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Ok, despite the title, this was precisely zero% use in helping advance my decades-long project of organising my books! 😡
On the other hand, it was thought-provoking, intelligent, emotional, funny, whimsical, serious, erudite and utterly bookish. I need more Perec!

"What is scandalous isn't the pit explosion, it's working in coalmines. 'Social problems' aren't 'a matter of concern' when there's a strike, they are intolerable twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, three hundred and sixty-five days a year."

"I write in order to live & I live in order to write, & I've come close to imagining that writing & living might merge completely: I would live in the company of dictionaries, deep in some provincial retreat, in the mornings I would go for a walk in the woods, in the afternoons I would blacken a few sheets of paper, in the evenings I would relax perhaps by listening to a bit of music."

He didn't mention cats, but obviously there must be cats!?‍⬛

I couldn't resist picking up this book simply because of the title, and I'm hoping the eponymous essay will provide the practical and actionable advice I so clearly need!
A selection of essays by Perec of which I'm on the first, dealing with Holocaust literature. Perec's mother died in Auschwitz, so a very personal connection to the subject.

Not really enjoyable for me. I found this dense and a bit of a let down, a bit of a slug to get through despite being less than 100 pages. I would suggest this to fans of philosophy and writers like David Foster Wallace or Kerouac.

This is tempting...

Penguin have added to their Great Ideas series

https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/pen02/penguin-great-ideas.html