Rating: 
Summary: interesting but unsatisfying
Review: Much of Bloom's recent--that is, post-The Western Canon--fare has the flavor of being written for the sake simply of publishing another book or for broadcasting his literary affinities. Having some familiarity with Bloom's ideas and passions, I know this not to be the case; there's always something more to his books. Still, How to Read and Why possesses that written-on-the-fly quality, and while Bloom's assembly of diverse and interesting pieces of literature is excellent as always, I ultimately found the book to be unsatisfying.
Aside from some introductory hows and whys, the book never really explains, satisfactorily, how we should read and, more importantly, why. He speaks of reading to re-capturing irony, of reading to accustom ourselves to change (and especially to the final and universal change), of reading because we cannot hope to meet all people. This is all true, of course, and the book might have been more successful had he pursued those threads and others throughout the text. After the introduction, however, Bloom begins his analysis of literature, broken down into sections on short stories, poetry, plays, and novels. The analyses are often interesting, sometimes wrong (just my opinion...for example, his opinions of Flannery O'Connor and Dostoevsky are severely limited here, as they were in Bloom's more recent Genius; in How to Read and Why, both writers receive similar treatment from Bloom, in the form of D.H. Lawrence's admonition, "Trust the tale but not the teller"), but they are his; they show only one "how" of reading; they are not readily generalized.
Yes, literature is enriching and enlightening; it enhances the experience of being alive. The insights it offers are diverse and often debatable. That's all part of reading's allure. But too often Bloom allows his analyses of works to speak for themselves, to show by their simple existence how and why to read. Perhaps this is mildly justifiable, since most folks who pick up a Bloom book are likely bibliophiles themselves. Nevertheless, and even to a bibliophile like myself, the book proved interesting but not entirely enriching.
Rating: 
Summary: How to Reread a Book
Review: I love book talk. This is an interesting title for a book. We know Bloom has read a lot of books because he has written so many. Furthermore, we know he is a book fan, sort of like the customer reviewer except that he has more credentials. The question is would this book make a person excited about reading. Using the word praxis is off-putting, but then Professor Bloom probably does spend most of his time in an academic environment. The experience of reading Turgenev and Chekhov, masters of the short story, is considered. Bloom holds, appropriately, that Chekhov was the main influence on all short story writers coming after him. Chekhov has the great writer's wisdom. His "The Lady with the Dog" is worldly laconic in its universalism according to Bloom. Hemingway's short stories surpass his novels. I agree with Bloom that Hemingway achieves tragedy in "The Hills of Kilimanjaro." Short stories may be divided into fantasy and not fantasy. Short story writers refrain from moral judgment. The portion of the book on reading poetry presents ideas on poetry very clearly. A reader might start with William Savage Landor or A.E. Housman and move through others such as Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, (we have all read Wordsworth even if we haven't read him since his influence was so immense), Coleridge, Eliot, Stevens, Lawrence, Hardy. Emily Dickinson, as Shakespeare, seems to be impossible to categorize. Comparing Emily Dickinson to Emily Bronte is apt, it is very revealing of the oddness of each writer. Milton was a sect of one. He believed that the soul and body died together. PARADISE LOST identifies energy as equal to spirit. Even the presence of others cannot transform reading from a solitary to a social act. THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN calls to mind German high culture. HAMLET is about theatricality, not revenge. In HEDDA GABLER there is the horror of losing social respectibility. Bloom notes that in the case of an enlightened and fervent young reader, the first experience of love is toward a literary character.
Rating:
Summary: For the individual in us
Review: In this poignant and beautiful book, Harold Bloom tries to drive home the lesson that we must read to become individuals. And since the "individual" is a Western invention (and since Harold Bloom is unabashedly in love with Western literature) this book is meant to be a kind of beginner's guide to the truly great books in the Western tradition. This, of course, is a very individualistic guide. Missing from it, for example is one of my favorite English authors, George Orwell whose "Homage to Catalonia" if not "Animal Farm" surely deserved at least a few lines; missing too are the great poets Pushkin, Lermontov, and Byron. Virginia Woolf's name is mentioned a few times; her books, however are not. I could extend this list ad nauseum. But that, of course, is not the point. This is Harold Bloom's list, not mine; and it contains his breath-taking commentaries that follow one another in a kind of unbroken chain that seems to sing or tremble; not mine. The fast-moving commentaries are almost too much. I could not read this book in one sitting. Reading about another's perception's of Nabokov and Hemingway and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Milton and Faulkner and Ellison and Morrison (to name only a few of the authors mentioned in these 283 pages) in one sitting is, for me, impossible. I had to come up for air rather frequently. I had to think about what I had read; I had to let the words I had heard sink in-for, as Bloom points out, we must listen when we read. But in the end, I found the book well worth the effort. For this book teaches the patient and attentive reader something few books on literature will: that we should read not out of any ideology, not to better the world but to better ourselves. Or, as Rabbi Tarphon whose Pirke Abot saying Bloom quotes in his conclusion tells us tells us, "It is not necessary for you to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." Being an individual-thinking for yourself--is hard work. But while we draw breath it is our ethical responsibility to do just that.
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