Thomas C. Foster's fantabulous book How to Read Literature Similar a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Betwixt the Lines elucidates literary analysis like no other text I have read. It clarifies the sometimes difficult chore of estimation and making meaning. Information technology has an excellent recommended reading list, and information technology is indispensable for English language teachers. I absolutely loved it. I didn't savour its "sequel," How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the Globe's Favorite Literary Grade virtually as much.

Let'due south start with what I liked:

  • The motif, which runs throughout the book, of the reader as creator. Reading is a artistic act. Books need that nosotros have an imagination. It reminds me very much of something I heard Jasper Fforde say nigh reading when I went to a book signing. Foster says, "readers are the ultimate arbiters of meaning in a work" (126). I agree with him, and it'due south one of the things that can be difficult most teaching English language. English language teachers are often experienced readers who empathize the means in which texts talk to ane another and speak the linguistic communication of symbolism and metaphor. Students, who are less experienced, often go infuriated when a teacher makes a connection or estimation that the pupil didn't make, and English teachers are often wrongly accused of inventing intentions the author never had. The author'due south intentions exercise not matter once the reader reads the books. We readers bring and then much feel, prior reading, belief, opinion, and cognition to everything we read, that no two readers read the same book, and no reader reads the aforementioned book the author wrote. I really like information technology that Foster explained the importance of the reader so conspicuously because information technology is a existent issue whenever two readers disagree about a volume.
  • I like Foster's breakdown of xviii things we tin can tell nearly a book on the kickoff page. It is a great guide for students who struggle with annotation. If you can bespeak students to look for style, tone, mood, diction, point of view, narrative presence, narrative attitude, time frame, fourth dimension management, place, motif, theme, irony, rhythm, pace, expectations, character, and instructions on how to read the novel (whew!), and so you volition have paved the way for them to better sympathise the novel and help them figure out what to look for when they read. 18 is a chip much, only I found as I scanned the list that I agreed that almost, if not all, of these elements can be determined to some degree on the start page of the novel.
  • I am fond of telling students that literature is the mirror that nosotros hold up to examine our world and to ourselves. Information technology tells united states who we are and what we want. Foster expresses a like sentiment: "So almost any novel can teach us, and the novel has one big lesson that lies at its very root: we matter. A human life has value not because it belongs to an owner, a ruler, a collective, or a political political party, simply because it exists every bit itself" (115). As such, characters in novels matter because they are the states. Nosotros see ourselves in them. Nosotros run into our humanity in their humanity.

At present to what I didn't like:

  • The volume is repetitive. Foster discusses the same books, pretty much over and over, and if, for some reason, you are unfamiliar with one of his pet texts or if you didn't like it for some reason, it'south difficult to connect to what Foster is saying—or information technology was for me. Your mileage may vary. I don't much like Joyce. There, I said information technology. I did give him a try. I judge I prefer my novels to be more similar the dandy Victorian novels Foster describes. I am not opposed to Postmodernism hither or there, and I don't have to travel with the characters in a straight line. Merely Joyce doesn't practice it for me. I similar it that Foster acknowledges we accept dissimilar reactions to novels. Towards the end of the book, he describes a discussion with a high school English form in which ane lone dissenter admitted he didn't similar Great Expectations. Of this student, Foster says, "It takes courage, to say yous're in AP English and aren't wild about i of the established classics. For ane thing, at that place's the weight of more than a century of received opinion going against yous" (292-293). Yep. True. I practice not like Ulysses. I tried to read it. I was grossed out on page one. I gave it upwards. And that is OK, though the "weight of [nearly] a century of received opinion" is going against me. But he's a favorite of Foster's (non surprising, every bit he seems to be a favorite of many college profs), and he is used as an example over and over and over. And since I didn't grok Ulysses, I didn't find myself connecting to those examples very well.
  • I think Foster's definition of theme is off, and I wouldn't recommend sharing it verbatim with students. Foster defines it as "the idea content of the novel" (30). When I teach information technology, I tend to take it farther than that. What message did y'all get from the novel? Deeper than what information technology is about—why did the writer write information technology? We tin't know that, of course, but we can extrapolate. Did F. Scott Fitzgerald write The Great Gatsby because he wanted to comment on how the American Dream is not achievable by all, and maybe that it is even dead or never existed in the first place? I don't know, but that is a bulletin I receive from it when I read it. Certainly different readers volition see different themes. Simply I don't notice the definition "thought content" to be all that helpful.
  • Likewise, Foster describes dissimilar kinds of narration on pp. 46-47. I teach students first person, tertiary person omniscient, and third person limited. I mention second person equally a type of narration they will rarely encounter. That'due south information technology. And I discovered that there are these other types called third person objective, outset person key, and outset person secondary, which, every bit Foster describes them, seem like splitting hairs unnecessarily. He also puts stream of consciousness in there, which is not a blazon of narration, simply a narrative technique. And he even says it'south not a kind of narrator, so I notice it confusing that he puts it in this list at all. Information technology doesn't belong there.
  • The book has no index. How to Read Literature Like a Professor has a great index. It fabricated finding data so much easier.
  • The book doesn't have a recommended reading listing. There is a list of other literary criticism to read, simply in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster shared a list of peachy literary works to read. I liked it. I suppose he figured the list of all the novels he mentioned in the volume should do, but I liked the list in the other volume.
  • Foster's appeal lies to a great caste in his entertaining way. He cracks jokes. He's snarky. For some reason, it was fun in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In How to Read Novels like a Professor, I institute it less appealing, and occasionally off-putting.

This volume is worth it for the give-and-take of reading as a creative deed and intertextuality, but aside from that, it doesn't bring much to the tabular array that wasn't captured better in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I highly recommend that book, and I would recommend it far to a higher place How to Read Novels Like a Professor.

This review is cross-posted from my book blog because I idea it might appeal to English teachers.

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