Writers by James Naughtie

I don’t often find myself stuck for something to read but if I do, Writers is a useful book to turn to. It’s easy to lose an hour or two flicking through the classic accessible style of DK publishing and doing so with Writers brings a mixture of the pleasant self-aggrandizing of ‘I’ve read it’ and the embarrassment that comes with ‘I should know that’. The book reminds me that I should try to reconnect with Chaucer, expand the pre-19th-century Japanese Literature section of my bookshelf, find out what Luigi Pirandello is all about, endeavour to actually read Proust, and that I really should try to get to the end of Don Quixote. Luckily, a brief snapshot of the lives, loves and works of great writers presented in this book will see me through before I have to do any of that.