How to Read and Why: The essential guide to enhancing self-awareness and personal growth through reading

It's a very good book. It tells you how to read a book better.

This is a contagious book. Once you start reading it you want to run madly and take some of the works suggested by the author. Bloom's views on genre, from short stories to novels, are tremendously valuable. I particularly liked his selection on poetry which is surprising and richly combined. In another note I would say that the relation among authors and styles and the combination of names has a meaning on its own sense. The reader may approach to a sort of a vivid intertextuality that triggers ideas and interesting conclusions to get the whole picture of genre, theme and times. Some may ask if a book of reviews may spoil those texts the reader have not undertaken. I would say that, as when you travel to a city, this may work as a guide to walk around without losing important details. Finally, after Bloom's How and Why, it's been a great exercise to ask to myself, "what" did I got from any book I've gone through. Sometimes, my answer matches Bloom's ... sometimes something utterly mine and new comes after the question...

Most bibliophiles will pick up this exegesis from the renowned literary critic, Harold Bloom, simply on the inherent challenge in the title. For those of us who profess as much a desire and self-improving drive through the written word as Bloom does then this book will either confirm our own decisive belief in how to read and the reasons why we do it, or irritatingly deny and confound them. In some respects it can be seen as a marker, an attempt for the avid reader to classify how we should read the great texts and confirm to ourselves that `yes, we do understand them'. What Bloom, therefore, must hold himself up to, by publishing his theory, is whether his own form of literature accurately describes how the populace should read any great literary work. By the end I found it ended up with an answer to a rather different question. Without going through the entire text there are three sections that leap out: Short stories, Novels Part I and Poetry. Bloom opens his critical work with short story specialists. His own work reflects the genre, with short one-two pages discussions on each, their salient work(s) and the contribution to the art form. We move from Turganev and Chekov to Maupassant and Hemingway, touching through Nabokov, Borges and Calvino, all the while relating them back to Bloom's idolised literary figurehead, Shakespeare. Of particular interest is the note on Landolfi, highlighting as it does a great work, inspired by another great author, Gogol, that parodies its inspiration. Indeed, the entire concept of `Gogol's wife' takes the real and criticizes it with the absurd, yet an oddly perceptive absurd that echoes Ionesco. In Bloom's section on poetry he is forced to follow the well-trodden path that any literary critic must do with this format: quote large tracts of various poems in order to get his meaning across, in sharp contrast to those sections ion the short story and novel. He does acknowledge this when he realises that each single word in a poem comprises far more imagery and emotion than is worth explaining or describing. Whereas the novel dictates the scene precisely, the poem offers a tantalisingly liminal nudge to the senses that the reader can allow to bloom in their own mind. As such, the section on poetry becomes more a classification of which of the great poets are in each poetical sub-genre. More a reason on why to read these poets, than how to read them. The section itself deals with Dickinson, Coleridge, Blake, Browning, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and the inevitable Shakespearian sonnets, amongst many others. The most interesting detail is perhaps on the Ballard of Sir Patrick Spence with its "tragic comedy almost unique in its stoic heroism", the most exhilarating the seventeenth century ballard, `Tom O'Bedlam' Bloom's section on the novels (in two parts) opens with Cervantes' `Don'Quixote' which he professes the greatest of all novels, swiftly moving onto the incomparable Austen who's novels rely so much on society but never a justification for them and Dickens, picking firstly, Emma, then Great Expectations as their benchmarks. There is an interesting comparison between the first and revised versions of James' `Portrait' which serves to emphasize the growth of the author's vast (as Bloom would have us believe) consciousness. So, by the end we don't feel that Bloom has given us satisfactory explanation of `how' to read and `why', more that his precis of what he considers the greatest of our literary artists suggests why we must read them specifically and (in an even more limited attempt) some pointers as to how to read them. For example, his explanation of Shakespearian vernacular does attempt to satisfy the `how to read' as it imparts different and more clear meaning to the poetry . By the end, we are left not with an answer to his titular concept, but a rather disparate reason for our `motives' to read, best given in his summation on poetry: "Poetry...does...startle us out of our sleep-of-death into a more capricious sense of life. There is no better motive for reading...."

A good pointer to novels, poetry and plays you may have overlooked in your own reading.

Book arrived as described.

Can't remember why I bought it. Interesting but you could just read a classic canon.

Perfect, just what I needed

This is a sort of a brief Western Canon, arguably the most popular book written by Bloom. As such, addressed to a larger audience, it is simpler, not divided in three great historical "ages", but rather in the basic genres of literature: short stories, poetry and novel. And it is magnificent. The book goes to some authors (more representative, preferred by the author, historically relevant, or else; it doesn't matter) and from there it reviews some of the works. It doesn't center at all in the English language - it is very good with Borges, Cervantes, Calvino and many other Europeans. The reviews of works is brief (sometimes merely a page) but we get plenty of information. All the canonicals are here, but also some other less "mainstream" - such as Eudora Welty. And all with the passionate, opinionated and very personal style of Harold Bloom, whom we sadly lost only a few months ago. Impossible not to jump to the many references and books it contains. A joy of a book that can be read in one sitting (or two) and which will make any reader to carry on with the works mentioned in its pages.

This is a sort of a brief Western Canon, the most popular book written by Bloom. As such, addressed to a larger audience, it is simpler, not divided in three great historical "ages", but rather in the basic genres of literature: short stories, poetry and novel. And it is magnificent. The book goes to some authors (more representative, preferred by the author, historically relevant, or else; it doesn't matter) and from there it reviews some of the works. It doesn't center at all in the English language - it is very good with Borges, Cervantes, Calvino and many other Europeans. The reviews of works is brief (sometimes merely a page) but we get plenty of information. All the canonicals are here, but also some other less "mainstream" - such as Eudora Welty. And all with the passionate, opinionated and very personal style of Harold Bloom, whom we sadly lost only a few months ago. Impossible not to jump to the many references and books it contains. A joy of a book that can be read in one sitting (or two) and which will make any reader to carry on with the works mentioned in its pages.

I purchased the Kindle eBook at a more than average price. Yet I find too many spelling mistakes, font irregularities, sentences running into one another, poor punctuation, and overall a very bad reading experience. The saddest thing about Ebooks is that one can't return them for the quality of the format.

I respect the scientific method, and often feel a reverence for it that is akin to religious experience. The same goes for the finest philosophy and precise explorations of the ontological, the epistemological, and the empirical. Psychology has also aroused my deepest curiosity, as has the esoteric, the mystical and the magical, because when you put it all together you feel as if you are looking at the total electromagnetic spectrum of existence. But you really aren’t. Without Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Turgenev, Dickens, Hemingway, Proust, Melville, Faulkner, et al, the messy cacophony of the human condition – and its infinite capacity for good and evil -- is either invisible, or out of focus. This is what I gleaned from reading Harold Bloom’s “How to Read and Why.” Years ago I bought the book hoping to learn how to read, and truly appreciate poetry, but also to gain insight into the very best storytelling in literature. Ironically, I got stumped in the section entitled: “Poems.” So, I put the book aside, and only resumed reading it when I couldn’t stand to read anything else. And it has turned out to be a kind of salvation. Now I feel as if Bloom’s intellectual breadth and detailed knowledge of literature can all but raise the dead. At the very least it can warm the coldest spirit and soften the hardest heart. Bloom’s descriptions of the complex savagery and comedic genius of the most unforgettable characters in world literature serve to redeem us. His account of Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” shock us with lightning revelations as to the true nature of human existence, its cruel ironies, its wicked Norwegian trolls, and “high” society’s meaningless, insincere nonsense. Along the way, Bloom’s intellectual breadth and knowledge of what he calls “The Western Canon,” and its theological functions, can take any susceptible reader to a new level of awareness, both of self and the cosmos. His notion of Shakespeare’s “invention of the human” becomes as palpable as flesh and blood in his explorations of Hamlet, which are as deep and dark as the concept of enigma itself. There are also countless suggestions as to why we should read sprinkled throughout the book at the opportune moments, such as when Bloom has provided a poignant example, or made some very demonstrative point. I have come away from this book convinced that no other medium can transmit such vital information as poetry, drama, the short story, or the novel. These are the real “Reality TV” that we need to be watching – quietly, in the refuge of our study, and in the sanctity of our own soul.

With the death of Harold Bloom, literature lost a great champion and this book written late in his career is one of hi best. Each section covered sends you scrambling for your bookshelf to read more extensively the author or genre he discovers. I am already on my second read with pencil ready to underline and comment. A truly wonderful read

A lovely, unaggressive intro to many classic works and a critical assessment paired with their being excellent teachers of deep and enjoyed reading. Amazing