Best british & irish literary criticism books according to redditors

The rise of "literary fiction" as a genre and belief that it is the sole genre of literary merit can be described by a multi-stage process:

1. The Modernist idea that art should be difficult. The Modernists had contempt for the common man and thus set out to create art works that required education to understand. Joyce, Le Corbusier, abstract expressionism (read Clement Greenberg on art and kitsch) all fit in this category. See John Carey's The Intellectuals and the Masses for more on this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Intellectuals-And-Masses-Intelligensia/dp/0897335074
   
   
2. After WWII, the GI program resulted in tons and tons of money being poured into universities. MFA programs like the Iowa Writers' Workshop became popular during this time. The professors at Iowa and these other universities were schooled in Modernism. At the undergrad level, "arts appreciation" courses also taught the Modernist conception of cultural history. Look at the way 19th century Academic painting is still dismissed in favor of the Impressionists.
   
   
3. The rise of databases to track sales to bookstores. Bookstores began categorizing their inventory like never before. Science Fiction, Romance, Erotica, Westerns, Fantasy, Fiction, Classic Fiction, Literary Fiction, etc.
   
   
4. The impact of movies. In many ways, movies are a far more emotionally engaging storytelling medium than novels. Novels are pages and pages of black and white text. Movies offer story, photography, music, actors, production design, and editing to present an overwhelming sensory experience. Just as the impact of photography hit painting hard (and was a big influence on the rise of nonrepresentational art) so too movies hit novels hard. Instead of focusing on story and character, things that in many ways movies do just as well as novels, writers began to focus on language at the sentence level.
   
   All of these trends together created the genre of "literary fiction" as we know it.

I took a college class on gossip and poetry, and the prof had us read a large chunk of this book on gossip theory and after reading it I feel 0 guilt about reading celebrity gossip. I think it's fascinating!

So you think you can argue by giving me links to a book on amazon.com? And, its not such an open and shut case as you'd hope, and I highly doubt this solves the problem of induction. I'm not going to argue this here, but I think if you're going to link to a book on amazon I'm entitled to link to another.

http://www.amazon.ca/Enquiry-concerning-Human-Understanding/dp/0199549907/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398018671&sr=1-1&keywords=hume

And because I'm a jackass. one more

http://www.amazon.com/Against-Method-Paul-Feyerabend/dp/1844674428/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398018826&sr=8-1&keywords=against+method

I know I must be missing some, but these are all that I can think of at the moment.

Fiction:

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

White Noise by Don Delilo

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW

Infinite Jest by DFW

Of these, you can't go wrong with Infinite Jest and the Collected Fictions of Borges. His Dark Materials is an easy and classic read, probably the lightest fare on this list.

Non-Fiction:

The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy

Chaos by James Gleick

How to be Gay by David Halperin

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

Secret Historian by Justin Spring

Of these, Secret Historian was definitely the most interesting, though How to be Gay was a good intro to queer theory.

The Táin is one of our greatest national epics - you can find an excellent translation by Kinsella (a famous Irish poet) online, no problem.

As a more pop-friendly alternative, Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick (the guy who designed the famous Che Guevara image) produced two illustrated volumes of the Book of Conquests - the founding mythology of Ireland. They are the Book of Conquests and The Silver Arm

Irish legends are primary sorted into what are called 'cycles'. There are four: the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Cycle of Kings. Each has a different flavour and revolve around different characters. You may enjoy one more the other. Our most commonly known heroes come from the Ulster and Fenian Cycles.

Here's "The Intellectuals and the Masses," which is just on the opinions of "the masses" by people in the literary world in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

A Celtic Miscellany: Selected and Translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson to get an idea of the variety within 'Celticism' and to get a feel of the myths and tales.

The Celts: Bronze Age to New Age by Haywood. A bit of a general book about the Celts.

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions by H R Ellis Davidson. A more scholarly work placing the Celts in the larger context of Northern European peoples.

Of course there's plenty more.

Book 4 by Aleister Crowley

The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley

The Vision and the Voice by Aleister Crowley

Liber 777 by Aleister Crowley

The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley

Gems From the Equinox by Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie

The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order by Israel Regardie

The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic by Israel Regardie

The Goat Foot God by Dion Fortune

The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune

The Winged Bull by Dion Fortune

Moon Magic by Dion Fortune

Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton

The Golden Ass by Apuleius

The Dream of Scipio by Cicero

Pistis Sophia by G.R.S. Mead

Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians of the 16th and 17th Centuries by "a Brother of the Fraternity"

The Golden Bough by Sir George Frazer

The Voice of the Silence by H.P. Blavatsky

The Kybalion by "Three Initiates"

The Corpus Hermeticum by Hermes Trismegistus

The Book of Abramelin

The Three Magical Books of Solomon

The book Scots: The Mither Tongue by Billy Kay is a favourite of mine for information on the history,politics and current situation of the Scots language. As for learning the language there are books such as this and grammar guides such as this. There is also the Dictionary of the Scots Language which is an amazingly useful resource for native and learner alike found here. As for the issue of listening to Scots speakers so you can understand pronunciation i have no suggestion however i will have a search and contact you if i find a good solution to this. When brushing up on my own Scots i always found copying passages from English into Scots as being useful for both increasing vocabulary but also making the word choice more natural when i was using it in daily life, i myself ended up completing a good chunk of the KJV in Scots. While an endeavour like the KJV is by no means recommended by me, smaller passages from books/newspapers/back of beans tins copied into Scots daily can be useful practice.

Oh, sorry, I thought I responded to you. Guess my reply didn't go through.

Yeah, you should attempt to relearn how to read. If you're reading really slowly, then that's going to cause a lot of problems down the road. A good speed reading book will teach you how to read and how to read quickly. Could also pair it with a reading comprehension book (I personally teach from Deeper Reading and Critical Encounters in High School English. Use the Deeper reading one first. Critical Encounters is to get to college level reading while Deeper reading lays the foundation).

I have taught people how to speed read. I have taken students with 120 WPM and English as their second language and got them to read at around 500-600 WPM and now they're off in medical school. It does work. It takes time (about two months I've seen if you dedicate a small amount of time every day), but the results are worth it. Relearning a proper way to read can greatly help. While I doubt you have a reading disability, even then, this would help. Every person who came to me for help with reading speed, as long as they kept to it, eventually made it to 400 WPM at least. Several made it to 600 WPM and higher.

I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but At The Bench - A Laboratory Navigator has a 10-page chapter about keeping a lab notebook.

Here's a brief Google Books preview; unfortunately it does not cover the relevant chapter.

This presentation(PDF link) cites a book called Writing the Laboratory Notebook by Howard Kanare, which (based on the Amazon reviews) might be more geared towards industry labs but could still be pretty useful in a general sense. You can find out for yourself, since I managed to find a full text copy online(PDF link). I don't think I'm accessing this through any proxies, so it does seem like it's freely available.

For a more thorough investigation of what's out there, you should consult your institution's library; I'm sure someone will be happy to help track down the exact book you are thinking of, or something functionally equivalent.

edit - here's a PDF link to another presentation, just for fun

"What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England"

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It's a reference book of all the mundane info you need to write a living, breathing world. You need to know the rules before you cnasteampunk them.

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This review describes it nicely: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R15YUTEEGOWF7V/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0671882368

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https://www.amazon.com/Austen-Charles-Dickens-Whist-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0671882368

Hello. A lot of people are telling you to "read." If that seems like a no-brainer, here are some suggestions as to what you might want to read. if you're really really dedicated, you can self-study into a college-like education (based on my experience as a current student of English).

• Read from the canon. In university, I had to study Early and Later British Literature. Those two anthologies are fairly comprehensive, and Norton has more of course. They're pretty thick, I would look into Chaucer, Shakespeare Yeats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Blake. (All of those but Chaucer and Shakespeare are from the Later anthology.)
  
• To add to the above point, google university reading lists, or the western canon. Also, I believe all the authors mentioned above are in the public domain, meaning you can find all their work online for free. Once you've got a good grip on them, you can dive into more complicated works like Milton, TS Eliot, Tolstoy ect. Dostoevsky is also an amazing writer, if my ESL grandmother could read him, likely you can too.
  
• The greatest two books on fiction analysis I know of are Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Aristotle's Poetics. Both can be found online for free. Remember that critical examination is descriptive, not perspective. Don't let definitions limit you.
  
• When it comes to actually writing, you can get better to a certain extent just powering though it. I notice that people (everyone from those like myself, to published writers) tend to plateau. Once you feel you've hit a glass ceiling, read something difficult, or learn something new about writing/criticism. Education.
  
• Workshops. Not all colleges even offer workshop courses! However, if you're lucky enough that a nearby college, community college or community centre—if anyone near you offers creative writing workshops or courses, you should definitely consider them. Workshopping you work is great for feedback and seeing what works and what doesn't in real-time.
  
• Don't want to pay for a course, or spend money? YouTube has full courses worth of lectures. Search things like English Literature Lecture or Creative Writing Lecture and you'll find courses or single lectures from Harvard, Yale, Brigham Young Academy (idk) ect.
  
  I hope that helps. I think that's as solid and specific advice as I can give. Although, I didn't list any specific works. If you have any questions or would like suggestions, please ask.

I get glimpses of genius from the "Wake". which flatters me to thinking i am the genius, when actually it's Joyce.

the parts i don't understand were something i used to blame on Joyce, but came to realize it's me not being as smart as i thought i was (something everyone eventually learns to deal with).

THIS helped a great deal. it's one man's take on the Wake, and not definitive. but it sure makes a damn lot of sense.

The Cambridge Companions series of books is generally quite good, and they have two on Conrad: The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (1996) and The New Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (2014). Any of the scholars represented in those books is likely to have other publications on Conrad.

And if you haven't already checked it out, the first place to look would probably be the Norton Critical Edition.

>You seem to be blaming the UK and England for this.

I blame the union, the establishment, and above all other Scots who decided that our language was inferior and that it embarrassed us. This result in us enforcing the use of English on others, in order to rid ourselves our Scottishness and become more British.

>But Scotland has always had control of it's own education system, right from the beginning.

The problem goes a lot further than schools. If you really do want to learn more than you appear to know on this complex topic, a good place to start might be Scots: The Mither Tongue by Billy Kay, and Tom Devine's Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present.

>There has been nothing at all stopping Scotland from teaching Scots in school the way Welsh is taught in Welsh schools (and the teaching of Welsh in schools has predated devolution).

The Welsh language also suffered as a result of union, though again, much of this was enforced by the Welsh themselves. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/AizYg0Bewkk?t=499

>You need to accept that the decision to stamp out Scots has been taken by Scottish people, which means that will likely continue after independence.

It definitely has, as a result of unionism and cultural cringe. But as a Scots speaker in his late thirties, let me assure you that there has never been so much awareness, and dare I say even pride, in the Scots language in my lifetime, and speaking to my parents, it seems the same holds true for them. This has been a direct result of both devolution and the renewed energy brought on by the first independence referendum, with sparked all manner of discussion and reflection on our politics and culture.

Coworker: I immediately thought she should get a really graphic Batman poster. You could even get it framed if you have enough left over. Here are some from Etsy: 1, 2, 3, 4, this one's a little different.. but it's video game related so.. here! 5
____

Boss: A nice photography book would probably be a safe bet: 1, 2, 3, 4, last one is $5 over budget, but 5
__

Professor: I'm sorry I don't have more original ideas for him but here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
__

GOOD LUCK!!

US link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BCK9FNT

Are there more? I couldn't find any other free ones going through the similarly listed items.

or if you want to kick it up a notch on the occult ladder, may I recommend..

http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Psychology-Brain-Software-Programs/dp/1561840718/

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Two-Peace-Expanded-3rd-Samraj/dp/1570972621/

http://www.amazon.com/Codex-Seraphinianus-Luigi-Serafini/dp/0847842134/

and, goes without saying really,

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Lies-Aleister-Crowley/dp/0877285160/

Burn after reading.

I haven't actually read it yet, but it's burning a hole on my bookshelf and looks really good - Psychogeography by Will Self and Ralph Steadman.

This is probably weird, but the most fun I have is when I am planning something. (An event/party with friends or family, curriculum for a class, a date.) Related, I think, is that I really enjoy experimenting with flavor combinations in foods/baked goods/cocktails. On a more normal level, I like to read, hike, and reddit.

Simple pleasures for me? Sleep, coffee, chocolate. Ooh, and bubble bath. My perfect summer day would be sunny, warm but definitely not hot, spent in a coffee shop with the windows open to a quirky town's Main Street.

Here's a book from my WL, because you've gotta have a book with your coffee!

Pandora's Mystery Summer Box of Goodies

Here's a 19th century guide:
http://www.amazon.com/Austen-Charles-Dickens-Whist-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0671882368

If you want an online version of Hume's Enquiry then use this one, unlike the one linked below it has the Selby-Bigge page numbers and properly marked paragraphs that any Hume scholar will refer to (The Selby-Bigge page numbers are very important though because anyone who refers to Hume in a citation will use these numbers). In terms of print versions Peter Millican (one of the top Hume scholars in the world) has an excellent affordable edition in the Oxford world classics series, but the definitive scholarly edition is this one edited by Tom Beauchamp. I find Hume very approachable, especially in the first Enquiry, but everyone differs - however if you've found Descartes easy enough to follow I should think you'll find Hume easy enough as well.

The Norton Edition of "The Wasteland" comes with critical commentaries, essays, copious footnotes, and Eliot's own dubious footnotes to the piece. Pretty good if you really want to dive into Eliot's masterpiece.

https://www.amazon.com/Waste-Land-Norton-Critical-Editions/dp/0393974995/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=norton+wasteland&qid=1563976887&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages would be my recommendation. It's the book I used when I took a class on Medieval Lit.

A collection of works by Samuel Johnson, such as
this one. His dictionary of English was the standard for nearly 200 years, and he did it with only clerical assistance. It's probably the single most impressive feat of scholarship ever, and his writings on many subjects are powerfully illuminating.

I recommend Magick (or Book 4) reminded me of Wilson's writing style even. very accessible.

If you want more of his crazy cool ideas and poetry I recommend Book of Lies

Also this website has everything

He covers so many diverse topics everything is worh checking out!

https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Johnson-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199538336

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Magic-Discworld-Terry-Pratchett/dp/0062225677/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550233194&sr=1-1&keywords=DiscworldI highly recommend both of these.

My gf has

A Handbook of Irish Folklore for college. I don't know if it is really academic or not.
She also has The Táin.

Hope that is useful for you.

Reed it at your leisure, bon voyage, avec les-yeux, sans visage.

O but mainly unterstand that what it is is what many say it isn't: a real and truly werked out story of the night.

It contrails many entrained trains of thought, but is ultrameantly a cohesive multi-storied single story comprising many ministories, each a storey of our Tower of Bauble.

Real-eyes that eachant effery word/wort/world May or mightn't half/have/halve/haft multi-tipple meanings/minings/linings/leanings, both in Anglish and in other languishes.

And read outside of it a little bit which's been writ about it, and it'll hint at the wit both in it, and the lit which other wits have written in their interpreting of it. viz: Book of the Dark and to wit: Skeleton Key To Finnegans Wake

Pluck it up, and put it down, as required. Shelf it while you muddle or re-read other books. Go back into it from the front, or back into it from the rear.

Be open.

Tough call. Eliot and Emerson are both in my top 20. I think I'd go with the Eliot one though, Pound is way more fun than Nietzsche. Also, I recommend this copy of The Wasteland.

Edit: Fixed link

[This please!] (http://www.amazon.com/Austen-Charles-Dickens-Whist-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0671882368/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=GSDXMIUT23M4&coliid=I3KQJLUT0ORAY2) Used, of course.

http://www.bicycles.net.au is one I failed to mention, there's also the other bicycling subreddits - /r/bicycletouring and /r/fixedgearbicycle are my favourite. I'm more interested in the touring side of cycling, so I can recommend a few good touring nooks:

"Full Tilt: Ireland to India by Bicycle," by Dervla Murphy is a great read

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychogeography-Will-Self/dp/0747590338 <-- not quite a bicycle touring book, but I know that Will Self rides a brompton and this is a book about travelling

Also, a book called "The rider" by (I think) Tim krabbe. That's more of a racing book, but it is an excellent one.

Click through links, google and generally read around and you'll stumble on more resources. Happy hunting :)

Writing the Laboratory Notebook is a very good resource, though possibly in excess of what your class requires.

The ACS puts its name on it, for whatever that's worth.