The Reader over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose [Hardcover]

Robert Graves (Author), Alan Hodge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1979

For those with a nose for poetry.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 290 pages
• Publisher: Random House Inc (T); 2 Revised edition (April 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394506154
• ISBN-13: 978-0394506159
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #772,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy This Book, November 1, 2002

By 

Irritated "wprof" (MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose (Paperback)

If your students refuse to learn how important it is to focus on INDIVIDUAL WORDS-- if they insist on thinking that it is sufficient to 'get their point across in a rough way'-- if their sentences are as a result sometimes nonsensical, suggest this book. And then make them read it-- including the appendix at the back.

Among other valuable aspects, the book uses examples of bad writing from famous authors-- simultaneously reassuring the student that a mistake can happen to the best of us, and reminding the student that vigilance is always necessary.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Granddaddy of Fisking, May 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Reader over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose (Hardcover)

THWACK! Down comes the headmaster's birch-rod on the sensitive knuckles of the bumbling pupil. Botch that passage again, lazybones, and I'll have your hide!

Poet-novelist Robert Graves and historian Alan Hodge have written a delightful book containing a very quirky 126-page critical history of English prose, a few short chapters listing every conceivable principle of clear & graceful writing, followed by some 200 pages of the most carping, anal-retentive editing & revising you've ever seen. Unlike most style-book authors, who criticize hypothetical or anonymous examples of bad prose, Graves & Hodge courageously tackle many of the biggest names of their era (Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Bernard Shaw) and relentlessly pick, pick, pick until the carcass is clean and the bones lie strewn about the lair. Then they put it back together again PROPERLY, the way the author should have done it the first time. As G&H themselves note, the book might as well be subtitled "A Short Cut to Unpopularity".

Of course, if any headmaster ever treated me the way G&H treat their victims, I'd be outraged. Luckily, we are not one of their hapless victims suffering under their harsh tutelage; so, although we wince in sympathy with those being raked over the coals, we can also profit greatly from their chastisement. "The Reader Over Your Shoulder" is the most painstaking and explicit guide ever published on the craft of revising one's prose. Ideal for self-study. But beware: G&H get under your skin and stay there. Even as I write this review I can sense these two meticulous sadists hovering over my shoulder and I ready myself for a thrashing.

This review refers to the out-of-print, unabridged 1944 edition.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is my favorite book in the world, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose (Paperback)

This is my favorite book. For years I struggled as a writer, unnecessarily as I now know, because I had never been taught the principles of clear communication.

This book teaches those principles. I recommend it to any writer who is trying to improve his work.

This book teaches a hard-core discipline of writing. To follow its principles will not only improve your writing ability, it will make you a better person.