How to Be Well Read review – John Sutherland's enjoyable literary list

Academic John Sutherland celebrates the 'common reader' in his surprising and enlightening guide to the great books

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• • Robert McCrum - The Observer, Sunday 11 May 2014

JK Rowling’s inclusion in How to Be Well Read is proof that John Sutherland has a ‘capacious mind’. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

These are trying times for readers. Thanks to the IT revolution, the biggest "paradigm shift" in 500 years, literary choices and opportunity are booming on a global scale.

Dazzled by an extraordinary menu of literary delights – in translation, in genre, and even in new formats – you might expect to find the hungry book lover behaving like a child in a sweet shop. Actually, many readers seem to find themselves in the middle of a collective nervous breakdown.
They won't get much help from the experts. The academy's response to this print bonanza has been to take refuge in "theory", a crabbed reaction that diminishes, rather than enhances, the uncomplicated private pleasure of reading. The upshot is confusion about hallowed cultural values.
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