Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books

Author - Chris Sheedy ... [Goo?] [Posters]
Author - Jenny Bond ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Penguin (Non-Classics) was reviewed on 12-Dec-2008.

Search ISBN:014311364X offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books Reference Book. Classifications : Authors Arts & Literature Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books Reference Books & Reading Literature & Fiction Subjects Books Trivia Fun Facts Reference Subjects Books General Reference Subjects Books . Click the following link to view the cover of Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books.

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1) Paperback Book Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Penguin (Non-Classics). I love the idea of the story behind the story. I couldn´t wait to get this book and even bumped it up my reading stack. However, I found it hard to get into. It takes the top 50 books written in the author´s opinion and breaks them down. In the introduction, the author states what they are trying to accomplish. I found the book fell short of these goals. First, the book tells you about the author of the particular book. For instance, what is going on throughout their life and then tells you about the events in the world that are going on in that time period. Most of these sections of the chapters I enjoyed. Then it goes into why the author wrote the book. In most chapters, it´s about 2 paragraphs long then the chapter will end about that particular book. I thought that the story behind the story would have more insider knowledge or more about why they wrote this particular book or even why it was so great. It doesn´t. The chapters are extremely short...about 4-8 pages on average. I did like the other reading material section in the back and the book gave me information I didn´t already know. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a quick read of facts about the world going on when these top books were written or a short biographical sketch about the author of these books.¤

2) Paperback Book Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Penguin (Non-Classics). As the other reviewer has written, this book packs a lot into its ~300-page length. In an easy-to-read format, you get the historical as well as the biographical context behind 50 masterpieces. A highly recommended read.¤

3) Paperback Book Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Penguin (Non-Classics). There are many books about books. "Why Not Catch-21?" by Gary Dexter is one of them. Harold Bloom´s "Novelists and Novels" is another. "Who the Hell is Pansy O´Hara?" is one of the most recent book about books. It is different from the others not only in style, but also in content. Some will find it fascinating to have stories like Rowling´s "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer´s Stone" discussed in the same book that discusses Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice") and Emily Bronte ("Jane Eyre"). The authors include the Russian heavyweights, Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace") and Fyodor Dostoevsky ("Crime and Punishment") - they tell us that Dostoevsky´s book was accepted by the publisher only because Tolstoy grew fat on his previous success and had not written anything that year, and coincidentally, Turgenev, their contemporary rival, also had nothing to publish at the time. The unconventional mix of stories - I should now add, Jacqueline Susanne´s "Valley of the Dolls", Dan Brown´s "Da Vinci Code, and A A Milne´s "Winnie the Pooh" - may discourage others. Austen, Tolstoy & Shelley ("Frankenstein") have readers; Rowling, Brown, & Susanne have fans. They might not like to catch each other reading the same book.

Secondly, this book stands out because it combines a discussion of the story and the writer in the context of its history, the writer´s biography, and the reviews of the work. It is a literary "making of" book of books. Every work is a chapter and the book is divided into two main parts, "fiction" and "non-fiction". That is the third intriguing aspect of this book. In the non-fiction segment the authors talk about "Encyclopaedia Brittanica", and "Guinness World Records" as well as Truman Capote´s "In Cold Blood". If one is looking for a scholarly work, he might prefer to pick up Bloom´s book instead, where he will read Bloom´s comparison of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in such terms as:
"Jane Eyre", like "Wuthering Heights", is after all a romance, however northern, and not a novel, properly speaking. Its standards of representation have more to do with Jacobean melodrama and Gothic fiction than with George Eliot and Thackeray, and more even with Byron´s "Lara" and "Manfred" than with any other works. Rochester is no Heathcliff; he lives in a social reality in which Heathcliff would be an intruder even if Heathcliff cared for social realities except as fields in which to take revenge."

Bond & Sheedy write, instead, "Charlotte, inspired by her time in Brussels, penned "The Professor". Emily, influenced by the wilds of the moors, had written Wuthering Heights". Anne had produced "Agnes Grey", a story based on her experiences as a governess." Bond & Sheedy´s effort, less profound in subject and analysis, is nonetheless full of useful information that are usually found embedded in a mass of other less striking information in major biographies. They tell about Erich Remarque and his "All Quiet on the Western Front", concluding with information about the consequences of his fame - the loss of his German citizenship, the welcome of America, his purchase of a house in Switzerland, his marriages (twice to the same woman), and his affairs, which include the story of Marlene Dietrich. This book will be a nice companion for a lazy afternoon by the beach; or a warm cafe in ski resort; or in the bath; or wherever.
¤

4) Paperback Book Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books by Penguin (Non-Classics). The captivating stories behind fifty of the greatest authors and their most famous literary creations

Before Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara ?, there had never been a single volume that explored the backstories of so many of the greatest books in the English language. A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world.
• When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4´ 9 1/2" author
• Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi’s Enigma code
• Leo Tolstoy’s wife copied War and Peace by hand . . . seven times

From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J. K . Rowling, Who the Hell Is Pansy O’Hara? offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 9-Jan-2009, 014311364X9780143113645, 640-4X0-440-000-900-860-561-431-981-111-8

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