Episode · How I Write · 2026-09-16
David Perell & Francine Prose: books mentioned on How I Write
Francine Prose: This Is What a Harvard Writing Masterclass Feels Like | How I Write
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Francine Prose recommended Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark, and discussed Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Lady with the Dog by Антон Павлович Чехов, and The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez. David Perell discussed The diary of a young girl by Cherry Gilchrist and others and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is a monumental masterpiece of nineteenth-century literature exploring themes of love, family, societal hypocrisy, and tragic fate.
Discussed“I mean there there are certain things that are hard like party scenes that party scenes are really I mean there are a lot of people and they're all talking at once and there's all this interaction and how do you follow it so that you look at I mean I guess James Joyce is the dead is the all-time”
Where to get it
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Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is an experimental, highly complex work of modern fiction known for its dense, multilingual portmanteau language and cyclical structure.
Discussed“I if someone put a gun to my head and said, "You have to read Finnegan's Wake now." It, you know, I go, "Shoot me.”
Where to get it
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Great Expectations
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a classic Victorian novel following the orphan Pip as he navigates social class, ambition, and personal growth.
Discussed“Well, I you know, one year I taught Jane Air and uh and Great Expectations in the same year. And Janeire is the greatest representation of of female rage ever.”
Where to get it
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Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is a celebrated Victorian novel following the turbulent life and emotional maturation of its eponymous orphaned protagonist.
Discussed“Well, I you know, one year I taught Jane Air and uh and Great Expectations in the same year. And Janeire is the greatest representation of of female rage ever. And that that hasn't gone away.”
Where to get it
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Lady with the Dog
Discussed“I mean, one thing is I really like indeterminate endings, you know. I mean, there's the ending of uh uh Czechov's lady with the pet dog, which is and they realize that the hardest part was still before them.”
Where to get it
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Loitering with Intent
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark is a witty, brilliant 1981 novel set in post-war London that follows an ambitious young female writer named Fleur Talbot as she navigates the eccentricities of the autobiographical writing world, where the bizarre events of her real life begin strangely mirroring the fiction she creates on the page.
Recommended“Have you read um Mural Sparks Lording with intent? I have not. It's really great, but it's the only thing I know about the phenomenon that I most of my close friends who are writers have had”
Where to get it
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The diary of a young girl
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is the enduring historical document chronicling the life of a Jewish teenager hiding from Nazi persecution in Amsterdam during World War II.
Discussed“I was struck by how much Anne Frank edited her her diaries. That seems to be something you were talking about over and over again. She wanted them to be published.”
Where to get it
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A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is a celebrated memoir detailing the author's impoverished yet creatively vibrant years as a young expatriate writer and journalist in 1920s Paris.
Discussed“Well, I was thinking of that part of a movable feast by Hemingway where he just says, "Write one true sentence. Write one true sentence."”
Where to get it
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The Autumn of the Patriarch
Discussed“The Garcia Marquez's Ottoma the Patriarch is one paragraph without paragraph breaks. And a friend of ours, a Polish artist, was saying, "Oh, I hate this book."”
Where to get it
