Re: what are you reading today?
Dark Phoenix
(funny, how that worked!) and I need to catch up on reviewing them before I
forget what they were about!
Extraordinary Groups: The Sociology of Unconventional Life-Styles, by
William M. Kephart. St. Martin's Press, 1977.
Please note that this is the original version of the book. The new version
drops several of the groups covered in this edition, inserting others in
their place. I'd love to get hold of the newer edition!
Kephart examines 7 groups which illustrate major sociological principles:
Old Order Amish, Oneida Community, the Father Divine Movement, the Shakers,
the Mormons, the Hutterites, and modern communes- modern in the 70s, of
course. The first six groups are explored in depth; their origins, history
and structure are all given in detail. The modern communes are given short
treatment, since it's hard to talk about them as a group, when they were all
founded on different ideals and worked in different ways.
Some of these groups are still around- the Mormons have exploded; some have
died off- the Shakers were a very austere group, prohibiting sex, which
meant that any new member had to be recruited, and they weren't exactly
offering a tempting lifestyle to most. The Oneidan community is gone, but
the silverware lives on. The ones that have thrived seem to be the ones that
have a strong central leadership, with clear rules, but which allow a more
or less 'average' lifestyle. Experiments in changing the family structure-
no sex for the Shakers, 'free love' for the Oneidans, polygamy for the
Mormons- fell by the wayside for the most part. It seems that people are
willing to live apart from society- so long as they don't deviate from it
very much.
--
Laurie Brown, Dark Phoenix
dark_p...@netw.com
Natascha
I am also reading (for fun) a book about greek mythology I used to have when
I was still in high school! Has to search a long time before I found it
again!
I have just finished a book called Without Conscience, about psychopaths, I
want to do a paper about this subject :-)
Natascha
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Lucifer
Just finished The Liar by Stephen Fry. It's um...interesting
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
Dark Phoenix
"Natascha" <kitt...@wanadoo.nl> wrote in message
news:45d6e67d$0$9541$dbd4...@news.wanadoo.nl...
>I am reading (for school) Biological Psychology. Interesting :-)
Is this about the brain chemistry? Is it interesting?
> I have just finished a book called Without Conscience, about psychopaths,
> I want to do a paper about this subject :-)
That sounds *really* interesting. I just read an artical about that in, um,
either SciAm or Discovery.
Dark Phoenix
Viking, 2003.
Having read reviews of this book by two different people on a.g., I had to
give it a go. The book is detailed without being beyond the nonscientist. It
explains how things go right in the formation of bones, limbs, genitals,
skin and other parts of the body; how they go wrong; and the results
thereof- some inconsequential, some a nuisance, some deadly. I would have
liked to have had some sections expanded- for instance, he discusses
dwarfish, but doesn't go into the different types of it. But an altogether
fascinating read that made me marvel that humans ever come out all right.
Dark Phoenix
A fun little tome of trivia about, obviously, cats. Quotes about cats,
historical cats, cat myths, cat superstitions, how their noses, whiskers and
tails work. Illustrated with vintage-looking line drawings. I'm not counting
this as a whole one of my 50 because it's so small.
Dark Phoenix
This book turned out to be quite different from what I expected. By the
title and the author, I figured it would be a handbook of creating pagan
rituals for use in hospice and funeral settings. It was that, all right, but
it was also a lot more.
The book addresses all the issues surrounding dying in our culture. What
happens physically. What happens to the dying mentally and emotionally, no
matter what their spiritual leanings are. What happens to the people around
them. How to support both the dying and the caregivers. How to deal with the
dead body, if you so wish (it even includes DIY cremation). It's an
eminently *practical* guide, that should give people confidence that yes,
they can deal with this. Recommended for anyone dealing with a death,
whether pagan or else wise.
Dark Phoenix
This book is exactly what the title says it is: a description of what
happens to the human body as it dies of various diseases. The author, a
surgeon who has practiced and taught for many years, gives into philosophy
at times, but mostly it's a recitation of the facts. Heart disease, cancer,
AIDS, Alzheimer's, trauma and just plain wearing out of old age are giving
their turns. The book is not gruesome (okay, the story of the first death he
attended is rather vivid) but just plain spoken, written in layman's
language and sparing nothing. I found it not depressing, but if anyone
reading it still had illusions of their immortality at the start, they will
surely have lost it by the end.
Despite having attended three human deaths, and been around other dying
people, I had a lot of questions about what was actually going on the bodies
of these people. This book filled in a lot of the gaps.
Dark Phoenix
Eva McEwen's childhood is complicated by a pair of ghosts. Her mother died
at Eva's birth, and she is being raised by her father & aunt. It's a lonely
existence, as the ghosts don't want Eva to tell anyone about them, and she
feels that anyone she is close to must be told about them. Through the
years, she finds out a few things about who they were and why they have
become her guardians. While she hates the loneliness they cause her, they
are also her companions who even help her at times - a couple of times
actually helping her get dates!- especially at the end. A moving book of
love and loss.
Dark Phoenix
This is one of those novels that make me want to grab the characters by the
shirt front, shake them, and say "Would you for crisakes stop and *think*
about what you're doing for a minute?!?" Two of the main characters- Nate &
Lesje- just sort of flounder along, becoming involved with each other
basically because of boredom rather than any real attraction. Nate and
Elizabeth, long married and living together at the start but emotionally
connected only by their children, show signs of wanting to heal the
relationship but make no moves to do so, because they are not in the habit
of talking to each other. Lesje allows Nate to dictate her life rather than
bother to decide what she actually wants. This book seems to be a warning to
examine one's life or you'll end up as miserable as these people. A
thoroughly aggravating read.
Dark Phoenix
Wrede takes the classic fairy tale and sets it in Elizabethan England. Dr.
Dee, the Queen's astrologer, and Ned Kelly, his sometime friend, have
important parts in the novel, but the main characters are a widow who is an
herbalist and -gasp! -knows how to read, her two daughters (Rosamund &
Blanche), and two princes of fairy. The humans find themselves forced to
work magic without getting accused of witchcraft, a real risk in that time.
The story is well done- the people are characters, not caricatures; the
different threads weave together nicely. An engaging novel.
Dark Phoenix
One of the very first Discworld novels, this story tells us how the
Librarian became an orangutan, how Rincewind came to join forces with The
Luggage (I can't bring myself to say "owned" when The Luggage is such a
personality in it's own right), and that Death does indeed have some
friends. This one takes on fantasy novels, making fun of Conan, the
red-haired female hero in Marvel comics whose name I forget right now, and
various stories which use magical stores that disappear after one has bought
something in them. You can see Pratchett finding his way to the style that
he's perfected now.
Robibnikoff
"Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> wrote in message
news:5M-dndWQEZ4FzXvY...@povn.com...
Um, you're reading five books at once?
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
BAAWA Knight!
#1557
Dark Phoenix
"Robibnikoff" <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:54nuo4F...@mid.individual.net...
>
> "Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> wrote in message
> news:5M-dndWQEZ4FzXvY...@povn.com...
>> The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett. Colin Smythe Ltd. 1986.
>
> Um, you're reading five books at once?
No, although I frequently do have a couple going at once, usually a
technical one and a fun one.
When my computer died, it was too much of a pain in the ass to write up
anything because the backup computer has a back CPU and locks up at random,
losing all unsaved and frequently some *saved* stuff. So I'm still playing
catchup on what I read during that time, plus the ones after because I
didn't think I should write on the ones read after until I'd written on the
ones read during.... which is silly but I have OCD. So, I still have four
more to go and I'm caught up- if I don't finish another one before then!
Robibnikoff
Well, good for you then. I have read two books at once, alternating back
and forth between them when the mood suited me, but I never attempted more
than that.
I'm currently making my third attempt to read "The Satanic Verses". Put it
down twice after the first chapter or two. If I can't get through it this
time, I'm tossing it.
Natascha
>
> Is this about the brain chemistry? Is it interesting?
>
> That sounds *really* interesting. I just read an artical about that in, um,
> either SciAm or Discovery.
Dark Phoenix
> I'm currently making my third attempt to read "The Satanic Verses". Put
> it down twice after the first chapter or two. If I can't get through it
> this time, I'm tossing it.
Good luck with that. I couldn't manage the thing.
Robibnikoff
>
> "Robibnikoff" <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote in message
> news:54oo0oF...@mid.individual.net...
>> I'm currently making my third attempt to read "The Satanic Verses". Put
>> it down twice after the first chapter or two. If I can't get through it
>> this time, I'm tossing it.
>
> Good luck with that. I couldn't manage the thing.
Much to my own surprise, I'm actually making progress. I think my research
into India after my husband's 3-week business trip last year there has
helped.
Dark Phoenix
I picked this up thinking it would be science fiction; it turned out to be a
love story with science fiction aspects to it. The protagonist, Henry, has
a genetic mutation that enables him- or, rather, forces him to travel back
and forth in time. He has no choice in the matter; it happens at the most
inconvenient times and places, and, to make matters worse, it's only his own
body that goes, no clothes or money. This gets him beaten, injured, leads
him to thievery, and, ultimately, spells his demise.
Clair, his wife, spends her whole life waiting for Henry. They first meet
when he, as an adult, travels back to her childhood. He watches her grow up;
she falls in love with him and waits. As a child and teen, she waits to grow
up so they can be lovers. As an adult, she waits for him to come back when
he disappears. Much later, after his death, she continues to wait, hoping he
will pop in, one last time. Her entire life, despite her child and her art,
is one big Wait For Henry. Despite the uplifting feeling that came from how
their love overcame the obstacle of Henry's time travel, I found this
waiting aspect of Clair's life very depressing.
While Clair and Henry are fairly well drawn characters, the others are more
sketchy. Henry's father, Henry and Clair's friends who know about his time
travel, the landlady who took care of Henry a good bit as he grew up- they
act out their supporting roles, but we never have a clue of what they think
about the time travel problem, something that had to have been both hard to
accept and hard to keep quiet about. In a way, it's a relief from the common
sci-fi scenario of tabloid reporters and the military industrial complex
hounding a person with exceptional abilities, but I would have appreciated a
little indication that at least one of these people didn't take time travel
as business as usual.
I'll give at a B+; very good, but needed a little punching up in the
character department.
Dark Phoenix
I was a little hesitant about this book- it seemed like chick-lit. But hell,
part of it is about Virginia Woolf, and it's a short book. How painful could
the experience be?
I enjoyed the book a great deal. The stories of three women in three
different eras intertwine in the book, as does the idea of suicide and of
time. Virginia Woolf, while living in the country and starting to write Mrs.
Dalloway, is the first woman, quite a time before her suicide, although the
opening vignette is of her death. The second is a housewife in 1950 America,
fearful that she cannot fulfill her role properly and obsessed with reading
Mrs. Dalloway, who contemplates killing herself but finds she has the
strength to go on after all. The third is a 1990s New Yorker, friend and
former lover of the AIDS stricken poet who dubbed her Mrs. Dalloway years
before, who is also son of the 50s housewife, who does kill himself finally.
Each looks at hours differently, whether an hour is something that must be
got through, like an unpleasant dental treatment, or a perfect hour to be
remembered and cherished. Cunningham's style puts me in mind of Woolf's; one
could easily imagine her writing this book.
Dark Phoenix
Inc. 1994.
This book is the basic, perfumery 101 book. What are top, middle and base
notes; the evolution of perfume trends; what scent groups that fragrance
chems belong in; the ingredients in some perfume bases. A very useful book
for the beginning perfumer, written in plain English by professionals in the
perfume field.
Dark Phoenix
I've been somewhat obsessed with Kesey ever since I read The Electric
Kool-Ade Acid Test way back in the early 70s. That book, about Kesey, led
me to read books by Kesey. And there just aren't very many books by him. So
when I found this one, it made me very happy.
It's a journal that Kesey kept while in jail for pot possession back in
1967. This jail experience was a very different one from what most people
had for drug possession; he was put into a work camp that had only two
guards, almost no discipline, and a steady flow of drugs. His family came
for picnics on weekends. He ran across the street from where they were
working to try and score drugs (inadvertently starting a rumor that he'd
sexually assaulted an old woman, which the woman put right, having been
rather charmed by his visit). The journal is not just words; it's
illustrated in a very 60s way with bright felt markers. Sadly, it's just not
that interesting other than as a period piece. Kesey tried a few times to
put it into some publishable form and failed; it finally came out two years
after he died. I doubt it would interest anyone who wasn't already a member
of the Kesey cult.
Dark Phoenix
A strange, sad book about strange, sad people. Hoffman works magical realism
with her usual grace, but this book is a darker one than most of her work.
On the night of her father's funeral, 17 year old, friendless Arlyn decides
that the first man she sees will be her destiny and the love of her life. As
luck will have it, self centered architecture student John comes to the door
to ask directions. They make love, and then, with Arlyn sleeping, he leaves.
Determined, she sells the house- which, because of her father's medical
bills, nets her nothing- and pursues him to his college dorm. He tells her
he's busy, but she waits, they make love, and then, with her sleeping, he
leaves for his family home. Still determined, she gets John's roommate to
drive her up to the family home, and she actually beats him there. John
arrives to find her making dinner with his mother. At this, John gives up.
They marry and have a child, but he is never home and he ignores Arlyn and
actively dislikes his odd, silent son. Arlyn, miserable, has an affair that
leaves her pregnant, but is afraid to leave John for fear he'll take her son
from her- a plot device that doesn't ring true, as John clearly doesn't like
his son. Shortly after giving birth, Arlyn dies. The rest of the book is
about people being unhappy, whether they be ghost or living. Most of the
people refuse to grow and change, preferring to stay in their misery,
letting their pasts ruin their futures. One person breaks past this; three
more are shown to be working on this. While it's a book about quiet
desperation, we are given hope.
Dark Phoenix
This novel has a very different feel from Skylight Confessions, which was
written four years after this one. Skylight is dark, with only a few rays of
sunlight breaking through; Future, although having dark foundations, ends
with everyone living happily ever after. A little too happily, really; some
people's characters have to change totally to achieve this conclusion.
The women of the Sparrow family all are born in Spring and all have some
supernatural ability- the first Sparrow woman could not feel pain, another
can tell a lie no matter how skillfully told, one can see other people's
dreams; the main character, Stella, comes into her power at 13 by seeing how
people will meet their deaths. This ability sets into motion one of the main
threads of the story: she sees a young woman murdered, and begs her good for
nothing father to intervene. Surprisingly, he tries; predictably, he fails;
and the young woman is killed. But because he had gone to the police to try
and stop the murder, he is now a suspect.
The main theme of this book is change: the father changes his character and
gets a second chance at love; Stella sees that her ability to see death
means that some of those deaths can be averted; parents and offspring change
how they react to each other and get to know each other before it's too
late; a couple of characters change what they consider acceptable in a love
interest and get to be happy. I enjoyed seeing people make the effort to
change instead of just plunging on to their fates like in so many stories; I
would have enjoyed the book a lot more if the ended hadn't had been such a
deus ex machine routine.
Dark Phoenix
Isadora Myung Hee Sohn - Isa- is the daughter of Korean immigrants. They are
living the American dream in 1970s suburbia. Her father is a college
professor; her mother, a beautiful stay at home wife. There isn't much
communication at home, and when Isa's baby brother is killed by a truck, Isa
feels that her parent's love and value the dead son much more than they do
the live daughter. Isa is not beautiful like her mother,- who encourages her
to save for an operation to make her eyes more Caucasian looking- nor as
gifted at math and science as her father. Add to this the racism she
experiences at school, and Isa becomes an outsider with one friend -who's
loosely organized family becomes a refuge for Isa- and an albino boyfriend
who is even more of an outsider than she.
You would think that, given this situation, Isa would learn that tolerance
is important. But when she discovers her mother is having an affair, she
proves herself to be as intolerant as everyone else. This has tragic
consequences for Isa and her family, and her coming of age finishes in a
burn ward and at her friend's parents house, as she realizes that there is
nothing new in the world; that we only think there is because it's new to
us, and that we are as our parent's make us.
*****
Caught up at last! And NOT reporting on the incredibly boring computer books
I've been reading.
TenshiKurai9
> Caught up at last! And NOT reporting on the incredibly boring computer books
> I've been reading.
Not even a listing without commentary?
-TenshiKurai9
Dark Phoenix
"TenshiKurai9" <Tenshi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1173849881.7...@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
I don't think I can count them, as, while I read *almost* every word, there
were sections I skipped in each one. Like, I didn't see the need to read
about, synchronistically, zip drives, when I'm never apt to see one (unless
you make art out of those you have and post a link where they can be seen).
And a couple of them were pretty basic and would be embarrassing to admit to
reading...
TenshiKurai9
> "TenshiKurai9" <TenshiKur...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > On Mar 12, 9:40 pm, "Dark Phoenix" <dark_phoe...@netw.com> wrote:
> >> Caught up at last! And NOT reporting on the incredibly boring computer
> >> books
> >> I've been reading.
>
> > Not even a listing without commentary?
>
> I don't think I can count them, as, while I read *almost* every word, there
> were sections I skipped in each one. Like, I didn't see the need to read
> about, synchronistically, zip drives, when I'm never apt to see one (unless
> you make art out of those you have and post a link where they can be seen).
> And a couple of them were pretty basic and would be embarrassing to admit to
> reading...
Partial listing?
-TenshiKurai9
Dark Phoenix
Lessee... there was the "missing manuals" series book on building web sites,
a 'dummies' or 'idiots' guide to troubleshooting, now I'm working on a 1500
page manual on Office, with at least one book on hardware lurking, waiting
for me- just as scary as most things that lurk in the dark. I could swear
there was another one, but I've managed to shut it out of my memory, like
hysterical amnesia.
Dark Phoenix
Yes, I'm having quite a Hoffman fest lately. Don't worry, folks, after this
one I only have one more laying on the floor unread, then you get a break.
This book is fairly unique among Hoffman's work in that there is no
supernatural events. Very, very implausible, but not supernatural.
In a small Massachusetts town, Ethan is considered the ideal husband. He's
extremely good looking, is a contractor who does great work, is the bravest
man in the volunteer fire department, and coaches Little League. He came out
of nowhere, a man with no past and no family. He is married to Jorie, the
town's prettiest woman and they are still hopelessly in love after 13 years.
Turns out this nauseatingly perfect man is a wanted man, who before coming
to town had murdered and raped -in that order- a 15 year old girl. He was a
self-centered psychopath who didn't think anything should be denied him. How
did this monster turn into the man everyone admired? How did his character
change so totally?
Well, it didn't, actually. As his wife realizes that he really is what he's
been accused of being, her visits to jail become sparse. Missing her
worshipful gaze, he turns to a teenaged admirer who is working on his
defense fund. He hasn't really changed at all; with Jorie, he had what he
wanted and she never said no to him. Had she not taken him home with her the
first night they met, she might have met the same fate as his teenaged
victim.
While Ethan hasn't changed, other people change a lot. Jorie stands on her
own feet. Their 12 year old son has to grow up too fast. Other people find
love at long last, and some find that sometimes you have to save your
family, no matter how annoying they are.
Characterizations are uneven; some people are vividly drawn, while some are
just sort of filling space. A good book, but it could have been better.
filigree
> Perfumery, by Robert R. Calkin & J. Stephen Jellinek. John Wiley & Sons,
> Inc. 1994.
>
>
>
> This book is the basic, perfumery 101 book. What are top, middle and base
> notes; the evolution of perfume trends; what scent groups that fragrance
> chems belong in; the ingredients in some perfume bases. A very useful book
> for the beginning perfumer, written in plain English by professionals in
> the perfume field.
Sounds interesting. I recently 'discovered' BPAL (ordered some samples)
which made me curious about how to blend the oils.
I'm currently reading A Very Long Engagement, and still having difficulty
keeping track of all the characters (the movie was difficult enough to
follow, IMO) though I am enjoying the book, and ordered a copy of the DVD
for when I'm finished with it.
Kirsten
.·°^°·.Elena.·°^°·.
Published by Past Times (http://www.pasttimesmailorder.co.uk) but I bought
it on ebay.
A lovely reading, with useful home hints and how domestic service was
organized (Butler, Valet, Housekeeper...).
Written partly in 19th century's English but it isn't really difficult to
read! ;)
--
Elena
"Silently she walks..."
Dark Phoenix
It seems like everything Murakami writes is surrealistic, and this is a Good
Thing. But Wind-Up Bird seems to be beyond surrealistic and ventures into
the disjointed and pointless. Most of the author's work makes me go "WTF?"
and "That's so cool" at the same time; this one just made me go "WTF!?!?!?!"
Not the entire novel, mind you, but large sections of it.
The basic story is of a young man who sort of drifts through life, rarely
initiating things, mostly reacting to things. He has quit his job (one of
the few things he initiates) and is a house husband. His cat doesn't come
home one day, and one day his wife doesn't come home, either. His quest, if
one can call it that, is to find both of them. Along the way he meets with
several people with various psychic powers, and discovers that he, too, has
such a power. He doesn't marvel at any of this, it's just the way things
are. The existence of these powers fits into this story and this world just
fine. He takes an Orpheus like journey into the underworld to find his wife,
via an old dry well; he is in two places at once without realizing it. That's
all fine.
What doesn't fit into this story are the war stories-tales of the atrocities
in Mongolia. I don't know if Murakami wanted to warn people of how normal
human beings can turn into monsters during war, and he couldn't come up with
any other place to put it or what, but I never did figure how it fit on any
level. These tales would have made another book, but I really felt they had
no real place in this one. They explained nothing. All in all, a really good
book that needed a really good editor.
Dark Phoenix
This small book is a fable: "Be careful what you wish for because you just
may get it." It's a bit more than that- we also get "Don't overlook what you
have today because you'll miss it when it's gone"- but not much more.
At first read, the novel seems terribly sketchy. None of the characters is
fleshed out at all. Then you realize that this is on purpose: the nameless
protagonist, having shut herself off emotionally as a child after she wishes
to never see her mother again and her mother promptly dies, doesn't pay any
attention to other people at all and we are seeing the other characters as
she sees them. She is the Ice Queen at heart, caring nothing for others, and
the Ice Queen in body, forever cold.
After she is struck by lightning, she learns of a man who was dead for 40
minutes before reviving, a man who now breathes fire. She becomes obsessed
with this man, and he turns out to be the magic key that thaws her out. At
the same time, her brother (her only family) is dying, her sister-in-law is
having his baby, and her acquaintances- I hesitate to call them her friends-
need her help. I'd like to say that this book is deep, but it's not- she
lives happily ever after, having had a total personality change without so
much as questioning it. It's true, though, that fables don't usually involve
soul searching, but some personality would have been nice. As it stands, my
reaction at the end was "Who cares?"
Dark Phoenix
A small biography by the son of Vita Sackville-West, the dear friend and
sometimes lover of Woolf. Nicolson's work is not a comprehensive, deeply
researched bio but rather more like the family reminiscences about a
favorite aunt, which is indeed how he viewed Woolf. Yes, he has read the
diaries and correspondence and quotes from them sometimes, but they are not
his focus. His is more an overview of how her life was lived, what sort of
relationships she had with friends and family, what she wanted to achieve
with her writing. The book comes across as sitting down to tea with an
English gentleman whilst he talks about people from his past; he never
ventures into the area of dirty laundry or things that would embarrass- he
maintains, for instance, that her half-brothers could not have sexually
molested her because she did not shut them out of her life, and they were,
after all, gentlemen. Good if one wants a brief bio so as to see what was
going on in her life when she was writing her various books; for more
detail, look to her nephew Quentin Bell's work.
Dark Phoenix
The Crimson Portrait is Jodie Shield's second novel, and, as in The Fig
Eater, descriptive passages are her forte. Her writing, while in a totally
different genre, reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith's in it's bejeweled
lushness. First she sinks you into the luxuries of a rich Edwardian manor,
then she puts her talents to work on the horrors of war time facial
injuries. One is immersed in the atmosphere of despair that the patients,
doctors and nurses alike all feel at the lack ability to effect a cure.
Plot is minimal, but this time, I think it was meant to be thus. People are
trying to survive this time as best they can. In the main, a very young
widow, honoring her recently dead husband's wishes, has allowed the manor
house to become a make shift hospital for the soldiers with facial injuries.
In her yearning to have her husband back, she thinks one of the patients is
him, somehow unrecognized by all but her. She realizes that he is not her
husband, and decides to make the soldier over into him anyway. He is the
same build, and his face is damaged and will be covered with a mask. If the
mask is made in the image of her husband, she seems to think, he will become
the man she has lost. Meanwhile, a dentist who has a talent for improvising
splints and other things to help the patients faces heal and an artist who
is working to document the patients healing, and then to make them masks to
hide their injuries, wish to have an affair but do not. Little happens
except in these people's minds and hearts.
This would be fine, except that Shields doesn't flesh out these characters-
at least two of whom are based on historical people. I ended up not knowing
enough about them to care about their misery. I don't know if the authors
sketchiness in filling in her characters is supposed to be artistic, or if
she is unaware of this weakness, but it's a serious one. She has a lot of
talent for writing, but needs to be more aware that we, the readers, need
more than just scenery to regard the book as a solid entity.
--
Laurie Brown, Dark Phoenix
dark_p...@netw.com
"To destroy the Western tradition of independent thought, it is not
necessary to burn books. All we have to do is leave them unread for a couple
of generations."
--Robert Maynard Hutchens.
Dark Phoenix
This is a novel, told in memoir form, based loosely on the authors childhood
and teen years with her divorced parents. Taking place in the 1970s, it
recreates the decade with accuracy, including - especially- the excesses.
'Ruin' is the apt family name of the narrator, Inez's, father. He's a genius
mathematician, the founder of a successful software company, a talented
piano player, and a ladies man. He can't seem to fail at anything, except at
marriage, so, after two failures, he avoids it like the plague, sliding out
of relationships when they get too serious, but staying friends with the
women. His wealthy family has everything handed to them; in the case of Inez's
half-brother, it's to his detriment. This side expects Inez to learn how to
ride English style, to pour tea in a genteel manner, and to attend a
cotillion- something she fails miserably at by not dressing properly and is
not invited to again.
Life with her mother is different. They live in a middle class suburb in
southern California, rather than in the tony Bay Area. Mother, a beautiful
former flamenco dancer, sells real estate, plays tennis obsessively, gets
into EST even more obsessively, and, even though living in the same house,
seems to have little to do with Inez's life. Abuelita (grandmother), a
Peruvian immigrant, works long days and weekends as a maid. She sees to
Inez's physical needs, but is equally nonexistent emotionally, but in her
case it's because of exhaustion and necessity rather than the self obsession
that drives Inez's parents.
No one parents Inez. She is left to find her own way in this new world of
sex, drugs and self actualization. She makes mistakes that a lot of people
made in the 70s, but she turns out surprisingly well. Her father really does
love her and makes efforts to stay in her life and help her- he just really
doesn't know how to do it. He's never grown up himself, and so cannot be an
example for her. Her father shares his pot with her and makes inappropriate
sexual comments about her friends. When Inez' junkie, surf bum, half brother
goes missing, Inez is the one who gets on a plane and goes to rescue him,
not her father, who is inert with worry in his bed.
Most of the characters are weirdly shallow, barely sketched in. I think this
is deliberate, because they barely touch Inez. There isn't so much a plot as
there is a flow of events. But this book kept me hooked the whole way.
atroph...@msn.com
L'Engle... I remember reading it when I was a kid, and I loved it..
It's about these kids whose father is a scientist and basically gets
kidnapped and trapped in another dimension, and the kids have to find
him and save him... it's really pretty cool....
*AtrophyAnnie*
Museumbitch
(Creative Women). Burda puts out Easy Fashion but, unlike the parent
mag, there aren't any patterns for guys. There aren't any in Kreative
Kvinnor either, although that's a little more understandable since it
apparently is aimed only towards the female half of humanity. I've
gotten more and more into giving handcraft workshops and wish I could
find more mags here (Sweden) that show GUYS knitting, embroidering,
etc!!!
Erin
http://arkivarie.livejournal.com/
Robibnikoff
Dark Phoenix
This thick novel is a combination coming of age and detective novel, filled
with innumerable references to books and movies (many of which I suspect do
not really exist, but I'm not sure about that). The protagonist, Blue Van
Meer, is brought up by her widower father, her mother having died when Blue
was five. Her college professor father drags her from post to post, never
staying in one place more than a semester or two. She is brought up without
friends or relatives but with an excellent education- she seems to have read
everything on earth and seen every movie. But this doesn't prepare her for
dealing with real life very well.
In her senior year of high school, Blue is befriended by an eccentric film
appreciation teacher who forces Blue on her 'entourage' of blue blooded high
academic achievers. They despise Blue, but marginally accept her at the
insistence of the teacher. And that is how the trouble starts. The teacher
has a lot to hide. She seems a bit mentally unstable, which gets worse after
a friend drowns in her swimming pool. Then she herself dies, leaving Blue to
unravel her past -and present- entanglements. To say what these
entanglements are would be a terrible spoiler, but the book is well worth
reading. It could have been a good bit shorter, especially at the beginning,
but it's quite a good read.
Dark Phoenix
Worst.
Drivel.
Ever.
Okay, maybe not the worst, but it's not good. More on the order of a first
novel, it's hard to believe that the author has three other novels
published.
The title and jacket description- fundamentalist Christians take over the
world, determined to convert or imprison everyone- made me wonder if it was
along the lines of a humerous take on Starhawk's Fifth Sacred Thing. The
fact that it was a satire, poking at the fundies, but was published by a
company with 'Faith' in their name, confused me. What was this strange book?
It lured me in. And, like a fish who is lured to a spinner, I regretted
falling for it.
There are some funny bits- the way the fundies rename businesses so the
names are Christian seeming, how they reword songs to remove the 'bad'
things. How gas is $6.66 a gallon for nonbelievers, but only a few cents for
the saved. How everyone has to have clothing and bumper stickers that
proclaim their Christianity. But these wear thin after a very short time,
and certainly don't compensate for the poor writing. At least the author has
a sense of humor about himself and his beliefs.
Dark Phoenix
A vampire and a werewolf walk into a diner.... sounds like the beginning of
a joke. Well, it's the beginning of a funny story. The vampire has a comb
over, the werewolf is obese. In the course of the book they encounter zombie
cows, a lonely ghost, a teenaged sorceress who is trying to end the world, a
sorcerer's spirit trapped in a Magic 8 Ball, and the Olde Gods. What's not
to love? A fun fantasy romp and a good brain cleanser after the book I read
before it.
Dark Phoenix
Set in the American south in the late 1920s, this novel deals with the lives
of the members of Dugan's Cabinet of Wonders, a self described touring freak
show. While it deals in part with how they are set apart from most people by
their physical differences, it's mainly about the emotions and dreams that
they have in common with every other person on earth. The Siamese twins
(yes, back then that's what most people called them) just want to be able to
be together and happy. The Fat Lady (no, they weren't very politically
correct then) wants her damned husband to not screw around. The
hermaphrodite wants a home that doesn't have wheels under it. Dugan, a
dwarf, wants the woman he loves to love him back, and to keep his family-
the touring company- together. He resents change and doesn't like that the
twins are growing up to be young women (he's raised them since they were
very young- when their mother sold them to him, just as he himself was sold
to another showman). Despite worsening profits, he thinks that the carnival
will go on as it always have.
Life never performs to expectations, however, and Dugan faces challenge
after challenge. The twins get engaged (to one man who loves both of them),
the Wolf Girl that he loves doesn't love him back, and a nasty streak of
weather settles everything in the end.
I only had two complaints with the book, one being that the characters were
all (with the exception of the 'rubes') a little too perfect and noble. Take
a bunch of people, put them in very cramped living quarters, make them work
their butts off, have lots of people gawk and stare at them and make rude
comments and *someone* is going to be an asshole, at least some of the time.
*Someone* is going to be lazy or greedy. But not in this crowd, which
removes a bit of tension that would normally be there. But it's not a huge
complaint. The other problem is that the author has a bit of a purple prose
problem, at times rising almost to a Bulwar-Lytton level. But it's a good
book in general, and I assume that as the author gains more experience (it's
a first novel) she'll remedy these faults.
Dark Phoenix
This slim volume is a collection of essays Vonnegut has written through the
years, put together to flow fairly seamlessly into message. Having the sound
of a commencement address, it looks at art, politics, greed, and the
soulessness of America with a razor sharp wit that somehow never ventures
into caustic.
I had only read Vonnegut's fiction before, so this work was a bit of a
surprise. Using only unexaggerated absurdity -no need to make anything up
when you're talking about the US government in the last few years!- he makes
his point with a gentleness that belies the seriousness of the subjects. He
does mention Kilgore Trout once (is there anything he wrote that *didn't*
mention Kilgore Trout at least once?), but that's the only deviation from
the facts. The book is short enough that you might be able to get your right
wing relatives to read it, and they should.
Olympiada
> A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut. Seven Stories Press, 2005
>
>
>
> This slim volume is a collection of essays Vonnegut has written through the
> years, put together to flow fairly seamlessly into message. Having the sound
> of a commencement address, it looks at art, politics, greed, and the
> soulessness of America with a razor sharp wit that somehow never ventures
> into caustic.
>
>
>
> I had only read Vonnegut's fiction before, so this work was a bit of a
> surprise. Using only unexaggerated absurdity -no need to make anything up
> when you're talking about the US government in the last few years!- he makes
> his point with a gentleness that belies the seriousness of the subjects. He
> does mention Kilgore Trout once (is there anything he wrote that *didn't*
> mention Kilgore Trout at least once?), but that's the only deviation from
> the facts. The book is short enough that you might be able to get your right
> wing relatives to read it, and they should.
>
>
that for a living?
I am still reading The Memoirs of a Geisha. Chiyo just made her debut
and she has a new name now which I forget. She has a crush on the
chairman and thinking about him causes her to act more elegantly. It is
very interesting to read how every movement a geisha makes is deliberate
from walking in a such way as to make her kimono flutter to pouring tea
in such a way that it reveals a bit of the arm but not too much, to
looking at a man in such a way as to cause him to drop what he is
carrying. Oh yes, Chiyo has just explained what a danna is, an expensive
long term relationship. Danna is the Japanese word for husband, but of
course for a geisha, this is not what it is.
Olympiada
karasu
> I am still reading The Memoirs of a Geisha. Chiyo just made her debut
> and she has a new name now which I forget. She has a crush on the
> chairman and thinking about him causes her to act more elegantly. It is
> very interesting to read how every movement a geisha makes is
> deliberate
It's an interesting little world: you can find similar ideas in
Western courts, like the different messages fans could give depending
on how open they were or the angle they were held out at. :)
Olympiada
dance with another geisha at Tayuri's first informal dance party. Then
the men got lewd and I got turned off. Of course, we know that's what
its all about, right? Sex. The passage I just read reminded me of those
erotic drawings and statutes in Chinatown that I used to be grotesquely
fascinated and aroused by, when I was a virgin.
Olympiada
Dark Phoenix
"Olympiada" <amkemail2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:t7k3t.q...@news.alt.net...
> My gosh, Dark Phoenix, you are an excellent book reviewer. Do you do that
> for a living?
Heh. I wish! No, just on the web.
> I am still reading The Memoirs of a Geisha. Chiyo just made her debut and
> she has a new name now which I forget. She has a crush on the chairman and
> thinking about him causes her to act more elegantly. It is very
> interesting to read how every movement a geisha makes is deliberate from
> walking in a such way as to make her kimono flutter to pouring tea in such
> a way that it reveals a bit of the arm but not too much, to looking at a
> man in such a way as to cause him to drop what he is carrying. Oh yes,
> Chiyo has just explained what a danna is, an expensive long term
> relationship. Danna is the Japanese word for husband, but of course for a
> geisha, this is not what it is.
That fascinated me, too. That a woman could be that erotic and fascinating,
without showing more than a tiny bit of skin, or just with their eyes. That
a person could control their body so well, not just during a performance,
like a ballet dancer, but for their whole life.
That book left me fascinated with geisha culture, and I sought out other
books about it, all nonfiction. There is even a book by Lisa Dalby (I think
that's her name), an American caucasian who took geisha training. Pretty
interesting!
Olympiada
> "Olympiada" <amkemail2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:t7k3t.q...@news.alt.net...
>> My gosh, Dark Phoenix, you are an excellent book reviewer. Do you do that
>> for a living?
>
> Heh. I wish! No, just on the web.
>
>> I am still reading The Memoirs of a Geisha. Chiyo just made her debut and
>> she has a new name now which I forget. She has a crush on the chairman and
>> thinking about him causes her to act more elegantly. It is very
>> interesting to read how every movement a geisha makes is deliberate from
>> walking in a such way as to make her kimono flutter to pouring tea in such
>> a way that it reveals a bit of the arm but not too much, to looking at a
>> man in such a way as to cause him to drop what he is carrying. Oh yes,
>> Chiyo has just explained what a danna is, an expensive long term
>> relationship. Danna is the Japanese word for husband, but of course for a
>> geisha, this is not what it is.
>
> That fascinated me, too. That a woman could be that erotic and fascinating,
> without showing more than a tiny bit of skin, or just with their eyes. That
> a person could control their body so well, not just during a performance,
> like a ballet dancer, but for their whole life.
>
> That book left me fascinated with geisha culture, and I sought out other
> books about it, all nonfiction. There is even a book by Lisa Dalby (I think
> that's her name), an American caucasian who took geisha training. Pretty
> interesting!
>
>
and how thinking of him makes everything joyful for her. I read later in
the book, and apparently she tries to win his affection for 10 years! It
is very possible to control one's movements with power and grace, dance
training helps with this. Posture is very important, how one carries
oneself, the image one projects to the world. Geishas are all about
images, and appearances, the outward projection. Geisha culture is not
the only place we see this kind of submissiveness carried out. A
parallel could be drawn to any kind of service work, whether it be in
the Church, or the school. What is interesting is that geishas have to
serve all men that pay for their services. It is like prostitution in a
way. It kind of depersonalizes the men, which is a good in a way because
it keeps passions from developing, save for Tayuri's passion for the
Chairman.
I just looked at some cards of some Japanese wood prints from the early
20th century. They are very serene. The images of Japanese womanhood are
refreshing antidote to the brashness and brazenness we see about us in
today's culture. Today's culture distorts natural femininity and
devalues it.
It makes become more like men and less like women and destroys the
differences between the sexes.
Its a very sad state of affairs when you think about it.
Olympiada
karasu
> Heh. I wish! No, just on the web.
I agree, you do the reviews well. :)
> That book left me fascinated with geisha culture, and I sought out other
> books about it, all nonfiction. There is even a book by Lisa Dalby (I think
> that's her name), an American caucasian who took geisha training. Pretty
> interesting!
I believe it's Liza, but yes, that's a pretty cool book: I just packed
my copy up today for the move! She also did a whole separate book
called Kimono, expanding out from the chapter she did on it in the
geisha book. It, if I recalled correctly, even included the names and
seasonal arrangements of the Heian color patterns.
There's a photo essay book from a National Geographica photographer
done in the 80s or 90s which has some beautiful photos, as well. :)
Dark Phoenix
1995
Dreaming is the story of Carolyn See's completely dysfunctional family life.
Brought up by a mother who was both alcoholic and abusive, Carolyn struck
out on her own as soon as she graduated from high school but carried on some
of the traditions she was raised with.
Her mother, father, aunt and every other adult she was around as a child was
alcoholic. They drank to escape from life's daily woes, they drank to have
fun, they drank because it was what they did at every single chance. Carolyn
picked this up, and added pot to the alcohol in the 60s. Both her husbands
were drunks. This is not an unusual story; there are any number of families
like this. What I found rather unusual was how much See accomplished. She
raised two successful daughters who have broken the family curse. She got a
PhD despite being perpetually broke- true, it was in pre-prop 13
California, where education was affordable, but it still takes a good deal
of work and stick-to-ativeness to do that. She became a successful author.
Her half sister, on the other hand, rather than doing better than the rest
of the family as Carolyn eventually did, came out worse. Drinking led to
heroin for her, along with dealing, thievery and jail time. Several rehab
stints led to nothing; she went back heroin several times. When the book was
written, she was clean, hopefully for good.
The author never sees herself as a victim, unusual in this day and age. To
her, it's all business as usual. All these people are just dreaming the
American Dream, and dealing as best they can when they don't make it. Drink
is both their fun and their refuge.
Dark Phoenix
Terri Windling. James Frenkel & Assoc. 2003
A very thick collection short stories, poetry and essays on the state of
fantasy & horror. I skipped the essays and poetry, but that still left a
weighty book. Fantasy and horror seemed like an odd combination to me, but
the fantasy was mostly not of the happy unicorn and noble elf sort, so the
book works nicely without any jolting switches from fluffy to dark. Some are
just odd, some are frankly creepy, like Nesting Instincts, the end of which
caught me completely by surprise. Others, like Little Dead Girl Singing, you
can guess what's going to happen, but it's still a good, skin-crawly story-
one that's a bit humorous, because most people just know parents like the
ones in the story. All in all, 550 pages of good stuff.
Dark Phoenix
The third novel starring Odd Thomas, this book restores my faith in the
series. The first one was excellent, the second was terrible, this one is as
good as the first.
Odd has gone to spend time in a monastery to try and sort things out. This
monastery happens to have a home for disabled kids with no place to go, a
poltergeist who was formerly a brother, and a huge underground retreat/lab
for a mad scientist. Trouble starts when a monk is found murdered and
bodachs -those entities that arrive when bloody mass death is soon to occur.
While the book takes it's basic premise from an old sci-fi movie, it's given
a modern twist and works well.
Dark Phoenix
Six stories by one of the big three contributors to Weird Tales. They range
from charming (The Willow Landscape) to boring (The Voyage of King Euvoran)
to skin crawly (The Maze of the Enchanter). The Devotee of Evil made me want
to point at the Devotee and give a sharp "Hah hah!" because, really, did he
think he could meet the ultimate evil and have a good ending?!?
Smith's over wrought prose would be too much in anyone else's hands. Somehow
he pulls it off- I'm convinced that he would write about making toast and
make people feel that it was an alchemical process, the toaster a relic of
an age before Atlantis, the jam a loathsome putrescence. Each sentence is
gilded and set with gems. The man uses words that no one else had used in
100 years, and some I suspect he made up. He can set a dark mood better than
anyone else I know.
Dark Phoenix
Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz. Bantam, 2004
Not the best of Koontz. I liked the characters (including the usual perky,
brave female), the story had twists, but it just... lacked. I know it
lacked, because I usually race through this author's books, and this one
took me a week and a half to read! There was nothing in it that said "You
will stay up too late at night, reading me!"
The premise was good enough: The night the protagonist is born, his
grandfather is in the same hospital, dying of a major stroke. As the birth
happens, the grandfather suddenly sits up, and begins prophesizing in a
strong voice. The prophecies? That five bad events will happen to the
newborn, on very specific days. The father writes these dates down, and the
grandfather dies, and Jimmy is born. He lives a happy life up to the first
of these five days, and then all hell breaks loose. Obviously, since there
are four more of these bad days left, he survives this assault. Sadly, I
found I didn't care.
Robibnikoff
"Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> wrote in message
news:zM2dnZ2g2KVk8Qjb...@povn.com...
> Rising from the dead, here;
>
>
>
> Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz. Bantam, 2004
>
>
>
> Not the best of Koontz. I liked the characters (including the usual perky,
> brave female), the story had twists, but it just... lacked. I know it
> lacked, because I usually race through this author's books, and this one
> took me a week and a half to read! There was nothing in it that said "You
> will stay up too late at night, reading me!"
>
>
>
> The premise was good enough: The night the protagonist is born, his
> grandfather is in the same hospital, dying of a major stroke. As the birth
> happens, the grandfather suddenly sits up, and begins prophesizing in a
> strong voice. The prophecies? That five bad events will happen to the
> newborn, on very specific days. The father writes these dates down, and
> the grandfather dies, and Jimmy is born. He lives a happy life up to the
> first of these five days, and then all hell breaks loose. Obviously, since
> there are four more of these bad days left, he survives this assault.
> Sadly, I found I didn't care.
I gave up reading Koontz years ago when I figured out that his books were
all pretty much the same.
Dark Phoenix
This is a bit of a stretch, writing about a book I read nearly a month ago.
This is made worse by the fact that I didn't quite know what to make of the
book when I read it, so please forgive any vagaries on my part!
Okay, I give up. I don't know what to say about it. It's about a London
architect, divorced, sharing custody of his daughter with his ex. During the
book, he sheds himself of a very casual girlfriend, meets (in an odd way) a
woman who he becomes interested in, becomes the object of some sort of odd
obsession of a rich, unprincipled developer, and works on a Docklands
project. Flashbacks occur, of wardens during the Blitz, of a Victorian
paleontologist, of London even further back than that in time. It's a
pleasant book if not compelling, which seems to place the layers of a person's
life along side the layers of time of a city.
Dark Phoenix
The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, by Ken
Albala. University of Illinois Press, 2007
One would think that a book of this sort would be a foodies dream, but it's
more apt to put one off one's feed than inspire feasts. Pies full of
eyeballs, fried insects that you squeeze the guts out of onto toast, and
sauces made of sturgeon jism sound more like an episode of 'Fear Factor'
than dinner. Even when we look at dishes made with ingredients more to
modern Anglo tastes, the flavoring is very different from what we are used
to. During the Middle Ages, everything is loaded with spices- ginger, black
pepper, cloves, cinnamon, all the expensive ones. When we move to the
Renaissance, the spicing is simpler, tending to be sugar and cinnamon- on
almost everything. You find sugar and cinnamon on all foods, from soup to
meats to dessert. Near the end of the era, you see the methods of classical
French cookery emerging- sauces based on butter and cream, much less
spicing, more reliance on the flavor of the main ingredient. Albala spends
most of the book contrasting the way food was eaten during the Middle Ages
vs in the Renaissance; why the changes? Is it just changing tastes?
Well, no. These are, after all, rich people's menus that were written down,
not every day food. And what do rich people like to do above all else?
Right, impress other people! So the foods they serve will feature whatever
is most expensive. During the Middle Ages, that was spices, so the foods
were all heavily spiced. As more trade opened up, tropical spices came down
in price and into the reach of the common man. Mustn't use anything the
common person might eat! At this point, dairy products become a sign of
wealth- a herd of dairy cows takes up a lot of room, and uses a lot of hay.
This means a lot of land that isn't growing anything but, well, cows. Only
the rich can afford to have cows rather than turnips growing. Hence the
butter and cream rich menus that show up at that point.
The moral? If your main thrust is to impress people, you don't care what you
eat, so long as it's expensive. Personally, the book reinforces my happiness
to be living in the age I do.
Natascha
"Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> schreef in bericht
news:zM2dnZ2g2KVk8Qjb...@povn.com...
> Life Expectancy, by Dean Koontz. Bantam, 2004
I am reading a dutch book which loosely translated is called 'all about
magic'; however, it's not really about magic, it's about cults and religions
from the beginning of time till now. Quite interesting.
Natascha
Lucifer
The age of the surf and turf? Sadly people still make ridiculous
statements with food.
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
Dark Phoenix
orig. published 1930 & 1932 respectively
Both of these short novels satirize the British upper class of the times.
'Vile Bodies' makes all these people seem completely vacuous, their only
interest being the next party. The protagonist, who seeks a way of making
money so that he can marry his love, takes a job as a gossip columnist, and
soon discovers that he can make it all up and get away with it. Soon he is
inventing people, who, despite not existing, are promptly being seen and
talked about by those who wish to seem important. He tries his hand at
starting fashion trends this way also, but with mixed success. The
haberdashers, more sensible than the toffs, refuse to create green bowler
hats or the like. This job, like every other chance at fortune the
protagonist has, is soon lost to another person. His fiancé marries a man
with money, but continues to sleep with her 'former' lover. Her father loses
his money to a con man who flatters him. No one in this group, it seems, has
a bit of brains or morals. I found the book amusing, although not as
hilarious as the book cover claimed. And I had to wonder if Waugh was a
member of this social class, or an outsider, and what the people of this
class thought of him at the time.
'Black Mischief' goes after the British colonials in Africa. I tells the
story of a fictional African country and it's political trials. It's new
leader, Oxford educated, wishes to modernize his realm. He is intelligent
and educated, but without much common sense, issuing orders without
bothering to figure out how they can be physically carried out, and, perhaps
more important, how they will be received. The main protagonist, a British
former classmate of the Emperor, becomes the man charged with making the
Emperors' plans come true. As such, he must deal with doing the impossible.
And here is the friction of the story: everyone else has much invested in
the status quo. The Emperor's military commander turns against him, the
British church leaders turn against him, and the British legation, well,
they just don't care what happens so long as they aren't disturbed. As in
'Vile Bodies', the UK people are portrayed as shallow twits. They lead idle
lives and their prejudice is completely acceptable to all in the story.
There is quite a surprise ending which made the whole book worthwhile.
Dark Phoenix
"Lucifer" <wyrd...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1184547847.1...@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jul 13, 2:42 am, "Dark Phoenix" <dark_phoe...@netw.com> wrote:
>> (still trying to get caught up)
>>
>> The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, by
>> Ken
>> Albala. University of Illinois Press, 2007
>> you
>> eat, so long as it's expensive. Personally, the book reinforces my
>> happiness
>> to be living in the age I do.
>
> The age of the surf and turf? Sadly people still make ridiculous
> statements with food.
>
Well, true, but at least my dinner doesn't look back at me. But then, I'm
not of the class to afford such delicacies!
Frances Moffatt
> I gave up reading Koontz years ago when I figured out that his books were
> all pretty much the same.
*deep breath* Rich but emotionally scarred woman meets emotionally
scarred man with combat training and together they confront an evil
brought about or exacerbated through technology in a situation where
(the institution of) the police are either no help or are part of the
problem and a small child or a dog--occasionally both--is also involved
on the side of the angels.
...yep, can still get it all out in one breath.
To be fair, the last one I picked up seemed to have broken from the
formula a bit. And unlike John Saul (who has this weird little three
sentence-fragment paragraph quirk which drives me *absolutely batshit*),
I like his writing. The character development is occasionally a little
heavy, but it still seems internally consistent and sensible for the genre.
Torrain (who has just been informed that she may lose newsgroup access
in two days due to excessive download. Again. Ye gads)
Robibnikoff
"Frances Moffatt" <rog...@torrain.com> wrote in message
news:QsOdncreoeqZ0j3b...@giganews.com...
> Robibnikoff wrote:
>> I gave up reading Koontz years ago when I figured out that his books were
>> all pretty much the same.
>
> *deep breath* Rich but emotionally scarred woman meets emotionally scarred
> man with combat training and together they confront an evil brought about
> or exacerbated through technology in a situation where (the institution
> of) the police are either no help or are part of the problem and a small
> child or a dog--occasionally both--is also involved on the side of the
> angels.
>
> ...yep, can still get it all out in one breath.
LOL - In a nutshell! :)
> To be fair, the last one I picked up seemed to have broken from the
> formula a bit. And unlike John Saul (who has this weird little three
> sentence-fragment paragraph quirk which drives me *absolutely batshit*), I
> like his writing. The character development is occasionally a little
> heavy, but it still seems internally consistent and sensible for the
> genre.
Perhaps, though I haven't had a desire to read any of his stuff for years.
I have read a couple of John Saul's books and, frankly, thought they were
crap.
>
> Torrain (who has just been informed that she may lose newsgroup access in
> two days due to excessive download. Again. Ye gads)
Oh dear :(
Dark Phoenix
Maguire, if you're not familiar with him, has made his name rewriting fairy
tales from the 'other' point of view; "Wicked", the tale of the Wicked Witch
of the West, being his most well known. So when the cover of "Lost" said
things about Scrooge & his ghosts, I expected that Scrooge would tell his
sorry tale.
Wrong. The book is not based on any other story or fairy tale, and the
Dickens connection is a real reach and has nothing, really, to do with the
story. I suspect the publisher told Maguire to think up *something* to make
readers think the book would be like his others, and this was the best that
could be done. Now, I certainly don't demand that an author keep writing the
same type of book all the time, but please, don't insult me on the cover.
Let the story stand on it's own. Because of the expectations that this sham
bred in me, I felt I was unable to appreciate the story for what it really
is.
Winnie, a writer, journeys to London to do some research for a book on Jack
the Ripper. She has a place to stay: a flat that, had things gone
differently with her family, she would have owned. Instead, it's owned by
her beloved step-cousin. This isn't a problem; Winnie loves cousin John,
perhaps more than some would say proper, even though they aren't blood
relations. The problem is multifold. First, John is nowhere to be found, and
has left no message. Second, there are workmen renovating the flat. Third,
the workmen have stirred up a poltergeist sort of spook.
Winnie takes it upon herself to find the source of the knocking coming from
the old chimney, which was covered over during Victorian era renovations.
First thoughts are of trapped cats, air in the flue, or some mundane
explanation. Finding these to be dead ends, she decides that it's a ghost,
either of her missing cousin or of a victim of Jack the Ripper- how the JTR
thread comes into this I never figured out. It's as tenuous as the Scrooge
connection. This core story, of the quest for the identity of the ghost, and
as we see later, of possession, is a good story. If Maguire had stuck with
this, it would have been a strong novel. As it is, it's too scattered. The
character of Winnie is rather unlikable (something she is aware of), which
made me care a great deal more about the ghost than about her. While it
turns out that her unlikability was triggered by an event, by the time this
is revealed, we've had a couple of hundred pages of thinking she's an idiot.
The book needed an editor.
Frances Moffatt
Issues one and two of /The Willows/, a traditional-styled weird tales
magazine. I always find it a pain reviewing magazines (or anthologies),
but I can say that I like these. The two stories I've read to date are
*interesting*; they break with the usual tropes without the odd
dreaminess (that I find often leads to self-consciousness) that
occasionally entails. There seems to be a decent spread of settings,
too; you've got your (mad or not) academics, but the first issues' got s
one set in and around a trapping camp up north, and one short one that
beautifully describes a castleful of gears.
Beyond that... Fine formatting, good clean editing, clear layout, one
or two tongue-in-cheek full-page pseudo-Victorian ads (now with 25% more
Laudanum!), staple-bound, black-and-white on plain non-pulp paper.
I am glad of my subscription.
Torrain
Museumbitch
the movie so now I understand why some of the book fans were cross
about the film.
Erin
Dark Phoenix
Now this is what female centered urban fantasy should be like. There is a
tight plot. There are a variety of characters, none of whom is a
stereotype-even the villain has a reason for his actions, rather than just
being evil for the sake of evil. There is sex, but it's used as a spice,
rather than the main ingredient. There is action and magic.
The universe that Armstrong sets her books in is one where magic, werewolves
and vampires exist. All the magical beings have their separate cliques, and
rarely get along with any of the others. The sorcerers and the witches
pretty much hate each other, which creates a bit of a problem for the
protagonist, Paige, a witch, and her live in boyfriend, Lucas, son of the
leader of the most powerful sorcerer's Cabal. Not that Lucas wants anything
to do with the Cabal; as a lawyer and investigator, he works against the
Cabals. So it's a bit of a surprise to them both when his father, Benecio,
calls him to work on a case: the teenaged members of highly placed Cabal
families are disappearing and turning up dead. Lucas may hate the structure
and power of the Cabals, but he doesn't hate the people, so he and Paige end
up working with Benecio to solve the crimes. It turns out to involve also
working with a necromancer who is also a TV medium, a snotty vampire, and
the werewolves from Bitten and Stolen. A nice romp with a little depth to
it.
Robibnikoff
Hilarious! Then again, I have a sick sense of humor ;)
http://www.finalexits.com/home.html
Dark Phoenix
House, 2006
Yoshino is a gay man, a law professor who specializes in gay rights. In this
book, part biography and part sociology, he proposes that there are three
methods of denying civil rights: by demanding conversion, by demanding
passing, and by demanding covering.
Conversion we're familiar with, the demand that gays 'cure' themselves to
become heterosexual, as if there is something wrong with them. Conversion is
also used on members of religions that aren't the dominant one. The term
'passing' arose among blacks of light skin, who 'passed' for white. Gays
pass for straight, pagans pass for Christians. Fortunately, in the US, we
are (mostly) past the need-at least legally- to contend with these demands.
Covering, however, is alive and well.
Covering, (a term borrowed from Erving Goffman) according to Yoshino, is
when a gay person is out of the closet, but acts as straight as possible. No
pictures of their partner on their desk at work, no holding hands in public.
But covering isn't just for gays; blacks find that to get ahead, they must
out Brooks Brothers the Brooks Brothers crowd, and never be seen playing
basketball or doing anything else that is considered stereotypically 'black'.
Women were told in the book "Dress for Success" that basically, they had to
be a man in a skirt. And it's not just dress; they, too, must avoid having
any family pictures on the desk, they must hide that they have children.
People of religions must not 'flaunt' symbols of their beliefs- no pentacles
for the pagan, no headscarves for the Islamics. It's all right to *be* gay
or black or a woman or a pagan, but just don't 'flaunt' it. To get ahead
(and sometimes just to survive) one must dress, act and talk like the
dominant section of society-straight, white, Protestant males. We are
stalled at this point here; refusing to cover has cost people their jobs (a
black woman wearing cornrows to work), their children (parents who come out
as gay tend to be losers in custody battles) and in some sad cases, their
lives (a gay man dragged behind a pickup until he was dead).
Yoshino, a former English major, writes with grace and style, interweaving
his personal experiences with legal cases. Short and easy to read, I
recommend this book.
Dark Phoenix
"Leonardo's Swans' is a historical novel based on the lives of Isabella and
Beatrice d'Este, daughters of the Duke of Ferrara, who live out their lives
in turbulent Renaissance Italy. Betrothed to politically advantageous mates
when they were 5 and 6 years old, they wed in their mid-teens. Isabella is
pleased with her husband at first; the Marquis of Mantua isn't her
intellectual match, but he is in his twenties, handsome, and very attentive
to the beautiful girl. He prefers his beloved horses and soldiering to art
and literature. Tomboy Beatrice, who loves nothing so much as riding and
hunting, is wed to Ludovico Sforza - Il Moro- the uncle of, as well as
regent for, the Duke of Milan. He is ancient- 40ish!- an avid patron and
collector of the arts, and the most ambitious-and wealthiest- man in Italy.
Isabella pities Beatrice, until she meets Ludovico. He is her match in
intellect, ambition and love of beauty. He has the money to commission
artists, to cover his wife in jewels. He has the power to hire Leonardo de
Vinci to be his artist in residence. Suddenly, Isabella isn't sure if the
right matches have been made.
The first half of the book focuses on rivalry between the sisters. Isabella
and Ludovico develop a close friendship. Isabella wants Ludovico to have de
Vinci paint her portrait, and knows it won't happen until Beatrice is
painted- something Beatrice wants nothing to do with. Beatrice lives a
miserable life, with her sister closer to her husband intellectually than
she is, and her husband having a live-in mistress in the castle. He only
touches Beatrice when his astrologer says it's a good time to try and sire a
son. Things change when Beatrice gets sick and tired of things and takes
matters into her own hands, banishing the mistress and seducing her husband.
As he recognizes her own intellect, he consults her on governing issues. She
becomes a woman of power, as does her sister, who rules Mantua when her
husband is absent, which is frequently.
The second half of the book chronicles the downfall of Sforza who has
plotted one too many times and over reached himself. Alliances change by the
day and no one can trust anyone else. In the end, Sforza is left with
nothing.
For once, a historical novel dealing with real people does not take gross
liberties with the facts. No huge events have been made up; no romances
invented out of thin air. The only jarring note is that the women seem to be
thoroughly modern women. Other than their desire to give birth to sons, they
show no signs of being second class citizens. They make decisions without
wondering if their husbands will approve, they talk back to the husbands.
They spend almost no time worrying if God will approve of what they do, even
though this is the era of the Inquisition. They just don't seem to quite fit
the era.
A solid book, but not very exciting, perhaps because I knew how it would
end.
ravenlynne
--
-Gina in Italy
http://www.myspace.com/ravenlynne1975
"I'm a psychopath with super powers and you're my girl!"
- Mr. Hyde, Jekyll.
Dr. Jekyll: Ever killed anyone, Benjamin?
Benjamin: Not personally. I have people.
Dr. Jekyll: You're missing out. It's like sex. Only there's a winner.
Museumbitch
Other than their desire to give birth to sons, they
> show no signs of being second class citizens. They make decisions without
> wondering if their husbands will approve, they talk back to the husbands.
> They spend almost no time worrying if God will approve of what they do, even
> though this is the era of the Inquisition. They just don't seem to quite fit
> the era.
Perhaps because they are upper-class, Renaissance women. In other
words, they were very much more privileged than other women of their
time.
Erin
Dark Phoenix
"ravenlynne" <raven...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f89hn...@news3.newsguy.com...
> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
Ooh! I loved that book! Let us know what you think of it when you're done.
ravenlynne
> "ravenlynne" <raven...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f89hn...@news3.newsguy.com...
>> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
>
> Ooh! I loved that book! Let us know what you think of it when you're done.
>
>
I'm halfway through and have to say that it is one of the most awesomely
fucked up things that I've read lately. Love it.
--
-Gina in Italy
http://www.myspace.com/ravenlynne1975
I've got the ways and means
to New Orleans
I'm goin' down by the river where it's warm and green
Gonna have a drink
And walk around
I've got a lot to think about oh yeah.
-concrete blonde
Robibnikoff
>
> "ravenlynne" <raven...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f89hn...@news3.newsguy.com...
>> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
>
> Ooh! I loved that book! Let us know what you think of it when you're done.
I think I read that one years ago. Doesn't it involve an alien presence?
ravenlynne
> "Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> wrote in message
> news:GN-dnSQ57-69HzTb...@povn.com...
>> "ravenlynne" <raven...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:f89hn...@news3.newsguy.com...
>>> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
>> Ooh! I loved that book! Let us know what you think of it when you're done.
>
> I think I read that one years ago. Doesn't it involve an alien presence?
Not so far....I'm only 600 pages into it and that's not there yet...It's
a post apocalyptic horror novel. Here's a link:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_%28novel%29
--
-Gina in Italy
http://www.myspace.com/ravenlynne1975
I've got the ways and means
to New Orleans
I'm goin' down by the river where it's warm and green
Gonna have a drink
And walk around
I've got a lot to think about oh yeah...
-concrete blonde
Robibnikoff
> Robibnikoff wrote:
>> "Dark Phoenix" <dark_p...@netw.com> wrote in message
>> news:GN-dnSQ57-69HzTb...@povn.com...
>>> "ravenlynne" <raven...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>> news:f89hn...@news3.newsguy.com...
>>>> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
>>> Ooh! I loved that book! Let us know what you think of it when you're
>>> done.
>>
>> I think I read that one years ago. Doesn't it involve an alien presence?
>
> Not so far....I'm only 600 pages into it and that's not there yet...It's a
> post apocalyptic horror novel. Here's a link:
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_%28novel%29
I took a look myself and I of a different book by that author
BTW, his novel "Boy's Life" is excellent. Have you read that one?
ravenlynne
>>> I think I read that one years ago. Doesn't it involve an alien presence?
>> Not so far....I'm only 600 pages into it and that's not there yet...It's a
>> post apocalyptic horror novel. Here's a link:
>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_%28novel%29
>
> I took a look myself and I of a different book by that author
>
> BTW, his novel "Boy's Life" is excellent. Have you read that one?
No, I'm a new McCammon reader.
Robibnikoff
> Robibnikoff wrote:
>>>> I think I read that one years ago. Doesn't it involve an alien
>>>> presence?
>>> Not so far....I'm only 600 pages into it and that's not there yet...It's
>>> a post apocalyptic horror novel. Here's a link:
>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Song_%28novel%29
>>
>> I took a look myself and I of a different book by that author
>>
>> BTW, his novel "Boy's Life" is excellent. Have you read that one?
>
> No, I'm a new McCammon reader.
It's a really great book - I advise everyone to check it out.
My husband's not a big reader (outside of the sports section) and he LOVED
it ;)
Frances Moffatt
> Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
Ohh, I liked that one.
That said, where are your .sig quotes from? I skimmed them, and then
just kind of sat there blinking.
Torrain
ravenlynne
The other ones were from the BBC show Jekyll...a miniseries retelling is
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's a brilliant show...will be on BBC America
this fall. My current quote is self explanatory.
--
-Gina in Italy
http://www.myspace.com/ravenlynne1975
I've got the ways and means
Dark Phoenix
"Robibnikoff" <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:5guh3oF...@mid.individual.net...
> BTW, his novel "Boy's Life" is excellent. Have you read that one?
I've got that one -bought it after reading "Swan Song" and "Stinger" (the
alien presence one), but I swear it doesn't look like it has any horror or
fantasy aspects- does it, and just doesn't look it from the cover? I've put
off reading it in favor of other things for a couple of years now.
Robibnikoff
>
> "Robibnikoff" <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote in message
> news:5guh3oF...@mid.individual.net...
>> BTW, his novel "Boy's Life" is excellent. Have you read that one?
>
> I've got that one -bought it after reading "Swan Song" and "Stinger" (the
> alien presence one),
Yes, thank you! That's the one I was thinking of :)
but I swear it doesn't look like it has any horror or
> fantasy aspects- does it, and just doesn't look it from the cover? I've
> put off reading it in favor of other things for a couple of years now.
It definitely has the fantasy aspect, but I don't think it has the horror
(it's been a while since I read it). I just remember that it was a great
story.
Dark Phoenix
Harper & Row, 1987
The Gies', authors of several books on the middle ages, take a well
researched look at family life and how it changed through the ages in
Europe. A number of common beliefs about how the family functioned back then
are have proved to be untrue, such as that there was no childhood and that
romantic love never existed in marriage.
There are almost as many differences in family style when you look at
different economic classes and different areas of Europe as there are
differences in time. The poor were vastly different from the rich, and Italy's
customs were unlike those of England. In general, the poor had fewer rules
to follow, since they had little property to protect, although some, such as
consanguinity rules trickled down from above. (at first, there were few
incest laws other than the obvious nuclear family ones, but the need for the
wealthy to be able to finagle their way out of a bad marriage arrangement
led to some very odd relations that were considered incest. At one point, if
a man had slept with a woman's 4th cousin, he could not marry her. Nor could
he marry anyone related to his godparent's family)
Contrary to popular belief, the rich had far more children than the poor
did. Partly this was because the rich could afford to feed more mouths, and
partly because rich women were much more likely to put the babies out to a
wet nurse, whereas the poor woman nursed the baby for two years or so and
thus was less likely to become pregnant too soon after giving birth. Also
contrary to legend, the children were not 'small adults', although the
children of the poor would have been given chores at a very young age, such
as caring for their younger siblings, owing to the fact that the parents
would have had too many working hours to take care of everything. But
illustrations from the time show children playing, and what few memoirs
exist (mostly from the latter part of the middle ages) show that people were
just as take with children then as now.
Romantic love within marriage was also something that most people think didn't
exist, but it did. Sometimes. The rich mostly had arranged marriages, with
the couple sometimes as young as 8 when they were betrothed, but for the
most part, they were quite a bit older, with males being in their 30s and
their brides being teenagers. The law said that no one could be married
without their consent, and some proposed marriages fell through for things
as trivial as the man being considered to be too short; on the other hand,
consent of the woman was sometimes gained through beatings administered by
her parents. Although a marriage contract between rich people could be as
complicated as a truce between two countries, letters and wills from the era
show affection between husband and wife in some cases.
The Gies have arranged their material chronologically, and give the
circumstances of both the rich and poor in each era. The effects of the
Black Death are particularly interesting in the speed with which people
changed their habits to account for the high rate of loss of family.
Recommended for anyone interested in the social aspects of the age.
--
Laurie Brown, Dark Phoenix, who is now going to try and find a place to hide
so she can read "Deathly Hollows!"
Kathleen
Deborah Rodriguez.
An American hairdresser goes to Kabul in the aftermath of the (partial)
ousting of the Taliban. The gal herself is a bit of a twit. Having
escaped a physically, verbally and emotionally abusive marriage to an
American man, what on god's green earth was she thinking when she
consented to be the second wife of an Afghani man?
Nevertheless it was an addictive page-turner, and her description of the
hardships faced by Afghani women under the rule of the Taliban is
heartbreaking.
To me, the object lesson is exactly how horrible life can become under
the rule of religious fundamentalists.
ravenlynne
new Harry Potter. I want to finish the series and have closure, but
can't seem to sit and READ. Damn the Guild Wars game.
Dark Phoenix
"Kathleen" <khhfmde...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:Fkwsi.822$FI....@newsfe12.lga...
I've seen that one, and wondered how it was. Thanks for the review!
--
Laurie Brown, Dark Phoenix
Dark Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling. Scholastic, 2007
A very short review, as I don't want to include any spoilers- I'm sure I can't
be the very last person on earth to finish reading this?
This book, the final in the series, is totally dark. No hijinks at school,
no Dursleys being ridiculous, no worrying about anything as trivial as
exams. It's all about survival. At no point is it a given that they will
survive the next hour, let alone get a decent meal or a place to sleep. Who
dies? It's not 'who', it's 'how many'. The wizardly grave diggers will be
busy for quite awhile after the end of this book.
While I couldn't (willingly) put the book down, I still felt there were
things that could have been cut out. The time Harry spends being hunted, and
moving aimlessly around, didn't need quite so much verbiage spent on it. We
get it; they don't know what to do, they are in despair and getting cranky,
we don't need to know about every single day. And the side story about Lupin
that never went anywhere should have been cut out. I guess it was the only
way Rowling could figure out how to get Lupin into this story. Still, I'm
sorry to see the series end. I enjoyed watching the characters grow and I
enjoyed falling into a magical world where candles float in mid-air and it's
okay to wear a velvet robe and pointy hat every day. And now what will the
fundies have to go after?
Lady Cat
"Swan Song" was tasty! I'm starting again on the new Harry Potter.
Read it the week it came out, took a week off; thought I'd start over
& roll the flavors around again.
This coming weekend is FetishCon here in Tampa. I'm pulling stuff out
of the closet to pack. My style is a mixture of fetish & goth most of
the time; so it's slow going. One outfit has to be flexible &
comfortable enough to be on a lit stage, bodypainting for 4 hours. One
can have uncomfortable shoes because it's at the hotel & I won't have
far to walk around. One has to be good for dancing, etc. *sigh* Here I
am; still packing the kitchen sink....
Lady Cat
...better take inventory of the liquor cabinet...
Dark Phoenix
If there is one single thing about Edith Wharton's life that can be
discovered from surviving sources that didn't make it into this book, I'm
amazed. Weighing in at 762 pages (plus another hundred pages of footnotes,
sources and index), this exhaustive biography leaves no area of her life
unexamined, from her gardens to her writing, from her love life to her taste
in décor. Lee was able to make use of previously unavailable sources for her
research, making this book more rounded that past biographies of Wharton.
Lee's biography of Wharton takes an unusual tactic: rather than following a
strict time line, one year after another, it goes over the same span of
years several times for different areas of Wharton's life. For instance, Lee
will go over ten years of Wharton's personal life, then go over the same ten
years, but this time focusing on her homes and how they were decorated. Then
again she goes over those ten years, this time explaining what Wharton was
writing at this time. At first I found this confusing, but as I read on, I
found this made perfect sense. Rather than have gardens jumbled in with why
she was impelled to write a certain story, we can concentrate on the area at
hand. If one were only interested in certain aspects of Wharton's life, this
would make it easy to skip the 'dull parts'! It does provide for some odd
continuities, as when Henry James pops up again many pages after he has
died, but for the most part, it works well.
Edith Wharton was a writer who was brilliant at times, taking on the idle
rich of her youth and the fast living rich of her middle and old age. She
was not a writer of pretty stories; as she got older, she had more and more
trouble getting the ladies magazines to publish her stories as they dealt
with subjects that they felt their gentle readers would find unacceptable.
She took on the subjects of divorce (quite a bad thing in her youth),
children born out of wedlock, extramarital affairs and all the assorted
failings of the human race. A best selling author for a number of years, she
fell out of fashion with readers, and wasn't rediscovered until the rise of
feminism in the 1970s. Film adaptations of some of her books have made her
popular again recently. Most people do not realize that she wrote
non-fiction books- gardening, travel and decorating were subjects she wrote
on; in fact, the first book she had published was on home decorating.
A bit of a contradiction, Wharton was a virulent anti-Semite with a Jew for
one of her best friends, a woman who chaffed against the restrictions
society placed on her yet was antisufferage, a complete snob who was
concerned with the sickly poor. She apparently did not see the irony in any
of this, and her friends put up with it.
Wharton married a man many years her senior and there is nothing in her
surviving writing (she destroyed many letters, both to and from herself)
that indicates there was any passionate love there. She may very well have
married just to get out of her mother's house- although she did not get very
far, as her first house was next door to her mother's. The marriage was
unsuccessful; Teddy Wharton was not Edith's intellectual match, they had few
interests in common, and he was careless with her money. He became mentally
ill and Edith was eventually able to divorce him after many years of trying
to find him a cure. The one big love of her life occurred in her middle age
but did not last; the object of her affection was a man who flitted from
lover to lover. While she was not to have a partner in life, she did have
many long term friends, many of them gay men- another contradiction as she
did not approve of homosexuality.
Edith Wharton lived a good portion of her life in France, considering it a
more civilized place than America and feeling much more at home there. A
number of her letters were written in French, which leads me to my one
complaint about Lee's book: she includes many of these French quotes without
translating them. I realize that not being able to read French is a deficit
in my education, but I'm sure I'm not the only untutored savage who would
wish to read this book, and a French/English dictionary just doesn't cut it
in trying to understand these quotes. If the book is ever revised, I hope
this is remedied. All in all, a great biography.
And now my brain needs something light and fluffy, like a marshmallow
book...
Robibnikoff
"Choosing a Career in Mortuary Science and the Funeral Industry" by Nancy
Stair
What can I say? Might be time for a career change................
Dark Phoenix
A murder mystery (is there any other kind of mystery? There are no rape
mysteries, no robbery mysteries, no petty theft mysteries...) with a
supernatural twist. The main character, Harper Connelly was hit by lightning
as a child, leaving her with the ability to sense dead bodies when close to
them and read their cause of death. She and her step-brother, Tolliver, make
a living finding dead bodies for people. On this case, while doing a
cemetery reading for a college class on the supernatural, she finds the body
of a young girl who she searched for three years before. And the fun starts,
with Harper and Tolliver as suspects, of course.
The book is a fun, fast (one evening) read. The characters are acceptable,
although a bit blind to the obvious. There is humor in the book without it
being a farce, which I appreciate. Harris is the author of the popular
Southern Vampires series.
patti crass
"Dark Phoenix" wrote ..
> Grave Surprise, by Charlaine Harris. Berkley, 2006
>
> although a bit blind to the obvious. There is humor in the book without it
> being a farce, which I appreciate. Harris is the author of the popular
> Southern Vampires series.
i thought that name looked familiar
patti crass/medusa
currently re-reading Steven Kings "insomnia"
Dark Phoenix
Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria, by Tony Rennell. St. Martin's
Press, 2000.
Covering the last month of Queen Victoria's life and the time until she was
sealed into her tomb, this book gives us a close-up look at what went on,
much of which was kept from the public at the time. Relying heavily on
memoirs, diaries and letters for contemporary accounts, this book has
details not available elsewhere.
Coming after 63 years of rule, Victoria's death shouldn't have been a
surprise- she was in her 80s, after all. But she had been on the throne for
so long that many people had never known a time when she was not there, and
could not imagine a time when she wasn't. A beloved institution, she was the
steady rock who had survived many prime ministers and many changes in the
times. The British Empire was at the height of it's glory, and most thought
it would continue that way.
The seriousness of her last illness was largely kept from the public,
largely because her family refused to believe in it. Her private doctor
warned them, but her children ignored him. He would tell them, to their
faces, exactly how bad things were, and they would act like he had said
nothing at all. When she did die, a frantic scramble ensued: Victoria had
been on the throne for so long that no one knew what to do, what the
protocol was, or how to deal with the succession and her funeral. There were
searches for records to show them what to do, for the marble bust likeness
of Victoria to go on her tomb (made when her beloved Albert died, to match
his own likeness), for enough black cloth for mourning clothes for the
entire nation, for enough purple crepe to drape houses and business- having
lived in black for most of her life, her orders were strict- she was going
to her grave in white, as a bride going to her husband, and the drapings
were to be imperial purple. Her coffin didn't get made when it was supposed
to. The funeral procession was delayed by technical difficulties more than
once. Her coffin was nearly dropped on the steps of the church.
These cracks in the façade of propriety were like omens of the change that
was to go on in the empire. Her son, the new king, was a very different
person than Victoria; he had no interest in staid manners. He liked drinking
and gambling and women of the coming age, who smoked and said what they
felt. He liked the new motor cars. The world was changing, and Victoria's
death was emblematic of this.
--
Laurie Brown, Dark Phoenix
dark_p...@netw.com
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/103910/laurie_brown.html
Lucifer
of weeks anyway)
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
Robibnikoff
Dark Phoenix
> The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Metford.
What do you think of it? I've been curious about that one.
Robibnikoff
>
> "Robibnikoff" <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote in message
> news:5k553gF...@mid.individual.net...
>> The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Metford.
>
> What do you think of it? I've been curious about that one.
It's interesting, but pretty dry.
No where near as fun as "Provolone in the Casket" :)