Most Popular Books by James Wood

The first collection of essays from America''s most revered literary critic--incisive, accessible, and passionately written.

In the tradition of E. M. Forster''s Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera''s The Art of the Novel, James Wood''s How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh? James Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Make Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.

New Yorker book critic and award-winning author James Wood delivers a novel of a family struggling to connect with one another and find meaning in their own lives. In the years since his daughter Vanessa moved to America to become a professor of philosophy, Alan Querry has never been to visit. He has been too busy at home in northern England, holding together his business as a successful property developer. His younger daughter, Helen—a music executive in London—hasn’t gone, either, and the two sisters, close but competitive, have never quite recovered from their parents’ bitter divorce and the early death of their mother. But when Vanessa’s new boyfriend sends word that she has fallen into a severe depression and that he’s worried for her safety, Alan and Helen fly to New York and take the train to Saratoga Springs. Over the course of six wintry days in upstate New York, the Querry family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others? Is happiness a skill that might be learned or a cruel accident of birth? Is reflection conducive to happiness or an obstacle to it? If, as a favorite philosopher of Helen’s puts it, “the only serious enterprise is living,” how should we live? Rich in subtle human insight, full of poignant and often funny portraits, and vivid with a sense of place, James Wood’s Upstate is a powerful, intense, beautiful novel.

The definitive collection of literary essays by The New Yorker’s award-winning longtime book critic Ever since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate, in 1999, James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking world. His essays on canonical writers (Gustav Flaubert, Herman Melville), recent legends (Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson) and significant contemporaries (Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante) have established a standard for informed and incisive appreciation, composed in a distinctive literary style all their own. Together, Wood’s essays, and his bestselling How Fiction Works, share an abiding preoccupation with how fiction tells its own truths, and with the vocation of the writer in a world haunted by the absence of God. In Serious Noticing, Wood collects his best essays from two decades of his career, supplementing earlier work with autobiographical reflections from his book The Nearest Thing to Life and recent essays from The New Yorker on young writers of extraordinary promise. The result is an essential guide to literature in the new millennium.

A Passionate, Profoundly Funny First Novel from "the Best Literary Critic of His Generation" (Adam Begley, Financial Times) Thomas Bunting, the charming, chaotic, and deeply untruthful narrator of James Wood''s wonderful first novel, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating and his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy Ph.D. (still unfinished after seven years), he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled "The Book Against God." But when his father suddenly falls ill, Thomas returns to the tiny village in the north of England where he grew up and where his father still works as a parish priest. There, Thomas hopes, he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant and formidable Christian example, and sort out his own wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar as well as an atheist, and he finds, instead, that once at home he soon reverts to the evasive patterns of his childhood years—with disastrous results. The story of a husband and wife, a father and son, faith and disbelief, and a hero who couldn''t tell the truth if his life depended on it, The Book Against God is at once hilarious and poignant; it introduces an original comic voice—edgy, elegiac, lyrical, and indignant—and, in the irrepressible Thomas Bunting, one of the strangest philosophers in contemporary fiction.

Following The Broken Estate, The Irresponsible Self, and How Fiction Works—books that established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation—The Fun Stuff confirms Wood''s preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of the contemporary novel. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches—that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leon Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov—Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, Aleksandar Hemon, and Michel Houellebecq. Included in The Fun Stuff are the title essay on Keith Moon and the lost joys of drumming—which was a finalist for last year''s National Magazine Awards—as well as Wood''s essay on George Orwell, which Christopher Hitchens selected for the Best American Essays 2010. The Fun Stuff is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about contemporary literature.

"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick Following the collection The Broken Estate--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation--The Irresponsible Self confirms Wood''s preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contemporary novels. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches, he effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally earnest and appreciative view of the most discussed authors writing today, including Franzen, Pynchon, Rushdie, DeLillo, Naipaul, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith. This collection includes Wood''s famous and controversial attack on "hysterical realism", and his sensitive but unsparing examinations of White Teeth and Brick Lane. The Irresponsible Self is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about modern fiction.

The Nuttall Encyclopaedia is an early-20th-century encyclopaedia, edited by Rev. James Wood, first published in London in 1900 by Frederick Warne & Co Ltd. It is named for Dr. Peter Austin Nuttall (d. 1869), whose works, such as Standard Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language (published in 1863), were eventually acquired by Frederick Warne, and would be published for decades to come. The encyclopaedia has a strong editorial voice, and concerns itself mostly with people and places. It may be the only printed encyclopaedia that has entries for fictional characters from Charles Dickens'' books, but at the same time lacks entries for fruit. Entries generally are very short. It often reflects the personal bias of the author, and of course views events from its own perspective in time; both aspects can be seen in entries like Dates of Epoch-Making Events.

No project management training? No problem! In today''s workplace, employees are routinely expected to coordinate and manage projects. Yet, chances are, you aren''t formally trained in managing projects—you''re an unofficial project manager. FranklinCovey experts Kory Kogon, Suzette Blakemore, and James Wood understand the importance of leadership in project completion and explain that people are crucial in the formula for success. Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager offers practical, real-world insights for effective project management and guides you through the essentials of the people and project management process: Initiate Plan Execute Monitor/Control Close Unofficial project managers in any arena will benefit from the accessible, engaging real-life anecdotes, memorable “Project Management Proverbs," and quick reviews at the end of each chapter. If you''re struggling to keep your projects organized, this book is for you. If you manage projects without the benefit of a team, this book is also for you. Change the way you think about project management—"project manager" may not be your official title or necessarily your dream job, but with the right strategies, you can excel.

In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood, noted contributor to the New Yorker, has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that, of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works - among others, Chekhov''s story "The Kiss," W.G. Sebald''s The Emigrants, and Penelope Fitzgerald''s The Blue Flower. Wood reveals his own intimate relationship with the written word: we see the development of a provincial boy growing up in a charged Christian environment, the secret joy of his childhood reading, the links he makes between reading and blasphemy, or between literature and music. The final section discusses fiction in the context of exile and homelessness. The Nearest Thing to LifeÊis not simply a brief, tightly argued book by a man commonly regarded as our finest living critic - it is also an exhilarating personal account that reflects on, and embodies, the fruitful conspiracy between reader and writer (and critic), and asks us to reconsider everything that is at stake when we read and write fiction.

Far from recommending cruel acts, utilitarianism, understood this way, actually runs congruent to our basic moral intuitions.

Since its first publication in 1970, this book has established itself as a popular, useful text in Bible colleges and seminaries. The usefulness of the book has been increased by the addition of a chapter on the Inter-testamental Period.

Wood reads Philip Sidney''s New Arcadia in the light of the ethos known as Philippism after the followers of the Protestant theologian, Philip Melanchthon. He uses a critical paradigm previously used to discuss Sidney''s Defence of Poesy and narrows the gap often found between Sidney''s theory and literary practice.