"How to Read Literarure like a Professor"

In this post I will be answering the following prompt: Is there anything peculiar or special about the writer's style? How does this affect your reading or understanding of the story?

Thomas Foster's style is one that is very personal and relatable for readers. Though this isn't special in its own right, Foster's humor/attempted humor helps his style to make his book appeal to more readers and help readers understand the material better than if he droned on and on like a textbook. By making his narrative style personal, funny, and by using many different examples to prove his points, Foster makes readers feel like they are sitting in on his lecture and learning along with the students that he talks about often in the book. Foster is aware that his subject has the potential to be very dry for people who are not literature professors themselves, so he uses this knowledge and his personal writing style to make his book less of a textbook and more of a learning conversation, always reiterating major points as the book progresses. Foster's humor/attempted humor also helped with the readability of the book and was always featured at the beginning of each chapter as if to say, "This chapter won't be as boring as you could possibly think it is because this isn't at all like a textbook, I promise!" I think that if Foster did not have such a personal style of writing, this book might have been much harder to read and less understandable than it is because of all of his examples, his humor/attempted humor, and his personal style. 

Introduction

Hello! This is a project for AP English Literature and Composition's summer reading assignment.
I will be reading the following books this summer for this class:

• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
• How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
• Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

I hope you enjoy my blog posts throughout the summer!

-Cece