New Releases by Thomas C. Foster

你喜歡看電影嗎？ 你覺得某部片很好看嗎？ 除了「好看」，你還能從中看出什麼？ 20堂電影課，解構百餘部西洋電影， 從經典到類型，從藝術片到商業娛樂片， 帶你看出更多有趣、以往從未發現的細節！ 《王者之聲》喬治六世廣播演說的場景震撼人心，關鍵竟在剪接師的鏡頭安排！ 你以為無聲電影的時代過去了嗎？看看《辛德勒的名單》如何利用無聲畫面製造戲劇張力！ 《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》以救生艇隱喻Pi的孤獨，希區考克作品裡的救生艇又代表什麼意思？ 電影是動態的語言，有獨特的文法與規則，它在不同的時間、空間裡演示許多事件，並由許多不同的元素組合起來，諸如：視覺、音效、背景音樂、光線控制、時間掌握、空間安排、動作以及對白。只要了解「電影文法」，徹底解析這種語言，你就能在觀影中得到更多收穫，看到其他人沒有發現的趣味。 本書提供20堂有關於「看電影」的課程，列舉多達100部電影做為範例，不管是好片、爛片，如何從一部片，看出一些以往你從未發現過的趣味，讀懂一些從前你根本不在意的橋段，讓你驚覺「看電影」原來是一種獨特的動態語言的學習： ‧音效課─無聲勝有聲：獲獎無數的《大藝術家》，向開啟全球電影史序幕的黑白默片致敬！ ‧光影課─明暗對比：還記得《魔戒二部曲》，聖盔谷浴血之戰與白袍巫師甘道夫再現的場景嗎？ ‧開場課─精采到讓人忘了手中的爆米花：伴隨你我童年的《法櫃奇兵》，如何創造闖關無敵的冒險英雄人物？ ‧課堂小測驗：你能看出電影裡的多少細節？找一下《亞果出任務》，裡面有一切我們想要看的元素！ 每個人都是分析電影的專家，一般觀影者欣賞的電影數量，到了二十五歲時就會比一生讀的書還要多！所以其實你也可以擁有自己對電影的解析、闡釋，而且沒有人可以擁有你的見解。一部電影包含了許多元素，但真正有趣的地方在於，我們可以分析、詮釋這些元素如何影響電影的意涵。你可以是觀影者，也可以是不再被動的原創作者。 準備好從全新的角度欣賞電影了嗎？ 【練習1】 想觀察演員如何發揮他們的演技嗎？選一個你喜歡的演員以及他所演出的不同類型電影，觀察他們在不同的環境下如何演出？例如，珍妮佛．勞倫斯在《瞞天大佈局》、《派特的幸福劇本》和《飢餓遊戲》中，如何運用眼睛、嘴巴、身體、聲音等技巧去演活不同角色？ 【練習2】 想了解光線、取景等技術對電影的影響嗎？你可以在接下來觀看的五部電影中，特別專注於技術部分。你需要看兩次，第一次享受故事的基本架構，第二次則專注在那些技術元素上。照這個方法看過幾部電影後，你就能自然而然地察覺到那些技術元素在電影裡的運作功能。 本書特色 1.作者具備將近30年的教學經驗，教你看懂電影、解構電影。 2.內容淺顯易懂，文字幽默風趣，有別於一般枯燥生硬的教材。 3.收錄全球百部經典電影，旁徵博引，貫穿全書。 4.一書在手，聊天找話題絕對不怕冷場。 好評推薦(依姓名筆劃排序) 左撇子/影評人 藍祖蔚/電影書寫人 看電影有許多種方式，你可以輕輕鬆鬆地觀賞，也可以不斷的向下推敲，像是影像語言、演技展現、音樂鋪排甚至是特效應用等等，《好電影如何好？──教你看懂電影的20堂課》就是一本教你如何鑽研探究電影的參考書，可以讓讀者能夠進一步的挖掘看電影的樂趣。 ──半瓶醋/影評人 電影是活動的藝術，而畫面如何活、鏡頭怎麼動，本書以富含層次的文字帶領你梳理，讓心底的「電影感」不再虛無飄渺！ ──張硯拓/影評人 從看完電影到看懂電影，有時存在著一段遙遠的距離。這二十堂課以最淺顯易懂的有趣文字，帶領你逐步接近電影的殿堂。 ──鄭秉泓/影評人 看電影當然可以被視為娛樂，但好的電影能沈澱在我們心房發酵，並且成為無與倫比的記憶。這本書可看為入門理解電影的專業角度，讓你看電影不只是看爽就好，還能看好看滿。 ──膝關節/影評人 原書名：《教你看懂電影的20堂課：好電影如何好》

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest—a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contexts—teaches you how to make your everyday reading experience richer and more rewarding. While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye—and the literary codes—of a college professor. What does it mean when a protagonist is traveling along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he’s drenched in a sudden rain shower? Thomas C. Foster provides answers to these questions as he explores every aspect of fiction, from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form. Offering a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—he shows us how to make our reading experience more intellectually satisfying and fun. The world, and curricula, have changed. This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect those changes, and features new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, as well as fresh teaching points Foster has developed over the past decade. Foster updates the books he discusses to include more diverse, inclusive, and modern works, such as Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere; Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X; Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird; Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street; Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet; Madeline Miller’s Circe; Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls; and Tahereh Mafi’s A Very Large Expanse of Sea.

The New York Times bestselling author of the beloved classic How to Read Literature Like a Professor teaches you how to write everything from a report for your community association to a meaningful memoir in this masterful and engaging guide. Combing anecdotes and hard-won lessons from decades of teaching and writing—and invoking everyone from Hemingway to your third-grade teacher—retired professor Thomas C. Foster guides you through the basics of writing. With How to Write Like a Writer you’ll learn how to organize your thoughts, construct first drafts, and (not incidentally) keep you in your chair so that inspiration can come to visit. With warmth and wit, Foster shows you how to get into (and over) your best self, how to find your voice, and how to know when, if ever, a piece of work is done. Packed with enlightening anecdotes, highlighted with lists and bullet points, this invaluable guide reveals how writers work their magic, and reminds us that we all—for better or worse, whether we mean to or not—are known by what we put on paper or screen, both our thoughts and our words.

The New York Times bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor uses the same skills to teach how to access accurate information in a rapidly changing 24/7 news cycle and become better readers, thinkers, and consumers of media. We live in an information age, but it is increasingly difficult to know which information to trust. Fake news is rampant in mass media, stoked by foreign powers wishing to disrupt a democratic society. We need to be more perceptive, more critical, and more judicious readers. The future of our republic may depend on it. How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor is more careful, more attentive, more aware reading. On bookstore shelves, one book looks as authoritative as the next. Online, posts and memes don’t announce their relative veracity. It is up to readers to establish how accurate, how thorough, how fair material may be. After laying out general principles of reading nonfiction, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor offers advice for specific reading strategies in various genres from histories and biographies to science and technology to social media. Throughout, the emphasis will be on understanding writers’ biases, interrogating claims, analyzing arguments, remaining wary of broad assertions and easy answers, and thinking critically about the written and spoken materials readers encounter. We can become better citizens through better reading, and the time for that is now.

From the bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes this essential primer to reading poetry like a professor that unlocks the keys to enjoying works from Lord Byron to the Beatles. No literary form is as admired and feared as poetry. Admired for its lengthy pedigree—a line of poets extending back to a time before recorded history—and a ubiquitous presence in virtually all cultures, poetry is also revered for its great beauty and the powerful emotions it evokes. But the form has also instilled trepidation in its many admirers mainly because of a lack of familiarity and knowledge. Poetry demands more from readers—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually—than other literary forms. Most of us started out loving poetry because it filled our beloved children's books from Dr. Seuss to Robert Louis Stevenson. Eventually, our reading shifted to prose and later when we encountered poetry again, we had no recent experience to make it feel familiar. But reading poetry doesn’t need to be so overwhelming. In an entertaining and engaging voice, Thomas C. Foster shows readers how to overcome their fear of poetry and learn to enjoy it once more. From classic poets such as Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to later poets such as E.E. Cummings, Billy Collins, and Seamus Heaney, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor examines a wide array of poems and teaches readers: How to read a poem to understand its primary meaning. The different technical elements of poetry such as meter, diction, rhyme, line structures, length, order, regularity, and how to learn to see these elements as allies rather than adversaries. How to listen for a poem’s secondary meaning by paying attention to the echoes that the language of poetry summons up. How to hear the music in poems—and the poetry in songs! With How to Read Poetry Like a Professor, readers can rediscover poetry and reap its many rewards.

From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes an indispensable analysis of our most celebrated medium, film. No art form is as instantly and continuously gratifying as film. When the house lights go down and the lion roars, we settle in to be shocked, frightened, elated, moved, and thrilled. We expect magic. While we’re being exhilarated and terrified, our minds are also processing data of all sorts—visual, linguistic, auditory, spatial—to collaborate in the construction of meaning. Thomas C. Foster’s Reading the Silver Screen will show movie buffs, students of film, and even aspiring screenwriters and directors how to transition from merely being viewers to becoming accomplished readers of this great medium. Beginning with the grammar of film, Foster demonstrates how every art form has a grammar, a set of practices and if-then propositions that amount to rules. He goes on to explain how the language of film enables movies to communicate the purpose behind their stories and the messages they are striving to convey to audiences by following and occasionally breaking these rules. Using the investigative approach readers love in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster examines this grammar of film through various classic and current movies both foreign and domestic, with special recourse to the “AFI 100 Years-100 Movies” lists. The categories are idiosyncratic yet revealing. In Reading the Silver Screen, readers will gain the expertise and confidence to glean all they can from the movies they love.

Aunque muchos libros pueden ser disfrutados simplemente por la historia que cuentan, a menudo hay significados literarios más profundos que suelen pasar inadvertidos. Esta guía nos muestra lo fácil y gratificante que es descubrir estas verdades escondidas, y entrar en un mundo en el que todo camino es una misión, toda comida un vínculo, y la lluvia, purificadora o destructiva, nunca es simplemente lluvia. Un clásico, revisado y actualizado por el autor, para aprender a leer entre líneas.

A thoroughly revised and updated edition of Thomas C. Foster's classic guide—a lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes, and contexts—that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable. While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes—and the literary codes—of the ultimate professional reader: the college professor. What does it mean when a literary hero travels along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he's drenched in a sudden rain shower? Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—and shows us how to make our reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun. This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface, and a new epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.

The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101 In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers. With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life. From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts. This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes a highly entertaining and informative book on the twenty-five works of literature that have most shaped the American character. Thomas C. Foster applies his much-loved combination of wit, know-how, and analysis to explain how each work has shaped our very existence as readers, students, teachers, and Americans. He illuminates how books such as The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, My Ántonia, The Great Gatsby, The Maltese Falcon, Their Eyes Were Watching God, On the Road, The Crying of Lot 49, and others captured an American moment, how they influenced our perception of nationhood and citizenship, and what about them endures in the American character. Twenty-five Books That Shaped America is a fun and enriching guide to America through its literature.

How to Read Novels Like a Professor is a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels, making reading more enriching and satisfying. In the follow up to his wildly popular How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster provides students with tried-and-true techniques to use in analyzing some of the most important works in literary history. How to Read Novels Like a Professor shows readers how to consider and a novel’s historical fine points as well as major themes, literary models (the Bible, Shakespeare, Greek mythology, and fairy tales), and narrative devices like irony, plot, and symbol. “By bringing his eminent scholarship to bear in doses measured for the common reader or occasional student, Professor Foster has done us all a generous turn. The trained eye, the tuned ear, the intellect possesed of simple cyphers brings the literary arts alive.”-Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking

Bestselling literature author, Thomas C. Foster, writes in an informal and engaging style to show how a novel's structure - point of view, narrative voice, chapter construction, character 'emblems' and even the first sentence, serve to create meaning and form the special literary language of the novel.