Books like Ways of reading by Martin Montgomery

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.

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.

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.

Better known for her five volume portrait of English rural life, Our Village, Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) was one of the most prolific female writers of her day. Part critical essay, part autobiography, Recollections consists of a series of sketches on and selections from Mitford's favourite authors, stemming from her desire 'to make others relish a few favourite writers as heartily as I have relished them myself'. The collection is arranged according to Mitford's own eclectic system of categorization including 'fashionable poets', 'cavalier poets', and 'poetry that poets love'. Mitford wears her immense literary skill lightly and Recollections is masterfully written, full of lively wit and fascinating biographical detail. Published just three years before Mitford's death, it was based on earlier articles and letters. Authors included range from Chaucer to Sir Walter Scott and Mitford's friend Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

"In this book, author Mark Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis in the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better. Edmundson's controversial Harper's Magazine article "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts: As Light Entertainment for Bored College Students" has been the most photocopied essay on college campuses over the past five years. Here he picks up where that piece left off." "Edmundson enjoins educators to stop offering condescending analystic technique and facile entertainment and to begin teaching students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. He argues that questions about the uses of literature - what would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life - are the central questions to ask in a literary education. Right now these questions are being ignored, even suppressed. And if religion continues to lose its hold on significant sections of society, what can take its place in shaping and guiding souls? Great writing, Edmundson argues."--BOOK JACKET.

Making the Modern Reader, the first full treatment of the early modern anthology, is in part a history of the London printing trade as well as of the professionalization of criticism. Benedict thoroughly documents the historical redefinition of the reader: once a member of a communal literary culture, the reader became private and introspective, morally and culturally shaped by choices in reading. She argues that eighteenth-century collections promised the reader that culture could be acquired through the absorption of literary values. This process of cultural education appealed to a middle class seeking to become discriminating consumers of art. . By addressing this neglected genre, Benedict contributes a new perspective on the tension between popular and high culture, between the common reader and the elite. This book will interest scholars working in cultural studies and those studying non-canonical texts as well as eighteenth-century literature in general.