The Christian Science Monitor

'What to Read and Why' shares a personal love of authors and titles

“ 'You’ve got to read this' ” should be the first line of every positive book review.”

So writes Francine Prose in an homage to her favorite authors and books. “I’ve always been delighted when an editor asked me to write an introduction to a classic that is being reissued in a spiffy new edition,” she writes in the opening pages of this essay collection, “because what I am doing, basically, is saying:

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