Apropos of Unread Authors

French professor of literature and psychoanalyst Louis Bayard has written a book about how we discuss books that we haven't necessarily, um, read. Or read in their entirety.

You can read the Adrien Tahourdin's review for the Times Literary Supplement here. And here is a wee taste of what the review has in store for you, which also makes reference to the sort of oppressive book guilt that the Unread Authors Challenge is meant to overthrow:

He does not address the fact that most of us have our blind spots where particular authors are concerned, and that many of us do feel oppressed by the thought of the books we haven’t quite got round to reading, or wish that we had read years ago and know we now never will. Bayard is not interested in this; instead, he divides the works he mentions into four categories: “LI” indicates “livres inconnus” (books he is unfamiliar with); “LP” “livres parcourus” (books glanced at); “LE” “livres dont j’ai entendu parler” (books he has heard discussed) and “LO” “les livres que j’ai oubliés” (books he has read but forgotten).

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