(Part 2) Best american literature criticism books according to redditors

To add a bit more nuance to this, read People Before Highways. It details the diverse activist movement that put a halt to several planned highways in the city's urban core and ultimately resulted in the orange line realignment and Southwest Corridor Park.

Catullus

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Betrayal-Catullus-Bruce-Arnold/dp/0130433454/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=22K0V9X7X9C74&keywords=love+and+betrayal+a+catullus+reader&qid=1558536403&s=gateway&sprefix=love+and+betrayal+%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

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Ovid

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Transformation-Reader-English-Latin/dp/067358920X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28WT9VPC88Q7S&keywords=love+and+transformation+an+ovid+reader&qid=1558536463&s=gateway&sprefix=ovid+love+and+trans%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1-spell

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovids-Amores-Book-One-Commentary/dp/0806141441/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=amores+book+1+ovid&qid=1558536435&s=gateway&sr=8-2

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovid-Metamorphoses-VIII-Latin-Texts/dp/1853997226/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=ovid+metamorphoses+8&qid=1558536602&s=gateway&sr=8-11

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Cicero

https://www.amazon.com/Cicero-Pro-Caelio-Marcus-Tullius/dp/0865165599/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cicero+pro+caelio&qid=1558536500&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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I really enjoyed Ovid at your level, which is why he is over-represented in this list. I know Perseus has commentaries on all the Catullus poems except the more risque ones. Unfortunately, those are also left out of the book I posted here. I would probably go with the Catullus one or the first/second Ovid books, just because I think love poetry is entertaining. The Cicero was definitely more difficult, but had a lot of juicy insults and was also quite fun. I used all of these and they definitely helped me improve my Latin, so whatever you choose will be good, just pick something you'll have fun reading. Good luck and enjoy!

In the history of philosophy, Thoreau is largely a neglected figure. However, there are a number of thinkers who have made the case that he should be considered a philosopher. Probably the most important of these is Stanley Cavell, and he takes up Thoreau in his Senses of Walden, among other texts.

There was also a recent collection of essays published as Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy. As you can see from the title, the editors are aware that Thoreau is not universal counted as a philosopher, but they are making the case that he should be.

The textbook we used as indo-european students in Copenhagen was Deshpande's along with Mayrhofer's small historical grammar for diachronic purposes. That book is a didactic masterpiece. https://www.amazon.com/Sanskrit-Grammar-Manfred-Mayrhofer/dp/0817312854

In terms of anthologies, my best luck so far has been with "The Best American Poetry [year]" I also love the "Best New Poets of [year]" series.

They are absolutely amazing.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-American-Poetry-2013/dp/1476708134


http://www.amazon.com/Best-New-Poets-2011-Emerging/dp/0976629666

Carlisle was a fucking travesty.

It isn't strictly Cherokee but the book [Native American literature] (https://www.amazon.com/Native-American-Literature-Lawana-Trout/dp/0844259853) is an awesome collection of works from writers of many tribes and genres. It's definitely worth a read.

Giorgio Agamben (Routledge Critical Thinkers) is a good intro-level text.

The introductory chapter by Andrew Norris in Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer is quite good.

The Figure of This World: Agamben and the Question of Political Ontology is less digestable, but seems to have a great reputation.

If you're looking for relatively breezy books on continental politics (and ethics), Mari Ruti's Between Levinas and Lacan is a good choice. You could also look at Todd May's Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction (though the May book covers more than just politics).

In Russia Serfs were predominantly local poor people - not imported from foreign nations - the system was of indentured servitude - whereby a serf would work on land for his or her entire life in exchange for the right to live in a house on the owner's property and in exchange for basic food, clothing etc. Serfs were treated like property and could only marry, move, have kids etc with the approval of their owners. Corporal punishment was used to keep them in line if they dissobeyed landowners, and because they were considered as property, they had virtually no rights pre-1861.

Serfs were an integral part of country life like slaves on plantations in the US. They would raise the children (along w/ foreign language professors for richer families - usually young girls from France) The "nanny" who was often an old serf woman who is no longer suited for work in the fields plays a central role in much Russian pre-20th century litterature. She is a key figure in Pushkin's works (ex: "Eugene Onegin") and is present in "War and Peace" "The Brothers Karamazov" as well as numerous other works. After the Emancipation of the Cerfs in 1861 - see wiki article - Serfs gained many rights de jure, but de facto because they still had debts to their masters and had few ways of getting out of indetured servitude, continued to function along the same lines, up until the 1917 revolution.

Bottom line : if you want to know about how serfs were treated look to Russian litterature from the 1700 + 1800s - Pushkin, Gogol (Ukraine), Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy etc - there are also films that were made based on their works but no specific Cerf film / cultural movement that is comparable to the one in the US with Slaves / African-Americans.

The only explanation I can think of is that in Russia it was about money and bloodlines - not about difference of ethnicity and culture.

Nannies - numerous Russian sources and a [book on Amazon :] (http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0985569816)

VERY interesting book that I will now be enticed to order : comparing African-American and Russian slaves/cerfs plight from a cultural heritage perspective :

Poetry 180 is a good free resource. Or get some anthologies used on Amazon. I'd recommend Staying Alive ($1.62) Stand Up Poetry ($2) and Good Poems ($0.25) for your purposes. They're all quite thick so very good bang for your buck, and it's mostly a lot more contemporary than the stuff you're mentioning so it'll be a good learning experience for you to read what's being published in poetry these days instead of 100+ years ago.

Not Australian, so i can't help you with the Australian issues, but I can help out with the first part.

Your statement "the way I wrote it is less journalistic and more telling a story, most of it reads like a novel, it's probably not very professional." I am a staff writer at a magazine where I write long pieces, so here are some thoughts on that:

The "professionalism" or journalistic nature of your piece has nothing to do with the structure, but its intent; just because it's not a hard news piece with an inverted pyramid structure, does not automatically disqualify it as professional or journalistic

For example, this random Washington Post story on a new budget proposal has all the elements of a "professional" news story immediately recognizable: a broad lead that lets readers know exactly what the story will be, followed by specifics, data, info, context, etc. Here's its lead:

President Obama’s new budget proposal calls for ten of billions in new spending and several revisions to the nation’s tax code, all of which could have a sizable impact on new and small businesses.

But then check out this piece: Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese for Esquire in 1966. It's widely known as one of the best pieces of American magazine writing by one of the best writers of the generation. This is journalism, too. It sets scenes, and uses detail you're just not going to find in a newspaper piece, and it reads significantly more like a novel. Here's its lead:

FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.

There's a significant value for people who can tell stories beyond the inverted pyramid structure, and I particularly appreciate people who can write non-fiction stories with with such vivid detail and unique writing style.

If you're more passionate about the storytelling aspect of non-fiction stories, instead of hard news, I'd recommend perusing the longform.org site for links to present-day stories that do it well. I'd also recommend these books for some inspiration and for intro into authors you may dig:

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight by Marc Weingarten

The New New Journalism by Robert Boynton.

Feel free to send me a PM.

I just read "First We Read, Then We Write" which I loved. The book synthesizes Ralph Waldo Emerson's thoughts on the creative process from his many essays and journals and channels it into a great hundred page book.

http://www.amazon.com/First-We-Read-Then-Write/dp/1609383478

I'm still not fully decided and have to read more. Can't say I've seen like a definitive piece on it unfortunately, but I definitely recommend reading up on the WPA to see a glimpse of what massive jobs programs have looked like in America in the past. Here are a couple of books about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-People-Writers-Uncovers-Depression/dp/0470403802

https://www.amazon.com/American-Made-Enduring-Legacy-When-Nation/dp/0553381326

And below is a book I recently read that is a product of the WPA writer's program. It's a collection of oral histories and stories from New Mexican women in the 30s. It's the kind of invaluable historical resource that there's just no financial incentive to produce.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155885312X/ref=x_gr_w_glide_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_glide_bb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=155885312X&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2

Should we judge these African Americans who lynched whites after the Civil War (see article written by a black scholar) http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.1.0026?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

He also has a book that describes many incident of black on black lynchings https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Rope-Lynching-Cambridge-American/dp/1107620376/ref=la_B01CNQ18EU_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503208558&sr=1-1

Wow it is shocking to believe that people that lived in a primitive and savage world before the modern era could be cruel to each other "Sarcasm Alert"

I keep a copy of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman on my nightstand. It's poetry, philosophy and spirituality all in one little book. Every time I read it I'm blown away by Whitman's breadth of vision.

https://www.amazon.com/Account-Relacion-Recovering-Hispanic-Literary/dp/1558850600

This is the book I read in college. It is non-fiction, but his version of events are a little too fantastical for real life. It's formatted like a novel. It reminded me so much of David Brin's The Postman.

Now I'm going to have to buy it and read it again. I really enjoyed it 20 years ago. I might be biased, though, because it was a big deal at my alma mater. One of the original copies is in the library, and several of my professors and classmates went out and settled the dispute regarding which route he took through Texas and Mexico.

I took a course on Ralph Ellison and I highly recommend all of his work, even the incomplete Juneteenth. My professor for this course also wrote http://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-Left-Making-Ellison-Invisible/dp/0822348292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323027498&sr=8-1 . Further reading if it interests you.

This is also well worth a read.

Have you read this?


https://www.amazon.com/Lyrics-Prince-Rogers-Nelson-Philosopher/dp/0965577589

Yes! I haven't read it though.

Just in case you don't get American Pop Culturisms

http://www.amazon.com/Screaming-Monkeys-Critiques-American-Images/dp/1566891418