Kategorie: Non-fiction

How to Read Literature Like a Professor – Thomas C Foster

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AutorThomas C Foster
Verlag Harper Perennial
Erscheinungsdatum 25. Februar 2014
FormatTaschenbuch
Seiten368
SpracheEnglisch
ISBN-13978-0062301673

“What I’ve learned from all these modern and postmodern works has led me to conclude that it is true of others as well: every work teaches us how to read it as we go along.” (Originalzitat Seite 248)

Thema und Inhalt

Thomas C Foster ist Professor für englische Literatur. Dieses Buch ist eine Art Wegweiser durch die Welt der Literatur und des Lesens. Auf unterhaltsame Art führt er die vielen unterschiedlichen Geschichten, die jemals geschrieben wurden, auf eine ursprüngliche Geschichte zurück, zitiert alte griechische Klassiker, Geschichten aus Religionen und Mythen. Es gibt nur eine einzige Geschichte, erklärt er, die Unterschiede entstehen durch die Art der Schriftsteller und Schriftstellerinnen, sie zu erzählen, und durch uns Lesende, mit welchen Erfahrungswerten wir die Geschichte lesen und für uns selbst auslegen. Diese Ausgabe aus dem Jahr 2014 ist eine überarbeitete Version des 2003 erschienenen Textes, mit neu hinzugefügten Kapiteln und Themen, die sich für Professor Foster aus seinem laufenden Unterricht und den dort gestellten Fragen ergeben haben, sowie zusätzlichen Beispielen aus der aktuellen Gegenwartsliteratur.

Umsetzung

In sechsundzwanzig Kapiteln geht Thomas C. Foster auf die wichtigsten Komponenten einer Geschichte ein, Kapitel siebenundzwanzig ist ein Text, die Kurzgeschichte „The Garden Party“ von Katherine Mansfield, um das nun erworbene Wissen am eigenen Leseverhalten zu testen. Das Buch schließt mit einer Leseliste und einem ausührlichen Index.

In jedem Kapitel geht es um ein bestimmtes Thema, zum Beispiel die Anordnung der einzelnen Figuren, wobei wir hier erkennen, dass es meistens nicht gut ist, direkt neben der Hauptfigur, dem Helden der Geschichte, zu stehen. So lernen wir, zwischen den Zeilen zu lesen, über die Bedeutung nicht nur der einzelnen Figuren nachzudenken und ihren Platz in der Handlung, über die Konflikte und Themen, sondern auch über die Landschaften, das Umfeld, das Wetter, die Jahreszeiten, alle möglichen Formen von Fortbewegung und Reisen und hier sogar auf die jeweilige Richtung zu achten. Dazu kann es sich lohnen, auch Zeichen und Metapher zu hinterfragen. Ungeschulte Hobby-Lesende wie ich denken, zu wenig Erfahrung mit Literatur zu haben, doch Forster bestärkt uns in diesem Buch darin, uns auf all das zu besinnen, was wir aus vergangenen Lektüren wissen, und nicht darauf, was wir nicht wissen. Wichtig ist es, jedes Buch, bildlich gesprochen, zu besitzen, es zu Unserem zu machen, denn jede einzelne Figur, die der Schriftsteller erfindet, wird von uns Lesenden neu erfunden, da wir unsere eigenen Erinnerungen, Erfahrungen und Beobachtungen mit einbringen. „Characters are products of writers‘ imaginations – and readers imaginations.“ (Originalzitat Seite 81)

Fazit

„There comes a point in anyone’s reading where watching for pattern and symbol becomes almost second nature, where words and images start calling out for attention.“ (Originalzitat Seite 304). Dieses vielseitige, interessante, erhellende und unterhaltsame Buch gibt es nur in der englischen Originalsprache, doch es ist sehr angenehm zu lesen und es lohnt sich.

Contemporary literature, Gegenwartsliteratur, Non-fiction, Reviews, Rezensionen, Sachbuch , ,

Howards End is on the Landing: A year of reading from home – Susan Hill

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AuthorSusan Hill
PublisherProfile Books
Date6 August 2010
EditionKindle
Pages244 (print-version)
LanguageEnglish
ASINB003ZDNWMC

“I found the book I was looking for in the end, but by then it had become far more than a book. It marked the start of a journey through my own library.” (Quotation page 1)

Theme and Content

It was an early autumn afternoon, when Susan Hill’s travel through the shelves begins. She was looking for this one book and found many others, long forgotten or never read.

Therefore, she makes the decision to begin a special reading year, reading just books from her shelves, without buying new ones. During this reading year, the author would also shorten the internet hours. It was not a kind of resolution or mission for her, just a personal decision to re-explore read and unread books in her house, although she soon finds out, that there are books for much longer than one year.

Plot and Writing

This book is a kind of diary, a story about Susan Hill’s life as reader, as author of fiction and non-fiction, and her own publishing company, Long Barn Books. She shares with us her memories about her childhood and youth in Scarborough and about the related books she still loves and keeps on her shelves, together with the newer children books that her daughters loved when they were children. There are memories of interesting BBC interviews for “Bookshelf” and of enriching conversations with other well-known authors. One chapter is about writing fiction and she remembers: “Writing fiction was not regarded as something you did as a set task at a set time every day, let alone with a regular target of words. Those who saw things this way had never, of course, tried either and certainly never had to work to a deadline, let alone earn a living by writing.” (Quotation page 184). While sharing her stories and memories with us, she takes books out of the different shelves to find forty books for this reading year, finally sharing her list of the “Final Forty” with us. “I am taking out far too many books. I need at least another year of reading from home. But now I have reached the landing and here it is. Howard’s End.” (Quotation page 234)

Conclusion

Howards End is on the Landing is a book about a lifetime of reading and writing, an interesting, enjoyable read for passionate readers where one will find inspiring titles not yet read but could also, like me, feel confirmed to do the same, start a year of reading through your own shelves of still unread books.

Non-fiction, Reviews , , ,

The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 – by Carmen Callil and Colm Tóibín

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AuthorCarmen Callil
AuthorColm Tóibín
PublisherRobinson
Date23 June 2011, reprint 2019
EditionPaperback
Pages304
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-1849016766

“While we differ in our response to literary theory – one of us is hostile to it, the other cannot have enough of it – we were as one in our determination to ignore the distinction between so-called popular fiction and literary fiction (also so-called.) … The critical dividing line between popular and literary also ignores the reader and the writer, who rarely contemplate the novel in this way.” (Two original quotations, Introduction, page 6)

Theme and Content

Colm Tóibín and Carmen Callil are well-known authors. This book includes two hundred novels written since 1950 by English-speaking authors from all over the world.  

Implementation

The books begins with an introduction where the two authors explain their intention to show that the modern novel flourishes more than ever before, but that it too has changed during these fifty years between 1950 and 2000. Their intense research led to one hundred and ninety-four own choices for readers of every age and taste, and six novels chosen by their readers. As the two authors are from different countries and they have different preferences, any list of this kind is also somehow personal, but they always have looked for a certain quality, an excitement in the reading and the feeling to want to give this book to someone else to read.

The introduction is followed by a list of titles in order of publication, because the entries are alphabetical under the name of the author. Each recommended novel has one page with descriptions of genre, themes, form, characters, content and the intentions of the author. On the bottom of each page, there you can find information about the author. This main part is followed by lists of Autobiographies and memoirs, Literary biographies, Poetry, Autobiographies and memoirs by novelists chosen in this book, Literary biographies of novelists chosen in this book and several lists of Literary Prizewinners from Bookers Prize to Novel Awards, ending with the Index of Titles.

Conclusion

An entertaining, delightful and interesting guide that leads us through fifty years of modern fiction and books we might know and love and others, new for us, that make us curious and immediately end up on our “want-to-read”-list. A timeless, enjoyable read.

Non-fiction, Reviews , , ,

Book Love – Debbie Tung

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AuthorDebbie Tung
PublisherAndrews McMeel Publishing
Date1 January 2019
EditionHardcover
Pages144
LanguageEnglish
ISBN-13978-1449494285

“How to spot a Bookworm – Saying they’ll just have a quick browse but come our looking like they bought a whole shelf.” (Quotation page 106, 107)

Genre, Theme and Content

Illustrations and relating texts for every minute, day and situation in the life of a book addict. Humorous, funny comics to make a bookworm laugh aloud with pleasure, smiling and nodding in agreement. Debbie Tung perfectly understands the everyday problems of bibliophiles and how it feels to be one.

Conclusion

A perfect gift for booklovers, for bibliophiles knowing the meaning of “SUB” and owning some of it. A book to flip through, read and enjoy time and again.

Non-fiction, Reviews , , ,