Average customer rating:
- beautifully realized story of familial anarchy
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Light While There Is Light: An American History (Sun and Moon Classics)
Keith Waldrop
Manufacturer: Sun and Moon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1557131368 |
Book Description
autobiographically based novel of Kansas boyhood
Customer Reviews:
beautifully realized story of familial anarchy.......2002-10-26
Avant garde poet, graphic designer, publisher and hoodoo god, Keith Waldrop, has written a roman a clef based on his family,a tragic comically wierd tale, told with straight faced, just-the-facts-mam restraint and sympathy. The prose is beautifully pitched, clear, resonant. Buy this book now.
Average customer rating:
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Walk in the Light While There Is Light
Leo Tolstoy , and
Lawrence Jordan
Manufacturer: Revell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Tolstoy, Leo
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ASIN: 0800717821 |
Book Description
Three classic tales of Christianity by Russias most widely read novelist packaged as a gift book. The stories are Walk in the Light, While There Is Light, The Long Exile, and Little Girls Wiser Than Their Elders.
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Walk in the Light While There Is Light
Leo Tolstoy
Manufacturer: Rifton NY: Woodcrest Bruderhof
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Tolstoy, Leo
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ASIN: B000UGX3RG |
Product Description
First Printing, Christmas, 1982. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was one of Russia's most celebrated writers and thinkers. After writing his famous novels, Tolstoy published dozens of stories and essays about living the Christian life. 69-page stapled booklet.
Average customer rating:
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While There is Light
Tariq Mehmood
Manufacturer: Carcanet Press Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1857547292 |
Book Description
This moving novel explores the life of a young Pakistani man in Great Britain as he grapples with what it means to be a foreigner and what it takes to call someplace "home." Centered on Saleem's visit to Pakistan to visit his ailing mother, this novel traces his internal journey to come to terms with how his Pakistani identity conflicts with his ability to live safely and with integrity in Great Britain. Saleem finds that although racism and criminalization are only skin-deep, redemption must come from within himself and the life he left behind.
Book Description
1947. The novel begins: On the screen at Kursk station in Moscow. A bright April day of 1902. A group of friends, who came to see Zinaida Krutitsky and her mother off to the Crimea, stand on the platform by the sleeping-car. Among them Ivan Osokin, a young man about twenty-six. Osokin is visibly agitated although he tries not to show it. Zinaida is talking to her brother, Michail, Osokin's friend, a young officer in the uniform of one of the Moscow Grenadier regiments and two girls. Then she turns to Osokin and walks aside with him.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting read.......2006-11-04
I enjoyed this book quite a lot despite the editing errors. Alhtough there were quite a few in this edition, I don't think that they were a major distraction. This book explores Nietzsche's concept of Eternal Recurrence in a very accessible but thought-provoking way. Whether you're very familiar with the concept or not, I think this book offers a succinct but enjoyable and engrossing overview. I will mention that I was assigned this book for a class and many of the other students found it to be a tedious and, at times, annoying read. I think that this was probably due to the nature of the topic, though.
So So..........2005-06-24
I was expecting something great from this book - it came up far short. Consistent with the other reviews, there were quite a few editing errors that I found in this book (which does not say much because I am not very big on grammar). While the last few pages were rewarding, overall the book was quite drab. Do yourself a favor however, read the back cover of the book where the guy who directed Groundhog Day comments on the book - it is an amazing commentary and will sum the entire book up in a paragraph.
Great novel, unclear on whether this version is good.......2005-04-04
Cannot vouch for this particular version of the book, but get a good copy somewhere, as it is worth it. If you like Kundera, have a fondness for Nietzsche, enjoyed the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog's Day," or sit there mulling over the towering pronouncement from Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," : 'You must change your life!' then this is the book for you. Even if none of the above apply to you, just take a chance on this slim novel. While I wouldn't recommend the entire mystical theosophist movement that propelled Ouspensky, this work will never quite leave you -- my criterion for a work of great art.
Good Book, Defective edition.......2003-01-11
This is a very interesting novel, but I gave it one star because I am rating the edition instead. Lindisfarne Books should be razed by fire and the editors suspended over a slow barbecue. They went to great lengths to provide the book with an arresting cover, interesting typeface for the chapter title, and lively (if uninformed) review notices on the back cover, but were so slipshod in their copy editing that they omitted words from the author's text in the first sentence of the first chapter! I kid you not, this book starts with a phrase, not a sentence! Fortunately it is about living your life over again, so the complete sentence reappears correctly on page 162 at the beginning of chapter 26. But such errors are unacceptable and unforgiveable in an editor, and can lead in time to a loss of the complete text itself, as any classical scholar can tell you, if you can find any these days. Don't buy this edition!
Average customer rating:
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Strange Life of Ivan Osokin
P. D. Ouspensky
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1432605070 |
Book Description
1947. The novel begins: On the screen at Kursk station in Moscow. A bright April day of 1902. A group of friends, who came to see Zinaida Krutitsky and her mother off to the Crimea, stand on the platform by the sleeping-car. Among them Ivan Osokin, a young man about twenty-six. Osokin is visibly agitated although he tries not to show it. Zinaida is talking to her brother, Michail, Osokin's friend, a young officer in the uniform of one of the Moscow Grenadier regiments and two girls. Then she turns to Osokin and walks aside with him.
Customer Reviews:
Another Must Read.......2005-04-04
If you like Kundera, have a fondness for Nietzsche, enjoyed the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog's Day," or sit there mulling over the towering pronouncement from Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," : 'You must change your life!' then this is the book for you. Even if none of the above apply to you, just take a chance on this slim novel. While I wouldn't recommend the entire mystical theosophist movement that propelled Ouspensky, this work will never quite leave you -- my criterion for a work of great art.
Strange Indeed....or is it?.......2003-06-23
You seldom come across books which can significantly change your way of thinking or maybe your life for good. This is definitely one such book. I accidently came upon it when I was searching for one of Colin Wilson's books and came upon Strange Life of P.D. Ouspensky which in turn led to this book.
The protagonist, Ivan Osokin, is someone with whom most of us can empathize with. He's someone who would like another chance to live his life again so that he can make use of opportunities he wasted. He is blessed when he finds a magician who can exactly do this - send him back in time with the memories of the "future". He finds himself being a schoolboy again and at a critical path of his life. The strange thing being - now its difficult for him to believe any of it. His memory of "future" starts fading slowly and he finds that the inertia of fate is not easy to get rid of. He's taking the same decisions that he took the last time. His "memory" reduces to a plain deja vu and he's left wondering whether any of it was really true.
Giving away more will destroy the pleasure of reading.
Ouspensky's insights will leave you spellbound till the end. I just wish I had read it a few years earlier.
An amazing book........2002-06-22
Over the years, I've recommended this book to my friends at least twenty times, and I have for sure recommended it to every psychologist, or anyone in any sort of therapy, that I have known. I read it when I was in college, doing the usual recreational drugs, and reading widely. This book amazed and dumbfounded me, probably more than any other book. The author possesses what seemed to me to be a rare quality (conceited and/or foolish as I am), and that is, he knows more about human nature, and the way the world works, than I do, and he can write about it.
The form of the book is a novel; the protagonist is beset by difficulties that he feels somehow responsible for, but, that he cannot understand. Like all of us? As the story unfolds, we see that this novel is unlike any other, as it examines the protagonist's role in the minutest details of events, and shows how these events contribute to the inevitablity of what seem on the surface to be chance or uncontollable outcomes.
One lesson I drew from the book is to try to 'look deeply' at things. There is the reality that our concious mind registers and that changes moment to moment, and there are currents of meaning that are constant and don't change, but that are not recognized for what they are and are not acknowledged by our concious mind. However, our unconcious mind is fully aware of these currents, and their reality is more substantial than the concious reality. Does that make any sense? Probably not. Be assured that 'Osokin' is an interesting tale, not pyschobabble like my attempted explication.
Ouspensky was a follower of Gurjeiff, and there are still Gurjeiff groups that meet to discuss his thoughts. My last boss at a tech firm was a leader of such a group! I found out from him that Gurjeiff-ans think that the movie "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray is in the spirit of "Osokin". I agree. The setups are the same, a day, or a life, to live over, however, what follows is entirely different.
Essential reading for anyone who wonders.."what if".......2001-10-01
From a music student to a student of Hermetic Science - this book changed my whole life, and way of thinking.
Ouspensky manages to combine real human feeling and longings with fantasy and dreams.
Enjoy!
Should be in print!.......2001-03-02
I first read this book at age eight after finding it on my mother's nightstand. I remember becoming totally engrossed in the story and reading it straight through form cover to cover. Strangely this novel has stood up well to several subsequent readings at various times in my life. I say strangely in part because I have not developed any noticable interest in any other works of fantasy or the occult in the ensuing years. This book stands out in my memory as a singular phenomenon.
Average customer rating:
- Warning: May Change Your Life
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Strange Life of Ivan Osokin
P.D. Ouspensky
Manufacturer: Law Book Co of Australasia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | Classics | Contemporary | General | Historical | Humor | Letters & Correspondence | Middle | Old | Poetry | Renaissance | Shakespeare | Short Stories
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General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
ASIN: 0710094191 |
Customer Reviews:
Warning: May Change Your Life.......2005-04-04
If you like Kundera, have a fondness for Nietzsche, enjoyed the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog's Day," or sit there mulling over the towering pronouncement from Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," : 'You must change your life!' then this is the book for you. Even if none of the above apply to you, just take a chance on this slim novel. While I wouldn't recommend the entire mystical theosophist movement that propelled Ouspensky, this work will never quite leave you -- my criterion for a work of great art.
Average customer rating:
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Jason and the Lizard Pirates (Trophy Chapter Book)
Gery Greer , and
Bob Ruddick
Manufacturer: Trophy Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
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ASIN: 0064404811 |
Book Description
Join Mark Bittman as he takes on the nation's top chefs in a culinary battle of home-style vs. restaurant style!
"Mark knows food. Mark knows chefs. Chefs know Mark.You know this has gotta be a great cookbook!"
—Al Roker, Host, NBC's Today show
The Chefs Who Took the Challenge
- JOSÉ ANDRÉS, Zaytinya/Washington, D.C.
- DANIEL BOULUD, Daniel/New York
- JAMES BOYCE, Studio/Laguna Beach
- GARY DANKO, Restaurant Gary Danko/San Francisco
- SUZANNE GOIN, Lucques and A.O.C./Los Angeles
- GABRIELLE HAMILTON, Prune/New York
- ANNA KLINGER, Al di Là/New York
- CHARLES PHAN, The Slanted Door/San Francisco
- MICHEL RICHARD, Citronelle/Washington, D.C.
- SUVIR SARAN, Devi/New York
- CHRIS SCHLESINGER, East Coast Grill & Raw Bar/Boston-Cambridge
- KERRY SIMON, Simon Kitchen & Bar/Las Vegas
- JEAN-GEORGES VONGERICHTEN, Jean-Georges/New York
Customer Reviews:
A smorgasbord of great chefs and Bittman's simplicity too! .......2005-06-30
The time may yet come this summer when you tire of the same old steak, burgers and chicken on the barbecue and yearn for something a little different. Like Lemongrass-Grilled Rack of Lamb with Tamarind Sauce, perhaps, or Grilled Tuna with Soy, Wasabi, and Pickled Ginger or a Lobster Burger involving scallops, ginger mayonnaise and Tomato Confit.
These are restaurant-style chef dishes, of course, and Bittman's responses, intended to show how simple, home-cooked food can be just as enjoyable are, respectively: Grilled Squid with Black Pepper and Sesame-Lemon Sauce, Tuna Teriyaki, and a Lobster Roll, served with melted butter on a hot dog bun.
It's a gimmicky idea, but fun, even if the connections sometimes seem farfetched (rack of lamb vs. squid?). Bittman, author of "The Minimalist" column as well as many books, adheres to a simplify-without-sacrifice philosophy and consequently is wildly popular with busy but serious home cooks. This book accompanies Bittman's public television series and includes short profiles of the 13 chefs, their restaurants and their dishes juxtaposed with Bittman's responses.
Sidebars include some of the show's repartee as well as cooking tips (like Jean-Georges Vongerichten's subtle use of cayenne instead of black pepper to season fish) and Bittman's variations, simplifications, explanations and suggestions for home cooks who want to prepare the chefs' signature dishes (Gary Danko's Duck Confit and Potato Hash as template for croquettes of many kinds; choosing lemons or persimmons, making shrimp shell stock, clarifying butter).
The chefs run the gamut from classical French (Daniel Boulud, Michel Richard) to Vietnamese (Charles Phan), Spanish (Jose Andres), Indian (Suvir Saran) and various trendy Americans (Kerry Simon, Anna Klinger, James Boyce). Some are young, some well established; all are confident and opinionated.
Illustrated with shots taken from the TV show, this is a clever, energetic book which offers a smorgasbord of the nation's leading cooks and an expert home cook's take on a wide range of recipes and techniques.
Ignore the "Challenge" Try the Recipes.......2005-06-07
The basic premise of this book is that the recipies concocted by the author featuring simple down to earth cooking can compete with the chefs from fancy four star restaurants.
Each "challenge" resents a chef's special dish followed by Bittman's more accessible interpretation. My conclusion is that "No, they don't compete." The basic rules are too different. Instead, what the guest chef cooks and what the author cooks are two different dishes. In looking over the recipies, sometimes I would prefer one, sometimes the other, often both sound like they would be good to eat --Example: A chef cooked Baked Stuffed Crab, Bittman cooked crab soup. Not the same disk, but I could handle either one but the baked one sounds better.
This book is the companion to a series of TV shows where these "challenges" will be shown. Here you have the recipe and you can cook either one or both at your leisure. The challenge part is just part of the TV show. The recipes are what count.
Good Idea with some good recipes.......2005-05-20
The idea of presenting complex and time consuming recipes from renowned chefs along side simplified versions is a great one. Bittman falls a little short in this regard since his recipes are not simplifications or variations in most cases, but a different recipe with similar main ingredients and a similar effect.
This aside, I like the cook book and have been pleased with the results from the recipes I have tried, especailly the Apple Confit, an impressive and time consuming dessert.
The food inside is good, so all other complaints are just nit-picking.
WTP?!?.......2005-05-10
What's The Point? It's a cookbook where half the recipes are from well-reknowned chefs exposing their true form, and the other half are Bittman's adulterated versions that are nothing like the original. In some he doesn't have the same method or technique; in others he doesn't even use the same base ingredient. It's like comparing apples to motor oil. Complex to Simple? Of course it's simple if you remove 90 percent of what was in the original! You cannot compare a grilled version of a protein dish to a sauteed version of another no matter how much you try to spin it.
And the photos are the worst I've ever seen for a major release of a cookbook. They are still photos taken from the video shoot while they were in the kitchens. Some of the photos have big block squares; the tell-tale sign of how the digital rendering couldn't be made. Take any .jpg file and blow it up 1,000 percent and you'll see exactly the results printed in this book.
Very disappointed.
Good Insights into Pro / Home Cooking.Flawed but Good Read.......2005-04-07
`How to Cook Everything, Bittman Takes on America's Chefs' by New York Times culinary journalist, Mark Bittman is another step in turning his `How to Cook Everything' into a brand and by raising expectations for what one may find in this book. Bittman certainly raised my expectations high enough to buy it immediately upon seeing the name of the author and the subject.
Contrary to my glib title to this review, this book is much less a real cooking competition between Bittman and famous chefs than it is a `cover story' for a foodie book genre which may have been created by Julia Child late in her PBS career. The underlying structure is that the host, a journalist / cookbook author as with Bittman or Child or a famous chef, as in the case of Jeremiah Tower, visits each `FAMOUS CHEF' in their restaurant kitchens or similar venue and cook some stuff. In the case of Julia Child, the focus was strictly on the cuisine of the visiting fireman. Bittman tweaks the premise by adding his own home cooking dishes to match up with the efforts of the professional. Then, with no judges or time clocks in evidence, each samples the other's dishes.
One of the first revelations in this book is that Bittman admits to not being a very good cook himself. While this is very interesting, it is not surprising, as Jim Villas in his `Between Bites' essay on Craig Claiborne, states that the great New York Times culinary writer was pretty deliberate in the kitchen himself (a kind way of saying `slow'). I believe it is fair to say that this certainly does not mean Bittman or Claiborne don't know food and cooking. It means that they have not spent years cooking the same dishes over and over and they have not spend decades practicing their knife skills to the point where they can reduce an onion to a fine dice in seconds. In contrast, Chris Schlesinger describes Bittman's knife skills with an onion as an exercise in `hacking'.
My anticipation and enthusiasm for the book grew as I started reading about the differences between home and professional cooking. I have seen it said before, but never with such force, that while many restaurant dishes simply cannot be done in the home, the opposite is true as well. There are some dishes that simply cannot be made as well in a restaurant as they can at home. The primary advantage of the restaurant kitchen are the very hot heat sources, either as oven, wok, or grill plus specialized forms of heat such as salamanders and Indian tandoori ovens. Other advantages are the battalion of prep chefs and the access to very high quality ingredients (See the excellent essay on this matter in `Kinkead's Cookbook'). The home cook has the advantage of time. If a dish requires a long cooking time followed by immediate delivery to the dinner table, a restaurant simply cannot make it. All restaurant dishes must be prepped up to the final step, where ingredients sit in preparation to be fired and completed in no more than 20 minutes.
So now I have read the introduction on how Bittman collected his collaborators, starting with old friends such as Daniel Boulud and Chris Schlesinger and ending with long time collaborator Jean-Georges Vongerichten. In between, he visits ten other major culinary stars such as Michel Richard and up and coming luminaries such as Kerry Simon. The anecdotes in this intro have honed my anticipation for the descriptions of the cooking. So now, I get to the section entitled `The Chefs and The Dishes' and am puzzled by tables of dish names by venue and chef. The reason for this section is explained as I turn to page 33 with the title `Starters' and find that all the recipes are arranged by type of dish. I am as deflated as a souffle when the oven door opens too early!
Bittman has raised my expectations of tales of culinary rapport to a high peak, only to dash them on an organization of recipes that totally swims against the main premise of his book. When I reviewed Jeremiah Tower's similar book, I was pleased with his arranging the recipes by type or course, since this improved the value of the book as a conventional reference cookbook. I expected that Bittman's premise would make an organization by chef the best choice, as this would best highlight all the differences between Bittman's home style and the chef's professional style in the four to six dishes the two cooks prepare together. It would also be an effective way to compare, for example, the French classicism of Vongerichten and Richard against the Spanish new wave cooking of Jose Andres. But this was not to be. What made it worse is that `The Chefs and The Dishes' outline did not give page numbers pointing to all the recipes of, for example Daniel Boulud. As I check the publisher, somehow I am not surprised to find that it is Wiley Publishing, the same house that does a slipshod job of editing the CIA books. Never have I more wanted to be a book editor in a position to prevent this mistake. Given my reaction to the book, it seems as if there was no senior editor at Wiley who sat down and looked over the whole project and did not see the weaknesses in the design of the book.
After all that, this is still a very good foodie read, similar to `Kinkead's Cookbook'. Just as Bob Kinkead has thousands of cookbooks, but has never prepared a dish directly from one of these recipes, this is a book you want to read from cover to cover and garner as many insights about techniques as you can. The sidebars and headnotes are full of useful and entertaining information, but the book could have been much better!
Books:
- Little Lord Fauntleroy
- Little Lord Fauntleroy
- Long Time Gone: A Novel of Suspense
- Loyalty in Death (In Death)
- Manor of Death (A Domestic Bliss Mystery)
- Map of Bones
- Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Book 3)
- Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (Mr Monk 1)
- Naked in Death (In Death, Book 1)
- Nuevo México Profundo: Rituals of an Indo-Hispano Homeland
Books Index
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