Alireza Mahdipour

Reading Between the Paragraphs: a Practical Guide to Short Stories Alireza Mahdipour

"To Read without reflection is to eat without digestion." Edmund Burk The aim of this book is to introduce imaginative literature to the student in a concrete, cohesive, and self-contained way, and to help the student appreciate an original literary text in its totality, with less dependence on the teacher guidance or such requirements as dissociated abstract courses in literary terms. The book has been designed for the Short Story course in undergraduate level, yet it can also be used for courses such as Introduction to Literature, Creative Reading, and Creative Writing. Two particular features of this book are as follows: 1. it checks the student's ease and speed which may result in the lack of appreciation and delight, and may also lead to passive and superficial education. 2. Full appreciation and pleasure of reading come from the process, not the product. Therefore, instead of post-reading 'end questions' that are common in many books and anthologies, this book provides pre-reading questions before and between the paragraphs, in accordance with the process of reading, to encourage checking and guessing.