Essays Books - Page 15

La ciudad de las bestias

Isabel Allende

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 92 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

bienvenidos a la selva de los clichés y del aburrimiento 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Leí la mitad de este libro. Isabel Allende escribe con un español fácil de comprender para un lector (como yo) que no sea hablante nativo del español. El cuento promete ser interesante: un chico acompaña a su abuela a la selva amazona a encontrar "la bestia" (o sea, "bigfoot" en inglés). Pero no te asustes, cada persona en esta novela se conforma a su papel estereotipado. Los nativos son profundamente espirituales, muy pegados a la naturaleza, y sin egoísmo ningún. El antropólogo está pintado de una forma tan exagerada que me pareció farsa: solo habla de los nativos sanguinarios (quienes no lo son), tiene miedo de su propia sombra, y es altamente sexista. Las mujeres son sensatas y los hombres insensatos, etcétera, etcétera.

Además, una vez que el grupo de exploradores se mete en la jungla, el libro se vuelve aburrido. Dos niños (incluso el protagonista) son secuestrados por unos nativos (pacíficos si no haces caso al secuestro) y Allende pasa mucho tiempo describiendo esta tribu idílica, todos compartiendo todo.

No es decir que nosotros en el oeste no podemos aprender de las culturas menos industrializadas. Seguro que sí podemos, pero el dibujo que pinta Allenda es tan blanco y negro que nada se parece a la vida real. Es una caricatura no más, pero no hace gracia.

[Es el segundo libro de Allenda que he dejado sin terminar. El otro fue Ines del alma mia, en el cual el personaje principal me pareció tan anacrónico que no lo aguanté. Algún día leo uno de sus libros clásicos, como La casa de los espíritus.]

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 (The Best American Series (TM))

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From "Q & A" by Dave Eggers
A group of senators and assemblypersons were pressing The Best American Nonrequired Reading on a number of questions relating to the collection, so we decided to kill that stone in the shape of an introduction in the shape of a Q & A.

Who are they, the Nonrequired committee's members who decide on things in this collection?
They are high school students from all over the San Francisco Bay Area.

Are they touched by some kind of divine light?
The question is a good one. There is rampant speculation on the subject.

Are they all great-looking and charming and well dressed?
Yes. All of them, and especially Felicia Wong, who can even make her own clothes.

I have a question about the process by which the entries in this collection are chosen. Is it scientific?
The process by which The Best American Nonrequired Reading is put together is not scientific. It is whatever one would consider the opposite of scientific.

Creationist?
Well, no, it's not creationist either. The point is that we are probably a bit less top-to-bottom thorough than, say, the Army Corps of Engineers. Well, actually, scratch that. We are probably about exactly as thorough as the Army Corps of Engineers, in that we are intermittently thorough.

What is your opinion and the committee's opinion of the state of short stories and small magazines and other periodicals?
This is a good time. It really is.

More specifically?
Not all of us Americans appreciate the fact that we have about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Every state seems to have a very good quarterly, and about a hundred colleges have very good quarterlies — from the Kenyon Review to the University of Illinois's Ninth Letter. So by our estimate there are about 150 very good quarterlies in this country. Maybe more. Now, the thing we don't always appreciate here in America is that elsewhere in the world there are few to no quarterlies.

How does it feel to select something for the collection that you found in an unlikely place?
It feels so good. This year, for example, at the last moment we found "Humpies" by Mattox Roesch. It was published by Agni Online, and we all loved it, and here it is, ideally able to reach a new audience. We all took pleasure in finding that one; the mandate of the committee is to find the offbeat and the lesser-known and bring these pieces to our readers, most of whom have great skin and bad eyes.

Franz Kafka's the Metamorphosis (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 158 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I loved this book!!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ONT9LRSBFK3Z

Not for the Faint of Heart 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Metamorphosis / 0-553-21369-5

When I was in 9th grade, my somewhat harried teacher attempted to assign me Ovid's Metamorphosis (a collection of Greek myths) and instead assigned me Kafka's Metamorphosis. Kafka's tale is short but packed with vivid symbolism in which a young man inexplicably wakes up one day as a large roach creature and subsequently fails to turn back into a man. After a confusing night with the novel, I reported back to the befuddled teacher, and she substituted another book, much to my relief.

Years later, I now reread Kafka with an adult's awe and appreciation, rather than the child's confusion. The novel is packed with deep symbolism and, even now, I could not tell you with confidence what it "means". I believe the story is of being trapped in a family that does not appreciate you, except for what you can do for them, and I believe the sad ending masks an even sadder one - that the young daughter will soon become the new symbolic 'roach' to the family, bringing in resources but never loved or appreciated. However, I have heard other interpretations, each meaningful and special. I recommend this book, but the first read through should be with a light eye, not questioning the strangeness nor looking too hard for meaning. Rather, I think Kafka is best when you allow the impressions to kind of wash over you as you go.

Editorial Review:

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis climaxes in the very first line--the protagonist has indeed been transformed. The critical questions lie in the interpretation of the transformation. Kafka has been said to have offered everything from a psychological parable of Oedipal struggle to a caricature of psychological readings.

The title, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Franz Kafka, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.

Voices of A People's History of the United States

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Here in their own words, are Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Plough Jogger, Sacco and Vanzetti, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Twain, and Malcolm X, to name just a few of the hundreds of voices that appear in Voices of a People's History of the United States. This volume is identical in size and format to Zinn's A People's History, and the 24 chapters parallel the chapters in that book. Zinn writes short introductions to the texts, which range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages or longer. Voices is a symphony of our nation's original voices, rich in ideas and actions, the embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent wherein lies our nation's true spirt of defiance and resilience.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States tells the story of this country from the point of view of the people usually left out of history books-women, Native Americans, workers, blacks and Latinos. It has served to remind generations of Americans that democracy is fundamentally a conversation between people, one that has always been led by working people and those with the least to lose and the most to gain in a truly democratic society. Each year, A People's History is read by more people than the year before; recently, it sold its millionth copy.

Beloved historian and activist Howard Zinn is the author of the best-selling A People's History of the United States and many other books, including The Zinn Reader, and, most recently, Terrorism and War.

Anthony Arnove is the editor of Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn and Iraq Under Siege. An activist and regu-lar contributor to ZNet, his writing has appeared in The Nation, The Financial Times and Mother Jones.

The Inimitable Jeeves

P.G. Wodehouse

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What ho! 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Although "The Inimitable Jeeves" is not the first appearance of the famous double act, Jeeves and Wooster, it is the first book to be 'completely' dedicated to them. It was first published in 1923, and was originally known in America as, simply, "Jeeves".

The book is set in the 1920s England and features Wodehouse's best known creations : Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Bertie is the book's wealthy, good-natured and rather dim narrator. He's a member of the "idle rich" and, rather than having to work for a living, lives off an allowance provided by his uncle. He spends much of his time in the bar-room of the Drones Club, is fond of the occasional wager and has an appalling dress sense. Luckily, Bertie has Jeeves to look after him. Without Jeeves, Bertie's life would be a mess : he makes an excellent hangover cure, his bets usually win and he's intelligent enough to rescue Bertie from nearly any situation. He disapproves of Bertie's more garish items of clothing, and will - occasionally - take it upon himself to deal with the offending item.

All of the short stories are connected and most of them involve Bertie's friend Bingo Little, who is always falling in love - occasionally while still 'officially' in love with another. It's Bingo who most consistently drops Bertie into trouble : Bingo's schemes generally aim for an increase in his allowance from his Uncle, with the intention of marrying his latest girlfriend. Generally, Bingo's intended is a girl his uncle wouldn't approve of - so he ropes Bertie and Jeeves into helping him out. There are also appearances for Bertie's troublesome cousins, Claude and Eustace, a devious bookmaker called Steggles and Bertie's fearsome Aunt Agatha. Bertie is held in very low esteem by Agatha, but she is determined that Bertie should marry - Bertie's opinion, as far as she is concerned, is irrelevant.

A very easy and enjoyable read.

Private Parts

Howard Stern

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 83 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

....and i thought i was disfunctional! 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

a rather interesting bio. pretty much the whole book is half bio and half satire and commentary. it definitly give's you a tour into the demented mind of howard stern and as you progress through the book even as raunchy as it get's you finish by saying to yourself "well that made sense"

not for the uptight and not for the easily offended,,,read with an open mind!

HOWARD IS THE BEST 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I could actually hear Howards voice as I read this great book that tells the story of Howard Stern from a child until present day(1994)Also check out his follow up book Miss America(its also great)

"Can one pour out one's heart?" 5 out of 5 stars.
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Writing about oneself is an extremely difficult task that requires both daring and self-criticism. I don't know how many times I wanted to destroy my own writing because, with time, I realized how naive and stupid I was in the past. This is not the case with Howard Stern's autobiography here. He's a very brave man who does not fear to be criticized neither for who he is nor for what he does. Perhaps, the greatest anxiety of being ignored or under-appreciated drives H. Stern to put his "private parts" into unusual and fascinating language codes. And in this creative process, he is probably to be compared to such great names of the past as Giovanni Boccaccio ("The Decameron") and Francois Rable ("The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel").

Moreover, H. Stern's "Private Parts" is a great representation for the recent immigrants like me of the unofficial American life in the second half of the 20th century. I'm reading this book along with Peter Novick's "The Holocaust and Collective Memory" and it's a great combination so far that allows me to see what's considered history and by whom.

Leaving the critical reflection for people who don't understand that critical concepts and theories are not weapons to discredit an artwork or an artist, just want to say, "I really loved this book!" I did love it even though as an average woman I was constantly measuring myself up to who H. Stern considered "hot" or "nice" or important. On the other hand, reading "Private Parts", I've never felt alone in my self-oppressive thoughts and unrealistic dreams. Howard Stern also indulges into both unimaginable self-appraisal and genuinely scary self-criticism.

I'm still just half-through his book, but I think I won't change my mind about his talent and daring even if he wrote at the end that every reader of the book is an idiot. So far, I don't even care what the book ends on. H. Stern has already put the culmination at the beginning - a very feminist gesture... If you are easily excited (sexually I mean) I'm not sure you'll be able to continue reading after the first 10 pages. You'll surely need to pause... for a while... Enjoy the reading!

Editorial Review:

reveals his outrageous takes on politics, current affairs, and the entertainment business. 250,000 first printing. Major ad/promo.

Lectures To My Students

C. H. Spurgeon

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Ministry & Church Leadership -> Preaching

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Preachers often quote Spurgeon today because he had an ability to explain Christian truth to ordinary people with pointed, memorable statements. The people who heard and read his words were effectively taught theology and enjoyed it. He was a dogged defender of the Bible as God's truth. There was another side to Spurgeon's Character, he had a sensitive and loving nature that was the spur to him preaching the gospel, so that as many people as possible could hear the good news about why Jesus Christ came to spend time on earth, building a church for eternity. This also showed through in his warm pasturing of his congregation and the setting up of a college for future ministers of the gospel. Spurgeon realized that he could influence the church beyond his own lifetime if he could encourage future pastors to trust the Bible, love people and preach the truth fearlessly. To achieve this he collected his lectures to his college students and published this book. It has been a classic of pastoral theology ever since and is still used to train ministers to this day.

Reefer Madness and Other Tales from the American Underground

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Total reviews: 105 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants.

The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- or more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the fascinating workings of the shadow economy by focusing on marijuana, one of the nation's largest cash crops; pornography, whose greatest beneficiaries include Fortune 100 companies; and illegal migrant workers, whose lot often resembles that of medieval serfs.

All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past three decades, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with a deep-seated puritanism to create situations both preposterous and tragic. Schlosser traces compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground.

With intrepid reportage, rich history, and incisive argument, Schlosser illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

Barbara Ehrenreich

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

What would Ehrenreich do if the 'rich' opted out 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Why is it that I always get the sneaking suspicion that when Robin Hoods like Ehrenreich talk about the 'rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer' she has in mind a great big tax increase? What would happen if all those nasty rich people just opted out and took their compensation off-shore, in the form of long term share grants? I am not an uncritical fan of Ayn Rand, nor do I consider myself 'rich' - but gosh, when I keep reading about the nasty rich people (read: sucessful risk takers who already pay virtually all of the taxes in this country), I can't help but ask - Who is John Galt? You're poor and want to improve your situation? I would suggest that you get an education, put off having children until you can afford them, live within your means and save your money. Apparently that is too simple and smells of a Protestant work ethic. Gotta find those scapegoats.

Editorial Review:

America in the 'aughts---hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as "the soul mate" of Jonathan Swift.

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

Clive James

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Get a Brow Lift from He Whose Mighty Intellect Towers Above All! 1 out of 5 stars.
14 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Although intended as a work of literature, "Cultural Amnesia" has more in common with your local phone directory -- except that the phone directory contains more information. Like the phone directory, this book is a list of names in alphabetical order, but then, unlike the phone directory, a plethora of other names are thrown-in at random, often with no explanation of their significance. The conceit of the book is, of course, that if you are unfamiliar with these names, usually obscure Viennese Jewish writers of the last century, your erudition is too puny, and you have no business reading this book in the first place.

For instance, an early chapter (remember, like the phone directory, it's in alphabetical order) is supposed to be about Jorge Luis Borges. And what does Herr Professor von James have to say about the celebrated old man? Nothing, because as with the rest of the book --zoom!-- he immediately veers off on a tangent. Reading the tortured prose of Professor von James is like watching an old-fashioned pinball machine, because from the starting-point of Jorge Luis Borges we are immediately bounced over to a discourse on Moby-Dick, quickly followed by "One of my exemplars, Witold Gombrowicz," and from there to Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky, Sigmind Freud, Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich, Milos Foreman, Vaclav Havel, Eratosthenes, Erasmus, and Victoria Ocampo. All this on a single page! (p.66) Does any of it manage to make any sense? No, it's simply a mess of names dropped together. In speech, such word-salad would be diagnosed as hebephrenia, but here it is to be admired as the crowning achievement of one of . . . nay! THE World's Greatest Intellect.

Similarly, the chapter on Alfred Einstein contains no information whatsoever on Alfred Einstein. If you don't already know who Alfred Einstein was, you're not gong to find out here. Instead, we are treated to ruminations about that old, old question, What immortal masterpieces would poor Schubert and Mozart have written had they not both died so young? It's a question usually posed to impress bored freshmen in music appreciation courses, but here, Herr Doktor von James gives it a new twist: not what would poor Schubert have written had he lived to a ripe old age, but what would he have written had he lived to be as old as Mozart was when he died? If you are left wondering what the possible significance of such an imponderable might be, it shows how shallow your thought is.

Throughout the book, Herr Professor von James takes pains to mention his lofty academic achievements and how many languages in which he is fluent. It all makes me guess that because his advancement was so rapid, he skipped past the sixth grade, in which one is taught how to write a coherent paragraph or an essay on a single topic. But not only is this book a disorganized mess, the quality of writing is vile. The salient trademark of a hack writer is the overwrought metaphor or rancid simile -- such as, "Lending him almost irresistible force as a thinker was the riverine flow and clarity of his prose style . . ." (p.145) ("Prose style"? Why not just prose? Or style?) James continually uses "impact" in place of "effect." He uses such trite redundancies as "first and foremost" and "part and parcel," and I'm certain that if I keep slogging through this mess I'll find "at this point in time," too. In addition, there are numerous errors, maladroit punctuation and patently defective sentences throughout the book, and I suspect that even the proofreaders at W. W. Norton couldn't slog through this mess with out having their Eyes Glaze Over.

How ironic that in this book, which has more mistakes than any other book I've seen, Professor James spends a chapter nit-picking over the writing of others, and he proclaims, "Competent writers always examine what they have put down. . . . Bad writers never examine anything." Like a schoolmarm, he criticizes (p.382) someone for saying, "'the hoi polloi,' when we should leave off the 'the' because 'the' is what 'hoi' means." But both Dryden and Byron wrote "the hoi polloi," and in Act I of ''Iolanthe,'' W. S. Gilbert wrote, "Twould fill with joy, And madness stark / the hoi polloi (a Greek remark)?'' Obviously those are inferior writers who need correction from The Great Clive James, and I assume that, if he is so persnickety about not using "the" with hoi polloi, he likewise refrains from using an article with other borrowed words such as "algebra" or "alcohol."

A book like this one (certainly not this one, but one like this one) is supposed to entertain you with interesting facts and insight, but "Cultural Amnesia" is amazingly bereft of either. Instead, there's an abundance of mere opinion. Another reviewer here (likely from the camarilla of Objectivists) is irate that Herr Doktor von James has dismissed the novels of Ayn Rand as ". . . certainly among the worst books ever to be taken seriously." O.k., maybe Ms. Rand's books are awful, and maybe they aren't. But does Herr Doktor von James provide us with any reason for his dismissal? No. Apparently when you operate on such a lofty intellectual plane, it is only necessary for him to pronounce his verdict, and surely you must agree with him and perhaps apply yellow highlighter to the passage. This book consists of 25% name-dropping and 25% of such summary judgments, some of which --such as "Without a capacity for blaming the sterile, there can be no capacity for praising the vital" (p.127)-- are supposed to leave you stroking your whiskers, but other pronouncements are merely banal:
"Carly Simon, who was brought up as a privileged child . . . no doubt took genuine satisfaction out of making money by herself."
Duke Ellington's orchestra "could create its own world, and the truest statement ever made about Ellington's supremacy was that his orchestra was his instrument."
"Ben Webster, I thought, was much possessed by Melody's incestuous love affair with her brother Rhythm." (Is that a banal sentence, or what?)

Other such arbitrary proclamations (which Herr Doktor von James terms "detachable judgments") are not only inane, but they are wrong. "If the most brilliant mathematicians and computer engineers of 1945 could be brought here now and shown an ordinary laptop . . . they would have no idea of how it worked." (p.117) This statement reveals a profound ignorance of the subject. Other than, I suppose, the optical drive, computers have actually changed little over the years, other than the obvious fact that they have grown much smaller, and even Charles Babbage (1791-1871) would know that no matter how the trick was performed, the laptop was basically no more than a processor, memory and storage.

In addition to the name dropping and baseless declarations, the most common tangent that Professor Dr. James veers of to is the Nazi genocide. Well . . . (clearing of throat) . . . yes, that is a very serious topic, and perhaps it is impossible to say enough about it, so the good professor dwells at length on the subject, and the book (even the chapter on Terry Gilliam) returns again and again to ruminate on the Nazis. Very well, but what new insight does Mr. Dr. James bring to the subject? His assessment of Hitler is thus: "He didn't know he was sick. He thought he was well." Throughout the book, he seems to be trying to convince us that the Holocaust was a bad idea. In another chapter (the one on Flaubert, naturally) he goes off on a tangent about how it would be a good thing if Islam were more tolerant of infidels. Do you really need this old windbag to tell you any of that?

Now, if you are reading this, if you are interested in this tome, it may be that you aspire to become a top-drawer intellectual or at least appear to be one. That's nice, but do you really think that reading his panegyric to Tony Curtis or his analysis of the movie "Titanic" will help you achieve your goal? Will reading about his preference for David Letterman over Jay Leno or the junk about Carly Simon put you atop the brain heap? Don't spend $15 on this shallow book. Instead, go to the library and borrow the works of Oswald Spengler, and show everyone that's what you're reading. Then, spend the money you saved on a bottle of Pernod and a pince-nez.

Editorial Review:

I can't remember when I've learned as much from something I've read—or laughed as much while doing it. —Jacob Weisberg, Slate Finally in paperback after six hardcover printings, this international bestseller is an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece—the perfect introduction to the very core of Western humanism. Clive James rescues, or occasionally destroys, the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.