Allan and Sarah have compiled a bunch of inside stories of famous authors, characters and stuff like that which seems to be a Readers Digest presentation and serves those who are interested in literature well, English. Like Mark Twain hating Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' to an extreme. Or Stephen King being all set to burn his manuscript of 'Carrie' which was rescued by his wife and later became a huge hit. And a journalist named Dorothy Parker who left her entire estate to Martin Luther King.
Some other interesting snippets I picked up apart from the three on the back cover are - Doris Lessing wrote a lot of science fiction, Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond was a WWII Intelligence Officer, Mark Twain made a ton of bad investments and missed out on the one big one - the telephone, many authors were keen to get rid of their best works by burning or getting rid of them somehow, Sartre loved his amphetamines, Balzac had 50 cups of coffee every day, Stephen King had addictions to drugs, William Burroughs shot his wife with an arrow trying to reenact 'William Tell' and the sorrow made him a writer, Anthony Burgess feared he had only one year to live and wrote furiously to provide for his wife (wrote five that year including 'Clockwork Orange') but never died and ended writing 30 books, Proust, Twain and Capote wrote sleeping in bed, Hemingway wrote standing up, Dickens loved visiting the morgue.
Interesting bunch if nothing else. Nice and easy read.
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