The main lesson she gives here though – the underpinning conceit of the whole book – is that writers need to learn how to read closely. And each topic is illustrated by quotes from classic authors (she has a strong preference for your long dead white guys – the only women authors I can remember she mentions are the Brontës and Woolf.) Nothing is missed by Prose as she targets character, narrator (i.e. Almost like a physics text book it starts with the smallest particles (words) before working its way up to more macro concepts (sentences, paragraphs). Reading like a writer is logically set out.

And I mean inspiring – as soon as I finished the book I hunted through my bookshelf at home for the volumes of classic books I knew that my wife owned, and that were now acting as the respectable disguise for my ’embarrassing books’ (30+ Warhammer 40K novels).

I’m happy to say it has been 9 hours well spent, as Ms Prose’s book of writing advice – nay – her book of reading advice is both entertaining and inspiring. I picked up this audiobook on the Libby Library app, on a whim essentially, as I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect. A selection of the classic novels that my wife owns and insists be put in front of my Warhammer 40k BooksĪ topic I know I have dealt with before (See Reading with intent: Musing on Writing), but after listening to Ms Prose’s audiobook, I thought it was worth revisiting briefly.

Prose reading like a writer