Learn how to make Jane Austen's tarragon eggs, John Steinbeck's mushroom risotto, and more

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Household chores. We dread them, we put them off indefinitely, we think of them as anything but entertainment. But here comes The Household Tips of the Great Writers—an imaginative and impossibly humorous omnibus of literary impersonation by parodist extraordinaire Mark Crick, who guides us through the art and craft of cooking, gardening, and fixing up the house with the help of some of modern history's most celebrated literary icons. The real joy of the book, of course, isn't so much the specific recipes and tips—though who could resist a quick miso soup à la Kafka?—as the comedic precision with which Crick caricatures, lovingly, each writer's voice.

From boarding the attic with Edgar Allan Poe ("Working from the corner furthest from the feeble light source, which scarce illuminated my labours, I began to lay the boards. Those dark recesses, unlooked upon since the cloak of slate first enveloped them in eternal night, resisted my intrusion like the densest thicket.") to putting up a garden fence with Hunter S. Thompson ("He lifted a size-eleven foot onto the spade, his leg peeking coquettishly through the slit trouser leg, and the blade sank into the ground. There was a lot to do.") to burying bulbs in autumn with Sylvia Plath ("I swallowed trying again to clear the bitter taste from my mouth then I tipped the bulbs from the bag and watched as their fat little bodies rolled around on the garden path."), Crick has all your household and gardening needs and emergencies covered.