Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Not Just Monsters…
Literary creations and identities and life lessons in this delightfully illustrated little tome. Theq drawings may take the reader back to more magical times and the characters that may have influenced them then and perhaps later through life.

"Delightful" and "magical" is right!! I loved learning a little bit about each of these characters, and the doodles added a wonderful touch of whimsy. Love, love, love!

This book was nothing like I expected. It was heavy on information, and lacking on interest. I had difficulty getting through it. It's probably just me.

This book is a collection of the author's favorite literary characters. The characters are varied from well known classics to some lesser known works. From the title I was expecting monsters or those evil characters we all love to hate. Instead there are good and bad characters and quite a few from the Bible. Overall the essays were OK but I found them dragging at the end. This book is better read in small doses. I also think the title should be changed.

Thank you to the publisher and #NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. What a wonderful text for any admirer of literature. In essence, this compilation is a collection of essays which begins with a touching ode to the power of stories and the characters and worlds that novels present to readers. I found the overall content insightful and informative, and finished with a whole reading list of titles to discover on my own. Alberto Manguel’s drawings were a sweet addition to the book.

Fabulous Monsters was a fabulous little book about characters. However, it struggled in representation. I wanted a book about Monsters, and not all of them were. Interesting read, but it wouldn't live on my shelves.

The first half of the book was interesting, but after a while, the author failed to keep me interested. Also, it was strange to have so many Biblical characters, a couple of them would have been fine, but so many together and so often ade it even harder for me to keep reading.

This book was not what I expected. I thought it was a decent book, written well, however, due to the title I expected it to be about monsters. Not all that he talked about were monsters. Some were heroes, too. It is a good book to read, but don't pay attention to the title.

“An original look at how literary characters can transcend their books to guide our lives by one of the world’s most eminent bibliophiles”. In this enjoyable, but fairly inconsequential exploration of his favourite fictional characters (not all monsters in spite of the title) Manguel reflects on what they mean to him and how this meaning can change over time. Each short chapter is accompanied by one of Manguel’s character sketches. It’s a pleasant enough read but didn’t seem to amount to very much. Very little has stuck in my memory, to be honest. A book to dip in and out of, perhaps, rather than read straight through.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Yale University Press in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting little collection of discussions about literary characters, for want of a better description. The title 'Fabulous Monsters' is meant to represent all of them but I find it a little confusing on the whole given that many of them are heroic characters. Each discussion is accompanied by a doodle of the character and I really liked these. They added a layer of charm and really helped linked the discussions together. The content of the discussions were sometimes interesting but there seemed very little link in terms of what Manguel chose to discuss about each character. I guess there doesn't need to be but for some of them, the character themselves was barely mentioned. This was particularly baffling with Alice in Wonderland for example, whose discussion was a lengthy comment on Wonderland rather than anything to do with Alice herself, who is actually a pretty interesting character given her origins. I did enjoy this and found it very charming but a few of the literary references were lost on me. A great gift for a fan of literature though.

I'm still figuring out how I am going to write what I thought of this book. I liked jumping down on the sea of words used by the author to tackle more about the literary characters that have garnered dark image because of their roles in the story they were in. Though, I know I'll appreciate this better if I also know the other characters being talked bout. And, I also had quite a misunderstanding on what the book is because I thought it'll be about monsters, but instead, it is only a word used to represent them because of their role as an anti-hero. Overall, this is an okay book for me. I know literary lovers would love reading this better.

First of all, though I finished the book, I am still a little confused because the title of the book is misleading as the literary characters mentioned in the book are neither fabulous nor are they monsters. I still have no idea about the purpose of this title. When I look at the list of names I see no connection: There is Alice, as in the wonderland, then Robinson Crusoe, Superman (I still don't understand the purpose of him being there?), Satan (maybe the only one that can be considered as monster maybe?), Heidi's grandfather (I mean why? Was he that bad?). Some of them can be anti-heroes but not monsters. I don't know. Still too confused.

Even if I skip the list of completely unrelated figures of literature, I think the content is also a little disorderly, it felt like the author had too much knowledge (it's obvious he knows his onions) but could not make up his mind to bring every bit and piece together properly. I don't know what I expected when I picked it up but this was not it. I am not really satisfied but glad I read it, though.

Last but not least, one full star goes to the chapter "Hacivat and Karagoz", a highly underestimated Turkish literary classic and traditional performing art. I don't know how the author got to know about it but I have to congratulate him on his analysis of the characters and their reflection of Turkish culture and society.

"Biology tells us that we descend from creatures of flesh and blood, but intimately we know that we are the sons and daughters of ghosts of ink and paper." A series of musings by the great bibliophile on how we remember our lives by way of the books we read; on how each fictional character exists at certain stages of their lives eternally, but can also have other ages inferred; on how they change with us, or on how they change from one generation of reader to the next. Or at least, so says the introduction; many of these pieces are simpler things than that, simply a few pages of observations on a particular fictional figure. Manguel being Manguel, they are seldom without interest, but more than a few are pleasant without being especially memorable (and as for the sketches as in drawings...well, you can see why he's best known as a writer, not an artist). Monsieur Bovary, of all people, is a curious choice of opener, and there are a few obscurities here (at least to an Anglo audience – Turkey's answer to Punch and Judy, for instance), but Manguel certainly doesn't object to playing the hits either: so Alice, for instance, becomes an avatar for us all, sensible people trapped in a mad world, yet braver than most in her ultimate refusal to take it seriously. Alas, the problem with more familiar characters is that we've already our own firm ideas of them, meaning a greater chance of inward bickering with Manguel's version. The Dracula entry, say, introduced me to a wonderful rhapsody on necks by Renaissance Frenchman Maurice Sceve ("a branch, a column of the altar, a lectern for Venus' letters, a tallboy of chastity"), but also seems to suggest that all vampires are Draculas, which I only find funny if I'm absolutely sure it's being done as a deliberate wind-up. And don't even get me started on the mentions of 'Spiderman'. Still, there's plenty to be learned along the way; I never knew that Treasure Island at first went by the far less arresting name The Sea Cook, or that the notion of the hippogriff stems from a line about griffins and mares mating in Virgil, which he meant in much the same way as we would talk of Hell freezing over, given the notorious animosity between the two species. Despite which, Manguel insists, after Ariosto, on a certain intrinsic rightness about the notion. Which surprises me; the hippogriff always struck me as one of the least believable cryptofauna, and I say that as someone whose general preferred way to die would be mauling by a griffin in the background of a live news report about something else entirely. And then the longest piece, ostensibly about Jonah, is really more of a grump about arts funding. But even if this certainly doesn't bear comparison with The Library at Night, it would do nicely as a superior sort of loo book. Plus, the acknowledgements finally give a name to my nemesis - Titivillus, imp of typos and factual errors!

(Netgalley ARC)

The book's pretty simple: Manguel is revisiting many of his favorite literary characters, relaying why they're so important to him, complete with context within their respective stories so that the uninitiated aren't left in the dark, as well as some further analysis over some selections (Jonah--yes, from The Bible--has one such elongated portion to help bring things into focus).

I find that this work's best feature is getting the reader to realize just how attached we find ourselves to these characters; how we bind to them, possibly try to emulate them, fantasize about their successes/adventures/realities, etc., and, at most points in our lives, without truly realizing it. They're more personal to us than we give them credit for, and Manguel appears to want us to take that into consideration (and celebrate it, in fact) as he recollects his various choices, which are accompanied with interesting and eye-catching doodles.

It cannot be understated how effective it is to have a drawing/picture of a character shown before you start to talk about said character. That move is a fantastic primer. Seriously. Just think about the alternative and how much more muted a reading/exploration would be without something visual to calibrate you.

The book's length is a-okay, which is an indirect way of saying that it refrains from figuratively going too far off-road on any of the subject matter, and works as an interesting herald to call a greater appreciation to the characters we've held dear for so long.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Yale University Press for the advance read.

***Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***

I loved reading about all of my favorite monsters from classics. This was a decent guide.

Fabulous Monsters goes through different literary characters with multiple points of view, quotations and illustrations of each character. It delved into more than just the characters, but also brings in the authors and moves the characters into our world.

Though not all were familiar to me, I enjoyed reading about them, especially with all the comparisons and variety between all the characters.

From thoughts on imagination, identity and contradictions, to reflection, feelings and the blending of the reader and the protagonist. From Alice to Job and Dracula to Superman, it has something for everyone.

I did not get a chance to read this book since it got archived suddenly without my knowledge. The publication date was still far away so I thought i had time.
It seems like an interesting concept.

Fabulous Monsters collects the author's thoughts on some of the most famous characters of literature. He analyzes the characters to see what they mean to him, to other readers, and to larger society. If you enjoy literary analysis and social commentary, or if you've previously liked this author's musings about books, then this is a must-read. Others may find it slow or hard to get into.

Have you read Dracula? Did you enjoy Alice's adventures? How do you feel about the Red Riding Hood?

Fabulous Monsters is a collection of some of the most famous characters of literature (with a strong focus on fairy tales), which are then analyzed based on their deeper representations, and on what they mean to the reader and the society as a whole. This is a clever, well-written and interesting book, which has some strong points and is intriguing to read.

Strongly recommended to anyone who's interested in digging deeper into these beloved characters of literature.