The Works of Edgar Allen Poe - Volume 5 by Edgar Allan Poe
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
It appears I accidentally clicked on Volume 5 first, but how can I not love anything that starts with an essay about the philosophy of furniture and contains this line: "Yet I have heard fellows discourse of carpets with the visage of a sheep in reverie — “d’un mouton qui rêve” — who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own moustachios."
Sure, between the furniture and the Romans besieging Jews it's not been at all what I expected, but so far it's wonderful.
What I ended up liking best about this volume was the anticipation of scary. Even if a given short story wasn't particularly spooky, I'd get all worked up expecting that it would be. At one point I was reading this in the Pyeongtaek train station and Wyatt scared the shit out of me when he arrived and touched my shoulder.
Unfortunately for me, then we hit the poetry bit. I liked The Raven but everything after was all downhill. The problem could be me: I'm not a poetry reader. I find that I can read it and find the rhythm and perhaps a line or a few together will make sense, but after that the poem tends to flow over me and make no sense overall. Since the last third of this volume was all poetry (or even worse, an essay about what makes real poetry), it ended up disappointing a fair bit.
That said, I do intend to try and read the first four volumes over the next four Octobers, so perhaps Poe will be redeemed for me at some point.
Also, that essay about furniture was pure win.
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