Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

by Thomas C. Foster

What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface -- a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character -- and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you. In this practical and amusing... (more)

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

by Harold Bloom

The New York Times bestseller from Harold Bloom... A National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Publishers Weekly best book of the year. "The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer."--Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author,... (more)

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

by Harold Bloom

More than a required reading list, The Western Canon is a major work of vision by the foremost literary critic in America. In defining the essential masterworks of world literature--the Western Canon--Bloom enlightens and inspires all readers to return to the special joys of reading that our literary tradition offers. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Vintage)

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Vintage)

by Bruno Bettelheim

The great child psychologist gives us a moving revelation of the enormous and irreplaceable value of fairy tales - how they educate, support and liberate the emotions of children.

How to Read and Why

by Harold Bloom

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to... (more)

Literary Theory: An Introduction Second Edition

Literary Theory: An Introduction Second Edition

by Terry Eagleton

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

by Francine Prose

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. In Reading Like a Writer , Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers&#8212Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen,... (more)

Flirting with Pride & Prejudice: Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece (Smart Pop series)

Flirting with Pride & Prejudice: Fresh Perspectives on the Original Chick-Lit Masterpiece (Smart Pop series)

by Jennifer Crusie

** COMPLETELY UNAUTHORIZED ** One of fiction's most well-loved novels, this 19th-century classic continues to capture the hearts of contemporary readers with its notions of marriage, dating, and romance. Leading authors in the area of women's literature and romance contribute to this fresh collection of essays on everything from Lydia's scandalous marriage to George Wickham to the female-dominated Bennett... (more)

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read

by Pierre Bayard

The runaway French bestseller hailed by the New York Times as “a survivor’s guide to life in the chattering classes.” If civilized people are expected to have read all important works of literature, and thousands more books are published every year, what are we supposed to do in those awkward social situations in which we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read? In this delightfully witty, provocative... (more)

How Fiction Works

by James Wood

What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works , the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings —Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by... (more)

Maps and Legends

by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a... (more)

Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds

Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds

by Harold Bloom

A monumental achievement of scholarship, GENIUS examines 100 of the most creative and literary minds in history. From the Bible to Socrates, through the transcendent achievements of Shakespeare and Dante, down through the ages to Hemingway, Faulkner, and Ralph Ellison, Bloom discusses the numerous influences of his chosen geniuses and the kinships among them over the centuries. He also offers revealing excerpts... (more)

Great Books

by David Denby

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER At the age of forty-eight, writer and film critic David Denby returned to Columbia University and re-enrolled in two core courses in Western civilization to confront the literary and philosophical masterpieces -- the "great books" -- that are now at the heart of the culture wars. In Great Books, he leads us on a glorious tour, a rediscovery and celebration of such authors as Homer... (more)

Culture and Imperialism (Vintage)

by Edward W. Said

A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. "Said is a brilliant . . . scholar, aesthete and political activist."--Washington Post Book World.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism presents a staggeringly varied collection of the most influential critical statements from the classical era to the present day. Edited by scholars and teachers whose interests range from the history of poetics to postmodernism, from classical rhetoric to ériture féminine, and from the social construction of gender to the machinery of academic superstardom, The Norton... (more)

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)

by Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar

This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual.

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

by Marina Warner

In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend-from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales? Are they a source of wisdom or a misleading... (more)

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

by Peter Boxall

For discerning bibliophiles and readers who enjoy unforgettable classic literature, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is a trove of reviews covering a century of memorable writing. Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word.The featured works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek... (more)

Lectures on Literature

by Vladimir Nabokov, Fredson Bowers

For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

by David Foster Wallace

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a sick sense of humor? What is John Updike+s deal anyway? And who won the Adult Video News+ Female Performer of the Year Award the same year Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in his new book of hilarious nonfiction.For this collection, David Foster Wallace immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: literary criticism

by Thomas C. Foster

by Harold Bloom

by Harold Bloom

by Bruno Bettelheim

by Harold Bloom

by Terry Eagleton

by Francine Prose

by Jennifer Crusie

by Pierre Bayard

by James Wood

by Michael Chabon

by Harold Bloom

by David Denby

by Edward W. Said

by Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar

by Marina Warner

by Peter Boxall

by Vladimir Nabokov, Fredson Bowers

by David Foster Wallace