Reviews for Lyra Heroica

The average rating for Lyra Heroica based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-06-27 00:00:00 ynqoycs KHVWleMivwHhbrmpSE The Best - Atul Gawande's "The Way We Age Now" - Sam Shaw's "Run Like Fire Once More" - Charles Simic's "The Renegade" Other Highlights - Adam Gopnik's introduction - Rich Cohen's "Becoming Adolf" - Anthony Lane's "Candid Camera" - Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence" - Louis Menand's "Notable Quotables" - Hugh Raffles' "Cricket Fighting" - John Updike's "Extreme Dinosaurs" - Joe Wenderoth's "Where God Is Glad" Full disclosure: I stopped reading Emily R. Grosholz's "On Necklaces" after these two sentences: 'That year, when we were not exchanging scholarly notes, we were shopping for shoes at the outlet. E.B. White said of the gifted spider Charlotte that it is rare to find a someone who is both a good friend and a good writer; I might add, and a good shopper.' I know it probably sounds harmless to some, but I really don't have any interest in reading someone who drags a prose artist like E.B. White into Sex and the City-esque slop.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-29 00:00:00 Kiva Bolton It is exceedingly difficult to rate an anthology with any more than three stars, because almost inevitably there will be some essays I love and some I despise (or rather, that bore me so to death that I don't even dignify them with a complete read). And when you average out love and despise you get 2.5, and then have to rate it a 3. Regardless, this is worth a read, as "The Best" series of all types are every year. I particularly enjoyed the essays that leaned more toward the personal and emotional (one in particular by a man IV feeding his HIV positive partner at home was wonderful), rather than the analytical and pseudo-intellectual (really, necklace making as a metaphor for life? I've never read so much about beading and cared so little...and I am a former beader!). Recommended for those that don't have qualms cherry picking.