The Complete Idiot's Guide to Critical Reading

by Amy Wall, Regina Wall

The essential guide to looking at literature with your own two eyes. What students know about Shakespeare, Orwell, Dickens, and Twain is primarily what their instructors tell them. Here's a book that teaches the students how to move on to the next level-evaluate and read critically on their own, trust their own opinions, develop original ideas, analyze characters, and find a deeper appreciation for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more.

* Ideal companion for college students and accessible for the casual reader as well
* Covers fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, biographies and memoirs, essays and editorials, and newspapers, magazines, and journals
* Features examples from published writing
* Includes a reading list and a glossary of literary terms

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Books About Books

488 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Syahira · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was struggling with Modern Poetry so I pick up this book for a read on the ride to Singapore and some other moments where I tend to be not in the mood for anything. Surprisingly, this book is useful even for casual reviewer for me and also students who do critical reviews in reading comprehension articles.

There were introduction to the basic forms of reading literature like fiction, non-fiction and other types of writing. Each are accompanied with its own examples which sometimes I just glaze through but some of the time, it provide guidance in analyzing something in the text like how to read and understand the content of an essay. How you have to focus on key words and phrases, re reading, main points and etc.

Its also added some chapters on the writing structure itself, like setting, themes, characterizations, climax, plots, progressive thinking, literary classics etc. There are also 101 on newspaper, memoirs and research. Instead of long hours of sitting in a chair and listening to paid people rambling about how you should do it, try reading this book first.

The last several chapters like "Testing Your Knowledge of Fiction" does help when you're on review-writing block like I'm having now. I especially like the one about "Identifying Figurative Language" which are always a problematic to me with my abysmal ability to comprehend poetry.

Albeit, a basic reference books but if you want some information on even the basic of things in critical reading which are used in school mostly, you should have a copy of this book on the side.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book delivers what it says. It categorizes all of the possible fiction and nonfiction genres and tells you about them each in turn. It tells you what to look for in each case. So the essential thing for that is Curiosity; if you aren't interested in the subject you won't be able to find out anything from it. Through this book, you could also get some good writing advice.

It also has a list of suggested authors and works by those authors at the end of the book.

This book is what I expected, so it's not that bad.

[Stephanie Kurisunkal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books helped improve my reading skills!

[Cristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic refresher of critical analysis across multiple genres. A bit dry but useful nonetheless. Perhaps the most useful takeaway was the reminder to approach the text with a commitment to discover my own unique perspective of the reading—whatever it may be.

[Kary Bueno · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not what I expected :( wasted money.

[Candy C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a clear layout and the content is easy-to-understand because of the style of writing and examples provided. However, after reading all the way till the last two chapters, I did not know how to answer many of the questions. Though this may be my problem. The appendix is a wonderful supplement to the book, especially the reading list and notes. I plan to read all the books mentioned in the list!

[Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided that my first book of 2009 should be something that would help me get more out of my reading the rest of the year. I may count this towards the Dewey Decimal Reading Challenge as well.

[Jackie Rodriguez]

I would like to read about critical thinking, I think Amy wall can help me with a reading skills work that I am doing ,

[keereads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read

[Maria Ulfa · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is very helpful for me to finished my assignment