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How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas C. Foster
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.80
You Save: $6.15 (44%)
New (44) Used (11) from $7.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 19725
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061340405
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.3
EAN: 9780061340406
ASIN: 0061340405
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081130225628T
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Product Description
Of all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and today's masters, the novel has grown with and adapted to changing societies and technologies, mixing tradition and innovation in every age throughout history. Thomas C. Foster—the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating symbolic codes of great literature in his first book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor—now examines the grammar of the popular novel. Exploring how authors' choices about structure—point of view, narrative voice, first page, chapter construction, character emblems, and narrative (dis)continuity—create meaning and a special literary language, How to Read Novels Like a Professor shares the keys to this language with readers who want to get more insight, more understanding, and more pleasure from their reading.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Good pointers, some flaws, but finding meaning in literature is ultimately a personal journey. December 2, 2008
If I were to meet Thomas Foster, I would probably enjoy talking to him. He has a good sense of humor and he knows his stuff; reading him, however, is a completely different experience. Like everyone else, I enjoy the occasional presence of levity, but Foster lays it on too think in this guide to digesting a novel's deeper meaning.
One of the most challenging and profound intellectual pursuits, critically reading a novel is not something to be taken lightly. I know that Professor Foster has great admiration and respect for literature seeing as he has devoted his life to studying it, but his tone and the words he uses to describe some of the greatest works in literature came off irreverent, which both surprised and bothered me. For example, he refers to War and Peace as "a little fourteen hundred page DITTY about the war against Napoleon" (280). I don't like when scholars take their work too seriously, but comments such as this AND discussing Harry Potter alongside the greatest novels ever written seems too far in the other direction.
However, the book does have its strong points. It introduces several meaningful, college-level topics, including but not limited to metafiction (elements in a novel that discuss novel writing), stream of consciousness (literature's newest and most radical innovation), character emblems (possessions that help illuminate a character's significance) and the importance of an author's diction and syntax (I particularly enjoyed this one as it featured an insightful comparison of the radically disparate styles of Faulkner and Hemingway).
In the end, discovering satisfying meaning and pleasure in reading remains a deeply personal undertaking. No guide, whether jocular or scholarly, will be able to communicate exactly how one should approach the interpretation of a novel because, as Foster himself acknowledges, we all bring different experiences to our reading. An instructor can give his student pointers, but understanding a novel's greatest value requires that the reader see the narrative in terms of his life, which, of course, is a skill that cannot be taught.
Reading Novels Like a Professor November 25, 2008
How to Read Novels Like a Professor is a worthy companion to his first book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. The new one is an excellent read for all high school students and their teachers, offering some interesting insights into analyzing novels. His style of writing is easy to follow and interesting, not a dull diatribe on literature. I may make this required reading for my AP English class.
 A guide for everyone September 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This isn't a book for stuffy academics. It's readable and enjoyable, even if you're not a creative writing or english major. Foster's discussions of literature (mostly 20th century, but he runs the gamut), is lively, entertaining, and ultimately enlightening. I find myself reading and rereading the chapters again and again; each stands on its own as a discussion of a particular topic.
lil bit of help September 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
this is a little bit of insite into the world of books.
not all of us have lit degrees and are limited in our resources.
so this was a little gem for me.
I think its a handy little interesting tool for a dedicated reader.
How to Read Novels Like a Professor is a concise, informed and valuable introduction to the world of novels August 19, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
"How to Read Novels Like a Professor" is the sequel to "How to Read Literature" by Dr. Thomas C. Foster. Foster is a professor at the University of Michigan-Flint. One can imagine being fortunate enough to sit in his classroom! If we as readers cannot be that fortunate we can relish his informed survey and suggestions on the joy of the novel.
The book begins with a short survey on the rise of the novel from Miguel de Cervantes immortal "Don Quixote" to the magical prose of J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter serial. We learn that in the heydey of the novel in the Victorian era the novels were published monthly or weekly. They were then printed in a three volume cheap edition before a more expensive single volume was published. The greats of the era such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackery, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot all appeared in this printed format. Victorian novels were long, episodic and relied heavily on cliff hangers and colorful names to remind readers of who is who in the story.
Foster notes that on the very first page of a novel you can see how the author utilizes style, tone, mood, diction and point of view. Foster also introduces us to novelistic themes, mood and how the writer uses narrative to tell his/her story. He sometimes gets a bit too technical for the nonacademic reader though he does seek to explain what the terms mean.
We see how writers use symbols and express themselves through metaphors gained through their life's experiences. We see how important place and the historical situation are in novels. The novelist creates his/her own world be it Faulkner's county in Mississipi Joyce's Dublin; Hardy's Wessex or Dickens' nineteenth century London. Foster discusses characters and their motivations as drawn by the novelist.
Foster uses countless quotations from novels to show us how the artist crafts a novel. Unlike the Victorian age, today's novelist do not always end their books with all the character's fates clearly explained. Novels are now open-ended. Various narrative methods are being used in the postmoderistic world of modern novels. Stream of consciousness and different kinds of narrative are utilized by the modern writer.
Foster uses examples from world literature from Rushdie in India to the Caribbean and Latin America to make his points. His knowledge of African-American and Native American literature is vast. He is, also, an expert on the Western canon.
This short book is a popular approach to a fascinating subject. Anyone from high school teacher to student to book lovers will profit from this excellent resource. This book reminds us that as all readers are different so to is each person differently impacted by the words on the pages of the novel being read. Nevertheless, these reading tips from a master teacher are sure to enhance the reading experience. Well done and selling well on Amazon!
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