![]() ![]() ![]() One of the characters in the book is a General Stumm who decides to do some reading in order to find out about his political opposition, but is so daunted by the number of volumes in the library that he visits that he decides that it is an impossible task and not worth beginning. ![]() Let me take the first of these, books you haven’t read, as a means of illustrating why I make this assertion.īayard, who is actually a professor of literature, takes as his way in to discussion about not reading Musil’s The man without qualities – I confess I’d have to put this down as a +FB (one of the books I’ve read but forgotten). ![]() The first section of the book – on books you haven’t read, books you’ve skimmed, books you’ve never heard of and books you’ve forgotten – contains ideas highly relevant to academic work. I contend that these are as relevant to academic reading – and the dreaded ‘literature review’ in particular – as any of the how-to-do it texts, including my own. I want to suggest now that this is actually a book worth reading – not so that you can literally do what the title suggests, although you might feel this is very acceptable after you’ve read it – but rather worth reading for the key points that Bayard makes. I recently mentioned in passing in this blog, in relation to writing book reviews in fact, the book by Pierre Bayard provocatively entitled How to talk about books you haven’t read (2007). ![]()
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