Random House asks Have you Read?
09.03.10 | Victoria Gallagher
Random House has bought Have You Read?, a "book about books" in which Professor John Sutherland gives a personal take on his 500 favourite titles.
Nigel Wilcockson, publishing director of Random House Books, acquired world rights from Victoria Hobbs, literary agent at A.M. Heath.
Wilcockson said: "John Sutherland is the most terrifyingly well-read person I have ever met. He also manages to be both massively erudite and hugely entertaining. It's just not fair."
Have You Read? looks at 500 of the professor of literature's favourite books, including classics, one-hit wonders and a handful of obscure titles. Random House Books will publish the title in October 2011 in hardback with a mass-market paperback edition to follow a year later in Arrow.
Sutherland currently teaches at the California Institute of Technology. He previously wrote Curiosities of Literature: A Book-lover's Anthology of Literary Erudition (Arrow). He said: "The more books we have, the more we need books about books, in my view. This selection is my personal must-read library. There is a lifetime of pleasure in them."
