I knew Donna Tartt wrote the afterward to the reissued edition of Charles Portis’ True Grit. I didn’t know that she read for the audiobook. It might be the first one I ever listen to. (See also Tartt on being read to as a child.)
Part of the pleasure of reading MFK Fisher’s 1942 hard-times survival guide, How to Cook a Wolf, comes from the withering commentary/self-rebuttal she added for the 1952 edition.
Can a writer get through Somerset Maugham’s (hilariously scathing) Cakes and Ale without reading whole passages to others? Exhibit B; Exhibit A. Try it; let me know how you fare.
“Show me a novel that’s not comic and I’ll show you a novel that’s not doing its job.” Howard Jacobson on the devaluation of humor in literature. See also Jacobson for Beginners.