Review: How to Read Literature Like a Professor

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am glad I read this book.

It’s witty, charming and very interesting for someone who is interested in learning more about literature and interpretation. It is also incredibly useful for someone trying to write richer works with better impact.

The core lesson here, the idea that the book seems to want to leave you with, is that reading can be all the more rewarding when you are aware, when you are careful and thoughtful. That is a beautiful lesson, and it is presented well. The two dozen or so patterns introduced in this book are not comprehensive, but if you are reading Western literature you will see them repeatedly and undoubtedly. As the book says, once you start recognising patterns with the broad and general ones, you will learn to recognise more specific ones.

There is a wealth of authors and books referenced here. Some are powerful and well-known, others are slightly less well-known but I will definitely be seeking them out now. I think that’s another awesome thing you get from reading this.

And as someone who writes, it is so cool to see interpretations of other works and learn about the process of analysis. The imagery and symbolism is definitely worth exploring to make one’s own work more interesting.

All in all, a solid read for anyone who wants a richer experience reading books and writing stories.

(It’s also superbly paced. I learned so much, with so many examples, so rapidly. It felt perfect as a book to teach me the basics of how to approach the subject of reading literature through the lens of literary analysis).

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