Essays Books - Page 8

Labyrinths (Modern Classics)

Jorge Luis Borges

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Like a Science Textbook, Man! Gimme a Break! 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Borges was a hep cat, man, I'll concede that & seems to read a bit but his stories read like friggin' medical textbooks! Fine for scientists & other geeks of that type but a bit dull for the average reader. My favorite story was `Garden of Forking Paths,' which is the clearest story & easiest to understand. The `Secret of the Sect of the Phoenix' I'm assuming deals with Freemasonry though Borges claims it was homosexuality. But then he claimed a lot of weird things.
Borges is like digesting an overdose of fiber, long, arduous, excruciating at times, & in the end stinky, heavy, & a little too black.

Mystical, cosmopolitan, multi-layered 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Borges is a writer with his own voice, non-conformist, well read, man who experienced first hand political persecution in his native Argentina. Borges is a kind of writer able to transform his uniquely complex personal sensibilities to millions of his readers from all over the world. The beauty of his work is that he was able to merge the ideas of many writers, philosophers and thinkers into a style of his own. This is presentation of his work that includes stories and other writings long after Borges went blind and was able to dictate his work. Definitely type of writing meant for sophisticated minds. I completely enjoyed this book.

Editorial Review:

Jorge Luis Borges was a literary spellbinder whose tales of magic, mystery and murder are shot through with deep philosophical paradoxes. This collection brings together many of his stories, including the celebrated "Library of Babel".

84, Charing Cross Road

Helene Hanff, Frank Doel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 104 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Killer charm 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Given the amazing reputation this book has had for over thirty years I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Helene Hanff, a television screenwriter living in Manhattan after World War II, collected a series of letters she wrote to the workers at Marks & Co., a bookstore along London's famous Charing Cross Road, over the course of two decades, from her initial requests for certain books she had trouble acquiring in the United States through her later lasting friendship with the Marks & Co. staff. The book has often been advertised as being all about a common love of books, yet that's really not what comes through in the letters: the bond Hanff forged with the booksellers had much more to do with her over-the-top personality, which fortunately they found quite charming. While their letters to her are very restrained and respectful, hers are pretty zany, filled with all kinds of strange punctuations and with forceful declarations: of enthusiasm when her book orders live up to her expectations, and of mock outrage when they are not. As the letters make clear, she is also extraordinarily generous to the booksellers especially during the lean years in Britain between the War and the Coronation, and sends them all kinds of commodities and foodstuffs which were very hard to acquire during that time (like eggs, bacon, and nylons).

If this were an epistolary novel it might be a bit hard to take the incredible zestiness of Hanff's wild enthusiasms, and even the poignancy added by knowing it is all true only curbs your exhaustion a bit at her gigantic personality. (You even wonder at times whether the Marks & Co. are as delighted by her so much as they're just cowed by her.) It's a sweet little book, but you do feel as if Hanff were trying to clobber you -- and the booksellers -- over the head with her forceful charm.

Editorial Review:

It all began with a letter enquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New York, and posted to a bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. As Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper Frank Doel of 84 Charing Cross Road, a relationship blossoms into a warm, charming, feisty love affair. We follow, in her subsequent letters and in the shop's responses, the trial of one woman;s idiosyncratic path through English literature. Along the way, as Anne Bancroft notes in her introduction, our enjoyment in sharing. Hanff's literary eduction is deepened by the human story her letters tell as she grows ever fonder of her bookselling friends across the ocean.

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

Ruth Reichl

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 111 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Warning - lot's of gushing to follow 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was in love with this book from the first words of the introduction, where Reichl tells us about the story telling tradition in her family. She introduces her book thus: "Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual. I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story". She then proceeds to tell her stories so convincingly, with such candor and feeling, that you completely forget that some of it is embellished for story telling purposes.

The recipes are absolutely charming and wonderful, a very genuine addition. They may not be the best recipes, some of them may well be old fashioned, but they are honest and intended as an illustration; she includes no photos after the one on the cover - the recipes serve as photos of her life as told here.

This book is about Reichl's life with food. It is not a true autobiography, but anecdotes that are slices and bites of her life. We feel we know Ruth while realizing that we don't know everything about her. But then isn't that the reality of most friendships? And Ruth does feel like a friend that you are getting to know.

Anyone who loves food and cooking will get great pleasure from this book. It is always charming, always engaging, always entertaining. I ordered her sequel the minute I read the last word.

P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening

Studs Terkel

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian and nonagenarian makes a selection of his favorite unpublished writings, broadcasts, and interviews.

Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prizewinning oral historian through his landmark books—"The Good War", Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs's best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and deeply enjoyable writings for the first time.

The pieces in P.S. reflect Studs's wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs's finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Studs's heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime"); and the transcript of Studs's famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times.

A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of Studs's extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he found to talk to.

The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)

John M. Shanahan

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Talkers are no good doers."-- William Shakespeare

"The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it."-- FranÇois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"It is hard to believe a man is telling you the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place."-- H. L. Mencken

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.-- Gore Vidal

"Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins theyhave never committed."-- Cornelia Otis Skinner

"You lose it if you talk about it.-- Ernest Hemingway

"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."-- William Butler Yeats

"Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five."-- William Somerset Maugham

You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic.

Classified by such themes as "Truth, Lies, and Deception," "Men, Women, and Relationships," and "Passions, Virtues, and Vices," these quotes contain timeless messages for all humankind. Oscar Wilde: "A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position." Charles de Gaulle: "The cemetery is filled with indispensable men." Abraham Lincoln: "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Sophocles: "Men of ill judgment oft ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it."

Perfect for anyone who has ever been left speechless, this book will make you as glib as Oscar Wilde, as profound as Winston Churchill, and as wise as Aesop. Inspirational, entertaining, and thought-provoking, this is one collection that no library or bookshelf should be without.

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Walden and Civil Disobedience (150th Anniversary) (Signet Classics)

Henry David Thoreau

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

He heard a different drummer- The sun is but a morning star 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Thoreau is more than simply a writer who produced a great American classic. He exemplified the idea which perhaps as much as any other has come to be at the heart of the American creed. "If a man does not keep pace to his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Throreau when he went into the woods of Walden Pond on July 4, 1845 , a journey in solitude which would last just two years and two months, was the archetypal American individualist. He was the man 'doing his own thing' living in accordance with what only he could know was right for himself. This idea of 'radical individualism' has become part of the American common faith. Its abuses are legion and may be disastrous, but it also has brought about not simply 'better mousetraps' but a whole vast world of innovations and innovators, the like of which Mankind has never known before.

Thoreau as he writes in his introduction went to the woods to explore not simply the natural world, the outdoors he so much loved. He went to the woods to truly go more deeply into and know himself. As he says in his introduction:

" I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me."

Thoreau in that enigmatic, epigrammatic aphoristic style, he shared with his great mentor and fellow pioneering poet- philosopher, Emerson connects the world within with the world without , connects the Concord woods with the Cosmos . He creates a work in 'Walden' of singular beauty and of its own special economy and principles in thought.

Thoreau was too an abolitionist, an opponent of the Mexican war, a civil disobedient who refused to pay the poll tax-, a pioneer
whose followers would include Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

But in his close looking at the world of nature and the world of himself he was first a great explorer of life and reality going out alone in his own way- however geographically close he may have been to home.

His words and his wisdom waken us even today to the hope of new and better worlds i.e. he also embodied the spirit of a great American optimism.

The great individual teaches us even in dark hours to find new worlds in ourselves outside our own darknesses. " There are new worlds yet to be born" he writes, " The sun is but a morning star"

Editorial Review:

Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.

Naked Pictures of Famous People

Jon Stewart

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Total reviews: 96 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In these nineteen whip-smart essays, Jon Stewart takes on politics, religion, and celebrity with a seethingly irreverent wit, a brilliantsense of timming, and a palate for the obsurd -- and these one-of-a-kind forays into his hilarious world will expose you to all its wickedly naked truths.

He's the MTV generation's master of modern humor, a star of film, TV, and the comedy stage. This sultan of savvy serves up a whip-smart, utterly original collection of comic essays in Naked Pictures of Famous People.

A seethingly irreverent wit, Stewart has a genius for language and brilliant timing that makes his up-to-the-minute collection a must-have for humor lovers in search of a Woody Allen for the 90s.He's the MTV generation's master of modern humor, a star of film, TV, and the comedy stage. This sultan of savvy serves up a whip-smart, utterly original collection of comic essays in Naked Pictures of Famous People.

A seethingly irreverent wit, Stewart has a genius for language and brilliant timing that makes his up-to-the-minute collection a must-have for humor lovers in search of a Woody Allen for the 90s.