Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2007
Translated by Jeffrey Mehlam from Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus?, Editions de Minuit, 2007

If civilized people are expected to have read all important works of literature, and thousands more books are published every year, what are we supposed to do in those awkward social situations in which we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read? Literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that it’s actually more important to know a book’s role in our collective library than its details. Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, and even the movie Groundhog Day, he describes the many varieties of “non-reading” and the horribly sticky social situations that might confront us, and then offers his advice on what to do.

“It may well be that too many books are published, but by good fortune, not all must be read…A survivor’s guide to life in the chattering classes…evidently much in need.”
— New York Times

“In this work of inspired nonsense —which nevertheless evokes our very real sense of insecurity about the gaps in our cultural knowledge— reading is not only superfluous, it is meaningless. Our need to appear well-read is all.”
— Sarah Gold, Chicago Tribune

“Brilliant…A witty and useful piece of literary sociology, designed to bring lasting peace of mind to the scrupulous souls who grow anxious whenever the book-talk around them becomes too specific.”
— London Review of Books

“With rare humor, Bayard liberally rethinks the social use [of literature] and the position of the reader…Read or skim How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Or simply listen to what people say about it so that you can talk about it with ease. In either case, you may not be able to forget it.”
— Les Inrockuptibles

[Coda]
by René Belletto

Publisher: Seeking an American Publisher
Translated by Alyson Waters from Coda, P.O.L, 2005

[Ecrits politiques]
by Maurice Blanchot

Publisher: Fordham University Press, spring 2009
Translated by Paul Zakir from Ecrits Politiques, Editions Léo Scheer 2003

Voice Over
by Céline Curiol

Publisher: Seven Stories, 2008
Translated by Sam Richard from Voix sans issue, Actes Sud, 2005

A lonely young woman works as an announcer in Paris’s Gare du Nord, surrounded by people yet separate from them. Obsessed with a man who loves another, she suffers alone as she waits for him. In her solitude, she wanders the streets of the modern city, playing on the edge of danger, seeking connection.. […] Voice Over was recently published in the author’s native France to great acclaim, and rights have been sold in fourteen countries. The novel appears now for the first time in English.

“Not only is it the finest first novel I have read in many years, but it is, quite simply, one of the most original and brilliantly executed works of fiction by any contemporary writer I know of.”
— Paul Auster