Reddit mentions of How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

This book definitely helped me a lot when I was struggling in AP lit. I highly recommend it:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Literature-Like-Professor/dp/006000942X

In addition to reading, reading, and more reading: interact with your reading. Write notes during and after you read a novel. Write all over the margins (if you dare). Think about what you've read. This might sound crazy, but have a conversation with your book. Your author is trying to have a conversation with you, so go ahead and reciprocate. What are they talking to you about? What questions are they asking you?

Act like you're filling out the major sections of a Spark Notes book.

• What was the overall plot?
  
  
• What were the major themes?
  
  
• What were major symbols that helped support those themes?
  
  
• Are there things that feel significant but you're unsure where they fit? Continue thinking about it. If you have even the slightest inkling that maybe a particular passage or event is significant in any way, run with it until you hit a wall. Even if you don't get it all, it's still practice.
  
  The more you learn, the more questions you'll ask yourself. The more you read, the more you'll find that the answers to these questions often come from particular places. There are patterns that authors use when crafting the answers to those questions (rest assured they are thinking about them always), and the more you read the more you'll pick up on those particular patterns.
  
  If you've ever read something and thought that a passage seemed significant in any way, you've already started picking up on those patterns. You might think the author spent a peculiar amount of time describing some mundane thing, or the author seems to be using a lot of the same imagery, and so on. These are all ways the author is communicating to you through more than just the story. The more you read, the more obvious these become.
  
  Keep a "reading journal" where you write these ideas down. It doesn't matter if you never go back to them, because the act of writing forces you to think about it a little longer, and helps solidify these patterns in your mind. You'll find that it's easier to analyze the works you read and you'll get more enjoyment from them.
  
  Talk to others about a book if you can. I've begun to think that reading (or appreciating any art) is a communal act more than a solitary one. Learning what others have to say about a particular piece will help you learn new ways of viewing material that you couldn't come up with on your own, and therefore find new ways to view material in the future.
  
  Don't worry about being behind in your class. Many of them have their own ideas for sure, but I'd be willing to bet a few of them are just reading Spark Notes before they come in to class. Either way, as I said before, other people have different ways of reading material and different levels of experience reading. This doesn't make you any more or less behind in your expertise. You have your own, very unique, background in life that gives you a unique perspective and therefore unique insight into every piece of literature (or otherwise) that you pick up. What you find significant in a novel, even if it's totally different than everyone else, is just as valid as anything else. (A professor may like strong support for your arguments so you may have to give a little there, but with for-pleasure reading it still holds)
  
  Finally, after you've read the book and thought about it and wrote your own notes about it, go ahead and read the Spark Notes on it. I loved Slaughterhouse Five and picked up on a lot of things, but reading those Spark Notes blew my mind! Just like conversing with friends, Spark Notes help you view the material in new ways and even provide overwhelming support for their claims.
  
  I also want to add (and it's been posted before), I cannot recommend How to Read Literature Like a Professor enough. It will help you immensely, even if you think you already understand literature.

Well like I said, Hayden White is a heavy hitter and has the advantage of being a historian who plays with literature (so he is approachable).

Another good approach is to check out lit classes or, perhaps even more accessible for the busy professional, podcasts of lectures by lit professors. Listening to what they prioritize, what language they use and how they approach material can be quite interesting/helpful

For instance I found listening to The Tolkein Professor quite elucidating. It helped that he is also a medievalist and I am also a big Tolkein nerd.

Let me think about some other options for reading material and I'll do an edit tomorrow.

edit:

• So Yale has an "open" course posted: Introduction to Theory of Literature which might be worth checking out.
  
• Another good intro book worth looking at would be Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice
  
  
• For a lighter approach (i.e. far less "academic" and far more "popular") there is also How to Read Literature like a Professor. I find him to be a bit flippant at times, but he is enjoyable.
  
  Hope that helps!

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

They're dumbed down versions of scholarly texts, it just made me laugh at the moment. Professors who write texts and other textbook authors seem to hold themselves with such esteem. There isn't really any original thought in texts, he's correct in that.

This book changed the way I read literature and I actually began to enjoy it--as an investigator enjoys solving a murder!

Clearly you haven't seen the mocking you got for trying that path. I don't think you have any real knowledge of what you're bitching about, and it sounds to me like you're rehashing someone's argument that you imperfectly understand. For instance, you mention Homer and The Illiad. The Illiad covers only a two week period of what is a much larger conflict. It is extremely 'repetitive, cluttered and long-winded' because it was originally an entirely verbal document. Like the Bible, there was an entire cycle of works built around the larger conflict, but the rest of the 'books' in that 'bible' are lost to us and known only by extracts from the latin 'cliff notes' that survived. My comment does not reinforce your central argument. Indeed I haven't seen an argument from you except that 'the bible is boring, herp/derp'. The reality is, the bible and Shakespeare together are pretty much all of English literature. The rest is commentary. I'd recommend you read this book if you're confused on that point. Don't worry. It only has words of few syllables and isn't that taxing to read.

I just finished reading Contagious: Why Things Catch On and really enjoyed it. I started How to Read Literature Like a Professor the other day and am enjoying it so far.

I believe you have something to learn my boy.

I've also found two more books by Thomas C. Foster that seem to be somewhat alike this one. Not sure if they're any good either though.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Literature-Like-Professor/dp/006000942X/iliketurtles

"how to read literature like a professor" (http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Literature-Like-Professor/dp/006000942X) ...a shitty idea indeed

I like. Just keep in mind other fantasy influences, and look into what people didn't like about those books. I can see parallels, but as long as you are aware of it, its fine. I write fantasy too, and a good deal of my work is keeping track of that. I'd recommend this book to help with both reading and writing, especially understanding archetypes and reader perception. Have you started writing it yet?