BIBLIO is the largest independent book marketplace in the world, with over 100 million books.

Skip to content

No image available
No image available

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021 Paperback - 2024

by Will Self

Add to wish list

Reader reviews for

From the publisher

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature

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 readers, 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 humor infuse every piece.

A book that examines how the human stream of consciousness flows into and out of literature, Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of contemporary literature.

Details

  • Title Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021
  • Author Will Self
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 336
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Grove Press
  • Publication date 2024-01-09
  • ISBN 9780802162649 / 0802162649
  • Weight 0.7 lbs (0.32 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3 in (20.57 x 13.97 x 3.30 cm)
  • Category Literature - Classics / Criticism

About the author

WILL SELF is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including Great Apes; How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Shark; Phone; and the memoir Will. He lives in South London.

More Copies for Sale

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021

by Self, Will

  • Used
  • Very good
  • Paperback
Condition
Very good
Binding
Paperback
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780802162649 / 0802162649
Quantity available
2
Seller
Item price
A$21.22
A$16.47 Delivery to USA

Show details

Description:
Paperback. Very Good.
Add to wish list
Item price
A$21.22
A$16.47 Delivery to USA
No image available

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021 [Paperback] Self, Will

  • New
Condition
New
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780802162649 / 0802162649
Quantity available
3
Seller
Item price
A$18.95
A$5.72 Delivery to USA

Show details

Description:
New.
Add to wish list
Item price
A$18.95
A$5.72 Delivery to USA
No image available

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021 [Paperback] Self, Will

  • Used
Condition
New
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780802162649 / 0802162649
Quantity available
3
Seller
Item price
A$24.37
A$5.72 Delivery to USA

Show details

Description:
Like New. 0x0x0.
Add to wish list
Item price
A$24.37
A$5.72 Delivery to USA
No image available

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021

by Self, Will

  • Used
  • Good
  • Paperback
Condition
Good
Binding
Paperback
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780802162649 / 0802162649
Quantity available
1
Seller
Item price
A$53.64
Free Delivery to USA

Show details

Description:
paperback. Good. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.
Add to wish list
Item price
A$53.64
Free Delivery to USA