Quoth the raven
...Nevermore! I'm not smart enough for this book - lemme get that out, first and foremost. English is not my native language, and this book is in old english, so it was super challenging on that aspect. And on top of being written on a harder kind of english, Mr. Poe seems to love those long winded sentences, that really begs you to lean over and pay attention. And re-read the same paragraph a couple times. I will admit I didn’t understand a blink of certain stories. The fact these are all small stories was also a challenge for me (I usually don’t get that gripping urgency in finishing the book), but that is something particular to me. It took me some good 10 years to finally sit down and decide to finish it, once and for all. We don’t DNF books in my house. That being said, I'd say Mr. Poe's works are a mixed bag. The most famous ones are the ones I enjoyed the most: The Black Cat, The Red Pestilence, the-bug-one... some satires were interesting too, never saw that coming. And, of course, The Raven. I'm not a poem girl, but I liked a lot of poems here. That being said, this book brought up an old discussion I'm still not quite settled with: Do we separate the Author from the Book? In certain instances, it becomes clear some shades of r*cism bleed onto the pages, but for the most part, it can pass as a reflection the prevalent line of thinking of his era. And this I can.... understand? Minimize? For this reason The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was a huge let down. I was loving it, truly. Until, uh.... Yeah, pure and blatant r*cism. Left a bad taste, if you know what I mean. Other than that, I still think Poe has great works that rightfully so became legends. The Raven is a must read for anyone with any trace of gothic blood in their veins. The Black Cat too. If r*cism is a sensitive topic to you, you might want to do some research on which tales to avoid. If, on top of it, you DON’T think author and book should be separated, perhaps you should avoid Poe entirely. I think I'm leaning more towards treating book and author as separate things entirely, for a number of reasons. So despite everything, this was a ride. A long, looong ride.