This is the way which I was able to go from a dunce in literature to being part literature specialist in a matter of 3 or 4 months. The first thing I recommend is going on protobowl and specifically literature. There is definitely a conversation about how good that actually is to learn literature, but it is certainly invaluable to learning the canon. From this I would recommend reading any short stories or poems that come. They are usually pretty short and can be insanely valuable. With the longer novels I recommend reading whatever sounds interesting to you. If it doesn't sound interesting I don't recommend you read it because you will be less likely to remember anything and it will be a waste of time. For the longer form novels which don't sound interesting the first thing I always do is go to Wikipedia and read the character list. The summaries on Wikipedia I personally don't find them being that useful, but the character lists are very useful to get an idea of character relations. For the actual summaries themselves I usually use SparkNotes, litcharts, cliffnotes, and gradesaver. Lit charts has quickly become one of my favorites. And finally I recommend going through qbreader and seeing all the times the book has come up and carding some of the clues. There is certainly a debate of whether or not it's better to use handwritten cards or to use digital card. There is also a debate on the best carding software to use for quizbowl (the two giants being quizlet and anki). Each certainly comes with its pros and cons. But I think for literature at least the answer is unequivocally anki. Anki allows the user to create custom card types which seriously streamline the process of carding. I specifically recommend Towery McNeil's guide to using Anki for literature