Rating: 
Summary: Living breathing prose
Review: If your not interested in Baroness Blixen or Africa, still read this one. Read for the beautiful descriptive prose of Isak Dinesen. She seems to want us to experience the prose, just as she experienced life on a coffee farm in the Ngong hill country of Africa. There is a grace about Baroness Blixen that is difficult to describe. One really doesn't know where the grace comes from, yet it wafts up out of the prose, greeting us as an esteemed friend, and inviting us to stay awhile on the Ngong hills.
Rating:
Summary: Out of this world
Review: Isak Dinesen is one of my favorite authors and one of the books contained in this volume, "Shadows on the Grass" is my favorite book of hers. I must confess that I think as a fully realized piece of literature, "Out of Africa" (making this collection of the two a real bargain) and for trademark decadent splender, "Seven Gothic Tales" is better, but I like this one for one story and one in particular which seems to merge both elements. This is "A Letter from A King" in which Dinesen recalls a lion hunt which she and Denys went on. Upon shooting a rather large lion she had it skinned and sent to the king. His majesty Christian X sent her a warm letter of thanks which she in turn used as a king of magic totem with the natives who worked on her coffee farm. The story contains far more elements than just that. I also must confess that when I first encountered this work of literature it was in the course of watching a film at the Karen Blixen house in Denmark where I watched as the author told to the story during the course of the film. The other stories in this book are excellent as well. I recommend this book as well as all of the other books that Isak Dinesen wrote, they are all wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Out of this world
Review: Isak Dinesen is one of my favorite authors and one of the books contained in this volume, "Shadows on the Grass" is my favorite book of hers. I must confess that I think as a fully realized piece of literature, "Out of Africa" (making this collection of the two a real bargain) and for trademark decadent splender, "Seven Gothic Tales" is better, but I like this one for one story and one in particular which seems to merge both elements. This is "A Letter from A King" in which Dinesen recalls a lion hunt which she and Denys went on. Upon shooting a rather large lion she had it skinned and sent to the king. His majesty Christian X sent her a warm letter of thanks which she in turn used as a king of magic totem with the natives who worked on her coffee farm. The story contains far more elements than just that. I also must confess that when I first encountered this work of literature it was in the course of watching a film at the Karen Blixen house in Denmark where I watched as the author told to the story during the course of the film. The other stories in this book are excellent as well. I recommend this book as well as all of the other books that Isak Dinesen wrote, they are all wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Out of this world
Review: Isak Dinesen is one of my favorite authors and one of the books contained in this volume, "Shadows on the Grass" is my favorite book of hers. I must confess that I think as a fully realized piece of literature, "Out of Africa" (making this collection of the two a real bargain) and for trademark decadent splender, "Seven Gothic Tales" is better, but I like this one for one story and one in particular which seems to merge both elements. This is "A Letter from A King" in which Dinesen recalls a lion hunt which she and Denys went on. Upon shooting a rather large lion she had it skinned and sent to the king. His majesty Christian X sent her a warm letter of thanks which she in turn used as a king of magic totem with the natives who worked on her coffee farm. The story contains far more elements than just that. I also must confess that when I first encountered this work of literature it was in the course of watching a film at the Karen Blixen house in Denmark where I watched as the author told to the story during the course of the film. The other stories in this book are excellent as well. I recommend this book as well as all of the other books that Isak Dinesen wrote, they are all wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Magical prose that will break your heart.
Review: It's difficult to find truly magical prose in today's publications. Recently, I was hungry for some poetic fiction and pulled this volume from my bookshelf. I'm so glad I did.Karen Blixen writes with true insight and an artist's approach about her beloved farm in Africa. There's a paragraph where she wonders if Africa knows of her like she knows of Africa. What other author has ever asked that question? She also details the migration of buffalo, elephant and antelope with such majesty that the mind's eye can almost feel the ground move under their hooves. If you're looking for a satisfying story that will entertain you for many nights, read "Out of Africa." You will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A Woman's Journey Toward Self
Review: Karen Blixen says in this beautiful book, "I will not let thee go unless thou bless me." Her farm in Africa yielded both miracles and suffering. This book reveals Karen Blixen's Sunday self--gracious and self-deprecating, enlightened and insightful. She faces struggles we know: career challenges, marital conflicts, complicated loves, and unfulfilled desires. She is one of us. Linda Donelson, author of "Out of Isak Dinesen: Karen Blixen's untold story"
Rating:
Summary: Blixen reminds us of what a true storyteller is.
Review: The movie kind of left me feeling indifferent, however, the book, so well written, far surpasses it. If you miss the skilled, thoughtful, clever, intuitive way Blixen describes what might be seen as an everyday event by the casual observer, you simply miss the gift of this work. She communicates in such a way that you are certain you have felt that way once or shared those identical feelings. I am reading this book again for the second time and it has a peculiar way of transporting me out of my current curcumstances into the world of South East Africa in the early 1900's. I am sure that when I finish it, I will feel like I did the first time, as if I was losing a close friend.
Rating: 
Summary: An African's View
Review: The prose in this book is lush, the writing lyrical, even if it often rhapsodizes the ordinary, like many books white people write about Africa, where the landscape and animals are more important than the people. But at least Dinesen does devote time to people - her African servants, especially Farah, who she clearly comes to love, albeit in the way that one loves a lesser mortal. Despite that, Dinesen's view on Africa is fundamentally racist, very much a product of its time. She incessantly compares Africans to animals. As an African, I read much of this book with disdainful amusement at so much ignorance masquerading as truth, and, less often, with empathy at her misguided earnestness. All her generalizations on the different tribes are silly - "all 'Natives' have in them a strong sense of malice, a shrill delight in things going wrong." And her epiphanies are even sillier - when a 'Native' shows himself to be a genius at western-style cooking, she thinks to herself: aha! perhaps Western civilization is divine and predestined. Most shocking is that SHADOWS ON THE GRASS, written years after she left Africa, sounds more racist than OUT OF AFRICA. One would have thought that time and changing attitudes would have changed her views, and released her from the cage of the 'times she lived in.' It is in SHADOWS ON THE GRASS that she propounds her theory of retarded mental growth in black people. Kikuyu children, she writes, stop developing mentally at age nine. But the irony is that she seems to be unaware that her stories of her Kikuyu servants - who come across as intelligent - do not support this theory. At the end, she writes about the servants she has kept in touch with. Moving enough, but there was something about the insistent tone that made me wonder if this was a woman keen to present an 'image of herself.
Rating:
Summary: A literary gem
Review: This book changed my life and because of it Dinesen has become a major influence in my writing. She was an amazing woman living in an amazing time and she managed not only to capture her own voice in text, but also the voice of an entire generation. Her intelligence and strong yet frail personality is very subtle in her narration, but at the same time very apparent. I highly recomend this book not only for its literary merits but also for its beautiful setting, which was made more beautiful after benn filtered through Dinesen's eyes. If you would like to continue to read about Dinesen and her time period I would also reccomend: West With the Night (Beryl Markham) Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa EXCELLENT BOOK Straight on Till Morning (Mary S. Lovell)
Rating:
Summary: An incredible, classic account of bygone Kenya
Review: Those who loved this book as I do should also read Beryl Markham's alleged autobiography [actually a biography] "West with the Night", and also "The Lives of Beryl Markham" by Errol Trzebinski [Norton]. And, if you can find it, "Silence will Speak: A study of the life of Denys Finch Hatton and his relationship with Karen Blixen", also by Trzebinski. Out of print and hard to find, but worth reading. PS: needless to say, "Letters from Africa" and a couple of the good biographies of Dinesen.
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