Cracking the GRE Literature Test, 5th Edition (Graduate Test Prep) | 
|  | | | Title: | Cracking the GRE Literature Test, 5th Edition (Graduate Test Prep) | | Author: | Princeton Review | | Publisher: | Princeton Review | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 20 September, 2005 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0375764909 / 9780375764905 | | List Price: | $18.00 | | You Save: | $5.76 | | Amazon Price: | $12.24 | |
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Product Description
The GRE subject tests are among the most difficult standardized exams. Rather than testing general problem-solving skills, they require highly specialized knowledge.
The experts at The Princeton Review have thoroughly research each subject test to provide students with the most thorough, up-to-date information available. Students don’t need to relearn the entire histories of their fields—just what they need to know to earn high scores on the exams.
Each guide includes one full-length practice exam, complete with comprehensive explanations for every solution.
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Customer Reviews:
• Great Book! 27 September, 2006
This book is great! It has wonderful strategy tips that really helped me on managing my time. The mythology chart and the historical chronology of literary periods are also excellent. The explanations of the practice test answers also explain what all the wrong answers are so you can better reference where to look up these authors and titles. I only wish that there was more than one practice test and that the book was longer. Buy this book for your test!
- Reviewed by customer ID: AKLDODTS9Q1CM
• Qualified Praise 05 November, 2006
This study guide was certainly helpful inasmuch as it allowed me to focus my studies for the GRE Lit. in English subject test--helped me, in other words, follow some line of preparation that was more pointed and purposeful than simply reading over the Norton anthologies.
But after taking the exam, I feel much less confident in the spot-on accuracy of this study guide than I did about the *Verbal Workout* guide by Princeton Review for the GRE General Exam. Of course there's just much more material to cover for this exam. But more importantly, *Cracking the GRE Literature Test* rests on several crucial assumptions, assumptions that I adopted myself in studying for the test, but which now appear to me a little questionable.
First, this book assumes that the large bulk of the exam involves identification--overt or covert, open or implied. Thus it emphasizes the study of basic titles, character names, and (to a lesser degree) plot contours of canonical Western works. While this was in some measure helpful, I found that the test focused much more on passage interpretation or analysis (grammar, style, definition), and that the passages themselves were drawn from sources other than those emphasized by the PR study guide. Look to the periphery and not to the center of the canon for these works, I guess I would tentatively advise. Not what one wants to hear after extensive reviews of *Canterbury Tales* and *Paradise Lost*, but such was my experience. The good news is that the interpretation questions rely on material that's technically provided in the exam; the bad news is that, on a 230-question test, one just doesn't have the time necessary to do justice to all such questions.
Second, the study guide assumes that a novice-level familiarity with literary theory suffices for the purposes of the Lit. in English subject test. If my recent experience is at all representative--and who knows if it is?--I would recommend that potential test-takers review, not only the study guide's encapsulation of various theoretical schools, but also the work of some *specific* theorists. I suppose that the (what else?) relatively new Norton anthology on criticism & theory would be a good resource here.
Third: some final thoughts on what this guide explicitly told me NOT to study, including Shakespeare and the Bible. I took an undergraduate Shakespeare course, so I was happy to follow the former instruction. And I don't regret doing so. But there were several more Bible-as-literature questions, posed in much greater detail, than I was expecting--and this in addition to the several Bible-allusion answer choices to questions on literary works. (Most of this stuff was, granted, in the passage-analysis zone, but still.) Not sure if this represents ETS's effort to rebuke the Princeton Review's disciples--but perhaps I'm just spinning a story where there's none to tell.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3EYU7FD6LOCGY
• Excellent Resource For How To Take The Test 09 January, 2007
If you are looking for a last minute study session, this is not the place to turn. They give you excellent advice on how the test is scored and methods of marking answers but there are few passages in it. They do provide an excellent list of authors you should know and quick overviews of some classic literature but nothing extreamely specific. I used this book in conjunction with my own study program and found the book really worth my while. It's a little light on Lit theory though, so you may want to brush up on that part of the test. Overall I would buy it again. It's written with a dry sense of humor and a drive to see the student do well
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2XMEOJEA1B62B
• Useful For A Plan Of Attack.... 22 July, 2007
I must admit that I was intially skeptical about how much a Literature GRE prep book could help me; it seems almost common sense to think you cannot possibly study for such a broad topic. The book dispells this myth right away, and uses a convincing argument: the fact that literature in English covers such a broad area is something to the test maker's detriment, not the test taker's. It is the GRE subject test maker's responsibility to create a test that is multiculturaly sound; one that needs a represntative of English literature that a student of English at a college in India could recognize as easily as a student of English at Harvard. Therefore, there are ways to study for this broad topic: by looking at the barest essentials; the canonical pieces of poetry and fiction that a discernible person might guess an English major might have studied. Which leads to the next myth: that once you have a list of likely works that you must read every single one, from Beowulf to the Modern era. This isn't true, (the book makes the point here that one shouldn't bother going to grad school if s/he's already read most of the important works in English; it would surely be worth a degree or two by that point) in fact you need only skim the important details of these works by 1.reading a summary; 2. reading an author's bio or an intro section to the work in the Norton anthology; or 3. if you've already read the work, quickly reviewing the plot and characters by skimming a few passages to jog your memory. The goal is to get points, and luckily most of those points are easily taken if you can recognize a certain passage, which most likely contains key elements from a work or author and not a vaugue obscurity that no one has read except the most fervent of an author's scholar.
Oh, and if you're like me and weren't an English major, I highly recommend that you buy this book as a favor to yourself. As you're already disadvantaged by your skim study in comparison to the English majors you'll be competing against in grad school, you need all the advantages you can get. It starts with this one. The book has major and minor lists of works and authors that scrupulous research of previous tests deems you should know, so I suggest you take advantage of it. Luckily I was an English minor, and was fairly well versed by reading in my spare time. If you aren't either of this things however, I'd suggest not only getting this book, but hiring a tutor.
In summary, if you like the large, cumbersome expanses of a huge discipline attempting to be shoved into a small peanut shell, then this book is for you. You'll be getting just a snippet, but this snippet may indeed be worth your money and effort. Just remember though: it's a guide or an outline, not the end all and be all of your studying efforts. Treat it as such, and keep your Norton anthology handy.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AM7ZZ2R3MX2BA
• This Book Relieves The Pressure... 14 August, 2006
When I took the GRE in lit three years ago, I didn't know about this book. I wish I would have. Studying literature isn't like studying math; you can't just learn the formulas to be successful. And with such an anbundance of literature from which to choose, you may get the feeling very early on in your course of study for this exam that you have no idea where to start. Now I'm taking the exam again and this book helps. This book more than helps. Let the experts guide you. They've studied the GRE exams and know ETS's trademark question styles that will help you. The writers and contributors to this study guide help show you where to start, what to emphasize, and how to study for the exam rather than the material, and they do it with a sarcastic wit that keeps you interested. Buy this book - if not for the infinite wisdom, for the pressure it relieves.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3DE6172PYIGXP
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