You definitely know how to read. But do you know how to read artfully? Unlike everyday reading, artful reading—the way we read novels and short stories—is less about reading for specific information and more about reading to revel in the literary experience.
It involves recognizing
* how a story’s particular narrative style affects your connection with its characters,
* why authors choose to hint at meanings instead of just writing them out for you,
* how the organization of a novel into distinct chapters can affect your engagement with its plot, and much more.
When you approach a work of fiction the way you do an e-mail or report or newspaper, you miss out on all of this. You’re not getting everything you should out of the reading experience. Learning the skills and techniques of artful reading can improve your life in many ways.
* If you’re a fiction reader, they can make your first reading of a new novel or short story feel as rewarding as a second or third reading, and they can give you new perspectives on works you already cherish.
* If you’re an aspiring writer, they can help you understand the methods that great writers use to tackle literary concepts—successful methods you can then apply to your own writing.
* If you’re a book club member, they can enliven discussions and provide your group with engaging activities to create even deeper appreciations of the works you’re reading.
* If you’re a student, they can improve and enhance the close reading skills essential to success in high school, college, and beyond.
Course Lecture Titles
1. Artful Reading and Everyday Reading
2. Authors, Real and Implied
3. Narrators—Their Voices and Their Visions
4. Characters—Beyond Round and Flat
5. Descriptions—People, Places, and Things
6. Minimalists to Maximalists to Lyricists
7. Explosive Devices—Irony and Ambiguity
8. Reading for the Plot—Five Simple Words
9. Master Plots—The Stranger and the Journey
10. The Game Is Afoot—Sherlock Holmes
11. The Plot Thickens—Scott and Brontë
12. The Plot Vanishes—Faulkner and Woolf
13. Chapters, Patterns, and Rhythms
14. Scene and Summary, Showing and Telling
15. Subtexts, Motives, and Secrets
16. Dialogue—The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
17. Metafiction—Fiction about Fiction
18. Adaptation—From Fiction to Film
19. Realism Times Four
20. Thumbs Up?—Interpretation and Evaluation
21. A Long Short Story—”Runaway”
22. A Classic Novel—The Age of Innocence
23. A Baggy Monster—War and Peace
24. Picking Up the Tools
