Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere

“Leto is as funny as she is well-read; a delight for bibliophiles and wannabes alike.”

Lauren Leto, humor blogger and co-author of Texts from Last Night, now offers a fascinating field guide to the hearts and minds of readers everywhere. Judging a Book by Its Lover is like a literary Sh*t My Dad Says—an unrelentingly witty and delightfully irreverent guide to the intricate world of passionate literary debate, at once skewering and celebrating great writers, from Dostoevsky to Ayn Rand to Jonathan Franzen, and all the people who read them. This provocative, smart, and addictively funny tome arose out of Leto’s popular “book porn” blog posts, and it will delight and outrage literature fans, readers of  Stuff White People Like and I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar—people obsessed with literary culture and people fed up with literary culture—in equal measure.

What kind of reader are you—and what does your bookshelf say about you?

• Favorite Author Stereotypes: Find out what it really means if their favorite writer is Dostoevsky, Ayn Rand, or Jack Kerouac (and what you should assume about yourself).
• The Book Lover’s Life: Witty observations on the rules of book club, how to survive as a nerd, and why the term "bookworm" should be changed to "bookcat."
• Bookstore Behavior: A hilarious field guide to public reading, bookstore hookups, and that certain smell only a true bibliophile understands.
• How to Fake It: Can’t tell your Faulkner from your Franzen? Learn how to speak condescendingly about the most revered authors and avoid discussing the major plot points of any novel.

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 who’s pontificating on Cormac McCarthy’s “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 Leto’s Judging a Book by Its Lover is manna from literary heaven! A hilarious send-up of—and inspired homage to—the 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.

“If CliffsNotes had an opinion and a couple of drinks under their belts, they’d sound like Lauren Leto.” - Omnivoracious.com

“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

“It’s On the Origin of Species for the library set.” - James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces