Good Fiction Guide - Softcover

Rogers, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192800833 ISBN 13: 9780192800831

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Let this guide help you choose a book that you really want to read from over 4,200 titles. Featuring both subject essays and over 1,100 alphabetically arranged entries on writers ranging from Maeve Binchy to Emile Zola, this is an invaluable guide for anyone trying to find their way around the mass of fiction in bookshops. 34 well-recognised authors and critics introduce literary genres. John Sutherland on Classics, Val McDermid on Thrillers, and Michele Roberts on France are just a few of the experts who recommend their personal top twelve favourite reads within their subject areas. Covering a wide range of fiction; classical and contemporary, literary and popular, British and foreign; each entry also suggests other authors who deal with similar subject matters or write in the same genre. The entries aim to provide a flavour of each writer's work and give recommendations of which of their books to read. A snapshot of English literature at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

About this title

Review

Reading is like a huge treasure hunt. Every book leads to another title. The Good Fiction Guide, which lists 5,000 different books by over 1,100 authors--from Achebe and Adams to Zelazny and Zola--provides useful extra sign posts. And because its subject is fiction--not literature- it ranges eclectically from Henry to Helen Fielding and from Anthony to Joanna Trollope. Thirty-four jargon-free essays by literary cognoscenti include Adele Geras writing entertainingly about teen novels, John Sutherland is informative on classics and Mike Harris thoughtful about war. Film adaptations, Western, and magic realism are among other topics covered. The alphabetical author listings give biographical details and an assessment of output followed by helpful cross-referencing. Below the John Creasey entry, for example, are listed Ed McBain, John Harvey and Colin Dexter to point the way through crime writing. If you like Dickens, try Thackeray, Dostoevsky, George Eliot and Peter Carey. Inevitably there are strange omissions. It's curious that children's author Philip Pullman is included but not Harry Potter's creator JK Rowling. Odd, too, that there is no mention of Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown or EM Forster's A Passage to India in the India essay. "Each essayist's "top twelve" is entirely his or her own choice," writes editor Jane Rogers. "I've rejoiced to find favourite books recommended, been outraged by the omission of equally good writers and been tempted into entirely new areas of fiction by the enthusiasm of essayists." --Susan Elkin

Review

Check this book on your way to the fiction shelves ... the ultimate reader-friendly book ... sharp and up-to-the-minute ... This is the book for a lifetime. Irish Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192800833
• ISBN 13: 9780192800831
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528