{{Short description|Book by Francine Prose}} {{no footnotes|date=November 2015}} {{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject Books --> | name = Reading Like a Writer | title_orig = | translator = | image = Readinglikeawriter.jpg | caption = Cover of the first edition | author = Francine Prose | illustrator = | cover_artist = Roberto de Viqde Cumptich | country = United States | language = English | series = | genre = Nonfiction | publisher = HarperCollins | release_date = 2006 | english_release_date = | media_type = Print (Hardback) | pages = 275 pp | isbn = 0-06-077704-4 | dewey= 808/.02 22 | congress= PE1408 .P774 2006 | oclc= 62762325 }} '''''Reading Like a Writer''''' is a writing guide by American writer Francine Prose, published in 2006.

==Background== Subtitled "A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them," — Prose shares how she developed her writing craft through writing and reading. She uses examples from literature to demonstrate how fictional elements, such as character and dialogue, can be mastered.

==Summary==

* ''Chapter One: Close Reading'' Prose discusses the question of whether writing can be taught. She answers the question by suggesting that although writing workshops can be helpful, the best way to learn to write is to read. Closely reading books, Prose studied word choice and sentence construction. Close reading helped her solve difficult obstacles in her own writing.

* ''Chapter Two: Words'' Prose encourages the reader to slow down and read every word. She reminds the reader that words are the "raw material out of which literature is crafted." Challenging the reader to stop at every word, she suggests the following question be asked: "What is the writer trying to convey with this word?"

* ''Chapter Three: Sentences'' Prose discusses how "the well made sentence transcends time and genre." She believes the writer who is concerned about what constitutes a well-constructed sentence is on the right path. Prose mentions the importance of mastering grammar and how it can improve the quality of a writer's sentence. In this chapter, she also discusses the use of long sentences, short sentences, and rhythm in prose.

* ''Chapter Four: Paragraphs'' Prose discusses that, just as with sentence construction, the writer who is concerned about paragraph construction is stepping in the right direction. She states that the writer who reads widely will discover there are no general rules for building a well-constructed paragraph, but "only individual examples to help point [the writer] in a direction in which [the writer] might want to go."

* ''Chapter Five: Narration'' When determining point of view, Prose says audience is an important factor. She gives examples from literature of point-of-view variations. First person and third person are discussed, and even an example of writing fiction in second person is given.

* ''Chapter Six: Character'' Using examples from the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Jane Austen, Prose discusses how writers can develop characterization. She mentions that Kleist, in his "The Marquise of O—" ignores physical description of the characters, but instead "tells us just as much as we need to know about his characters, then releases them into the narrative that doesn't stop spinning until the last sentence . . ." Excerpts from other pieces of literature are used to show how action, dialogue and even physical description can help develop characterization.

* ''Chapter Seven: Dialogue'' Prose begins this chapter by dispelling the advice that writers should improve and clean up dialogue so it sounds less caustic than actual speech. She believes this idea on dialogue can be taken too far and that dialogue can be used to reveal not only the words on the surface, but the many motivations and emotions of the characters underneath the words.

* ''Chapter Eight: Details'' Using examples from literature, Prose explains how one or two important details can leave a more memorable impression on the reader than a barrage of description.

* ''Chapter Nine: Gestures'' Prose argues that gestures performed by fictional characters should not be "physical clichés" but illuminations that move the narrative.

* ''Chapter Ten: Learning from Chekhov'' Prose gives examples of what she has learned from reading Anton Chekhov. As a creative writing teacher, she would disseminate advice to her students after reading their stories. As a fan of Chekhov, she would read his short stories and find examples of how he would successfully break the "rules" of fiction writing, contradicting something she recently told her students to do in their writing projects. Prose also discusses how Chekhov teaches the writer to write without judgment; she tells how Chekhov practiced not being the "judge of one's characters and their conversations but rather the unbiased observer."

* ''Chapter Eleven: Reading for Courage'' Prose discusses the fears writers may have: revealing too much of themselves in their writing; resisting the pressures that writers must write a certain way; determining whether or not the act of writing is worth it when one considers the state of the world. She concludes her book by stating that the writer may fear creating "weeds" instead of "roses." Continuing the metaphor, she says reading is a way for the writer to see how other gardeners grow their roses.

* ''Books to Be Read Immediately'' Prose includes a list of book recommendations, many of which have selections from those that are used as examples for the concepts she discusses.

==Books to be Read==

Here are the books in mostly chronological order. The chapters in which they are discussed are in italics.

* Sophocles (trans. Sir George Young) Oedipus Rex * Anonymous (trans. Dorothy L. Sayers) The Song of Roland * Miguel de Cervantes (trans. Tobias Smollett) Don Quixote * William Shakespeare King Lear * John Milton Paradise Lost * Samuel Richardson Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded * Samuel Johnson The Life of Savage ''Sentences'' * Edward Gibbon Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire * Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility ''Paragraphs'' ''Character'' * Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice ''Paragraphs'' ''Character'' * Heinrich von Kleist (trans. Martin Greenberg) The Marquise of O---- and Other Stories ''Sentences'' ''Character'' * Stendhal (trans. Roger Gard) The Red and the Black ''Paragraphs'' * Honore de Balzac (trans. Kathleen Raine) Cousin Bette * Nikolai Gogol (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) Dead Souls: A Novel ''Courage'' * Charles Dickens Dombey and Son ''Narration'' * Charles Dickens Bleak House * Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights * Ivan Turgenev (trans. Isaiah Berlin) First Love * George Eliot Middlemarch ''Character'' * Herman Melville Bartleby, the Scrivener ''Paragraphs'' * Herman Melville Moby Dick * Herman Melville Benito Cereno * Gustave Flaubert (trans. Geoffrey Wall) Madame Bovary ''Courage'' * Gustave Flaubert (trans. Robert Baldick) Sentimental Education ''Character'' * Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Constance Garnett) Crime and Punishment ''Narration'' ''Courage'' * Leo Tolstoy (trans. David McDuff) The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories * Leo Tolstoy (trans. Aylmer Maude) The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories ''Courage'' * Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) Anna Karenina * Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) War and Peace * Leo Tolstoy (trans. Rosemary Edmonds) Resurrection * Louisa May Alcott Little Women * Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ''Narration'' * James Baldwin Vintage Baldwin ''Paragraphs'' * Henry James The Portrait of a Lady ''Gesture'' * Henry James The Turn of the Screw ''Narration'' * Anton Chekhov (trans. Constance Garnett) Tales of Anton Chekhov: Volumes 1-13 ''Detail'' ''Gesture'' ''Chekhov'' ''Courage'' * Anton Chekhov (trans. Constance Garnett) A Life in Letters ''Detail'' * William Strunk The Elements of Style, Illustrated ''Sentences'' * Marcel Proust (trans. Lydia Davis) Swann's Way ''Gesture'' * Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ''Sentences'' * Virginia Woolf On Being Ill ''Sentences'' * James Joyce Dubliners ''Sentences'' ''Gesture'' * Franz Kafka (trans. Malcolm Pasley) Metamorphosis and Other Stories ''Detail'' * Franz Kafka The Judgement ''Gesture'' * Franz Kafka In the Penal Colony * Rex Stout Plot It Yourself ''Paragraphs'' * Katherine Mansfield Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield ''Words'' ''Gesture'' * Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep ''Sentences'' ''Gesture'' * Ryunosuke Akutagawa (trans. M. Kuwata and Tashaki Kojima) Rashomon and Other Stories * Konstantin Paustovsky Years of Hope: The Story of a Life ''Paragraphs'' * Rebecca West The Birds Fall Down ''Sentences'' * Rebecca West Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia ''Sentences'' * Isaac Babel (trans. Walter Morrison) The Collected Stories ''Paragraphs'' ''Courage'' * L. P. Hartley The Go-Between ''Gesture'' * F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby ''Words'' * F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night ''Words'' * Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises ''Sentences'' * Ernest Hemingway A Moveable Feast ''Sentences'' * Elizabeth Bowen The House in Paris ''Detail'' * Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Russian Literature ''Chekhov'' * Vladimir Nabokov Lolita ''Narration'' ''Dialogue'' * Nadezhda Mandelstam Hope Against Hope: A Memoir ''Words'' * Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children ''Dialogue'' * Henry Green Doting ''Dialogue'' * Henry Green Loving ''Dialogue'' * Samuel Beckett The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 ''Gesture'' ''Courage'' * Francis Steegmuller Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait * Paul Bowles Collected Stories and Later Writings * John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever ''Sentences'' * Randall Jarrell Pictures from an Institution * Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies ''Narration'' ''Dialogue'' * Juan Rulfo (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden) Pedro Páramo ''Courage'' * Peter Taylor A Summons to Memphis ''Narration'' * J. D. Salinger Franny and Zooey ''Detail'' * William Gaddis The Recognitions * Mavis Gallant Paris Stories ''Narration'' * Italo Calvino Cosmicomics * Paula Fox Desperate Characters ''Paragraphs'' * Zbigniew Herbert (trans. Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott) Selected Poems ''Courage'' * Flannery O'Connor Wise Blood ''Narration'' ''Gesture'' * Flannery O'Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories ''Words'' * Flannery O'Connor Collected Stories ''Detail'' * Richard Yates Revolutionary Road ''Words'' * Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude ''Paragraphs'' * Gabriel García Márquez The Autumn of the Patriarch ''Paragraphs'' * William Trevor The Collected Stories * William Trevor Fools of Fortune * William Trevor The Children of Dynmouth * Stanley Elkin Searches and Seizures ''Sentences'' * Harold Brodkey Stories in an Almost Classical Mode ''Narration'' ''Dialogue'' * Donald Barthelme Sixty Stories * Alice Munro Selected Stories ''Words'' * John le Carré A Perfect Spy ''Dialogue'' * Philip Roth American Pastoral ''Sentences'' * Philip Roth Novels and Stories 1959-1962 ''Gesture'' * Diane Johnson Persian Nights ''Narration'' * Diane Johnson Le Divorce ''Narration'' * Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow * Raymond Carver Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories ''Sentences'' ''Paragraphs'' * Raymond Carver Cathedral * Stuart Dybek I Sailed with Magellan ''Narration'' * Joy Williams Escapes ''Dialogue'' * Scott Spencer A Ship Made of Paper * Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried ''Sentences'' * Charles Baxter Believers: A Novella and Stories ''Gesture'' * David Gates The Wonders of the Invisible World: Stories ''Dialogue'' * Denis Johnson Jesus' Son * Denis Johnson Angels ''Paragraphs'' * Tatyana Tolstaya Sleepwalker in a Fog ''Words'' * Bruce Wagner I'm Losing You ''Character'' * Jay McInerney Bright Lights, Big City ''Narration'' * Jonathan Franzen The Corrections ''Paragraphs'' * Deborah Eisenberg The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg ''Narration'' * Richard Price Freedomland ''Narration'' * Edward St Aubyn Some Hope: A Trilogy ''Gesture'' * Edward St Aubyn Mother's Milk ''Dialogue'' * James Wood Broken Estates: Essays on Literature and Belief * Junot Díaz Drown ''Gesture'' * Gary Shteyngart The Russian Debutante's Handbook ''Paragraphs'' * ZZ Packer Drinking Coffee Elsewhere ''Gesture'' * Konstantin Paustovsky (trans. Joseph Barnes) Years of Hope: The Story of a Life

==External links== *Quotes by Francine Prose at Wikiquote * [http://bookishlove.net/200611/francine-prose-at-strand/ Report and photos from reading at Strand] (Nov 2006) * [http://www.quarterlyconversation.com/TQC_7/Reading_Like.html The Quarterly Conversation review]

Category:2006 non-fiction books Category:Books about writing Category:HarperCollins books