"In Hallman's first collection, he delivers a set of critical essays from writers on their favorites, great literature that has had lasting personal influence for influential writers and critics including Nabokov, S.H. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie and Susan Sontag. In her classic 'An Essay on Criticism,' Virginia Woolf assesses the prejudices of critics, particularly sexism, regarding works across the spectrum of fiction; elsewhere, contemporary author Dagoberto Gilb delivers a stirring examination of his fatherless childhood, imagining a perfect stepfather through the lens of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. Hallman's collection of reader-focused criticism focuses on the spirited, positive defense (or outright celebration) of authors and works; broad in scope and full of personal, passionate writing, this volume makes a fine reader for contemporary critics and other literati." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Writers and critics have always approached writing about reading differently. Most people are familiar with the latter group, which churns out stifling essays telling readers what to think, but rarely "why." Editor J.C. Hallman suggests an alternative: the writers' methodology. Writers come at the subject from an intensely personal perspective, incorporating their pasts and passions into the process of interpretation. In the pieces Hallman compiles here, some of the most important writers ever to live ponder some of the greatest books ever written. The essays are by turns funny, smart, suggestive, scathing, laudatory, poignant, and hopeful, and above all, deeply engaged in a process of careful reading. Together, they chart a trajectory that digs deep into the past and aims toward a future in which literature can play a new and more profound role in how we think, read, live, and write.