Reading well has very little to do with speed. What’s far more important is comprehension, and for the writer-reader, that means discerning nuances and subtexts, understanding the unstated, the merely implied, and being able to infer the significance of each detail—how it is part of an integral whole.

Nothing is gratuitous. If you find yourself saying about a novel, “Oh, I just skipped those parts,” then either you’re missing the significance of “those parts,” or the novel isn’t as good as it should be. Therefore, assume that everything in a story has a valuable purpose until you can confidently make the judgment that the element is gratuitous and therefore a flaw. With persistence, a writer should be giving the reader something new and/or necessary, something that drives the story forward. Ideally, every sentence enhances plot, character, setting, and/or theme.

There’s a reason Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has a streak of gray hair; there’s a reason he wears a red hunting hat in New York City. There’s a reason horses and traffic signals are referred to several times in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. There’s significance to a shirt advertisement on the train in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It matters in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms that Catherine Barkley carries around her dead fiancée’s “little” riding crop.

In this course, you'll join instructor Mark Spencer as he guides you through a close reading of a classic modern novel. Each session will focus on a different novel, with selections rotating over time. Take inspiration and instruction from some of the best writers of the modern age!