Yr 11: Reading to Write: Recommended Reading

In order to write well about reading, you need to be familiar with how professionals do it. You need to read examples from writing teachers, literary critics and writers. It is much broader, more interesting and more nuanced than making TEE tables of low-hanging literary techniques (noteworthy that 'technique' is a word that is NOT in the NESA Glossary!) And it is much more interesting than what you might have heard on the Book Club tv show, in which the members never had access to enough words to be really say anything significant.

Read these, or extracts from these. Or one of these. (To be honest, I like some of these better than others, and note that quite a few of them start with a declaration of doing close reading, that is, New Criticism, rather than applying any critical theory lens, such as Feminism, Marxism, etc).

Adler, Mortimer J, & Van Doren, Charles - How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Bloom, Harold - How to Read and Why

Clark, Roy Peter -The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve your Writing

Clark, Roy Peter - Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Writer Faces

Clark, Roy Peter - How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times

Clark, Roy Peter - The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English

Clark, Roy Peter - Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Cuddon, J.A. - Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

Davidov, Shelley & Williams, Paul - Playing with Words: An Introduction to Creative Writing Craft

Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature

Eagleton, Terry - How to Read a Poem

Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

Foster, Thomas C. - How to Read Poetry LIke a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

Fish, Stanley - How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One

Grenville, Kate - The Writing Book: A Workbook for Fiction Writers

Hirsch, Edward - How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry

Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Men Cry

Holden, Anthony and Ben - Poems that Make Grown Women Cry: 100 Women on the Words that Move Them

King, Stephen - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Kundera, Milan - The Art of the Novel

Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Lanham, Richard - Analyzing Prose

Marsden, John - Everything I Know About Writing

Mullan, John - How Novels Work

Oliver, Mary - A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry

Paglia, Camille - Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty- Three of the World's Best Poems

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

Schmidt. Michael (ed) The Great Modern Poets: The Best Poetry of our Times

Sutherland, John - 50 Literary Ideas you Really Need to Know

Sutherland, John - How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide

Tredinnick, Mark - The Little Red Writing Book

Tufte, Virginia - Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style

Virago - Writers as Reader: A Celebration of Virago Modern Classics

Willis, Ika - Reception

Wood, James - How Fiction Works

Resources on Rhetoric

Forsyth, Mark - The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

Lanham, Richard - A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms 

Rhetorical Devices: A Handbook and Activities For Student Writers

http://bmshri.org/sites/default/files/sri_sahithya/A_Handbook_of_Rhetoric.pdf

http://www.hellesdon.org/documents/Advanced%20Rhetoric.pdf

There is a relatively new genre called Bibliomemoir, where a writer writes about reading books. Some of these include:

Ellis, Samantha - How to be a Heroine, or, What I've Learned From Reading Too Much

Ridge, Judith (ed) - The Book That Made Me

Next post....Sample essay questions