Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Monday, March 14, 2022

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
 

Around the World in Eighty Days 

by

Jules Verne

 

Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a wager of £20,000 set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.



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The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)

The Jungle

by Upton Sinclair
(1906)

The Jungle is a 1906 novel by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Wikipedia

 The most famous, influential, and enduring of all muckraking novels, The Jungle was an exposé of conditions in the Chicago stockyards. Because of the public response, the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906, and conditions in American slaughterhouses were improved.



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American Literature for Secondary Schools by William B. Cairns

 

American Literature for Secondary Schools by William B. Cairns

American Literature for Secondary Schools 

by 

William B. Cairns

 

 

PREFACE

Teachers of English are fairly well agreed that most of the time spent in literary study should be devoted to literature itself, rather than to history, biography, or second-hand criticism. Yet many, and it seems to me an increasing number, feel that the student needs a brief general survey to aid him in grouping and correlating scattered facts, and to show things in their right proportions. This is especially true in American literature, where, if anywhere, the American student should correlate literary history with other history, and should see that American authors reflect in their writings national life.

This book is intended primarily for use in secondary schools where such a survey is offered in the third or fourth year of the course. It gives relatively few dates or unessential biographical facts, and only a moderate amount of formal criticism ; but it aims to show the continuous growth and development of American literature, to point out its connection with the American history which the student already knows, and to discuss in their proper relationships those authors with whom an American might reasonably be supposed to have an acquaintance.

A single brief term would be sufficient to study the essential parts of the text, and to illustrate them by reference to writings which the pupil has already read. The work will be far more profitable and more interesting, however, if the history can be enforced by a considerable amount of reading in the literature itself. The lists of readings and topics should furnish ample material for such an extension and enrichment of the course.



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Columbia University Lectures: Lectures On Literature (1911)

Columbia University Lectures: Lectures On Literature (1911)

Columbia University Lectures: Lectures On Literature (1911)   

These lectures by members of the Faculty of Columbia University were delivered, with one exception, during the academic year 1909-1910.  

CONTENTS  INTRODUCTION  LECTURE  PAGE 

I   

APPROACHES TO LITERATURE             

By Brander Matthews, Professor of Dramatic Literature 

ORIENTAL LITERATURES 

II   

SEMITIC LITERATURES      

By Richard J H Gottheil, Professor of Rabbinical Literature and the Semitic Languages 

III   

THE LITERATURE OF INDIA AND PERSIA                      

 By A V W Jackson, Professor of Indo-Iranian Languages 

IV   

CHINESE LITERATURE              

By Friedrich Hirth, Professor of Chinese 

CLASSICAL LITERATURES 

V   

GREEK LITERATURE                 

By Edward Delavan Perry, Jay Professor of Greek 

VI   

LATIN LITERATURE     

By Nelson Glenn McCrea, Professor of Latin 

LITERARY EPOCHS 

VII   

THE MIDDLE AGES                            

 By William Witherle Lawrence, Associate Professor of English 

VIII   

THE RENAISSANCE                

By Jefferson B Fletcher, Professor of Comparative Literature 

IX   

THE CLASSICAL RULE    

By John Erskine, Associate Professor of English 

X   

THE ROMANTIC EMANCIPATION                                

By Curtis Hidden Page, sometime Adjunct Professor of the Romance Languages and Literatures 

MODERN LITERATURES 

XI   

ITALIAN LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                                            

By Carlo L Speranza, Professor of Italian     

SPANISH LITERATURE                                                  

By Henry Alfred Todd, Professor of Romance Philology 

XIII   

ENGLISH LITERATURE       

By Ashley H Thorndike, Professor of English 

XIV   

FRENCH LITERATURE              

By Adolphe Cohn, Professor of the Romance Languages and Literatures 

XV   

GERMAN LITERATURE                    

By Calvin Thomas, Gerhard Professor of the Germanic Languages and Literatures 

 XVI   

RUSSIAN LITERATURE     

By J A Joffe, Lecturer on Slavonic Literature 

XVII   

THE COSMOPOLITAN OUTLOOK                  

By William P Trent, Professor of English Literature 

CONCLUSION 

XVIII   

LITERARY CRITICISM                                                                                                                                                    

By J E Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature  

INDEX                                                                      

 
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

by 

Washington Irving

 This gothic story by Washington Irving appeared in his collection of essays and short stories titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Along with its companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity. The tale is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town in an isolated glen called Sleepy Hollow.

 

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Sunday, March 13, 2022

The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crew mates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. Wikipedia



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Saturday, March 12, 2022

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

 

The Illustrated Man 

by

Ray Bradbury

The Illustrated Man is a 1951 collection of 18 science fiction short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. A recurring theme throughout the stories is the conflict of the cold mechanics of technology and the psychology of people. It was nominated for the International Fantasy Award in 1952. Wikipedia
 

Originally published: 1951
Pages: 256
Cover artist: Butchkes
Genres: Short Story, Science Fiction, Fantasy Fiction
 

 The unrelated stories are tied together by the frame story of "The Illustrated Man", a vagrant former member of a carnival freak show with an extensively tattooed body whom the unnamed narrator meets. The man's tattoos, allegedly created by a time-traveling woman, are individually animated, and each tells a different tale.

All but one of the stories had been published previously elsewhere, although Bradbury revised some of the texts for the book's publication.

The book was made into the 1969 film, The Illustrated Man, starring Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom. It presents adaptations of the stories "The Veldt", "The Long Rain" and "The Last Night of the World".

Some of the stories, including "The Veldt", "The Fox and the Forest" (as "To the Future"), "Marionettes, Inc.", and "Zero Hour" were also dramatized for the 1955–1957 radio series X Minus One. "The Veldt", "The Concrete Mixer", "The Long Rain", "Zero Hour", and "Marionettes Inc." were adapted for The Ray Bradbury Theater television series. "The Fox and the Forest" was adapted by Terry Nation for the 1965 BBC television series Out of the Unknown.

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