Two Handbooks

Two Handbooks is a book containing two brief discourses on the Author's thoughts on Poetry and Fame. The Brief Guide to Poetry draws an analogy between falling in love and reading poetry.---We ought to get to know the person we are falling in love with, so good practice for falling in love is to read good poetry; it is difficult to understand, yet teaches the reader how to listen. The Fame Handbook draws on a similar topic, stating that wielding fame correctly is a matter of prying into your audience, and cultivating an interest in their talents. It draws from sources such as La Rochefoucauld, Niccolo Machiavelli and Baltasar Gracian as inspiration for the handbook's penetration of human behavior and disinterest in things other than themselves. Both handbooks might seem narrow in focus, but the principles can be drawn from to cultivate a healthy attitude toward conversation, both penetrating much deeper than either fame or poetry.