How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
By Pierre Bayard
Granta £12, 176 pages
FT bookshop price: £9.60

Amazon stocks more than 70,000 books with “how to” in the title. Pierre Bayard’s provocative little volume is an unlikely addition to the list. It’s not just that the activity it concerns sits strangely besides the functionality of tomes such as Paul McKenna’s How to Get Rich. What makes it unusual is that it isn’t a manual, but a witty study in the sociology of reading.