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The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart."

Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his Last Poems of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind. --Kerry Fried

A Dangerous Climate: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (St. Germain)

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

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

One of the best in the series to date 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

*A Dangerous Climate* is the twentieth novel centering on Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's benign vampire hero, Count Ferenz Ragoczy Saint-Germain. I've been a fan of Yarbro's Count for thirty years, and this is one of my favorite of the novels so far.

The foundation of every Saint-Germain novel is a vivid and meticulously researched portrait of one or more times and places in world history, often one that is not commonly presented in fiction. *A Dangerous Climate* takes us to the year 1704 and the founding of the Russian city of Sankt Piterburkh by Tsar Piotyr I, or Peter the Great, at the mouth of the Neva River on the Baltic sea.

In the first chapter, night watchmen discover Saint-Germain right after he's been beaten so severely that he can't remember exactly what happened. A living man wouldn't have survived. Since Saint-Germain does, he spends the rest of the book trying to determine what happened, who wants him dead and when they'll make another attempt. The opening chapters describe his slow recovery, complicated by his need to conceal how well he's really doing from the physician and healers who are treating him.

We soon learn another unique aspect to Saint-Germain's situation in this story: he is not in Sankt Piterburkh as a lone "foreigner." The Count is visiting in disguise, pretending to be Arpad Arco-Tolvay, Hercegek Gyor, the missing husband of a Polish aristocrat, Zozia, Ksiezna Nisko. A gifted diplomat and spy for the Polish monarch, Augustus II, the Ksiezna must be escorted by a male relative in order to move freely among the foreign dignitaries in Sankt Piterburkh.

Saint-Germain's beating directly leads to his acquaintance with the independent Ludmilla Borisevna Svarinskaya, a Russian matron who has been rejected by her husband and is running a care house in Sankt Piterburkh. She earns Saint-Germain's admiration and respect, and eventually a closer relationship. But even as he juggles clandestine liaisons and extremely delicate politics, Saint-Germain is confronted with a crisis in his own affairs. While he has gone underground to impersonate the Ksiezna's husband, he learns that somebody else is impersonating him. His title, property and estates, under the care of a steward who sends regular reports to him in Sankt Piterburkh, are being claimed by an impostor. Now he has another problem to untangle, without unmasking his real identity to Piotyr and the other residents of Sankt Piterburkh or threatening the Ksiezna's mission.

The complications don't stop there. *A Dangerous Climate* features more in the way of complex puzzles and elaborate maneuverings than raw action. The plot spins out against the finely described backdrop of newborn Sankt Piterburkh--crude, muddy, cold and inhospitable, and yet filled with high born diplomats and ambassadors displaying all the luxury expected in a royal court, because Piotyr insists upon it. By the end of the book, we feel as though we've lived in Piotyr's city ourselves. As often is the case with Yarbro's novels, we're also deeply grateful that we don't live there now. But the conclusion of *A Dangerous Climate* is less grim than some of the other novels. Fans of the Count and new readers alike will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Editorial Review:

The vampire Count Saint-Germain, disguised as a missing Hungarian nobleman, is on a spy mission in the heart of Czarist Russia. Almost by the power of his will alone, it seems, Peter the Great is wrestling the city that will one day be St. Petersburg out of swampland. Representatives of the heads of all European states are living in tiny, frigid, wooden homes as they jockey for power and influence over the Czar. When a man shows up claiming to be the Count Saint-Germain, the vampire must figure out how to protect his title and wealth without revealing either his true identity or his True Nature.

Memoirs of Hadrian

Marguerite Yourcenar

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A masterpiece. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is an unlikely candidate to be on my list of the 5 best books I've ever read. But it is near the top of that list. An "autobiographical" account of a long-dead Roman emperor (not even one of the glamorous, or truly depraved ones), written by a 20th century Frenchwoman - who'd have thunk it?

Other reviews here pay tribute to the depth of scholarship underpinning this book, as well as to Yourcenar's brilliant writing. But it would be wrong to pigeonhole the book as catering only to those interested in the history of the Roman Empire. That's what's so stunning about the book - it has a universal wisdom that should appeal to any reader. The journey with Hadrian as he revisits his life in memory is remarkably moving.

I beg, I implore you - buy, steal, or borrow a copy of this book. It will draw you in. It may not change your life, but it will definitely make you think. All I know is that I find myself re-reading it every three to four years. Why? Because each time I learn something more about what it is to be human.* And come away reinvigorated to face the questions in my own life. I find this book far more spiritually inspiring than any of the more overtly spiritual books I've read.

An extraordinary book. 5 stars, only because it's not possible to give it more than 5.

* A *sodden* cliché, but I don't know how else to put it.

Editorial Review:

Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite Yourcenar reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era.

Favorite Scary Stories of American Children (Grades 3-6)

Richard Young

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

this book is not geared for American Children 1 out of 5 stars.
16 of 24 people found this review helpful.

We have just begun camping with our children and I purchased this book for campfire stories. Unfortunately, I started reading one of the stories "Wham! Slam..." which the book said was geared to ages 7 and 8 (my audience). The story told of a witch who axed two children to death and then chased two others, killing 11 dogs with a swinging ax and knife. Luckily, she was killed by the 12th who jumped at ther throat. THe children who survived cut out her heart...etc. Not appropriate for most 17 year olds, much less 7-8 year olds. The cover of the book says "for classrooms, storytelling settings, etc." What school? Rated "excellent" by the very conservative Washington Times...

Some Scary Stories 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Richard and Judy Young, professional storytellers based at Silver Dollar City, Mo., collected the favorite scary stories of American children. The authors admonish tellers to tell these stories responsibly in the introduction.

There is a table of contents, but the twenty-three stories are in no apparent order. The illustrations are simple ink drawings with blue accents. They are not integral to the stories.

Most of the tales are American or European in origin and a few are from Asia brought here by immigrants and soldiers returning from Viet Nam.

The stories are mostly quite short and easily told as written. The stories are divided into three groups: for ages 5 or 6, 7 or 8, and 9 or 10. The older group could also enjoy reading the stories.

The source notes, though brief, are detailed. The authors list the history of the tale and in many cases who they first heard it from.

The "Afterword for parents, teachers, and librarians" discusses the importance of storytelling and what to be careful of when telling scary stories.

There is a useful guide to pronunciation.
Karen Woodworth-Roman

Editorial Review:

A collection, selected by children as their favorites, of twenty-three spooky tales from a variety of ethnic traditions.

Saint-Germain Memoirs

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

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

Excellent shorter Saint-Germain stories 3 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Unlike most of the Saint-Germain stories, these stories are similar to small snapshots of his life, from Ancient Greece to present-day Canada. The first story The Harpy is a small but excellently-turned story about family members who suffer in a famous man's shadow. The next story, Lost Epiphany, was more choppy, I thought it needed a bit of lengthening, and it seemed to be a fragment rather than a complete story. The third story, Tales Out of School, was more in the fashion of CQY's longer works, and I found the descriptions of the embryonic University of Padua very interesting. The next story, Intercession, was chilling, especially when you realized how important the legal concept of Habeus Corpus has come to be for us. The final story, A Gentleman of the Old School wasn't one of my favorites, although it was interesting to see that Saint-Germain has survived to the modern day. There just wasn't a lot of plot, I felt.

I did have a few nitpicks with this book. The production values were a bit sloppy, but the press isn't Tor but some smaller independent one so I guess that is to be allowed for. I was confused by some of the dates given in Intercession; I think that they were mistakes uncaught before printing. I would also think that several of these stories would do better if we had a bit more information to flesh out the plot, so to speak.

If you like the Saint-Germain series this is definitely a book to get. If you are new to the series, start with Hotel Transylvania: A Novel of Forbidden Love and become acquanted with the series before reaching for this one

Editorial Review:

Saint-Germain is one of the genre's most memorable vampires. In this collection, follow the dark immortal from ancient Greece to the present as the tales of his timeless life are recounted. Also included is a brief essay by the author about her world-renown vampire, with an Introduction by Sharon A. Russell.

Scary Story Reader (American Storytelling)

Richard Young

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

An Awesom Thriller 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Scary Stories Reader is an awesome book about the world's most scary stories,from "Urban Legend Thrillers" to the jump ending stories.Each story has its own chill.Great selections will scare you to death.Read it to find the real scares and chills!You will really love this 5 star book.

Best Scary Story Book for Kids and Teens! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is, without a doubt, the scariest book for young adults. The stories are told with a creepy voice, and the pictures add to the mood. I highly recommend it!

Casey Luv's Scary Stories 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The Scary Storie Reader was great. Almost all of my classmates checked it out of the library. I was lucky because the library only has 1 copy and I managed to get a hold on it. After I started to read a few stories, I could see why everyone wanted it. It had terrifying stories! I gave this book 5 stars because it really deserves it for its thrilling horror stories and its well written chapters. I recommend you buy this book or at least check it out of the library if you haven't already. It was truly a good book.

Editorial Review:

Back by popular demand, these timeless, scary favorites and contemporary thrillers are collected together for young readers by storytellers Richard and Judy Dockrey Young. Spine-tingling tales of dating, cars, part-time jobs, being home alone, and being on one's own in the world address the concerns and interests of every young adult.

The Devil's Arithmetic

Jane Yolen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 271 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent book!!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book gives the reader a very brief view of history and how the evils of this world has a domino effect on us all. It also reminds us that we [humans] can survive in the worst of times with the help of family and friends. It is well written and gives you a good mental image of what you are reading.

Great book goes well with the DVD movie, 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Devil's Arithmetic (Puffin Modern Classics)
The book is very easy to read, goes pretty well with the DVD movie. I used this book The Devil's Arithmetic, DVD movie, and the downloaded study guide in my English high school and middle school classes in my World War II Holocaust unit with: Night by Elie Wiesel, and Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death Excellent resource for students to get a personal connection to World War II via the main character Hanna who is an high school teen ager who travels back to Poland and experiences the death camp.

Editorial Review:

Hannah is tired of hearing about the Nazis during the Holocaust, but when she opens the door for Elijah at the Passover Seder, she is transported in time to 1940s Poland, where she is captured and put in a death camp. A girl named Rivka befriends her, teaching her how to fight the dehumanization of the camp and hold onto her identity.

Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)

William Butler Yeats

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Another fine edition of the works of a great poet 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

There are by this time many collections of the works of Yeats, and this is one of the good ones. Aside from containing the major plays and poems it has critical essays by contemporaries of Yeats and important critical voices of our own time, such as Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, and the poet Seamus Heaney.
As for the work itself, however historically important the plays, and however of curiosity value 'The Autobiography' and other prose writings the Yeats that lives is in the poetry.
It is that lyrical greatness the power of song manifested early on which later was deepened into even greater poetry. From 'Innisfee' and "Song of the Wandering Aengus ' to the poetry of 'Byzantium' and 'Among the Schoolchildren'.
The great lines, a small sample of which follows"

And we will wander hand in hand / through hollow lands and hily lands/
And pluck till time and times are done/ The silver apples of the moon/ The golden apples of the sun/


"We must lie down where all the ladders start/ in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

" The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity"

"But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you/ and loved the sorrows of your changing face."

Editorial Review:

No other series of classic texts achieves the editorial standard of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with contextual and critical materials that bring the work to life for students. Careful editing, first-rate translation, thorough explanatory annotations, chronologies, and selected bibliographies make each text accessible to students while encouraging in-depth study. Each volume in the series is printed on acid-free paper, and every text remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice of excellence for scholarship for students at more than 2,500 colleges and universities worldwide.

Borne in Blood: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain (St. Germain)

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The year is 1817. In Switzerland, the Count Saint-Germain leads a comfortable life with his paramour Hero whose husband died fighting Napoleon. Saint-Germain's loving kindness cannot keep Hero from missing her children who are being raised by their hard-hearted grandfather.

The Count has become intrigued by the work of an Austrian noble investigating the properties of blood, a subject always of key interest to a vampire. But when the noble’s beautiful ward fixates sexually on the Count, the vampire fears for himself and his gentle lover.

With Borne in Blood, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s saga of Count Saint-Germain, reaches a milestone—the twentieth volume of the vampire's adventures. The Saint-Germain cycle is one of our age's most compelling bodies of work of dark fantasy and horror, and the longest running series of vampire novels. Historically accurate, these deeply emotional novels have a devoted readership. Recognizing her impact on the genre, the International Horror Guild named Chelsea Quinn Yarbro a Living Legend at the World Fantasy Convention in 2006.

A Poet to His Beloved: The Early Love Poems of William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

As a young man, William Butler Yeats was deeply affected by the idea of romantic love, or, as he called it, "the old high way of love." Characteristically, much of his early poetry that which was written prior to 1910, is poetry that belongs to courtship.

When Yeats was twenty-three years old, he met and fell in love with the beautiful Irish nationalist, Maud Gonne. Although she repeatedly refused to marry Yeats, Maud would become the object of his passion and his poetry. The emotional power in many of Yeats' early poems is shaped by the one-sidedness of his affair with Maud, but the poems themselves remain hopeful and bitter-sweet, pure in their language and attitudes about love.

The forty-one poems collected in A Poet to his Beloved represent some of Yeats's most evocative and passionate early love poems. These versed are simple, lyrical, and often dreamy, and they speak knowingly of innocence and beauty, passion and desire, devotion and the fear of rejection.