What are some good books to read to improve my prose?

East of Eden and Perfume both really helped me in that area.

>>9722379
Any book you think has good prose.

>>9722379
Hume's History of Great Britain or Gibbon

>>9722379

Read poetry instead of prose. Well written poetry is very controlled and analyzing every single detail (diction, syntax, word sounds, etc.) should help you appreciate its effects and help you to use them to write better prose.

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>>9722391
>History of Great Britain or Gibbon
Excuse me?

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>>9722423
you are excused

>>9722384
I've read East of Eden, but I'll pick up Perfume, thanks.
>>9722385
Yeah that's what I'm looking for, recs for books that have good prose
>>9722391
Not particularly interested in the history of Great Britain, is there anything else by him you'd recommend?
>>9722398
I like Eliot and Manly Hopkins, who else would you recommend?

Ficciones is great.

>>9722445
>Not particularly interested in the history of Great Britain
I thought this was about prose, not your pseud interests

>>9722445
>Yeah that's what I'm looking for, recs for books that have good prose
Dude, I think what he was hinting at is that whatever prose is "good" depends on your taste. You're not going to have a good prose style if you're trying to sound like someone else. I think it's pretty apparent when someone has an inauthentic prose style.

>>9722980
I'm a pleb and haven't read enough to have "taste", so I'm asking for recs here.

>>9722379
All books?

>>9722379
my diary desu

>>9723163
>>9723164
thanks for the free bump

>>9722379
Elements of Style.

I don't think style manuals are very useful. If you're a total amateur they can suggest a couple guidelines to follow (you'll forget most of them within a week), and there's a sort of dignified writerly tone they teach their readers which can be helpful for those struggling to find a voice, but they aren't a tool for significant growth. They'll take you a very short distance and then you're on your own again.

What I find effective is copywork. Repeatedly transcribe (by hand) passages that you find particularly evocative or beautiful. Most great prose stylists at one point also wrote poetry--read poems, memorize them, and try to write your own. Being able to recognize meter and the nuances of prosody will bring you further than any style guide ever could

>he thinks you can improve your prose through reading rather than writing

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>No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it: be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities—that is to say, if we possess them potentia—we can call them forth and bring them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished all this that we actu possess these qualities. This is the only way in which reading can form writing, since it teaches us the use to which we can put our own natural gifts; and in order to do this it must be taken for granted that these qualities are in us. Without them we learn nothing from reading but cold, dead mannerisms, and we become mere imitators.

sorry anon

>>9722391
You read my mind, anon.

>>9722379
Read some dialogues by Plato, his fucking prose is unbelievably good.