This book is considered to be one of the most important pieces of early english literature. By virtue of this alone, most everyone who goes through high school is forced to read it. It reads as a mildly interesting narrative. This translation is decent but fails to bring the story really to life. Beowulf, here, is a laborius and uninvolving read. If you are reading this for fun, you are better off seeking another translation (like Seamus Heaney). I suppose everyone should read this book to make themselves more knowledgeable of english literature, but it requires a sheer act of will. Unless you are forced to read it or really want to read it, you will probably be bored by this translation.

Beowulf is the original super hero, doing deeds other dare not do. I found Beowulf to also be a generalization of life. In our youth we think ourselves invincible and do daring things. As we get older, we get tied down to a job. In our old age, our strength fails us. Then it is up to the next generation to take over, with all their zeal and enthusiasim.

The translation from Old English came through nicely and even had some flow. Beowulf may be the most important Old English poem, but it is also an important Germanic epic poem, and little seems lost or changed by the Christian writers.

I grew up listening to and loving the two poetry Winnie the Pooh books. If like me, you love this poetry, DO NOT purchase these tapes! After listening to the first 15 minutes of one tape and skimming other poems in the hopes that Kuralt suddenly gained inspiration, the tapes have remained in the box unlistened to. I have tried to give them to other teachers, only to have them returned to me. Charles Kuralt is absolutely the WRONG person to read this wonderful poetry. His dry, boring, monotonous voice made me want to cry, terrified that his reading would turn kids off to Milne's incredibly beautiful and funny poetry.

I spent my childhood and adolescence in sight of Ashdown Forest, England, where the Pooh books are set. I still retain a deep affection for them. But Milne's verse is something else and would long-ago have been forgotten but for the stories with which it is associated. Nobody who has seen the parody:

Hush, Hush. Nobody cares. Christopher Robin has fallen down stairs.

will ever again be able to read Milne's sentimental whimsies with a straight face. The book is only worth three stars for the beautiful illustrations by E H Shepard

Everyone who has read Milne's original Pooh books knows that he can write a good hum, after all Pooh gives us several.

In this volume (and the earlier "When We Were Very Young") Milne's voice comes through more clearly, unmoderated by writing for his bear of little brain. He gives us a small volume full of poems that should surely last as well as his prose. While some of them are strongly flavoured by the time and place where he wrote them others are more universal in their subject and tone.

As you read this volume you will almost certainly come across something you recognise, if it isn't the line "James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree" that catches your memory then it might be "Just a bit of butter for the royal slice of bread." If not, then you will find many of them sticking when you have read them to a child.

I have seen editions of this volume without the illustrations by E.H. Shepard, it would seem to me a travesty to separate the two. Shepard has always been the traditional illustrator of Milne and the pen and ink drawings he made for the first edition of this book, retained in this (and most) paperback edition are marvellous - well executed and suiting the style and subject of the poems.

It is hard to overstate the joy my daughter and I have had from this volume. My mother read many of these poems to me thirty five (and more) years ago, over the past few years my daughter and I have discovered our own favourites. Now she is old enough that she reads them herself.

The poems are indeed a little sentimental, a little whimsical and seem to come from a softer, more pastoral childhood than has perhaps existed for many years. I don't see this as a problem for the poetry, after all, if we cannot recreate a gentler time for our children perhaps we can soften the one we can provide with the tiny charming tales in these poems.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a small child. I give it only four stars as the poems are mixed in quality.

Reading Anglo-Saxon literature can be for modern readers like listening to fingernails scratched on a blackboard. A mind conditioned to democracy, fair play and (public) modesty recoils at primitive sensibilities embodied in the heroic ideal -- where childlike loyalty to one's tribal lord is paramount and boasting about one's prowess is considered good manners. An excellent introduction to this anthology prepares new readers for the Anglo-Saxon world and world-view.

If we take Alexander at his word that "The excuse, ultimately, for a book of this sort is a conviction on the part of the author that some early English poems deserve to be read by those who do not make their living out of the subject, that what is excellent should be made current," these poems call for a more liberal translation. Alexander gamely tries to retain the sound of the originals, but sacrifices some of the empathy he could have inspired in an amateur audience.

Realism has conditioned modern readers to expect literary characters of more than one dimension, containing qualities both noble and despicable, and situations that are morally questionable. Most of these poems leave little room for ambiguity -- the good are good, the evil are monstrously evil.

The two most appealing poems for the modern reader may be "The Dream of the Rood" and "Deor." The first poem recounts the crucifixion from the persona of the cross. It is hard to read the line "They drove me through with dark nails" without admiration for the poet. "Deor" is the lament of a court poet whose role has been usurped by another. His plight is sympathetic.

Tales of battle and adventure abound. Perhaps the greatest adventure story is the survival of the poems themselves. They were recounted by memory for generations, transcribed by monks who layered Christian morality on top of pagan ideas, survived Viking raids and library fires as charred manuscript scraps. Old English is a language as alien to modern English as the surface of Mars is to Earth. Despite the difficulty of translation and difference of perspective, it is worth looking backwards to read these poems. If for no other reason than they are ours.

This commentary on Freud's biggest book is rather characteristic of the books being written these days. Its argument is tendentious and its scholarship trashy. To mention a random example, Welsh points out Freud's habit of never having discussions after reading papers, quoting Jones (his only source) for support. Now, I would advise Professor Welsh to do a little bit of research on this subject--5 minutes of research and careful reading would suffice to prove the contrary. It seems to be a recent trend to believe Jones whenever he writes something stupid, and ignore everything else. Professor Welsh is just another one of those trendy academics who are ready to jump on Freud whenever they see a chance. His strategy of calling Freud a product of the 19th century is old, really old, as if our malicious professor hasn't read much of the anti-Freudian literature either. This book is simply weak

This book goes a long way toward locating Freud in the tradition of the nineteenth-century novel. Welsh (unlike many who tackle Freud these days) is imaginatively equipped to engage with "The Interpretation of Dreams," and approaches the book as one would a literary text, perhaps the only way in which it is possible to read Freud anymore. In doing so he manages to avoid the twin pitfalls of adulation and "Freud-bashing"; "useful" is the way I'd characterize it.

I found this book difficult to read. The problem for this reader was that familiar material was presented in an overly repetitive way with few new insights, while the material that was new to me was difficult to even comprehend. This is certainly not one of the books I would recommend for someone interested in learning more about Hamlet.

For example, the first chapter discusses the way that Shakespeare added characters to his source materials to enhance the effect of the play. Welsh focuses on the expansion of Polonius' family to provide a foil to Hamlet's family. This information could have been presented much more crisply, and is familiar to any one who has read even the briefest discussions of Shakespeare's source material, for example Jenkin's introduction to the Arden version of Hamlet. On the other hand, on reading the chapter Welsh wrote on Goethe and Scott's comments on Hamlet, I never could follow which of these two critics he was talking about. Not fun.