How to Read Texts

How to Read Texts is filled with a passion for reading and for authorship. Lively and approachable, this is a great book for anyone interested in how we approach the texts we encounter in our lives. – Professor Graeme Harper, Bangor University, UKNeil McCaw’s How to Read Texts: A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills offers an invaluable and expansive introduction to the often vexing worlds of avant-garde critical theory and literary interpretation. Yet even more significantly, McCaw challenges us to discover our own critical voices, to seek out brave new textual frontiers of our own making, and to think creatively about the nature and direction of our reading experiences. Suitable for academic and general readers alike, How to Read Texts affords us with the attendant tools and historical background for unlocking and appreciating the rich texts that mark our lives. – Kenneth Womack, Penn State Altoona, USAHow to Read Texts will encourage both students - and, as importantly, their teachers - to re-think the very basics of reading and analysing texts. – Peter Dempsey, Department of English, University of Sunderland, UKWith a solid set of appendixes and an index, How to Read Texts is enthusiastically recommended for those facing a tough pile of books in their future. – James A. Cox * Midwest Book Review (Wisconsin Bookwatch) *How to Read Texts: A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills offers high school and college-level students a fine survey of critical theory paired with exercises and checklists to help students in their own readings of primary and secondary texts. Students learn how to gain confidence in their skills and learn the methods of recognizing and challenging assumptions in this fine survey of critical thinking skills. – James A. Cox * Midwest Book Review (California Bookwatch) *

Neil McCaw is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Winchester, UK.