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In this delightfully tongue-in-cheek book, a #3 bestseller in France, literature professor Bayard contends that, in this age of infinite publication, the truly cultivated person is not the one who has read a book but the one who understands the book's place in our culture. Using examples from works by Graham Greene, Umberto Eco, and others (and even the movie Groundhog Day), Bayard examines the many kinds of "non-reading" (forgotten books, books discussed by others, books we've skimmed briefly) and the many potentially nightmarish situations in which we are called upon to discuss our reading with others.

The book urges everyone who's ever felt guilty about missing some of the great books to consider what reading means, how we absorb books as a part of ourselves, and why we spend so much time talking about what we have, or haven't, read.

Pierre Bayard is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. He is the author of Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? and of many other books. Jeffrey Mehlman is a professor of French at Boston University and the author of a number of books, including Emigré New York. He has translated works by Derrida, Lacan, Blanchot, and other authors.

Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over eight hundred titles to his credit. Named one of the Best Voices of the Century and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.