Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Books & Reading

"As warm and stimulating as a library to which one returns again and again."
--Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)

While books contain insights into our selves and the world, it takes a conversation--between the author and the reader, or between two readers--to bring them fully to life. Drawing on sources as diverse as Dr. Seuss and Simone Weil, P. G. Wodehouse and Isaiah Berlin, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda shows how the wit, wisdom, and enchantment of the written word informs and enriches nearly every aspect of life, from education and work to...

Everyone knows which books people buy; they can just look at the best-seller lists. But who knows which books people steal? Who, for that matter, knows that authors ruin the book market by writing too much? Or why book critics are not critical? Or why librarians need to throw out more books? Who, indeed, knows the answer to that all-important question in our democracy: should presidents and presidential candidates write books? (The answer is no.)

In this irreverent analysis of the book industry, John Maxwell Hamilton -- a longtime journalist and public radio commentator -- answers these...

Today's parents are increasingly concerned about the reading and spelling skills taught in schools and are taking charge of their children's education. Full of ideas and suggestions----from innovative preschool exercises to techniques that older children can use to increase reading speed and comprehension----Straight Talk About Reading will instantly help any parent lay a solid foundation for their child's formative educational years.

Molly Abel Travis unites reader theory with an analysis of historical conditions and various cultural contexts in this discussion of the reading and reception of twentieth-century literature in the United States.

Travis moves beyond such provisional conclusions as "the text produces the reader" or "the reader produces the text" and considers the ways twentieth-century readers and texts attempt to constitute and appropriate each other at particular cultural moments and according to specific psychosocial exigencies. She uses the overarching concept of the reader "in "and "out "of the text...

Molly Abel Travis unites reader theory with an analysis of historical conditions and various cultural contexts in this discussion of the reading and reception of twentieth-century literature in the United States.

Travis moves beyond such provisional conclusions as "the text produces the reader" or "the reader produces the text" and considers the ways twentieth-century readers and texts attempt to constitute and appropriate each other at particular cultural moments and according to specific psychosocial exigencies. She uses the overarching concept of the reader "in "and "out "of the text...