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Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He has written more than 20 books of literary criticism. From a lifetime of writing and teaching about literature, this great scholar exhorts readers to consider the pleasures and benefits of reading well. Beginning with a basic question, "Why read?" Bloom offers his thoughts on works that form the canon of great literature. Short stories, poems, novels, and plays are held up to the light of Bloom's considerable intellect. Here are the authors that bear reading again and again, including Turgenev and Tennyson, Cervantes and Shakespeare. Harold Bloom's many honors include a MacArthur Prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy's Gold Medal for Criticism. As he shares his passion for literature, his discussion is made even more enthralling through John McDonough's warm narration.… (more)
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For the reasons listed above, I think this book merits a read to anyone who is curious about where or why to begin reading seriously. Whether in agreement or not, his suggestions will provide a good place to get started, and help in develop a critical eye toward reading and reviewing. I enjoyed the combination of familiar and unfamiliar authors, and quickly found my to-read list growing.
Discovering the confusion over authorship was not what subsequently upset me, upset being an understatement. Like
Instead, the book consists of listings of all novels, story collections, poems, etc which the author deems essential reading. Some of his choices are questionable, and apparently made only upon his eminent authority as an expert.
I had never read much in the way of short stories - always avoided them. After absorbing the opening section of this book, I had read collections by
This books just gets a two star because he did manage to wake up the interest for books I've intended to read for years but never gotten around too, but just two stars because of what I've written above.