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    How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
    How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
    How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
    Audiobook10 hours

    How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form

    Written by Thomas C. Foster

    Narrated by David de Vries

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 24, 2019
    ISBN9781494546533
    Author

    Thomas C. Foster

    Thomas C. Foster is the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Write Like a Writer, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, and other works. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry as well as creative writing and freelance writing. He is also the author of several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry.

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    Reviews for How to Read Novels Like a Professor

    3.5/5

    140 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I wish I could return to college and take a literature course with Thomas C. Foster as my professor. Since that is not possible, I am exceptionally grateful that he has now written two books that I can learn from and enjoy. How to Read Novels Like a Professor, a companion to his previous text, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, teaches the lay person how to be a more well-informed and observant reader. As with any really good teacher, Foster possesses a thorough knowledge of and real enthusiasm for his content area. He conveys his material with short, snappy chapters and utilizes a range of great literary examples. He doesn’t dictate, but rather suggests possibilities, and is able to have the reader see and now better understand what has (surprise!) been there all along. Foster’s tone is relaxed, conversational, and just (thank goodness) a bit irreverent. For example, my favorite chapter in this latest book is “Never Trust a Narrator with a Speaking Part” in which Foster explains that a first person narrator is invariably unreliable ~ he is deluded, naïve, mistaken, uninformed, in denial, etc. ~ in short, the narrator of the story doesn’t know things you know as the reader and that the author has written it that way for deliberate effect and purpose. Immediately I begin to think of all my favorite stories that were written in the first person, and of course Professor Foster is correct! How did I miss this all these years as a reader? (Or, as with any truth, did I always know, but without conscience understanding?) So with my hearty recommendation, grab a cup of cup of coffee, take a front row seat, and read along with wonderful Professor Foster.
    • 3/5
      This book provided an interesting look at what a novel is, and what things to pay attention to while reading them. However, much of the 300+ pages were devoted to either the author's preferred styles and books or to specific examples out of classic works. While these portions weren't necessarily uninteresting or inapplicable, I do feel that it detracted from the seeming purpose of the book in the first place. I honestly tired of hearing him ramble about his favorite authors and books, and was frustrated that many of his unending examples were from books I haven't yet read...or may not read since we seem to have very different taste in reading. The book should have been titled "How to Read Novels that This Professor Likes".
    • 4/5
      Very interesting look at novels. Highly recommended to both literature students and non-students.
    • 4/5
      I love books about books and reading and this one was all the better for the humorous tone it had.
    • 4/5
      A really enjoyable book. The author kind of goes on sometimes (he admits it) and kind of drives his ideas into the ground, but because this book is written in a conversational way, it's not so bad. As someone who has a (bad?) habit of only reading nonfiction, this has made me excited to read more fiction, and so it's accomplished what it set out to do.
    • 4/5
      I wouldn't normally have picked up this book, but alas it was one of my summer reading requirements. However, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

      The reader learns about the origin and history of the life of the novel. You also will learn about various things to look for in the novels you have read, are reading, and will read. Foster talks about the importance of the first page of a novel, the various different narrative perspectives a book can include, and much more.

      The main reason I enjoyed this book was due to Foster's enthusiasm about the novel. You can tell and picture his passion for writing, and all the components that go into writing a piece of work. He gives you a tip, and then shows several examples of how writers have used that tip in their own writing. The works he takes examples from can be from the oldest of classics to more modern ones. So in a sense, you are technically getting two things in one. First thing you are getting are the tips to better your comprehension while you read future novels. Second, you are getting more books to add to your TBR list, because you and I both know that our TBR lists are still not long enough.

      I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is searching for some help in better understanding the components that go into reading a novel. I found this novel to be quite helpful in that department. There are parts that tend to be on the drier side, but it's a book where I felt like I could personally connect with the author.
    • 5/5
      I read How to Read Literature Like a Professor early last year, and was pleasantly entertained and informed by his conversational introduction to symbols and motifs common in literature. In this book, he specifically looks at the novel including how the beginning teaches you to read the novel (and grabs or fails to grab the reader), chapter breaks, ambiguity, and how the history of the novel informs its form - and how authors have been playing with this ever since.I found this book every bit as entertaining as the first, if more loosely structured. I really like Foster's approach in encouraging a variety of readers and interpretations. I greatly appreciate that he doesn't expect everyone to read like him or enjoy the same things that he does; in fact, I'm almost positive that he and I are very different readers, as I still like my novels to have less ambiguity and more finality in their endings than he clearly does. When I was an English major as an undergraduate, my experience was much less an "Aha!" and much more a "Where do professors come up with this stuff?" If, like me, you tend to take literature at its more literal level and don't get the postmodern or even just the symbolism that your English teacher said was there, you may get a lot of out these titles too.
    • 3/5
      Not as good as "how to read literature like a professor" by the same author. That one is better.This book gets far too deep into theory and has to remind the reader about 1000 times that novels are made up stories. It really got old.
    • 2/5
      I love books. You know that about me. But what probably you don’t know is that there are some books that I don’t like, some books I actually hate. Yes, it’s true. I hate textbooks. I loathe textbooks. I hate the pompous, condescending tone of textbooks. I hate the know-it-all attitude of textbooks. I hate the way textbooks act like they don’t have to try to be well-written; textbooks know people will be read them anyway because people are forced to read them. I hate textbooks.So I will say, sadly, that I found this book to be a textbook. There is, sadly, nothing jaunty about this book. I liked How to Read Literature Like a Professor, this author’s previous book. But maybe Foster used up all his jauntiness in that book. In any case, I was bored to death reading this book and that’s a shame.
    • 3/5
      I HATE the title of this book. But the book itself was worthwhile. Very accessible, it's both a reminder of forgotten lessons from high school and college literature classes and, for me, a provider of some new considerations in reading a novel. It made me want to go back and re-read some novels I've very much enjoyed but (it's clear to me now) missed so much. [The Known World], [Beloved], [Arthur and George], [To the Lighthouse] -- to name just a few. For many this book would be too basic and I admit to some embarrassment that it didn't seem too basic for my current needs. But I suspect that Foster, himself, would tell me to skip the self-abnegation and get on with having conversations with novelists.
    • 4/5
      The cover blurb says it all: "A jaunty exploration of the world's favorite literary form."I think I would love Prof. Foster's classes. He has a way of phrasing his ideas and assertions that is humorous, friendly, and accessible. In this book, he covers the development of the novel, the Victorian influences - which were apparently monumental - and post modern writing. I personally prefer linear writing (I found out), but Foster does a such good job of explaining experimental writing that I may overcome my middle-aged stubbornness and check it out!
    • 3/5
      This is a good explanation of what to look for when reading a novel and, unlike many books of its kind, does not presume that only the classics are worthy to be read and analyzed. I probably would have enjoyed this book more if the author and I had any common ground in what we liked in novels. He briefly mentioned a few of the authors I spend most of my time with, spending more time on Joyce and Nabokov than I enjoy. Still, for a crash-course in literary interpretation, this is a good book.
    • 5/5
      For anyone that ever wondered why literature majors could push out a twenty-odd page paper on the significance of anything in a novel and not even bat an eye when asked, "why does this matter?" this book can explain all of that in a way that's actually enjoyable. Not only does Foster present the concepts of narrative, voice and characterization in plain language, he actually makes it immensely accessible. He'll even sneak in lessons on the history of the novel, history in the novel and metafiction. Examples in the book run all the way from Beowulf to Harry Potter and everything in between - when you get a chapter that offers up examples like The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Vanity Fair, Lord of the Rings, Lolita and The Odyssey, you know that he's thought his point through. One warning - your to-be-read pile will grow while reading this book!
    • 4/5
      For a refresher or a good overview of how to critically read novels this is an excellent, easy to read and understand look at how professors and critics of literature analyze it. The different elements are broken down and explained, and some of the history behind modern day thought about the novel is explained. An excellent read for members of book discussion groups, students, or anyone interested in getting more out of their reading.
    • 4/5
      Foster creates a conversation with his reader, guiding us to understand the approaches that distinguish classics from others. He emphasizes repeatedly how there is no magic formula, but there are certain constants. Hemingway uses short sentences; Faulkner tortuously long ones. Both force the reader to develop a meaning. I also appreciated the context he provided for various trends in fiction. Victorian novels were shaped by the serialized nature of publishing, such that chapters needed to hae a climax and the names had to be memorable enough to be familiar again with the next monthly installment. The advent of modern philosophy allowed for more uncertainty about characters and less tidy endings.Foster summarizes his points with a series of 20+ universals, such as the "Law of Universal Specificity: You can't write about everywhere or everyone, but only about one person or one place." Reading this book helped me appreciate a lot of novels I didn't fully understand. It also validated a lot of my own criticisms about specific novels and certain techniques. Foster encourages the reader to own the book, pointing out that the author's role stops with the final edits.
    • 3/5
      Professor Foster has taught college literature for many years and is well versed in the content of the world's best novels and the techniques employed by their authors. This work contains a well-organized presentation of the components of excellent novels, and outstanding examples of how specific writers implement them in particular situations. He also supplies an overview of how the novel has changed as it matured from romanticism to post-modernism.Perhaps to appeal to collegiate audiences, his presentation seems at times to be contemporary to a point of adolescence.Recommended
    • 4/5
      I read "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" and loved it so much, I went out and bought this book, "How to Read Novels Like a Professor" before I'd even finished the first one."Novels" provides a brief history of the novel, and then talks about how novels are structured with lots of examples and a conversational tone that makes the book interesting and fun to read. This book was more of a lecture style, compared to "Literature" which really was a "how to" guide. Both are great reads that can add to your appreciation of books.