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Currently?
In paper (there doesn't seem to be an ebook), Northrup Frye's _Anatomy of Criticism_. As Frye put it in his introduction "This book forced itself upon me when I was trying to write something else." He had done a study of William Blake (_Fearful Symmetry_) and wanted to tackle Spenser's Faerie Queen next, but found himself first writing a volume on the theory of allegory, which expanded to a full scale theory of criticism.
Frye uses the term "poetry" for what he discusses, but his concerns are greater, and he complains at one point that there is no general technical term for a work of prose fiction, and that "novel", while normally used, is by no means comprehensive.
Next up in paper is Eric Auerbach's _Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature_.
In electronic form, it's G. K. Chesterton's _The Outline of Sanity_, where he argues in favor of Distributism, and asserts that the problem with Capitalism is not too many Capitalists, but too few. Events have rather overtaken him, and you can argue we have what he proposes, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Along with that, one of Dorothy Sayer's "Peter Wimsey" mysteries, _Clouds of Witness_.
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Dennis
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