Product Description
On a night alive with the lights of the Aurora Australis, a distant and abandoned weather station holds the only hope for a young emperor penguin who lies close to death on the most remote ice sheet in Antartica. His name is Pengey Penguin. Even though he was abandoned under the most unusual circumstances, he grew to be an adventurous spirit, undaunted by his troubles and driven by unwavering devotion to his principles and the love of Wendy, the human who saved him from certain death by starvation. Now it should be thoroughly understood that Pengey is not very tall and he is certainly not very strong, but he is very quick, extremely smart, exceedingly polite and very well mannered. This is his story, or at least how it all began. He already likes you, and it's his greatest wish that you'll like him, all his friends, and his bedtime story, too.
Customer Reviews:
The Many Adventures of Pengey Penguin .......2007-04-12
Bought a copy for my granddaughter who had it read to her several times and enjoyed it so much she has since donated the book to her school library. I will replace hers with my copy since she is still a firstgrader!
I LOVED this book! What a great story to read to my nephew!!.......2007-03-14
So I just moved and my new roommate had this book sitting on the coffee table. Given that we're both single and in our 30's I had to ask what was up with the kid's book (hoping that I wasn't inadvertently offending him if it was the reading level he was at ;)) and he said the author was a friend of his and that it was a really cute book.
So, knowing nothing more than that I picked it up to read w/my Sunday coffee and couldn't put it down! What a delightful book -- even for the adult who will read it to a child (which makes all the difference when it comes to story time for exhausted parents at the end of a long day). This book belongs in the same category as the childhood classics like Beatrix Potter books, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Velveteen Rabbit, Madeline and Alice In Wonderland.
What a treasure! I can't wait to read it to my 18 month old nephew!! I really really hope there are sequels full of more fun Pengey adventures coming soon!
Adventure & Survival.......2007-02-03
After watching March of the Penguins I became fascinated with all things Penguin, especially the lovable baby emperor penguins. John Burns' book is delightful in this regard as it introduces us to a baby penguin who faces the challenge of survival in the Antartica and in places like an airport.
Pengey Penguin is quite the little character and spends some time swimming in the airport aquarium, escaping from a hungry seal and surviving being sold to a mad scientist who lives in an ominous castle on the outskirts of the city.
The mood is almost like a cartoon with Pengey, the other animals and the evil characters being the cartoon and loving humans being real. The book reads like a movie and for that reason it will appeal to adults and children. The only scene that may cause some concern for children under 5 -7 is the one with the mad scientist, but Pengey escapes unharmed.
Pengey displays bravery, survival skills, friendship, strength in adversity, creative thinking, loyalty, tenacity, kindness, love and a desire to meet goals. The book itself has a beautiful durable sapphire blue cloth binding with gold letters. The arrangement of the text allows for the book to be read more easily and the author cleverly weaves in details about real penguins. This book is the first in a trilogy with additional stories set for release in 2007 and 2009. It will be fun to follow the adventures of this adorable penguin. The pictures throughout really give this book a cute personality.
~The Rebecca Review
A charming tale, sure to capture the reader's hearts from the very first page........2006-11-06
"The Many Adventures of Pengey Penguin" is a delightfully entertaining novel for readers age 5 to 95. Pengey is an inquisitive, orphaned young emperor penguin, who is rescued from the brink of death near an abandoned weather station. Courage, curiosity, and plucky determination all power his penguin heart, and he speaks his mind openly; soon, all his talents will be tested to the utmost for the sake of not only himself, but also his animal and human friends. A charming tale, sure to capture the reader's hearts from the very first page.
Pengey's Adventures.......2006-10-17
I just finished reading "The Many Adventures of Pengey Penguin". The thing I liked best about this book was the relationship between the three main characters. They were each different types of birds that had to learn to work together to survive on their trip. They helped each other out of dangerous areas and had fun along the way. I think most people would enjoy this book.
Book Description
Arguably the most tumultuous time in recent American history, the Civil Rights years inspired the most rational and irrational of human behaviors and set the stage for sweeping reform in the nation's race relations. Juan Williams's moving chronicle of the movement stands as the definitive history of the era.
Customer Reviews:
Documentary that reads like a spell-binding fiction.......2007-01-05
In October 06, I watched 2 parts of the PBS series with the same title. It became clear to me for the first time the kind of grossly unfair treatment, injustice that African American had to endure, as recently as the 1960s. After seeing the book on Amazon, I know I have to get this. The book was even better than the TV episodes. Absolutely riveting and couldn't put it down. The descriptive parts were intermingled with first hand accounts from courageous African American men and women who were willing to, and many did, lose their lives to stand up to injustice. A must read that gives unparalleled insight into a decade of American Civil Rights history.
very educational.......2006-08-17
I have never seen the PBS series but I enjoyed the book which gives a good account of what happened in the years 54-65. Of course it misses things but it will give you the basics.
Only annoying thing are the little interviews with people in the middle of the text so you have to flip back and forth.
Pictures are great
An Excellent Primer.......2004-04-28
By now the number of volumes written on the Civil Rights Movement could fill whole libraries. Yet fifteen years later, this book still stands as one of the best introduction to the early years of the movement. Books such as Taylor Branch's Pillar of Fire and Parting the Waters may cover the same era of 1954 to 1965; this book is a good introduction for those who may be intimidated by Branch's comprehensive volumes. Rather than trying to cover everything, the book takes its cues from the documentary series and examines a select set of pivotal moments of the movement: school desegregation, the Montgomery bus boycott, the march on Washington, the Selma to Montgomery march and others. Each chapter delves into the story of the events, but also fleshes out the areas between these momentous events, both telling the background and hearing the experiences of those there, in their own words. The book is readable, not the dry tone that many associate with history books. But most of all it gives the reader the chance to delve into an important part of American history in the second half of the 20th century. This is an excellent book that should be picked up by anyone wanting to get a sense of where America was moving in these pivotal eleven years.
WOW !.......2003-04-01
Great book ! I was born in 1957 so I wanted to learn about the Civil Rights Movement as it was when I was growing up. This is not only an excellent history, but an incredibly interesting story, and a shocking testament to the injustices the Black people have suffered in America. I learned a lot and gained some insight into this issue.
First hand account.......2001-07-07
The book reads smoothly and contains unique ethnographic information. The book follows a chronological order of events in the civil rights movement. Readers who are interested in an eye witness account of the movement between 1954 and 1965 should purchase this book. It would be appropriate for a high school educational setting.
Book Description
Originally published in 1868—when it was attacked as an “indecent book” authored by a “traitorous eavesdropper”—Behind the Scenes is the story of Elizabeth Keckley, who began her life as a slave and became a privileged witness to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Keckley bought her freedom at the age of thirty-seven and set up a successful dressmaking business in Washington, D.C. She became modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln and in time her friend and confidante, a relationship that continued after LincolnÂ's assassination. In documenting that friendship—often using the First LadyÂ's own letters—Behind the Scenes fuses the slave narrative with the political memoir. It remains extraordinary for its poignancy, candor, and historical perspective.
Customer Reviews:
Intimate recollections of the Lincoln White House.......2007-09-13
Although this volume comes from the memories of someone familiar with the Lincoln White House and who became a close friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, it must be read cautiously. For example, despite the book's basic authenticity I find its account of Stephen Douglas's love for young Mary Todd and her jilting of Lincoln implausible despite Keckley's claim that she got the story directly from Mary Todd Lincoln and Anson Henry (a close friend of Abraham and Mary, who was a matchmaker encouraging their romance). Possibly some errors might be attributed to one or more literary assistants who helped compile the book. If a reader needs to be certain a about a particular statement, comparison with other sources is wise. Still, the volume will be valuable to anyone interested in firsthand impressions of the Lincoln White House.
Friend and confidant to Mary Lincoln.......2007-03-22
I got this little book so that I could learn more about the Lincolns and their home life at the White House. It does an excellent job of telling the story of Elizabeth and Mary's friendship, which I wish could have continued, but alas, it didn't. I would recommend this book to all readers interested in US history, not matter what their age or gender, so that they can get an intimate view of the Lincoln's family life. Elizabeth was a strong and proud woman with a high moral and ethical character...if she were alive today, she would be swamped with interview requests and book deals!
Not What You'd Expect, But Read It As If You Lived 138 Years Ago.......2006-08-05
In 1868, three years after the War Between the States ended and Abraham Lincoln was murdered, Elizabeth Keckley sat down to write a partial history of her life as a slave and modiste (dressmaker) for Mary Todd Lincoln at the White House. If readers judge "Behind the Scenes" by the standards of modern biographies, they won't do the book justice.
"Lizzie" Keckley was a slave who insisted on buying her freedom, even after being offered it for nothing. In modern terms, she was an "Aunt Tom" for validating the notion that any human being can be bought and sold for a price. By her own standards, she was affirming her value to society. It's impossible to judge such a person in contemporary terms.
Lizzie's dressmaking skill attracted the attention of Mary Todd Lincoln in 1861. Mrs. Lincoln was quite addicted to clothes, and hired "Dear Lizzie" as her private modiste. Their association solidified into a deep friendship after the death in 1862 of Willie Lincoln (in the White House); Lizzie offered warmth and solicitude, badly needed by an erratic First Lady whose intemperate ways and harsh tongue had made her perhaps the most disliked person in Washington. The friendship persisted after Lincoln's assassination, when Lizzie aided Mrs. Lincoln in purging her monstrous debts (she owed $70,000 to department stores) by trying to sell off old dresses and jewelry.
"Behind the Scenes" ended the friendship. After its publication Mary Lincoln, her pride wounded, dropped "Dear Lizzie" and referred to Mrs. Keckley as "that colored historian."
For students of the assassination Mrs. Keckley's reminiscences are especially helpful. Several weeks after April 14, 1865, while Mrs. Lincoln was still in mourning inside the White House, Lizzie told her "the new messenger" (not identified by name in the book, unfortunately) was on watch, he being the same man who had abandoned his post outside Lincoln's box at Ford's Theater. Mrs. Lincoln excoriated the "new messenger" and accused him of complicity in the assassination. The messenger admitted his carelessness but denied complicity, insisting he had simply taken a seat where he could better watch the play.
Except for the ambiguous word "messenger," this account conforms precisely to the convential wisdom that prevailed until about 25 years ago, i.e. that John F. Parker, a Metropolitan Police officer assigned to White House duty, was responsible for guarding Lincoln's box on the night of the assassination, but left his post and allowed John Wilkes Booth clear entry (and how would Booth have known the coast would be clear?). Post-modern historians, possibly seizing on Keckley's use of "messenger" to describe Parker, contrived a theory that Parker's duties never included protecting Lincoln...which idea begs the obvious question, "Why would Mrs. Lincoln have been so angry at someone who wasn't responsible in the first place?" And, since Parker supposedly went on trial for negligence (the records were mysteriously destroyed), "Why would anyone have been put on trial for neglecting Lincoln at Ford's Theater if he had been only a White House functionary all along?"
One person's memior.......2005-04-26
This is a memior written by a woman who started life as a slave, then managed to buy her freedom, and later set up a successful living as a seamstress, eventually going to work for Mrs. Lincoln in the White House. As such, it is a bit rambling. There are two chapters about her early life as a slave, but the author knows that what is most interesting to the readers is her life in the white house, and so she skips ahead to that period, giving us her personal "insider account" of daily vignettes with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. These vignettes include an eyewitness account of Lincoln's second inauguration address, the death of Willie Lincoln, and events immediately after Lincoln's assasination. The author then goes on to describe her post-white house associations with Mrs. Lincoln, who became a personal friend, as Mrs. Lincoln deals with post-presidency debts. The book continues with an in-depth account of how Mrs. Keckley assisted Mrs. Lincoln with attempting to sell her personal effects (dresses) to raise money. This must have been of great interest to readers when the book was first published in the 1860's, but has limited appeal to modern readers.
Overall, however, the book is a very interesting glimpse into the daily life of a slave, an independent businesswoman in the 1860's, of someone who worked in the white house during the civil war, and of someone in the close confidence of the Lincolns. It is well-written and engaging.
The Life Of A Slave.......2005-02-18
This is my least favorite book on the Lincolns. It's the story of Elizabeth Keckley, who was a slave. Elizabeth eventaully becomes Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker and friend. This is a lot more about slavery than the Lincolns.I don't mind reading about the subject. I just didn't think it was a very well-written book on Elizabeth's part.
Amazon.com
When war broke out in August 1914, 21-year-old Vera Brittain was planning on enrolling at Somerville College, Oxford. Her father told her she wouldn't be able to go: "In a few months' time we should probably all find ourselves in the Workhouse!" he opined. Brittain had hoped to escape the Northern provinces, but the war seemingly dashed her plans. "It is not, perhaps, so very surprising that the War at first seemed to me an infuriating personal interruption rather than a world-wide catastrophe."
Her father eventually relented, however, and she was allowed to attend. By the end of her first year, she had fallen in love with a young soldier and resolved to become active in the war effort by volunteering as a nurse--turning her back on what she called her "provincial young-ladyhood." Brittain suffered through 12-hour days by reminding herself that nothing she endured was worse than what her fiancé, Roland, experienced in the trenches. Roland was expected home on leave for Christmas 1915; on December 26, Brittain received news that he had been killed at the front. Ten months later Brittain herself was sent to Malta and then to France to serve in the hospitals nearer the front, where she witnessed firsthand the horrors of battle. When peace finally came, Brittain had also lost her brother Edward and two close friends. As she walked the streets of London on November 11, 1918--Armistice Day--she felt alone in the crowds:
For the first time I realised, with all that full realisation meant, how completely everything that had hitherto made up my life had vanished with Edward and Roland, with Victor and Geoffrey. The War was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were dead and would never return.
First published in 1933, Testament of Youth established Brittain as one of the best-loved authors of her time. Her crisp, clear prose and searing honesty make this unsentimental memoir of a generation scarred by war a classic. --Sunny Delaney
Book Description
Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to Vera BrittainÂ's elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western Front. By warÂ's end she had lost virtually everyone she loved. Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary Supplement as a book that helped “both form and define the mood of its time,” it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably changed by war.
Customer Reviews:
Heavy handed prose weakens work.......2007-09-13
I clearly am in a minority here but I did not like this book. A peer of other notable young British writers like Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, Britton's book stands out among the male writers of the period as giving a woman's view of the war. The problem, at least for me, is that Britton is so over come with bitterness that she flogs the reader with it from the start.
An early feminist Britton had strong views and supported her male friends and family going off to the First World War but as they fell to the german guns she, like many of her generation, became disillusioned. This is understandable but in writing her book, Britton cannot set aside her bitterness and it makes the reading ponderous and heavy. For example noting a fete in her early childhood and the bunting and flags put out she says "If only I knew then it was all meaningless." we are taken from a little girl's views to a bitter adult in the blink of an eye and it just gets too much.
By comparrison the autobiography of Robert Graves, Goodby to All That, starts out with the childish illusions being enjoyed as a child and slowly the bitterness slips into the writer's world view as he matures and is exposed to the horrors of the war. this is far more subtle and easier to read, meaning you are guided to the ponit he wants you to reach, instead of trying to bludgeon you into the mindset as Britton does.
Indispensable autobiography.......2007-03-24
The word "classic" gets thrown around a lot these days. Many so-called "modern classics" are not that important, but "Testament of Youth" deserves this reprint as a Penguin Classic. Brittain tells of her early life in the north of England between 1893 and the start of World War I in 1914 in beautifully clear prose, and her clarity of thought and powers of observation make the bulk of the book, dealing with the war's impact on her, painfully vivid without ever lapsing into self-pity. Like too many others of her generation (and the next and the next) Vera Brittain learned almost unimaginable lessons about life and her own inner strength. To that extent, "Testament of Youth" can serve as both example and inspiration.
Vera Brittain came from an upper-middle-class background shared by millions of young women in late Victorian England. One thing that made her different was her great intellectual curiosity and determination to escape a truly suffocating existence that few of today's Western women can easily imagine. What made her like most citizens of the time (and of later times)was her complete ignorance of the meaning of "war." Patriotism, her social conscience, and a desire to take part in the bigger world led her to volunteer as a nursing sister with the British Army. Her grueling hospital experiences were a revelation to her. Her personal losses are even more powerfully revealing of the human condition. Brittain was a "survivor" in every sense of the word.
"Testament of Youth" is just as fresh and moving today as it was when it was written 75 years ago and Vera Brittain tells a story that must be told and retold to each generation. For every reader who finds the book "too long" by current standards (its almost 700 pages), there will be two who wish they could follow the author even further. But even if you find yourself skipping ahead, particularly in the early part, you will not be able to forget Vera Brittain or her story. "Testament of Youth" is one of the great autobiographies of the past 100 years.
Deserves Wider Readership.......2006-06-03
This is a fascinating, insightful book that it would behoove many of us modern folk to read. Learn about the harder times of the past, while sipping latte in a comfy chair. You'll be thankful for today's comforts -- and today's modern attitudes towards the capabilities and intelligence of women -- after you read what it was like for one woman early in the 20th century. Simply a great book.
Testamony.......2006-04-23
Vera Brittain enrolled in Summerville College, Oxford, in a time before degrees were granted to women. This was just before The First World War changed almost everything for almost everyone. When it was over, her best friends, her fiance and her brother had all been killed. She also personally witnessed the agony of thousands in the surgical wards where she worked as a volunteer nurse.
In response, she became a suffragette, a feminist and a liberal writer and lecturer. She sought to prevent such tragedy from reoccurring.
The answers to the political and social questions with which she struggled elude us still. But Vera Brittain's autobiographical account of her generation's trials, Testament of Youth, remains both a stunningly-honest portrait of a courageous young woman and a vivid chronicle of a time almost out of living memory. Through her words we see what we might have thought, felt and believed, had we been born into her era.
Great WWI Living History.......2005-11-26
A real sleeper - I'm surprised after reading it that the book isn't more well known. Very well written and compelling. The author juxtaposes the war and it's history with the daily life of the people living it. She's a keen observer of both history and human nature. She does, I think, leave out some history that seems important now but maybe they weren't to her at the time. Highly recomended.
Book Description
In 1665, the Great Plague swept through London, claiming nearly 100,000 lives. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles the progress of the epidemic. We follow his fictional narrator through a city transformed-the streets and alleyways deserted, the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors, the dead-carts on their way to the pits-and encounter the horrified citizens of the city, as fear, isolation, and hysteria take hold. The shocking immediacy of Defoe's description of plague-racked London makes this one of the most convincing accounts of the Great Plague ever written.
Customer Reviews:
THE DAWN OF SCIENCE .......2006-11-26
Since Daniel Defoe was only four years old in 1664, A Journal of the Plague Year is a novel rather than a journal. It was written as a pamphlet to warn people of what to expect and how best to defend themselves should another plague strike. What makes any book written in the distant past interesting is the glimpse it affords into the mentality of the people of the time. This was the plague that caused Isaac Newton leave London for the country, where he purportedly started the work that led to the invention of calculus and the laws of gravity. We can see the struggle between clear thinking and self-destructive superstition in the thoughts of Defoe's character.
On the one hand he insists the plague is doubtless "stroke from Heaven, a messenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to repentance," but in the next paragraph he understands that the plague arises from natural causes, propagated by natural means." So he concludes that God is using natural causes to exact his vengeance, even though he also says he must be allowed to believe than all who got sick received it in the ordinary way of infection. So he speaks disparagingly of fatalistic Christians, and especially Moslems, who ignore simple safety precautions because they are convinced that only those whom God wishes to will get the plague. Though convinced that the plague is God's way of punishing the wicked, he acknowledges that it strikes the good and wicked alike, and the wicked were just as likely to survive as the good. When the plague finally ends, he is convinced that nothing but God could have ended it - not even the worst of people could have doubted this. He seems surprised by man's unthankfulness and the return of all manner of wickedness soon after the plague. Presumably, the average people of the time really felt that they deserved to die arbitrarily of an awful disease, and after living with the horror of seeing friends and family die agonizing deaths, that they should feel thankful that God had not done the same to them. Thankfully, science has put an end to this kind of superstition. True, some people still cling to this ugly notion of God, but while we can respect Defoe as an unusually intelligent man of his time, any writer with such ideas today would be happily dismissed as a crank.
(Peter Payne, author of CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA BATTLES THE BEELZEBUBIAN BEASTS OF THE BIBLE)
Journalism not fiction.......2006-04-01
This edition restores Defoe's original punctuation, with capitals for nouns and colons for stops, so that the writing has recovered the vitality, weight and flexibility that Defoe intended when he wrote it.
To enjoy this book you need to read it as creative journalism rather than fiction otherwise it will seem dull, and Daniel Defoe is never dull. It can't satisfy as fiction because it isn't fiction. It doesn't have any of the benefits of fiction such as plot, author's whimsy, or character development. The Journal is based on the eyewitness experience of his uncle Henry Foe, which has been expanded by Defoe's own journalistic research after the event. He has simply taken the eyewitness experience of his uncle and created a masterpiece out of it for posterity.
This technique began with his first book, The Storm, except that in that book the eyewitness accounts - no doubt spruced up by himself - and his own work were separated. In the Journal of the Plague Year these are blended together so that his book has the vividness of the eyewitness view of the events as well as the talent and research that history would wish of an account of these events.
By misclassifying the book as fiction (and by modernizing the punctuation) we have been degrading the book's value to history and to readers.
I wish the print was bigger and blacker and this applies to the Modern Library edition too, as does the above review.
A credible account of a time of horror .......2005-11-10
The Great Plague took place when Defoe was five years old. Therefore his account written many years afterwards is as much fiction as eye-witness reporting. Yet his first- person narrator collects statistics and provides a credible account of the horrifying effect of the plague upon the citizens of London.
He relates the effects of the 'Plague' on various parts of the population and traces its develoment in time. One can sense in it how much Camus in writing his great work , " The Plague" is indebted to this work.
In the concluding days as the Plague wanes Defoe reflects upon the citizens of the city and their new reality.
This is the concluding section of the work, and gives an excellent feel of Defoe's language and narrative stance.
"It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a doth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his groin, all which were frightful to the last degree, but the week before. But now the street was full of them, and these poor recovering creatures, give them their due, appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and I should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that I believe many of them were really thankful. But I must own that, for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was said of the children of Israel after their being delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water: viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.
I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting, whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return of all manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eye-witness of myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year therefore with a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:-
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!"
Average customer rating:
- The Misanthrope's Decision
- it took years to read - just kidding!
- Excellent!
- Anticipation
- A True Masterpiece for all Time.
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The Years (Penguin Modern Classics)
Virginia Woolf
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Woolf, Virginia
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ASIN: 0141185325 |
Book Description
Written in 1937, this was the most popular of Virginia Woolf's novels during her lifetime. It explores a rich variety of themes such as sex, feminism, family life, education and politics in English society from 1800 to the 1930s, as they affect one large middle-class London family.
Download Description
A tour de force written near the end of Virginia Woolf's brilliant career, The Years narrates fifty years in the life of the Pargiter family. A novel about the passage of time and the small moments that comprise everyday experience, The Years is a deeply moving and profound work by one of the truly original writers of the twentieth century. Less experimental than her earlier novels, The Years was Woolf's most popular work during her own lifetime.
Customer Reviews:
The Misanthrope's Decision.......2006-05-18
For sixty prolific years, the "Academy" has virtually ignored Virginia Woolf's THE YEARS. Average readers assume that critics would have picked up on the novel's generational gaps, its complicated plotline, or the fact that it's written by Virginia (freaking) Woolf, but they are sadly mistaken. Nobody in academic circles reads this novel, and it sits lonely on library shelves next to irregular printings of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE and ketchup-stained folios of Woolf's forgotten biography, ROGER FRY.
That fact, of course, wasn't enough to deter this huge Virginia fan. The "Academy" isn't always correct - as many Lacanian readings of Chaucer have verified - and THE YEAR's wonderful cover was enough of a sell for this bored college student with an extra weekend. I read the novel once over a spaghetti dinner, and twice over the next day while moving the lawn. Then I devoured it for a final time before writing a review on it. The novel wasn't an awful work, I felt, but it had never really begun: the motor of narrative hadn't started, and the lawn, fecund and fresh, had yet to be mowed. That's not to say I didn't try. I kept a list of characters to kick-start the motor. Here I am, I would say to myself on any given year. I'm following Rose. She's the young feminist, right? Here she is throwing a brick. And she's married, right? No, a little voice in the back of my head would ring. And so would come down the pencil, marking off my list. I made these lists, kept flow-charts, and tried to trace everything into an end. The filmic end came, with its sun shining, but it felt as if I was ready to send the novel away to a publisher, rather than relish it. The experience of reading it was like what writing it must have felt like.
Ultimately, that stylistic complaint is my only major criticism of the novel. Woolf was never a Dickens-esque plotter, but the characters in this novel simply feel like names on the page - and there are a lot of them! We can follow them, but we never feel the desire to. We carry conversations with Mrs. Dalloway because we want to; we talk to Mrs. Ramsay because she perplexes us (and herself); and we yell at Mr. A because he's a jerk. There's a little of that here, but it feels more like a metaphysical trace than a collection. Woolf imprints her face on the glass, rather than waiting for us.
If my experience isn't enough to deter you, I think you should really read it. In a Kaufman-esque moment, you might feel as I did - like the writer on the other side of the page, looking at the reader. I didn't have fun, but I did learn a lot about Woolf. Her hang-ups, frustrations, and impending suicide all mark this novel, and it ranks slightly above average only by feeling like her imaginery autobiography did: honest in its weakness, and weak for its strength.
it took years to read - just kidding!.......2005-01-19
I refer to the Penguin edition of this book with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson.
This is not my favourite Virginia Woolf novel. It is too shapeless for me - perhaps that's what Virginia Woolf was trying to demonstrate - that life is shapeless in its continuation from generation to generation. But to show any meaningful drift to sameness and change I believe we need a much greater perspective than we get from the Pargiters. And when there isn't much direction, much sense of approaching a climax, then, for me anyway, all Virginia Woolf's fine detail and acute observation becomes a tedious reiteration of the ennui of life which I prefer to avoid in literature rather than be reminded of over and over again.
The notes to this novel are quite comprehensive but I was uncommonly annoyed at one point. There is a novel by Philip Dick that I remember reading in which the author explains the correct pronunciation of the main character's name half-way through the novel. Murphy's Law almost guaranteed that I had selected the incorrect pronunciation and had to resound the character's name from that point on. This was a bit annoying. But not half as annoying as when Virginia Woolf tells us that the character North - again half way through the novel - was having his name pronounced incorrectly as if it were a point of the compass. This, of course, is exactly how I pronounced it in my mind. But what other way is there? Neither Virgina Woolf nor Jeri Johnson tell me. I am still mystified.
And perhaps this is the nub of my disenchantment with this novel. Perceptive as the writing might be, I feel an alien in this company, out of my depth amongst a batch of people who know the proper way to pronounce North.
Excellent!.......2003-08-28
This is one of Woolf's best, if not THE best. It follows a family through decades, showing the changes in them and the changes in the world around them. That stream-of-consciousness style that she is so famous for runs smoothly in The Years, and just flows over the reader. It was hard for me to tear myself away from this book. . . I had to simply shut the book, often in mid-sentance, to make myself stop reading. This comes highly recommended.
Anticipation.......2003-07-29
Eleanor felt that the poor enjoyed themselves more than they did. They were stuck at home too much. In 1891 Eleanor Pargiter was a social worker. It is now 1907 and Edward Pargiter, brother of Eleanor, has produced an English translation of Sophocles's Antigone.
Moving forward, it is 1908 and Martin Pargiter has visited his father and his sister, Eleanor. 1911 produces a scene of Rose with her cousins Sarah and Maggie, daughters of Sir Digby. Maggie has married a Frenchman later on.
There is a meeting of Kitty, Lady Lasswade, and Eleanor. Following the meeting Kitty was going to the opera and so she was dressed in formal clothes. Eleanor thought that Kitty had the great lady's manner. Eleanor felt dowdy compared with Kitty. Edward Pargiter was present at the opera. Lucy Craddock had been Kitty's tutor at Oxford.
Eleanor is found at the country place of her brother Morris's mother in law. Her father died. She had no attachments at the moment. Her sister in law Celia told her there was to be a village fete. Eleanor met Sir William Whatney there. She had not seen him since he had been to India. Peggy and North, her niece and nephew, came in. She thought her growing interest in birds was a sign of old age.
Eleanor sold the family house and made arrangements for Crosby, the servant, to depart. She left with the family dog who soon had to be put down because it was aged, disabled, and suffering. Martin, called Captain Pargiter, did not marry. He encountered Kitty who introduced him to Ann Hillier. Martin said to Kitty that Eleanor was a queer old bird.
During the war Eleanor at one point dined with Maggie and her husband. Maggie felt that Eleanor looked like an abbess. The story shifts to the present day and Eleanor is shown having returned from India. It is noted by one of the characters that Edward and Kitty had been very much in love but that Kitty had married another man. Pleasure is increased by sharing it.
This book is a pleasure to have and to read. Is there a pattern, a theme? Virginia Woolf was a pattern maker. This work anticipates THREE GUINEAS and BETWEEN THE ACTS. It is in a new manner for Virginia Woolf. Leonard Woolf wrote that he did not care for it but stifled his displeasure to spare his wife agony.
A True Masterpiece for all Time........2001-08-08
If an immortal were to ask me what is is like to be mortal, and live with a family and with time and with age, I would hand him this book, and feel confident that he would get a grasp of our experience. Mrs. Woolf has gathered the dimension of time in this novel through simple passages of conversation that left my heart sinking and rising. What an achievement!
I read this after reading Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One's Own, and The Waves. In this novel she was trying to cut her style back, making it more concise, and moving away from experimentation. Yet, she produced a most unique novel.
Book Description
Designed for introduction to fiction and fiction-writing courses, 30/30 is part of Longman’s Penguin Academics series of portable, value-priced texts. This anthology offers an array of fiction that not only teaches craft, but also provides a context in which to study formal and thematic trends of the past 30 years. The stories are represented by a mix of well-established authors and newer voices, offering a stylistic range, from the traditional narrative to experimental forms, and thematic range as well, with stories that address issues including family and culture, love and loss, ethnicity and gender.
Book Description
The sonnet is one of the oldest and most enduring literary forms of the post-classical world, a meeting place of image and voice, passion and reason, elegy and ode. It is a form that both challenges and liberates the poet.
For this anthology, poet and scholar Phillis Levin has gathered more than 600 sonnets to tell the full story of the sonnet tradition in the English language. She begins with its Italian origins; takes the reader through its multifaceted development from the Elizabethan era to the Romantic and Victorian; demonstrates its popularity as a vehicle of protest among writers of the Harlem Renaissance and poets who served in the First World War; and explores its revival among modern and contemporary poets. In her vibrant introduction, Levin traces this history, discussing characteristic structures and shifting themes and providing illuminating readings of individual sonnets. She includes an appendix on structure, biographical notes, and valuable explanatory notes and indexes. And, through her narrative and wide-ranging selection of sonnets and sonnet sequences, she portrays not only the evolution of the form over half a millennium but also its dynamic possibilities.
Customer Reviews:
A worthy collection of sonnets in English.......2006-12-30
The sonnet begins when a fine man of law
devised the structure of a little song;
a genre that, while definitely not long,
could say a lot -- indeed entirely more
than any ballad sung by troubadour.
Journeys to far lands have made it strong,
and many fine companies it has been among;
its makers are the ones who know the score.
Shakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Millay,
Longfellow, Whittier, that transcendental lot,
a host of other poets have used the form;
it's a surprising, yet quite lovely way
to take some flowers, fit them in tiny pot,
and in this way create a wondrous norm.
Sonnets great and less so .......2006-01-01
THE SONNET IN OLD AGE
If to the sessions of sweet silent thought
one summons memories of sonnets long reread in mind
unsprings the blasted lyrics Time has left unpaged
dreams of other nights and other days
in quiet places long since lost in youth
where little lines embodied- Glory, Beauty, Truth.
Then Shakespeare Donne Keats,
Hopkins Milton Wordsworth Yeats
obscuring lesser names and smaller shades
inspire with dearer dearer life
tranquillity's reflection
in old age
Consoling our last moments
in God's praise.
Average customer rating:
- A significant addition to academic library collections
|
Jan Tschichold, Designer: The Penguin Years
Richard B. Doubleday
Manufacturer: Oak Knoll Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1584561785 |
Customer Reviews:
A significant addition to academic library collections.......2006-12-05
Jan Tschichold, Designer: The Penguin Years is a seminal and impressive contribution to the history of publishing with its focus on Jan Tschichold and his influence with respect to the typographic revolution that was applied to Penguin's mass production of books for the general populace. Author Richard B. Doubleday (Assistant Professor of Art, Department of Graphic Design, College of Fine Arts, Boston University) brings a special research-based expertise to providing an historical and analytical survey of Tschichold's contributions during the mid to late 1940s that saw the emergence of a wide ranging Penguin Book Series that included both fiction and non-fiction. Many of Tschichold's preliminary hand drawn cover and title page designs are made public for the first time in order to demonstrate and document his meticulous attention to detail and the development of his `New Typography'. Enhanced with the inclusion of an extensive bibliography on Tschichold's writings and historical appendices of his inter-office memoranda and texts, "Jan Tschichold, Designer" is a significant addition to academic library collections on the history of publishing, and an especially recommended for students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in typography, book design, and the publishing industry.
Books:
- The Nature and Properties of Soils (13th Edition)
- The New American Story
- The Practical Encyclopedia of Rocks & Minerals: How to Find, Identify, Collect and Maintain the World's best Specimens, with over 1000 Photographs and Artworks
- The Supreme Court of the United States: A Student Companion (Oxford Student Companions to American Government)
- The Walrus Was Paul: The Great Beatle Death Clues
- The Wretched of the Earth
- Thought as a System
- Tree of Knowledge
- Undaunted Courage
- Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
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- The Birds of East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi
- Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny
- State budget and tax actions 1991
- All You Can Be : A soldier's reflections on service in the greatest Army the world has ever seen.
My Penguin Osbert
My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal (Robert F. Sibert Honor Books)
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems
Mr. Popper's Penguins
