A guide for those who don’t read, but wish they did

It may well be that too many books are published, but by good fortune, not all must be read. In practice, primed by publishers, critics, teachers, authors and word-of-mouth, a form of natural selection limits essential reading to those classics and best sellers that become part of civilized intellectual and social discourse.

Pierre Bayard, a professor, offers
social guidance to the unread.

Of course, many people don’t get through these books, either, and too embarrassed to admit it, they worry constantly about being exposed as philistines.

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Read the New York Times review

Lennard J. Davis also wrote a review at The Chronicle