How To Read Literature
By Terry Eagleton
Yale Press

In his preface, Terry Eagleton suggests that the "slow reading"--or reading analytically, conscious of the appropriate literary elements--is fading away, and his goal is to provide a short book to keep it going.  The book is organized into sections: Openings, Character, Narrative, Interpretation and Value.

Eagleton approaches mostly well-known novels and poems with his characteristic wit, though his comedy stylings sometime come at the expense of accuracy. He denigrates Shakespeare's comedies for not being very funny, knowing full well that the term 'comedy' in this context is all about happy endings (marriage usually) and not at all about hilarity.  He belabors some points as analytic philosophers are wont to do, though in his case it seems he's sometimes just setting up a laugh line.  "The Great Wall of China resembles the concept of heartache in that neither can peel a banana." And you know, green ideas sleep furiously. It's Groucho doing G.E. Moore.

So, depending on your taste in humor, this book is entertaining.  It's also informative on a number of classic works.  He's particularly good on Dickens.  I read this in advanced page proofs, so I felt no compunction in marking up the text, and I find a number of highlighted passages, but a few pages with "bullshit" bannered across the top.

Strictly speaking  this is not in form or content a book on how to read literature.  One can learn things about these literary texts and about some analytical tools from reading it, but Eagleton too often states his opinion, his reading, as fact.