Close Reading without Readings: Essays on Shakespeare and Others

by Stephen Booth

Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth's lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book's title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns--repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones--and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare's works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth's efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.-- "CHOICE"

201 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 18, 2015

About the author

Stephen Booth is the author of 18 novels in the Cooper & Fry series, all set around England's Peak District, and a standalone novel DROWNED LIVES, published in August 2019.

The Cooper & Fry series has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, and Detective Constable Cooper has been a finalist for the Sherlock Award for Best Detective created by a British author. The Crime Writers’ Association presented Stephen with the Dagger in the Library Award for “the author whose books have given readers most pleasure.”

The novels are sold all around the world, with translations in 16 languages. The most recent title is FALL DOWN DEAD.

A new Stephen Booth standalone novel with a historical theme, DROWNED LIVES, will be published in August 2019:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drowned-Live...

In recent years, Stephen has become a Library Champion in support of the UK’s ‘Love Libraries’ campaign. He's represented British literature at the Helsinki Book Fair in Finland, appeared with Alexander McCall Smith at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival in Australia, filmed a documentary for 20th Century Fox on the French detective Vidocq, taken part in online chats for World Book Day, taught crime writing courses, and visited prisons to talk to prisoners about writing.

He lives in Nottinghamshire.