A review by unladylike
How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor: A Smart, Irreverent Guide to Biography, History, Journalism, Blogs, and Everything in Between by Thomas C. Foster

2.0

Professor Foster at one point mentions that journalists almost never get to decide the headlines published with their articles, but writers of nonfiction books do choose their titles, and must bear the responsibility of living up to it. It is ironic, then, that this book fails that test. I think the title starts with "How to" to identify it as part of a series of other books by the same author, dealing with poetry, literature, etc. Rather than learning how to read nonfiction more critically, I simply learned about this particular affluent, liberal, white man's opinions on a long list of different writers and political realms. While I happen to agree with most of the opinions he espouses, that is not what I was looking for in this book.

This book is actually an anthology of reviews of best selling books and thus, of their authors. There were a few tidbits that might be helpful to my own writing, such as not starting any sentences on the first page of a memoir with "I," but otherwise it was only useful to help me decide whether or not to read some particular other books. If you're a similarly positioned baby boomer fond of the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked," you might enjoy Foster's most recent "How to Read ... " book.