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Summary: I wish I had the time ....
Review: A great book and another fine publication by the author. I wish I had the time to read two novels a week (in my dreams I could do it on a daily basis), but I agree that it is how we read, and how much we read that will make a difference in our lives. I watch my 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter fight over the remote control daily. They have no desire to read books whatsoever. I have faught many battles with them and I have lost the war. My hope is that one day they will too enjoy what great authors bring to our homes and fill our hearts.I still haven't lost the hope.
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Summary: LEADS BY THE HAND
Review: Once more, Bloom at his best: you have to love literature, if you discover it with him. He does away with pragmatism and dry criticism, and leads you through the marvels of narrative communication. In a world that is increasing its illiteracy, rather than decreasing it, I believe authors like Bloom have a magic wand with the word that must be praised for what it is: a gift for unravelling the deeper enjoyment of a classic.
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Summary: Our greatest advocate for the written word has done it again
Review: More than a mere summary of literary classics, this book is a passionate defense of engaged, informed reading. While the multitude (especially the young) read for credit, praise, or to pad college resumes, Bloom presents a more reasonable (and insightful) alternative: we read so that we might better know ourselves. Because Bloom abhors the current fashion of "socially relevant fiction" that attempts to right past wrongs, elevate historical victims, and assuage our collective guilt, he believes that only if we return to a "selfish" form of reading (in that the use, if there is any, for literature is to discover our natures as human beings) can we hope to resurrect the dying art of the novel. Bloom engages us in a journey through short stories, poetry, plays, and novels, always relying on the text (not some political motive or ideology) to illuminate our lives. Bloom cares first and foremost for the characters, situations, and language that allow us to connect in unparalled ways. That we as a nation should require a "why" when it comes to reading (and reading intelligently, for Bloom has no tolerance for our Oprah-ized obsession for supermarket drivel and tales of moral uplift) is depressing to be sure, but Bloom holds out hope. After all, he must. To contemplate a world in which we no longer have an answer to the "why" is one, frankly, not worth living in at all.
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Summary: enlightening as always
Review: Years ago I read an article in The New Yorker (or maybe New York Magazine -- it's been awhile) about Harold Bloom's nocturnal pattern of staying up all night and reading. He apparently required only a few hours of sleep and spent the rest of his days and nights devouring books. On a typical night, he'd read 2-3 novels! We should be grateful that perhaps the most prolific reader of all time and an academic is able to magnanimously share his reflections in a jargon-free idiom so unlike most literary criticism. His prose is always clear and free of lit. crit. vocabulary that only a specialist would know. For that reason alone, this book is a terrific read -- it makes the reader want to go out and buy all the novels discussed and read them. What could be a better effect that a book that generates increased reading? I've enjoyed the five or so books I've read by Harold Bloom not to mention his "Bloom's Notes" series on great literary works that puts Cliffs Notes to shame. His literary knowledge is so deep and so wide that everyone, even teachers who spent years teaching these books, can pick up some useful information. I particularly enjoyed his emphasis on memorizing poetry and the effect it can have on one's life. He made me run, not walk, to pick up Stendal's The Charterhouse of Parma which I can't wait to read.
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Summary: Why Not
Review: This book does for us what a college professor would do. Mr. Bloom gives the reader just enough information about the stories and books that he discusses to get us interested. I am and have always been a fan, so I was happy to see him in print again
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Summary: Become a more purposeful reader
Review: As Mel Grussow says in his review of Harold Bloom's last book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, "[a]s always, Bloom emphasizes the text." Indeed, Professor Bloom, the literary critic famous for his prodigious intellectual energy and certainly the most gifted contemporary of that dying breed, has been emphasizing the text - the classic plays and "free characters of themselves," as he calls them, which he understands profoundly - for the last thirty-four years at Yale University's path-breaking English Department. How to Read and Why, a change of pace, continues this prolific course forcibly and perspicuously. Bloom, in his most famous polemic, The Western Canon (1994), points out that the reading of literature always comes down to a matter of choice - that it is in fact impossible for anyone, especially anyone who has a life outside of reading literature, to read in one lifetime all the works generally considered canonical; those who value great literature should at least make a sustained effort to read of the canon what we reasonably can, to saturate ourselves in that acme's rich deposits of art. Bloom's warning against imposing upon fiction the "burden of improving society," is, I think, his soundest: we should not read to "expiate social guilt or reform bad institutions," and not write to appease the politically correct "School of Resentment." As always, upon finishing one of Bloom's book and thus compelled to revisit a mentioned text (I foremost desired Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"), we find that Bloom, grand old bard, has been right all along.
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Summary: "It is not necessary for you to complete the work "
Review: In the epilogue of this book Harold Bloom talks about Rabbi Tarphon's statement in ' Pirke Avot '(The Ethics of the Fathers) " It is not necessary for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from undertaking it". Harold Bloom has not desisted in reading and rereading the great works of Western Literature, and in so doing advocating to his readers that they too live in the 'enhanced consciousness' which great Literature gives. Here too Bloom reads and rereads some of the great works of the Tradition and provides whole new networks of insights and connections, inspirations and ideas for us to think about and make our own rereadings with. None of us Bloom laments will be able to read all the great and good books which have been written- and none of us will be able to reread as we could the great works already read by us, works which in some sense demand endless rereading- but each of us can be free to undertake the work and so far as possible know the joy and the difficulty , the pleasure and the insight , the sense of enhanced life, the love of meeting others and better knowing ourselves, which reading Literature gives.
Thank you Harold Bloom for enhancing our world with your exalted love of literature. May you go on reading and rereading for many years to come.
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Summary: Why read??? Why look at a painting?
Review: Because these things exist and continue existing in our minds, what other justification do you want? They lift up our imaginations and the imaginations of the artists. Bloom presumes anyone still cares about imagination. There was a newspaper article published here just recently that said adults don't read as much as we think. Of course they don't, they don't have time, they don't want to, they don't see the need to. They're too busy making money, going out and drinking, getting divorced, playing golf, etc etc etc. Keep this in mind, and this book becomes more a lament on where inquisitive minds have gone.
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Summary: A fun book, but doesn't deliver what it promises.
Review: I picked up How to Read and Why from the library and read it in two days; it was a very fun book and made me want to read more. Its biggest problem is that it simply doesn't tell you how to read. It tells you what to read. You'd be better served simply doing a Google search for the various short stories it covers in chapter 2. They're all good and you can find most of them online. I copied and pasted 5 of them (they're public domain) and printed them out. They're all worth reading. Basically, How to Read and Why is a fun book, but you might as well just buy the books that are listed in the index. Bloom doesn't add too much to them.
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Summary: Worshiping at the Altar of Shakespeare
Review: `Worshiping at the Altar of Shakespeare' would be a more appropriate title for Professor Bloom's book. Or possibly, `WHAT to Read and Why.' As it stands, `How to Read and Why' is excruciatingly inappropriate for what Bloom sets forth. Bloom asserts in his preface that his book teaches HOW to read and why. The word "how" presupposes that the reader requires instruction in beginning to read, in this case, some of the Western world's greatest literature. Anyone who is new to great literature certainly needs help in how to read it. Such a reader requires assistance in literary devices, content, historical significance, cultural influences, etc. inherent in the works. That type of foundation will help teach you HOW to read. Bloom gives no such help. Rather, he tells you WHAT to read, and why it should be read. (He also assumes that the reader comes to the table with an already vast knowledge of literature and "how" to read it.) Even if Bloom changed his title to `What to Read and Why,' he might as well call it, `Shakespeare is All You Need,' or `How to Read Shakespeare into All the Great Masterpieces of World Literature.' Sure, Shakespeare was profoundly influential (and continues to be) in the realm of literature, no one would deny that. But to CONSTANTLY compare every author and every piece of writing to Shakespeare is like telling a child, "That's good, Johnny, but you'll never be as good as your big brother, you know that, don't you?" Even Shakespeare himself would have to grow tired of all the adoration spewed out by Bloom. Enough already. Don't get me wrong - Bloom is obviously a genius. Anyone who read (and understood) Blake, Tennyson, and Browning at age eight, knows a thing or two. Bloom gives the reader prime examples of great literature. He just doesn't tell you HOW to read them; he tells you WHY. Another reviewer hit the nail on the head: Take the list of works that Bloom suggests, and read them for yourself. Try to find out something about them: the time they were written, the literary devices they use, the cultural and societal influences, the authors who wrote them. The more you discover, the more you will enjoy and appreciate these masterpieces. 283 pages
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