Thomas C. Foster's splendid volume How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines elucidates literary assay like no other text I accept read. It clarifies the sometimes difficult task of interpretation and making meaning. It has an excellent recommended reading list, and information technology is indispensable for English teachers. I absolutely loved it. I didn't enjoy its "sequel," How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Class nearly as much.

Permit's outset with what I liked:

  • The motif, which runs throughout the book, of the reader as creator. Reading is a creative act. Books demand that we 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 pregnant in a work" (126). I concur with him, and it'due south i of the things that can be hard about teaching English. English teachers are frequently experienced readers who understand the ways in which texts talk to one another and speak the language of symbolism and metaphor. Students, who are less experienced, often become infuriated when a teacher makes a connection or estimation that the pupil didn't brand, and English language teachers are often wrongly defendant of inventing intentions the author never had. The author'southward intentions exercise not matter once the reader reads the books. We readers bring so much experience, prior reading, belief, stance, and knowledge to everything nosotros read, that no two readers read the same book, and no reader reads the same book the author wrote. I really similar it that Foster explained the importance of the reader and then conspicuously considering it is a real upshot whenever 2 readers disagree about a book.
  • I like Foster's breakup of 18 things we can tell virtually a book on the outset page. It is a peachy guide for students who struggle with notation. If you tin can bespeak students to look for style, tone, mood, wording, indicate of view, narrative presence, narrative attitude, fourth dimension frame, time direction, place, motif, theme, irony, rhythm, footstep, expectations, character, and instructions on how to read the novel (whew!), then y'all volition have paved the way for them to better empathize the novel and help them figure out what to look for when they read. Eighteen is a bit much, simply I found as I scanned the list that I agreed that most, if not all, of these elements tin be determined to some degree on the first page of the novel.
  • I am fond of telling students that literature is the mirror that we hold upwards to examine our world and to ourselves. It tells us who we are and what we desire. Foster expresses a similar sentiment: "So almost any novel tin teach u.s., and the novel has 1 big lesson that lies at its very root: we matter. A human being life has value not because it belongs to an owner, a ruler, a commonage, or a political party, only considering it exists as itself" (115). Every bit such, characters in novels matter because they are united states. We see ourselves in them. We run into our humanity in their humanity.

Now to what I didn't like:

  • The book 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 information technology for some reason, it's difficult to connect to what Foster is maxim—or it was for me. Your mileage may vary. I don't much like Joyce. There, I said it. I did requite him a try. I judge I prefer my novels to be more than like the great Victorian novels Foster describes. I am non opposed to Postmodernism here or at that place, and I don't have to travel with the characters in a straight line. But Joyce doesn't do information technology for me. I like information technology that Foster acknowledges we have unlike reactions to novels. Towards the finish of the book, he describes a discussion with a high school English form in which one alone dissenter admitted he didn't like Slap-up Expectations. Of this educatee, Foster says, "It takes backbone, to say you're in AP English and aren't wild about 1 of the established classics. For i affair, there's the weight of more than a century of received opinion going against you" (292-293). Yep. True. I exercise not like Ulysses. I tried to read it. I was grossed out on page one. I gave it up. And that is OK, though the "weight of [nearly] a century of received stance" is going against me. Just he'south a favorite of Foster'southward (non surprising, every bit he seems to exist 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'southward 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 it, I tend to have it further than that. What bulletin did you get from the novel? Deeper than what it is about—why did the author write information technology? Nosotros can't know that, of course, only nosotros tin 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, merely that is a message I receive from it when I read it. Certainly dissimilar readers will see different themes. Only I don't notice the definition "idea content" to exist all that helpful.
  • Likewise, Foster describes different kinds of narration on pp. 46-47. I teach students get-go person, third person all-seeing, and third person limited. I mention second person as a type of narration they will rarely encounter. That's information technology. And I discovered that there are these other types called third person objective, first person central, and starting time person secondary, which, as Foster describes them, seem like splitting hairs unnecessarily. He also puts stream of consciousness in there, which is non a type of narration, just a narrative technique. And he fifty-fifty says it'south non a kind of narrator, then I detect it confusing that he puts it in this list at all. Information technology doesn't belong at that place.
  • The book has no index. How to Read Literature Like a Professor has a great index. It made finding information so much easier.
  • The volume doesn't have a recommended reading listing. There is a list of other literary criticism to read, but in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster shared a list of cracking 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 book.
  • Foster's appeal lies to a dandy degree in his entertaining style. 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 found it less highly-seasoned, and occasionally off-putting.

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

This review is cross-posted from my book web log considering I thought it might appeal to English teachers.

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