By and large, I think it's fairest to say "I didn't mind" the books we read in school. 

A few stood out as instant favorites: Shakespeare's Macbeth which, together with Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet movie (which we watched in class) laid the groundwork for my lifelong love of Shakespeare; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese (which the rest of my class hated, but I instantly loved).

Some that I found OK without being enthusiastic about them still inspired me to take a closer look at their authors and discover works that I ended up liking much better -- e.g. Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers and Intrigue and Love (aka Passion and Politics), which eventually led me to his Don Carlos, which in turn became an instant favorite.

Some I rather disliked in school (at least in part, because of the way in which they were presented in class), but I reread them years later and they suddenly made a whole lot more sense -- such as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Albert Camus's The Stranger (though I still liked The Plague, which we never read in school, better), Max Frisch's Homo Faber and The Firebugs; and, perhaps most surprisingly, Thomas Mann's Mario and the Magician (surprising because Mann was already a favorite author of mine at the time, so this should have been a no-brainer favorite from the start).

There were only a few books that I positively hated in school, but those I hated with enough of a vengeance never to have looked at them again -- or at anything else written by their authors: Peter Handke's Kaspar and Alfred Andersch's Sansibar.

Far and away the biggest impact on my reading preferences, though, was wielded by my final English teacher, who not only taught that Shakespeare class mentioned above and introduced me to sonnets (EBB, Shakespeare and otherwise), but who also gave me a copy of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as a gift ... and thus inspired yet another one of my most lasting instances of book fandom -- because come on, if you fall in love with Austen's writing when reading Mansfield Park, everything else is just bound to fall into place completely naturally.

(Task: Did you love or hate the books you had to read for school?  Looking back, which ones (good or bad) stand out to you the most?)

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I really enjoyed this lovely collection of poems. Despite its age, so many of the emotions expressed still resonate today. The language used is phenomenal and the descriptions overall have the power to inspire the reader. I especially enjoyed Browning's pacing and rhyme schemes. A wonderful book of poetry.

Excluding the two major narrative poems:

Snooze. It's not bad, just boring. These days only two kinds of people genuinely like these; those who can cope with Love and the Moon poetry, which, thematically, has been losing ground on my attention since I became an adult and those who are obsessed with Shakespeare's life, biographical and/or psychological, who were satirised up to the eyeballs by Oscar Wilde. I don't have that obsession.

The best part is the epitaphs, which are at least witty.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. 

Pablo Neruda

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (born July 12, 1904) preferred to write in green ink because the color was his personal symbol of hope.

Sonnets for Heidi is a heartfelt tale in which what-might-have-been becomes a way forward.

Trish has a lot on her plate. She lives in the San Fernando Valley with her boyfriend Eric; they have a great relationship, but Trish had an abusive first marriage and is leery of getting married again. She is also coping with the recent death of her mother -- and the responsiblity for her aunt Heidi that her mother's death has thrust upon her. Trish feels guilty about putting Heidi into a care home, even though Heidi has Alzheimer's and the care home is a great situation for her. Still, she does her best for Heidi, which is more than the woman's son has ever done for her.

Then suddenly, Heidi too dies. And in going through her aunt's things, Trish stumbles onto a family secret -- one that will take her back to her hometown in Pennsylvania, and will introduce her to a woman Heidi never forgot.

Bowersock is a wonderful writer, and here she has brought her characters to life in a kind and loving way. My mother suffered from dementia before she died, and I recognized many of Heidi's behaviors as the coping skills they were -- and I felt for Trish, who always seemed to cope with them with grace. And the way she honored her aunt's memory at the end was marvelous.

I highly recommend Sonnets for Heidi for any reader who enjoys character studies of strong women, and for those who need to be reminded of how oppressed women were in the first half of the 20th century.

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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book, and am providing an honest review in exchange.