thing I'm hoping for � news of an author or a book that I would have never discovered otherwise. On this score I was disappointed. Her list of 100 books to read for pleasure offers the usual pleasure of lists* but few surprises. I share her zest for detective fiction, and tend to agree that Sjöwall/Wahlöö's Martin Beck novels are even better than Mankell's Wallander series** � but only a dullard would forgo either. I especially appreciated her remarks on translators, particularly her preference for Alfred Birnbaum as the translator of Haruki Murakami's novels. (Thanks to her I hunted down an obscure Japanese English edition of Norwegian Wood.) But readers looking for esoteric eccentricity or strong opinions will have keep looking.
___________
* I'm a long-time fan of The Guardian's . For the true aficionado, it's impossible to beat the canonical List of Lists at the end of Bloom's book � which indeed communicates its pleasure on every page.
** Oddly, only Mankell makes her list.
August 13, 2016
I enjoyed this. It reminded me of Francine Prose on reading like a writer and Lesser's earlier Rereadings, but not James Wood or Sven Birkerts so much. Her obligatory list of 100 books to read is silly, though - she limits herself to one book by each of her chosen authors but spends 3-4 pages writing caveats and explanations for the brevity of the list. Why not just list more?
Interesting discussion of Murakami's translators Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin - now perhaps I understand why A Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World has always been the only one of his novels I love. Jay Rubin's opening sentences The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
Interesting discussion of Murakami's translators Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin - now perhaps I understand why A Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World has always been the only one of his novels I love. Jay Rubin's opening sentences The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:
Alfred Birnbaum's:
When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.
I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was nearly done, but because Claudio Abbado was bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax.
I'm in the kitchen cooking spaghetti when the woman calls. Another moment until the spaghetti is done; there I am, whistling the prelude to Rossini's La Gazza Ladra along with the FM radio. Perfect spaghetti-cooking music.(Lesser suggests that in Birnbaum's translation the logic of cause-and-effect English sentence structure has been jettisoned in favor of "some other mode, and it is that mode -- the intrusion of the surprising and the foreign and the unknowable into the mundane regime -- which marks the world of a Murakami novel.")
I hear the telephone ring but tell myself, Ignore it. Let the spaghetti finish cooking. It's almost done, and besides, Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra are coming to a crescendo.
July 2, 2016
I like it when I read a book that is beyond my expectations! Though I think that the book title should be “Why I read Literature: the serious pleasure of books�, because the actual title is too general as if the author is going to talk about any or every genres.
Wendy Lesser way of dividing each chapter and analyzing each theme and character in a novel, short story or poem is beyond my expectation even after reading the titles of the book chapters and knowing what it will be about. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is in love with literature as “a must read�!
Lesser’s artistic way of analyzing and criticizing not only literature but also “us� and how we read literature is magnificent and interesting. It reminds of my College years in BA as I majored in English Literature, where in each course in Drama, poetry or novel we were struggling to analyze and understand different themes, characters etc. It was enjoyable and to some extent hard to figure out how to read it in the best way . This is why I liked the author’s point in her conclusion when she stated that : � but I have just realized something, as I near the end of my self-imposed quest, where the pursuit of why I read has turned into a discovery of how I read. What I now understand is that I read poetry much as I read prose, and nonfiction in much the same way I read fiction. I read them all for meaning, for sound, for voice but also for something I might call attentiveness to reality, or respect for the world outside oneself. The writer Harold Brodkey used to say, when he was alive, that literature consisted of one speaking voice plus one other genuinely existing thing�.
P.S my review is not going to tell you how much this book is marvelous.
Wendy Lesser way of dividing each chapter and analyzing each theme and character in a novel, short story or poem is beyond my expectation even after reading the titles of the book chapters and knowing what it will be about. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is in love with literature as “a must read�!
Lesser’s artistic way of analyzing and criticizing not only literature but also “us� and how we read literature is magnificent and interesting. It reminds of my College years in BA as I majored in English Literature, where in each course in Drama, poetry or novel we were struggling to analyze and understand different themes, characters etc. It was enjoyable and to some extent hard to figure out how to read it in the best way . This is why I liked the author’s point in her conclusion when she stated that : � but I have just realized something, as I near the end of my self-imposed quest, where the pursuit of why I read has turned into a discovery of how I read. What I now understand is that I read poetry much as I read prose, and nonfiction in much the same way I read fiction. I read them all for meaning, for sound, for voice but also for something I might call attentiveness to reality, or respect for the world outside oneself. The writer Harold Brodkey used to say, when he was alive, that literature consisted of one speaking voice plus one other genuinely existing thing�.
P.S my review is not going to tell you how much this book is marvelous.
February 25, 2014
lesser uses her chapters as parts of lit she reads for and likes, or doesn't: character and plot ; space between , that is gaps or detachable parts, she uses many examples like dickens characters,how they have detachable parts, gaps between 'you' and 'i', doubts, confessions, non-chronological stories, lies etc ; novelty ; authority ; grandeur and intimacy ; elsewhere, which deals with translations and other elsewheres ; inconclusions (she hates them) ; and a final afterword on books as physical vs digital ; AND a final final section listing 100 great books one could read.
lesser uses lots of examples to explain her ideas and though at end of book she says the reader must read it from page 1 to 212 or they won;t understand it, i read translations first as chapter one seemed to college lit classy. but then i went back and read whole book again in 'order'.
some of her readings and examples: sebald ; atxaga ; thompson 'killer inside me' ; lampedusa ; kafka ; michael hamburger ; de waal ; henry james (a lot of henry james) ; thom gunn ; dostoyevsky ; ross macdonald ; mankell ; manning ; mantel ; marias well, you get the picture. serious thoughts on books and readings. and rather wonderful too.
lesser uses lots of examples to explain her ideas and though at end of book she says the reader must read it from page 1 to 212 or they won;t understand it, i read translations first as chapter one seemed to college lit classy. but then i went back and read whole book again in 'order'.
some of her readings and examples: sebald ; atxaga ; thompson 'killer inside me' ; lampedusa ; kafka ; michael hamburger ; de waal ; henry james (a lot of henry james) ; thom gunn ; dostoyevsky ; ross macdonald ; mankell ; manning ; mantel ; marias well, you get the picture. serious thoughts on books and readings. and rather wonderful too.
February 19, 2019
Very self serving author and the book was disappointing. I tried to enjoy this book, but every few pages was either a major spoiler to books she's asking us all to read and constantly brings up Henry James as if we are all lesser readers for not having read him already.
The one good thing is her list of 100 books, but that could have been gleaned from any google search of top 100 lists. I have a secret feeling that she wanted to put more than one Henry James books on the list but her publisher guided her away from this I kept trying to pick this up and finish it, but it was not nearly as exciting as I thought it would be when I picked it up.
A true struggle to finish it and skipped over large sections if her comments were about a book I hadn't read yet, knowing she would spoil the entire plot. I suggest to others, to skip over the entire book instead.
The one good thing is her list of 100 books, but that could have been gleaned from any google search of top 100 lists. I have a secret feeling that she wanted to put more than one Henry James books on the list but her publisher guided her away from this I kept trying to pick this up and finish it, but it was not nearly as exciting as I thought it would be when I picked it up.
A true struggle to finish it and skipped over large sections if her comments were about a book I hadn't read yet, knowing she would spoil the entire plot. I suggest to others, to skip over the entire book instead.
May 15, 2020
Wendy Lesser is a very erudite reader, and I would give this book five stars except I think the title is misleading. It should be Why I Read Classic Literature: A Comparison of Writing Styles. You would really enjoy the book, for example, if you studied Russian Literature or Shakespeare. For the average reader, the author provides a suggested reading list with a web link to materials for a reading group. I share some of the others opinions such as I don't care for James Joyce's writings and we both love Scandinavian mysteries. I wish she would have included more contemporary writers such as Michael Chabon or Karl Ove Knausgard. I also reading a biography on the architect Louis Kahn by the same author that is quite good, so I looking forward to reading her other works.
December 28, 2018
In her Why I Read, The Serious Pleasure of Books, Wendy Lesser won me over at once with the opening paragraphs of her “Prologue: Why I Read�:
“It’s not a question I can completely answer. There are abundant reasons, some of them worse than others and many of them mutually contradictory. To pass the time. To savor the existence of time. To escape from myself into someone else’s world. To find myself in someone else’s words. To exercise my critical capacities. To flee from the need for rational explanations.
“And even the obvious reasons may not be the real ones. My motives remain obscure to me because reading is, to a certain extent, a compulsion. As with all compulsions, its sources prefer to stay hidden.�
Later in the prologue, she unashamedly comes out with this: “I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure.� (Before you conclude that this condones the schlock of Sidney Sheldon or Jacqueline Suzanne, please note that in the subtitle of her book, Lesser modifies “pleasure with “serious.�)
Folks who live from social occasion to social occasion or from trip to trip and seem to be in constant need of vacating their lives can find it hard to understand bibliophiles, who have blessedly little trouble staying put if only they have an engaging book in hand. Here’s Lesser: “Jane Austen’s Bath is more present to me than the tourist-laden city I have actually visited, and Gogol’s Nevsky Project is more memorable than the mundane boulevard I saw when I finally got to St. Petersburg.�
I recently referred to William Giraldi as being “preternaturally well-read.� The extent and range of Wendy Lesser’s reading exceeds the preternatural. (Lord, she’s even well-reread.) One of the greatest pleasures of this book is the abundance of choice quotations from writers living and dead. At one point, wanting to convey Montaigne’s isolate exceptionalism, Lesser has at her ready disposal this jaw-dropping quotation from one of his essays:
“Not from fear but from cunning, I want to go to the earth like a rabbit and steal off as I pass away. It’s not my intention to treat or to display my constancy during that action. For whom would it be? Then all my right to reputation and all my concern for it will be at an end. I am satisfied with a death which will withdraw into itself, a calm and lonely one, entirely my own, in keeping with my life � retiring and private. I have enough to do without having to console others, enough thoughts in my mind without fresh ones evoked by my surroundings; enough to think about without drawing on others. This event is not one of our social engagements; it is a scene with one character.�
In the chapter called “Novelty,� Lesser considers the interminable war between traditionalists and the avant garde and laudably comes down on the side of neither.
Unaffiliated with anybody’s English Department, Lesser is free to be forthright and unsparing in her disdain for much of the work of the iconic James Joyce:
“For a very different approach to literary innovation, consider James Joyce’s Ulysses. This is a novel that has always gotten on my nerves. I admit that a part of what is annoying is how much other people love it and praise it, when it leaves me cold. I vastly prefer the youthful author of Dubliners, and even the slightly pushier fellow behind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to the highly self-conscious innovator who wrote Ulysses. By the time he reached that point, Joyce had begun to congeal into the artist who would eventually produce the nearly unreadable Finnegan’s Wake, and the obvious source of the rot was his overweening desire for a great literary reputation. This trumped all other literary desires on his part, so that things which had mattered to him earlier � the creation of believable human figures, the portrayal of a particular moment in Dublin’s and Ireland’s history, the use of language as an element in our common experience, the reliance on real as opposed to fabricated emotions � all gave way to this one enormous wish: to be the greatest, most impressive writer of his generation. This is not a literary impulse but a self-promotional one, and you can sense it in every chapter, almost every line of Ulysses. We are meant to recognize and applaud the skillful scene-by-scene parallels between the heroic Homeric tale and its reduced Dublin version, the chortlingly amusing imitations of other literary forms, the archetypical renderings of Jew and Catholic and man and woman. Woman! Don’t get me started. If I hate anything more than the rest of the book, it’s that ridiculously orgasmic Molly Bloom soliloquy with which Joyce concludes � a ventriloquist’s dummy masquerading as a character. Reading her breathy Yeses, I can hear her all-too-evident author congratulating himself on his literary genius.�
Whew! I savored that, as a reader who has long regarded as utter gas the section of Ulysses that begins with “Ineluctable modality of the infinite …� And Lesser goes on for another paragraph about Finnegan’s Wake.
She has a deft sense of humor and can use it to make a point. On the touchy subject of directorial interpretations of Shakespeare, she writes: “You can put a piece of toast on the stage and call it The Merchant of Venice, and no one is going to stop you.� To her credit, hard on the heels of that observation she mentions being moved by a Berliner Ensemble production of that play performed in German and set in a Mercedes-Benz factory. Lesser is always ready to waive reservations and acknowledge anything that works.
i know one writer who is reluctant to read anything in translation. Lesser is fully aware of the difficulties of translation and eloquent on the need for it.
The book concludes with Lesser's list of 100 books that have given her pleasure.
Lesser’s book joins Sven Birkert’s 2006 The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age and this year’s American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring by William Giraldi as an indispensable triumvirate of books supporting bibliophiles and readership.
“It’s not a question I can completely answer. There are abundant reasons, some of them worse than others and many of them mutually contradictory. To pass the time. To savor the existence of time. To escape from myself into someone else’s world. To find myself in someone else’s words. To exercise my critical capacities. To flee from the need for rational explanations.
“And even the obvious reasons may not be the real ones. My motives remain obscure to me because reading is, to a certain extent, a compulsion. As with all compulsions, its sources prefer to stay hidden.�
Later in the prologue, she unashamedly comes out with this: “I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure.� (Before you conclude that this condones the schlock of Sidney Sheldon or Jacqueline Suzanne, please note that in the subtitle of her book, Lesser modifies “pleasure with “serious.�)
Folks who live from social occasion to social occasion or from trip to trip and seem to be in constant need of vacating their lives can find it hard to understand bibliophiles, who have blessedly little trouble staying put if only they have an engaging book in hand. Here’s Lesser: “Jane Austen’s Bath is more present to me than the tourist-laden city I have actually visited, and Gogol’s Nevsky Project is more memorable than the mundane boulevard I saw when I finally got to St. Petersburg.�
I recently referred to William Giraldi as being “preternaturally well-read.� The extent and range of Wendy Lesser’s reading exceeds the preternatural. (Lord, she’s even well-reread.) One of the greatest pleasures of this book is the abundance of choice quotations from writers living and dead. At one point, wanting to convey Montaigne’s isolate exceptionalism, Lesser has at her ready disposal this jaw-dropping quotation from one of his essays:
“Not from fear but from cunning, I want to go to the earth like a rabbit and steal off as I pass away. It’s not my intention to treat or to display my constancy during that action. For whom would it be? Then all my right to reputation and all my concern for it will be at an end. I am satisfied with a death which will withdraw into itself, a calm and lonely one, entirely my own, in keeping with my life � retiring and private. I have enough to do without having to console others, enough thoughts in my mind without fresh ones evoked by my surroundings; enough to think about without drawing on others. This event is not one of our social engagements; it is a scene with one character.�
In the chapter called “Novelty,� Lesser considers the interminable war between traditionalists and the avant garde and laudably comes down on the side of neither.
Unaffiliated with anybody’s English Department, Lesser is free to be forthright and unsparing in her disdain for much of the work of the iconic James Joyce:
“For a very different approach to literary innovation, consider James Joyce’s Ulysses. This is a novel that has always gotten on my nerves. I admit that a part of what is annoying is how much other people love it and praise it, when it leaves me cold. I vastly prefer the youthful author of Dubliners, and even the slightly pushier fellow behind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to the highly self-conscious innovator who wrote Ulysses. By the time he reached that point, Joyce had begun to congeal into the artist who would eventually produce the nearly unreadable Finnegan’s Wake, and the obvious source of the rot was his overweening desire for a great literary reputation. This trumped all other literary desires on his part, so that things which had mattered to him earlier � the creation of believable human figures, the portrayal of a particular moment in Dublin’s and Ireland’s history, the use of language as an element in our common experience, the reliance on real as opposed to fabricated emotions � all gave way to this one enormous wish: to be the greatest, most impressive writer of his generation. This is not a literary impulse but a self-promotional one, and you can sense it in every chapter, almost every line of Ulysses. We are meant to recognize and applaud the skillful scene-by-scene parallels between the heroic Homeric tale and its reduced Dublin version, the chortlingly amusing imitations of other literary forms, the archetypical renderings of Jew and Catholic and man and woman. Woman! Don’t get me started. If I hate anything more than the rest of the book, it’s that ridiculously orgasmic Molly Bloom soliloquy with which Joyce concludes � a ventriloquist’s dummy masquerading as a character. Reading her breathy Yeses, I can hear her all-too-evident author congratulating himself on his literary genius.�
Whew! I savored that, as a reader who has long regarded as utter gas the section of Ulysses that begins with “Ineluctable modality of the infinite …� And Lesser goes on for another paragraph about Finnegan’s Wake.
She has a deft sense of humor and can use it to make a point. On the touchy subject of directorial interpretations of Shakespeare, she writes: “You can put a piece of toast on the stage and call it The Merchant of Venice, and no one is going to stop you.� To her credit, hard on the heels of that observation she mentions being moved by a Berliner Ensemble production of that play performed in German and set in a Mercedes-Benz factory. Lesser is always ready to waive reservations and acknowledge anything that works.
i know one writer who is reluctant to read anything in translation. Lesser is fully aware of the difficulties of translation and eloquent on the need for it.
The book concludes with Lesser's list of 100 books that have given her pleasure.
Lesser’s book joins Sven Birkert’s 2006 The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age and this year’s American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring by William Giraldi as an indispensable triumvirate of books supporting bibliophiles and readership.
April 9, 2017
A decent treatise on classics that move us and literature that provides pleasure, Why I Read offers a roadmap for worthy literature with its list of recommended novels in the back itself worthwhile to look over and the rest of the book also a gem.
December 24, 2020
Perhaps a better title for this book would have been "What I think are the qualities of a good book"
Basically a Lit 101 class disguised as a book. The best chapter is the last - The Book as Physical Object.
Basically a Lit 101 class disguised as a book. The best chapter is the last - The Book as Physical Object.
October 29, 2018
3.5: Uneven, but worth reading for her take on Ulysses which matches mine completely (basically: overrated 😉).
December 3, 2014
Originally published at:
First impression
On my first shopping spree at Book Outlet I saw this book; I liked the cover and the premise seemed interesting. Wendy Lesser is a critic, a novelist and also an editor so it was appealing to me to hear, or rather read, in the words of someone who is so into the field that is reading, why reading is such a pleasure and I will admit I was curious to see if we had similar points. From the beginning of the book I realised this was more about the serious part rather than the pleasure part, or at least that is what the book made me feel. From sentences such us "real literature" and "[…]to refer repeatedly to murder mysteries, a notoriously trashy form" to afirmations that frankly let me feeling (and I realize this is completely subjective) like the author was disapproving of my reading, I just couldn't find joy in this book.
Final thoughts
I will be honest: every time I thought about writing this review I cringed remembering how I felt reading the book. It read to me like a highbrow lecture that made me feel inadequate with my reading. I am not saying off course that this was in any way the intention of the author; I am just telling you how the speech in the book affected me.
From the beginning, when she used sentences such "real literature" it stroke me as disdain of some sort, disapproval of genres and even of certain readers and while I can be as much as a book as anyone, this just felt wrong. Then there was the situation with the examples she uses to show the alleged pleasure for the first chapter I could not recognize the books or for that matter the authors she was citing. This, I know, is my problem, not hers. Probably I would recognize authors that she wouldn't, and that's ok. But when in all of her examples there is not a single one you recognize, engaging with the book and saying:"Ah yes, I see what your point Mrs. Lesser". If you compare it with by Peter Mendelsund you might see what I mean with this. I have never read Anna Karenina, but being such a wide known book I knew and understood what the author meant; this was impossible for me with Lesser's book.
Even in cases where I had read the book or at least part of it, this understanding of the author was not there. For example I tried to read Don Quixote (in Spanish mind you) I made it to chapter 12 I think where he starts having a monologue with rocks, once Sancho Panza has left him alone. I just couldn't go on; there was no pleasure for me reading it. I made it through Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower but after that I no longer engaged in Proust's work. But even then, when she did use these books at examples I just couldn't see what she was pointing out in them and I would end up with the horrible feeling that it was my fault.
One thing we did agree on was translations and their effects on the reader. I am one of those people that would love to read all her books in the original language, but then again, I am not going to learn Swedish any time soon guys and my German won't allow me to read The Never ending Story any time soon, even if it is a book I already read. So it is important to find someone who manages not only to translate the sentence but the meaning of the sentence, and of course this is hard to do.
I was sad at the end, because I had very high expectations for the book, but it was just not for me.
First impression
On my first shopping spree at Book Outlet I saw this book; I liked the cover and the premise seemed interesting. Wendy Lesser is a critic, a novelist and also an editor so it was appealing to me to hear, or rather read, in the words of someone who is so into the field that is reading, why reading is such a pleasure and I will admit I was curious to see if we had similar points. From the beginning of the book I realised this was more about the serious part rather than the pleasure part, or at least that is what the book made me feel. From sentences such us "real literature" and "[…]to refer repeatedly to murder mysteries, a notoriously trashy form" to afirmations that frankly let me feeling (and I realize this is completely subjective) like the author was disapproving of my reading, I just couldn't find joy in this book.
Final thoughts
I will be honest: every time I thought about writing this review I cringed remembering how I felt reading the book. It read to me like a highbrow lecture that made me feel inadequate with my reading. I am not saying off course that this was in any way the intention of the author; I am just telling you how the speech in the book affected me.
From the beginning, when she used sentences such "real literature" it stroke me as disdain of some sort, disapproval of genres and even of certain readers and while I can be as much as a book as anyone, this just felt wrong. Then there was the situation with the examples she uses to show the alleged pleasure for the first chapter I could not recognize the books or for that matter the authors she was citing. This, I know, is my problem, not hers. Probably I would recognize authors that she wouldn't, and that's ok. But when in all of her examples there is not a single one you recognize, engaging with the book and saying:"Ah yes, I see what your point Mrs. Lesser". If you compare it with by Peter Mendelsund you might see what I mean with this. I have never read Anna Karenina, but being such a wide known book I knew and understood what the author meant; this was impossible for me with Lesser's book.
Even in cases where I had read the book or at least part of it, this understanding of the author was not there. For example I tried to read Don Quixote (in Spanish mind you) I made it to chapter 12 I think where he starts having a monologue with rocks, once Sancho Panza has left him alone. I just couldn't go on; there was no pleasure for me reading it. I made it through Swann's Way and In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower but after that I no longer engaged in Proust's work. But even then, when she did use these books at examples I just couldn't see what she was pointing out in them and I would end up with the horrible feeling that it was my fault.
One thing we did agree on was translations and their effects on the reader. I am one of those people that would love to read all her books in the original language, but then again, I am not going to learn Swedish any time soon guys and my German won't allow me to read The Never ending Story any time soon, even if it is a book I already read. So it is important to find someone who manages not only to translate the sentence but the meaning of the sentence, and of course this is hard to do.
I was sad at the end, because I had very high expectations for the book, but it was just not for me.
Read
August 2, 2020Oo, I had a tough time with this one for two (petty?) reasons 1) there seemed to be a greater usage of male pronouns for the abstract author/writer than female (I noticed she/her twice and he/him 5-7 times and after the 3rd time in a row it is jarring)
2) Lesser describes the unsuspicious reader a reader who is just filling time with book "trash reading"pp99 which I grew incandescent thinking about.
I think these things distracted from what the book is trying to do, which is describe why Lesser reads and all the lovely things she's read (largely classic canon but also genres like SciFi and Mysteries, however she sticks mostly to dead writers it still feels very much like she doesn't like things that aren't capital L literature.) Not that I didn't want to run out and read all the books mentioned anyway. While her list of 100 books to read for pleasure only has maybe a 1/4 women writers, Lesser's focus is on promoting older works that are not going to show up on the bestseller list and I'm a both/and kinda reader (read the our-voices that is new and the old stuff when you feel like it)
Written in 2014, Lesser includes a bit grappling with the rise of the eBook, where we all were thinking maybe the eBook would be the last word on book format. I think we've landed at an equilibrium now.
2) Lesser describes the unsuspicious reader a reader who is just filling time with book "trash reading"pp99 which I grew incandescent thinking about.
I think these things distracted from what the book is trying to do, which is describe why Lesser reads and all the lovely things she's read (largely classic canon but also genres like SciFi and Mysteries, however she sticks mostly to dead writers it still feels very much like she doesn't like things that aren't capital L literature.) Not that I didn't want to run out and read all the books mentioned anyway. While her list of 100 books to read for pleasure only has maybe a 1/4 women writers, Lesser's focus is on promoting older works that are not going to show up on the bestseller list and I'm a both/and kinda reader (read the our-voices that is new and the old stuff when you feel like it)
Written in 2014, Lesser includes a bit grappling with the rise of the eBook, where we all were thinking maybe the eBook would be the last word on book format. I think we've landed at an equilibrium now.
December 10, 2014
Why I Read reads a lot like a thesis, because it's so serious and filled with serious literature. Yet, even though it read like a school thesis or a scholarly journal article, there was just something incredibly interesting about it at the same time. I found myself alternately amused, interested, skimming, and completely relating to what Lesser had to say.
Even though it was heavy with facts and quotations from classic novels, Wendy's writing just balanced it out perfectly. She had many quotable passages, mentioning things I could simply relate to as a reader. In fact, just to prove my point, I'll share a few of these quotes below. [Please note that these are taken from a review copy, and are subject to change in the actual book.]
"When it comes to literature, we are all groping in the dark, even the writer. Especially the writer. And that is a good thing -- maybe one of the best things about literature. It's always an adventure of some kind. Even the second or third or tenth time you read it, a book can surprise you, and to discover a new writer you love is like discovering a whole new country."
"Nothing takes you out of yourself the way a good book does, but at the same time nothing makes you more aware of yourself as a solitary creature, possessing your own particular tastes, memories, associations, beliefs. Even as it fully engages you with another mind (or maybe many other minds, if you count the characters' as well as the author's), reading remains a highly individual act. No one will ever do it precisely the way you do."
"Sometimes, when I have ordered an old book on the internet and it finally arrives in the mail, and after I have thrown away the packaging and poured myself a drink and sat down in my favorite chair, I open the cover and sniff the pages before I even start to read. I always think the smell of that paper goes with its feel, the tangible sensation of a thick, textured, easily turnable page on which the embedded black print looks as if it could be felt with a fingertip, even when it can't."
It's important to note, of course, that this novel is only the opinion of one person and not a generalization of everyone's habits. Even though it might appear to be so based on the quotes I've included, not everything Wendy included in her novel was applicable to me.
Honestly, I dove into Why I Read to take a break from my YA books. It might not have been the most readable material, but I still found myself engrossed. If you're interested in exploring your reading habits, and trying to reflect on why you read, this might appeal to you.
{If you liked this review, check out for more!}
Even though it was heavy with facts and quotations from classic novels, Wendy's writing just balanced it out perfectly. She had many quotable passages, mentioning things I could simply relate to as a reader. In fact, just to prove my point, I'll share a few of these quotes below. [Please note that these are taken from a review copy, and are subject to change in the actual book.]
"When it comes to literature, we are all groping in the dark, even the writer. Especially the writer. And that is a good thing -- maybe one of the best things about literature. It's always an adventure of some kind. Even the second or third or tenth time you read it, a book can surprise you, and to discover a new writer you love is like discovering a whole new country."
"Nothing takes you out of yourself the way a good book does, but at the same time nothing makes you more aware of yourself as a solitary creature, possessing your own particular tastes, memories, associations, beliefs. Even as it fully engages you with another mind (or maybe many other minds, if you count the characters' as well as the author's), reading remains a highly individual act. No one will ever do it precisely the way you do."
"Sometimes, when I have ordered an old book on the internet and it finally arrives in the mail, and after I have thrown away the packaging and poured myself a drink and sat down in my favorite chair, I open the cover and sniff the pages before I even start to read. I always think the smell of that paper goes with its feel, the tangible sensation of a thick, textured, easily turnable page on which the embedded black print looks as if it could be felt with a fingertip, even when it can't."
It's important to note, of course, that this novel is only the opinion of one person and not a generalization of everyone's habits. Even though it might appear to be so based on the quotes I've included, not everything Wendy included in her novel was applicable to me.
Honestly, I dove into Why I Read to take a break from my YA books. It might not have been the most readable material, but I still found myself engrossed. If you're interested in exploring your reading habits, and trying to reflect on why you read, this might appeal to you.
{If you liked this review, check out for more!}
June 30, 2021
from Chapter Four, "Authority":
...The point of all this is that literature can never be *just* a trick. We need to feel that something more is at stake, that something is truly being created where nothing was before...It would be inaccurate to say that authoritarian works command while works with authority persuade, for even the word "persuasion" is too blinkered, too end-achieving, too personally manipulative to cover the methods employed by the most powerful literature. (But the words "method," "employ," and "power" are also suspect here. They are blunt instruments standing in for something that is far more delicate and in fact nearly indiscernible.) The author who possesses authority has no palpable designs on us: we barely exist for him, just as he barely exists for us...And yet at some point in the process of reading, if the work has authority enough, the self yields.
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
this passage (in full, anyhow...go read the whole thing!) and this chapter explained a lot for me. I avoided reading _The Color Purple_ for, like, 20 years because of all the snarky (at best) criticism of Alice Walker's place in the new canon. I didn't feel like reading anything super-manipulative and/or just not that good, and I reallyreallyreally didn't want a reading experience that would make me side with the Bad Guys. so when I finally read the novel ( because one should), I was doubly resistant...and yet, it happened: Walker's writing established an aesthetic authority to which my stupid, scared self yielded entirely.
at the same time, Lesser's notion of authority seems to explain why Eugenides leaves me cold. when I read him, I can *feel* his end-achieving designs in a way that embarrasses me. like a "miss u" text from someone you just met: dude, is your nose running? like seeing somebody wearing a Nirvana t-shirt: do you even Pixies? thx for making *me* feel like a dick, you dick.
it isn't that I dislike perceiving an author's designs on me; I am definitely not so cool that I'm not flattered by the attention. but when the author who barely exists to my barely-existing reader is, say, a more artful McSweeney's type, then that discernible design-- however overt or even heavy-handed--is more like seeing somebody wearing Velvet Underground knee socks. like, ok, i'm looking at you, so good job, but now tell me more.
...The point of all this is that literature can never be *just* a trick. We need to feel that something more is at stake, that something is truly being created where nothing was before...It would be inaccurate to say that authoritarian works command while works with authority persuade, for even the word "persuasion" is too blinkered, too end-achieving, too personally manipulative to cover the methods employed by the most powerful literature. (But the words "method," "employ," and "power" are also suspect here. They are blunt instruments standing in for something that is far more delicate and in fact nearly indiscernible.) The author who possesses authority has no palpable designs on us: we barely exist for him, just as he barely exists for us...And yet at some point in the process of reading, if the work has authority enough, the self yields.
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
this passage (in full, anyhow...go read the whole thing!) and this chapter explained a lot for me. I avoided reading _The Color Purple_ for, like, 20 years because of all the snarky (at best) criticism of Alice Walker's place in the new canon. I didn't feel like reading anything super-manipulative and/or just not that good, and I reallyreallyreally didn't want a reading experience that would make me side with the Bad Guys. so when I finally read the novel ( because one should), I was doubly resistant...and yet, it happened: Walker's writing established an aesthetic authority to which my stupid, scared self yielded entirely.
at the same time, Lesser's notion of authority seems to explain why Eugenides leaves me cold. when I read him, I can *feel* his end-achieving designs in a way that embarrasses me. like a "miss u" text from someone you just met: dude, is your nose running? like seeing somebody wearing a Nirvana t-shirt: do you even Pixies? thx for making *me* feel like a dick, you dick.
it isn't that I dislike perceiving an author's designs on me; I am definitely not so cool that I'm not flattered by the attention. but when the author who barely exists to my barely-existing reader is, say, a more artful McSweeney's type, then that discernible design-- however overt or even heavy-handed--is more like seeing somebody wearing Velvet Underground knee socks. like, ok, i'm looking at you, so good job, but now tell me more.
December 12, 2014
Wendy Lesser is the founding editor for the American literary magazine The Threepenny Review; she is lucky enough to spend her days with books. She is a bibliophile with a lifetime of reading experience to offer as well as an eclectic taste. Why I Read is a collection of essays that explores Lesser’s thoughts and ideas on literature in through the lens of different topics like character and plot.
This sounds like the type of book I should love and it ticked all the right boxes for what I look for in a book about books; eclectic taste, part memoir and offering some literary criticism. However I felt a huge disconnection with this book and I spend a lot of time just trying to pin-point what wasn’t working. Clearly Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and is well read, though I felt like that passion didn’t translation into her writing. This felt more like academic writing, so all emotion felt removed from Why I Read, but this is the type of book that needs that emotion and passion.
I enjoyed the fact that Wendy Lesser jumped from Henry James or Fyodor Dostoevsky, to Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, Patricia Highsmith and other crime novelists. It was fascinating to see crime novels used as examples in literary criticism, I was happy to see examples of science fiction, and fantasy also included rather than sticking to just literary fiction or classics. It is a real shame that the writing was so flat; the concepts and ideas were great and with some polishing this could have made for a wonderful book.
I am disappointed that this book never grabbed me and the writing held the book back. There are plenty of interesting ideas and literary criticism worth exploring but the dull nature really made that difficult. I sounds like Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and would have a lot ideas worth listening to if only that passion was visible in the writing.
This review originally appeared on my blog;
This sounds like the type of book I should love and it ticked all the right boxes for what I look for in a book about books; eclectic taste, part memoir and offering some literary criticism. However I felt a huge disconnection with this book and I spend a lot of time just trying to pin-point what wasn’t working. Clearly Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and is well read, though I felt like that passion didn’t translation into her writing. This felt more like academic writing, so all emotion felt removed from Why I Read, but this is the type of book that needs that emotion and passion.
I enjoyed the fact that Wendy Lesser jumped from Henry James or Fyodor Dostoevsky, to Jim Thompson, Ross MacDonald, Patricia Highsmith and other crime novelists. It was fascinating to see crime novels used as examples in literary criticism, I was happy to see examples of science fiction, and fantasy also included rather than sticking to just literary fiction or classics. It is a real shame that the writing was so flat; the concepts and ideas were great and with some polishing this could have made for a wonderful book.
I am disappointed that this book never grabbed me and the writing held the book back. There are plenty of interesting ideas and literary criticism worth exploring but the dull nature really made that difficult. I sounds like Wendy Lesser is passionate about books and would have a lot ideas worth listening to if only that passion was visible in the writing.
This review originally appeared on my blog;
August 26, 2015
Before consuming Lesser's work I had solid notions of why I read. Of course, to learn and be entertained are given equal weight. From there my motives become more personal. I know that for some people reading is a chore best avoided. To these folks, I can only encourage the effort because I believe it is worth it. Reading is meant to be a challenge. Anything that presents difficulty often returns incredible rewards. And besides, skimming short, simple works impact one’s intellectual growth or so experts say. These social scientists advocate slowing one’s reading down and reading longer works more often.
Thankfully, I love a beautiful turn of phrase. I admire a narrative that places one in that moment. I crave an argument compellingly delivered. I respect the complex being made simple but not so simple as to rob it of intricacy. I appreciate learning new words, turning them over in my head and sounding them out on my tongue.
Lesser does as well. In this effort she tackles aspects of reading and writing. In this exploration she brings forth examples of books that cannot be missed. Without a doubt she goes about it in a serious way that may put off the casual reader. But in so doing she is making a point. Most have forgotten that learning and discovery are meant to be arduous. The journey is the destination. If you are handed the answers what have you possibly learned?
William Henry in his brilliant rant, In Defense of Elitism, wrote, "Today, even critical books about ideas are expected to be prescriptive, to conclude with simple, step-by-step solutions to whatever crisis they discuss. Reading itself is becoming a way out of thinking." I hope that is never the case.
Thankfully, I love a beautiful turn of phrase. I admire a narrative that places one in that moment. I crave an argument compellingly delivered. I respect the complex being made simple but not so simple as to rob it of intricacy. I appreciate learning new words, turning them over in my head and sounding them out on my tongue.
Lesser does as well. In this effort she tackles aspects of reading and writing. In this exploration she brings forth examples of books that cannot be missed. Without a doubt she goes about it in a serious way that may put off the casual reader. But in so doing she is making a point. Most have forgotten that learning and discovery are meant to be arduous. The journey is the destination. If you are handed the answers what have you possibly learned?
William Henry in his brilliant rant, In Defense of Elitism, wrote, "Today, even critical books about ideas are expected to be prescriptive, to conclude with simple, step-by-step solutions to whatever crisis they discuss. Reading itself is becoming a way out of thinking." I hope that is never the case.
February 20, 2014
The author, Wendy Lesser writes in her prologue, “Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it.�
Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as “Character and Plot,� “Novelty,� “Grandeur and Intimacy,� and “Authority,� Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside tasks in favor of reading. “Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different,� she writes. “It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else’s past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times.�
Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun along with the hundred books to read for pleasure listed in the end.
Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as “Character and Plot,� “Novelty,� “Grandeur and Intimacy,� and “Authority,� Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside tasks in favor of reading. “Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different,� she writes. “It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else’s past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times.�
Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun along with the hundred books to read for pleasure listed in the end.
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