William Schoell

A deep dive into the life, career, and achievements of the mysterious poet Edgar Allan Poe. Born of well established actors, Poe seemed to have an almost annoying sense of entitlement. After his mother's death and his father's abandonment, Poe was taken in by the caretaker of his mother, Fanny Allan and her husband, John Allan. Never being legally adopted by the Allan's threw Poe into a pit of insecurity and in retaliation began engaging in things that were not beneficial for his career. I loved this book for the main fact that Poe failed, multiple times and still became a successful, published, poet and author. Although i gained a lot of insight on the life of Poe, I would say this is not an easy book to comprehend-- the story is easy to follow but not in a very memorable fashion. There are not too many pictures to classify it as a picture book. I would recommend this to anyone that is doing research on Poe.… (mais)

Mystery and Terror reads more like an undergraduate paper than a biography. The tone is informative and direct, but also dry and disappointingly neutral. Despite the fact that there's no information about the author beyond being, "the author of a number of books for young adults," (back cover), I don't doubt Schoell's interest in the subject; still, there's no passion or fire, no craft to elaborate or highlight Poe as an individual. The chronological, straightforward presentation of information is easy to get through, but not particularly memorable, which is disappointing, considering the colorful nature of Poe's life. Pages of the text are dotted with a few black and white photographs and illustrations, but overall, the format is as uninspiring as the content. I could envision a student using this text for a quick report or to cushion a bibliography--which, by the way, Mystery and Terror's own bibliography only contains eleven sources, four of which are collections of stories and not necessarily biographical research--but I would look elsewhere if trying to get a student truly interested in Poe and engaged in a text.

Not to be unduly harsh, I would highlight again that the text is informative, and for the most part, seemingly factual. Also, I can appreciate Schoell's generally unbiased tone and recognize that there's value in such a stance, even though it did not align with my personal expectations of a biography on Poe.… (mais)

I am torn as to whether this book is spectacular, or flawed in a single regard. This book focuses upon the life of the author H. P. Lovecraft in its entirety. This is immensely enjoyable as most often, anything regarding Lovecraft has been strictly about his stories and characters rather than his life. This book focused upon Lovecraft's upbringing, his childhood, his family's history, and other such interesting bits of back story such as his frequent nightmares which the author tied into the the book as an explanation for the stories which Lovecraft would write. However, while the author corrected the dearth of information about Lovecraft's own life, he neglected any mention of the stories themselves to tie these childhood and life experiences into. Had he provided more, and more significant, examples of these weird and macabre stories to tie Lovecraft's life into, then there would have been a more complete rendering of his life and works. Still, the focus upon Lovecraft's life was welcome.
I would recommend this to High School students to read, in part because they would be more aware of the works in question than younger students.… (mais)