Unabridged Chick

Don't let that rather pedestrian first line put you off; this is an irreverent yet avowedly geeky look at the canon of Western European literature. Beginning with the ancient Greeks and ending with the Modernists, Newman provides pithy summaries of famous works with humorous ratings (by importance, accessibility, and fun).Ranking books is pretty subjective, no matter how objective the criteria, and I'm honestly not usually a fan of this kind of non-fiction (I like forming my own opinion, thank you!). But Newman's sense of humor is much like mine -- geeky, sarcastic, feminist, wry -- and so reading her was a bit like riffing with my nerdy Lit major girlfriends. However, you don't need to be an armchair academic to appreciate Newman's thoughts on the greats of Western literature. Her pithy biographies and summaries give a snapshot of a particular work or writer, and a suggestion of why one should read or not read said work/writer. I started marking hilarious/amusing/outrageous passages to quote and then found that I literally had a tab on every page. Here's a taste of Newman's writing style; she's discussing Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther:The success of this novel was staggering. Across Europe, Werther became a role model for youth. Everyone wanted to be like this whining reject. Scores of young men killed themselves in imitation, until Geothe was ready to go around killing them himself. For the rest of his life, Goethe was revered as the man who created Werther, even after had written far greater books, invented colors, and created the world in six days. (p151)According to her own criteria, she rates The Sorrows of Young Werther as having a 10 in Importance, a 9 in Accessibility, and an 8 in Fun. I'm inclined to side with her opinions since she rates The Scarlet Letter with a 9 ("alas!") for Importance, an 8 for Difficulty, and a 4 for Fun. (My thoughts exactly!)I was so amused and inspired by Newman's thoughts, I'm going to do a reading challenge based on the authors and books she mentions. (More on that to come.) Writers on writers is a favorite genre of mine, and book nerds on books is a sure way to get me to read more books (so brava, Newman!).A super fun, snappy, and easy-to-digest guide to Western literature, that will provoke nods of agreement and a few gasps of horrified disagreement. And lots of laughing. Way more fun than my 10th grade English class!