Easily Amused: Samuel Johnson: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Product Details

Paperback: 880 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Reissue edition (April 15, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0199538336
ISBN-13: 978-0199538331
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Samuel Johnson
Price : $11.53
You Save : $5.42 (32%)

Samuel Johnson: The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Buyer Reviews

I read Johnson in the same way that I read Jane Austen, for the pure joy--and the celebration--of their beautifully balanced sentences. Indeed, it's practically like playing Bach to perform these sentences as they mount into paragraphs. 1 walks away feeling that one's thinking apparatus has been lovingly oiled, buffed, spun and polished. In addition, there's the extraordinary range of this man's thinking to applaud as well. Nevertheless, the problem for some many people may well be that the book in query, with its generous selection and its straightforward-on-the eye type size, is roughly the identical dimensions as Johnson's brain, and most likely a tad heavier, which mitigates against taking it out for a stroll stuffed into the back pocket for an occasional dip. As an alternative it should certainly be installed in the bedroom or the bathroom or any room exactly where it can be consulted in an on-once more, off-again manner. I read the Rambler selections, the dictionary and the poetry in this way. What's beneficial about Johnson is that his prose is like poetry--it can't be read by means of just when, but demands re-reading, and each and every time delivers however a different prize for the effort. Funny that it all came from a grotesque hypocrite and snob who enjoyed bullying others and was none also clean about his shirt and linen. Lastly, brilliant as he was, I have to disagree with Johnson when he says, at the beginning of his Rambler Essay "The Need to have for Common Knowledge" "That wonder is the effect of ignorance has been quite often observed....Wonder is a pause of cause, a sudden cessation of the mental progress, which lasts only whilst the understanding is fixed upon some single idea, and is at an finish when it recovers force adequate to divide the topic into its components, or mark the intermediate gradations from the initial agent to the final consequence...." (pg. 222 this book). The more I understand Johnson and his times, his parts and his divisions, the alot more I am struck with wonder.

OK, I'll admit it... When I dropped out of high school at the tender age of 14 for a profession of glue-sniffing and joy-riding round the graffiti-sprayed council estates of my native Irvine, I was a 'seven-stone weakling' in terms of applying the English language.
Brought up on a diet plan of comic books, tabloid newspapers, and football magazines (Shoot, Match Weekly, etc) and 'educated' in a Socialist-inspired 'comprehensive' school, I wasn't seriously equipped for my future career as an international journalist. But then some thing extremely strange and bewitching occurred - I found 'THE Doctor,' as we acolytes refer to him, and started mentally operating out on his lengthy, finely wrought sentences.
At very first, each seemingly interminable sentence was like attempting to swim the English Channel - I believed I would drown before reaching the other finish - but, somehow, I survived and identified myself on dry land, confused and wet, but nevertheless alive and raring to have another go.
In the months that followed, the fine doctor's erudite style became Mother's milk to me as I progressively beefed up my English. This enabled me to grab a place at the prestigious university of Thames Polytechnic and, then, on graduation, to a career writing for a wide range of remarkable publications, which includes Riff Raff, Tokyo Notice Board, and the Wall Street Journal.
The fantastic point about THE DOCTOR's prose is that he utilizes a disproportionate number of abstract nouns, which means you have to mentally offer your own examples. At initial this can be exceptionally challenging, but if you stick with it, your brain will develop into, as mine has, a potent and expressive tool.