Average customer rating:
- An urban legend brought into novel form
- re: typos
- Worth reading; dark, broody ,,,poignant
- Ponderous, pedantic, and pretentious
- Very good...
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Kiss Me, Judas: A Novel
Will Christopher Baer
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 United States
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ASIN: 0670881759 |
Amazon.com
In his extremely dark but very effective first thriller, former cabdriver and homeless counselor Will Christopher Baer takes that old urban legend of the man who wakes up in a hotel bathtub full of ice to discover that somebody has removed one of his kidneys and whips it up into a modernized Edgar Allan Poe nightmare. Baer's hero is in fact called Phineas Poe--an ex-cop who spent six years digging up dirt in and on the Denver P.D.'s Internal Affairs Division. On his first night out after a nervous breakdown and a six-month stay in a psychiatric hospital, Poe is picked up by a prostitute named Jude who drugs his drink and deftly removes his kidney.
Poe heads for the Witch's Teat, a sex shop where his friend Crumb works. "Crumb isn't really a doctor. He does cheap abortions and gunshot wounds and even dental work for the mad and desperate," Baer writes in deceptively plain present-tense prose, which quickly mesmerizes like electronic music. "Crumb reads a lot. He has a closet full of old surgical textbooks and a lot of stolen equipment. And he doesn't try to fake you. If you come to him with a ruptured bowel or a crushed spine, he gives you a cup of tea and sends you to the hospital." Poe learns that his kidney has been replaced by a bag of heroin--which could kill him if it dissolves. Intent on retrieving his stolen organ, he traces Jude to a bowling alley called the Inferno. Strangely enough, with Jude he reluctantly discovers the chance of love and family that he thought was gone forever when his wife died. In lesser hands, this flash of light in a roomful of noir could easily have spoiled everything. But Baer makes it all seem as natural as whistling in the dark. --Dick Adler
Book Description
The judgement of Phineas Poe, ex-cop, is not at its best. Just released from a psychiatric hospital, he is lured into bed by a beautiful and menacing woman who calls herself Jude. He wakes up in a hotel-room bathtub packed with ice, holding a damp note that reads, "If you want to live, call 911." Jude has stolen one of his kidneys. "Don't worry," she whispers in his dreams, "you really only need one." This brilliantly minimalist novel follows Poe--a grungy, seductive, and deeply vulnerable antihero--as he pursues the mysterious Jude and is plunged into an edgy, drug-blurred underworld where he almost feels like he's come home. Falling helplessly in love with a cruel but tender killer, he fights to avoid becoming her accomplice as well as her victim. As Kiss Me, Judas propels its cast of comic and sinister characters toward a shocking climax. This rare new voice glitters with corrosive wit and razor-sharp images that invade the mind with the arrogance and sexual intimacy of film. Will Christopher Baer doesn't describe arousal and vertigo--he evokes them. He is Jim Thompson and Mary Gaitskill read through the back-lit smoke of noir.
Customer Reviews:
An urban legend brought into novel form.......2007-05-07
Remember the urban legend about waking up in a bathtub filled with ice and the note that tells you to call 911 right away? Well, Will Christopher Baer has written a novel length story about such an urban legend.
Phineas Poe, an ex-cop teetering on the edge of sanity, meets a prostitute in a bar. The next thing he knows, he's shy $200.00 and one kidney. The girl said her name was Jude, and Poe can't get Jude out of his mind. He wants to kill her, he wants to be with her, he wants to find her. And he wants to find his kidney.
When Phineas meets up with Jude, following a note she left for him, he finds her in possession of a green cooler with a lock on it. He boards a train with Jude, takes off in a plane with Jude, checks into a hotel with Jude, all while fending off strangers such as Blister, a man who presented himself as a cop but is relentlessly following Poe. A woman names Isabel who reminds Poe of his deceased wife Lucy. And a chameleon named Henry who keeps popping up in his life. Who is Blister and what's really in that cooler? Why has Henry and Isabel taken such an interest in him? And why is Jude so dedicated to keeping him alive with his deadly wound from the kidney surgery?
You'll have to read this story to believe it. It's written in a surrealistic style, using no punctuation for dialogue. It's written like a rambling fugue from Poe's point of view. What worked for Selby doesn't always work here. At times the prose became so vague that even I couldn't follow it. Poe's thoughts travel from past to present to dreamworld in random segments, and you're often left wondering where the story is going. Still, in spite of the surrealistic, dreamlike style, the book still flows in a nice smooth line. My other major complaint would be an unfulfilling ending, but I hear that Poe continues in another book. There were a lot of questions left unanswered at the end of the book.
Overall, I give this book a solid 4 stars, especially if you're into the strange and bizarre styles - and a viable tale spun from an urban legend. Enjoy!
re: typos.......2007-03-30
For everyone wondering about the typos. This is a reprint from the original Viking release and as a consequence MacAdam/Cage had to retype the books in full. After that, someone was paid to read the book and thoroughly check/fix typos.
This man didn't do his job and the book suffered. Don't blame the Author or dock the book because of this mistake. That's all about that.
It is a very good trilogy!
Keep an eye out for GODSPEED, and the Phineas Poe comic - out soon!
Worth reading; dark, broody ,,,poignant.......2007-03-26
I think anyone else's review will be fine here. I just wanted to point out that I own the set of three matching covers (black, green, white) and enjoyed the book just fine, but was appalled to see "Kiss me, Judas" had in the upwards of 45 typos. The most shocking part was that this is republished and not even the original edition, which would've been acceptable. But you'd thnk they'd have worked out 45 typos (I quit counting) by the time a trilogy is reprinted as a set. Either way give it a read; it doesn't hinder the story.
Ponderous, pedantic, and pretentious.......2006-07-29
It's not so much that this novel is both immoral and grotesque (which it is), but that the love that is supposed to bind it together is so preposterous as to make the novel unreadable. I found myself giving up around page 100, frustrated by the all-too-precious prose and the absurd idea of a man who's had his kidney removed by a woman only to fall in love with her. I don't know about you, but there's only so far I can stretch a metaphor. Take away my kidney, and that's where I draw the line.
Very good..........2006-02-15
Aside from the lest than climactic ending, I found this to be an enjoyable read.
Book Description
From Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring to Kenneth Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, here are seventeen classic stories and poems from the golden age of the English fairy tale. Some of them amuse, some enchant, some satirize and criticize, but each one–in the words of Laurence Houseman, author of the classic Rocking-Horse Land– “is an expression of the joy of living.”
Accompanied by the illustrations from the original editions of these works–by such celebrated Victorian artists as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Maxfield Parrish, and Arthur Rackham–this collection will delight readers both young and old.
Average customer rating:
- Joseph a review by Jason Leonard, author of Poisoned Mushrooms
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Joseph: a Victorian Fairy Tale
ZEM BOOKS
Manufacturer: Lulu.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1411612787 |
Book Description
What if Frederick Treves, the kindly Victorian surgeon and protector of the hideously deformed Joseph Merrick, was in actuality Jack the Ripper? That is the premise of this dark, gothic tale from the mind of writer/spiritualist channeler Tom Baker. The author of Awakenings takes you on a harrowing journey, into the realm of the mystical, and re-writes both his own history and that of the long-suffering Merrick, in an exploration of the monstrous side of human longings and supernatural visitation. Come with us, and tour the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel. But beware! behind every corner, a shadow lurks... This edition has been revised and includes a special appendix, as well as photo-illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Joseph a review by Jason Leonard, author of Poisoned Mushrooms .......2006-05-13
"Every artist is a cannibal. Every poet is a thief.
All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief."
-"The Fly" by U2
Occasionally, in history, there comes a time when new creations and ideas lose their flavor and fade away. Forgotten. New concepts come along and almost rub out the old ones. Almost. There are some that remember.
"Joseph" is a tale that author Tom Baker has composed to revive the black and white memories of The Elephant Man and Jack the Ripper.
The interesting twist is that Mr. Baker weaves himself into the story at a particular point and critiques what may well be the flaws or weak points up until then. This pulls the strings tight and strengthens the rest of the narratives.
It jumps around a bit, making it a little hard to follow at times. There is an explanation for this, but it is anticlimactic.
Nevertheless,for those who remember the non-fiction classics, "Joseph" is more than a pleasant walk down memory lane. It's an old dog with a few new tricks.
For those who don't...it's about bein' ugly and killin' whores.
Jason Leonard
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Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity
U. C. Knoepflmacher
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers
ASIN: 0226448150 |
Book Description
Behind the innocent face of Victorian fairy tales such as Through the Looking Glass or Mopsa the Fairy lurks the specter of an intense gender debate about the very nature of childhood. Offering brilliant rereadings of classics from the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" as well as literature commonly considered "grown-up," U. C. Knoepflmacher illuminates this debate, probing deeply into the relations between adults and children, adults and their own childhood selves, and the lives of beloved Victorian authors and their "children's tales." Ventures into Childland will delight and instruct all readers of children's classics, and will be essential reading for students of Victorian culture and gender studies.
"Ventures into Childland is acute, well written and stimulating. It also has a political purpose, to insist on the importance of protecting and nurturing children, imaginatively and physically."—Jan Marsh, Times Literary Supplement
"A provocative and interesting book about Victorian culture."—Library Journal
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Victorian Newsletter, published by Ward Hellstrom on September 22, 2003. The length of the article is 7414 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Fairies and feminism: recurrent patterns in Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and Bronte's Jane Eyre.(Book Review)
Author: Warren Edminster
Publication:
Victorian Newsletter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2003
Publisher: Ward Hellstrom
Volume: 104
Page: 22(7)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Yearbook of English Studies, published by Modern Humanities Research Association on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 714 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity. (book review)
Author: Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
Publication:
Yearbook of English Studies (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
Page: 285
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Amazon.com
As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this, and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis, and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviorists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met.
These new methods are not without rigor, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanizing--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages, but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
Widely praised for his innovative scientific thinking and elegant writing, Antonio Damasio achieves a new understanding of consciousness by asking-and answering-profound questions: How is it that we know what we know? How is it that our conscious and private minds have a sense of self? A gifted medical clinician with decades of caring for patients with brain damage, a great scientific thinker, and an extraordinary writer, Damasio offers a new understanding of the biological roots of consciousness and its role in survival. Damasio's work on feeling and emotion forever joins our minds and bodies, offering an arrestingly original way of understanding what it is to be human. After reading Damasio's landmark, Descartes' Error, Jonas Salk wrote, "You will never again look at yourself or another without wondering what goes on behind the eyes that so meet." As to The Feeling of What Happens, the New York Times wrote, "Unlike any other book here, it will change your experience of yourself."
Customer Reviews:
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.......2007-09-12
This book is a must read for serious counseling professionals.The orchestra of feeling , emotion and thought that are part of our biological music is exciting to read and think about.
the amazing world of the subconscious.......2007-04-19
I was inspired to read and study this book after listening to an NPR documentary called "Where am I?". This book is not an easy read for those not having a background in biology or neurology, but is very rewardable. I don't have a formal education in biology or neurology, but have studied subjects in this area from reading various books, watching documentaries and reading articles.
This book really solidifies my understanding of emotion and reinforces what I've learned from reading Pert's book "Molecules of Emotion" and from the film "What the Bleep do We Know?". Damasio's main reason for writing this book was to explore the problem of consciousness which involves two questions:
-How are images (objects) in the brain generated?
-How do our brains sense that we are the owners and observers for these objects?
These are not trivial questions and the author makes it clear in many places in the book that what he is explaining are his ideas and are not widely accepted in the scientific community.
In reading Damasio's book, I focused on what was of interest to me and how the information can help me rather than focusing on whether or not what he is saying has scientific validity. I was fascinated by the notion that our brains are our body's captive audience or emotion is a slave to our bodies. So many people talk of having a "gut instinct" or "following your gut" but few know or even care to understand where this comes from. After reading this book, I know that certain parts of the brain such as the amygdala are activated upon thinking about or seeing an object. When this happens, a whole cascade of reactions in the body takes place which includes but is not limited to a reaction in the gut. All of this often takes place without us being consciously aware of what triggered the reaction. The emotions that we are conscious of comes from the perception of these changes in our bodies. This for me really underscores the importance of listening to your body. When you feel your heart racing, your palms sweating, butterflies in your stomach, etc. you should ask yourself why am I feeling this way? What triggered these physical changes? The more we do this, the more we learn about ourselves and make better decisions.
genius.......2006-12-19
if you are interested in understanding the mind, brain or sciences, you must read this book. it's pivotal to our understanding of consciousness and mind. deeply insightful and inspiring. opens new grounds for investivation, research and understanding.
i must say though- that i read this book in summer 2003 and the impression left was powerful. one of the greatest brain books.
Don't Bother.......2006-11-11
Dr. Damasio attempts to write an interesting book, however, don't get fooled by its title which can be enticing. The best part of his book is the Appendix in that he gives a brief introduction to brain anatomy. He also gives a good explanation on the neurophysiology of emotions, yet, his writing style is extremely verbose. It takes him 4 lines to write a complete sentence which can be condensed to one line. The material is redundant and can be condensed to half its size. I lost interest quickly and will not purchase his other works.
Poorly written.......2006-11-06
I studied the topic of consciousness for a biopsychology course, and this book served as my main resource. I enjoyed Damasio's model of consciousness, but it was a painful read. He regularly uses ineffective analogies to classical music and other high-brow topics. Worse, he stretches the information out over 400 pages, despite having written a 25-page review article on the very same subjects. Save yourself a lot of time, and just read that article:
Parvizi J., Damasio A. Consciousness and the brainstem (2001) Cognition, 79 (1-2), pp. 135-160.
Book Description
With 150 tempting recipes for those lush, vine-ripened, sun-warmed, fat, juicy, and ready-to-burst heirloom tomatoes, The Tomato Festival Cookbook is the landmark cookbook for America's favorite garden vegetable. Author Lawrence Davis-Hollander presents an exhaustive collection of everything about the tomato--from tomato lore, gardening how-to, expert advice on seed saving and preservation to selecting the right heirlooms for your gardenand your kitchen. With definitive recipes for such classics as Tomato Basil Quiche and marinara sauce to show-stoppers from chefs Alice Waters, Deborah Madison, Daniel Boulud, Rick Bayless, and Melissa Kelly, to name a few.
Whether you grow your own rainbow selection of heirlooms or are thinking of adding them to your garden, Davis-Hollander has the best advice on heirloom growing. As the founder and director of the Eastern Native Seed Conservancy, an organization dedicated to promoting our knowledge of useful plants, especially heirloom food plants, Davis-Hollanderhas handpicked the recipes and the chefs to contribute to this preeminent tomato bible. Along with an impressive background in botany and farming, Lawrence is committed to food preservation, sustainable farming, and the rebirth of the American Farmer's Market. For the tomato lover who does not have a garden full of plump, red heirlooms, this book offers a guide to the local Farmer's Market with a knowledgeable eye and an appetite for Green Zebras, Cherokee Chocolates, Box Car Willies, Omar's Lebanese, and Earl of Edgecombs. With recipes for everything from salsas, risottos, and Chicken Nicoise to tomato tarts and sorbet, The Tomato Festival Cookbook takes the tomato to new culinary heights. For anyone who loves eating, growing, preserving or just admiring tomatoes, The Tomato Festival Cookbook is as essential to the kitchen as the tomato itself.
Customer Reviews:
TomatoFest.......2007-08-10
Excellent book - since we are new Heirloom Tomato growers and are working on a TomatoFare in Washington State, this is a great reference, beautifully illustrated book for review.
Tomatoes.......2007-05-27
If you love tomatoes, this will give you some fresh ideas for preparing them.
More than a Cookbook!.......2006-02-26
This first-time author brings together reknowned chefs and tomato connoisseurs who share over 150 mouth-watering receipes ranging from common preparations like spaghetti sauce to fancy creations like West African Chicken. Sidebars of information are included giving growing tips and historical lore for selecting the best-tasting heirlooms for each recipe. Davis-Hollander uses carefully selected and saved tomato seeds to produce exquisite tomatoes for his exotic recipes. This is a good source for specific information on heirloom tomatoes and a variety of tasty dishes.
Focuses upon culinary creations featuring heirloom tomatoes.......2004-07-16
Compiled and organized by Lawrence Davis-Hollander (Founder and Director of the Eastern Native Seed Conservancy), The Tomato Festival Cookbook showcases 150 recipes each of which focuses upon culinary creations featuring heirloom tomatoes as a principal ingredient. Along with the "kitchen friendly" recipes, The Tomato Festival Cookbook offers informed advice on selecting the very best heirloom tomatoes, reveals how to grow great-tasting tomatoes in your own garden, provides historical tomato lore, as well as profiles of notable tomato growers and thematically appropriate regional festivals. From Tomato and Corn Salsa; Stuffed Mussels with Tomatoes and Almonds; Spicy Tomato Cocktails; and Heirloom Tomato and Goat Cheese Salad; to Robert Gurvich's Pizza with Fresh Tomato Sauce; Spanish-Style Fish with Tomatoes and Potatoes; Tomato Jam Tart; and Tomato-Rice Casserole with Poblanos, Beef, and Melted Cheese, The Tomato Festival Cookbook will prove to a welcome and much appreciated addition to any tomato lover's personal cookbook collection!
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- Murder at Ford's Theatre
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