Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Sep 04, 2011

Martine rated it:

This book jumped off the library shelf at me because though I've heard of Byron, I knew little more than that he was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' and consorted with his sister, so I thought it was time to find out more. Well, the boy certainly was dangerous to know - he had more cases of the clap than a year's intake at the GUM clinic. If he came strolling through my front door, I wouldn't touch him with a bargepole!

The book was simply unputdownable - but I've a notion this was More...

0 comments like

Nov 13, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

A great book for its brevity and a quick overview of Byron's life, but truly one of the worst edited books I have read. In parts of it, I could actually hear the author typing her rough draft notes into the computer--the prose suddenly fell into present tense fragments (and if it was a stylistic choice rather than poor editing, it didn't work for me). Gross mistakes--referring to one character as a cousin on one page and as a nephew later on (I admit, it's hard to keep track of these Byrons, sin More...

0 comments like

Sep 16, 2009

Christia rated it:

Until I read O’Brien’s biography, I really didn’t know much about Byron, other than some of his better known poems (She Walks in Beauty is one of my favorites) and his bad boy reputation, but he is a literary figure that I’ve always been interested in, mainly because of his legendary larger than life image. Although apparently Carolyn Lamb’s description of him as “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is well known, I had not heard it. By the end of the book I realized it was also pretty darn accur More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 08, 2009

karen rated it:

byron is just not that into you. it doesnt matter what you do - hes just not that into you. he might put his baby in you, but he will leave you as soon as you start going into labor and return later only to shoot bottles in your living room while you strain and bleed to produce a creature he will hardly look at. because he is not into you. he will allow you to risk your life by being his mistress while your husband who has already buried two wives under suspicious circumstances fumes and observe More...

39 comments like (41 people liked it)

Feb 23, 2009

bestiaries rated it:

The country girls author takes a look into the world of a rather gigantic poet.The word byronic, to this day conjures up sybaritic images of excess, a rebelliousness and a reluctance to answer to anyone.

Byron as a prototype existentialist y/y? In any case I would have loved to be around for some of his more debauched moments.

...

Here is a description of a get together not long after he moved into his ancestral seat, the gothic newstead abbey.

" More...

0 comments like

May 07, 2009

Joe rated it:

I lived in Athens, Greece, for a while, and shopped in the neighborhood of Byronas, named for Lord Byron. I didn't know much about him other than he was a British poet who went to Greece to help her win independence from the Ottoman Empire. Having read this book, I now know more, of his wild mood swings, him whims, his frivolity, his lack of care for societal norms. And a lot about his love affairs, with women and men. A lot of them! Whew! I only rated this book two stars, though, because of the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Orna rated it:

This biography adds nothing to our knowledge of Lord Byron. With no bibliography or references, it falls short of contemporary academic practice -- which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if O'Brien had brought a novelist's insight and sensibility to the tale. Unfortunately, no.

I can see why O'Brien, the Irish high-queen of florid love, would be attracted to Byron - as man and as writer - and as she was restricting the work to an examination of his behaviour in love (and lust), I ex More...

0 comments like

Jun 22, 2011

Jake rated it:

Edna O’Brien’s writing style perplexes me. I remember being mystified by it when I read her excellent novel House of Splendid Isolation. I felt this disconnect again while reading Byron in Love. I was impressed with the tightness of the plot and the lack of excess in her prose. The trade off is I tended to feel a bit detached and unemotional while reading this book. At times, Ms. O’Brien’s poise and restraint as a novelist unduly bridled the sauciness of Byron’s story.

When I read Ms More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 28, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

A very short, highly readable book about Lord Byron, largely drawn from letters and other contemporary records. The ending was a let-down because O'Brien had built such a strong picture of Byron's wild and destructive side. She had not built such a documentation of his writing, rather treating the reader as if s/he knew them well already. At the very ending, she sort of let the dichotomies "settle themselves." I still found this an excellent book. One part I would have rather have More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 19, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

You can only hear Lady Caroline Lamb's description of the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron--"mad, bad, and dangerous to know"--so many times before you're to the point of, O.K., tell me everything or let's just stop carrying on about him. Well, this book does just that, and let me tell you, he was very, very bad indeed. Some might say this book verges on the voyeuristic, but I'm not sure where to draw the line with this deliberately outsized Romantic personna who was so publicly naught More...

0 comments like

Oct 17, 2009

Audacia rated it:

Oh, Lord Byron. Sigh.

I was seriously obsessed with Byron, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley when I was in high school. Why yes, I've seen Gothic about a million times. Also, on my first solo trip to Europe, I visited some of their haunts in Switzerland & Italy, saw Keats' death mask, locks of their hair... I'm a nerd, I know.

There are a number of biographical tomes on Byron, and this is one of the most easily digestible ones. And that's not just because it is no More...

0 comments like

Oct 11, 2009

Maria rated it:

Edna O'Brien's biography of Lord Byron is the latest of many biographies on the poet. Her reason for bringing us yet one other biography of Byron is, in her words, "to follow him in his Rake's Progress and his "Poet's Progress, playing billiards in an English country house and passing clandestine notes to a young bride under the very watch of her pontifical husband, Sir Wederburn Webster, Byron reading Madame de Stael's 'Corinne' in the garden of his Italian mistress and writing her a More...

3 comments like

Aug 18, 2009

Andy rated it:

Lord Byron was a prolific poet, but perhaps his most lasting contribution to humankind is to demonstrate once and for all that hedonism really isn’t a particularly rewarding lifestyle. Well, sure, who hasn’t wanted to shoot pistols in the dining room and drink wine from human skulls, but thanks to Byron, we know better, don’t we? (O’Brien says that after Byron’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley died in a sailing accident, his skull very narrowly avoided becoming part of Byron’s drinkware collection.) More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 23, 2010

Lauren rated it:

As O'Brien portrays him, Byron is quite a repulsive man--vain, cruel, self-centered. The book is fun in a seedy sort of way--but don't read it if you want a complete life of Byron. The author focuses almost entirely (as the title should make you expect) on Byron's love life. My one criticism of the book is that her portrait doesn't really explain the effect he had on people, male and female, who fell for him right and left. Could his looks have really been enough to cause this?

1 comment like

Mar 18, 2010

Cialan rated it:

Writing was slightly irritating. Lots of endless sentence fragments strung together with commas but that's not what you remember. Byron is like any rich celebrity--only made more famous by his antics. At least he left some good writing behind when he died at age 37.
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move;
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
The fire that on my bosom preys
More...

0 comments like

Jul 01, 2009

Victoria (vikz) rated it:

As a teenager, I had two literary heroes. The first was lord Byron and the second was Edna O'brian. They both seemed rebellious, exotic and they both talked about sex and relationships, something that preoccupies most teenage girls. Or least they pre-occupied me as a teenager. So, this book held much promise and it didn't disappoint.

While the story was familiar,becoming the stuff of legend, o'brian's poetic voice and novelistic eye added another dimension.

0 comments like

Jan 30, 2010

Yooperprof rated it:

No footnotes or bibiliography.

Okay, I know it's a short book, not meant to be a scholarly tome, more an impressionistic daub. But for a life as controversial as Byron's, the reader really does deserve to know where the information is coming from.

Also, there are places in the text where O'Brien's prose is awkward and confusing. I wonder if they allowed her to get away without a copy editor because she has such a name herself in literature.

0 comments like

Oct 19, 2009

Sbaird rated it:

"Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know"...sums up Lord Byron and this quote is by one of his lovers-Caroline Lamb. O'Brien's portrait is more on the lines of an article for Vanity Fair-short, salacious, and forgiving of all of his rock star faults. I felt no closer to understanding Byron as an artist or a man after reading her work but I also could not put it down.

0 comments like

Nov 21, 2010

R. rated it:

Ok, so not yet 18 years old, Byron trundles off to his "super excellent" rooms at Trinity College Cambridge with his pet bulldog. The dog proved too viscous, so he replaced it... with a bear! Depite my love for the audadicty, yet I find myself more repulsed than attracted to this man who imposed no limits upon his own behavior. He is the Paris Hilton of the early 19th century and I can't help but speculate that, like her, would have died a poor, obscure, syphilitic, were it not for th More...

1 comment like

Jan 18, 2010

Amanda rated it:

Not written in the typical historical voice I expected, and the book was exceedingly slim... just over 200 pages. Well done, but with no family trees, helpful hints or anything more than vague descriptions of familial and conjugal associations, making the novice Byron reader a bit at a loss at times. Overall: worth reading, since it won't take up too much time.

0 comments like

Jul 26, 2009

Sarah rated it:

Reads like a romp--a quick, breezy, torrid look at Byron's rather active love life. Don't read if you would like to hang onto a view of him as the dreamy romantic hero-poet, a cad maybe, but a dashing, charming, sensitive, misunderstood cad. He sounds here like someone you would totally hate if you knew him. However, I've said it before, I'll say it again: miserable and/or horrible people make for far more interesting biographies than happy, well-adjusted ones.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Kathy rated it:

My goodness, O'Brien is no admirer of the promiscuous Lord Byron. And if all she writes is true, and I have no reason to dispute her, who can blame her? She did fashioned quite a good book out of his enormous number of affairs despite a preponderance of run-on sentences. She made few comments on his poetry, and not many about his life outside the bedroom: hence the title!

0 comments like

Nov 13, 2011

Tyler rated it:

The only redeeming thing about this book is its subject matter - Byron lives up to his billing. But the writing is horribly convoluted at times, and O'Brien has a way of lumping so many people together that you almost need to keep a list of them to make sure you've got them all straight.

0 comments like

May 12, 2010

Iris rated it:

This book was very dry and disappointing. I stuck with it because I was desperate to hear about the story behind "She Walks in Beauty," and when I finally got to that point in the book there was ONE sentence devoted to it. Soooo incredibly frustrating. The author went into great detail on boring topics, and quickly glossed over the more interesting ones. She also didn't include much of the actual poetry that Byron wrote. I didn't think this book would be an anthology, but I though More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 09, 2011

Judith rated it:

What an intriguing man who wrote such lovely poetry. He packed a lot of living into a short life. The book is well-written, but tedious at times. His voluminous writings, mostly in the form of letters and a journal provide a rich source of information about him.

0 comments like

Jul 26, 2011

Margaret added it

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, especially if you were a half-sister, heiress, Turkish boy, Italian Revolutionary, radical feminist, Whig politician, Greek Revolutionary, publisher or school friend with a shilling...mad, bad and dangerous to know pretty much covers it.

0 comments like

Aug 13, 2009

Miranda rated it:

What begins as a charming dandy devolves into cynical monster and abuser of women. Edna O'Brien's biography skims through Byron's affairs with little contextual reference; it's not a book to begin to learn about Byron's life, certainly, but charming and lively in its way. However, by the end I was just as depressed as Byron probably was, mucking about in those Messolonghi swamps.

0 comments like

Jun 26, 2009

Maggie rated it:

Somewhat cursory, always lyrical, fascinating without being torrid. My only complaint is about her sentences, which sometimes run off a comma when a semi-colon or period would be preferred.

0 comments like

Aug 18, 2009

e.a. rated it:

I gave up on this book. I will tell you why with a joyously annoyed review when I have the emotional energy for it.

The short of it is: what a petty, shallow gesture of exploration of a person who did not need to seem even MORE petty and shallow.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2011

Jen rated it:

A well-written short biography of the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" poet. O'Brien relies on Byron's letters to delve into his personality, with an emphasis on his childhood and on his later (numerous) romances.

0 comments like

reviews