Does analysing a book 'spoil' its charm? Does understanding the workings of a writers' craft (rhetoric, grammar and syntax etc.) undermine the pleasure of their books? Can reading "as a critic" ever increase our pleasure of a poems and novels?

Professor Belinda Jack offers a new a model for reading, based on 'subliminal advertising.' This allows for a detailed explanation of how an understanding of the tools of writing can add to and enrich the reading experience.

Close reading of a selection of passages from a wide range of authors from Virginia Woolf to Charles Dickens will form the focus here.

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