 | | |
| Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Schnakenberg
Creator: Mario Zucca
Publisher: Quirk Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $7.98
You Save: $8.97 (53%)
Buy New/Used from $5.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (9 reviews)
Sales Rank: 44896
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1594742111
Dewey Decimal Number: 810.9
EAN: 9781594742118
ASIN: 1594742111
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In the tradition of Quirk's bestselling Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (100,000+ copies in print), here are outrageous and uncensored profiles of the world's greatest writers, complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright bizarre facts. Consider:
Edgar Allan Poe was kicked out of West Point Military Academy.
Louisa May Alcott was addicted to opium.
W. B. Yeats paid surgeons to transplant monkey glands into his scrotum.
J. R. R. Tolkien slept in his bathroom.
Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership before hitting the big time.
With chapters on everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your teachers were afraid to answer: What's the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? Why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie's Angels? The classics were never this much fun in school!
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
FUN, RELAXING READING November 18, 2008
I found the book fun, interesting and down-to-earth. All us book types enjoy looking at our favorite authors, and of course, when you review a book like this one with its quirky haps and circs, it just stimulates your interest in other writers. I noticed Hemingway didn't appreciate bad reviews and Louisa May liked her opium, and Agatha wrote romance novels under a pseuodonym and Salinger drank his own urine for medicinal reasons; and the secret lives go on and on. I enjoyed it and have recommended to my reader and librarian buddies. Good show!
 The Secret Lives of Great Authors is a fun trip through literary land with great illustrations and prose needing proofreading! September 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Secret Lives of Great Authors by Robert Schnakenberg is a fun romp through literary land. The book examines the private lives of 41 classic authors from William Shakespeare the amorous playwright of Avon to the weird reclusive author Thomas Pyncheon.
This little book is also fact filled. Among listing the major works of the authors the book examines the quiddities of the great. Among such gems were these:
Lord Byron collected the public hairs of each of his many lovers.
Louise May Alcott had a crush on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and the eccentric Henry David Thoreau (Thoreau's family owned a pencil company for which Thoreau worked).
Franz Kafka refused to drop his shorts at a nudist camp.
Thomas Stearns Eliot was a practical joker including the use of whoopee cushions.
JRR Tolkien had to sleep in the bathroom since his wife hated to hear him snore in bed.
You get the idea! Much of this material is trivial but it does serve the purpose of humanizing these iconic figures. After all they were human!High School students and those just getting immersed in the wonderful world of literature would enjoy these humorously short profiles.
The book is poorly proofread
As an example, Twain could not have given a lecture on flatulence to Queen Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603) who had been dead for centuries before the American Lincoln of our Literature was born in Missouri in 1835. Some words are misspelled. Better editing should be exerted for the next edition.
The book is the companion volume to "The Secret Lives of Great Painters and Sculptors" published by the Quirk Publishing Company.
Good book, wierd formatting July 1, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I picked this up the other day & I've been enjoying it ever since. The layout of each chapter being a different author or set of authors is nice, since it makes for a good bathroom book or a nice book to read before you go to sleep. I'm not sure if all of the facts are true (as said by one of the other reviewers), but they make for good reading.
My only complaint is that the book is set up very strangely. The book's pages are rather thick & stiff, which puts me at constant fear of the spine breaking apart if I'm not careful. While the book does feel nice under the fingertips, I'm afraid that it's not very practical. Still, it's a minor complaint overall.
I'd recommend this to book fans, both serious bibliophiles & casual readers. Everyone will find something they like, whether it's complaining that some things are a little off or whether it's discovering that their favorite author wasn't as squeaky clean as our teachers would have liked us to think.
 Lots of Bad Information June 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
One reviewer has already noted this, but this book is full of bad info. I'm not sure who did the fact checking here, but a lot of the blurbs are just plain wrong. I admit, I haven't read the whole thing, but just reading up on my two favorite authors -- Hemingway & Kurt Vonnegut -- yielded bad info.
It says that Hemingway never actually ran with the bulls in Pamplona. This is technically true. He never ran down the street with the bulls charging. But he did get in the ring when the bulls reached the arena, and nearly got gored. There are pictures of this!
It says that Vonnegut ran a Saab dealership (one of the first in the country) while writing his most famous books, including Slaughterhouse-Five. It is true that Vonnegut opened and ran one of the first Saab dealerships in the country, but not while he was writing his novels. He wrote Slaughterhouse-Five while teaching at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.
This books is fine for harmless fun and bathroom reading, but for Truth and serious research, look elsewhere.
Terribly funny, but... June 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
... I found one serious flaw that bugged me (and made me question the resources the author used). The author stated that Mark Twain made a speech on breaking wind to an audience that included Queen Elizabeth I. The year of birth given for Mark Twain is 1835. Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603. Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926, and the author dates Mark Twain's death as 1910, and therefore there is no typo here. He must have meant Queen Victoria. For this, I have deducted a star, but nevertheless, I found this book to extremely entertaining. I definitely recommend this book for a good laugh, if nothing else.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| | |
