Full name: Thank You for Not Reading: Essays on Literary Trivia

Author: Dubravka Ugresic Year: 2000 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, Essays Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781564782984 1564782980

In this collection of acerbic essays, Ugresic dissects the nature of the contemporary book industry, which she argues is so infected with the need to create and promote literature that will appeal to the masses -- literally to everyone -- that if Thomas Mann were writing nowadays, his books wouldn't even be published in the U.S. because they're not sexy enough. A playful and biting critique, Ugresic's essays hit on all of the major aspects of publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves. Thanks to cultural influences such as Oprah, The Today Show, and Kelly Ripa, best-seller lists have become just a modern form of socialist realism, a manifestation of a society that generally ignores literature in favor of the next big thing. Similar books: Time Bites by Doris Lessing Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith Quarrel & Quandary by Cynthia Ozick Signposts in a Strange Land by Walker Percy Visiting Mrs. Nabokov by Martin Amis Where the Stress Falls by Susan Sontag Literary Occasions by V. S. Naipaul The Curtain by Milan Kundera Curious Pursuits by Margaret Atwood Under the Sign of Saturn by Susan Sontag Imaginary homelands by Salman Rushdie Otherwise Known as the Human Condition by Geoff Dyer Feel Free by Zadie Smith The Patch by John McPhee Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy L. Sayers Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov The Great Movies by Roger Ebert