The Art of XRay Reading, Roy Peter Clark
The Art of XRay Reading, Roy Peter Clark
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The Art of X-Ray Reading
How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

Author: Roy Peter Clark

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Unabridged: 8 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/26/2016

Synopsis

Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts.

Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tara on January 29, 2020

Absolutely fascinating. This book configures a new model of reading. Described as 'x-ray reading,' this mode of reading offers a way to look at 'the great texts' and learn about vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraphing, plot and resolutions. This is a fine book that probes 'the great texts.' Yes......more

Goodreads review by Lori Tian on March 20, 2016

I'm a longtime Clark fan, and this didn't disappoint. I recommend it highly for serious readers and writers alike.......more

Goodreads review by Amy on June 02, 2020

I will absolutely use this book as a resource for my AP Lit. class. Clark gears the book as a guide for teaching writing using great literature such as The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but it’s so much more than that. It’s also a guide for close reading exercises and......more

Goodreads review by Erik on January 17, 2019

I wish I had read this many years ago. This is a book about how to mine the treasures out of literature. It's a call to slow down. To not view the book simply in its entirety, as something to be completed, but rather word by word. The Art of X-Ray Reading covers small sections of 25+ pieces of liter......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on January 21, 2019

This wasn’t the best book, but it was fairly refreshing. I’ve read many of the books referenced in the text, so it was a fairly interesting time spent looking closer for details I’ve missed in the past. Mostly, however, this book covers a lot of what a university English class covers. I’ll be honest......more

Quotes

"Just when you think Clark, who has written some of the best books on the writer's craft, has covered everything related to the subject, he digs deep into literature and excavates a gold mine of artistic strategies for great writing....With lively, colorful writing and inspired practical advice, this guide earns a spot along with Clark's Writing Tools as essential reading for writers. Recommended for book lovers as well."—Kirkus (Starred Review)

"This book sits on the (well-oiled) hinge between close reading and manual. Roy Peter Clark, who knows a thing or two about the writer's trade, digs into passages of successful writing from King Lear to the Goon Squad in order to unearth such writerly tools as foreshadowing, wordplay, shock value, repetition, rhetorical tropes, soliloquy and many more. It's a delightful read and an illuminating method for beginner or pro."—Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction and Losing Tim

"Any honest writer will tell you this: It's not tricks that make you better at crafting prose. It's reading. Lots of reading. Close reading. X-ray reading. Roy Peter Clark decodes brilliant passages so that we can not so much emulate them, but make our own magic."—-Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax and Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch

"This enjoyable book is perfect for students, writers, and anyone who wants to learn more about great literature."—Library Journal (starred review)

"This is an infectiously enthusiastic guide to becoming an active reader, an homage to the wealth of meaning in great literature, and a striking demonstration of how that meaning can be transmitted from author to reader across centuries and oceans."—Publishers Weekly

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