The book lover
By: [collected by] Ali Smith.
Contributors: Smith, Ali, 1962-
Edition: 1st Anchor Books ed.
Publisher: Anchor Books; Anchor
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 470
ISBN-13: 9780307386083
Subjects: English literature -- 21st century
Other titles: Reader.
Description: "The Book Lover is a treasure trove of what Ali Smith has loved over the course of her reading life, in her twenties, as a teenager, as a child. Full of pieces from amazing writers like Sylvia Plath, Muriel Spark, Grace Paley, and Margaret Atwood, it also has a wonderful selection of lesser-known authors like Joseph Hoth, who is only just gaining proper status now, and Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian genius who's far too underpublished. From surprising figures like Beryl the Peril, Billie Holliday, and Lee Miller to unusual selections from the most prominent writers in history, The Book Lover is an intimate, personal anthology that gives readers a glimpse of how writers develop their craft - by reading other writers."--Jacket.
Notes: Originally published as The reader by Constable & Robinson Ltd., London in 2006.

Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Girls. From Northanger Abbey / Jane Austen ; The poet has come back; title: / Margaret Atwood ; The terrible peacock / Djuna Barnes ; From Lady sings the blues / Billie Holiday ; From Born free / Laura Hird ; Witch / George Mackay Brown ; We shall not escape Hell / Marina Tsvetayeva ; Meadowsweet / Kathleen Jamie ; This Englishwoman / Stevie Smith ; Spunk / Paul Bailey ; From Up the junction / Nell Dunn ; Annie Laurie / William Douglas ; From Their eyes were watching God / Zora Neale Hurston ; Double act / Beryl the Peril ; From Wise children / Angela Carter ; From Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson ; Everything is nice / Jane Bowles ; From Orlando / Virginia Woolf; title: Dialogues. On first looking into Chapman's Homer / John Keats ; In the garment district / Lydia Davis ; On the ward with TV, iPod, and telephone / Kasia Boddy ; Call-girls / Jack Rillie ; Elasticity / Margaret Tait ; To anybody at all / Margaret Tait ; Wants / Grace Paley ; On angels, Ars poetica? / Czeslaw Milosz ; Between two Colmars / John Berger ; From After nature / W.G. Sebald ; The cinema and the classics : beauty / H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) ; Mae West / Colette ; Colette / Lee Miller ; From the preface to Bloodshed and Three novellas / Cynthia Ozick ; From A writer's diary / Virginia Woolf ; More questions than answers, Instructors to an actor / Edwin Morgan; title: Journeys. The good-morrow / John Donne ; Lu-Lu / Joy Williams ; 15 December 1919 / Katherine Mansfield ; Unseen translation / Kate Atkinson ; Adlestrop / Edward Thomas ; The song of wandering Aengus / W.B. Yeats ; Passengers with heavy loads / Joseph Roth ; The falling city / Lavinia Greenlaw ; Kansas to New York / Louise Brooks ; On midsummer common / Liz Lockhead ; Remedy / A.M. Homes ; Bring back, bring back / Fred D'Aguiar; title: The world. The darkling thrush / Thomas Hardy ; Hymn to Iris / Alice Oswald ; Art in nature / Tove Jansson ; Earthy anecdote / Wallace Stevens ; Black rook in rainy weather / Sylvia Plath ; Mrs Fish / Xandra Bingley ; Bairns arena frightened, Old Aberdeen / Hugh MacDiarmid ; The 24-hour dog / Jeanette Winterson ; Pastoral / William Carlos Williams ; The trees / Philip Larkin ; From The living mountain / Nan Shepherd ; Into the sea / Alan Spence ; Prelude, In May / J.M. Synge ; On "rose is a rose is a rose" / Gertrude Stein; title: Histories. Infant joy, A poison tree / William Blake ; From Sunset song / Lewis Grassic Gibbon ; Houses and small labour parties / Alasdair Gray ; Independence / Helen Oyeyemi ; He died on Friday / Ramona Herdman ; The child dying / Edwin Muir ; The house I live in / Maggie O'Farrell ; Small avalanches / Joyce Carol Oates ; Saturday, 8 July 1944 / Anne Frank ; Reconciliation / Dilys Powell ; Fragments, from Berlin / Armando ; Field study / Rachel Seiffert ; The butcher's apprentice / Nicola Barker; title: Beliefs. From Cymbeline / William Shakespeare ; The happy corpse story / Leonora Carrington ; From The palm-wine drinkard / Amos Tutuola ; From Memoirs of a dutiful daughter / Simone de Beauvoir ; Baa baa black sheep / Tom Leonard ; Our Lady of the accident / Lorna Sage ; From State of grace / Clarice Lispector ; Thing no is(of / E. E. Cummings ; From The comforters / Muriel Spark ; White lies / Derek Jarman ; Alchemy / Dubravka Ugresic ; It's only a paper moon / E.Y. "Yip" Harburg ; Fleeting happiness / Cookie Mueller ; From Six memos for the next millennium / Italo Calvino ; The ninth elegy / Rainer Maria Rilke ; End / Robert Creeley.