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John Murray learns how to talk about books

03.08.07 Alison Flood

John Murray has snapped up a book it promises will make readers look good at dinner parties. Eleanor Birne bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada in How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Henry Hitchings from Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White. She will publish in autumn 2008.

Hitchings is the author of John Murray's Dr Johnson’s Dictionary and the forthcoming The Secret Life of Words which will publish next spring. He said: “The book has to be determinedly personal. We all know the guilty pleasure of doing what my title describes, and we all wish we were better at it, and we’d all like to sharpen our tools and boost our arsenal of con tricks. The final irony is that in setting out to stimulate the skill advertised in its title, this slim volume may actually, instead of providing the means of avoiding books, inspire people to devour them."

John Murray Rights deal

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