A Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction)
by Anthony Burgess
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Paperback (November, 1986)
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Reviews (532)

A Must-Have Book!,
Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange has become a sort of underground classic. It is read and loved by young men all over the world.

The novel is written in a language all its own; a hybrid of English and Russian slang. Burgess called this language Nadsat. It can be, at first, difficult. However, once the reader acclimates themself to the rythyms of the words Nadsat comes alive. The language of this novel is electric. Burgess was very interested in music, and was a composer. In this novel he uses words as Mozart would have used musical notes.

A Clockwork Orange is the story of Alex, a young criminal. He and his "droogs" (friends) roam the streets robbing, beating, and raping the people they encounter. Alex is quite satisfied with his life, he has everything he needs.

Things begin to turn bad for Alex after a midnight raid on a house in the country. He is captured by the police and his friends turn on him. Soon Alex finds himself in prison, where he is offered the "Ludovico treatment". This treatment will garuntee that he never breaks another law.

Alex agrees to the treatment in exchange for release from prison. This is the point in the story where Burgess' talent really begins to show. It is at this point that the reader fully realizes that Burgess is not simply telling a story; he is showing us a metaphor for the world we inhabit.

The Ludovico treatment turns Alex into a clockwork orange: he appears to be a living creature, but is merely a machine. Alex, stripped of free will is unable to defend himself. And, because he cannot choose evil, any good he may do is meaningless.

In this book Burgess first creates a loathsome character. Then draws us into his world, making us care a bit about what happens to him. He then tears down that characters world, to show how easily our world can be torn down.

This is a startling, and brilliant book. It is not for the squeamish, nor the easily offended.

By the way, if you purchase this book be sure to look for the European edition which is one chapter longer than the American version. Another terrific purchase I made off Amazon -- completely unrelated to Clockwork Orange -- is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, a very engaging, substantial and funny book

----------------

Themes and such
First off, for all those looking for a clearly stated rating, or opinion, this novel was enjoyable. The characters were a bit shallow, but I contribute this to Alex's narration--because he describes the events through his perspective, he, naturally, does not see the other character's depth/thoughts, etc. His own character began as a simple character as well, but he grew (subtle actions and words hinted at a depth). Anyways, the book is a violent one, not as terribly graphic or explicit as some have said, but nevertheless, violent. Not for the kids (the immature ones, at least). I have not seen the movie myself, but from what I have heard and read (I own a version of the novel that has an introduction by Blake Morrison which speaks of the movie), the movie is a great deal more violent and explicit (so much so othat Burgess himself found it gratuitous). So. Onto my review which will discuss the book's various themes and such.

Anthony Burgess tries to convey several themes, particularly the maturation of youth, the importance of freewill, and the relationship of high art with refinement. Alex's character in the beginning of the novel was a petulant and selfish adolescent whose fun included rape and drugs. The government and society tried severely to discipline and control the wild youth. All of their attempts, including incarceration and post-corrective advisers, were in vain and Alex returned to his old ways. Despite Alex's troublemaking, he established early in the novel his desire to learn from his elders, "to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world" (Lee, p.12). This shows that rebellious teen actually hears the preaching and "nagging" that is told to him by adults, and that there is hope that may reform.

At the end of A Clockwork Orange (after the Ludovico technique and its failure), subtle changes had emerged in his character-he felt bored and hopeless and didn't participate as much in committing the actual violence. After some other changes, it is revealed that Alex keeps a photograph of a baby with him, now clearly showing his transformation. Then his meeting with Pete and Georgina show Alex that it was time to mature and leave his youth. **Nadsat (the slang terms he uses), I have found are used to represent the "wildness of youth". Note that Dim, who despite growing up (physically) continues to partake in violence as a police officer, and still uses nadsat. Vis-a-vis, Pete no longer does, and has in fact settled down and has become a father.** Alex had grown up, and in the process, fully left his violent ways. Youth is meant to be wild, admitting that Alex's youth is an exaggeration, and the only cure is age. In the words of Blake Morrison, "Youth...must have its fling, however wild."

The second theme within A Clockwork Orange is the importance of freewill. The government and society attempted to solve the growing problem of teenager related crimes by suppressing their freewill (Ludovico's technique). This however, as shown in the book, was no solution. Alex (the technique's first subject) still had violent thoughts and wanted to do bad things, he just couldn't physically act out. So then, was he a good person? No. The actual act is not what makes something immoral, it is the intent (as with a young child who unknowingly injures someone).
Finally, often those who enjoy classical music, are affluent or are intellectual are thought to be better. There is a general notion that high art civilizes. However the men that ran Auschwitz read Shakespeare and appreciated Beethoven and Bach (A Clockwork Orange, introduction by Blake Morrison, xiii). There is a stereotype that enjoying the arts makes one better morally and socially, and as displayed in A Clockwork Orange, this is not true.

A very flawed bit of ultra violence
Why?That was the main question I seemed to be asking myself while reading Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.I had the same problem watching Kubrick's movie version made back in 1971.Why does young Alex act the way he does?He has normal and loving parents; he is a mere 15 years of age.His background just does not seem to mesh very well with how he is presented: a brutal, savage rapist and even killer.

The story opens relentlessly with Alex and his hoodlum friends kicking the snot out of an innocent civilian.Next, they go to an innocent woman's house, rape and beat her to death.(Also bloodying up her husband).Finally, they break into another innocent woman's house, where everything goes wrong.Alex cracks her over the head a bit too hard and ends up killing her.He is immediately sent to prison.The police don't treat him too kindly, but who would?

Alex, after spending a year in prison, gets sent (or rather volunteers) to be part of a new "experiment" in which violent criminals are cured of their inclination towards evil.They are forced, against their will, to watch violent and unspeakable films.Repeated viewings of these films lead the victim to a feeling of nausea and sickness.Soon, they have no desire to commit violence.I guess you can call it stripping away at human freedom and brainwashing.

After Alex gets let out of this institution, he attempts to go back home.His parents reject him.Distraught, he wanders to a place where a bunch of old people are gathered together.Ironically, one of them is the same man Alex so ruthlessly beat up in the first part of the novel. He is recognized, and "attack of the senior citizens!"They all attempt to beat him up and scream for his blood.Give me a break.Next, he discovers one of his childhood hoodlum friends is now a cop along with his former enemy.They beat the tar out of him, of course, because nothing good can happen to Alex at this point.

Next, he wanders to the same exact house in which he brutally raped and killed a woman earlier in the book.The man who answers the door does not recognize him though.He helps him clean his wounds, feeds him, and is compassionate towards him.He soon recognizes Alex, however, because of the unique slang language he used.He ties that language to the same villain who attacked him years earlier.

After being shut up in a room, Alex can't take it anymore, and jumps out of an open window.He doesn't die, however.Soon after he is taken to a hospital where the doctors "correct" him and he becomes the same violent freak we have all learned to love from the beginning of the novel.He is cured.Hurray!! Society is outraged at how "unjustly" poor Alex was treated. Another bit of irony for you, the man of the wife Alex raped and killed gets sent away to an institution so he won't be anymore trouble to Alex.Oh the corrupt government gets its just punishment gets its due for doing what they did to poor old, violent, raping, murdering, old lovable Alex.

Ugh.Where do I start?The most glaring thing that upset me about A Clockwork Orange is that because of the way it is written, we are supposed to sympathize with Alex.How can you?I also don't understand the question the novel asks us in an offhand matter, "Is it right to "reform" people by taking away their freedom to choose?"No, not for normal people it's not.Alex could have been sent to the electric chair for the things he did, in my opinion, so who really cares if they took away his freedom?I think he was better off as a mindless twit than a sadistic rapist.Did the people he raped and killed have a freedom of choice?

IF Burgess would have explained a bit more the society in which Alex lived, maybe my questions would have been more properly answered.He does nothing to explain this ultra-violent society.I can't even picture this "nightmarish future" because Burgess does nothing to describe it.He also gives us no insight to why Alex acts the way he does.I couldn't get that out of my mind.I like the British ending a tiny bit better because it gives Alex a bit more human elements, opening the door for a possible future change.Maybe he is somewhat human after all, maybe all that violence did cause some regret.By this point, however, it is too late to really care.

The only thing I really liked about this novel was Burgess' creative use of slang and jargon.He invents Alex's language.I like the creativity involved in that process, but unfortunately it can't save this mess.Too bad it couldn't have been used on a greater novel.

I know this book is herald and praised all over the world, but even Burgess himself can not figure out why, (he says this in his introduction).Can I pity or sympathize with a character I know nothing about? Alex is as cardboard as characters get, aside from the creative, confusing language he uses.I know he likes Beethoven.What else? Hmmmmm.

Also, can I picture a futuristic world that is not described?I learn nothing of this "ultra violent society, aside from the random acts of violence Alex and his friends commit.How can this be a fable of good and evil, when no good is shown?Listen to the sequence of events in this novel, a beating-a rape-a murder-another prison beating--violent films--abandonment-another beating-a fantasized rape-a bit of redemption.

A Clockwork Orange is real hoax of a novel, it entices us to believe it is a thundering statement against forced mind control and restraints on human choice and freedom, but all it really does is rejoice in the viciousness of its "hero", Alex.

Grade: C- (Orignial version)
Grade: C (British version) ... Read more

Isbn: 0393312836
Sales Rank: 1757
Subjects:  1. Classics    2. Literature - Classics / Criticism    3. Science Fiction    4. Science Fiction - General    5. Modern fiction   

After the End of Art
by Arthur C. Danto
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Paperback (09 November, 1998)
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Art is still dead, according to Arthur Danto, professor at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History is a collection of Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts. Famous for his radical critiques of the nature of art--he dates the death of art to around 1964 and declares the art museum has replaced the church for the masses--Danto continues to question traditional notions of aesthetics and philosophy in regard to contemporary art. While touching on a variety of art-related topics, the focus of tehse lectures remains the deviation of contemporary art from the great narrative that has defined art throughout history. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A pale book about the pale of history in art
This is an essential book but definitely passé. It is hard to follow and it is hard to get clear ideas from it because it is extremely digressive. His concept of « the end of art » is based on the idea that « art » is a concept that appeared around 1400 and died around 1963. The very idea of this concept is absurd, and he knows it, because artistic practices existed before 1400 and still exist, after 1963. We have to get rid of this concept of « art » to go back to concrete artistic practices. Arts, but also philosophy, religion or science are representations of the world, of man, of the relations between the two. And these representations are contradictory, coming from a person who is itself contradictory in a world that is contradictory. In other words all human representations are a bunch of hierarchised end intertwined contradictions. Art is reduced by Danto to « painting ». This is in itself absurd because painting cannot be cut from all other artistic practices, from all other media that convey human representations. Art must be all inclusive. Art is part of a whole, of a multimedia vision, expression, representation. Danto does not take into account the great « moments » of history when a change in one technical field transformed the world of « art » (multimedia, multiart, multigenre artistic practices). First the invention of writing that enabled an easy conservation and transmission of written representations : philosophy, literature, religion, etc. Second the invention of the printing press that killed the art of illuminations, created the art of prints, etc, and spread the possibility for individuals to appropriate a work of art. Third the invention of theaters, hence of plays, operas,and the development of concerts. Note theaters were invented by the Greeks a long time ago and reappeared in the Western world only with the Renaissance. Arts shifted from churches (open to all) to the chateaus (open to a few) and then to the theaters (open to those who could afford it). This will ultimately lead to the museum and the teaching of arts (fine arts, music, literature, poetry, etc) in the schools. Danto never takes into account this institutionalization of art that shifted from a religious pedagogical representation (in the Middle Ages or in Africa and some other countries and continents) to institutions that had the mission to preserve and teach what artistic productions they considered as acceptable. Fourth photography and the cinema (plus the radio and television) : the emergence of a communicational society, and Danto seems to ignore that Marshall MacLuhan is THE master analyzer of this communicational society. Fifth the computer and the Internet that produce today the all-inclusive communicational society. Sixth the evolution of commercial practices in a consumer's society where packaging, advertising and all kinds of applied arts become the commercial necessity for corporations of any type to be competitive on the market. This might have led Danto to understanding that over the last five centuries a new society has emerged : an all-inclusive multi-you-name-it-you-have-it communicational society in which anything static is becoming dead. Hence we have to move, we are moving towards a dynamic performing artistic life in which all arts have to mix because they all mix in everyday life (music, visual and dramatic shows, films, and so on, visual environment and universal packaging). Art is then going back to what it was but on a new universal scale : mixed arts in public places like churches or market places, but without any limitation and without the obvious ideological pedagogical objective of the old days. Have we entered an era of universal artistic practices for everyone ? We may think so, and we have to study in details the obstacles and the limitations on that road, as well as the opposition between consuming and creating, between professional creation and amateur practices, between works that open up doors and have a future and works that are just following a trend - if not a fashion - or even going back to an old practice.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Stimulating
What does Arthur Danto mean by his title "After the End of Art"? He starts off his stimulating,if rather repetitive book, by discussing the German art historian Hans Belting's book The Image Before the End of Art.That book discusses the history of devotional images and icons before 1400 AD, and how they were produced primarily as icons, and not as art per se.It was only with the beginning of the renaissance that images became part of what could be described as an aesthetic ideology.In the opinion of Vasari and others art, in particular painting, can be seen as a progressive narrative which progresses towards mimesis, or imitation.After the invention of the photograph, accurate imitation became less of a value, and the progressive virtue of this narrative became one of "shape, surface, pigment, and the like as defining painting in its purity."The climax of this ideology came in the great, flawed, critic Clement Greenberg's championing of the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock.But as abstract expressionism exhausted itself in the early sixties, one could no longer define art as a progressive narrative.To use Danto's example, one could no longer produce a theory of art which would disqualify Andy Warhol's Brillo Box as a work of art.Therefore, everything could be a work of art."Art" or the old "artistic ideology" was dead.There is such a thing as art, says Danto, and there is an inherent essence in it, but it is vastly wider than the progressivedevelopment ideology that had previously existed.

At the same time, says Danto, one must take a historicist approach.Very simply, "Manyof the artworks (cave paintings, fetishes, altar pieces) were made in times and places when people had no concept of art to speak of, since they interpreted art in terms of their other beliefs."Danto goes on to discuss how much art of the present day would not have been considered art in the past. He provides some interesting aspects of this historical anomaly. For example there is the 19th century artist Anselm Feuerbach who painted a grand, academically precise picture, the sort that would soon by overtaken by impressionism, of a scene from Plato's Symposium.But he made a mistake in his meticulously accurate historical reconstruction.He includes a painting in the background which portrays Xenophon's variation on the same events.The problem is that the painting is not in the style of a fifth century BC Greek painting.Danto goes on to discuss the inevitable failure of the Vermeer forger Hans Van Meegeren, how Russell Connor combined Picasso's Les demoiselles d'Avignon and Ruben's Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, and finally ends up with "America's Most Wanted" the painting the Russian artists Komar and Melamid painted after conducting an elaborate opinion poll.

One should be aware of the many criticisms that have been made of this thesis.For example, there is the ironyof having a narrative which amounts to the end of narrative. And as Terry Eagleton sourly puts it "if art these days is a realm without rules, it is so, among other reasons, because there is not really that much at stake. If art mattered socially and politically, rather than just economically, it is unlikely that we would be quite so nonchalant about what qualified for the title."One should also read Perry Anderson's The Origins of Postmodernity for another perspective on the postmodernist moment. Still, this is an important book, and one should pay particular attention to Danto's chapter on the nature of monochrome art.There is also a nuanced chapter on museums and the conflict between them as purveyors of the beautiful and the artistic and the possibilities of anti-museum based community art.There are also discussions of Kant, Heidegger and particularly Hegel; amusingly enough, the last thing in the book is a caricature of Danto showing a Brillo Box to a disconcerted Hegel.

Art and Individuation
In this valuable book, Danto is not speaking of the death of art as one might speak of the death of God.When he speaks of 'the end of art', he is speaking about the end of art history as we know it and have thought of it; the way of viewing art history that we were taught in 'The History of Western Art 101'.

"To say that history is over is to say that there is no longer a pale of history for works of art to fall outside of.Everything is possible.Anything can be art.And, because the present situation is essentially unstructured, one can no longer fit a master narrative to it....It inaugurates the greatest era of freedom art has ever known. (p.112)"

The history of art up to this point has been a history of exclusion, legitimizing and highlighting only certain works which fall within the pale of this narrative.Danto's point is that there is no longer a pale of history.

But it is possible, I believe, to see something even larger in Danto's analysis, something that would be interesting to pursue by someone with a good grasp of history and culture.One might see further into his thesis and find that the history of art has been one of an evolution of individuation.Starting from the Egyptians, where art was an umbrella covering the entire culture, a culture in which the individual was of little value, to our present age in which art has moved to the opposite extreme, no longer controled by anything or anybody (except perhaps the art industry itself), heralding a new stage ( about 1964 by Danto's reakoning) in the idividuation of the planet.

If, as Teilhard de Chardin says, the impulse of evolution is toward greater consciousness and greater complexity, then what we are seeing at the present time is not something unstructured (as Danto posits), but rather, something of far greater structure, something much more complex than we have witnessed before.A stucture and complexity perhaps presently beyond our comprehension.(Of course, the conservative view of this will be that we are witnessing an encroaching chaos that will destroy civilization as we know it.)

From this new perspective, the present radical pluralism would be, rather than an unstructuring, a further step toward something of a far deeper order, an order we have not seen before, one which reflects an important moment in the individuation of humanity on this planet.Taking Danto's basic thesis, one might write a new history of art from the point of view of the evolution of individuation in art. But then this would be another master narrative and would undermine Danto's thesis.Or would it?For this is not a master narrative of art but of evolution itself as evidenced in art.

And who better to herald this advance than the artists! ... Read more

Isbn: 0691002991
Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Art criticism    4. Criticism    5. Historiography    6. History - General    7. Philosophy    8. Postmodernism    9. Art / History / General    10. Art and Architecture   

Technopoly : The Surrender of Culture to Technology
by NEIL POSTMAN
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Paperback (31 March, 1993)
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Editorial Review

Neil Postman is one of the most level-headed analysts of education, media, and technology, and in this book he spells out theincreasing dependence upon technology, numerical quantification, and misappropriation of "Scientism" to all human affairs. No simple technophobe, Postman argues insightfully and writes with a stylistic flair, profound sense of humor,and love of language increasingly rare in our hastily scribbled e-mail-saturated world. ... Read more

Reviews (47)

He's well versed and funny, but I wouldn't read this.
Postman's Technopoly has some very interesting, well written ideas, but the problem with Postman is his refusal to recognize the advantages of technology, he's simply too one sided to be useful. When reading Postman, you get this feeling that he really wants everyone to go back to the Stone Age. It also rubbed me the wrong way when he talks about how technology has unexpected consequences, and then makes a huge deal about how we should restrict technology because of that reason. The flaw in this peticular argument is that everything has unexpected consequences. It's like saying you shouldn't leave your house because you might die in a car accident as an unexpected consequence.

In conclusion, he has some interesting ideas, but this guy isn't to be taken too seriously. His logic is questionable in some places and he's way too one sided to be useful.

Utter Rubbish

This book is utter rubbish.It is carelessy written, its arguments are logically shaky to say the least, and it contains glaring factual errors.

I was all the more disappointed because I had previously read Postman's excellent book "Amusing Ourselves to Death".Furthermore, Postman's topic in "Technopoly" is a serious one and deserves a serious and lucid treatment which, alas, it does not get here.

As I read this book I became more and more exasperated by its shoddy thinking, but the "last straw" which made me bang the book shut in disgust was Postman's statement that a Turing Machine is a computer which can pass a Turing Test.

An essential tool for understanding change
I read this book years ago, but its insights continually help me understand the changes taking place around us. Postman's essential point is that technological change-and he's talking about all such change, from the Stone Age on-inevitably brings about changes in culture. These changes are both profound and subtle, so Postman offers a wealth of examples from different eras. The bigger the technological change, the more dramatic the cultural shift is. He's not, repeat not, against technological development per se. He simply asks that you look at it and try to see the changes as they happen in the hope of mitigating the inevitable downsides. New technologies involve what he called "Faustian bargains"-they give you something, but they also take something away. I have to say that I was very taken aback by the number of people here who really didn't seem to address or, frankly, understand, the main point of this fine and valuable book. ... Read more

Isbn: 0679745408
Subjects:  1. Social aspects    2. Sociology    3. Sociology - Social Theory    4. Technology    5. Social Science / General   

Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book: A Primer for Adults Only
by Shel Silverstein
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Paperback (09 September, 1985)
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Reviews (51)

this is a RIOT!
This book is really really funny! Buy it. Buy a couple. Do NOT let the kids NEAR it!

Primer for Adults?
For starters, I think this book is funny and clever, and I was planning to pick up a copy for a buddy who just had a baby...However, I'm bummed about the "Primer for Adults" part. The book is even funnier as a mock kid's book and the "Primer..." line spoils the fun and gives away the joke before you even open the book.

With the original title, the book is clearly 5 stars.

Wickedly funny
You surely don't need me to introduce you to the late Sheldon Allan Silverstein. Even if you're not aware that he wrote the lyrics to e.g. 'A Boy Named Sue' and 'Cover of the Rolling Stone', you've undoubtedly at least heard of _The Giving Tree_ and _Where the Sidewalk Ends_ and _A Light in the Attic_ and _Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back_ and _The Missing Piece_ and . . .

You probably don't need me to introduce you to this wickedly hilarious and subversive book, either. It's one of the most side-splitting things Silverstein ever wrote, and if you know who he was, you've probably heard of it. It's brilliant, and it's guaranteed -- maybe even deliberately designed -- to annoy the sort of person who says 'I have a sense of humor, but'. (Which always, _always_ translates to 'I don't have a sense of humor'. You can take that to the bank.)

But if you don't yet have your own copy, you might be put off by the fact that the new edition's title says it's for 'adults only'. That's misleading; in fact it's almost exactly the reverse of the truth. There's no 'adult material' in the entire book -- just some stuff that might be a little risky for kids too young or unsophisticated to understand the jokes.

But the jokes are most definitely for kids -- even really tall, forty-plus ones like me. Do you know any 'adults' who would be amused at the sly hint that you should give Daddy a haircut while he naps because, having spent all his money on toys and oatmeal for _you_, 'poor poor poor poor Daddy' can't afford to go to a barber? Or who would laugh uncontrollably at the suggestion that if you tell the kidnapper your daddy has a lot of money, maybe he'll let you ride in his really keen fast car?

'Adults only', my tochis. Kids understand this humor _way_ better than 'adults' do; any grownup who laughs at it is really a great big kid. I'm giving a copy to one of my daughters for her birthday, with strict instructions not to show it to my wife. [Later note: Her reaction when I gave it to her was to laugh herself silly on every page and say repeatedly, 'That is _so_ wrong.']

Kids are nowhere near as touchy about this dark-humored stuff as 'adults' are. When I was a toddler, my parents used to sing me a cute little song about chopping me up for kindling wood; I don't think I suffered any emotional scars. And most 'nursery rhymes' -- not to mention fairy tales -- are bloodthirsty horror stories. When most kids find out what 'Ring Around the Rosey' is _really_ about, they think it's _cool_.

Your own kids' chances of keeping their sense of humor into 'adulthood' increase immeasurably if they have a copy of this book to help them. Give it to them at once. No loving parent subjects a child to an unnecessary risk of maturity. ... Read more

Isbn: 067121148X
Sales Rank: 6749
Subjects:  1. American wit and humor    2. Education    3. General    4. Humor    5. Teaching Methods & Materials - General    6. Humor / General   

The Dark Is Rising Sequence: Silver on the Tree/The Grey King/Greenwitch/The Dark Is Rising/Over Sea, Under Stone
by Susan Cooper
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Paperback (01 October, 1993)
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Editorial Review

Joined by destiny, the lives of the Drew children, Will Stanton, and aboy named Bran weave together in an exquisite, sometimes terrifying tapestry ofmystery and quests. In the five-title series of novels known as The Dark IsRising Sequence, these children pit the power of good against the evil forces ofDark in a timeless and dangerous battle that includes crystal swords, goldengrails, and a silver-eyed dog that can see the wind. Susan Cooper's highlyacclaimed fantasy novels, steeped in Celtic and Welsh legends, have won numerousawards, including the Newbery Medal and the Newbery Honor. Now all fivepaperback volumes have been collected in one smart boxed set. These classicfantasies, complex and multifaceted, should not be missed, by child or adult.The set includes Over Sea, UnderStone, The Dark IsRising, Greenwitch, The Grey King, and Silver on the Tree. (Ages 9 andolder) --Emilie Coulter ... Read more

Features

• Box set

Reviews (178)

My favorite books as a young adult
I first read these books when I was eleven (these are not recommended for teens as another reviewer suggests but for young adults, a high-level ten-year-old reader could read them.)I read them right before Christmas and I still pull them out once a year when the weather gets cold - they are a fast read and really get me into a nostalgic mood.Cooper's writing really absorbs you into the story and it's hard to put these books down once you get started - it's a good idea to have the whole set on hand.

Other reviewers have expressed disappointment in the ending of Silver on the Tree.Why didn't Cooper just destroy all the Dark and have everyone live happily ever after?Because the battle between Light and Dark never ends and everyone is responsible for fighting that battle. She expresses this view many times throughout the books and the end just stresses this point.The children forget what has happened on the supernatural level and I don't think this is a detriment to the ending - it would be harder for them to function in the mundane world if they remembered everything.As to whether they kept the growth and wisdom they gained throughout their journey, I always imagined they did.The fact that they remember each other afterward means they couldn't have lost everything they experienced.Even though this story has a lot of mythology and fantasy in it, it is definitely a story about life in general and life isn't always "safe" with a sunshiney happy end for all.

I took comfort in these books as a child because the children act so naturally - they get angry, they feel grief, fear, and envy - but they act bravely in the face of life's obstacles.They make mistakes but they also use their hearts and heads.They are at once very human and very admirable.The adults in the book are full of wisdom and humor and their characters are also well-drawn.Cooper's descriptions are full of warmth and affection, she creates a real sense of closeness between the varied personalities.

The word that comes to my mind in describing these books is "noble".The story line is universal and treated with gravity but not a heavy hand.The characters are "good" in the sense that they are human but strive to do the best they possibly can for the benefit of all. There are so many values to be learned from this book, and they are easy to swallow. It's hard to write a book with such a slant without it becoming preachy, but Cooper pulls it off perfectly with a great sense of humor and loving kindness.I recommend these books to every parent of a young reader - every ten-year-old in my family will receive a set from me for Christmas.

A deep and rewarding literary treasure
I first read The Dark Is Rising sequence as a grammar school student many years ago, having discovered it in our school library and checked it out essentially on a whim. I still remember to this day how I ended up spending an entire midwinter's weekend reading voraciously, forgetting about eating, about sleep, about going outside to play in the snow with friends.

I read the series again the following year, and have done so every year since, at least once a year. I've long since grown into a middle-aged academic, but I continue to keep with tradition and read them regularly.

Cooper's writing is both haunting and lyrical without being difficult, her characters and setpieces deeply moving and compelling without seeming overwrought. Cooper has created a world of High Magic, not of wand tricks and groaning, toothy monsters and self-absorbed wizards with pointy hats and potions, but a world that soon becomes a metaphor for the epic, humanistic moral foundation of all of human culture, a broad perspective that few authors ever manage to grasp, let alone are able to convey. Magic in the cooper world is sublime, forceful, and ageless, never verbose or quaint. These are tales of the magic of mother nature, the magic of family ties, the magic of history, of our collective memories and links to the past, and the magic of the living present, that we all cling to only for a moment.

Though the writing is simple and accessible, the themes are those that make all great literature great. The Dark is Rising sequence is rewarding in the same way that McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" or Proust's "A Remembrance of Things Past" are rewarding, with the added benefit that The Dark is Rising can be shared with a younger audience coming to these notions and sensibilities for the first time.

A must-read, for those of any age.

Another Childhood Classic
First of all, I think that comparing these books to Harry Potter is unfair - let's not forget who came first here.
Cooper creates an amazingly rich and well-textured series of worlds within worlds here. The balance between believable, sympathetic characters and the overarching symphonic structure that comes from high myth is extraordinarily well handled.
The settings are exquisite, more than enough to make me want to jump on the next train to Wales or Cornwall. The characters are interesting, and Cooper does an excellent job of showing all the contrasts of good and evil, displaying them in black and white and every shade of grey.
The series borrows extensively from the mythical traditions of Cornwall and Wales, so in some senses there are no surprises, but Cooper uses these common elements of myth to create a beautiful and compelling story, in much the same way as Tolkien of Lewis, and even George Lucas, have done.
The Dark is Rising is my personal favourite of the sequence, a fairly classic quest/adventure tale, and one that works well as a stand alone, if you only read one of these books, this should be the one. Will Stanton is also a fascinating character, and quite literally comes into his own.
Over Sea Under Stone is the first book in the series, and in many ways it is distinct from the other books. At first Cooper had no intention of writing a sequel, and the mythic elements are not quite so strong in this book. Don't disregard it entirely, however, it still makes a good starting point for the series.
Greenwitch is an interesting interlude in the series, stressing the importance of human involvement in the fight between the Dark and the Light. Here we also begin to see that there is not only the magic and the power of Dark and Light, but also something unknowable, something Wild. This book also allows for the development of female characters in the series.
The Grey King sees Will heading off on another quest, but this time we start to see the more overarching elements of the series fall into place, and we really get a sense that we are heading towards a final showdown. This book is exciting and more complex than some of the earlier ones, but I don't want to give too much away.
Silver on the Tree is the last part of the sequence, and does seem to wrap things up quite neatly. The final chapter of the book has one of those little morality sort of sermons in it, which some people seem to find irritating but I personally found it to be very touching and moving, enough so that I have it stuck on my wall. The book is full of foreboding and seems to rush towards its climax, perhaps a little too fast. It may seem that Cooper has tied up all the loose ends, but with a little further thought any reader can imagine that life for her characters is not going to be easy from now on.

I can't really recommend these books highly enough, so just read them! ... Read more

Isbn: 0020425651
Subjects:  1. Children's 9-12    2. Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9)    3. Fantasy    4. Fiction    5. General    6. Great Britain    7. Juvenile Fiction    8. Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic   

Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (09 September, 1993)
list price: $22.00 -- our price: $22.00
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Editorial Review

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman ... Read more

Reviews (1064)

Put this and 1984 together and you have a clear picture
of the future (and, boy, is it *not* pretty!).

For all Americans' talk about how they don't trust anything they see on TV, they sure do parrot what they see as fact time and again: They talk about characters in soap operas as if they were real family members (like the "families" of the parlor walls in the book), they trust what Fox News throws out as fact every day of the week (shades of the book, again), and things have improved so much in this country that years ago there had to be an entire cable channel created to accomodate the insatiable appetite for 24/7 celebrity news.

Oh, how Ray Bradbury was a visionary way back in 1953.

Upon television's advent in the late-1940's and increasing popularity in the 1950's, it was often referred to as the "boob tube" and that would be a vast understatement nowadays. I think it's pretty much safe to say that the tube's executives have run out of fresh, original ideas, hence the bombardment of mindless "reality" TV shows (where everything is, surprise, scripted). Americans also think it's perfectly fine for these televangelists to scream about what a bunch of losers we are but if we fork up thousands of dollars to them, we'll be saved. (That's gotten so out of control that there are a few cable channels devoted to that junk.)

And now we're back to mindless soap operas such as "Desperate Housewives." The cycle of mindlessness just goes on and on.

I read the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451 and at the very end of the book, someone conducted an interview with Bradbury who said that there are no forms of censorship in this country because, "We have too many groups for censorship to be possible."

The reality is the exact opposite.

The majority of these "groups" actively encourage censorship when what's being said either affects their agenda or when they just plain don't like the statement. Too bad the interviewer didn't ask Ray to explain the recent record/cd crushings (today's answer to burning) of Sinead O'Connor or the Dixie Chicks (these happening in the past 15 years alone), when they made statements that certain groups didn't like.

The worst example of censorship is happening everyday right in front of our faces with the Iraq "war," where the puppets in the US media say whatever the Pentagon instructs them to say. Want to get the truth about what's going on over there? You'll have to tune in to international news outlets.But do that before Bush appoints his right-wing friends on the board of PBS to stop the BBC World News and other international news from being shown over here.

Finally, there are a few things that were written way back in 1953 but which have turned into proof-positive fact in America 2005. Coming from the character of Fire Chief Beatty:

Page 60: "The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle." Translation: A child is to be incorporated into a mass consumer from birth, not because the country's power structure want your children to be smarter.

Page 61: "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a *sense* of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Hey, Beatty, you forgot political science.

Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a utopian novel much like Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, or Rand's Anthem.It is a startling depiction of a life where books are taboo, and reading is illegal.Instead, the people are dumbed down with constant noise and emotion devoid of purposeful thought.This novel is enthralling.It is vivid and potent because the telltale signs of demise are familar in our everyday lives: the importance that people are placing in TV (i.e. entertainment), the growing violence in children, the dumbing down of literature, and the impersonal relationships between family members.Bradbury has reminded me how much I love literature and impressed me to guard the gift of the written word.

My Favorite Amazon.com Pick this year!
This book is extremely entertaining, I couldn't put it down. It basically starts with a man in a dystopian society where the firemen don't put out fires, they start them. They are ordered to do this by a tyrannical ruler who does not want the masses to read, so he may control the country without anybody starting a revolt against him. This fireman is happy with his job, he loves to watch the flames burn the books, he knows nothing better. His life is fine until one day he meets the young woman and she makes him understand what life is all about. The adventure starts when he goes against mainstream society and instead of burning the books he reads them. I will not ruin the rest of the book for you but will only say that he faces many difficulties as a result of his choice to challenge the established order. READ THIS BOOK!

Also recommended: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez (Complete Restored Edition) ... Read more

Isbn: 067187036X
Subjects:  1. Book burning    2. Bradbury, Ray - Prose & Criticism    3. Censorship    4. Classics    5. Fiction    6. Literature - Classics / Criticism    7. Science Fiction    8. Science Fiction - General    9. State-sponsored terrorism    10. Totalitarianism    11. Fiction / Science Fiction / General   

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
by Seamus Heaney
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (February, 2001)
list price: $13.95 -- our price: $11.16
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Editorial Review

In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts withinstant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death. The Anglo-Saxon epic, composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, has long been accorded its place in literature, though its hold on our imagination has been less secure. In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, thanks to the Irish poet's marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun.

There are endless pleasures in Heaney's analysis, but readers should head straight for the poem and then to the prose. (Some will also take advantage of the dual-language edition and do some linguistic teasing out of their own.) The epic's outlines seem simple, depictingBeowulf's three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art: Grendel, Grendel's mother (who's in a suitably monstrous snit after her son's dismemberment and death), and then, 50 years later, a gold-hoarding dragon "threatening the night sky / with streamers of fire." Along the way, however, we are treated to flashes back and forward and to a world view in which a thane's allegiance to his lord and to God is absolute. In the first fight, the man from Geatland must travel to Denmark to take on the "shadow-stalker" terrorizing Heorot Hall. Here Beowulf and company set sail:

Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
sand churned in the surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird...

After a fearsome night victory over march-haunting and heath-marauding Grendel, our high-born hero is suitably strewn with gold and praise, the queen declaring: "Your sway is wide as the wind's home, / as the sea around cliffs." Few will disagree. And remember, Beowulf has two more trials to undergo.

Heaney claims that when he began his translation it all too often seemed "like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer." The poem's challenges are many: its strong four-stress line, heavy alliteration, and profusion of kennings could have been daunting. (The sea is, among other things, "the whale-road," the sun is "the world's candle," and Beowulf's third opponent is a "vile sky-winger." When it came to over-the-top compound phrases, the temptations must have been endless, but for the most part, Heaney smiles, he "called a sword a sword.") Yet there are few signs of effort in the poet's Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epic's mix of fate and fear. After Grendel's misbegotten mother comes to call, the king's evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but it's a gift to the reader:

A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.

In Heaney's hands, the poem's apparent archaisms and Anglo-Saxon attitudes--its formality, blood-feuds, and insane courage--turn the art of an ancient island nation into world literature. --Kerry Fried ... Read more

Reviews (196)

Into the Mythic: The Archetypal Hero
Heaney has reached through the mists of history to produce a Beowulf that is at once lyrical, majestic and elegaic. I gave up on this poem in high school, but upon discovering that it was one of Tolkien's favorites I gave it another try. Fans of the Hobbit will see the ancestry of that novel's dragon in this poem.
The three agons that Beowulf faces - Grendel, Grendel's mother, and finally the dragon - are stages in the development of an archetypal hero - the labors of a Nordic Hercules. Leadership/heroism in this world is won through physical courage which equates with moral courage. This poem is perhaps best read today as an extraordinary piece of genre (either fantasy or science fiction), with its dramatic under water fights, its grim monsters and ancient landscapes serving to stir the reader's imagination.
Many critics have commented on the uneasy play between the pagan and Christian elements in this work, and while lip service is constantly given to the Christian God, I find the pagan striving for an earthly glory that will live beyond the grave to be the most forceful aspect on the poet's/and Beowulf's agenda.
This poem got better for me as it advanced. And while the characters for the most part lack any convincing interiority, towards the end there arises a poignancy that Heaney's genius elevates to an almost Lear-like lament. Here is King Hrethel lamenting the death of his son: "It was like the misery felt by an old man/who has lived to see his son's body/swing on the gallows. He begins to keen/ and weep for his boy, watching the raven/ gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help./ The wisdom of age is worthless to him./ Morning after morning, he wakes to remember/ that his child is gone; he has no interest/ in living on until another heir/ is born in the hall, now that his first-born/ has entered death's dominion forever./He gazes sorrowfully at his son's dwelling,/ the banquet hall bereft of all delight,/ the windswept hearthstone; the horsemen are sleeping,/ the warriors under ground; what was is no more./ No tunes from the harp, no cheer raised in the yard./ Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed/ and sings a lament; everything seems too large, the steadings and the fields."
This kind of poetry is almost Shakespearean before Shakespeare; a blueprint of the triumphs of Anglo-Saxon literature to come. Read it and mourn the loss of a heroic culture.

The New Translation Blew me Away!
This is a true literary achievement.Heaney's prose and
the brilliant translation are remarkable.I especially
liked the norse text side by side with the English.

The only thing that kind of surprised me was how Tolkien-esque
the final story sounded.I don't know who was drawing
inspiration from who here.:)

Beowulf should be heard, not seen
I have been laboriously teaching myself Anglo-Saxon in order to read the "real" Beowulf.I also have a tape of parts of Beowulf read aloud in Anglo-Saxon.It was with some trepidation that I ordered the CDS.Heaney has kept much of the masculine sound of Beowulf -- the alliteration, the beats, the broken measures.I am happy.
One criticism:there are no "tracks" so that if you begin listening in the car as I did, when you start to drive home, you're back at the beginning.I would have liked a way to return to the approximate place where I left off listening.
If you're still struggling with Anglo-Saxon, this is a great way to experience the sounds of Beowulf. ... Read more

Isbn: 0393320979
Subjects:  1. Ancient, Classical & Medieval    2. English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh    3. Epic poetry, English (Old)    4. Heroes    5. Monsters    6. Poetry    7. Scandinavia    8. Works by individual poets: classical, early & medieval    9. Works by individual poets: from c 1900 -   

Elektra: Assassin
by Frank Miller
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (31 October, 2000)
list price: $24.95
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Reviews (21)

Before you see the Jan 05 movie, read this.
Elektra Natchios, daughter of Greek Diplomat Hugo Natchios and his wife, Christina, has been a gymnast, martial artist, ninja, and assassin. Though she was a black belt by age twelve, trained in the lethal arts of Ninjitsu, and was renowned as the world's deadliest assassin, she is dead. Or is she really?

A strange woman has washed ashore off the coast of South America. No one can identify her. She does not have any finger prints to even help. When people, high in politics, begin dying it is clear that Elektra did NOT die after all. She has returned. But is she sane?

***** The story begins while Elektra is still in her mother's womb. Once born, the story is told mainly from Elektra's point-of-view. None of it makes much sense to the reader. Soon Special Agent John Garrett helps Elektra narrate. The reader then sees things happen from the point-of-view of Elektra and Garrett. Things still make little sense to the reader; however, a pattern begins to form and the reader can now piece a few things together.

Half way through this comic novel (over sized paperback), more characters begin to help narrate. Yet only one of the newer characters play a major role in clearing the air for the reader. That character is Agent Chastity McBryde, who seems almost as insane as Elektra. By the ending, the reader fully understands it all and is left utterly speechless!

If you plan to watch the January 2005 movie release "Elektra", read this first! Elektra is NOT a "super hero" and the movie does not try to portray her as one. Quit thinking "Dare Devil", "Spider Man", and/or "Batman". Elektra is totally unique. Even after reading this book I cannot say for sure whether Elektra is really sane! If you miss out on reading this comic novel, you miss out on most of who Elektra really is. *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Before you see the Jan 05 movie, read this.
Elektra Natchios, daughter of Greek Diplomat Hugo Natchios and his wife, Christina, has been a gymnast, martial artist, ninja, and assassin. Though she was a black belt by age twelve, trained in the lethal arts of Ninjitsu, and was renowned as the world's deadliest assassin, she is dead. Or is she really?

A strange woman has washed ashore off the coast of South America. No one can identify her. She does not have any finger prints to even help. When people, high in politics, begin dying it is clear that Elektra did NOT die after all. She has returned. But is she sane?

***** The story begins while Elektra is still in her mother's womb. Once born, the story is told mainly from Elektra's point-of-view. None of it makes much sense to the reader. Soon Special Agent John Garrett helps Elektra narrate. The reader then sees things happen from the point-of-view of Elektra and Garrett. Things still make little sense to the reader; however, a pattern begins to form and the reader can now piece a few things together.

Half way through this comic novel (over sized paperback), more characters begin to help narrate. Yet only one of the newer characters play a major role in clearing the air for the reader. That character is Agent Chastity McBryde, who seems almost as insane as Elektra. By the ending, the reader fully understands it all and is left utterly speechless!

If you plan to watch the January 2005 movie release "Elektra", read this first! Elektra is NOT a "super hero" and the movie does not try to portray her as one. Quit thinking "Dare Devil", "Spider Man", and/or "Batman". Elektra is totally unique. Even after reading this book I cannot say for sure whether Elektra is really sane! If you miss out on reading this comic novel, you miss out on most of who Elektra really is. *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

Full of Too Much Wind...Like The Air!
You won't find a much bigger fan of Miller anywhere as his Daredevil work got me into comics in the early 80's and has kept me in comics for the past two decades. But frankly (sorry, couldn't resist), there are aspects of this large and sprawling story that are simply a mess. Sure it is innovative and its groundbreaking storytelling style is STILL being copied in current Daredevil comics today (thanks mostly to David Mack). Sure it turned a lot of heads in its day as nobody had ever seen anything quite like it. Sure it was courageous to take Elektra totally out of Daredevil's world and establish her as the baddest assassin on the block, especially in a no-holds barred mature reader format. Sure it was chock full of social commentary, psychological insight, sexual tension and political satire. BUT...it all adds up to simply a decent rather than a great read.
There are just too many things that bog this story down. The worst has to be that this was originally done in an eight issue format so there are a number of recap pages in this story telling you things you have already read. What's worse, this is usually done as military type briefings or reports on pages with tons of tiny panels that you have already seen with copious amounts of text telling you things you already know. It was annoying when I read it in the comic format back in '86 and it really brings the story to a grinding halt in this collected volume. The art by Sienkiewicz is inconsistent (which was a planned feature of the story) going from beautiful and detailed to crude child's scribbling at times which is not only disconcerting, but it seemed to get much more arbitrary as the story went on. In the early chapters, this choppy art style is very well done and moves the story along nicely, but in the latter portion of the book, it seems to have no other purpose than to follow the art style that had already been established. Finally, while the first part of the tale is very verbose with lots of intricate panel work, the end of the story has very little text with huge splash pages of very simple art. While some may argue that this was to depict the doom of the atomic apocalypse that the story was moving towards, if you really stop and look at it, it appears that Frank and Bill were trying to fill pages to finish out their eight issues of comic.
While I have many gripes with this work and place it very low on my list of Frank Miller output, I cannot deny that the core story and concepts are very good. There are amazing sequences in this work that are some of the best comics I have ever read. When Garrett is sitting at his computer researching Elektra's history and suddenly realizes she may be in the room...man, I have never seen anything like that simple sequence. My big problem is that this intricate little story is burdened and complicated by too much extra material that chops up the flow. If this were edited down to its basic story, keeping the innovation, but cutting out all of the extraneous stuff, I would certainly be writing a different review. ... Read more

Isbn: 0871353091
Sales Rank: 271056
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - Fantasy    3. General    4. Graphic Novels - General   

House of Leaves : A novel
by Mark Z. Danielewski
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (07 March, 2000)
list price: $19.95 -- our price: $13.57
(price subject to change: see help)
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Editorial Review

Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of afilm, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised byStephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been somethinglike House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel has a lotgoing on: notably the discovery of a pseudoacademic monograph called The Navidson Record, written by a blind man named Zampanò, about a nonexistent documentary film--which itself is about a photojournalistwho finds a house that has supernatural, surreal qualities. (The inner dimensions, for example, are measurably larger than the outer ones.) In addition to this Russian-doll layering of narrators, Danielewski packsin poems, scientific lists, collages, Polaroids, appendices of fake correspondence and "various quotes," single lines of prose placed anywhich way on the page, crossed-out passages, and so on.

Now that we've reached the post-postmodern era, presumably there'snobody left who needs liberating from the strictures of conventional fiction.So apart from its narrative high jinks, what does House of Leaveshave to offer? According to Johnny Truant, the tattoo-shop apprentice who discovers Zampanò's work, once you read The Navidson Record,

For some reason, you will no longer be the person youbelieved you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it'salways been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark likea room. But you won't understand why or how.

We'll have to take his word for it, however. As it's presented here,the description of the spooky film isn't continuous enough to have muchscare power. Instead, we're pulled back into Johnny Truant's world throughhis footnotes, which he uses to discharge everything in his head, includingthe discovery of the manuscript, his encounters with people who knewZampanò, and his own battles with drugs, sex, ennui, and a vague evilforce. If The Navidson Record is a mad professor lecturing on thesupernatural with rational-seeming conviction, Truant's footnotes are the manicstudent in the back of the auditorium, wigged out and furiously scribbling whoa-dude notes about life.

Despite his flaws, Truant is an appealingly earnest amateur editor--finding translators, tracking down sources, pointing out incongruities.Danielewski takes an academic's--or ex-academic's--glee in footnotes (thesimilarity to David Foster Wallace is almost too obvious to mention), as well asother bogus ivory-tower trappings such as interviews with celebrity scholarslike Camille Paglia and Harold Bloom. And he stuffs highbrow and pop-culture references (and parodies) into the novel with the enthusiasm of an anarchist filling a pipe bomb with bits of junk metal. House of Leavesmay not be theprettiest or most coherent collection, but if you're trying to blow stuff up,who cares? --John Ponyicsanyi ... Read more

Reviews (446)

extraordinary
Warning: this is not light reading. If you're looking for fluff or mass-market action-suspense, this is not it. If you have the time to immerse yourself in a book, prepare to be entranced.
There aren't enough words to describe how utterly amazing this book is. Ambitious, creative, unlike anything you have read or are likely to read in the future. The act of reading the book forces you to get involved in the story, the words are in motion. Words tumbling on each other, squeezed into a little square on the page, flipped upside down or visible backwards on the other side of the page... every bit of the design of this book is done for a reason. You can feel the claustrophobia or the wide open space, you can feel the confusion and desperation of the characters in the book because you are feeling the same thing just reading it.
Not only is the story good, but the book itself is truly inspiring, one that I am proud to have in my collection.

I hXXX no feelings [ ]out this bo[ ] useless
I woke up today after having finished this book last night and thought 1 However, upon more serious reflectionFNORD, and remembering what my high school Latin tutor used to say (Semper ubi sub ubi.2), I find myself more able to articuXXXXXXXwhXXXXXhatedXXXXXunreadXableXXXXetentiousXXXX4

1. Unfortunately hydrochloric acid was spewed upon the review when the reviewer regurgitated and the text here is illegible - Ed.

2. What the heck man? I don't know Latin. Why do these reviewer types always have to use foreign languages to express themselves?3

3. While Mr. Tardy, the young man who found this review in a shoebox filled with Aquavit and phlegm, only has a high-school education, I am quite familiar with Latin. This phrase, a common joke among high school Latin students, translates as "always where under where" - Ed.

4. The text of the review simply vanishes at this point, like your money and time will if you read this book.

Sometimes boring, sometimes terrifying
This book will put you through 10 pages of pointless nothing (or maybe it is to set the mood) and then hit you with one page that will make you sleep with the lights on. I'm sure the other reviews have pointed out how unusual and sometimes anoying the writing style is, writing upside down and in mirror font and stuff.It's all true, and the writer seemed to not really know where the heck the book was supposed to be going toward the end. But the basic storyline in this book is absolutely awsome, and the parts that are scary are probably the scariest I've ever read. Don't bother if you don't like wierd stuff though. ... Read more

Isbn: 0375703764
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - Horror    3. General    4. Horror - General    5. Literary    6. Fiction / Literary   

To Kill a Mockingbird : The 40th Anniversary Edition of the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel
by Harper Lee
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (01 December, 1999)
list price: $19.95 -- our price: $13.57
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Editorial Review

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Reviews (1401)

One of the Best books I've ever read
This book is ablsolutley outstanding. Using the point of view of a child it gives us an innocent standpoint through which to observe the effects of racisim. This book brings into light the good and bad in all of us and teaches us that the worst can be brought out in even the best people when society's views are as cruel and hateful as they were in this period of time. Since reading this book I don't think I've looked at things the same, in all honesty after reading this, no one truly can.

A Must-Have Classic! Read it at least once!
To Kill A Mockingbird is a powerful masterpiece at it's best. This classic tale was brought to life by Harper Lee in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and later became an Academy Award-Winning film. There are over 15 million copies in print with translations in forty languages. The story takes place in Alabama during the Depression, in the early 1900's. It is about a young girl, her brother Jem, and their lawyer father Atticus, who must teach his children the value of every human being, regardless of race. It is a life lesson that is taught not only to the characters in this book, but the reader as well. Harper Lee does a marvelous job allowing the reader to actually live the hatred, love, suspense and determination of this family to stand up for what they believe in. It is a test for them because in the days that To Kill A Mockingbird takes place, race issues were just coming to life, and the true lesson was yet to be learned.

The storyline is about a young girl, Scout, who is at the age of curiosity. She wants to learn about everything, and looks to her older brother Jem to help her learn the ways of life. It is about a father that is forced to raise his children alone, after losing his wife. Through many hardships, this family learns about respect, love, personal growth, and most importantly they learn life lessons. "You never really know a man till you walk a mile in his shoes", says Atticus, who is defending an innocent black man, who is being charged for the rape of a white girl. In the end the real truth comes out, to no avail. The story is also about friendship, found in Dill, a boy that brings excitement to these two young characters. The three quickly become friends and they explore, play, learn, and love one another.

The story is based on Scout Finch, Jem, Dill, Atticus Finch, and many others who bring this book to life. The Radleys, who live next door to the Finches, are a strange and curious family to say the least. Through determination, they all quickly learn the Radleys aren't as strange as they would appear. There is Aunt Alexandra, who is very much against everything that Atticus believes in, she moves in with her brother and tempers flare. The neighbor, Miss Stephanie Crawford nurtures the children and aides them in ways only a woman can, since they lack a mother figure. Culprina, the black housemaid who has been helping Atticus raise his children, also guides this family into a world of understanding. Through all the characters, you find a perfect puzzle, that without just one piece, it would crumble.

The meaning of this book really touches on all the problems that are still very real in this world today. It is a true life lesson for the reader, young and old alike. I don't believe anyone can read this classic and not walk away with something truly special....Love For All.

Also recommended: THE LOSERS' CLUB: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez

about mockingbird
i had to read this book in class and i thought it was really good book exceptt he authour in my opinion put in a lot of unneccasry detail that didnt really add to the story, however it had a really good plot and there were many parts that had a lot of suspense and i just couldnt help reading ahead of everyone in my class! ... Read more

Isbn: 0060194995
Subjects:  1. Classics    2. Fiction    3. Lee, Harper - Prose & Criticism    4. Legal    5. Literature - Classics / Criticism    6. Literature: Classics    7. Fiction / Classics   

Bach: Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites
Average Customer Review:
Audio CD (25 October, 1990)
list price: $31.98 -- our price: $28.99
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Editorial Review

This is Yo-Yo Ma's first recording of Bach's Cello Suites, digitally recorded in 1983 and first issued on LP. He has since made a second recording of the Suites in 1998, taken from the soundtrack of a video series, so it's interesting that the earlier set remains available. If you've been lucky enough to hear Ma play this music in concert, you'll realize that neither set represents his Bach at its best. This rendition is generally quite straightforward, beautifully played and musically sound but sometimes not very emotional. The second set is more expressive but frequently seems self-conscious. Either of these recordings is a worthy representation of Bach's superb music, but neither attains the mature eloquence of Starker's final recording, a level Ma will probably reach himself in his third recording. --Leslie Gerber ... Read more

Reviews (29)

sweet
Pablo Casals was the first to regard these suites as concert pieces rather than mere technical exercises, or so we are told. Rostropovich approaches them with great reverence, but perhaps too much reverence. Depending on your mood or musical philosophy you may well prefer the happy medium we have here.

(I think of the guitar: the rich vibrato of Andre Segovia and Christopher Parkening in contradistinction to the dryer sound preferred by many modern guitarists, and someone such as Ron Rendek, say, falls more or less in-between.)

Sets a new performance standard
While I have heard only one other piece played in a different style for whom I can compare to, I must admit that I believe this is an almost perfect rendition of all Bach's Cello Suites. I wonder where any criticism can come in, except to say that maybe his breathing is annoying. But who can stop their breath? Especially when you need to put so much heart into this beautiful thing... Perhaps it's disappointing to note that these musical melodies will activate not just your pleasure centers, but also the faces you take when you think. This will change a dinner's mood to philosophical and otherwise. You'll be forced--that's the key ingredient to good music--to pay attention. You can't walk around, you must sit, and, listen.

There is no other way to say this: the performance is flawless. It has no style. He has become a perfect melody of nothing, allowing the full style of Bach himself to come through, throwing away his ego's tendency to improvise. Noting that the pieces were meant to be played in full, these are the only cello recordings I believe that can be viewed, heard, smelt, felt, and understood through the whole recording. Other artists playing these works manage to gather up large emotional swells within us, but only for the beginning five minutes or so. Or so the first minute shows us, until we get bored and stop the music. These are pure rhythm-meditations, designed to make us think. Not for relaxation, but for peace.

Exquisite!
A lot could be written about this recording. Let me just say that this is everything music should be: profoundly moving, simultaneously cerebral and visceral, and timeless. With out a doubt, Bach is pure genius and Ma does these compositions justice. ... Read more

Asin: B0000025QM
Subjects:  1. Chamber    2. Chamber Music & Recitals    3. Classical   

Army of Darkness
Director: Sam Raimi
Average Customer Review:
DVD (02 September, 2003)
list price: $14.98 -- our price: $11.98
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Editorial Review

A movie that only true horror buffs could love, Army of Darkness is officially part 3 in the wild and wacky Evil Dead trilogy masterminded by the perversely inventive director Sam Raimi, who would later serve as executive producer of the popular syndicated TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Raimi's favorite actor, Bruce Campbell, returns as Ash (hero of the first two Evil Dead flicks), a hardware-store clerk who is magically transported--along with his beat-up Oldsmobile and a chainsaw attachment for his severed left forearm--to the brutal battlefields of the 14th century. He quickly assumes power (who else in the Middle Ages packs a shotgun and a chainsaw?), and unites his band of medieval knights against the dreaded Army of the Dead. Raimi gleefully subverts almost every horror-movie cliché as he serves up a nonstop parade of blood, gore, and vicious sword-bearing skeletons--an affectionate homage to animator Ray Harryhausen's classic Jason and the Argonauts. The frantic action is fun while it lasts, but even at 80 minutes Army of Darkness nearly wears out its welcome. You know that Raimi can maintain the mayhem for only so long before it grows tiresome, and fortunately this madcap movie quits while it's ahead. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Features

• Color
• Closed-captioned
• Widescreen
• Dolby

Reviews (508)

0 STARS:Talk about stupid, this thing is ridiculous.
When I watched "Army of Darkness", I tried really hard to keep an open mind, but much to my dismay, I had to admit that this movie is utter trash and completely boring.I actually liked "The Evil Dead"...a pretty good movie, so I thought I should check out this sequel...boy was I wrong!!I couldn't believe that I had heard so many good things about this movie and it was jst incredibly terrible.I guess this movie appeals to a very limited auction or as they say has a small "cult following".I must admit this whole Medieval theme is extremely lame...it definitely gets stupid and very boring, very fast."Army of Darkness" falls more into the category of a cheesey sci-fi comedy rather than a horror flick.As a horror movie, it fails miserably.Therefore, I cannot recommend this trash to anyone who is a true horror movie fan...avoid this garbage at all costs.Some people call "Army of Darkness" a horror movie...I just call it "rubbish".

Genuine and Original!
This is one of my all time favorite zombie, horror movie and at the same time it's one of those movies that made me laugh also the most. No, this is not another zombie cheap flick (when I say cheap I mean horrible) it's one of those films that will give you the chills and will make you spill your drink, if you're having any, due to the laughter that will be inevitable.

If you have seen 'The Evil Dead' then you're on the right track to start this one since it is the sequal. Bruce Campell's character goes to the midieval age to try to find a way back to the present, modern time. But in order to do that he must go into a journey fighting the dead itself. You will see how the can guy can screw up and will make you laugh alot and also how he kicks zombie ass in this movie, which all scenes showing are truly original.

Most entertaining undead movie ever
I don't know about the specific special release or bonus packages for this movie (so maybe I should be careful how I rate this), but the movie itself is top notch. Unless you're a hardcore afficonado, I'd recommend buying one copy of this movie and leaving it at that. ... Read more

Asin: 0783227434
Subjects:  1. Horror   

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 September, 1994)
list price: $13.00 -- our price: $10.40
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Reviews (93)

One of the Best
A fantastic contemporary look at life for Native American descendents. An excellent book.One I highly recommend. Deep and passionate with a fine line of humor that sometimes had me laughing out loud.. It is a very realistic book with very well written stories. I also recommend: Ceremony and My Fractured Life.

Bitter Beauty
I came to Alexie's book through `Smoke Signals', the movie that was loosely base on it. While the movie was first rate, and touched on the themes of despair and sadness endemic to life on the Reservation, it in no way prepared me for the dark, brooding, bitterness that lies coiled like a snake ready to strike at the heart of Alexie's prose. He has distilled five hundred years of his culture's loosing battle against the interlopers who have replaced them in their own land down into a powerful, bitter prose that rivals that of the greatest and grimmest of Russian novels.
If this was all there was to the book, `The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven' would have a limited appeal at best. But there is much more here. Alexie's talent at creating characters rivals that of Dickens, and the residents of the Reservation whom he introduces us to in these short stories are likely to stay in your imagination forever. Also, his sense of humor and comic timing are just as deft as his skill at emoting bitterness and despair. This softens the blow of his grim vision just enough to allow us to appreciate its bitter beauty.
Though I have no first hand experience of life on the Reservation, these stories feel as raw and honest as anything that I have ever read - painfully honest. Alexie has taken that pain and reshaped it into something beautiful and wonderful, and provided a window into a world that most of us will never know.
After reading this book, I am convinced that Sherman Alexie is a master talent, who will eventually take his place in the pantheon of great American writers. He was a wonderful discovery, and if you have not yet experienced his work, well then, get to it!

Theo Logos

Lovely and Poignant
I totally adore this book. I first read it in 1994 as a Freshman in High School. It's how I fell in love with Sherman Alexie (he spoke at my graduation last year at the University of Washington and was FABULOUS!!). It's such a lyrical story, the vignettes are lovely, very poignant.

I love Thomas Builds-The-Fire so MUCH!! It makes me so sad the way in which he is received by most people in this book. His stories are so precious and important, I want to blast them over loud speakers!!

So glad I re-read this. Such a beautiful string of intertwined vignettes, even when discussing UN-beautiful things, Alexie's poetic words caress my tongue and brain. Ahhhhh....Good Stuff. Very Powerful. Everyone should read this, at least once.

... Read more

Isbn: 0060976241
Sales Rank: 4923
Subjects:  1. Autobiographical fiction    2. Fiction    3. Fiction - General    4. General    5. Indians of North America    6. Literary    7. Spokane Indians    8. Washington (State)   

The Art of the Motorcycle
by Thomas Krens, Matthew Drutt, Guggenheim Museum
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (01 September, 1998)
list price: $65.00
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Editorial Review

The Art of the Motorcycle begins with a serious preface by Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, who calls the motorcycle "a quintessential symbol of the insecurity and optimism of our time." At 411 pages long (an ll-page, single-spaced bibliography of motorcycle books carries it over the top), it is a hefty compendium of motorcycle history, culture, design, and science. While the essays range from treatises to such fun stuff as "Bikes were always work for me," a long poem by Dennis Hopper, this thoroughgoing tome is above all a meticulous catalogue of the 96 motorcycles exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum during the summer of 1998, with details about engine design as well as esthetics. "Another significant innovation is the machine's throttle-controlled oiler," we read of the 1911 electric-orange Flying Merkel Model V. "Lubrication was a continuing problem in the early days ... but Merkel's system ... preceded by nearly two decades both Indian's as well as Harley-Davidson's adoption of this feature." The bikes are documented with crystal-clear photographs in this precision-built book. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Reviews (13)

FINE CONTENT MARRED BY FAINT, SMALL PRINT
This is a nice "coffee table" book about their recent exhibit. As a rider since '59, I couldn't wait to get into the text, which is divided by time periods.
Alas, the print is a super thin, "artsy" typeface, very faint and grey colored- not a rich, easy to read, black Courier, for example. And the white space is excessive; they could have increased the typeface size by 4 or 5 points and stillhave more than enough border on each page!
Conclusion- a fine book marred by it's designers to make it less readable and useable!

Essential reading for enthusiasts
Museums, exhibits and the books devolving from them only hint at the mysteries they purport to show but rarely reveal. This is particularly true of exhibits of things that move, whether airplanes, cars and motorcycles on one hand, or people on the other. Once mummified via restoration and encapsulated in historical review, these lively subjects lose their kinesthetic value and become dessicated.
Within the limitations of those realities, here is a book that is endlessly fascinating and pleasing, replete with photos that while technically excellent are for the most part static and thus devoid of context. The essays, although pleasant, lack edge and passion, thus failing to evoke the adrenal glands (which operate at high levels when pushing a motorcycle to the limit).
The descriptions of the machines, from knowledgeable masters such as Kevin Cameron, capture the essence of what the designer tried to do and how well he (no known female motorcycle designers, but correct me if I'm wrong) hit his target.
This is a book to