The Year of Reading Dangerously How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life eBook Andy Miller
Download As PDF : The Year of Reading Dangerously How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life eBook Andy Miller 
A working father whose life no longer feels like his own discovers the transforming powers of great (and downright terrible) literature in this laugh-out-loud memoir.
Andy Miller had a job he quite liked, a family he loved and no time at all for reading. Or so he kept telling himself. But, no matter how busy or tired he was, something kept niggling at him. Books. Books he’d always wanted to read. Books he’d said he’d read, when he hadn’t. Books that whispered the promise of escape from the 6.44 to London. And so, with the turn of a page, began a year of reading that was to transform Andy’s life completely.
This book is Andy’s inspirational and very funny account of his expedition through literature classic, cult and everything in-between. Crack the spine of your unread ‘Middlemarch’, discover what ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Moby-Dick’ have in common (everything, surprisingly) and knock yourself out with a new-found enthusiasm for Tolstoy, Douglas Adams and ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’. ‘The Year of Reading Dangerously’ is a reader’s odyssey and it begins with opening this book…
The Year of Reading Dangerously How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life eBook Andy Miller
Andy Miller’s Year of Reading Dangerously is more like a memoir than a book of literary criticism. I was disappointed by Miller’s emphasis on himself, but others might enjoy the details of his daily life, childhood, and youth. To his benefit, Miller avoids being boring even though his life is fairly typical. I even found myself won over in the end despite his flaws.Flaws?
•In most of the book he comes across as a petulant complainer.
•It’s clear that his literary and musical taste was arrested in adolescence. (If you think that sounds harsh, he admits it himself.)
•He enjoys humor in books and although he is sometimes clever, he’s never very funny. I laughed only once. It was when I read, “These men of my acquaintance… loved Bukowski like little girls love ponies.”
•He hates One Hundred Years of Solitude, and compares Marquez to a trained chimp doing the same trick over and over again. He writes, “…the book is terrible.” And later, “I press on, uptight and bored”.
•He never reveals what makes his year of reading "dangerous". I thought maybe Miller would read something so moving he'd be shaken to the core, altering his life philosophy or way of life. This doesn't quite happen.
•He actually writes LOL in his book. I don’t care if this is supposed to be irony or a not-so-subtle criticism of social media, but I found it irritating and not very funny.
•Like Andrew Keen in The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture, Andy Miller laments that "blockheads" have the freedom to publish reviews online. Criticism should be the job of paid professionals who have cultivated literary taste. He says it best himself:
"In the Internet age, where comment is free and everyone is entitled to a wrong opinion, blockheads write zealously, copiously and for nothing. They have a platform unprecedented in human history. The problem faced by ‘old media’, and professional critics in particular, with their years of experience and their skill in fine phrase-making, is that their opinions now carry little more worth than those of the individual with a laptop who has never read any books and who would not recognise a pleasing and insightful cadence if it half-slammed, half-caressed them in the belly with a slippery bagful – well, you know how it goes by now."
One the positive side:
•I was glad to have read the book mostly because I enjoyed disliking the author!
•A few of his reflections on life and literature were worthy of highlighting.
•He accomplishes his own little chimp trick in almost every chapter, finding an unexpected way to connect one novelist with another (Houellebecq and Douglas Adams, Melville and Dan Brown.) I liked this.
•I came away wanting to read a few books: Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Schopenhauer'sThe World as Will and Representation, Vol 1, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
•Near the end of the book Miller exhibits convincing self-reflection, and the book almost becomes uplifting.
•There were a few moments of mastery that have me convinced this is an author to watch. I think he's capable of more.
One last thing. You might wonder how the year of reading “saves his life”, as the title promises. (Keep in mind he was already a literature major working as an editor.) Well, when he gets to the 49th book, Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, Miller finally shows some tenderness. He is moved to discover that art is like a grand consolation prize despite the inevitability of death.
I have a hard time with that awakening. To major in literature is essentially to major in death. All literary works explore the "inevitability of decay". Why does it only sink in for Miller at the 49th book, a book by Michel Houellebecq? Either way, this is the chapter where I actually start to warm to Miller, even though I have no interest in reading Atomised. He finally finds what the title promised us: hope, and “a way forward”.
Product details
|
Tags : The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life - Kindle edition by Andy Miller. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life.,ebook,Andy Miller,The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life,Fourth Estate,BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Personal Memoirs,Biography and True Stories Biography: general
People also read other books :
- A Midsummer Night Dream eBook William Shakespeare
- A Heart Journey Through Poetry Shannan Lee Williams Robyn Kirkey Walker 9780615947129 Books
- Bone Broth The Secret to Longevity Lies Within Your Broth edition by Bob J Spears Cookbooks Food Wine eBooks
- Peter Pan Classical Books James M Barrie 9781541234444 Books
- The Sea Wolf London Jack Sir Angels Books
The Year of Reading Dangerously How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life eBook Andy Miller Reviews
A good read! Author's analysis of various books was interesting and made one want to read any that had not been read.
Great books do not compensate for tedious, long-winded descriptions of the author's dull life.
I really enjoyed this book and have recommended it to a few friends. The narrator's voice is charming and so funny. It's not necessary to have read any of the books he references, nor to follow up and read them.
This is a very enjoyable book written by a youngish Englishman who is the same age as my son. His review of childhood favorites reminded me of my son very much and I liked his take on books that I had read and did or did not enjoy. Highly recommend this to those who read both classics and current best sellers. Much of the book is quite humorous.
I was kind of hoping this book would inspire me to read great books instead of wasting time on the internet, and that's exactly what it did. The author is extremely different from me which made his perspective really interesting, and he read a lot of books I had barely even heard of (modern classics). Loved his honesty and frank opinions. I've read probably five or six "books about books" and this one was the best. I hope the author writes another book soon!
I love books, and I love reading them. Like Miller, my relationship with them has been, often, abusive and confused and generally messy. In that sense, this was The Book For Me.
I'm certainly a proponent of the complex power of books, and Miller describes that complex power effectively. In that sense, it was a success. But it's also, in a way, nothing more than a collection of echoes of better books. It's not like War and Peace it doesn't contain all other books. Rather, it contains *gestures* to all other books. It leaves you with a feeling of hollowness that was not, I think, at all deliberate.
When I first came across this title, I was immediately intrigued. Here, I suspected was the story of a man who improved his lot by following a reading plan. Well, that much proved true. I also suspected that his list would be one to emulate and that he would encourage that path. Not so much on that idea. What I did take away from this book was the encouragement to make my own list of a betterment, not follow the author's list. Sure, some of his titles might find their way on my list but many of his choices as "great books" were instead odd, idiosyncratic choices that had been stacked around his house for a decade or longer. I guarantee that Harold Bloom does not have "krautrocksampler" on the Western cannon. But most of us do have boxes or shelves of books that we bought but never got around to reading. Like the author, I too have claimed knowledge of the contents of those unread books. Thanks, Andy, for giving me the push to tackle those "unread" titles.
Andy Miller’s Year of Reading Dangerously is more like a memoir than a book of literary criticism. I was disappointed by Miller’s emphasis on himself, but others might enjoy the details of his daily life, childhood, and youth. To his benefit, Miller avoids being boring even though his life is fairly typical. I even found myself won over in the end despite his flaws.
Flaws?
•In most of the book he comes across as a petulant complainer.
•It’s clear that his literary and musical taste was arrested in adolescence. (If you think that sounds harsh, he admits it himself.)
•He enjoys humor in books and although he is sometimes clever, he’s never very funny. I laughed only once. It was when I read, “These men of my acquaintance… loved Bukowski like little girls love ponies.”
•He hates One Hundred Years of Solitude, and compares Marquez to a trained chimp doing the same trick over and over again. He writes, “…the book is terrible.” And later, “I press on, uptight and bored”.
•He never reveals what makes his year of reading "dangerous". I thought maybe Miller would read something so moving he'd be shaken to the core, altering his life philosophy or way of life. This doesn't quite happen.
•He actually writes LOL in his book. I don’t care if this is supposed to be irony or a not-so-subtle criticism of social media, but I found it irritating and not very funny.
•Like Andrew Keen in The Cult of the Amateur How today's Internet is killing our culture, Andy Miller laments that "blockheads" have the freedom to publish reviews online. Criticism should be the job of paid professionals who have cultivated literary taste. He says it best himself
"In the Internet age, where comment is free and everyone is entitled to a wrong opinion, blockheads write zealously, copiously and for nothing. They have a platform unprecedented in human history. The problem faced by ‘old media’, and professional critics in particular, with their years of experience and their skill in fine phrase-making, is that their opinions now carry little more worth than those of the individual with a laptop who has never read any books and who would not recognise a pleasing and insightful cadence if it half-slammed, half-caressed them in the belly with a slippery bagful – well, you know how it goes by now."
One the positive side
•I was glad to have read the book mostly because I enjoyed disliking the author!
•A few of his reflections on life and literature were worthy of highlighting.
•He accomplishes his own little chimp trick in almost every chapter, finding an unexpected way to connect one novelist with another (Houellebecq and Douglas Adams, Melville and Dan Brown.) I liked this.
•I came away wanting to read a few books Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Schopenhauer'sThe World as Will and Representation, Vol 1, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
•Near the end of the book Miller exhibits convincing self-reflection, and the book almost becomes uplifting.
•There were a few moments of mastery that have me convinced this is an author to watch. I think he's capable of more.
One last thing. You might wonder how the year of reading “saves his life”, as the title promises. (Keep in mind he was already a literature major working as an editor.) Well, when he gets to the 49th book, Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, Miller finally shows some tenderness. He is moved to discover that art is like a grand consolation prize despite the inevitability of death.
I have a hard time with that awakening. To major in literature is essentially to major in death. All literary works explore the "inevitability of decay". Why does it only sink in for Miller at the 49th book, a book by Michel Houellebecq? Either way, this is the chapter where I actually start to warm to Miller, even though I have no interest in reading Atomised. He finally finds what the title promised us hope, and “a way forward”.
0 Response to "≡ Download Gratis The Year of Reading Dangerously How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life eBook Andy Miller"
Post a Comment