Thank you, Pierre Bayard, for saying what we're all thinking. Bayard is being cute with his winking title, as well as setting his sights squarely upon the mass market, but he touches on some highly legitimate critical issues--no, you know, more than that, there's the material here for not only a real critical exegesis, but a social manifesto of reading.

Basically, the concept is, we privilege, aspire to, cover up the absence of, the read text--the object in isolation, read cover to cover, understood and digested--and only then contextualized. The notion of text as discernable cultural artifact, as existing outside the reader, the utility of authorial intent, all these trad-crit shibboleths, he wads up and sets afire with fun cod-Derrideanism, and good on him.

But the book's real revolutionary impact, or rather the revolutionary idea to which Bayard refuses to give full weight and a serious treatment, is simply: the more you care about literature, the less you should read. Or formulated less absurdly: reading is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Become familiar with a book, by all means; as concept, narrative, cultural moment. Read it, if you can spare the time, or just go on cultural osmosis and Baz Luhrmann's movie. But really: every moment spent puzzling through Ulysses is a moment that could be spent discussing Ulysses, or putting it in context, and the difference between a casual skim (ultimately, the aforesaid manifesto is one of skimming) and a deep semesterlong exegesis of Ulysses is the time that could be spent reading through, well, the complete works of James Joyce extra-Ulysses, or . . . you know, other shit. Is the real reader a fox or a hedgehog? Cearly a fox--one who wants to read and feel and be as many things as possible. ( )

A French professor of literature, Bayard expounds on his theory, using literary examples, that reading a book is wholly unnecessary to create and participate in dialogue about it. Academic in tone, the book provides a point of view that counters accepted wisdom. Students of literary theory and criticism may choose to argue with Bayard's interpretation of the interaction between book, reader and community, but this is a book worth discussing-- whether you've read it or not. ( )

It is sorely tempting to review an imaginary humourous gift book here; a sort of Bluffers Guide to Reading because Bayard's thesis is that many conversations about books are dialogues of the deaf. He postulates that we operate within three 'libraries': the virtual, the inner, and the collective. The collective is the true intersection of the inner libraries of the participants in a discussion whereas the virtual is the stated or implied intersection. Furthermore, the contents of our inner library is a fluid mixture of fluid constructs. Our memories and perceptions of each book are in constant flux. This has a profound effect on our attitude to reading and to the discussion of books.

All of this is explored in a series of essays in which a specific book about books is both the subject and object. Eco's post-modern Name of the Rose is likely to be widely familar to an anglophone reader but most of the references are to French works. Bayard is so punctilious about his descriptions of each work that the reader need feel no discomfort at any ignorance even though, by his own account, the author is as unreliable as any narrator.

I picked this up intending to give it a quick skim but I found myself devouring every word. And in so doing I undermine part of Bayard's structure: He has no abbreviation for close reading; the best that I can offer is HB and SB++. ( )

The best part of this book was the cover. It was an quick read, but apparently I do not share the humor or supposed wittiness of the author. The only chapter I gleaned anything from was iii; Books You Have Heard Of which discussed Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I had actual heard of this book and so it was interesting, easy to relate to and not above me. I felt like the reason I didn't get this book was because the author was French and so his frame of reference was way different than mine. ( )

Great discussion of the place titles hold in the social/cultural landscape and how we orientate ourselves in that space - thus obviating the need to have actually read the titles cover to cover. Wonderful. ( )

Until last month, I hadn't written a Book Note in just over two years. I admit that's a long hiatus, but I was still taken aback at an email that asked, "Does that mean you haven't read a book since 2006?" I blog, therefore I am? Courtesy of Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, I now have the perfect retort for the next hiatus: "That all depends on what you mean by read." According to Bayard, we have many ways of relating to books beyond not reading, including skimming, skipping, forgetting and glancing at covers. "As cultivated people know," Bayard tells us, "culture is above all a matter of orientation. Being cultivated is a matter of not having read any book in particular, but of being able to find your bearings within books as a system, which requires you to know that they form a system and to be able to locate each element in relation to the others." This book is a delightful antidote in a society that holds reading sacred. It does indeed encourage you to talk, guilt-free, about books you haven't read, but more than that will make you remember why you love reading in the first place. ( )

This book seemed to go against every belief I have ever had about books and reading. I was told from when I was very young that the more I read the more I learn. I did not feel comfortable with the fact that this idea was being challenged. I began reading this book with intense skepticism and the intense desire to find something wrong with Bayard's argument. Instead, I found myself agreeing with him.

There are always books we cannot make ourselves read or we start reading them numerous times only to give up and put them back on the shelf. These books induce headaches, misery and coma-like sleep states. We force ourselves to sit through hours upon hours of unpleasant reading all the while retaining nothing of what we read. We could easily be reading something enjoyable or doing something more important. If we simply must read this book a skim is definitely preferable to hours of torture.

I found myself employing Bayard's techniques without even knowing it. I have a feeling I will keep doing so. The is the type of book that teaches you without you even knowing it. The only criticism I have is that there were simply too many quotes. It made the prose seem choppy. Other than that, this is definitely worth a read even if it seems you will not agree.

Quite well written. (Listened on CD) ( )

Funnily enough, I actually ended up reading this whole book, which seems its inherent irony, and then talking about it while I was attending the Yeats seminar.

First of all, this is a book tailor made for book academics -- so if you are in the engineering field or have otherwise never made it through a literature seminar on either side of the table, you can skip this book. But for those English grad students and, better yet, professors and authors out there, this little book is a gem. Here's what happens every few pages:

1. Laughing out loud ("ah hahahahaha!")
2. A pause ("oh, wait...")
3. Realization and acknowledgement ("actually, that's quite true")

I genuinely laughed at the witticisms, the tongue-in-cheek situations, the deliberately skewed allusions (the author admits that he has not "read" all of the books from which he has quoted in this volume)... but inevitably there were moments of pause, in which I realized that real scholarship was being snuck in under the radar, and that the really, really funny stuff was also true. Bayard's expansion on the idea of the "screen book" or the construct of memory that is a particular book to a particular individual -- he threads out some solid cultural theory here, in explaining how each of us has our own mental library of said constructs which we draw from when interacting with others on the subject of books -- is both fascinating and useful. I pondered as much as I chuckled, and came away from this text with a lot to think about in terms of how people read, remember, and discuss literature.

Not to mention some handy excuses for not "reading" required course books. :)

in the spirit of this book, I didn't read it, I skimmed it. I think I can talk about it with you anyway, though. ( )

I have yet to read this book, so I should feel aghast at attempting to review it. I usually would, but given the book's title...
My library is full of books I have skimmed through, or cherry-picked particular chapters out of. Alternatively when feeling like I must read up on a subject (without having the actual time to do so) I read the introduction, conclusion, the first and last paragraphs of each chapter and then a smattering of footnotes and finally leaf through the bibliography.
Having picked up a lot of books purely on the strength of a friend's recommendation or a glowing/intriguing review, it is often a shame not to read them, but surely books I have hunted down out of some integral need must be further up the (ever-increasing) to-be-read stack?
I received this as a lovely little gift from a friend (thanks to the strategic placing of a small wishlist (the large one's on BookMooch) on my LibraryThing profile). When he asks me how it was, I shall (deadpan) state that "I haven't read it".
As an aside to the LibraryThing developers, this is one book I would like to tick 'Currently reading' and 'To read'.
I will however, not stoop so far as to rate the book.

A strange book - my verdict using the author's own rating system would be SB+ (Book I have skimmed, and have a positive opinion of). Bits of it were witty and fascinating - others less so. I'd describe it as a 'curate's oeuf' of a book.

Amazingly the chapters I enjoyed were those using books I have actually read to illustrate a particular facet of non-reading - ie: Eco's The name of the Rose; Greene's The Third Man, and David Lodge's Small World & Changing Places; and Hamlet. Each of those chapters made me want to go and re-read the source. However, I have no desire to visit any of the other major books used, mostly obscure (to me) French texts, and thus previously unknown to me (UB-) but are now heard of (HB--) and will remain so! - these were the bits I skimmed.

Interestingly the author declines to specifically say whether he has actually fully 'read' any of the books mentioned or analysed. I also found a witty degree of self-parody, as we learn very little about the author's personal reading habits. This is extended to the fact that he uses many examples of fictional non-reading that authors have created in their books to illustrate his thesis!

I admit, I'm think I'm quite a dab hand at talking about books I haven't yet read, as my own to be read pile is about 1000 books - and I do read the blurbs and reviews before filing them, and I adore looking at books on a shelf. This skill also enables me to say "Oh I've got that, but not read it yet" with monotonous regularity when helping to choose a book at our Book Group. ( )

Everything I read about this book before I read it promised a witty, beautifully styled text that advised the reader on how to, well, talk about books he hasn't read, but also how to deal with social situations in which the reader finds himself having to lead intellectual discussions about a book he hasn't read. The word I latched on to was "witty," thinking this was going to be a serious joke book - extremely hilarious writing about a topic that needs real consideration. Like when humorists write about politics.

Instead, I found this to be an STB. No, that doesn't mean "sexual transmitted book." You see, books are mentioned throughout this book, as would make sense; the author gives comments on each book - whether he has not heard of the book (UB - unheard of book), books he has skimmed (SB), books he has heard about (HB), and books he has read but forgotten (FB). He then rates them. Well, I am going to call this an STB (slept-through book) with a rating of ++, which is the highest possible rating. I don't want to imply that the book was boring; it wasn't the book's fault that I read it late into the night after having gotten very little sleep the night before. (Well, I suppose if you really think about it, it is the book's fault for being so interesting that I didn't want to put it down; however, I sort of feel that since the book gives advice on how to talk about books you haven't read, I can rightly talk about this book which I only partially read.)

It wasn't witty. Or if it was, I didn't get it. It's French humor, I suppose, and I put that in italics because this book taught me to not be afraid of culture and being open, and perhaps a little bit because that's how everyone refers to the French. In any case, I was initially disappointed by the lack of hilariousness, since that's what I'd expected, but the book wasn't by any means boring. In fact, as I've mentioned, it was quite interesting - so interesting that I hadn't initially planned on writing an entry about it, but now I feel like I must.

The book takes the reader through many styles of non-reading, which I found interesting as I'm also finding my way through How to Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler (FB++). I haven't picked it up since October, when we moved into this apartment and I misplaced it, but the similarities in the way I seem to recall (but have also entirely forgotten) reading styles are described (whether reading or non-reading) is interesting to think about. It's entirely possible, as this book has proven, to talk about books which one hasn't read, or which one has skimmed, or in some cases which one has actually written but forgotten that he's written it (Bayard uses Montaigne (HB+), while I would probably use Süskind's tribute to Montaigne(FB++)).

In any case, all examples are taken from books. Either Oscar Wilde has said something in his personal essays (HB++) about avoiding books, or a character in Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities (HB+) has the opinion that reading a book is not quite as important as understanding a library. It reminded me of writing papers in college, and I suppose this makes perfect sense as it's written by a college professor who probably expects the exact same kind of writing from his students. (The style of, "Let me provide quotes and then reword these quotes into terms that are more easily understood by your tiny brain.") These books: I'm not sure if they're supposed to all be books that everyone is "supposed" to have read. I know that The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (SB++, because while I just finished it, I only understood about half of it - I may as well have skimmed it) is one of those, and so is Shakespeare's Hamlet (HB-). The other examples used are perhaps socially "required" in France.

It's true, I've never read Hamlet. Until now, I never realized how unashamed I am of not having read the "required reading." One of the first thing Bayard suggests is to get rid of that feeling of guilt that you haven't read something everyone else says they have read. I've read Paradise Lost (FB++), but I haven't read The Perks of Being a Wallflower (HB--), which is one of those books that everyone has read but which I feel is highly overrated. Yes! That's right! I'm saying things about books that I haven't read! I also haven't read any of the Oprah books, which in my opinion are all crap, nor have I read William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (HB+), which I regularly recommend to customers at my bookstore who are trying to decide which reading list title to read (nevermind that it's usually the shorter selection).

It reminds me of an instance when I worked at a corporate bookstore (if you're unaware, I'm working independent now). Someone had asked if we carried any William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair (HB--). I had never heard of the author. I didn't know what he wrote or who he was or why I should care except to help the customer find his books. I was then insulted, told that I was "wasting my education" as a college student because I wasn't familiar with the author. Since then I've collected several of the author's books but I haven't read any of them. I've now realized that it was out of shame of not having heard of Thackeray that I decided to start collecting his books. I say! I'll not pick up any of his books again, because How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read has made me realize how unnecessary my guilt is, how afraid of culture I was, how utterly terrified I was that someone would think I wasn't "smart enough" or "well-read enough." (Mind you, I enjoy collecting books for other reasons, but when I seek out authors I've never read, it's probably either for this reason or because I want the full collection.)

I purchased Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities several years ago - volumes one and two. It's an incredibly thick book; they both are. I've mused about reading it now and again. I don't remember my original reason for buying it - probably because it has a librarian as a character - but I was surprised to see it used as the first example in this book. I've been using quotes and examples from it which I've found on the Internet probably subconsciously thinking that someone would see that I've used examples from this book and think I was cool enough for their culturally enhanced club. They probably lie about reading Hamlet, too, although I'd like to say that I've never lied about reading Shakespeare. He's too difficult outside of a classroom setting.

I've digressed. What this book boils down to is an alternative take on how we read. Its title implies that it's entirely about not reading; indeed, the back cover implies as much also, but what I found I like most about it is that it ends up being about reading style. It wants you to pay more attention to how and what you're reading; it wants you to realize that it doesn't matter if you haven't read something, or even if you have. It really doesn't matter if you have every Shakespeare play memorized, or if you have an Oscar Wilde quote for every occasion. Society presses these "certain books" that we all must have read and frowns upon those who still have them on a "to be read" stack. Is it necessary? According to this book, the purpose of reading is to add to our autobiographies, to create ("To talk about books you haven't read is an authentically creative activity, as worthy - even if it takes place more discreetly - as those that are more socially acknowledged" (182).), to invent, to be open to what the book is or isn't saying.

Have you ever heard someone say that they've "absorbed" a book? Think instead that the book has absorbed you, or a little part of you. Instead of leaving itself inside you, you've left a little bit of yourself inside it. Whether you've read it through entirely (and thus given immeasurable amounts of yourself and your time to a block of paper), skimmed it (leaving only traces), or read someone else's review of it and decided that was sufficient (giving the book your thoughts, but not your soul), you're creating something new whenever you encounter a book. It doesn't always end up being the same book. ( )

This is one of four newish books I recently read mostly so I could finally get them off my queue list, all of which were actually pretty good but are mere wisps of manuscripts, none of them over 150 pages or so in length. This one is the surprisingly thoughtful How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by a hip French literature professor named Pierre Bayard; because make no mistake, this is not exactly a practical how-to guide to faking your way through cocktail parties, but more a sneaky examination of what it means to "read" a book anyway, if by "read" you mean "understand, relate to, can recall details of, and can discuss with others." After all, if we read a book as a child and then completely forget its story as an adult, do we still get to count that as a "read" book? Bayard gets into all kinds of interesting questions like this, ultimately arguing that the most important thing we can do as readers is understand the entire time period that book is a result of; in the goal of accomplishing that, then, he argues that it's perfectly okay to just read the Cliff Notes of famous huge books you know you're never going to get around to actually reading, perfectly okay to discuss a book at a cocktail party you're familiar with but haven't actually sat down and scanned each and every page. This is how we learn, he argues, how we grow as both humans and patrons of the arts; every Wikipedia entry we read, every conversation we fake our way through, every BBC adaptation we check out, ultimately helps us understand the full-length books we do sit and closely read from the beginning to the end, which is why we shouldn't be ashamed of any of these activities but rather proud of them. Funny, smart, and very French; a very fun afternoon of reading.

Out of 10: 9.2 ( )

This book is soooooo French... It's an interesting concept, it's reasonably well-written, but I think the arguments are basically flawed. I wanted to disagree violently with and pick apart so much of what he had to say that my copy is festooned with little yellow tags. In the end, M. Bayard isn't interested in talking about books you haven't read so much as embracing the fact that one hasn't read them. Since I intend to read as many books as it is within my physical capacity to manage, this essentially represents a challenge to my personal raison d'etre.

I still give it three stars, but recommend you take the author's advice and don't read it :-) ( )

Firstly, what this book is not. It is not an obviously humourous look at writing, though the absurdist humour that runs as a current throughout this book is strong. However reading some reviews of this title it seems that many readers expected it to be a 'funny' book and were disappointed (or baffled) when it was not.

It is possible to read this book as a serious philosophy tract about reading and books - what it measn to understand a book, how a book really exists, the place of the book in life and society, concepts of 'knowing' and 'reading'. You could also read it as a complete piss-take, and frankly it is hard to know how it is intended.

The prose can be a bit dry at times, though it is always hard to tell with a translation whether that is due to the original prose or the translation. ( )

Not only do I not own this: but I didn't read it; and it's not actually a book.

(To explain this to whoever flagged my review: this is a review of the AUDIO BOOK version: so strictly speaking, I DIDN'T read it and it's NOT a book. Which makes this review a meta-reference to the book itself. Happy?)

“I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.”–Oscar Wilde

Wilde’s epigram precedes Bayard’s table of contents and sums up the style of the book that is to follow. Bolstered by dry wit and an impressive grasp of a range of literary critical thought, Bayard discusses reading, non-reading, and the relationship between one’s reading and cultural literacy.

Bayard writes “Reading is first and foremost non-reading” since “…the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening all the other books in the universe.” Bayard feels that removing the cultural stigma that is associated with non-reading and embracing the inevitability of non-reading (since it is humanly impossible to read everything) will free us to be more creative in literary exchanges and more true to ourselves. To convince his readers of the importance of non-reading and the legitimacy of talking about books one has not read, he organizes his book into three sections.

In section one Bayard describes the principal kinds of non-reading. To delineate the differences among non-readers, he uses quotes from the librarian in Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. The librarian explains his non-reading: “‘The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the titles and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian…He’s bound to lose perspective’”. Basically, the idea of this section is that non-reading enables one to keep perspective–to see the relationships “the connections and correlations” among books instead of simply accumulating isolated bits of knowledge.

Principal types of non-reading according to Bayard include the absence of reading altogether (not being interested in content or location) and the abstention from detailed reading (ingesting only bits and pieces of a work via reviews, conversations, table of contents, etc. order to grasp its location to the whole). He supports the latter way of non-reading. As he puts it, this view represents a fundamental shift toward seeing reading as loss (whether that loss is due to skimming, forgetting, or the time expended leaving little time to understand its relationships to other books) rather than reading as gain (toward one’s cultural and individual literacy).

In section two, Bayard analyzes concrete situations in which we might be called upon to talk about books we haven’t read. He argues “there is no such thing as an isolated book.” Each book has a place in the “collective library” and it is the reader and/or non-reader’s job to locate the book’s relationships to other books. This section includes many humorous examples of situations in which non-readers are forced to navigate through social exchanges about books they “should” have read.

In section three, Bayard offers a series of simple recommendations from one non-reader to his readers. He suggest, “To speak without shame about books we haven’t read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps…” He repeatedly affirms his theory that reading is a process with “fault lines, deficiencies, and approximations.” By contrast, the non-reading approach to books enables seeing relationships among books, augments cultural literacy, and reinvigorates cultural exchanges in social situations while remaining true to oneself.

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the work was following along with the examples he develops that so aptly buttress his arguments–to support his points he uses quite a few books I have not read (yes, I admit to non-reading) such as Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose but he also draws from works that I do know such as the Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Groundhog Day (yes, the latter is a movie, but it buttresses his point). Such diverse examples suggest a culturally literate author is behind the book and its ideas.

One need not agree with everything Bayard propounds in order to enjoy dialoguing with his argument. I did not find his recommendations for removing the stigma of non-reading all that helpful, and I won’t be quitting reading anytime soon. Mainly, though, his non-reading argument falters in his emphasis on the social aspects of reading while failing to account for the individual pleasures that come from reading books word by word, phrase by phrase, page by page.

Nevertheless, his book provides much food for thought. He’s correct that each of us only has 24 hours in a day, and our reading selections do preclude us from reading other works. Pondering this serves to make me more aware and more selective about the books that I do choose to invest time in. In some cases, for books that one has no desire and/or time to read, the non-reading approach of abstaining from details in order to locate the book’s place in the collective library makes sense.

Bayard’s work also reinforces for me the value of reading other people’s ideas about a work (and along those lines, Sam Anderson has written a top-notch (and equally witty as the book itself) review of Bayard’s book)). Bayard’s emphasis on the importance of locating each individual book within the collective library (in this case, he practices this in his work by discussing how his ideas fit with the ideas of other scholars with regards to reading and non-reading) while not being a new idea is definitely one that merits the occasional reminder.

All in all, I’m glad that I read How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. It’s a solid selection for those who are interested in thinking about the relationship between books and cultural literacy and about the implications and consequences of reading/non-reading.

Now it’s time for me to take a holiday non-posting break. Happy holidays to all, and I’ll return to post about my reading again in the new year!

Take away quote:

“…culture is above all a matter of orientation. Being cultivated is a matter not of having read any book in particular, but of being able to find your bearings within books as a system, which requires you to know that they form a system and to be able to locate each element in relation to the others…It is, then, hardly important if a cultivated person hasn’t read a given book, for though he has no exact knowledge of its content, he may still know its location, or in other words how it is situated in relation to other books” ( )

Ok, so shoot me. I read the book description, I read the humorous chapter premises, and perhaps unfoundedly, decided I knew exactly what I was going to get from this book. I thought I was going to get a humorous devaluing of reading, and in particular of the "great works of literature," grounded in all the taboo truths about reading many teachers and well-read individuals would not like to admit, while at the same time as it points out the fact that with the way some read, they may as well not read books, that the solution isn't actually not reading but reading in a different, more aware way. A humorous encouragement to trully understand and enjoy the books you read.

So for those of you who think like me, fair warning: That's not really what this book is like. It really is discussing, sometimes humorously, how useless it can be to read books. Also, humor wasn't as prevalent as I thought it was going to be, and the expected underlying message that the reason it's useless to read books is because many aren't reading them "right" (understanding them properly, learning from them, enjoying them, whatever you like ^_^), the subtle tongue-in-cheek encouragement to NOT not actually cease reading but to read differently...didn't seem to be there.

I'll admit to you right now I only got half way through, so maybe the book did turn that way eventually and I didn't get there. Still, as I past that half way mark and still wasn't sensing any change, and as I was forced to go through more repetitive musings on not reading, I just gave up. There's also the distinct possibility that there was humor and subtle pro-reading messages that were just flying over my head. Still, I find it mostly repetitive and unsatisfying. Nonetheless, I've still got to give it some points for bringing up some interesting points, even if it didn't go the direction I wanted to hear about. ( )

I haven't made up my mind yet whether I liked this book. I admit that, in listening to the audiobook, I occasionally found my attention drifting and losing the track of the book. But then I found that it didn't really matter. While the author's points are thought-provoking and humorous, they are also repetitive. I found, too, that he spoke more about the ways that we find ourselves discussing books we haven't read (or have read but forgotten) rather than how to actually do it.

One definite drawback ... My already lengthy "to be read" list got a bit longer after reading this book because the author describes several books that sounded very interesting (some that I had heard about, some that were unknown to me) . ( )

From the title of this book, a prospective reader would seem to be justified in assuming that it offers ways to hold one's own in public discourse on published works that one has not actually read, whether through lack of time or simply lack of inclination.

The provocative thesis of the book is dealt with at modest length, in a work of just over 200 pages. Originally published in French under the title "Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus ?", it was translated into English and published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2007. The book's author is evidently of French extraction (insofar as one can accurately judge from his name), an inference entirely compatible with the Wikipedia report that he holds a faculty position at the University of Paris.

Views may well differ as to whether the author has successfully explained his thesis; what's more, opinions seem like to vary significantly on the degree to which it is deemed convincing. Under the circumstances, the prospective reader can be forgiven for questioning whether a purchase of the book is justified, since (if the title is to be believed) much can be said about books without subjecting their ideas and the words in which they are expressed to any serious consideration.

Indeed, the inescable paradox is that reading this book would seem to belie its own advice to the reader. Readers will simply have to make their own decisions about whether to save their money by following the title's implied advice, or whether to read what Bayard has to say. For my part, I have decided to test the book's thesis with the foregoing review, which I hope other non-readers may find useful, if not amusing.

Hard not to read. ( )