“Every word, phrase or sentence spoken by the literary figures in this book is drawn verbatim from their letters, diaries, journals, or essays.” – Preface
The main character is a professor by the name of “Glyn Maxwell” (name of Author) who finds himself in a dream-like, quaint, rustic, village school. There’s a pub, a church, all like in the old days. He must teach a semester-long course on poetry. He is charismatic, funny, and passionate–a bit like Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society.
He is given this syllabus to teach: “Reading List for Elective Poetry Module” featuring a week on each one of these poets: Keats, Dickinson, Hopkins, Brontes, Coleridge. Poe (on Halloween), Clare, Yeats, Whitman, Browning, Byron.
Each lesson feels like you, the reader, are present in a small seminar at University where the students can freely joke with the professor and also become fully engaged with the material—and the professor is passionate, and charismatic as he decomposes poems, discusses the poet(s), and asks thought-provoking questions. The lecture is followed by a vivid ‘hallucination’ or imagining that the narrator is meeting the poet in discussion. This whole book is a dream-like state. The dead poets talk to the narrator, get invited to class where they are publicly interviewed and they share anecdotes. They also explore parts of this town like the library, or pub. I enjoy the ways in which the whole text is full of literary references. For example if a student jokes a bit too much the teacher announces that ‘Yorrick’ is in the class. Simultaneously it merges the past with the present. Students for instance pick up that Bob Dylan songs have Poe references, as do Hitchcock films. I was more intrigued by the poets I genuinely like (Dickinson, Poe, and Whitman) because I was curious what Maxwell would do with them, and what new things I might learn about them. I found there were many funny parts, like when the narrator/author tries to write a letter to Walt Whitman but he just can’t get it right, because it sounds too much like something a teenage fan-girl would write, so he crumples up every draft thanking his lucky stars he didn’t ‘send it.’
Here are some of my favourite lines
Keats Lecture:
“poems that stay stay because the body feels them”
Dickinson Lecture:
“You can’t teach Emily Dickinson, you can’t write like her either. You no more have to write in her stanzas than you have to write limericks or clerihews. But you do have to absorb that she wrote about everything else she could think of—herself, others, life, death, God, Time, being here, being gone—in little quatrains shaped like hymns, rhymed or half rhymed, mostly four beats then three beats, four, three, stanza-break, and she barely left her bedroom…what you owe to such a poet is a true pause for thought.”
The visit to the library (with Emily):
“There are old books on every stall, twelve stalls, volumes and volumes, and great swathes of canvas thrown back behind the hardwood frames as if to protect them when needed.”
(A draft) Letter to Whitman:
“There’s more Life than there is Art, your poems seem to say, and the glory is in the reach, the stretch, the straining ever upwards like plant-life in the sunshine.”
I really enjoyed this book, and it really comes across as a work of passion. I wish I would have spread it out and read the poet alongside each chapter so that it feels like a real course. One can see that the author is well-versed and well-acquainted with the poets he teaches. The whole work felt like a love letter to these poets. I hope that if this work gets worked into an audiobook there will be more voices for each student and they find suitable voice actors for the dead poets because the whole work is mostly in dialogue and it would be fascinating to experience it that way—something like the way they recorded Lincoln in the Bardo. I thought it was well written, and captures the poets spot on because as the preface mentions the words, the attempt to reconstruct them, and capture their spirit comes from the poets’ archives and is probably as close as we will ever get to them.
I strongly recommend this book to readers who enjoy poetry, have liked studying poetry, want to learn any more about the poets listed, and who like 19th century literature from the Western Canon. Again, the feeling I had reading this was akin to sitting in a University lecture taught by a great professor…and that is a very pleasant feeling.
The book is scheduled to be published in August by Pegasus Books. Click here for link.
This series of interviews captures the spirit of Bradbury. All the interviews took place between 2010-2012 and they are all conducted by Sam Weller. I didn’t really like the interviewer as much and sometimes I felt like his block quotes were larger than Bradbury’s. I was more interested in what Bradbury had to say. I wish there was a transcript in there of some of his lectures in his later years. I would also recommend watching a YouTube video of his 
I received this from one of my favourite grad-school professors who taught me about rare books, readerships, and bookbinding. To celebrate fifty years of being a Press a series of Canadian printers have written several articles within this codex encompassing the history of Coach House Press. This press is closely affiliated with the University of Toronto and has printed several library catalogues for the UofT library system throughout the years, as well as launching famous authors with beautiful editions of their books like the recent award winning Andre Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs. This book covers the Press’s history and its adoption of newer media and ways of printing as well as exploring prominent figures in its history like Alfred H. Howard and his contribution to the city of Toronto by means of his manuscript collection. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in small printing press histories, Toronto-specific history, or this history of printing arts
This novella was sent to me by EarlyReviewers from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest: 
Mark Watney is a botanist astronaut who has gone on an expedition to Mars with a team. Due to unforeseen events the ship had to leave as the team thought he was dead and he is ultimately left alone behind on Mars. The novel follows Watney’s struggle to survive on Mars and communicate with NASA and his team as well as all the various teams on Earth making great efforts to bring him home. I understand that since the film came out the plot is no surprise to anyone and I am perhaps a little late to the party. What I found endearing about this novel was that despite the science-heavy space exploration vocabulary it was a combination of Robinson Crusoe in Space, and the renewal of faith in humanity. Reading about so many people around the world working together to bring one person home was so satisfying and rewarding. In addition, reading about one person being so isolated for so long explores dark corners of the human condition. I wish Weir would have focused more on this. I would have appreciated a chapter from Watney’s perspective on what he was thinking on a daily basis, what the loneliness felt like, what he was experiencing. A break from all the action and science and business for a moment of reflection and spirituality would have added more depth to both Watney and the novel. It’s a little difficult to remember that Watney is away from Earth for 2.5 years, and completely alone on Mars for 565 days (or a year and a half) because the novel focuses only on the actions taken rather than the intense reflective moments that would break the human spirit in such a situation. From time to time I had a hard time believing Watney was hired by NASA for this expedition in the first place because of his attitude. Maybe it’s just me, but I think NASA would make exceptions for only Nobel-prize winning physicists with attitudes but not for botanists with attitude. Even Watney refers to himself as a ‘dorky botanist’ who is not that great compared to anyone else on the team. I believed that people would fight to get him back, I didn’t believe NASA would have sent him in space in the first place because of his attitude. Why would you send a person on a team in an enclosed space for years if he has a hard time getting along with people and following instructions? I definitely wanted to get to know Watney more. His character was not that well flushed out and I’m a little tired of the ‘genius with an attitude’ plotline. The one missing chapter adding depth to his character would have made this books so much better. For once in a long time I can say: the movie was better. Damon added more depth to Watney than Weir did. Sorry, but…it is what it is.
Kate Bolick can write well and she is intelligent. There are many literary references, and an outline of five great women who have inspired her in her life including three of my favourite female authors: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Wharton, and two people I learned about for the first time: Neith Boyce and Maeve Brennan. What bothered me was how much of a memoir/autobiography it was. It read like a Carrie Bradshaw rant about herself. I kept thinking that maybe if I cared more about who this author was then this memoir and reading journey would have been more inspiring. I read this at the same time as John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and the whole time I was hyper-aware that her content is by far more interesting and well-researched, but I didn’t care about her biographical parts as much as I did about Steinbeck. I also wanted this book to be what it promised: a book covering the history and cultural analysis of the spinster. I wanted to know about perception, barriers, how to break them…I wanted to feel inspired. There were several parts when she was discussing biographies of authors that I did feel somewhat inspired, but then it would slowly vanish in the background as Bolick started talking about her life again….the men she dates, the things she does on a daily basis. Lastly, and perhaps this is somewhat shallow but it REALLY bothered me, was that she writes many times about how ugly she was, and how “not like other girls” she was in terms of looks and how she was not desirable. Just google her…or flip the book over. She literally looks like a model for any beauty product. She’s white, tall, thin, beautiful hair……it honestly felt like she was mocking the reader and was fishing for compliments. So if you expect the book to be about what it means to be a spinster, or a social history of it, you will NOT find it here. This book is exclusively about Kate Bolick and 5 authors who were women and who inspired her, and then she tells you why in her life particularly these women were important.
Have you ever thought “I love Steinbeck! I wish I could hang out with him!” If you have, then: READ. THIS. BOOK. This journal/travelogue work is John Steinbeck’s account of his travels across the United States in the 1960s, with his dog Charley, in a trailer that he names ‘The Rocinante’ (after Don Quixote’s horse). He describes what he sees, records interactions with different people he meets on the way, and this book is filled with reflective notes on what he thought of certain situation and how they relate to other instances in life or giving his opinion on his immediate reaction. There are a few literary references, and instances of simple humour (i.e. getting stopped at the Canadian border for “dog reasons”). I kept thinking that if anyone other than Steinbeck wrote the same travelogue it wouldn’t be that interesting. It’s interesting BECAUSE it’s Steinbeck. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys travel literature, travelogues, journals/diaries, and those who love Steinbeck and his work because in the end it just feels like you’re hanging out with him and his dog.
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