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| Author: Thomas C. Foster
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $9.86
You Save: $4.09 (29%)
Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 3868
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 006000942X
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780060009427
Publication Date: March 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Could be quite useful to an incoming Freshman in college March 6, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
A better subtitle to this book might be "Understanding Symbology," but then you would miss the "lively" and "entertaining" part of the current subtitle, and that shouldn't be thrown away. This is probably the best book I've ever read about the ugly task of decoding literature, and I would highly recommend it as a graduation present for any high school student who plans to attend college. It's that good. Foster is no dry academic, although his taste still runs to the rather mundane type of literature that doesn't do anything for me personally. What Foster is good about, though, is explaining exactly why he finds that type of literature exciting and how one can decipher it to understand what those darn professors find interesting about it, too.
This is a nice companion piece to Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, especially her chapter on how novelists play games when writing. Smiley comes to the novel as a practioner; Foster looks at the novel as a cartographer. Smiley explains how to play the game, while Foster shows how to understand what the game was that the novelist was playing. Do all novelists play games? No, only the better ones. It's not that novels that have nothing going for them beyond the plot are bad per se, but like a movie that goes from one chase sequence to showdown, a plot-only novel is one-dimensional.
The only thing missing in Foster's explication here is an understanding for novels of ideas, which often get short shrift from the academy, sometimes rightly (when the novel has no plot or characters and only presents the ideas) but often overlooked because the novelist eschews symbology for prognostication. It's only a slight misstep, and one easily forgiven for most college classes where this book will come in handy won't be covering those kinds of books anyway.
Reading between the lines November 23, 2006
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
If only I had had access to HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR for my Freshman English classes!! Foster provides great insights into those specific points college professors and advanced placement English teachers make concerning classical texts. You may even discover why certain works appeal to you while others don't. Foster clearly explains the literary devices are used to effect mood, attitude, and feelingsto create entertaining tales. Shakespeare may have been original, but he was also a master of understanding what worked for other authors from whom he borrowed much. A number of great works written since Shakespeare use his devices including subtle references to the Bible and the Greek Classics.
 don't read this book August 1, 2006
9 out of 28 found this review helpful
Anybody who's familiar with anykind of storytelling definitely should not need to read this. Watching movies, reading books, drawing parallelels and over-analyzing would be much more fun, and much more interesting. The author proves himself not a master of insight, but instead a master of tautology. The introductory chapter ought to have gotten me to stop, but hey, it was required reading. I could have died a happy reader without ever needing to read this book.
This is no On Writing. Its a professor who thinks too-little of his students' capacity to reason and too much of his own capacity to invent (and tell jokes.) It doesn't need to be so long (were this a good book, I wouldn't consider it long), but he's so preoccupied, not just with giving examples from literature virtually nobody needing the book would be familiar with, but with his own sense of humor and the brilliant interpretations he's crafted.
But they're useless. Really. If an author's done his job right, a literary work shouldn't be an intellectual riddle to unravel, but it should convey its meaning to the lay person through these devices. Somebody doesn't need to know "whenever people eart or drink together, it's communion, (Foster, 8)" to pick up on the emotional dynamic in a scene, and be moved subconciously by the close, familiar and personal setting. The same applies to every single one of his clumsy, bold, ugly little "rules."
The only thing worth taking out of this book, (though you really should know it from experience), is just to know that you should think about what you're reading. There's always a purpose, even when that purpose is showing you that there is no purpose.
And Mr. Linder is not the devil. He plays the role of the devil, he's the tool for the devil, but he is not the devil. He is by no means the villian, nor malicious, nor conciously buying the protagonist's soul. I'd even let slide his dramatic semantics if the story slavishly nad obviously followed a Faustian plot, but it doesn't. Walter Lee is not Faust, he lacks the will to power. He's merely trying to save his family. In fact, to trade the well-being of his family in exchange for the preservation of something material that he connects his identity to would be the soul-selling. I would not get along well in his class. What college does he teach at, again?
The above paragraph has no place in a book review. I apologize.
Informative and Memorable April 2, 2004
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is a super introduction to reading literature critically. Foster writes in a relaxed, conversational manner so the reader feels like a participant in the classroom. His book is geared for beginners, so don't look for a huge vocabulary or philosophical overtones. A fun and quick read even for literary masters, because we sometimes lose sight of the basics. Highly recommended.
An enjoyable read. August 14, 2004
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I really appreciated this book and the simple way the concepts were explained. I am a teacher and trying to express the concepts Foster clarified so eloquently described in the book is tricky. I enjoyed reading the book myself, and intend to rely on it as reference for my lessons. I highly recommend it for those who wish to get more out of their reading experience.
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