Reviews for The Volunteer Library: A Handbook

The average rating for The Volunteer Library: A Handbook based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-13 00:00:00 Cecil Sansbury Dorothy Donnelly was a successful actor in the 1900s and 1910s, as well as being a script doctor, playwright, producer and librettist (for The Student Prince, easily her best known work, among others), yet she's next to forgotten- McLean smartly suggests that it's because she wasn't a Shakespearean tragedienne, didn't get involved in any juicy scandals, and never had children to wave her flag. McLean's excellent book is a reclamation of Donnelly's place in theater history, and she gives a thorough, entertaining account of her career - the archival research and warm voice of McLean are both fantastic, and I was more than disappointed to find that this is the only book McLean wrote. McLean's last line is "Dorothy Donnelly deserves her monument," which is absolutely true - and theater scholarship deserved more of the excellent work of historian Lorraine Arnal McLean.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-24 00:00:00 Roger Rocha H.G. wrote this novel at warp speed nine, as evidenced by the bluntest ending ever written and presented in a Penguin Classic. His dystopian vision here, however, is one of the most influential in SF and beyond. Needless, we’d have no 1984 if it wasn’t for this patchy, overtly racist, but workmanlike tale. Respect to Herb.