Customer Reviews

Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Murnighan drains the swamp of any inhibition one may have to delve into these classics. He focuses us on the humor and insights to be derived and provides a fresh scaffold. A definite must read for all college freshman as well as for those now motivated to revisit these literary giants.

Wow!! This is truly one of the best purchases I've made on Amazon, and I've been buying books online for years just waiting to find something so awesome!

Sit back, relax and enjoy the brilliance. Curling up with this book was like having a fantasy dinner party with every genius writer you skipped over in your youth. The author is an extremely talented writer, I guess his work spans a doctorate in medieval literature as well as trendy online blogs, and so he has this truly magical ability to breathe new life into these works, without making it a snoozefest. He reminds us how to read the great works, and does so with such a witty and hilarious flair, and wow, his lovingly selected quotes make you glad you waited for this book.

I'd especially recommend this a starter book for a book club, an excellent read just to take to the beach. It makes great summer reading, and especially perfect if you've been thinking about delving into some of the classics, but can't think where to start.

Really an instant classic.

This is a great, hilarious, mind-boggling book. It is funny, intense, and full of insights and ideas. How could anyone read all these tomes, be so delighted by them, and show us how we can enjoy them too? Only someone with a huge intellect and tremendous passion for great literature. It's a wonderful thing when your children impress you, and that is certainly the case here. Although Jack would like this book to push us all to read the originals, too many of us will simply delight in his summaries, love the humor, and act like we know more than we do when we steal the great quotes that he provides and act like we found them ourselves. For my money, the chapter on the Old Testament and the opening sentence on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice are worth more than the cost of the book. And these are only two of the many gems in this lively, entertaining read. Enjoy!

I really loved this book. It is so much fun and such a pleasure to read, but there is a serious side to it, too. A friend and I once had a long discussion about the fact that, if you wanted to, you could not come up with a better way to ruin literature for readers than the way it is taught in American high schools and colleges. If that is true, Murnighan is our very own Virgil or Beatrice, our wise and wonderful guide through the literary Inferno that this terrible system makes of these great books. Along the way, with equal parts wit and wisdom, Murnighan rehabilitates these books for us--pointing out the offenders of every kind--and reminds us the point is to like reading, and that means that we, the readers, have the right to judge and choose, and no just to accept what our betters tell us. I promise you'll be a convert. That, and its beautifully written, too.

I've already read about 17 out of his list of 50 classics, but I can't say that I've enjoyed all of them. I plowed through some stretches more out of a sense of duty than of enjoyment.

Murnighan's approach is to read the part that you'll enjoy, and pass on the rest. This idea kind of shocked me, as my customary approach has been that a book (especially a "classic") should be taken as a whole - the unitary artistic output of an act of creation. Murnighan's rather irreverent approach (as demonstrated in his choice of language as well as in his pick-and-choose attitude) I found somewhat strange. However, there is a touch of wisdom in it: If you're out of school and reading for your own pleasure, why force yourself to read what you don't like? Conversely, why deny yourself the pleasure of reading what you might like, just because it's embedded with other material that is not to your taste? Even as a "dutiful student of literature", doesn't it make more sense to read part of a classic than none of it? And if you find that you really do like a particular book, you can always go back to the part you skipped and read it later.

I will definitely go back to this book the next time I want to read one of these 50 classics. But I will apply the insight of "skipping what's not fun" to other books as well!

As an English Lit major in college, I had to slog through many of the 50 books on Mr. Murnighan's list.

While I truly do love to read, I have to say that I logged many boring and uninterested hours when reading some of those archaic classics - unable to understand much of what I was reading and unable to care. Reading this book, however, was magic... Mr. Murnighan honestly has me running for the bookshelves for another visit.

He provides a fresh, funny and often compelling perspective on each book he writes about. He gives the good, the bad and the ugly about each, and it really feels as though he breathes new life into the old greats.

This book is not only insightful and intelligent, it is also one of the funnier books I have read in a long time. My sister and I were practically in hysterics while reading his takes on some of literature's most heralded protagonists. (Man-crush on Jesus, anyone?) He takes down the giants of literature and makes them accessible to anyone who has ever wondered what the big deal was all about.

This is great fun - it is one of those books that can be picked up and picked at time and again, without the need to read from cover to cover. Students who need to read one of those 'wretched' classic titles will find comfort and assistance here, and even if one disagrees with the author's sentiments (not recommend The Sun Also Rises??), the writing is too charming to keep a reader distressed for long. This volume obviously took a lot of time and effort; it was a brave undertaking and we have to give Murnighan props for even thinking of tackling these books in one volume.

I found this book very enjoyable to read and also very helpful and inspiring. But....I feel like some of the "What to Skip" suggestions might be a problem. No doubt there are parts of books the can be skipped, but for example in Bleak House (a favorite book of mine) the Author advises the reader to skip any chapter with Skimpole in it. Hmmm...while I agree that Skimpole is a despicable individual, I can't agree with skipping all of his chapters as they seem important to the book, and I feel like Dickens portrait of Skimpole is quite good and should not be missed.

Jack Murnighhan states in his chapter on `Madame Bovary': `Read the wrong thing, and the damage is irreversible.' I agree. Although sometimes I think it's an issue of timing: a book that is inaccessible or incomprehensible at one stage may become a joy to read at a different stage. Or vice versa.

The main reason I bought this book was to see which the chosen 50 books were. Having some quite fixed favourites of my own, I'm always intrigued by which books others choose, and why. Once I checked that `Wuthering Heights' had been included, I relaxed and enjoyed the book.

I liked the structure of this book which included a cheat sheet which includes the following headings: What to Skip; The Buzz; What People Don't Know (But Should); Best Line; What's Sexy; Quirky Fact; and What to Skip. This cheat sheet is applied to each of the 50 books. I don't agree with all of Jack Murnighan's views, but I enjoyed reading them. His enthusiasm for these books and for literature in general is contagious. I'm not sure that I'll tackle all of the classics I've not yet read (roughly half of those listed) but I'm tempted to read some and to reread others.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This was a very interesting book. It really helped to bring the classics to life and make them seem interesting to the casual reader.

The best thing about the book is the way Murnighan breaks down the best parts and best lines of the novels and plays. It is a great tool I can use as a teacher to show my students why they should read these books.