This nonfiction book is both more and less than I hoped.

What I wanted was a resource to connect English Language Arts to Taylor Swift songs and then be able to use it with my students.

What I received: In some ways the book meets my desire. There is an analysis (typically brief) and explanation (also, typically brief). There are some songs where a teacher could use the information as provided and run with it to develop a lesson. The vast majority of others provide just enough information to help a teacher continue with research to develop a lesson. What’s the difference? Between 15 minutes and an hour of lesson development time, I’m guessing.

Just an FYI, but the authors are not Taylor Swift and TS does not offer these explanations unless in a “this was said in an interview” sort of way.

A wish: A cross-reference/linked list of skills (the definitions of the skills are at the end) with the songs would be invaluable and make this so much easier to use as a teacher.

We’re always getting asked for Taylor swift books at my library and this book will make a lovely addition to our collection. With fun illustrations and interesting interpretations this book is perfect for any swiftie!

I hope this one is better in print than digital. Though not a huge swiftie was still excited as a regular fan and book lover. The actual book though felt disjointed and the topics muddled. I kept looking to see if I’d missed something. Not sure who the audience or overall theme was after reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! Thank you to the publisher for my advanced digital copy! It was so fun & interesting to read about the origin/meaning of Taylor's songs/lyrics. This book is truly perfect for any die-hard Swiftie! Will for sure be recommending!

An amazing gift book for an Swiftie! Thank you to Quirk books and Net Galley for a digital review copy.

Taylor Swift by the Book by Rachel Feder and Tiffany Tatreau is an insightful and engaging exploration of Taylor Swift's lyrics through the lens of classic literature. The book cleverly pairs Swift's songs with literary works, offering a fresh perspective on her songwriting and demonstrating the depth of her storytelling. While the concept is innovative, the analysis sometimes feels forced, with some connections between the songs and books seeming tenuous or overly simplistic. Additionally, the tone can be overly celebratory, occasionally missing a more critical examination of Swift's career or the broader cultural context. Despite these minor drawbacks, the book remains a thoughtful and fun read for both Swift fans and literature enthusiasts alike, highlighting the creative synergy between music and literature.

The introduction prepares us: “we have vindication—proof that Taylor Swift doesn’t just write bops, she writes intellectual bops.” It’s not a textbook, but it’s written by an academic, and this close reading will satisfy English majors with detailed analysis of archetypes, literary devices (like the use of metonymy in Swift's lyrics), and cross-references (such as an idiom that first appeared in Shakespeare's “Othello”). Superfans and those new-to-the Swiftie-verse will be happy to find suggested playlists and era-by-era sectioning.

Thank you NetGalley the publisher and author for the ARC.

This was an interesting take on pop hits written and performed by the mega star. Not quite my normal genre but I found it worth the time. If you love TSwift maybe this is for you but if not I would pass this one by.

I apparently wished for this on Netgalley because I got an approved wish so I thought I'd better give it a go. It's interesting all the links made to her songs, but like other reviews I've read, I feel some observations are a bit far off the mark and confusing.

However, I like the idea and the illustrations work nicely

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC

A fun title, likely to make a popular gift for Christmas. Thèmes well explored, if a little repetitively in places, and a nice balance struck between humour and literary theory.

Oh this book was wonderfully done! Absolutely buying this for my daughter for Christmas! It was so well done. I was so intrigued by each page. Loved it!

I wanted to like this book so badly because I love any high-level review of popular culture. But this book felt much too disjointed and didn’t really seem to have any unifying point or thesis.

As a Taylor Swift fan, I was really excited about the concept of this book. Unfortunately I decided to DNF at 34%. I found a lot of the references too basic and just sticking to simple explanations of a line here and there instead of really getting into the context and meaning of songs. Ultimately this wasn’t for me but maybe it would be a fun holiday gift for the right Swiftie in your life. Thank you to the publisher, Netgalley and librofm for the free ebook and audiobook.

“The greatest story is the messy, nonlinear, deeply flawed, and complex tale of what it means to be human. And falling in love with our lives might be one of the greatest love stories we’ll ever know.”

*Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

Going into this, I knew I was biased in more ways than one. Not only am I a Taylor Swift fan but even more so, I’m a poet who LOVES literary devices. I’ve also been waiting ages for someone to finally annotate and reference Taylor Swift’s lyrics. Not only do the authors do this, but they also take us on a journey. They are our tour guide through the storytelling of Taylor Swift, complete with further readings and playlists for each album. They also include a glossary at the end with literary devices, which I absolutely loved and inspired my own writing.

As someone who could quite possibly spend all day talking about Taylor Swift and how incredibly clever she is, I will take any opportunity to overanalyze her work or read interesting takes on it. Unfortunately, I found this book to be a bit confusing, and at times, even frustrating. There are definitely some fun facts sprinkled throughout, as well as informative glimpses into historical references of Taylor’s (such as Emily Dickinson or The Great Gatsby). But I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to someone who’s an established fan, simply because I think they would also be confused by the authors analyzing portions of lyrics without looking at the broader context of the work.

It feels unclear who the audience for this book is supposed to be, because there are tonal shifts in nearly every chapter. Is it for a younger audience? Longtime fans? Academics? The writing goes back and forth between attempted academic analysis, and breaking the fourth wall (so to speak) by speaking directly to the reader in a casual manner.

I think this book would have benefited from more perspectives, in addition to analyzing lyrics/songs in a greater context of Taylor’s work. I know there are both academics and culture writers who have written really in depth and thoughtful pieces about Taylor Swift, and those perspectives probably would have rounded it out more.

It’s a useful step on the way to establishing literary Taylor Swift studies to agree on all the places where Swift seems to be reworking other texts. We don’t all want to reinvent the wheel every time we try to write about Swift and literature. For example, “happiness” includes a collection of quotations from The Great Gatsby. So far, really, we don’t have a way to compile this information except through the annotations on Genius.com, which are… unreliable. As far as that goes, this book is useful.
I found it less useful in explaining why it matters that Swift is thinking about her relationship to (e.g.) Fitzgerald.
The book is organized around “eras” (probably the wrong word, but I see what they did there) assigned to different Swift albums: these are Bildungsroman (Taylor Swift), Fairy Tale (Fearless and Speak Now), Modernist (Red and 1989), Decadent (reputation), Sentimentalist (Lover), Romantic (folklore and evermore), Gothic (Midnights), and Postmodernist (TTPD). There are also explanations of the lives and work of different “tortured poets” including obvious ones like Lord Byron and Emily Dickinson and the more obscure Edna St Vincent Millay and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper as well as playlists of Swift songs built around different motifs.
The book is set up as a series of annotations, although sadly (at least in my ebook review copy) these are annotations without a text: the title of a song is given, followed by only individual lines of interest each accompanied by a note. These range from well researched explanations of how Cheshire cats came to be associated with grinning to what feels more like filler. The line “we’re all bored” from New Romantics bears the annotation that “ennui” is common in modernist writing - and earlier writing… … … … I think the organization of the book into dubious “eras” is to blame for this. A suggestion that “This Love” could be considered “The Great Gatsby” “fan fiction” because of a mention of a lantern burning in the night follows another suggestion that the same song echoes a line in Samuel Beckett. But it remains unclear to me exactly what it adds to read either allusion into the song except to prove that the song does in fact fit within Swift’s modernist era, which… isn’t a thing. As W. K. Wimsatt Jr. and M. C. Beardsley argued in their foundational article “The Intentional Fallacy,” you’re the person who gets to decide what you think a text means, which includes what it seems to be alluding to, as long as you have a compelling reason for reading it that way. And certainly, you could imagine someone explaining why these details matter.
This work that you can imagine someone doing has the effect of making this book feel like a worksheet, like you’re looking at the teaching materials for a really interesting lesson. The line “clink, clink” from “Slut!” is cited as an instance of “onomatopoeia.” It is not clear why this is noted, except to teach the reader what onomatopoeia is. You can imagine what you would do with this in class. Who knows what onomatopoeia is? What’s another example? Why do you think this song is trying to reproduce the sound of the world it exists in?
Of course, as founders of a new field, a lot of what we are doing is imaginary work, projecting the way forward - like the speaker of “happiness,” who hasn’t met the “new me” yet and isn’t even sure whether she means by that her ex’s new girlfriend or her own healed self. We don’t know what Swift Studies looks and feels like yet.
I will say in its defence that this book definitely feels intended to spur you to further effort. Lit crit words like “trope” and “onomatopoeia” are in bold to denote that you can flip forward to the glossary at the end to find their definitions. You have to actively look them up, like you have to find a text of each song’s lyrics (or listen to it or remember it). The book asks a lot of work of its reader. There’s even a list of recommended reading after each “era.” And I think there are readers who will find it inspiring in starting their study of Swift.

Devoured this in a day. I’ve always been a huge Swiftie and literature addict so this was perfect for me.

I’d already been on so many deep dives into her lyrics I was sceptical whether there’d be much in this book that was new to me but there were quite a few texts referenced that I haven’t even heard of. The comparisons here were all well thought out and substantiated but I would have loved to see more tentative interpretations even if they won’t be agreed upon by everyone.

My only criticism is that I wish it were longer. Some of the songs are only touched upon with a single line such as labyrinth explaining that it’s a maze with a monster in, which I think is already common knowledge and without any further commentary, seems a bit redundant to have even bothered including. I also did not need the Robert Frost poem misinterpretation explained to me three times. Once would have sufficed.

It was a very good book and I won’t listen to a lot of the songs the same way again. I can’t wait to be even more insufferable now I know even more literary swiftie references

This is a really interesting read for anyone who wants to take the understanding of Swifts lyrics to another level. Packed full of literary references and interpretations. I think this would work really well as a physical book as I found myself wanting to flick between chapters and compare to the lyrics in more depth.

I am NOT a Swiftie; actually I have always been baffled by the power she wields over different generations of my students. Over 10 years ago, I had a KS4 student who was mesmerised by her songs. I chalked it down to a teenage girl 's longing for romance. But now I have KS2 students who are Swifties. Her fandom spans across a wide age range. I found that baffling. Her only songs that I knew of before today was her debut country song "You belong with me" and the much later dance song, "Shake it off". I could see how teenage girls could easily bond with the feelings of that lovesick heroine in "You Belong With Me", how the SNS generation could bond with that "To Hell With Them, I Do Me" attitude in "Shake It Off". But that was all that I knew about her. I was never intrigued enough by her songs, news or beauty to find out more about her.

As quite a few of my students love her, I requested this book. And it changed me. The book tries to see Swift's own growth in her unique Swift's world through the lyrics of her songs. It is really eye-opening. It drove me into watching a few of her lyrics videos. She is indeed a breath of fresh air in the Western pop music world where lyrics are often as graphic as a porn site video.

Admittedly, the book can be difficult to read at times due to the layout of the book, but it is a rather refreshing and intriguing look at a pop icon's work.

I am still NOT a Swiftie. But I am beginning to understand why she is so popular with my students.

This is a must have for Swifties and readers! I have been working through a Taylor Swift reading challenge that I created for myself to get through some of my TBRs but after reading this book I need to go back and redo some of the prompts! I cannot wait to get a physical copy of this book! As an academic I am adding Rachel to my list of dream collaborators! I have made a note to come back and post a goodreads and instagram review once I have physical copy so that I can show off the beautiful artwork