(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best british & irish literary criticism books

> I‘d like to throw in words such as Kuh, Tochter, kennen, or Nacht. You probably know how to pronounce them, no matter if you speak German.

This reminded me of a great anecdote in Billy Kay's important book 'Scots: The Mither Tongue'. I've uploaded it here for you: https://i.imgur.com/MtIyChd.png.

> given the choice between speaking closer to RP or Scots, I’d always opt for the latter as I have ties to Scotland

Hearing things like this increases my optimism about the future of the language. It wasn't that long ago we were trying to rid ourselves of it. Now we have foreign language speakers choosing to align more closely to it. That's a great thing to hear!

> Thank you for sharing!

Thank you! I really enjoyed reading your reply.

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.

• Texts for Nothing, Samuel Beckett
  These are 13 short prose pieces written around the same time as Godot. The best place to find them is probably in The Complete Short Prose which is often carried by Borders. Here's a recording of Text 8 to give you a taste. If you like the style, his "Trilogy" is in the same vein.
  
  
• The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
  This is a very good book, the movie hardly does it justice. The main idea is historiography.

What might work (depending on the size, if it works for you) is an AP Literature study guide. Some are available on Kindles, etc, so that might be an even better choice (the paperwhite lasts 30 days without charging). Here's an example. The Praxis (I assume 5038?) encompasses more than just literature - there are a lot of pedagogy and technique questions, too, but I found a lot of them to be common sense. Actually, most of the questions on there are common sense, if you're able to narrow down some of the answers. It's by no means a comprehensive exam.

(Though I do remember like 6 questions on Ozymandias from when I took the test last year...:) )

Hope that helps!

The Luddites are the most famous example I can think of off the top of my head. Terribly misunderstood, they were often highly skilled workers whose abilities were being replaced by machines. "Luddite" now means someone backwards and resistant to change, but the original Luddites had valid economic reasons for their machine-breaking.

Great book on that that assembles a lot of their own original statements: https://www.amazon.com/Writings-Luddites-Kevin-Binfield/dp/1421416964

There are a few I can recall that may allow for some variety to your presentation, and, hopefully, new sources of information. The Sound and the Fury is the greatest example, in my opinion, of incest in literature, so you're on the right track.

• Ada, or Ardor (Nabokov) concerns an entirely incestious family. There are frankly described instances between Ada and her brother Van, as well as Ada and her sister Lucette.
  
  
• "Each Other" (Doris Lessing) is, if I recall correctly, about incest between siblings.
  
  
• White Jazz (James Ellroy) concerns the main characters incestious relationship with his sister.
  
  Also, this may help: Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf It's a bit pricey, but could prove helpful. Excerpts may be available somewhere online.

If what you are looking for is a general survey, then what quite a few posters online seem to recommend is [Michael Alexander's History of English Literature] (http://www.amazon.com/History-English-Literature-Palgrave-Foundations/dp/023036831X). While I have not personally read it, online reviews seem to deem it a succinct, crisply-written and reasonably updated text.

However, if you want a comprehensive guide to English Literature along with a sound discussion of the historical and cultural contexts of English society and how literature and social life evolved in England, I'd urge you to look at [Adams's The Land and Literature of England: A Historical Account] (http://www.amazon.com/Land-Literature-England-Historical-Account/dp/0393303438) or alternatively, [Poplawski's English Literature in Context] (http://www.amazon.com/English-Literature-Context-Paul-Poplawski/dp/0521839920).

Go through their table of contents and a few introductory pages. Get a cursory feel for the mode of narration and pick whatever you deem fit for your needs.

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.

He wrote in English so pick based on your desire for hardcover, paperback, etc.

I like this one just because it's part of the collected works.

> So you admit apologists are at odds and cannot seem to excuse this word or explain it as a wild ox or a rhino, which is it?

The Hebrew word means "wild ox," the English word means "rhinoceros." I've explained this all very clearly already, so for asking the question I am assigning an extra book, Don Juan by Lord Byron. Hop to it.

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.

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.

Positive: I just got a batch of books from my museum's annual book sale! Relevant to here are: The Stolen Prince, Hugh Barnes; Women in an Industrializing Society: England 1750-1880, Jane Rendall (1990); Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850, Dianne Dugaw (1989); To Ornament Their Minds: Sara Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy 1792-1833, Litchfield Historical Society (1993); Our Own Snug Fireside: Images of the New England Home, 1760-1860, Jane C. Nylander (1993); and Women's Life & Work in the Southern Colonies, Julia Cherry Spruill (1938, but reprinted in 1977 and it seems to be good scholarship). Good deals on a few of those! It would be more handy to have them as ebooks but at 50c-$1, you can't beat the price. I fully intend to read them soon but read Rachel Dratch's memoir first and am now on the complete short stories of Dorothy Parker. It was a good sale.

Negative: It's an awful sale. We got an insane number of books donated this year and I was run ragged setting it all up with only a couple of volunteers, only one able to really do anything physical. Very few books have sold, and we're going to be left with a still-insane number to get rid of. All the local libraries are having their sales this weekend so nobody wants the remainder. What are we going to do??

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.

Maybe try:

Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders by Josephine Ross and Henrietta Webb

Ah...wait, might this be "Studies in Words"?

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.

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.

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