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Ulysses

James Joyce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 395 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.

Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus

Fables Vol. 9: Sons of Empire

Bill Willingham, James Jean

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A series that is stunning in its consistent brilliance 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I discovered FABLES perhaps a bit later than many others, but I'm making up for it with my enthusiasm for it. I've now read all of the nine main books, the 1001 NIGHTS OF SNOWFALL spin off, and the two Jack of the Fables books (even though Jack is possibly my least favorite character in the books). I look forward to getting the tenth book this June. My point is: this is an addictive series.

The issues that make up this volume pretty obviously are setting up big events in the future. We see a war council held by Gepetto and his minions. We see Snow White and Bigby and their brood visit his father the North Wind. We are introduced to several new characters. We get new wrinkles, such as Rodney Greenwood, who seems to almost like the residents of Fabletown.

But while FABLES has great stories, what I most enjoy is the way Willingham explores all the various facets of their fictional world. From the very beginning the series has never done just one thing. There is an astonishing variety, just as the cast of characters really could be characterized as an ensemble cast. If you were forced to identify the "lead" characters, it might be Snow White and Bigby Wolf, but there have been several issues in which they've not appeared at all, sometimes several issues in a row.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Editorial Review:

The infamous inhabitants of folklore were forced into exile when a savage creature known as the Adversary conquered the fabled lands of legends and fairy tales. These magical characters now disguise themselves as normal citizens in modern-day New York and around the world.

In this volume, Pinocchio suffers seriously divided loyalties between his father, the evil Adversary, and his fellow Fable refugees in New York. Discover what he does while his father hosts a secret conference of the imperial elite to decide the ultimate fate of Fabletown. Plus, Bigby Wolf reluctantly decides it's finally time to square accounts with his long-estranged father, the North Wind and makes a journey with Snow White and their kids to find him.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics)

James Joyce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 239 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Best Kindle edition of Joyce's "Portrait" 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

There are many editions of James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" available, but this is easily the best Kindle edition. The text is based on Chester Anderson's 1964 text. There are also a good number of annotations by Seamus Deane--fewer than in Anderson's Viking Critical edition but sometimes more detailed and aimed at a less scholarly audience. best of all, this edition is a very well constructed ebook, with a good table of contents to facilitate navigation to the beginning of chapters and with an excellent implementation of endnotes. Annotated items are marked witha superscripted number that links to the endnotes. The notes are all placed together, so you can read other notes rather than having to go back to the main text to go to other notes.

All in all, this is the best Kindle edition of Joyce's classic. The text is based on a standard version, the notes are helpful, and the implementation highlight the advantages of the Kindle format.

Editorial Review:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique.

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.
10 of 13 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.

Dubliners

James Joyce

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader understand Joyce's use of textures, dialect, and symbols. Each of the beautifully written short stories in this collection precisely details a brief scene in the life of a resident of Dublin at the turn of the 20th century. Although the characters do not know each other, their experiences unfold along the same streets and often overlap thematically. Their tragedies mirror that of Ireland, a country struggling for political identity and held back, in Joyce's view, by rigid religious ideas and adherence to tradition. Joyce's great skill at dialect offers a sense of the city's complex social structure, while themes of isolation, emotional paralysis, violence, regret, and death run throughout the collection and link all of the stories. Chronologically, too, the stories appear to progress; portrayals of youthful confusion and disillusionment in the opening story, "The Sisters," become the haunting midlife meditations of "The Dead." Like his masterpieces Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce's Dubliners displays consummate control of nuances, emotions, and images.

Goblins Don't Play Video Games (The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, #37)

Debbie Dadey, Marcia T. Jones

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

a book you should put in your game system 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

this book is a good book to read if you are into the eletronic world.

Goblins Don't Play Video Games 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

If you are into mysteries you would like this book. It is full of adventures and kids getting into mischief. It was great book to read.

Goblins! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

There are some weird grownups in Bailey City. But could the new computer teacher at school really be a tricky goblin? THE BAILEY SCHOOL ARE GOING TO FIND OUT!

booklover 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

my son loves this series it's put the fun back in reading for him!!!!!!

Editorial Review:

Gordan Goble, the new computer teacher at the Bailey School, has a gray complexion, an evil laugh, and makes the lights flicker on and off. Is he a real-live goblin?

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An unparalleled selection of fiction from H. P. Lovecraft, master of the American horror tale

Long after his death, H. P. Lovecraft continues to enthrall readers with his gripping tales of madness and cosmic terror, and his effect on modern horror fiction continues to be felt-- Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker have acknowledged his influence. His unique contribution to American literature was a melding of Poe's traditional supernaturalism with the emerging genre of science fiction. Originally appearing in pulp magazines like Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, Lovecraft's work is now being regarded as the most important supernatural fiction of the twentieth century.

Lovecraft's biographer and preeminent interpreter, S. T. Joshi, has prepared this volume of eighteen stories--from the early classics like "The Outsider" and "Rats in the Wall" to his mature masterworks, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The first paperback to include the definitive corrected texts, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style, and establishes him as a canonical--and visionary--American writer.

"I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." --Stephen King

Fire In The Ashes

William W. Johnstone

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Ashes are Hot 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

William W. Johnstone's second Ashes novel strongly continues the saga began in Out of the Ashes. This time around, the Rebels, defeated but not crushed by the fall of the Tri-States, are secretly rebuilding their forces under the watchful eyes of a socialist dictatorship.

Hundreds of federal police forces are carrying out brutal raids against innocent people, and a mercenary army is helping to keep the peace. Meanwhile, a third enemy is lurking in the shadows.

The story and action are strong and believable. I also see the strong need for an armed population, and the elements and warnings against socialism are as strong today as they were when this book was written.

Editorial Review:

Torn straight out of today's headlines, national bestselling author William W. Johnstone's groundbreaking and controversial series refuses to die...Destroyed by the fires of nuclear holocaust, our once great nation is in shambles. Life as we know it is no more. But among the survivors stands Ben Raines, retired soldier, mercenary, and the only man alive trained to lead the Resistance into a visionary new America.But the Rebels' greatest adversary - our own government - forces Raines and his army into bloody guerrilla combat - and an unavoidable civil war. Now, as brother turns against brother, an even greater peril is thrown into the pot: a new, indestructible breed of post-apocalyptic enemies who threaten to wrest control of the new world and sink it into a hell on earth.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Shirley Jackson

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Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Visitors call seldom at Blackwood House. Taking tea at the scene of a multiple poisoning, with a suspected murderess as one's host, is a perilous business. For a start, the talk tends to turn to arsenic. "It happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night," explains Uncle Julian, continually rehearsing the details of the fatal family meal. "My sister made these this morning," says Merricat, politely proffering a plate of rum cakes, fresh from the poisoner's kitchen. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. "What place would be better for us than this?" she asks, of the neat, secluded realm she shares with her uncle and with her beloved older sister, Constance. "Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people." Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, ritually revisiting them. She has made "a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us" against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers.

Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters' careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat's treasures, talking privately to Constance about "normal lives" and "boy friends." Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible secret, the convergence of the villagers upon the house, and a spectacular unleashing of collective spite.

The sisters are propelled further into seclusion and solipsism, abandoning "time and the orderly pattern of our old days" in favor of an ever-narrowing circuit of ritual and shadow. They have themselves become talismans, to be alternately demonized and propitiated, darkly, with gifts. Jackson's novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more--like some of her other fictions--as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normality itself. "Poor strangers," says Merricat contentedly at last, studying trespassers from the darkness behind the barricaded Blackwood windows. "They have so much to be afraid of." --Sarah Waters

The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)

Henry James

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

hmm. 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 13 people found this review helpful.

I like this book. Have to say though, I found it to be a tough read. I hestitate to say anything bad about it, because everyone else gave it 5 star reviews, so I feel like I must've missed the real magic in it. overall, it was ok. I never found the plot to be very well organized-it seemed like the author just kind of wrote whate came to mind and then went where it led rather than work from a definite plan. In fact, it never seems to have much of a plot at all, its really more of a psychological study of the nature of the characters. hence, it is not called the " The Adventures of a Lady." I also would have appreciated a little more dialogue to move to story along, as sometimes it does get rather heavy and dull. However, if you can overlook that, Henry James has a beautiful writing style, creates beautiful characters, and is a necessity on the bookshelf of any serious reader.

Editorial Review:

When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.