{"product_id":"9780374115265","title":"Books Promiscuously Read : Reading as a Way of Life","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eBooks Promiscuously Read\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Heather Cass White\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe critic and scholar Heather Cass White offers an exploration of the nature of reading\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeather Cass White’s \u003ci\u003eBooks\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ePromiscuously Read\u003c\/i\u003e is about the pleasures of reading and its power in shaping our internal lives. It advocates for a life of constant, disorderly, time-consuming reading, and encourages readers to trust in the value of the exhilaration and fascination such reading entails. Rather than arguing for the moral value of reading or the preeminence of literature as an aesthetic form, \u003ci\u003eBooks\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ePromiscuously Read \u003c\/i\u003eillustrates the irreplaceable experience of the self that reading provides for those inclined to do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough three sections—Play, Transgression, and Insight—which focus on three ways of thinking about reading, \u003ci\u003eBooks\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ePromiscuously Read \u003c\/i\u003emoves among and considers many poems, novels, stories, and works of nonfiction. The prose is shot through with quotations reflecting the way readers think through the words of others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooks\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ePromiscuously Read \u003c\/i\u003eis a tribute to the whole lives readers live in their books, and aims to recommit people to those lives. As White writes, “What matters is staying attuned to an ordinary, unflashy, mutely persistent miracle; that all the books to be read, and all the selves to be because we have read them, are still there, still waiting, still undiminished in their power. It is an astonishing joy.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Books Promiscuously Read] was \u003cb\u003eso engrossing that I couldn’t put it down\u003c\/b\u003e, and I think that was actually the point. This is somebody who really just wants to encourage you to enjoy the time that you spend reading . . . \u003cb\u003eThis is a book that tells you that your guilty pleasure is actually not guilty\u003c\/b\u003e.” —Tess Taylor, \u003ci\u003eNPR\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"To metacognitively read about the reading process, to double back onto one’s own track, to sniff the air for one’s own scent, can be a heady experience.\u003cb\u003e Cass White grounds us expertly.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eBooks Promiscuously Read: Reading as a Way of Life\u003c\/i\u003e is \u003cb\u003ea delight to read\u003c\/b\u003e primarily because it eschews the easy commonplaces of the why you should read' genre in order to get at the core of the experience itself.\" —Ryan Asmussen, \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003cb\u003eAn elegantly constructed meditation on the vital relation between reading and the everyday self,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eBooks Promiscuously Read\u003c\/i\u003e  animates the experience with wit,   brilliance, and affection.\u003cb\u003e  A pleasure to read and pass on\u003c\/b\u003e.” —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eVivian Gornick\u003c\/b\u003e,\u003c\/i\u003e author of \u003ci\u003eUnfinished Business\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the pleasures of reading is the branching-and-branching-and-branching of texts, the way the books you’ve read form an underground network of intentional and unintentional references to each other . . . \u003cb\u003eHeather Cass White’s Books Promiscuously Read describes this joy—and all the joys of reading—as efficiently as I’ve ever seen anyone do.\u003c\/b\u003e It is a book that I would give someone who has just got bitten by the reading bug and doesn’t quite understand yet what’s happened.” —Phil Christman, \u003ci\u003ePloughshares\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eBooks Promiscuously Read\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e sets a high standard\u003c\/b\u003e for what might become an exciting new genre of literary criticism for educated general readers . . . \u003cb\u003eIt rings true\u003c\/b\u003e.\" —Allen Michie, \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eArts Fuse\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"'\u003cb\u003ePeople who like to read should do more of it,' writes Heather Cass White.  People who like to read should read more of Heather Cass White.  Buoyant, precise, speculative, astute, intermittently wild, this book is proved on the pulse\u003c\/b\u003e. Somewhere between commonplace book and brilliant guide for the perplexed, between apologia and \u003ci\u003eessai\u003c\/i\u003e, White’s work shimmers: aphoristic, inviting, provocative. Proposing reading “as a mode of living” and “a species of dreaming,” White salutes the perfectly useless jouissance of readerly absorption; en route she offers fleet, searching, illuminating readings (of Cervantes, George Eliot, Thylias Moss, inter alia). \u003cb\u003eThis is seriously deep play.\u003c\/b\u003e\" —\u003cb\u003eMaureen N. McLane\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eMore Anon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cb\u003eDiscerning \u003c\/b\u003e. . . Literary-minded readers will appreciate this fresh approach.\" —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780374115265\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":40790079602894,"sku":"9780374115265","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_b6c22393-af15-45f6-8dc3-33bbd6de83b4.jpg?v=1643199267","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780374115265","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}