title: What W. H. Auden Can Do for You (Writers on Writers)
author:  Alexander McCall Smith 
description: If youre a fan of McCall Smiths,you know that hes a fan of W. H. Auden. His two series set in EdinburghScotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie novelshave characters who frequently quote Auden. In this installment of the Writers on Writers series, McCall Smith, with a wink to Alain de Bottons How Proust Can Change Your Life (1998), sets out to speak directly about what Auden has meant to him and how readers who have never read the poet can be enriched by his work. McCall Smith is marvelous in describing scenes from his own life that were made radiant or understandable by Audens poetry. He is less successful, except in a general poetry can change your life way, in relating Auden to new readers. This book wanders quite a bit, and it certainly wont generate Auden converts, but it will help both Auden and McCall Smith fans understand the themes and values of both. --Connie Fletcher
zlib_text: Praise for Alexander McCall Smith
  
  ‘The suspense lasts till the end; and McCall Smith has the gift of evoking an
  entire social atmosphere in very few and simple words’ _Sunday Telegraph_
  
  ‘McCall Smith’s greatest gift as a writer – and God knows this is just one of
  many gifts the 56-year-old possesses – is that he can write likeable
  characters’ _New Statesman_
  
  ‘One of the most entrancing literary treats of many a year . . . a tapestry of
  extraordinary nuance and richness’ _The Wall Street Journal_
  
  ‘Has the power to amuse or shock or touch the heart, sometimes all at once’
  _Los Angeles Times_
  
  ‘Alexander McCall Smith’s subtle, gentle stories are works of art’ _Daily
  Telegraph_
  
  ‘ . . . with a mastery of comic understatement and a powerfully evident
  sympathy for his subjects and their milieu, Alexander McCall Smith sets out a
  world where the old rituals of politeness and respect hold sway. His
  unassuming, carefully voiced tour of the small things that make life worth
  loving is a quiet 