How to Write a Book Review

Or, How to Write a Book Review With Balls.

Here's how Pablo Neruda laid it on the line about the writer Julio Cortazar:

Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair.

I love how accusatory and eccentric and fantastic and, well, real this review is. Neruda captures that feeling that arises when you experience artwork (or something) that blows your head off and opens your eyes and heart and gives you that urgency to communicate how vital it is to the human race to have the same experience asap. Can you relate?

I'm not familiar with Cortazar's work, so I went to Amazon to check out his most famous work, Hopscotch.

The "key phrases" associated with this book  included: fat pajamas, metaphysical rivers, calculating cat, old man upstairs, drinking mate, millenary kingdom, beautiful green eyes.  And, instead of a Table of Contents, there's a Table of Instructions.

So I checked it out from the library immediately.

How about using the keywords in a writing prompt?

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Poems by Pablo Neruda

A great movie about poetry, beauty and Pablo, Il Postino.