My aunt recommended this to me. I'd apologized to a group we tried to start online that I hadn't finished the book, but I did read about half the chapters. What I read was very good. In the first part of each chapter Maugham profiles a famous author; then you get introduced to the famous work in question. These are quite lively, well, really shocking introductions of mostly 19th c. authors! Easy to carry around in paperback, too.
Authors and Books profiled: 1) Henry Fielding and Tom Jones, 2) Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice,
3) Stendhal and Le Rouge et Noir, 4) Balzac and Le Pere Goriot, 5) Charles Dickens and David Copperfield,
6) Flaubert and Madame Bovary, 7) Herman Melville and Moby Dick, 8) Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights,
9) Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamozov, 10) Tolstoy and War and Peace.