Pittsburgh Books

I am envious of Michael Chabon. To have the skill to write such a near perfect book for your first novel is remarkable. It is also a shame that this book is overshadowed by "Kavalier and Clay" and the "Wonder Boys" since it shouldn't take a back seat to either of those novels.

The book explores the first summer post-college for Art Bechstein. Chabon's portrait of Art -- the strained and tense relationship with his father, the family tradegy still haunting him from his youth, his sexual experimentation and fleeting friendships makes for a most compelling read -- is pure genius.

Chabon created memorable characters -- Art Lecomte, Cleveland, Phlox and Art's father -- and it was also a masterstroke to keep the setting in the smaller industrial town of Pittsburgh rather than a larger and more commonplace city like NY, LA, Chicago or Boston. The characters felt like a larger part of the local environment rather than one of many nameless and faceless disaffected youth.

The chapter taking place at Jane's parents house while Art L housesits and the the encounter of Jane's dog with their neighbors is worth the price and read of the book alone -- it is hilarious.

When Art Bechstein was finally able to leave Washington, D.C., and his mob father behind, he ran to Pittsburgh to attend school. His last summer in the sweltering city proved to be an exciting and intriguing adventure.

The handsome and personable Arthur Lecomte introduces Art to women, sex and a new way of life, but with the arrival of Arthur's mysterious friend, Cleveland, Art must face his father and the "family" he tried to forget.
Michael Chabon's debut novel, set in the 80s, is a coming-of-age tale of excess, sex and friendship. It paints a different side of the crumbling steel city, a side of grit and grime, where the unexpected is lurking behind every corner.

Chabon's writing is colorful and imaginative, but the story lacks real excitement. It is slow to take off and quickly fizzles. It is a story that is always on the edge of breaking through, but never pushes the reader over the ledge.

"Mysteries" is an easy read that doesn't force the reader to think too much. In short, if you don't want a tough plot that twists and turns like a rollercoaster, then this book is it.

I loved the flow of language and the development of character. This story develops like a fairy tale with a gritty edge and depth of reality that makes the reading a profound experience.

I received this book for Christmas 3 or 4 years ago and finally read it last weekend. I am very sad that I've missed out on Chabon's beautiful prose style until now and I am going to remedy this post-haste. I thought the narrative drive of this book, its sense of tragedy and events coming to an unavoidable head, was very powerful. I enjoyed Art Bechstein's character immensely. I enjoyed the others a little less--with the notable exception of Cleveland. I wish Cleveland had had more face time in the book. While Phlox and Arthur are there just to allow Bechstein to discover his sexual identity, or so it often seems, Cleveland highlights one of Bechstein's far more interesting, in my opinion, character issues--his relationship with his father and his father's profession, and the issue of being honest with one's self about anything period. My main complaint- and it's not really a complaint, just a comment- about the novel is that it is rather disjointed. For 100 pages or so Art/ Flox/ Arthur are just buddies and then all of a sudden, it becomes about Art being gay. Cleveland's self-immolation, positively Wagnerian, is also a bit sudden. However, this book was never dull and was always emotionally moving, and I am looking forward to reading more Chabon soon.

This is can be a very painful book to read. All of the characters are larger than life except the women. Or should I say the woman, the female love interest who turns out to be a cardboard doofus. All the cool guys are cooler than frozen cucumbers; they are physically formidable and intellectually blank (as is the current ideal). Daddy is a gangster. Sonny is clueless. Then he discovers homosexuality. Wow! Brave new world that has such magical, mystical, manliness. I can't put it down fast enough.

I really enjoyed Picnic, Lightning. I like poetry a lot. I really enjoyed this book because you can relate yourself to it in so many differnt ways. Anyone who reads a poem from this book and interpret it in their own way. You can make the poem be whatever you want it to be.

For example, i was reading Aristotle and the futher i got into the poem i started to think he might have been talking to a high school student and giving them a dose of reality. I started to ponder this and realized that the title was Aristotle. Billy Collins was speaking of life itself. Anybody can relate to a poem if you just give it the time of day.

Overall, the book was nicely put together. I enjoy the fact that Billy Collilns isn't like every other poet. He takes ordinary things that would happen in a day and elaborates. He has his own style and he sticks with it no matter what critics may say. I was really into the book. It's one i can say "hits the spot."

I love Billy Collins, he is a genious poet. He can take the most mundane topics, turning ten, a new day, a peach, and make them in to fascinating topics to read about.

I would like to note however - the paradelle is NOT a real form of poetry from 11th century France. He made it up. You've been hoaxed if you believed this. It may be hard to write - but intentionally so. The man prefers free verse - he was mocking fixed styles.

So if you here any comments about the questionable quality of "A Paradelle for Susan" - try to remember - this was intentional!

Thank you.

I don't know what else to say about Billy Collins that I haven't said elsewhere. He's a remarkable poet, who does his thing and does it well. Picnic, Lightning is a pretty solid collection of poems, though if you have Collins's selected poems there's no need to pick this one up. Those that weren't included in the selected aren't very good, with the exception of "I Go Back to the House For a Book," which I think is a marvelous poem and should have been included in the selected poems.

Billy Collins fulfills Wordsworth's image of "spots of time" captured and later reflected upon. Though Collins's messages and meanings are subtler than Wordsworth's, Collins connects with feelings and moments common to many of us. His inspiration from daily life, from which he draws Keillor-esque observations, quenched my fears that as a writer, I must draw from exotic experiences uncommon to my readers. A peaceful read at Saturday breakfast.

"I like writing about where I am,
where I happen to be sitting,
The humidity or the clouds,
The scene outside the window-
A pink tree in bloom,
A neighbor walking his small, nervous dog."

Billy Collins seems to have moments of brilliance within poems discussing ordinary aspects of everyday living. Is this part of his charm? I think for someone to find beauty in the ordinary, you have to have a vivid imagination and transform the simple into the magnificent.

Collins was reappointed to the post of U.S. Poet Laureate in the summer of 2002. He travels throughout the country for readings, lectures and is well loved by his audiences.

While some reviewers don't feel his poetry has beauty, I think the beauty is when you connect with a specific poem. In this book, I had to read all the way to page 39 before anything really "struck" me as amazing. There is a cute poem about breakfast, a story of fishing and then on page 17 I found: "no matter what the size the aquarium of one's learning, another colored pebble can always be dropped in."

I think what I like is the conversational style. Billy seems to mostly be talking to the reader or explaining a situation that he enjoyed. There is a casual elegance in his poems. He invites you to journey with him through the poems, although at times Collins throws in a highly imaginative sentence or an entire poem that throws you for an intellectual loop. Billy Collins vocabulary is stunning all on its own. The way he blends the words into images and colors is more than impressive.

In "Journal" you can imagine yourself walking in the dark, downstairs in a robe and trying to compose an entry in a journal. Any writer knows, you can hardly go to sleep when thoughts are pouring out of your mind and begging to be dripped through a pen onto a new page.

My favorite poem in this book was: "I Go Back to the House for a Book" because anyone who loves reading can relate to being stranded without a book. Here one part of himself goes back to the house while another part races off into the world. He plays with a similar idea in "The Night House," where his body, heart, mind and soul go to different areas of the house.

"Moon" is rather interesting. Here, Collins speaks of our inner child and how even if we don't have a child, we can care for our inner child. I have to laugh when I read "Paradelle for Susan," because even the poem sounds nervous. Collins repeats most of the lines. Apparently a Paradelle is not that easy to write and it might be a fun challenge to try to write your own poem in this "fixed form."

Reading the poems in "Picnic, Lightning" might make you feel slightly poetic yourself.

Pittsburgh Press has issued special limited edition hardcovers of three of Billy Collins' books: Questions about Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. I'm thinking I need to find an autographed copy of "Questions about Angels." If you are just starting to read poems by Billy Collins, I'd start with "Questions about Angels."

~The Rebecca Review

This exhaustive, comprehensive and completely detailed masterpiece is a complete post-revisionist account of Reconstruction, providing analysis of every conceivable angle. It includes a convincing refutation of the Dunning school, why a revisionist school emerged, the nuts and bolts of Presidential Reconstruction, why "Radical Reconstruction" was never truly radical. The book describes how the undertaking was too vast for a small 19th century central government, why the state governments were unwilling and unable to deliver very much, and how ultimately, the effort failed.

There is an abridged version of this work for the general reader. However, I suggest a reading of the longer book. Even at 600 pages, it is worth it. As other reviewers have pointed out, this is the definitive account of reconstruction.

If you are looking for a cursory overview of the Reconstruction years following the American Civil War, this is NOT the book for you. However, if you are not afraid to take on a lot of historical facts, this is a good book that covers the political waxing and waning era. I've often wondered how we got from such a "righteous cause" to the turn of the century civil rights mess we had. This book helped me better understand the realities of the times. Not easy to read but worth the effot.

The period of post civil war reconstruction has largely been a mystery to me from the perspective of a mid-twentieth century public education. With the dearth of social ills now confronting us that previously could hardly have been imagined, I decided to take the time and read Froner's dense prize-winning account of reconstruction for any insights to why America seems to be failing so many of its citizens. Froner's deconstruction of the period is nothing short of a revelation - from the beginnings of class antagonisms, capital speculation and political influence, a brightline extends from the Reconstruction period directly to today's social ills, prejudice, war profiteering, crime and the prison-industrial complex, neoconservative agenda's and shady corporate deals. The wealth of documented source evidence and period pieces leave little doubt of the historical accuracy evident in the work - it is dense, fact-filled and notated, a sampling of which I double checked personally. Reconstruction illustrates that the abuses of our Constitution aren't new or original, but only the current incarnations of an evil born out of the greed and selfishness that pre-empted a rare opportunity to fulfill the promises made by our founding fathers. This is a must read book - more so today in light of the neoconservative and fascist resurgence cloaked in bloody patriotism and false morality. Facts add weight to the truth of history and the credibility of the author.

I finished this book this weekend. It took me the better part of the summer to get through the 600+ pages of text. This is not an easy read, in many cases it was downright depressing. Oftentimes, I stopped because I just couldn't read anymore. There was only so much 'man's inhumanity to man' you can take. While good, and righteous people sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

Other times this book had me racing to Google or Wikipedias to bring back knowledge about people and places Foner describes more fully. For all the salacious things said about the Radical Republicans a huge debt is owed to Senator Thaddeus Stevens. He led the charge for overturning President Johnson's veto on the 13th Amendment and help craft the 14th and 15th as well. Steven's was a visionary, and had we done what he advocated we might have preempted 100 years of prolonged guerilla warfare after the Civil War. I read that Steven's home in Lancaster, PA was being destroyed to build a convention center. It ironic because everywhere I go in the South there is yet another memorial to Lee, or Jackson, or some other aspect of the 'Lost Cause' yet no one has the fortitude to save the memory of this great American; Thaddeus Stevens.

Sad, tragic... just like this book.

This textbook was one of the first to point out the less-than-rosy treatment of blacks in the Reconstruction era, and such a text was long overdue. However, the narrative is painfully long and regularly repeats material covered in a previous chapter. You inevitably come to feel that Foner felt - in his eagerness to show the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - that it was better to overwhelm the reader with repetition than to risk a single point being lost. One begins to crave a good editor for Mr. Foner, which is unfortunate because this book - for all its faults) really does an admirable job of pointing out the plight of the ex-slave in the South. Bottom line: Reconstruction should be read, but the reading is very painful.

Based on Canin's short stories, I confidently expected to love this novel. I am not going to argue that Carry Me Across the Water is a bad book, but I was not nearly as impressed as I expected to be.

I am not sure that I am smart enough to exactly pinpoint what did not work. I certainly appreciated it as I was reading it. As I sit here now to try to find the words to describe the flaws, I keep coming up with "forgettable" and "weak". All the same, "weak" is not correct. Canin is too good of a writer for that. "Diluted" is maybe more appropriate. It is as though what I like about his short stories is not concentrated enough to hold my attention here throughout the book. August Kleinman is an interesting enough character. The events in his life should also have been interesting enough. But still, it just didn't do it for me.

There is enough of the flavor here of personal taste to suggest that you try the novel for yourself to see what you think. Since I cannot really define why it did not work, it may well be my issue rather than the novels. Still, I think that I am going to circle back around to his short stories and remember what I liked so much in the first place.

Three stars, really. But I cannot give a writer this strong less than four stars.

After the major disappointment of For Gods and Planets, Canin again displays a mastery of his craft in Carry Me Across the Water. What a pleasure to find a novel that can be comfortably read in a couple of days yet leaves a deep emotional impression. I disagree with the reviewer who complained about the form, which uses flashbacks and cuts between various scenes in the protagonist's life; there's nothing confusing about it, and it works beautifully. I do agree that Canin has brought to bear his skill as a short story writer in conveying the essence of a good novel without the tedium of endless descriptions and meandering plot lines. For those looking for a complex interweaving of many well-developed characters, look elsewhere; this is the story of one man's life, in which all other characters are supporting, existing only through the lens of his aging eyes in order to help us understand how he feels as he approaches the end of his life, and why. Those reviewers who found the man unsympathetic perhaps are just not as familiar with their own irritable side as they hopefully will be eventually. I found the portrait very true to my experience. Canin seems to do much better with older characters; his young people tend to be two-dimensional, but he has a wonderful grasp of the subtleties of the minds of people much older than he is himself.

After For Gods and Planets I wondered whether Canin was capable of writing a good novel. As I finished the last page of this one, I said out loud to myself, "A good book."

Usually Ethan Canin is a wonderful writer. This book, however, is not up to his other work.
Perhaps it's because the reader can't ever gain enough sympathy for the protagonist--August Kleinman is cardboard cutout of a man who cheats, lies, amasses wealth, tries (improbably) to atone for a past sin and yet, is unpleasant to almost everyone in his daily life--(except when the person happens to be a lovely young Latina who brings out his 'protective' side-- to whom he makes a gesture that seems predictable and silly.)
The reader is clearly supposed to see August as a world weary, crotchety 'ole coot, with a sad history behind him (that disallows good manners) but a heart of gold. It just doesn't work.
He just comes off as irritating and shallow.
The device of making him a checkout-bagger is condescending and unreal. He doesn't have enough kindness or dimension to make him believable in this role. (Except--of course--his kindness to the aforementioned pretty lady.)
All in all, a surprisingly bad book from a good writer.

Canin, a writing professor at the University of Iowa, reminds me of Richard Yates in that I refer to each of them as a writer's writer. Both of these writers have very different strengths (and their lives have other points of intersection), but each has a way of producing work that is technically wonderful, while at the same time being an entertaining story. In this instance, Canin weaves a story about August Kleinman, a Jewish man who escaped the Holocaust and fought oversees in the Pacific. The story weaves August at multiple time periods and we jump from perspective to perspective seamlessly. That's the strongest aspect of this novel - the way Canin takes us to different points in August's life, while maintaining our complete and utter belief that this is the same person at different developmental stages in each instance. Another way to look at this novel is through its "tightness." Canin does a great job of linking things together and of providing closure to almost every single detail that he includes. This novel seems like it could have been written in two days or two years.

I highly recommend the book to people who enjoy reading technically saavy material. Rarely will you find work that is successful at pushing itself stylistically without compromising the plotline. Buy it and enjoy.

August Kleinman is a a man in his 70s who has fully experienced life, from his escape out of Germany as a child to his service in WWII to his lucrative career as a business entrepreneur. Now, his beloved wife has passed away, and Augie struggles with maintaining a relationship with his son and new grandson while also trying to come to terms with his guilt about past mistakes. Author Canin skillfully weaves stories of the past--Augie's experiences as a soldier in Japan, the progression of his marriage--with those of the present--namely, Augie's interactions with his remaining family and a return trip to Japan. Although the frequent changes in setting could have been disorienting, Canin keeps the reader grounded with use of simple yet enchanting language. Slowly but surely, the story of Augie's life enfolds, coming to a satisfying conclusion while still leaving the reader with questions about Augie's exact fate. Sweet without being overly sentimental, this is a short novel with a wide appeal.

Beautiful! That's one of the few words this author knows. Someone please get her a thesaurus! This is one of the poorest books I've ever read. I bought it because of the great review in "Entertainment Weekly." They're usually right on target, but this time I was TAKEN in.

I'm really surprised at the reviews that found 'Taken' boring.
I can't remember the last time I read a book so compelling! You probably do need some kind of interest in babies, and the inconsistencies of character that all humans deal with, to like this book though. I will definitely be buying more of George's books.

I took this mystery along with me to France. I started reading it and stayed up all night to finish it. I love the way George pieces everything together. I find this style more interesting than the typical "who dunit" where one has no idea who is guilty to the end. Marina and the cop are great characters. Even the bad guys were interesting.

Unfortunately, I have to say this book was boring. It was so hard to read. The plot was so poorly put together, that I had a very hard to finishing it. I'm sad to say I can not recommend this book.

This book was almost a pain to read. The characters were hard to relate to and I personally found them unlikable. I think the author dragged on the plot too much. I stopped reading almost at the end because I realized I did not care about these characters that did not seem realistic at all.

This novel, although mostly a series of vignettes with only the slightet of plot and character development, never the less delivers a harrowing descripton of the Mexican Revolution.

book is excellente. I would recommend this acclaimed book for further study anytime. I appreciate the simplicity and outright insight in the time of a heartless revolution. Please pick this book up when you have the time.

matthew ellsworth

The translation or something about the way it was written made it a bit confusing at first, but once you "get" the "writing style" of the book, you will be glad you kept reading.

Mariano Azuela's novel about a group of men fighting in the decade-long Mexican Revolution is a seminal work in Latin American literature. As the concluding essay notes, Azuela's ability to accurately depict all that is most surreal in reality was the starting point for more modern magical realist authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a stand-out novel written in a sparse, at times dreamlike style.

The Underdogs, or Los de Abajo, reveals Azuela's ambivalence about the Revolutionary movement. While it is clear that the men persecuting the hero, Demetrio Macias, are not the men one wants controlling the state, Azuela also doesn't hesitate to depict the revolutionaries themselves as bandits, stealing from the peasants they are supposed to defend. The conflict over whether the Mexican Revolutionaries were soldiers or bandits is one that may be found in history books. Azuela's semi-autobiographical novel doesn't offer an answer to that question, but it does provide what some of the most famous historical literature does not: a depiction of the hellishness of war. In that alone, it is a good companion reading to any nonfiction accounts of the Revolution.

Frederick Fornoff's translation is mostly well-done, though his decision not to keep in the dialect in which most of the characters speak is, in my opinion, a poor one. There was an enormous cultural divide between the average revolutionary and the Mexicans living in cities or haciendas. I feel that Azuela's original language reflected that divide. However, this edition is still worth buying, because the concluding essay on Azuela's place in Latin American and epic literature is both poignant and revealing. The Underdogs is a grand novel, for both literature and history buffs.

THE UNDERDOGS may well be about the spirit of the Mexican people, as some other reviews have suggested, but its conclusions are quite different. Don't think this is some inspiring story of the noble masses and their unconquerable spirit!

Azuela was writing in response to previous romantic depictions of the Mexican revolution -- you know, Pancho Villa the poor heroic figure of the countryside. Many had argued -- and still are, as you can see from some of these other reviews -- that the revolution was a turning point and created a new, more modern mexico.

In response, Azuela skewered the revolution. His story has almost no dates or locations -- you won't learn anything about the historical facts, as the encyclopedia would define them, of the revolution from this book. What Azuela does depict are the people and their spirit -- but he does this in shockingly unflattering terms.

Much of the book is a parade of violent scene after violent scene. Houses are ransacked, artwork destroyed, people casually killed, women casually raped. For U.S. audiences today, the book might remind us of the film NATURAL BORN KILLERS in terms of its consistent violence with little morality attached.

Moreover, these are not revolutionaries with much of an idea what they are doing. Yes, they are the underdogs of the title. But the underdogs do not want a better state -- a better nation. They mock Cervantes, the intellectual among them. No, the underdogs want to be top dog -- to exploit just as those they replace.

This devastating message is the one the book leaves us: the revolution meant nothing, achieved nothing, and was nothing but Mexico's underdogs lashing out savagely.

It is an easy and enjoyable read, but it can leave you with a Nietzchean feeling that none of this matters...

-- Julian Darius

Handler is so good at mastering voice. In this book, it's Joseph's. (In The Basic Eight, it was Flan's.) He flawlessly depicts incredibly interesting and unique characters, which is enough alone to make his books worth reading. Add his characteristic wit, and you've got an amazing novel, as is the case here.

Watch Your Mouth. Was this ever a strange and wonderful book. It had me both raising an eyebrow and laughing out loud many a time. It was sometimes a bit much - one gets a little tired of the narrator and his bizzare, strangely apt sexual metaphors after a while - but then the opera half ends and you're thrown into this crazy self-help book format, and the transition is odd enough that you forget about your weariness. Actually, I think that's pretty much true for the whole novel. It's so ... so weird, and so fresh, and so unique, and because of this, I loved it.

"Watch Your Mouth" is an operatic comedy about incest! So if you like weird books, this is right up your alley. I almost found it too weird, too strange, too absurd though. But you know what, I kept reading it. It was disturbing, but not disturbing enough to make me want to give up.

I thought it was confusing with all of the opera tie-in's/references, but I'm not a big fan of opera. Also, the ending was weak and rather predictable.

Character development was good though - I have an idea of what each character is like in my head. Despite it being rather short, it's not exactly a fast read - Handler is a little too wordy for me at times.

Actually, I didn't really enjoy it at all, but I definitely won't forget it. And despite not really liking it, I'm somewhat tempted to read more by Handler just to see what else he can think of!

if you've read any of handler's other books, you know what i mean when i say that at the turn of every page, the daniel handler grin smirks across my face. if you have not read any of handler's other books, you would not know what i mean when i say that and have probably already become bored with this review.

to throw you a proverbial bone, this man has mastered the sweet and sour of dark humor, and treats us once again with ridiculous characters in a real world, or real characters in a ridiculous world. if you can't stomach nonsense, or prefer books about happy people doing great things, ditch this book and burry this proverbial bone in your neighbor's proverbial backyard.

if this review were a fortune cookie, it would say: read the book (unless you are afraid of jewish voodoo, in which case, do not). your lucky numbers are 13, 7, 42, & 9.

Since reading The Basic Eight almost five years ago, I have been in awe of Daniel Handler's wit, way with words, and knack at making me laugh even when his characters are in the bleakest of situations. Even I had some doubts about Watch Your Mouth, though, and how he could take the subject of incest (something I was wary to read about, for some reason)and work it into a novel that could compare with the wonders that were his other works (The Basic Eight, Adverbs, A Series of Unfortunate Events).

After finishing this novel, my only regret is that I didn't pick it up sooner. I found myself on the verge of laughing aloud at work -- probably not the greatest thing to happen, especially since, with a Handler novel, you can't explain exactly why you're laughing. Reading this book was like being part of a delicious inside joke. The ways in which the author manages to mention a previous phrase or event in such an unexpected way kept me grinning from ear to ear as I turned each page.

All in all, I loved this book. The only thing that I found ever-so-slightly disappointing was the ending. The series of events seemed to dissolve into nothing...which, come to think of it, maybe have been the intent all along. I just would have liked a bit more closure, I suppose.

Daniel Handler is a talented writer. How else could he come up with a novel, which is written both in the form of an opera and then written like a self-help book? How can it be deeply erotic, funny, disturbing and scary at the same time? He is a genius that is how.

Watch Your Mouth tells the story of Joseph, a young college student, spending the summer at his girlfriend Cyn's parents' house outside Pittsburgh, while he and Cyn work at a day camp for young Jewish kids, Camp Shalom. The Glass family are a very odd bunch with Mimi, the mother, working for an opera house that's producing a series of anti-Semitic operas; Ben, the father, is a Orthopedic Surgeon recovering from a failure, that resulted in a patient's bone cracking in half; Stephen, Cyn's brother, who a science geek who works at Carnegie Mellon; Then there is, Cyn, the vixen herself who lured our hero into her strange family's house, so Joseph and Cyn could have sex all summer long. That part, Joseph was okay with. I have to credit Handler with writing openly about young lust and sex. He doesn't spare the details.

But Joseph stumbles on the family secret; actually it's not much of a secret because each family member rationalizes to Joseph, how having sex with a family member is okay. Cyn wants Ben, Ben wants Cyn, Stephen wants Cyn and Mimi wants Stephen. Then Joseph starts hearing sounds in the middle of the night and the Glass family has given into their-disturbing-fantasies.

With that, Watch Your Mouth, turns into a thrilling novel where the body count is high due to a wronged family member with a interest an Jewish Folklore (see: Golem) and Joseph is on the run for his life trying to recover from a horrifying summer that once looked so great.
Watch Your Mouth is a great book that can be confusing sometimes, because Joseph doesn't quite believe what's happening in front of his eyes. But Handler, known to the world as Lemony Snicket, is a truly talented author with a wicked wit and a taste for black humor.

This is a great book. The poet uses humor to comment on the human condition. It says so much about life, hate and love. The reviewer who has tagged himself as "a reader" and named his review "Poetry Written by the Intimidated" is not openminded enough to read something of this caliber. He is reviewing poetry but states this claim "I'm not a poet, nor do I have a Ph.D., although I have wasted my time on occasion." Why would this person write a review OF POETRY who feels like poetry is a waste of time? Read it and love it.

Gabe Gudding may very well be a genius.
Gabe Gudding may very well be a psychopath.
It's interesting that none of the other reviews (as of this writing) for this book are very fair or even very helpful . . . when taken alone, but as a collection, they are more or less adequate. All are either 1 star or 5 stars, ranting or raving.

Gabe Gudding is the kind of poet that inspires a great deal of ranting and raving, and possibly some humming, as well. If he had no other skill as a writer, (to my mind) this alone would make him a good poet. The main failing of our poets today is the inability to affect. Gabe affects. Not only does he affect, he infects. In fact, I had to buy this book because I was infected by Gabe.

First the polarized reviews intrigued me, then the online samples of Gabe's work baffled me, and finally Gabe's blog left me frightened and bothered. A little voice in my head made it quite clear that I was to purchase A Defense of Poetry without any further hesitation. One of my major motivations was to write a 3 star review on Amazon. I had been entertaining the fantasy that Gabe himself had written all of the other reviews here under pseudonyms. His blog, after all, is so riddled with impersonations.

Gabe Gudding is an infectious disease. Any poet writing today that can be an infectious disease is an important poet, a poet to be watched. In Gabe's case, he may also be a poet to be surveilled . He should not, for instance, be left alone with your family pet.

Here's some quick Q&A from my middle of the road, 3 start mentality.
Is Gabe a genius?
Maybe.
Is A Defense of Poetry a great book?
No. It's an important book.
Why is ADoP not a great book, but an important book?
Because it engages in wonderfully radical cage rattling, yet the rattling is not being done by barbarians at the gate, but by that high Roman inside the cage.

Ultimately, this makes ADoP more of a freakish curiosity than a true siege of the kingdom. And I find this a bit frustrating, because I am convinced Gabe has the firepower to lay wonderful siege. At the bottom line, ADoP is like an "authoritative" report on the existence of WMDs given by a government who feels the need to falsify a report on WMDs to justify its morally questionable actions.

Gabe, you would make such a splendid barbarian, but you are working for the Man!

Gudding's feeling for sound is pretty much unparalleled. His knowledge does seem encyclopedic (to excess). His cleverness is monstrous and lovely. And he's darn funny much of the time (I love his heroic little effigy on the book's cover, complete with P-emblazoned chest and purple cape). I don't get the academic in jokes for the most part, and Gabe's ultimate objective (if there is one) is lost (to me) in the abstracted and rampant wowing his erudite circus act inflicts on the audience. Quite possibly, I'm just not smart enough or educated enough to "get it". Maybe the whole thing is one of those post-modernist ha-has that SEEMS to have an objective, but doesn't, for, alas, all is meaningless. I hope not, because if that was true, then I would have to classify Gabe as a dope (and a dupe), and I don't want to do that. I don't want Gabe to be classified or in any way contained.
(to be continued . . .)

(. . . continued)

I relish the idea that Gabe is as ballsy as some other reviewers feel he is. I want to see heads roll and walls tumble in the contemporary kingdom of poetry. But if Gabe is a performance-artist-in-print trying to cut down the entire forest with a herring . . . the joke is only on him and not on Poetry at all.

Gudding may have the charisma to command the barbarian hordes, but the hordes donýt live inside the academy walls . . . theyýre in the wild. I think Gabe needs more canon fodder from the wilds (rather than the ýcanoný fodder of academia). Heýs got a big, black, iron gun, but heýs stuffing it full of the kind of yellowed pages Eliot and Pound drooled lasciviously over and were later castrated for. It needs buck shot and marbles, big hunks of porcelain, gravel, locusts and walnuts, coke bottles (reissues of the old fashioned ones), and the rusted pieces of transmissions. Too often ADoP is a gun that SAYS ýBang!ý rather than GOES ýBang!ý

The poem ýHairý kind of sums it up for me. I have a personalized interpretation for it (not a universal one). Gabe busts out the convicts by hiding them in his hair. His hair is big because his head is full of large, wild, and powerful thoughts. These thoughts are large enough to ýcontain multitudesý, and that means some darkness. Well, good for him! And good for Poetry. But what does our big gunned Gabe go and do? He runs right to his buddy Pete, the Dante professor. That is, he takes his dark and wild thoughts and he stuffs them back into his classical, academic, insipidly trivialized intellect. And whatýs the result? The wild darkness gets trapped into a wig, and then a handbag, and then a backpack, and then a suitcase, and then a trunk, and THEN back into his hair/intelligence. The wildness has been much muffled. In the end, he can only walk and weep in confusion.

Now, ýHairý is a good poem. And itýs very honest in the right kind of way (not that self-absorbed, icky confessional way). But it is tragic. I feel for both Gabe and for poetry. I hope Gabe can figure out what to do with the convicts, and I also hope he doesnýt mistake them for peacock rectums or impulses to harm animals. I wish Gabeýs angry stream of consciousness ran headlong into academic poets and the ivory towers of academic thinking rather than dogs and other simple non-intellectual creatures.

It is a disservice to all of us that Gabe has chosen to reside in his butt (ýStatementý), because the guy is a brilliant freak with talent WAY out the wazoo. Ultimately the scatological humor strikes me as less a dung pie in the face of high-mindedness and academic elitism (as many claim) than the subconscious excrement flung loose from a very high-minded academic intelligence stuck in an abstract feedback loop. It is not so much flung as shed . . . and if we track him by his droppings weýll find him snuggly nestled into the den of the classical literature library of University-X.

Now all someone needs to do is bust into said library and stuff Gabe in your hair, take him out to the barbarous woods, and release him into the wild. Then, we might end up with one of the rare great poets of our greatness-starved era.

And Gabe . . . good luck with that butt thing.

(4 stars this time to equal 3.5 overall)

This Poop is brilliant. If you like Christopher Smart (Gabe's Smarter), Levine (Gabe's not nearly as boring), or Christopher Twigg (Gabe may be leafier)--you'll like this. To be honest, Gabe's not like any of 'em. He's more like the Clarence Darrow of poetry...and Butt's.

This book has a tough time getting put down, but not a tough time getting... yada, yada. It's an interesting, intelligent, original, & entertaining (like movie entertainment=fun) collection of poetry, regardless of Christopher Smart's socks or whatever.

See what i did there? I like the idea of this book so i just bought it, meanwhile you could buy DEATHDAY BY EUGENE BRUCE (No. 23 in the list if you type my name in)as i've heard that's pretty bloomin' good - especially concidering he's a Brit! Go on - dive in - I love you America!

Well, I can't say it was awful, and it was undeniably funny at times. However, those occasions were rare, and on the whole, found it very, very boring. I also found a few grammar errors, but I guess that doesn't really matter in the long run.
The example sections were the best part of the entire book, and were very enjoyable.
However, the Zombie Survival Guide, while different, is much better, and if you want a zombie book, you'd be better off getting it instead of this.

This is a self-improvement book you'll find in the humor section of the bookstore. Learn how to take control of your life by looking to the zombies' actions and goal determination. There were spots that got me to smirk but never did I laugh at the attempted humor. As someone else pointed out, you don't get the impression that the author is really a zombie book/movie fan but rather uses the topic as a marketing ploy. The first half of the book as looking at general zombie traits and what it is to be a zombie with a single goal orientation. The second half is your 12 week program on how to acquire and implement your 'zombification'.

It's a great looking book with crisp white rigid soft-cover roughly 4x6". It's 275 glossy pages with well done cartoon art inside. However, if read multiple times, I foresee that the rather cheap binding is going to allow pages to fall out. I really wanted to like this book but it was boring to read and it didn't hold my full attention. The text is lackluster, a bit unfocused, and was not terribly amusing, to me anyway. Some people are going to love this book, others won't. Overall, the book is like a joke without the funny.

This book is meant as a gag, of course, but actually there is some good advice in here! You won't end up eating the brains of your friends and family (I think), but you will learn how to seize the moment, forge a new path, and act on your impulses.

So, I guess I'm saying: This book doesn't bite! (Get it?)

This is the first book in the last 30 or so books I've read that I didn't finish or want to finish. I got to page 175 and realized that to continue reading the rest of the book would be pretty much like staring at the wall. The first hundred pages were kinda entertaining but after that when the author starts talking about Zombification and the way you can go about Zombification is where it gets incredibly stupid and mundane. I was very disappointed because the title is Zen of Zombie but it really doesn't tie Zen into it the book in my opinion. I also can not believe some of the typos in this book.

There are few people who have been around for virtually the entire history of the NFL. Dan Rooney is the last survivor of the day when men who could think past the end of their own bank account ran the league. His stories about how his father and men like Wellington Mara and George Halas made the NFL are worth the time even for non-Steeler fans. Should be a mandatory read for Jerry Jones and Dan Synder.

Excellent history of the Pittsburgh Steelers especially now that there is talk of the Steelers possibly being sold. A wonderful family governed by Art Sr. A must read for Steeler fans and those who appreciate history of the NFL.

This book is an easy read. My husband, who is not much of a reader, however is a HUGE Pittsburg Steelers fan. I bought him this book for Christmas and he read it within 2 days. It was surely an easy read and quite humorous. There are several interesting stories shared, which allows you to peek in the life of Dan Rooney.

This is a very good book, but I did not appreciate the black magic marker mark on the bottom part of the book. It made it look like that book was retrieved from the garbage pile at the printers.

The book provides a very good history of the Rooney family and the Steelers.

As a lifelong Steeler fan, this was a must-read, a tome that belongs on my bookshelf along with "Doing it Right" by Jim O'Brien. Mr. Rooney's accounting of history is first-hand and basically unscrubbed. He talks about the things he, his father, and the Steeler staff did right over the years, and the things they did wrong (e.g., Unitas, Marino). He tells you who are the good guys and the troublemakers. He takes you from the earliest beginnings of the NFL on through to the hiring of Mike Tomlin. It's a little tricky to follow chronologically because he gets off-topic and rambles now and then (I found myself thinking "wait a minute, that's not... what year was this supposed to be?). And there are some outright errors, which are mentioned in other reviews. The style is very (very!) homey, as you would expect, with an almost turn-of-the-century charm throughout. But in the end, you believe that Dan Rooney really is that sincere and genuine, and schmaltzy, and that's why so many people love him. Come to think of it, who doesn't like Dan Rooney? (Sorry, I haven't read Al Davis' book).