Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Based on the Book by Thomas C. Foster
    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Based on the Book by Thomas C. Foster
    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Based on the Book by Thomas C. Foster
    Ebook42 pages29 minutes

    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Based on the Book by Thomas C. Foster

    By Worth Books

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of How to Read Literature Like a Professor tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Thomas C. Foster’s book.

    Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. 
    This summary of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster includes:
     
    • Historical context
    • Chapter-by-chapter overviews
    • Important quotes
    • Fascinating trivia
    • A glossary of terms
    • Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
     
    About How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster:
     
    Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a series of short essays that show readers how to “read between the lines” and make great books come alive.
     
    Based on Professor Foster’s years as a teacher of literature, Foster explains how authors use the English language to accomplish their goals and how we can recognize literary ideas in a wide range of works. The tools he offers can be applied to any book—from the classics to the latest blockbusters.
     
    The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 13, 2016
    ISBN9781504043373
    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Based on the Book by Thomas C. Foster
    Author

    Worth Books

    Worth Books’ smart summaries get straight to the point and provide essential tools to help you be an informed reader in a busy world, whether you’re browsing for new discoveries, managing your to-read list for work or school, or simply deepening your knowledge. Available for fiction and nonfiction titles, these are the book summaries that are worth your time.  

    Read more from Worth Books

    Related to Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor

    Related ebooks

    Book Notes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How to Write the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay

      Sep 4, 2019

      The classic comp exercise is often thought of as facile—the opposite of mature, fully realized work. That's exactly why Rion Amilcar Scott took it on. The post How to Write the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Learn To Tell Your Story

      Dec 10, 2018

      Learn To Tell Your Story
      2 min read

    • Article

      Crowing Glory

      Mar 12, 2020

      Crowing Glory
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 17, 2021

      by Clare Moleta Scribner/Simon & Schuster — $35 The father and his son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Max and the Feral Kid in Mad Max 2 and now Li and her daughter, Matti — the highways of the post-apocalyptic planet appear likely to be overrun by s

      7 min read

    • Article

      DREAM HOUSE As Interview

      Oct 9, 2019

      DREAM HOUSE As Interview
      12 min read

    • Article

      Kate Briggs Isn’t Trying to Be Original

      Apr 9, 2024

      "I’ve never been interested in making a claim to originality." The post Kate Briggs Isn’t Trying to Be Original appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Thematic Writing

      Dec 11, 2023

      Thematic Writing
      9 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Why Is This Story Being Told?

      Aug 20, 2018

      If you have ever been in a writing workshop, especially of the MFA variety—and good for you if you haven’t—you are likely familiar with the most dreaded response a piece of writing can get. It can be phrased in a variety of ways, sometimes hedged and

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Novel Versus the Short Story: A Conversation with Matthew Lansburgh

      Mar 22, 2018

      The novel’s superiority over the short story has long been a subject of contentious debate among writers, readers, and publishers, and is in no danger of being resolved to anyone’s satisfaction in the near or distant future. The New York publishing w

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian

      Dec 8, 2019

      I spent a lot of time rereading the same books I used to sneak into my desk back in old days. We don’t need to feel apologetic about loving these books. The post A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Everything Matters, Nothing Matters: The Millions Interviews Daniel Torday

      Sep 17, 2018

      In Daniel Torday’s latest novel, Boomer1, ex-journalist, bluegrass musician, and failed academic Mark Brumfeld sparks an online movement against the economic tyranny of the baby boomers—all from the basement of his parents’ house. Told from the persp

      12 min read

    • Article

      A Book That Changed How I Think

      Oct 25, 2023

      The right book read at the right time can alter not just what you think, but how. The effect can feel like putting on a new set of glasses: Everything remains the same, but you view reality with sudden clarity. It can also be more unsettling—great wr

      6 min read

    • Article

      YA Isn’t Just for Young Adults

      Jan 17, 2024

      When we have a child or teen at the center of a story, is the categorical difference between YA and adult in the plot, the stakes, or the voice and tone? The post YA Isn’t Just for Young Adults appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Bina Shah and Joseph Olshan: An Author/Editor Pair on Inspiration, Switching Genre, and the Edit Process

      Aug 16, 2018

      Bina Shah was introduced to me via Facebook by a mutual friend who is a fine short story writer. She contacted me directly about her first novel, which I published. I don’t believe she wrote her new novel, Before She Sleeps, thinking it would b

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Eugene Lim

      Dec 1, 2017

      1. Our current condition of ambient despair gets an excellent portraiture in Evelyn Hampton’s The Aleatory Abyss. It’s an obscure book about being obscure—or at least it is a book about occupying forgotten interstitial spaces and about being of and a

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor

    5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      To the point, informative, precisely what it says it is, a summary of the book in the title.

    Book preview

    Summary and Analysis of How to Read Literature Like a Professor - Worth Books

    Context

    First published in 2003 and rereleased in 2014, Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the culmination of a literature professor’s life and work in the art of storytelling that has sold more than one million copies. Over the course of decades of experience with his students at the University of Michigan–Flint, Foster devised a method of explicating great literature in approachable ways that can also be useful to casual or avid readers. How to Read Literature Like a Professor became the first of a series that includes How to Read Novels Like a Professor (2008) and How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids (2013).

    In a world overflowing with information, tweets, blog posts, and countless online articles, the joy—or even the point—of slowly reading a good book is often lost. In Foster’s original work—published the year before Facebook was launched, but many years after the dawn of the cell phone—readers gain insight into the same tools and methods that great thinkers, writers, and readers have always found essential when it comes to understanding works of fiction. A single book can open innumerable doors to vistas in history, art, psychology, religion, science, human nature, and so much more.

    Books are the original hypertext, with links to other ideas and other books all over the world. In the same way a beginner in golf, or a medical student, needs guidance from professionals before becoming an expert, readers can benefit from assistance, too. Foster’s book was written to provide interested lay readers with a kind of portable education—an easy way for the average person to, over time, greatly improve his or her comprehension and enjoyment of the best books the language has to offer, as well as excellent ways to examine the latest summer blockbuster.

    Overview

    Are there things a reader absolutely needs to know before entering the world of a novel? According to Foster, the answer is both yes and no. No, because a great book is constructed as a stand-alone work of art, a discrete and self-contained piece

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1