Dictionaries at the ready - it's a new Will Self book! Well, Why Read is not really new, in that it's a collection of previously published pieces, mostly about reading, books and other authors.
As such, it's Self at his most pithy and provocative. I must admit to finding his novels a bit of a rich indulgence - great in concept but hard to stomach. (Perhaps because, as he writes in one article, 'Being A Character', he didn't have much interest in his early books in what usually hooks people in: "my fiction ... is about the exhilaration of ideas, rather than the enervation provoked by these initially seductive ... simulacra of people.") Like Junk Food, this is much more easily digestible, a buffet rather than a seven-course banquet.
Buzz review here.
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