This is a small souvenir type book, so if you are looking for a comprehensive collection of the poems written by Scotland's national poet, this is not the one. However, it served my purpose of getting to know his works a little just to get an impression.

The collection includes twenty-four poems, originally published between 1784 and 1794. They are divided into six categories: Drink, death, love, friendship, marriage and animals. The section on animals only contains one poem, though!
I liked the love poems best, they are simple, but touching and moving because Burns expresses so much in such modest lines. The poems on marriage, in contrast, are quite misogynistic. The poems on drink were the hardest to understand because of the vocabulary and because they told stories that were hard to follow.
All in all, I got used to the Scots writing fairly quickly (it helped to read them aloud in my mind), and I am happy to have read these, but will not seek out more as this was quite enough.

The books includes several pictures as well, and I enjoyed these (they show Scottish scenes from the writer's lifetime), but I would have liked a bit more info. Only a couple of the pictures show the painters name, and there isn't any other information apart from a list of art galleries in the beginning of the book (it does not even say which picture is presented in which gallery). In addition, the book misses a list of the poems and their publication date, so I had to make my own while I read. A short biography of Robert Burns would also have been nice. I think that even in such a small book, these things should be included. ( )

I seriously disliked this approach to Burns’s works. I only finished it because I’m Scottish, and I paid for it. Never again! ( )