This book was not at all what I expected, but it was a very enjoyable read. I expected this book to offer techniques akin to Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book." I expected to hear about reading different genres, about reading slowly, about grasping the broad picture, about taking notes, etc. But there was none of that. This book is a sort of truncated encyclopedia of symbolism and allusion. He talks about the symbols employed by authors to communicate things about their characters. He discusses Christ figures, baptism, meals/communion, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, the Bible, blindness/sight, vampires, the quest, intertextuality, and so on. I recognized the influence of Joseph Campbell on more than one occasion. They are both dealing with myth, essentially. Foster writes, "In these last three chapters we've talked about three sorts of myth: Shakespearean, biblical, and folk/fairy tale. The connection of religion and myth sometimes causes trouble in class when someone takes myth to mean 'untrue' and finds it hard to unite that meaning with deeply held religious beliefs. That's not what I mean by 'myth', though. Rather, what I'm suggesting is the shaping and sustaining power of story and symbol" (59). I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to enrich their reading of good literature.