3.80

1

January 7, 2017

Don't Buy This

Don't buy this. The publisher has stolen the cover design of Vintage Classic's edition of the book to mislead readers to believe it's published by that publishing house. The publication quality is hilariously bad--whoever made it just printed a Word document of the book.

4

February 1, 2017

Highly Relevant Today ** Wood 5 minute review

This book has a symmetry that reminds me of that of All the Light You Cannot See, which makes it inherently satisfying. Sadly, its social commentary is still very relevant today, making it a great reading choice, but a disturbing one. The writing itself falls a little clumsily on the modern ear, and some of it is a little obtuse. All in all, it is a very interesting look at British aristocracy in its waning days of the Empire.

1

January 10, 2018

One Star

Print edition unreadable. No text formatting such as paragraphs and chapters just one continuous stream of poorly printed characters.

1

December 20, 2016

Do not buy this edition

Howards End is a wonderful novel, but avoid this edition like the plague. It looks like someone in the mailroom photocopied it and slapped it between 2 covers. Spacing is crazy. Typeface is ugly. Unreadable. Should not be for sale.

1

February 23, 2017

Who Printed This?

This is a review of the version with the small trees on the cover. Do not buy this. It is of very poor quality and appears as if someone set up a photocopier and decided to sell some books. The cover is the only "pretty" part of this book.

5

December 2, 2016

... of free Kindle facsimilie books - the illustrations are poor, but the price is wonderful

I get a lot of free Kindle facsimilie books - the illustrations are poor, but the price is wonderful! EM Forster is up my alley and I am re reading almost all his novels. Great escape. In this case, there are photos at the end of the book - worth a look, since the original house that inspired the book is pictured.
Count me as a person who loves literature from the days before there were telegrams, telephones and . . . people communicated more personally and the literature of the time reflects that.

5

August 15, 2018

Howards End is E.M. Forster's great novel on class and money issues in 1910 England

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. He was raised in a household of women and matriculated at Cambridge University where he would spend most of his adult life. He served in the British Red Cross in World War I and was a closet homosexual until his death in 1970. His reputation is high in literary circles and Howards End is one of his best books. The novel has been turned into a famous movie with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins and was recently a STARZ network series.
Howards End contains fascinating characters:
Margaret and Helen Schlegel are the daughters of a German born man and an English woman. Their parents are dead; they live in a fashionable area of London. The live on a generous inheritance and they do not work. Instead they enjoy music, art, literature, fine art and cultivated intellectual talk. Forster was a liberal intellectual and the book is filled with chat on socialism, capitalism, suffrage for women and the clashes between rich and poor.

Binny their brother attends Oxford and is a weak cipher of a character.
Henry Wilcox is the wealthy industrialist who marries Margaret. His children by his first wife Ruth (who wills her home Howards End to Margaret Schlegel) are Charles. Paul and Evie. The family is athletic, modern, non-intellectual and very wealthy.
Leonard Bast is the poor bank clerk who conceives a child with Helen Schlagel following a night of passion. His wife is the uncouth Jacky who once had an affair with Henry Schlegel.
The novel is written in a poetic style and evokes England as the nation moved from the Edwardian age into the modern Georgian society of the twentieth century. Forster wrote well and I enjoyed the book which I have read several times. Not everyone's cup of tea but a classic that many of Forster's readers enjoy one hundred plus years after it was written. Enjoy!

2

November 4, 2017

A Tough Read!

A tough read that is not worth the effort, and I love most classic English novels. There are whole paragraphs that are unintelligible, and there is no sense of realistic resolution in the end. Reading critical essays helped make sense of the three featured families, but with so many great books to read, I would definitely skip.

5

September 6, 2016

The Human and the Divine

Howard's End is a novel that transcends time, space, nation, or setting. It deals with what is most important in life: relationships. How we connect to our fellow human beings is what concerned EM Forster. And he dealt with the issue masterfully. Truly one of the greatest things ever written in the English language. Reading this book, I mean REALLY reading it, so that it gets into the dark crevices of your soul and enlightens it just a little, will make you a better human being to others. And that is the whole point of both being human and of literature.

4

April 22, 2013

A beautiful book that I really enjoyed

I really loved this book in many ways. One of my favorite things about it was that when the characters were talking, it would make the pacing of the story a bit hectic, and then the author would begin to describe things in an almost philisophical way that was very soothing. I loved that continual back and forth of energy flow.

One thing that I thought was really interesting about this book was the hindsight. In hindsight you could see at exactly what point the inevitable tragic end was set in motion. All the way back to one casual comment, and then the characters were just acting true to their nature, being the only people they could be, the people they were. And the results led to a man's death. But just because something so terrible happens does NOT mean that people would not enjoy the book. It was a very compelling book, and one I'm sure I'll read several more times over the course of my life, and I highly recommend it.

3

October 23, 2019

amazing book, bad printing

Watch for cheaply made digital printing editions. Dover Thrift used to be considered authoritative texts, but they now clearly use digital printing techniques that leave many typos and font sizes that are all over the place. You will be reading along fine, then a single line will look smaller and the horizontal line spacing will become tighter (spaces between words). The result is a jarring reading experience. Also, no one proofreads these computer editions. So you will find lots of typos. I would look for a critical edition or the Library of America. The binding was fine, so it was easy to hold to read it, tho. Upton Sinclair gets more than 5 stars for an amazing book. Every American, every meat-eater, every consumer, every person on the planet who works for a living, every immigrant, farmer, unionist, lawmaker, politician, restaurant worker--everyone should read this book as required reading for workers' rights and food rights, also animal rights. The story is heartbreaking and the history is real. This book led to real reform and Sinclair is a hero as well as a fine, master craftsman as a writer. A page turner filled with horror, grief, and pathos.

5

February 5, 2018

~ If you want to try a quality book ~

I've always liked the artistry of this writer. I find the journey the reader goes on in this title satisfying.

It is worth a read. Obviously, no one knows what's best for you more than you. Ith has been so well received that a movie was made based on it..

1

March 16, 2018

One Star

The ending is crap.

2

November 14, 2016

Two Stars

Print was too small for a senior.

3

March 29, 2016

Meh

Not exactly a waste of time, but I wouldn't read it again. Didn't really like or care about any of the characters since they weren't very realistic. It is like an old, very fuzzy snapshot of people you don't know. Meh.

1

June 23, 2018

One Star

I couldn't listen to it. It was hard to listen to the narrator.

1

May 22, 2018

is excellent. But no matter what I tried

The book, which I have read before, is excellent. But no matter what I tried, even purchasing it a second time, the digital edition couldn’t be downloaded.

1

March 19, 2018

The movie is much better

I hated it. I could not finish it. It was too wordy about art, music, etc.

1

July 19, 2017

Howard's End - Audible Edition - Do Not Buy - Incomplete Production

Howard's End - Audible Edition. Do not buy. It is 3x hours long. This is not abridged edition. it is simply a case where the rest of the book was not published. It stops 1/3 of the way through. I let the Audible know of the error. They sent me the standard email back on corrective action. I called them and the representative believes this production is correct even though a book of this length should be much longer. It is shame. I was just beginning to enjoy it.

1

April 17, 2017

A publication of nonsense.

This is the most bizarre publication of a novel that I have ever seen. Every chapter appears as a single paragraph. Surely Amazon should not present this book to readers as if it contained normal paragraphs. Reading this layout is ridiculous. I can see why no printer or publisher has put its name to this book, and no address either.

2

September 5, 2019

Slow story line.

Very slow moving story with little to no climatic elements.

2

July 16, 2018

BORING

Very disappointed in this "classic novel". I wanted to read it especially after watching the mini series on HBO.

2

June 22, 2018

Boring

Did not care for it

2

May 21, 2018

Stilted

I found this book difficult to read. It was very stilted, and very English. The character development seemed to be the driving force and yet the characters seemed distant and obtuse.
I probably would not recommend it.

2

April 7, 2018

Don’t be fooled by the title, this book never actually ends.

Don’t be fooled by the title, because the book never actually ends. As a refresher, I just tried reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia that could probably be published as a novella in itself. It feels longer than any of James Patterson’s BookShots.
It’s the first time on Wikipedia that I haven’t gotten pulled down the rabbit’s hole, that was how needlessly boring and unending the plot of this book feels. For a novel that's only around 340 pages, I can't imagine it taking less time to read than "War and Peace". I can't imagine it taking less time to read than the Napoleonic Wars, for that matter.
Here’s an actual short summary: nothing happens and continues to not happen in a mindnumbingly, Victorian-dressed, Groundhog Day sort of way, punctuated with the revelations that Henry Wilcox has ruined the lives of several women across a few decades, just so it seems like there’s a reason to keep reading.
There isn’t. And yet, we do.
Once a year or so I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and ask myself if I ever actually finished that book.
I try to remember what it was about, or anything about the plot, the last thing I remember, a character’s name even; anything substantial at all about the story or characters to anchor my fragile midnight reality upon. Then I remind myself that no one ever has finished it. Forester has defied the laws of time and space in writing this novel. ‘Howard’s End’ is a literary wormhole, and we’re all still reading it. Somewhere, despite claims it was completed in 1910, Forster is still writing it, his own portrait of Dorian Gray on the printed page; stealing the souls of those naive enough to believe the could ever find resolution in its story, and keeping him alive throughout the turning pages of history. But is a cursed existence worth experiencing? And aren’t we all cursed now, from the moment we laid eyes on that damned title page?
This isn’t the millionth time you’re ready it, poor Penguin, it’s the first. You’ve never finished reading it, and you never will. None of us will. We are all Henry Wilcoxes now, forever repeating the same mistakes, unable to learn, to change our attitude with time, or consider others as we push blindly forward in our damned vainglorious manner. We turn the page, believing we are nearing the end. But we never do. For us, “Howard’s End” never will.