A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Harold Bloom is a prolific, highly decorated literary scholar who has taught at both Harvard and Yale.  The library has one of his books about Shakespeare.  Now we have this book, too: Till I End My Song .  It's a volume of last poems (or poems that Bloom has deemed last poems for whatever reason) by illustrious poets spanning several centuries. It is an intriguing and fascinating premise that is diminished and slightly soured by the pretentious tone of the editor's introductions for each poem.  A glaring oversight is the severe under representation of female poets.  One is nearly 150 pages into the volume and has read the last poems of thirty-four male poets before Bloom presents (finally) the last poem of Emily Bronte, the first female poet he spotlights. This book is available at the library, and lovers of poetry will enjoy this volume. --Reviewed by Ms. Angie

Have you ever gone through a spell where you just don't feel like reading?  For a while there I was reading and reviewing like the world was about to end (which it was supposed to at 6 p.m. Saturday or so I'm told) and then I hit a wall.  I went through several books that I started and didn't finish.  Then I decided to reserve a bunch, and, in the meantime, I borrowed a few from another library in an attempt to throw everything at the wall and see what stuck.  Now most of the books I reserved have come in, and there's a pile of books to read at home.  Hopefully the dry spell is over. The Island by Elin Hilderbrand is one of the last books I read before the reader's block started, and I just never got around to typing up the review.  It's the second Hilderbrand book that I've read. The rotating third person perspective gives the reader insight into the inner lives' of the characters and their past heartbreaks.  The island life and setting draws the...

The Tiger's Wife is Tea Obreht's debut novel; Obreht has made some prestigious young writers to watch lists (she's only 25), and thus, her debut novel was highly anticipated by many and has received rave reviews.  The novel is well written, but I must admit that I felt like the book was building up to an ending that never came.  While there aren't any fairy tale overtones to the story, parts of it are heavily drawn from the Godfather Death fairy tale. A doctor in an unnamed Balkan country still healing from a harrowing and brutal years long civil war that literally split the country in two, Natalia is on her way to inoculate the children of a remote and rural orphanage when she receives word that her beloved grandfather has died at a remote clinic nearby.  What follows is Natalia's attempt to make sense of both her grandfather's life and his death, specifically why he died where he died.  Natalia's grandfather's life and death are inexplicably tied to...

For those of you who enjoy poetry I'm sharing this link to the poem " Funeral Blues " by W. H. Auden.  The last stanza of the poem was used as an epigraph for the previously reviewed (see below) Pack Up The Moon by Anna McPartlin.  The novel's title comes from a line in the last stanza of "Funeral Blues."  I rather enjoyed the poem after I looked it up in its entirety and thought others would too. Wystan Hughes Auden (1907-1973) was born in York, England, but later achieved U.S. citizenship.  In addition to poetry, he also wrote many prose essays and reviews on a variety of themes that he also addressed in verse.  He was also involved in performance art and documentaries.  After teaching stints at the University of Michigan and Swarthmore College, Auden worked in Europe for the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey at the close of the second World War.  Upon completing this work he returned to the U.S. where he continued his teaching career at several Ameri...

I loved Pack Up The Moon the debut novel by Anna McPartlin, whose follow ups to this debut I have also read and reviewed for this blog.  In my review for Apart From The Crowd , which is the novel after this one but was written before Alexandra, Gone , which was the first McPartlin novel I read and reviewed, I thought that Apart was not as well written as Alexandra and that perhaps this reflected the novelist's growth as a writer between Apart and Alexandra .  But having read Pack Up and found it as well written and as good as Alexandra , I've now come to the conclusion that for whatever reason, there was just something a little off with the writing in Apart .  I loved Pack Up The Moon and I love Anna McPartlin--she has most definitely gained another fan.  I'll refrain from worrying about when her next novel will drop until after I've finished As Sure As The Sun which is the last McPartlin novel I haven't read. Have I said I loved this book?  Well, I di...