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Lit Kit. Kitul De Spravietuire In Literatura Occidentala (2013)

by Sandra Newman(Favorite Author)

4.11 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Baroque Books & Arts

review 1: I was an English major in college. I had been steered away from Mathematics (which is a whole other story), I knew I wanted to be a librarian and I liked to read. What choice did I have about my major? However, I managed to graduate without reading many of the classics. So I am always fascinated by books like The Western Lit Survival Kit. I wonder what I missed.Newman not only gave me info about the books I missed but also reminded me of some great works that I had enjoyed and not thought about since college days. I like her sense of humor and her rating system works well, in my opinion. All in all this was a book that I enjoyed and I may return to it to pick out some titles to read in the future.I recommend this book to those of us who graduated from college withou... moret reading all the great classics; to people looking for interesting, free books for their Kindle or Nook and to those folks who have read these books and want a good laugh.Using Ms Newman's own rating system, I give her a five for importance (in the grand scheme of life this is not too too important), a ten for accessibility and a 15 for fun. I had a great time with this book.
review 2: This is not meant to be a serious study of literature, which should be obvious from the title. It's a fun, quick read although the contrived humour is sometimes a bit irksome--since it's not really that funny, especially when she waxes poetic about speculations of certain writers' sexual orientation. I found it a bit strange is that once we get past the classical era, she seems to focus nearly exclusively on English (by that I mean British/Irish/American) and French lit, with a bit of Italian and Russian stuff thrown in for good measure.Towards the end, she seems to be rushing to finish the manuscript (at least it reads like she wrote it linearly). She leaves out a lot of important writers from the past two centuries--where's Rilke? Barrett Browning? Shaw? Orwell? Tolkien? The existentialists? And why leave these people out but include Nerval?That said, the book is a fun read and has some interesting anecdotes about how authors lived and how people lived at the time--many of which are made up or embellished for the sense of trying to sound funny. I can't stress enough that it's not meant to be a real "survival kit" and probably isn't a fun read for people who aren't already at least somewhat familiar with major works of literature. Literary snobs who take themselves too seriously probably won't enjoy it much either. Most others will find it a fun, quick, lighthearted and somewhat goofy look into the lives of some of our best-known writers. less

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