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Notable: books about authors

 
Published Nov. 4, 2015

Notable

Books about authors

These books take different tacks on the wit and wisdom of well-known writers.

Last Night's Reading: Illustrated Encounters With Extraordinary Authors (Penguin) by Kate Gavino, a New Yorker who goes to lots of readings, combines killer quotes with her sketches of the authors. My fave, from George Saunders: "Get more confused."

Slaughterhouse 90210: Where Great Books Meet Pop Culture (Flatiron Books) by Maris Kreizman is full of illustrated, inspired pairings of quotes from great writers with pop culture phenomena: Joan Didion and Taylor Swift, Don DeLillo and Seinfeld, Susan Sontag and Kanye West.

The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them (Bloomsbury), edited by Antonia Fraser, collects fascinating essays on reading by such accomplished writers as Margaret Atwood, Alan Hollinghurst, Ruth Rendell and Jeanette Winterson.

Colette Bancroft, Times book editor