{"id":2244,"date":"2010-08-14T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/?p=2244"},"modified":"2010-09-07T13:51:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T11:51:44","slug":"que-libro-me-compro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/2010\/08\/14\/que-libro-me-compro\/","title":{"rendered":"Which book should I buy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 195px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1845950933?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1845950933\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"How Fiction Works\" src=\"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/images\/How-Fiction-Works-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0140174923?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0140174923\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"The art of fiction\" src=\"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/images\/The-art-of-fiction-190x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wood or Lodge?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Time for listener&#8217;s questions:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read a couple good books on writing and I&#8217;d like to find others that study fiction in further depth. I&#8217;ve seen two available online and I&#8217;d like to know your opinion on them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<a title=\"How Fiction Works\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1845950933?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1845950933\" target=\"_blank\">How Fiction Works<\/a>&#8220;, by James Wood.<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;<a title=\"The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0140174923?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0140174923\" target=\"_blank\">The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts<\/a><a title=\"El Arte de la Ficci\u00f3n\" href=\"http:\/\/www.casadellibro.com\/homeAfiliado?ca=3386&amp;isbn=9788483077276\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a>&#8220;, by David Lodge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid they might be critical articles on classical authors -when I&#8217;m not interested in literary criticism- or they may be too general or superficial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately I don&#8217;t know any of them. I see <a title=\"The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0140174923?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=0140174923\" target=\"_blank\">on Amazon<\/a> that Lodge&#8217;s is a compilation of articles previously published on <em>The Independent on sunday<\/em>. Each chapter deals with one topic and illustrates it with quotes from clasics, which is probably a good idea for a structure and might waken up your appetite for further reading.\u00a0 According to the back cover, <a title=\"How Fiction Works\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1845950933?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=talleliter-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=19450&amp;creativeASIN=1845950933\" target=\"_blank\">Wood<\/a> is not an author but a critic, and according to the table of contents, two chapters are devoted to Flaubert, which is probably a waste of pages unless you know his work. Both volumes receive generally good reviews, though Lodge&#8217;s sem to be slightly better. If I had to choose among those two, I think I&#8217;d go for Lodge, but you see it&#8217;s only a first impression. If you&#8217;re really interested? Get both.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t fool yourself, though: there are hardly any &#8220;advanced&#8221; manuals for writers. I still haven&#8217;t found one that takes for granted that I know the difference between first- and third-person narration and takes on from there. They all stop to explain -and frankly, one gets sick of it. The reason why they all appeal to beginners is because by doing so they expect to reach a wider audience and sell more copies. If you know a book &#8220;for experts&#8221;, please share it in the comments!<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, one learns something from every book. Sometimes it&#8217;s a detail on structure, or perhaps a new trick for writing dialogue, or a new perspective on things we thought we already knew. As we can&#8217;t possibly learn everything from one book, the more we read, the more we&#8217;ll know.<\/p>\n<p>But remember: we learn writing through reading, but mainly through writing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time for listener&#8217;s questions: I&#8217;ve read a couple good books on writing and I&#8217;d like to find others that study fiction in further depth. I&#8217;ve seen two available online and I&#8217;d like to know your opinion on them: &#8220;How Fiction Works&#8220;, by James Wood. &#8220;The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts&#8220;, by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[58,103,53],"class_list":["post-2244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taller-literario","tag-shopping","tag-narrativa","tag-recomendacion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2244"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2247,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alexhernandez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}