Start with high-confidence literary criticism books, then narrow by subgenre or adjacent topics.
Encounter
Milan Kundera
How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken
Daniel Mendelsohn
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised Edition
Thomas C Foster
The Western Canon
Harold Bloom
Better Living Through Criticism
A. O. Scott
Forbidden Knowledge
Roger Shattuck
Topophrenia
Robert T. Tally Jr.
How Fiction Works
James Wood
On Late Style
Edward W. Said
The Norton Introduction to Literature, With 2016 MLA Update, Shorter Twelfth Edition, Paperback Version
Kelly J. Mays
Crime Fiction
John Scaggs, John Drakakis
Secular Scripture
Northrop Frye
Political Science Fiction
Donald M. Hassler, Clyde Wilcox
A Student's Guide to Literature
R. V. Young
Conversations With Kazuo Ishiguro
Brian W. Shaffer, Cynthia F. Wong
The Bright Book of Life
Stephen Mendel, Harold Bloom
