Books like How to read and why by Harold Bloom

A timeless lecture manual that examines reading through the lens of psychology, offering systematic strategies for adult learners and contributing to a broader understanding of civilization.

In Tehran, Azar Nafisi secretly hires seven female students each week to read banned Western classics, revealing the personal and political struggles of women under Iran’s revolutionary regime.

Francine Prose shows how studying great writers—from Dostoyevsky to Joyce—reveals the craft of storytelling, urging readers to analyze language and technique in order to improve their own writing.

A collection of essays by Nick Hornby, focusing on his book collection and the books he reads in his busy life as a writer in America.

Alan Jacobs shows that reading is thriving in America and offers practical, playful advice to help readers enjoy books without judgment, covering literary fiction, poetry, nonfiction and digital reading.

A study guide offering Bloom’s critique of J.D. Salinger’s *Catcher in the Rye*, with a brief author biography, thematic analysis, and an index of ideas.

"Renowned scholar Elaine Scarry's book, The Body in Pain, has been called by Susan Sontag "extraordinary ... large-spirited, heroically truthful." The Los Angeles Times called it "brilliant, ambitious, and controversial." Now Oxford has collected some of Scarry's most provocative writing. This collection of essays deals with the complicated problems of representation in diverse literary and cultural genres--from her beloved sixth-century philosopher Boethius, through the nineteenth-century novel, to twentieth-century advertising. qWe often assume that all areas of experience are equally available for representation. On the contrary, these essays present discussions of experiences and concepts that challenge, defeat, or block representation. Physical pain, physical labor, the hidden reflexes of cognition and its judgments about the coherence or incoherence of the world are all phenomena that test the resources of language. Using primarily literary sources (works by Hardy, Beckett, Boethius, Thackeray, and others), Scarry also draws on painting, medical advertising, and philosophic dialogue to probe the limitations of expression and representation. Resisting Representation celebrates language. It looks at the problematic areas of expression not at the moment when representation is resisted, but at the moment when that resistance is at last overcome, thus suggesting a domain of plenitude and inclusion." http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0604/90022508-d.html.