How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide: October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.)

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Oct 31, 2010 10:00:06

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

!1: Best Buy The Poisonwood Bible is one of those books that I have wanted to read for a long time. I finally had the opportunity to listen to the audio version, narrated by Dean Robertson and was very pleased.

For those of you who are not familiar with this novel, The Poisonwood Bible is the story of fanatical Baptist missionary, Nathan Price, who moves his wife Orleanna, and their 4 daughters to the Belgian Congo from Bethlehem, Georgia in 1959. The Reverend Price was hoping to bring Christianity to the people in the village of Kilanga, at a time when the people of that village were struggling to survive and to remain free from Belgium.

The family arrives in the Congo without a clue as to what they were in for. The bring seeds to plant, but the soil is so poor, seeds will not grow. There is no plumbing or electricity and disease is prevalent everywhere it seems. The Reverend tries to get the people to come to the river to be baptised, but no one is interested in finding God by bathing in waters where crocodiles live. While the goal of Nathan Price was to transform the the lives of the Congolese people by bringing God into their lives, what really happens is that the lives of this family is transformed bit by bit, by what life was really like for them in the Congo.

The story is told in alternating voices of Oleanna and his daughters, and covers a period of about 30 years. The story hooks the reader immediately as each of the characters share realistic views of what they were experiencing along the way. Nathan Price is the only major character who does not have a voice in this novel, and yet in some ways I felt I got to know him the best through the eyes of his wife and daughters. He was an extremely arrogant and unlikeable man who put his entire family at risk. He was degrading to women, and I can't think of one positive thing to say about him. I think the fact he had no voice made this story all the more poignant.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story you really need to read for yourself. It's touching, compelling and insightful. The author did an amazing job depicting the political climate at that time. It's a story about religious beliefs, a story of the disintegration of a family, and a story about forgiveness. It is a story that makes you think, and a story that makes you question the actions our government sometimes takes, which really is not always in the best interest of the people. I truly had sympathy for this family, especially as the years pass and each of the girls tries to find their place in the world. I loved the first half of this book, but felt that the second half got a little bogged down at times. Despite this, I highly recommend this book.

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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Modern American Reading Practices: Between Aesthetics and History

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Oct 17, 2010 07:17:31

In this thoughtful study, Phillip Goldstein shows how the valuation of aesthetics in literary criticism has become increasingly complicated in recent decades. Contemporary readers not only need to look at the text's figures and structure, or the author's intention but must take various media, including television, movies, magazines, and newspapers; as well as the sexuality, gender, race, or nationality of the author, media, or text into account. In this context, Goldstein argues that the study of modern reading practices most effectively preserves the autonomy of aesthetics while revealing the changing social and historical contexts of American readers. Using pluralist perspectives on novels such as Frankenstein, Huckleberry Finn, Native Son, Light in August, and Jazz, this study suggests that these new historical conditions have markedly expanded and transformed the ways in which Americans have defined and read literature in the last two hundred years.

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Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Critical Reading

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Oct 03, 2010 05:00:07

The essential guide to looking at literature with your own two eyes.

What students know about Shakespeare, Orwell, Dickens, and Twain is primarily what their instructors tell them. Here’s a book that teaches the students how to move on to the next level—evaluate and read critically on their own, trust their own opinions, develop original ideas, analyze characters, and find a deeper appreciation for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more.

• Ideal companion for college students and accessible for the casual reader as well

• Covers fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, biographies and memoirs, essays and editorials, and newspapers, magazines, and journals

• Features examples from published writing

• Includes a reading list and a glossary of literary terms

!1: Best Buy How often have we heard the statement that someone is a prolific reader or that he or she is well-read?
At first this may impress us, however, when you think about it, you have to ask how much these individuals retain and what are they getting out of their reading? As Amy Wall and Regina Wall point out in The Complete Idiot's Guide To Critical Reading, there is a difference between being well read and knowing how to read well. What counts is not quantity but rather the quality of your reading.

As mentioned, one of the principal ingredients of critical reading is the ability to effectively analyze what you are reading, which entails questioning and thinking about the material in front of you. It is taking an active role rather than merely passively accepting words on a page-something that unfortunately many of us were not taught while we were students.

Amy Wall is a writer and poet by night, and a TV news producers and newsroom manager by day. She has authored many instruction books and has published her poetry in an online literary journal.
Regina Wall is currently a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She began her career as a writing teacher at Michigan State University and eventually became a professor of Literature, Humanities and Women's Studies at Vanier College in Montreal, Canada.
Together, they have teamed up to produce a manual that grabs you from page one, holding you captive until the very last page.

The Complete Idiot's Guide To Critical Reading strikes just the right tone: direct, upbeat and accessible. The authors have taken pains not to sound preachy, while at the same time providing readers with dozens of pointers that provide tools and maps in helping us understand fiction and non-fiction. We are shown how to become relentlessly inquisitive about any book we have chosen to read from the moment we commence its reading until the last chapter.

Divided into twenty-one chapters, the Walls impart readers with informative and interesting detailed chapters on developing a critical eye towards reading different types of fiction and non-fiction literature. Each section takes on an A to Z approach with its uniform distribution of information wherein readers receive tutorial guidance as to how to become skilled at reading poetry, history, historical fiction, science, philosophy, essays and memoirs, newspapers, magazines, short stories, plays, understanding why an author tells a story in a particular way, literary techniques, and how to connect the dots in making sense of what you are reading.
For example, if you refer to the chapter "Developing Your Critical Eye," we are given in depth instruction as to how to understand the facts an author presents in a work of non-fiction. Is the author expressing an opinion or is he or she interpreting the facts. Is there some kind of bias in the writing and how does the author's perspective compare against what we already know or believe.
Ending each chapter, the authors provide a summation of the basic principles expounded upon and what is the least you should know. Moreover, the text is enlivened with user-friendly side-bars and concrete examples taken from well-known fiction and nonfiction books as Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and several others.

Finishing up in perhaps true academic fashion, the manual provides chapters testing our knowledge of fiction and nonfiction. It is here where you are taught to connect the various pieces of writing to each other.

Also included is a comprehensive recommended reading list pointing the way for readers to track down must read novels and non-fiction and a helpful glossary. This is a "keeper" book and one that you will constantly refer to when assessing the quality of a book you have read.

Norm Goldman,Editor Bookpleasures
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