Judging a Book by Its Lover
A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere
By Lauren Leto
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780062070142, 288pp.)
Publication Date: October 2012
Categories: General, Books & Reading
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Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on Infinite Jest? Dying to shut up the blowhard in front of you whos pontificating on Cormac McCarthys recurring road narratives? Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straight?
For all those overwhelmed readers who need to get a firm grip on the relentless onslaught of must-read books to stay on top of the inevitable conversations that swirl around them, Lauren Letos Judging a Book by Its Lover is manna from literary heaven! A hilarious send-up ofand inspired homage tothe passionate and peculiar world of book culture, this guide to literary debate leaves no reader or author unscathed, at once adoring and skewering everyone from Jonathan Franzen to Ayn Rand to Dostoyevsky and the people who read them.
Lauren Leto dropped out of law school to start the popular humor blog Texts from Last Night. She co-authored the book Texts from Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending. She lives in Brooklyn.
“If CliffsNotes had an opinion and a couple of drinks under their belts, they’d sound like Lauren Leto.”
-Omnivoracious.com
“It’s On the Origin of Species for the library set.”
-James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces
“In terms of allowing me to sound smart at cocktail parties, this book surpassed my English degree by page twelve.”
-Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like
“Leto is as funny as she is well-read; a delight for bibliophiles and wannabes alike.”
-Wylie Overstreet, author of The History of the World According to Facebook












