Are text books necessary when studying?

English Literature students: How do you go about studying a novel?

• I just started studying literature at school. We often get set reading lists - i.e we have to do a lot of wider reading for class discussion. This might sound like a ridiculous question but... I am not too sure how to go about studying whole-length novels as part of my wider reading.  What I mean is that sometimes I feel like I read a book but haven't necessarily 'thought' about it or analysed it in an intellectual way once I have finished it for the first time.  I really love reading but I am wondering how to go about analysing the text in a broader way in order to be able to contribute to discussion and improve my critical thinking.    Would you recommend reading the book several times? Would it be better to make notes in the first reading? What is the best way to go about ordering such wider reading?  Sorry these questions seem unconnected. There are a lot of books on the wider reading list (around 100). This would obviously take at least a year to finish. There isn't physically enough time to analyse every single element in each book. Nor is there time to spend hours copying out quotes. So I guess my question is really aimed at how to focus my literature studies - how to read a book - and then how to think critically about the principal ideas of the book. Then, I suppose, my question boils down to this: What is the best method of recording these ideas and then ordering them?  I know people different things work for everybody but I would be really interested in hearing about the various ways in which people approach the sheer breadth of wider reading in literature studies.  Any help/advice/suggestions would be much appreciated !

• Answer:

  I have an MA in English lit. Many undergraduates who love to read think studying English is about reading. It's not. It's about arguing well. As you progress into this field you will find your professors largely falling into one of several camps -- psychological analysis, close reading, literary theory, Marxist thought, feminism, post-colonial and on and on. (More on that: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/01/) You will be pressured at some point to adopt one or another of these ways of examining the texts before you. Most of them share the feature of applying external philosophies to a static, "dead" work that hasn't changed in hundreds of years. Competing professors take this very seriously and often cannot abide each other's company for long. You have been warned. So, if you want great grades, the cynical approach is to read the last book or several articles by your current professor and just mimic their way of thinking about things in your work for that particular class. "Well, that's dishonest!" Sure, if you already have a closely held viewpoint on literary thought. But you don't, and adopting the professor's views for three months is the best way to really learn where they're coming from. Plus, they'll feel validated and probably grade you favorably. Win-win. (My final GPA was 3.92, pretty close to perfect.) If you carry on with that way of thinking that's your business, but you will learn each school of thought intimately and be informed enough to take your own direction later or, quite possibly as I did, quit altogether after the MA level.