Bookshelf Tour: Literary Studies 

So flattered to see my books on your stately white shelves, and sorry to hear they've put a dent in your finances!

Leaf by Leaf making my day.

You’re a madman, an absolute madman.

Just stumbled upon your channel and that is an impressive library. Being a huge fan of Mark Edmundson, glad to see your recommendation of "Why Read?" here. Thank you for your videos.

I wasn't that much of a reader. I would, at best, read a couple chapters of a novel and a few poems, in one month. Then i found your channel. Now i'm inspired to read all of my books on my bookshelf. Thank you Chris Via, for inspiring me to not only read more, but to also write more. *Leaf by Leaf has now gained +1 subscriber!*

That's the nicest bookshelf I have ever seen. Thank you for sharing.

Just found your channel ♥️ A REAL DREAM 😍😍😍 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING! This video made me happy ♥️

This has been such a difficult week. I am so glad for this video. Thank you so much.

After browsing your shelves, I bought a copy of So We Read On because I am a Gatsby fanatic and have a Fitzgerald shelf. I found a copy on eBay. I was at first disappointed that the label ruined the spine and front but was cheered to find that it was signed by the author, Maureen Corrigan!

Thank you for the relaxing video - this is just what I needed in this turbulent moment in time. I hope you're doing as well as can be, and that you and your family are safe. I watched this with my Goodreads open and added so many to my TBR list! I was really into the Beats, and Kerouac in particular, during my high school years and even wrote and presented a paper on On the Road. I haven't gone back to the Beats since then, but perhaps it would be interesting to revisit some of those texts and see how I feel about them now.

A modest collection! Enough to tuck inside the tortoise shell when moving to another part of the swamp. But I understand how the books take hold. An informative and (I thought) exciting work of criticism I read recently is Samuel Frederick's Narrative's Unsettled which focuses on three authors writing in German and how they derail or undermine plot as they pursue different aims with (possibly) cryptic - even undecipherable - motives. Happy reading!

I really love Dirda and am always happy to see people talk about his work. How to Read Slowly definitely calls my name, too!

I would love to live in your house , seeing all those great selections of books 😊

Thank you for this video (and all the new entries on my “to-read” list). I didn’t intend on watching it all in one sitting, but the time flew by!

Love your channel! Please do some more bookshelf tour videos soon :)

Just started watching your videos this week. Thanks for the great recommendations on literary criticism! Your site seems to distill a lot of wonderful recommendations in each video!

Excellent selection. Thanks for the video.

Just finished watching your 10 big books video and some of your bookshelf tours. Your selection and synopsis of the literary criticism was most helpful. (Just made a big Amazon order including Steven Moore's works). You seem to have digested quite a bit of material for a young guy! Looking forward to the rest of the Western Core series. I have a whole shelf dedicated to "Ulysses" and would be glad to recommend titles.

Great survey. I wish you had given us a list of some of the best you mentioned.

About Bataille's L'Impossible: "I did not get this at all." Oh, great laughs, thanks! With lines like, "Nakedness is only death and the tenderest kisses have an aftertaste of rat..." it's no wonder!

I heard Eugenides speak and read from "The Marriage Plot" when I was a creative writing student at North Texas. I asked him why he chose Bipolar for Leonard and not some other disorder and he said it was because he had a friend who had a boyfriend with Bipolar and that it would've been more dramatic than writing about just depression. He's a cool guy.

Mimesis is wonderful, I look forward to checking out the rest of your channel

These are turbulent days, so I guess the range of emotion I went through over those nearly 40 minutes I should not be surprised at...Anyway, it ended in laughter, very much appreciative, though hard to explain--something about how casually you slothed through, humbly tossing out signposts of study and knowledge like I might baseball statistics, all very much by the way, off the cuff--though you couldn't shake Gass off the Gaddis cuff--or Gaddis off the Gass (I keep them in separate rooms so they don't fight)...and then quite suddenly it seemed you suddenly began to think you'd gone on too long, just before you were done, so there was a hint of rush toward the finish. So that was funny, but I also went through all the range books and a literary life can inspire, even rage when I saw Gardner and a memory of petty nastiness was evoked (perpetrated by an overly worshipful fan of his), much in the array of emotions related to wist--I most wanted to pull the third Moore off the shelf, but other books unknown to me contained much I know and have felt or endured...great to see so much Mangual...great to see I have and have read a Bakhtin you haven't...great to see you have a Bursey, but I've read the two you don't have...No envy! It feels like it would be an odd trespass--there's a reason there are 15 books on Gaddis, for instance--this is very much the Via library. (In one of Gass's books he writes about he and Gaddis being in St. Petersburgh having to suffer through a tour of Raskolnikov's haunts WHILE someone read the book to them, and Gaddis saying over and over, 'but it's fiction...'

Great start to the series, and what a good week to drop the first one! I needed that. I'm fighting off the urge to spend a ton of money on books right now. ;) Honestly, I had no idea half of those Gaddis books exist. Good to know. I hadn't heard of a couple of the Pynchon ones either. Looking forward to the rest of the series!

I stumbled upon Nabokov’s “Lectures on Literature and have found it to be a sturdy and challenging guide to re-interrogate texts you thought you knew. Think you’d enjoy it.

Awesooooomeeee! You light up my boring day! Thanks!

I really enjoyed your video. Thankyou xx

Another great video. Just to underscore your comment on Mark Edmundson...wonderful thinker and interviews on Book TV worth the time.

Wow Speechless! Every video of yours excites me to read.

Dirda is beautiful on his hometown of Lorain, OH. I lived there at 16, found love. Boy went to prison, I went back to Virginia, we got out of touch. He died in 2003.

Your presentation on Cărtărescu’s Blinding brought me to your channel, and now I feel I am addicted to your videos. I am so happy this channel exists. Your library is so beautiful, every reader’s dream come true. When did you start building your library? Mine is not that big (not yet). I am still working on moving my books from Romania to the U.S. Again, thank you for your videos and the work you put into creating them. ☺️

How To Read Slowly sounds particularly interesting and useful. (I'm currently 600 pages into 2666 by Roberto Bolano and am already sensing a loss of my 'grasp' on The Part About The Critics and the story of Amalfitano, and that this lack of affective recall has come about as a result of rushing, even while making a concerted effort not to.)

This video made me spend money. LOL. Nice job! I'll send you my book bill here in a few weeks. ;-)

History,psychology,sociology and politics sections too please

Love this video! Is their any chance you could do a video about the annotations and tabs you have in your books? Can’t wait for the next one!

Good stuff mate

Moving from GR over to RU-vid. Those Steven Moore books are tempting me something fierce. I picked up Darconville's Cat this month already, though, and the book budget doesn't seem to be giving. Maybe next month...

I was particularly intrigued by Amy Hungerford's refusal to read Infinite Jest. So I googled it. I found an interesting article about it. Btw, great video as always!

You could have a public library. Wishing I had your collection for quarantine

What is it with Christians and books? I’m a Christian too and a lifelong bibliophile. Some of, if not all the best book tours I’ve seen on RU-vid have been Christian. I will admit Alanis Morissette has a very impressive collection as well. I believe I have more books, but man I am jealous of your shelves.

I loved Writing Down the Bones SO much. Then I met Natalie Goldberg at a bookstore I worked at in Albq and she was SO rude. I was heartbroken :(

Greetings sir am a huge fan of your channel and a subscriber can you please do a tour on other topics apart from literary studies would really appreciate it and sorry for giving you a hard time !! Thanks

Very enjoyable- maybe too enjoyable ended up putting a few books on the old tbr. I didn’t know Longinus had a book on writing. Will need to get to that. I have a question that maybe you can answer. Within many of Harold Blooms books he quotes Nietzsche and seems to esteem him, but I have never come across a book he wrote about him and his writings - do you know if one exists? It is very odd that he would quote him so liberally, yet not take time to expound on his views. Very unBloomlike, lol. Thank you so much for sharing your library with us. Oh, heck never mind I found what I was looking for in Bloom - double checked after I posted and it came up. I think google just toys with you sometimes.

What is your method to where you put your books other than fiction and nonfiction? I have Susan Bauer's The Well Trained Mind. Once Prometheus graduates I'll pass it on for my grandkids. And I also own a few other books, but boy did I add quite a few to my goodreads tbr! what a fun video! Thank you. And I had to look up word salad; reminds me of Virginia Woolf.

Might be a tough question, but if you were to suggest a top / essential like, 3 or 5 literary theory books to get started, what would they be? Finishing up ABC of Reading by Pound - which I love - now and that's been my introduction to theory. I'm an English minor so school has more or less scratched that itch (even just the Norton Anthology intros are always great), but I'd like to keep up my education over the summer and would love to know your suggestions! And apologies if this has been asked and answered elsewhere

As someone that's pretty much new to Literary Studies, what would you recommend first? Sooo many of these sound interesting, but I can't buy all of them right now! lol

I like H Bloom. Hes closed minded but the people who attack him arent?.He was probably the last who will stand for western lit in this PC age.

Do stickers on spine bother you? I try to remove unless library used.

This may sound peripheral to many, but how, really, how did you get that shelf made? it reminds me of the one I have seen circulating as Beckett’s.

Have you done a video about why Bloom is so "closed minded"?

hell yeah dude this rules

Do you have any thoughts on How to Read a Book by Adler?

Is this all of your literary studies? Sort of surprised to see no Edmund Wilson, Raymond Williams, Cleanth Brooks, Ernst Robert Curtius, Hayden White, Paul de Man, etc, etc.

Have you seen videos from the RU-vid channel called “The Pursuit of Wonder”?

I'm jealous

Can you tell me what do you think why Jeff used this book in his novel? 23:22

Aw yeah, it started.

Why did you switch to engineering/it?

Francine Prose sounds like a made up name