Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac, Henry Reed, and Peter Brooks

Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2005 (World Almanac and Book of Facts) by Ken Park

“… S-Karen Cockburn , Canada; B-Huang Shanshan, China Rhythmic Gymnastics Individual All-Around-G-Alina Kabaeva, Russia; S-Irina Tchachina, Russia; B-Anna Bessonova, Ukraine Team-G- Russia; S-Italy; …”

The World Almanac has throughout most of its 137 year history been one of the very best books available anywhere. I have used it avidly for over 30 years. Unfortunately it pains me to say that the 2005 edition, which is now out in paperback and hardcover in bookstores represents the lowest point in the book’s distinguished history. This is because the book went to press in mid-October 2004 and for the first time ever in a presidential election year, the presidential election returns are not included. Also missing are the results of the World Series. Until the last few years, election and World Series results had been a key and vital feature of the Almanac. According to the 2005 World Almanac John Kerry could be the president-elect as of this writing, Tom Daschle is still the Senate Democratic Leader and the “Curse of the Bambino” is still going strong. According to the Almanac’s web site only paperback copies for libraries and schools (and not available in bookstores and outlets like Amazon.com) will include the election results.

Instead of trivial and unimportant items like national election and World Series results the rest of us get earth shattering and all-important items like the Almanac’s first ever crossword puzzle and the editor’s picks of what they think are the all-time favorite TV sitcoms. With no 2004 presidential election returns to report, the 2005 Almanac omits the invaluable Presidential election resturns by county feature. In the past I always looked forwar to this feature, especially in election years as political junkies like myself could see how all of the nation’s counties voted in the election. One could learn a lot about politics and the country by looking through this feature, which I’m sure has helped nuture political statistical buffs like myself over many generations.

The World Almanac without the election results is like the Old Farmer’s Almanac without the weather forecasts and TV Guide without the TV listings (which seems to be on its way). The Almanac was started in 1868 in part as a handbook that provided the latest political information. Since the 2002 edition, the Almanac’s publisher since 2000, WRC Media (controlled by the leveraged buyout firm Ripplewood) has sent the book to pres in mid-October with the book being available by November 1. As a result the book no longer cover national elections or the World Series, which it had done so since its inception since 1868. In the short run the publishers might gain some sales in early November as the holiday shopping season seens to begin right after Halloween these days instead of Thanksgiving and a couple of extra weeks on the bestseller lists in November but in doing so they are eliminating coverage of two events whose coverage helped make the World Almanac a great success over the years, events the publishers know will take place at a certain time and could plan their publication schedules around.

Coverage of the elections and of the World Series was a key attraction and selling point of the World Almanac, features that I’m sure helped sell many copies of the book over the years. When the 1989 Bay Area Earthquake and subsequent postponment of the World Series forced the 1990 Almanac to go to press without the World Series results the editor printed a note regretting the “inconvenience to our readers”. In a 1992 compliation of some older materials from the Almanac, the World Almanac Commemorative Edition, an editor’s introduction from the 1893 edition is printed. It points out that publication that year was delayed so that the book could include complete rather than partial election results. During World War II the editors omitted pages of advertising the book had carried up to that point so that the book in face of wartime paper shortages could maintain its coverage of world events. Advertising hasn’t appeared in the Almanac since. These historical tidbits show how important prior Almanac publishers knew coverage of elections, world events and the World Series was to the Almanac and its success, something the current publishers don’t seem to understand or want to understand.

Until the 2002 edition the World Almanac was not published until after Election Day in federal election years and in other years after the end of the World Series. The World Almanac has been given the treatment by WRC and Ripplewood the way leveraged buyout firms often treat their brands: thinking they can improve the performance of the brand without any appreciation of what made that product special and unique to its users and buyers in the first place. WRC and Ripplewood don’t seem to understand that coverage of national elections and the World Series, and extensive lists of officeholders like mayors, federal judges and ambassadors (all missing from the 2005 edition) were crucial in establishing the Almanac’s reputation and standing over the years. The curent management seems to think that crossword puzzles, features on different demographic groups, quick quizzes and the editor’s opinions on different topics (all included in the 2005 edition) are more important. Joseph Pulitzer, who restared the World Almanac in 1886 after a decade’s hiatus as a “compendium of universal knowledge”, would probably rollover in his grave if he saw the 2005 edition. If WRC won’t return the Almanac to its old publication deadlines, they should sell the book to someone who will.

Alina Kabaeva No Shintaisou Kyoushitsu (Gymnastics Lesson)

Japanese DVD containing a ‘how-to’ with the Athens 2004 Olympic gold medalist on floor excercises with clubs, hoops, ribbons and balls from three camera angles.

Rhythmic Gymnastics by Nadejda Jastrjembskaia and Yuri Titov

This is the best book on coaching Rhythmic Gymnastics (or any sport) I have ever seen - It is so incredibly detailed. Talk about value for money !- it is absolutely packed to the brim full of precise descriptions on floor technique, handling the apparatus, developing strength and flexibility, dance, preparing for competitions, and more. It also includes many excellent diagrams to accompany the text, demonstrating beautifully the form and technique required for each skill clearly and simply.

This book is the ONLY book you will ever need to purchase on Rhythmic Gymnastics to coach all the way up to the elite level. The book offers many good tips for gymnasts wishing to be elite to get the competetive edge they need and to be the best they can be.

I thoroughly recommend this book to all.

Ciara Princess Harris may have started out life like any other ordinary kid. She went to school, participated in sports, and liked hanging out with her friends. But when she watched the group Destiny s Child perform on television, her world changed. She decided right then and there that she wanted to be a performing artist. Many kids have dreams like this. They imagine what life would be like as a famous movie star or musician. But few people actually do anything to make their dreams come true. Not Ciara. Instead of just dreaming about her future, she got up and made it happen. Now, after years of hard work, Ciara is a famous performing artist. She travels all over the country performing her music, and millions of people have bought her albums. Do you want to find success in your life too? Learn more about Ciara s life, and you can also achieve your dreams.

Amie Jane Leavitt is the author of more than a dozen books for children. She has also written magazine articles, puzzles and games, workbooks, activity books, and tests for kids and teens. Ms. Leavitt is a former teacher who has taught many subjects and grade levels. She loves to travel, play tennis, and learn new things every day as she writes. She believes that everyone should follow his or her dreams.

Touch: Naked girls home alone by Stephanie Kuhnen and Peter Gorman

The girl-next-door genre is way overdone, and it’s probably not the description that Goliath should have used in marketing this new book from New York photographer, Peter Gorman. But despite my problem with the term, girl-next-door, this is a surprisingly good book of nude and erotic photography. And Goliath is to be commended for its extraordinarily high production quality of this 7×10″ picture-packed publication.

This is Peter Gorman’s fourth book and it follows a similar path outlined in his previous two books, Stripped Naked and Naked Rooms. The central theme here is “everyday” women allowing Gorman entry into their homes, so that he can photograph each of them in the nude and occasionally acting out their sexual fantasies. Masturbation plays a role here and may be what prompted the title, Touch. But although erotica is a quality laced throughout this work, it could more aptly be described as confident women, parading themselves and their sexuality, not so much to titillate as to affirm their own sense of freedom, self worth, and self empowerment. They are beautiful, they are sexual, and they are quite comfortable with that level of self awareness.

All images are color based and appear to be shot in a mixture of natural and flash lighting. There is a pseudo-documentary feel to much of the work, with very little use of background blur or other depth-of-field tricks. Everything in their rooms, in their yards, and on their bodies is sharp and clear - Gorman captures everything. Each photograph is presented in full-page format with the opposite page white and barren, driving full attention to the featured image. So, although there are over two hundred pages, there are 106 photographs of around thirty models.

Stripped Naked by Peter Gorman

This is New York photographer Peter Gorman’s third book. Just as Naked Rooms was a radically different project from his first book, Naked In Apartment 7, this new work is another departure for him. But this time the results are more mature in their result and set Gorman on an even higher artistic plain. Gone are the highly stylized setups that characterized his first book, and the fluid, documentary style that distinguished his second book is no longer in force here. What we have is a more stable body of work from an artist who appears to possess a stronger sense of himself, and who harnesses a greater command of his craft. Gorman admits to shooting more “from the hip” these days, and all this work was shot in the unknown terrain of his female subjects’ own homes, where the lighting conditions were completely unpredictable. But the results are extraordinary, and are laced with a sense of precision not see in his previous works. The lighting, the surroundings, the girls themselves, all flow into a unified and potent ensemble of pictures that are distinctly erotic. These are not just nude portraits of attractive and interesting women - much of this work is blatantly erotic and the subjects all strut their stuff with ostentatious and confident abandon. These are sexual beings that are obviously quite comfortable sharing this aspect of themselves with Gorman. As Reed Massengill notes in the forward - this book is about art .. but it’s also about titillation.

Naked in Apartment 7 (Ill) by Peter Gorman and Reed Massingill

I have rarely seen nude photographs with the intimacy shown in these images. The models, dance students I believe, interact directly with the camera and also with the viewer. At their most brash they are also most vulnerable. The photographer has made something special here. He has somehow made an image of a living woman which opens that woman to our view on several levels. She is first of all and clearly alive. This is no magazine-fetish-mannikin-supermodel. This is a living, breathing woman. She is taking a pose, displaying herself for the camera; but she is also revealing herself in a way that few of us have ever seen. And yet, unlike the experience of other books of images, I do not come away with the sense that I was a voyeur, taking something. I felt like a participant, sharing something. This was a remarkable book.

Kundalini Tantra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati and Satyananda Saraswati Swami

I do not think that this book is too advanced. If anything, it is refreshing that he divulges so many secrets of yoga. Swami Satyananda is a Guru. People meet Gurus and have wild experiences that inspire them to make fundamental changes in their lives. But most Gurus do not teach their students the actual practices that caused the Guru to be able to have such a magical impact on people. The refreshing thing about this book is that Swami Satyananda divulges many of those practices in detail. Of course, like anything else, you need to be balanced in some healthy routines in your life in order to make Kundalini Yoga a healthy experience. There are people who work too much, exercise too much, eat too much. If you do anything with balance, it can be healthy. In my own practice, I have found that Kundalini Yoga has been healthy when I have done it in conjunction with daily silent meditation in groups of people. I will spend 45 minutes in a silent meditation group and then go do my yoga. The silence balances out the energy that the yoga generates. And the contact with other people further balances it out. I can see how it might be unhealthy if someone was not doing silent meditation, or if they did not have a lot of group contact with people. But when you have those balancing influences, books like this are very empowering because they give invaluable perspective on the experiences that occur in the unfoldment of anyone’s spiritual practice.

Kundalini Awakening: A Gentle Guide to Chakra Activation and Spiritual Growth by John Selby and Zachary Selig

John Selby has done an excellent job describing the chakra system and how to awaken the chakras as a group through meditation exercises. This book takes a gentle, gradual approach, so that the practitioner can avoid some of the unpleasant side affects of sudden kundalini activation. I worked through the exercises as written for several months before branching into a slightly different meditation form. During those months I did experience noticeable changes in my waking perceptions, as well as in my dreams, which became lucid much more frequently. I did, however, retain some blockages in certain chakras which these meditations could not seem to budge. Thus I would recommend that for stubborn blockages one work with a teacher, because the book alone can only take you so far. Still, it is an excellent book, written in a very positive and supportive voice.

The Kundalini Yoga Experience: Bringing Body, Mind, and Spirit Together by Dharam Singh Khalsa and Darryl O’Keeffe

It is not often you get to read a book that has been simply written in an authoritate manner by people who clearly walk the walk, as well as walk the talk. Well written, beautifully illustrated there is nothing to stop anyone who is interested beginning to learn the discipline safely and to their benefit with immediate affect. This book is much needed and is a credit to its authors, both of whom have been hard at work serving others over many years as they learned their trade through practice and service to others. This book has a refreshing approach where self diagnosis made easy and gifted to the reader in a way they can relate to and understand. True at a physical level but also for the emotions and for the intellect. Remedial measures are explained and made simple and then it is up to the reader whether to proceed or not, if they choose to then the remedial measures of today become the preventative means of tomorrow. Available in the USA and Canada as The Kundalini Yoga Experience and in the UK as Kundalini the Essence of Yoga - same book different title both by Guru Dharam Singh & Darryl O’Keeffe. Both the authors are real yogi’s of our time yet follow a traditional lineage influenced by Yogi Bhajan, an unbeatable combination and a must for any bookshelf.

Awakening Kundalini by Kelly Howell and Robert Schwimmer

I really like this CD. Howell gives a great explanation of what and why of Awakening Kundalini, then talks you through three breathing techniques, and finally a 30 minute meditation that is very powerful. I’m not sure if it is the breathing or what but I definitely feel more alive and energetic afterwards. I would highly recommend this CD.

The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga by C. G. Jung and Sonu Shamdasani

I found this book an incredibly intense book to read. There’s nothing simple about it. I had hoped for both clarity and understanding and received neither. I kept reading…hoping upon hope that Shamdasani’s words would hold me spellbound and captivated.

I seek truth in its simplest form, but did not find it here. While I am certain that Shamdasani’s intent was to provide the reader with an intelligent read, his need for intellectual diatribes created, in stead, an emotional abyss; I found that I could not connect with his analysis without great intensity of focus. Frankly, I didn’t have either the time or the inclination to work that hard to grasp the connections.

Had Shamdasani employed simplicity of thought and content as his guides, the average reader might actually benefit from his wisdom and intellect.

Kundalini & the Chakras: Evolution in this Lifetime by Genevieve L. Paulson

I strongly recommend this as an additional guide for anyone giving or receiving Reiki attunements. Many people have adverse effects from the attunement process; this book provides exercises helpful with preparation as well as after-effects. Another excellent resource provided by Paulson is the series of detailed tables on the chakra system at multiple levels (soul, physical body, etc.) and corresponding symptoms to issues with each chakra.

Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man by Krishna Gopi

In reference to the other two-star review, I thought I was the only one who found this book difficult to get through. I was left wondering why this is a classic, and a must-read kundalini book, with the exception of the few passages that describe the author’s tormenting experiences to highlight the dangers of such a powerful evolutionary process.

I have been in the throes of an involuntary kundalini progression for a number of years now, although not on the same level of trauma as the author experienced, so I do have a very good understanding at this point in my process of the mechanics involved in such an awakening.

And I do understand that the author experienced this during a time when so very little was known about kundalini, so in this respect it is an important piece of literature, and I do honor and revere his wisdom and experience. However, I found the text to be occasionally superfluous, tedious and extremely redundant. As I neared the end of the book I couldn’t help wonder in how many different ways the author could describe the same thing: an unknown, powerful, intelligent, conscious force making its way up his nervous system and vital organs to stimulate and awaken his system with accompanying symptoms of sleeplessness, change in appetite, and increased consciousness and constant awareness of a golden glow painting his vision.

James Hillman’s occasional commentaries were of little help also and were just as wordy, vague and confusing in trying to translate and explain the author’s psychological and physical processes.

The most helpful books about kundalini that I’ve found so far are “Farther Shores” by Dr. Yvonne Kason, and “Energy Work” by Robert Bruce. Even though Mr. Bruce’s book contains only a small section on kundalini, it is exact in its description and process. He also describes in other areas of the book the body’s energy channels and centers that play a part in the workings of the kundalini energy. I have used his techniques to restore balance to my system and to ease the progression of the unpredictable energy surges so I will undergo fewer problems.

Kundalini: The Arousal of the Inner Energy by Ajit Mookerjee

This book is meant to introduce the reader to the ancient yogic tradition of Kundalini. It details what the historic tantric scriptures describe and has many illustrations of historic drawings. The concept of Kudalini - awakening body/mind chakras - is described from a Eastern perspective. This also describes experiences of Kundalini by some of the known swamis (holy people).

Please note that this is not a Kundalini awakening instruction book. It is more a scholarly work on describing traditional Kundalini.

If you like to know about traditional concepts of Kundalini, this book will give you a good introduction.

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore has long been a favorite writer of mine. Her short fiction, which has appeared regularly in THE NEW YORKER and elsewhere, is unbeatable. Her humor is sharp, her descriptive powers awesome, and her stories (almost) always feel as though they actually go somewhere.

One of the best pieces in “Self-Help” is probably the first Lorrie Moore piece I ever read. “Self-Help” was published the year I graduated from college, and I think a college friend gave me a copy of “How to Become a Writer.” Note the “become” instead of “be.” Moore acknowledges the process involved in writing and lets her readers know that writers are not sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus or anyone else. Listen to this beautifully assured, resonant, yet hilarious passage from “How to Become a Writer”:

“First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age–say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a doughnut. She’ll say: ‘How about emptying the dishwasher?’ Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Acccidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.”

Moore likes to do that–throw in references like Vietnam, then spin things around a little so that it comes out funny. One of my favorite Lorrie Moore bits had to do with a woman who said something awful before she could stop herself–Moore described the blurted insult as being “a lizard with a hat on.” Wacko as that sounds, you still know exactly what she means. That is her great gift–she makes life sound wacko and off-kilter, but you completely, utterly GET IT anyway.

Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore

Recently I spent a third long stay at a hospital with my daughter. Living at the hospital, particularly accompanying your child, is a surreal (at best) existence. I found myself thinking constantly of Moore’s incredible rending yet somehow darkly humorous story, “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk,” wondering if anyone could possibly understand the dazed flurourescent-lit world of a pediatric hospital/cafeteria/series of Lego-like halls without having been forced to live it. The story brought me strange comfort, knowing that someone had glimpsed that life, the one where you’re woken up constantly in the night and wonder whether it’s night or day or if you’ll ever get out of sweatpants, and as I waited to hear news regarding red blood cells, a part of me was falling apart for the mothers and children I saw there whose stay would not be nine or ten days, as ours, but months. If you know anyone who is stuck at the hospital for ridiculous amounts of time, this is the gift to bring them. The other stories are excellent too.

Like Life by Lorrie Moore

Moore received a lot of attention for her latest, “Birds of America” but I prefer this collection. It’s not just that the book is funnier and deals with generally lighter subject matter, but that she is able to apply her poignant observations to more mundane material. Wheras Birds of America deals with children who have cancer and adults who are deep into what have become seriously disappointing lives, Like Life deals with those (mostly women) who are still treading water, not too happy with the way things have turned out so far, but also not so far gone that it all couldn’t turn around tomorrow. The character in one story is grappling with her unsatisfying relationship with her struggling playwright boyfriend, another is just having a lonely winter where she spends her time working in a store in the mall and playing with the cat. Even the nature of her disappointments — she is not allowed in to a community singing group because she misses the first meeting — wonderfully reflect the low gear in which many of her characters, like real life people, are operating. If it sounds pretty dull, this is exactly why this book is such a showcase of Morre at her best. I think it is probably easier to write movingly about cancer than it is to write about daily life. But Moore’s stories really are moving. A must read for anyone who aspires to write but worries he/she has nothing to say. Moore shows that every experience is a story — its all in the telling.

Anagrams by Lorrie Moore

I laughed out loud numerous times, little suspecting that I would put the book down upon completion and sob for about twenty minutes. I’ve never had this intense a reaction to a book, with the possible exception of Catcher in the Rye. Lorrie Moore is not only clever and funny as hell; she also has a spectacular dark side. The reader is at first a bit confused — is this a collection of short stories? If not, why is this character’s back story different in this chapter? What the hell’s going on here? By the last chapter, you think you’ve settled into an acceptable reality, only to have the rug pulled out from under you again. For readers who take a perverse pleasure in this kind of experience, I highly recommend “Anagrams”.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

This book deals with 2 major issues pertaining to teenagers: teen pregnancy and the friendship that sort of withers away as the two close friends become mature individuals and start to value different things. Though the author describes these issues quite casually without overly burdening the readers or pressuring them, I really think that these issues are not something we should feel lightly about. The writer touches upon two crucial issues that all teenagers are so susceptible to and that’s why I credit the author so highly.
The most apparent issue discussed in the book is teen pregnancy: Sils, the main character’s closest friend gets pregnant after dating an older man. Judging that the boyfriend, Mike, would not be responsible for the baby, Sils decides to get an abortion. At the time, because Sils and Berie, the main character, are only sixteen years old, they don’t have time to think much about morality of their decision. The decisions are hasty, largely concerned with their budget and how to get the abortion without causing much trouble. The scene when she goes through the surgery brings forth a lot of emotion from the reader because Sils lies alone in the operation room, in a shabby facility.
Going through these unbearable crisis as teenagers, Berie and Sils confirm their long friendship and bond. Because Sils was more developed and began dating boys at earlier age, Berie sometimes felt distant from Sils. When they sneaked out to dance parties, boys chased after Sils and Berie was left untouched until Sils rejected them. The devision that Berie and Sils went through because of popularity and appearances disappear as Sils learn that Berie is her true friend who can stay by her side when such difficulties surround her.
This book is highly recommended to teenagers as well as adults. The value of friendship and also the danger of unsafe sex is critically described in this novel. The writer posses the magic of getting her messages across without physically shocking us with explicit scenes and language.

Anathem, the latest invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, is a magnificent creation: a work of great scope, intelligence, and imagination that ushers readers into a recognizable-yet strangely inverted-world.

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside-the Extramuros-for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.

Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates-at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.

Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros-a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose-as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world-as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.

The author has written a great book that will help anyone who needs to add effective networking techniques to whatever they’re already doing, in an organized weekly format. The challenge here at least for me, is committing to implementing these weekly gems for a year. Unless you’re careful, this could become one of those books you’ve read, loved, and then put aside meaning to integrate the author’s suggestions into what you’re already doing, but failing to do so. I’m going to try to avoid that.

I believe that anyone who needs to more effectively network, either for business or personal reasons, will benefit greatly by implementing even some of the author’s recommendations.

Having read all of Mr. Meltzer’s other novels and most of his comic books, I was thoroughly looking forward to his new book, which aims to connect Cain’s murder of Abel with the creation of Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. I wasn’t disappointed at all. If you’re a fan of Superman, if you’re a fan of a good mystery/thriller, if you’re a biblical scholar, then you’ll likely enjoy this book. And then, hopefully, you’ll want to get involved in the action and help save the house where Superman was created.

Color film was non-existent in 1909 Russia, yet in that year a photographer named Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii embarked on a photographic survey of his homeland and captured hundreds of photos in full, vivid color. His photographic plates were black and white, but he had developed an ingenious photographic technique which allowed him to use them to produce accurate color images.

If you landed here through a title or subject search, you’ve probably already seen this book in the library. You have my sympathy on learning that it is out of print. (If you came here through my personal page, I’m flattered!) This is a book of photographs of Russia from the decade before World War I. Thing is, these are mostly _color_ pictures. This early color process produced images that are about as good as the color photos in the Sunday newspaper today. The photographer, S. M. Prokudin-Gorskii, showed the images in the form of a slide show to Tsar Nikolai II, in hopes of having similar exhibitions in Russian schools.

The subject matter is fairly prosaic. The images are postcard views of rustic villages, broad rivers, wooden dams, happy peasants at work and at leisure, exotic Caucasian and central Asian tribespeople in colorful native dress, lots of onion-domed churches and shrines. Prokudin-Gorskii meant these pictures to show the pageantry and glory of Mother Russia.

Today, they are painful reminders of a world that has been smashed forever. The peasants would die in the Great War, or starve in the postwar famines, or butcher each other in the Civil War, or be executed in the Red Terror. The public works would go to ruin due to the incompetence of the commissars who would run them after the bourgeois engineers had been eliminated. The colorful tribespeople would be exiled. The churches would be looted and demolished. The peaceful meadows would be paved over by ill-conceived, gigantic heavy industrial plants. The villages would be burned by civil war and foreign invasions. Seeing all these images which look like they were taken yesterday, and knowing the fate that awaited their subjects, is quite an experience.

Contrast this book to another book of pre-war Russian color photographs, _Leonid Andreyev, Photographs of a Russian Writer_. His vision is much more personal, but no less poignant.

History is interesting and exciting. We never know what to believe. That is why faith destroys us. faith in the blind. Jesus was an inspiring philosopher. no more. Who cares if he was married or had kids??? He was a man!!! and dont be an idiot thinking god had anything to do with mary becoming pregnant. common sense. if you believe that..might as well think david copperfield is the son of god. dont take my review that seriously. just planting seeds…and yes..off the book a tad! hahaha

Zip file of the entire book 133 MB

Jules Verne explores a realm of fantastical possibilities deep within the bowels of the earth. The journey starts in the professor’s study in Germany where an ancient parchment leads him and his nephew on an expedition to a remote mountain on Iceland. There they discover a deep chasm which leads the explorers to an amazing string of discoveries. There are vast oceans of water, giant mushrooms, storms, strange weather patterns, and a wide assortment of extinct creatures. This was Jules Verne’s first dive into science fiction. A must read for any science fiction or fantasy lover.
This was a great read, and possibly one of the most updated translations of the original French work. Loved the illustrations.

I’d read this book waaaay back in the past back when I was at school and so came to this reading with that warm feeling of childhood memory.

I was not disapointed! The characters are wonderful, each with their own motivations and behaviours, I believe “fully rounded” fits the description in this story.

The story itself is very well written and you can almost feel the events taking place around you. This is because the author takes time to develop the characters and happily fills out the details from inside their heads so you know and feel everything.

The story is not high action, but is very filled with events and problems that have to be solved, so you always feel engaged with the story.

Reading 2/3
Production 2/3
Story 2/3

Total Score 6/9

Available from Librivox

Children might be tempted to believe that there are Wish Granters floating about, if one can just find them! This fanciful tale is set in Victorian England–an era of gas jets, scullery maids and coal hobs. Four children (as in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE) discover a special fire egg which hatches in their nursery fireplace. Then their mother purchases a Persian carpet, which provides the vehicle for Space (if not Time) Travel. It even responds to written commands and obeys instructions without a human pilot.

All this magical flying about in response to wishes reminds me of the cloak in THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE and Mary Norton’s THE MAGIC BEDKNOB. Nesbit’s style also reminds me of Beatrix Potter, with many asides, advice or explanations directed to the reader. The setting returns us to the ingenuous nursery days of AA Milne’s stuffed animal world.

The story takes place around Christmas and the children wrestle with their consciences over moral issues concerning the unexplained acquisition of wealth, curios, toys and pets. How much to reveal to skeptical parents and how ethical it is to whisk unsuspecting adults away to a remote island or to allow rational people to assume they are insane or just dreaming. How can the siblings plus their baby brother (called the Lamb) ever return to the status quo, since they can only enjoy their carpet rides and conversations with the Phoenix in secret?

This book is too naive for the elementary kids of the 90’s, but it would be a good selection to read aloud, one chapter a night before bedtime to younger children. The more you have read of Children’s Literature, the more you will recognize from other books. This one may have been the inspiration for the others…!

The Phoenix and the Carpet free audiobook download - 191MB