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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
at the beginning of every school year in high school, i would flip through my english textbook to see if there were any edgar allan poe tales in it. and then i would read it even if it wasn't part of our curriculum. edgar allan poe is awesome.
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Took a while to finish but wow, everything Edgar Allan Poe has done in one book. I was mostly wanting to read it because I read some of his short stories in high school. What story really intrigued me was his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Reminded me of The Wager by David Grann.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This isn’t what I meant to spend all of February reading… oops. I can’t rate Him any less than 5 stars.
I don't like audio books very much. I can see their use if I commuted in a car, but since I take the train, I read. However, this is one of the few audios that I love.
Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone reading Poe is just the best. It is so AWESOME! So CREEPY! So PERFECT!
It helps that both Price and Rathbone are known for playing villans. Yes, I know Rathbone played Sherlock HOlmes, but I remember him best from Flynn's Robin Hood and that version of Richard II, The Tower of London I think it was called. (Anyway, for me the best Holmes is Jermey Brett).
Price, of course, is known for his various roles in various (somewhat bad) adaptions of Poe tales. If you like Poe and if you like creepy, this is worth the price. It includes the more famous tale as well as some poems.
Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone reading Poe is just the best. It is so AWESOME! So CREEPY! So PERFECT!
It helps that both Price and Rathbone are known for playing villans. Yes, I know Rathbone played Sherlock HOlmes, but I remember him best from Flynn's Robin Hood and that version of Richard II, The Tower of London I think it was called. (Anyway, for me the best Holmes is Jermey Brett).
Price, of course, is known for his various roles in various (somewhat bad) adaptions of Poe tales. If you like Poe and if you like creepy, this is worth the price. It includes the more famous tale as well as some poems.
I absolutely adore Edgar Allan Poe. This series is in a logical order and is quite refreshing. I recommend reading it yearly in the Fall.
Did quite a bit of Poe reading in high school: hated his stories - too macabre for me. Really enjoyed the poetry. Maybe it's because I finally aced a paper on them from a really hard teacher, or it could be that they spoke to me.
This was a beast of a book and I read it all. I appreciated the Introduction and the brief history of EAP's life. His poems were all impressive and dark and mostly about death. Some of his earlier stories were lost on me, but I started to perk up once I got to Hans Phaall. I enjoyed his imagination and trickery in this story about traveling to the moon in a hot air balloon--what imagery and construction to be able to imagine and contrive what it could be like to travel to the moon before the airplanes or spaceships were invented. Ligeia was intense and kept me wrapt. King Pest was a dark and somewhat comical story, with its characters reminding of the movie Beetlejuice. The story of William Wilson reminded me of a Victorian Fight Club and Tyler Durden. I thought The Gold Bug was clever but also after so many years had passed, wouldn't it be likely that the landscape had changed and the angles be thrown off by those changes? How can nature guarantee its permanence that way? Seems unlikely. The Premature Burial was one of my favorite stories because of the real terror back then, before all the medical and science advancements we have today, of burying a person before they are actually dead. We take this for granted now, because we may think, "How could they not know that a person was still alive?" But I think back then, without heart monitors and all the technology we have today, it was harder to tell than we can imagine. This story was clever in describing the meticulous way the narrator set up precautions to avoid a premature burial due to his catalepsy, then to the scary realization that the most feared thing had happened to him, then to the twist that it wasn't actually happening. It was a double twist. I also appreciated the morbidness of The Oblong Box and Thou Art the Man. My favorite story is still The Cask of Amontillado which I remember reading in high school and I was nicely surprised to find it in this book because I didn't know it was written by EAP! I like this story even more than The Tell-Tale Heart, which for some reason didn't strike me as all that memorable or scary. This story, however, was vicious and sociopathic, taking revenge to a great extreme. Coincidence that it starts on page 666?
His short novel (?) "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" was very entertaining and distressing to read. I definitely felt that the tale was told by someone who experienced it firsthand, which, if EAP didn't, confirms his talent for storytelling and writing and/or reporting. Extremely well done.
I didn't get too much out of the "Criticism" section, but I did enjoy his explanation of "The Raven" that was in "The Philosophy of Composition" and I skimmed through and didn't understand much of his discussion of verse, though if I wanted to do an in depth study of it, I'd read his writing on this more closely.
"My eyes, from the cruel pressure of the machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets. While I was thinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the main building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it was out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and blinking were never before seen. This behavior on the part of my eye in the gutter was not only irritating on account of its manifest insolence and shameful ingratitude, but was also exceedingly inconvenient on account of the sympathy which always exists between two eyes of the same head, however far apart. I was forced, in a manner, to wink and to blink, whether I would or not, in exact concert with the scoundrelly thing that lay just under my nose. I was presently relieved, however, by the dropping out of the other eye. In falling it took the same direction (possibly a concerted plot) as its fellow. Both rolled out of the gutter together, and in truth I was very glad to get rid of them." From A Predicament pg. 247 [Haha, I loved this!]
"...this 'little cliff' arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within half dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance." From A Descent into the Maelstrom pg. 341 [I would totally behave the same way with heights!]
"Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ears with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrow which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries." From The Colloquy of Monos and Una pg. 362
"...the Chevalier dismissed the affair at once from his attention, and relapsed into his old habits of moody revery. Prone, at all times, to abstraction, I readily fell in with his humor; and continuing to occupy our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams." From The Mystery of Marie Roget pg. 397
"The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner's and get embalmed for a couple of hundred years." From Some Words with a Mummy pg. 634
"The long imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul. They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon. But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless! -- but where?" From The Imp of the Perverse pg. 641
"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." From The Cask of Amontillado pg. 666
"When one has nothing to do, then is the time to correspond with one's friends. You perceive, then, why it is that I write you this letter--it is on account of my ennui and your sins. Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage." pg. From Mellonta Tauta pg. 684 {A truthful and demanding frenemy!]
"So intense an expression of romance, perhaps I should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which gleamed from her deep-set eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of hearts before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. 'Romance,' provided my readers fully comprehended what I would here imply by the word--'romance' and 'womanliness' seem to me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood." From Landor's Cottage pg. 720
"He goes wrong by reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a natural type in the contemplation of a star. He who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray--while he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below--its brilliancy and its beauty." From Letter to B___ pg. 858
"The increase, within a few years, of the magazine literature, is by no means to be regarded as indicating what some critics would suppose it to indicate--a downward tendency in American taste or in American letters. It is but a sign of the times, an indication of an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the condensed, the well-digested in place of the voluminous--in a word, upon journalism in lieu of dissertation. We need now the light artillery rather than the peace-makers of the intellect. I will not be sure that men at present think more profoundly than half a century ago, but beyond question they think with more rapidity, with more skill, with more tact, with more of method and less of excrescence in the thought. Besides all this, they have a vast increase in the thinking materials; they have more facts, more to think about. For this reason, they are disposed to put the greatest amount of thought in the smallest compass and disperse it with the utmost attainable rapidity. Hence the journalism of the age; hence, in especial, magazines. Too many we cannot have, as a general proposition; but we demand that they have sufficient merit to render them noticeable in the beginning, and that they continue in existence sufficiently long to permit us a fair estimation of their value." From Marginalia pg. 1046 [Sort of like how things are now with 140 characters and blogs...but fear of deterioration of the proper sentence with such phrases as "I can't even. Bye. I'm dead." or "That moment when...append slightly illustrative photo" or "When blah blah blah happens...append slightly illustrative photo"]
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
His short novel (?) "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" was very entertaining and distressing to read. I definitely felt that the tale was told by someone who experienced it firsthand, which, if EAP didn't, confirms his talent for storytelling and writing and/or reporting. Extremely well done.
I didn't get too much out of the "Criticism" section, but I did enjoy his explanation of "The Raven" that was in "The Philosophy of Composition" and I skimmed through and didn't understand much of his discussion of verse, though if I wanted to do an in depth study of it, I'd read his writing on this more closely.
"My eyes, from the cruel pressure of the machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets. While I was thinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the main building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it was out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and blinking were never before seen. This behavior on the part of my eye in the gutter was not only irritating on account of its manifest insolence and shameful ingratitude, but was also exceedingly inconvenient on account of the sympathy which always exists between two eyes of the same head, however far apart. I was forced, in a manner, to wink and to blink, whether I would or not, in exact concert with the scoundrelly thing that lay just under my nose. I was presently relieved, however, by the dropping out of the other eye. In falling it took the same direction (possibly a concerted plot) as its fellow. Both rolled out of the gutter together, and in truth I was very glad to get rid of them." From A Predicament pg. 247 [Haha, I loved this!]
"...this 'little cliff' arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within half dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance." From A Descent into the Maelstrom pg. 341 [I would totally behave the same way with heights!]
"Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ears with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrow which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries." From The Colloquy of Monos and Una pg. 362
"...the Chevalier dismissed the affair at once from his attention, and relapsed into his old habits of moody revery. Prone, at all times, to abstraction, I readily fell in with his humor; and continuing to occupy our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to the winds, and slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams." From The Mystery of Marie Roget pg. 397
"The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner's and get embalmed for a couple of hundred years." From Some Words with a Mummy pg. 634
"The long imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul. They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon. But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be fetterless! -- but where?" From The Imp of the Perverse pg. 641
"The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge." From The Cask of Amontillado pg. 666
"When one has nothing to do, then is the time to correspond with one's friends. You perceive, then, why it is that I write you this letter--it is on account of my ennui and your sins. Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage." pg. From Mellonta Tauta pg. 684 {A truthful and demanding frenemy!]
"So intense an expression of romance, perhaps I should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which gleamed from her deep-set eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of hearts before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. 'Romance,' provided my readers fully comprehended what I would here imply by the word--'romance' and 'womanliness' seem to me convertible terms: and, after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood." From Landor's Cottage pg. 720
"He goes wrong by reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a natural type in the contemplation of a star. He who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray--while he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below--its brilliancy and its beauty." From Letter to B___ pg. 858
"The increase, within a few years, of the magazine literature, is by no means to be regarded as indicating what some critics would suppose it to indicate--a downward tendency in American taste or in American letters. It is but a sign of the times, an indication of an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the condensed, the well-digested in place of the voluminous--in a word, upon journalism in lieu of dissertation. We need now the light artillery rather than the peace-makers of the intellect. I will not be sure that men at present think more profoundly than half a century ago, but beyond question they think with more rapidity, with more skill, with more tact, with more of method and less of excrescence in the thought. Besides all this, they have a vast increase in the thinking materials; they have more facts, more to think about. For this reason, they are disposed to put the greatest amount of thought in the smallest compass and disperse it with the utmost attainable rapidity. Hence the journalism of the age; hence, in especial, magazines. Too many we cannot have, as a general proposition; but we demand that they have sufficient merit to render them noticeable in the beginning, and that they continue in existence sufficiently long to permit us a fair estimation of their value." From Marginalia pg. 1046 [Sort of like how things are now with 140 characters and blogs...but fear of deterioration of the proper sentence with such phrases as "I can't even. Bye. I'm dead." or "That moment when...append slightly illustrative photo" or "When blah blah blah happens...append slightly illustrative photo"]
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.