Review by Choice Review
Although in the first two chapters of this book Mikics (Univ. of Houston) provides a poignant critique of how digital technologies have eroded contemporary reading habits, his overall condemnation of such distractions turns this into a nostalgic defense of books and book-based reading traditions. Many of his concerns regarding the value of slow, close, deep reading methods are thought provoking, but the either/or opposition he establishes between print and digital platforms prevents him from exploring ways to combine old and new habits. Consequently, the rest of this book variously resembles a love letter to book-based Western literature, notes for a first-year literature survey course, and a self-help manual for digital addictions. Mikics offers 14 rules for redeeming slow reading practices (e.g., "Be patient") and follows these with discussions of the particular nuances of short stories, novels, poetry, drama, and essays. Although Mikics tries to model, elevate, and preserve more rewarding reading practices, the ironies related to this attempt include preaching to distracted digital sinners in a 300-plus-page book that they will likely never read and promoting close, devoted reading while summarizing primary literary sources in ways that allow one to follow his lectures without ever encountering these sources directly. Not valuable for postsecondary use. Summing Up: Optional. General readers only. J. A. Saklofske Acadia University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Mikics here updates Charles Lamb's nineteenth-century protest against magazine-mongers pushing readers to pant and toil . . . at a sickening rate as they frantically cull facts from the latest publications and bid farewell to reading for its own sake. Like Lamb, Mikics understands how modern culture discourages reading for pleasure especially in an Internet world of short-lived but insistent information. Inviting readers into a less frenetic, more rewarding world, Mikics explores a series of literary masterpieces, showing how getting lost in a book is still the best way to find joys we really want. These joys, readers quickly realize, come more abundantly to those who follow the 14 rules Mikics expounds rules fostering patience in dealing with novels' tangled plots, canniness in interrogating dialogues in plays, perceptiveness in discerning poets' styles and themes, acumen in identifying constituent elements of short stories, and imagination in conceiving alternative constructions of those same elements. Readers acquire stimulating perspectives on individual works by Homer and Whitman, Dickens and Cather, Shakespeare and Chekov. But they also develop the intellectual poise to set one work into play with others, across boundaries of nationality, style, and history. An exceptional book whetting readers' appetites for the savoring of many more.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Although University of Houston English professor Mikics (The Art of the Sonnet) presents the guidelines in this thoughtful book as an antidote to the "continuous partial attention" that comes with distracted reading on the Internet, they are in fact the ground rules of the lit-crit technique known as "close reading," pioneered by American academics in the middle of the 20th century. As he ably demonstrates, those rules are still valid for understanding literature today, and for an enriched reading experience. Likening engagement with a new book to traveling to a new land, Mikics offers 14 preliminary rules for familiarizing oneself with the terrain and applies them in studies of short stories, novels, poems, essays, and plays. Several rules seem obvious: "Be Patient," "Get a Sense of Style," and "Use the Dictionary." For others, like "Identify Signposts," "Track Key Words," and "Find the Parts," he shows how careful application of these rules deepens the reader's grasp of the text-notably in his insightful deconstruction of Chekhov's short story "Gooseberries." Mikics writes accessibly and with infectious enthusiasm on an impressively eclectic range of classic and contemporary texts. The reader who picks up this volume will likely already have been won over to Mikics's argument, but the book's pedagogical value for students is considerable. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Mikics (John & Rebecca Moores Professor of English, Univ. of Houston; A New Handbook of Literary Terms) opens this guide for overburdened readers by asserting, "Faster is not always better." His goal is to help people read smarter and enjoy reading more in an age when for many of us surfing websites has replaced careful reading, especially for the younger generation. This is a how-to book offering a number of rules, from "be patient" (a book doesn't always unveil its secret at once) and "ask the right questions" to "find another book." Mikics starts with a discussion of the problems posed in an Internet culture (e.g., studies indicate that teenage students find it hard to focus on single reading tasks and are less able to handle complex, multistage problems). He then moves on to explicate his rules and concludes with chapters on reading different genres: novels, short stories, essays, plays, and poems. If at times, Mikics seems a bit cookie-cutter in approach (e.g., to read a Wallace Stevens poem: "explore different paths," "find the parts," then "use the dictionary"), the problem he addresses is very real, the rules he proposes make sense, and he is a perceptive reader. Verdict Expect a run on this book; it should prove popular in English classes at all levels, from high school and up.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Mikics (English/Univ. of Houston) argues that you can't truly enjoy literature unless you slow way down and readwell, the way he does. Throughout the book--an odd combination of literary exegeses and self-help suggestions--Mikics sprinkles complaints about the digital age and its current manifestations (Facebook, Twitter et al.) and asserts that they destroy our attention spans (is the increase of ADD related, he wonders?) and keep us on the surface of experience. His solution? Reading old books very slowly with an open dictionary alongside. Virtually all the authors he examines are dead (two are alive but "retired": Philip Roth and Alice Munro), so whiffs of antiquarianism waft up from most of the pages. Not that his arguments are unappealing. Of course we would all be better off if we read the classics and read them slowly; however, it just doesn't seem that likely to happen. Mikics declares that he's not advocating the "close reading" techniques described by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, but rather a more leisurely journey through significant works of literature--a journey which, he soundly argues, is enhanced by a knowledge of the author's biography and the cultural and historical contexts of the work. He then offers rules for readers, devoting a chapter to each--e.g., Be Patient, Get a Sense of Style, Use the Dictionary, Be Suspicious, Find Another Book. For each rule, Mikics offers ways to apply it to specific works. He ends with chapters on how to read various genres--with more analyses of specific works ranging from The Republic to Paradise Lost to Great Expectations. A learned and earnest but ultimately quixotic attempt to convince us that a stagecoach is better for us than a bullet train.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
