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Why Read

Selected Writings 2001-2021

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Why Read

By: Will Self
Narrated by: Will Self
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From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.

©2022 Will Self (P)2022 W. F. Howes Ltd Essays Social Sciences Witty
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Thanks for the book Will Self - I now have a greater understanding of the writing process and it’s accompanying pain . As a fellow bibliophile,failed surfer and grumpy old man I’m going to be more comfortable buying the books I want and lying down and reading when I choose , knowing there is at least one other person who has been more self indulgent .

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