Reviews for At the Table of the Grail: Magic and the Use of the Imagination

The average rating for At the Table of the Grail: Magic and the Use of the Imagination based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-30 00:00:00 Brent Jose I wasn't sure what I was expecting from this book - maybe another conspiracy theory, expounding the truth, type book. But it's not - it's a series of essays about writers who have written about the grail. Whether a pagan or Celtic sacred symbol, or a Christian religious relic, writers of both fact and fiction have been fascinated by the legends. From the earliest known poets who wrote down verbal legends already very old, right through to the more modern era, this book covers all of their work. To be honest, some essays were more successful than others. I enjoyed many of them, but some were either too dismissive of their subject matter or couched in such esoteric language that they became not worth the hassle to decode. But in the main, I learned a lot and enjoyed the experience.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-12 00:00:00 Perry Tollefson This is one of those books where you feel the world around you expand, it's an enlightening and stimulating experience, dynamic, inspirational even, it will open your mind to architecture, furniture, and space dynamics. It will have you thinking deeply of your dining table, your home, your garden, your street, your town, and beyond. Perec was simply one of kind. My personal view is that we were robbed of one of one the geniuses of our time. Had he been around for longer, I am sure his work would have got better and better. Not that there was anything wrong with it in the first place. Perec pays close attention (when I say close attention, I REALLY mean close attention) to everything around him, zooming out from the page he writes on the the whole of the space and it's nature, along the way he observes things as simple as a man locking his car to go to the store, the number and types of places he has slept in, and what happens to the picture and the wall its hung on, all in an inviting, welcoming voice. He feels like a friend, not just a writer. You don't want to leave his company. Part of this inviting friendliness comes from him inviting you to do the same as him. Simply Observe everything around you. Not just observation exercises, it goes deeper than that. In Species, Perec with a warm handshake entices you to look around your own city without boring you with actual full examples of exhaustive lists, making this work an enjoyable read rather than a trite and boring one. It's an eye-opener, and reading Perec certainly makes you feel truly alive, he will drag you out of a slumber, and give you a shot of Espresso with this book. He peels layers off the world around us like casually picking away at a piece of fruit. The bonus - a short story 'The Winter's Journey is also included, which is pretty darn good as well!