books, reviews of fiction and non-fiction

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You may participate, by submitting a short ( about 300-600 words) book review once or occasionally.

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Luck and the Irish

R.F. Foster

Over the past three decades, Ireland has metamorphosed from a troubled-but-winsome bastion of the Old World to a thriving economic power known as the "Celtic Tiger". With the second highest per capita income in the EU, the Republic has come a long way from the days of its political argument that the Irish economy featured a potentially desirous "less costly standard of living". "Luck and the Irish" chronicles this Irish revival.

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Tolle's path to his present role as a major spiritual teacher in the West is unique in that prior to his spiritual awakening he didn't study with any teacher nor observe any particular spiritual practise. He reports in his book to have lived in an almost constant state of anxiety, despair and depression until shortly after his 29th birthday. Then one night his inner pain became so unbearable that consciousness withdrew from its identification with the mind, which led to a spontaneous and complete spiritual awakening. He spent the following years integrating and understanding this new dimension of consciousness, and it took some 20 years from his initial awakening until he wrote The Power of Now, during which time he also studied the work of other spiritual teachers.
The teaching he outlines is based in a non-dual tradition with clear parallels to Buddhist philosophy, and yet it expresses a unique and radical approach to spirituality. It is a profound and far-reaching work, but at the same time it is so easy to understand that anyone can read it and relate to its contents. It is this rare quality of expressing deep, timeless truth in a straightforward and simple manner that is one of this book's greatest strengths.

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A freshly-picked selection of today’s hottest illustrators

Following the success of Illustration Now!, this installment presents a completely cover Illustration Now 2

new selection of 150 illustrators from all around the world. Whereas the first volume brought together a fascinating mix of star illustrators and brand new faces that together formed the face of illustration around the world, Illustration Now! 2 is even more exciting, featuring illustrators from 25 countries, with styles ranging from cutting edge to traditional. Also included is a dialog between design specialist Steven Heller and German illustrator Christoph Niemann about illustration’s role in the world today. This book is perfect not only for creative professionals and illustration students, but also artists and anyone with an appreciation for visual language.

About the editor:
Julius Wiedemann was born and raised in Brazil. After studying graphic design and marketing, he moved to Japan, where he worked in Tokyo as art editor for digital and design magazines. Since joining TASCHEN, he has been building up the digital and media collection with titles such as Animation Now!, the Advertising Now series, the Web Design series, and TASCHEN's 1000 Favorite Websites.

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When I recently reread The Handmaid's Tale, I was curious if I would find this novel as strong as I remembered. I thought that it would seem dated, or that I would otherwise be disappointed. However, I was pleasantly surprised, and impressed; maybe some details are a little dated by now, but Offred, the narrator, is so clearly and thoroughly imagined, and the novel is so well-structured, engaging, and suspenseful that I can still recommend it to other readers of fiction.
The society in which this story takes place, is quite complex, and tracing its history and rise to power is one of the pleasures of the novel.

What is the novel about?
Gilead is a religious state, that made child-bearing and war its two primary concerns. Women are not allowed to hold jobs, use money, or read - and if they're healthy and of childbearing age, most of them are conscripted into being Handmaids: surrogate mothers for powerful military families, where the responsibility for bearing a child is solely theirs; men cannot be considered sterile. Offred ("Of-Fred" - their names come from their assigned Commanders) is a national resource. She is a handmaid: viable ovaries make her a precious commodity in her current society, the Republic of Gilead, where the birth rate has decreased to dangerous levels. Assigned to a Commander whose wife cannot produce, Offred’s purpose is clear. She has to breed.
Dressed in red from veil to shoes, apart from the white wings which cover her face, Offred can go outside. That means that she can walk in silence each day past The Guardians of the Faith, who man each barrier. She exchanges tokens for food. She visits the Wall, where gender traitors and war criminals hang for atrocities, once legal, committed in the time before. Offred has had her own daughter, and husband, taken away from her.

Both the description of the system, the regime and the bizarre consequences of it for (men and) women ánd the loss, subsequent isolation and hope of these women are main and moving aspects of this novel.
Over twenty years after it was first published (1986), I can still recommend The Handmaid's Tale.

Aly Wagenvoorde

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Emily Brontë (1818-1848) was born in Yorkshire and died at the age of 30 after spending practically her whole life on the moorlands. The spirit of the moors is embodied in the novel.
Wuthering Heights is the name of the house where many of the events of the novel take place. But it is also a symbol of passion, energy, emotion and violence, aspects reflected in nature, because the house is exposed to strong winds and other natural forces by its position on top of a hill. The other house, Thrushcross Grange, represents the complete opposite: absence of violence, quiet love, lack of energy. These aspects are also reflected in nature, as the Grange is built in a peaceful valley.
The major themes are love and revenge: the love between Heathcliff and Catherine, and Heathcliff's revenge on the Earnshaws and on the Linton family.
Although the novel is situated in the period 1776 and 1802, I still recommend it.

Ben

Kate Bush Live 1979

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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 –1904was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, and is considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in world literature.

Chekhov is a master at making his characters' darkest aspects comprehensible and human. He's never sentimental and he's not particularly pleasant, but he will always feel modern because of his astonishing juxtapositions and the way his characters' swift, darting minds vacillate between idealism and boredom, vanity and hope. His narrator has a keen vision of class anger, resentment, and envy. Although less enchanted by his own characters than was Tolstoy, Chekhov acutely portrays large-heartedness.
There are several volumes available with tales from Chekhov, and reading these stories is still interesting and worthwhile.
You can find a list of short stories here:

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What Michael Cunningham does in The Hours is the reworking of a great novel. It is simplified and purified. Besides there are comments upon, and replies to the themes of Woolf’s original text.
The story unfolds through the interweaving narratives of three women whose lives are linked by and constantly refer back to Mrs. Dalloway.
Clarissa Vaughan is a woman, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend, Richard Brown, a poet.
The second woman is Laura Brown, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home.
And there is Virginia Woolf, first recuperating with her husband in a London suburb. She, having been forced to retreat from literary London after a breakdown, is tentatively beginning to write her new novel. Occasionally she catches a glimpse of inspiration, but fears it will fade like a dream the moment she wakes up.

The characters experience similar hopes and fears, similar passions and constraints. What changes is the world around them: the material freedoms of different ages and the social mores which govern what one can and can’t be.
As in Mrs. Dalloway, the focus is on the beauty and wonder of individual moments. That doesn’t make this book more or less the same, however. The Hours shows us more about the irrevocability of time going on, which ensures that everything will ultimately fade and decay.
Besides, Cunningham takes many of the sub-plots from Mrs Dalloway – privilege, parenting, homosexuality and mental illness – and looks at them as people did, in different decades. What is impossible, almost unthinkable, in Virginia Woolf’s 1920s and hidden behind suburban façades in the 1940s is gloriously possible in the 1990s. This is most clearly the case when it comes to homosexuality.
The Hours revisits and updates special moments from Mrs. Dalloway. It is exquisitely written, original, dreamy, emotive, and a joy to read.

“Yes, Clarissa thinks, it’s time for the day to be over. We throw our parties;…we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep – it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.”

Riverworld is both a movie (2003), and a series of 5 science fiction books, written between 1970 and 1983 by Philip Jose Farmer. The movie covers the first couple of books*.
I first read the series several years ago and liked it very much. The movie loosely follows the books, but falls sadly short, perhaps because few movies can evoke the use of one's imagination in the ways a book can; but also due to the fact that the acting is ho -hum, with the exception of Jonathan Cake, who plays Nero, and a couple of others. Many reviewers have taken exception to the choice of an American in the lead role, which deviates from the books; but given that it was made for an American audience, I find this understandable.

The premise of the Riverworld is that all the people who have ever died (on earth), are reborn in another world, on the banks of this gigantic river, which presumably goes for millions of miles. The controllers of this world provide the basic needs to all the inhabitants through stations set up for dispensing food etc. No one knows what their agenda is.

The books (and movie) follow a band of these travelers as they go along the river, some searching for answers, some seeking to dominate, some just trying to survive. As you may have guessed, the river population is make up of bands of peoples from all times, cultures, and societies, not necessarily grouped together in any particular fashion. As such, strife and violence are the order of the day. Everyone is thrown into a fight for survival. Of course, one runs across many famous people from history, and even prehistory.
It's a fascinating, and imaginative study of human nature, to which a two hour movie (series pilot*) could only aspire to wetting one's interest ..... a task that it does not accomplish, in my opinion. If the movie has one redeeming quality it's the scenery.
The shots are breathtaking. One site (http://www.xs4all.nl/~rnuninga/PJFriverw.htm*) claims that the movie was filmed in New Zealand. Of course .... no one really dies on the river. Those who appear to, are simply reborn in another place.
I highly recommend the books.
P.S. I understand that the movie industry is scheduled to release another incarnation of Riverworld this year (2010).

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On the Labor day weekend in 1987, thirteen year old Henry persuades his single mother Adele to leave their dump for a trip to the nearby Price Mart. He is ecstatic when she agrees as she never leaves their home except if she absolutely has to since his dad left her and remarried.
They meet Frank, who bullies them into picking him up. An escaped convict, Frank needs a place to hide from the law so he coerces the mother and son to take him into their home or else. However, as he holds them prisoner in their home, the trio forges a relationship with him in charge. He tenderly ties Adele to a chair using her silk scarves as gentle ropes; while feeding her. He teaches Henry, who hates sports as he stinks at them, to throw a baseball. He soon finds he wants more from the mom as they fall in love and consider fleeing together, and with her son who fears desertion from his mom and his surrogate father.
This is a super character study that focuses on the changing relations between three protagonists over the Labor Day weekend. A Stockholm syndrome effect occurs as each grows closer to one another. Henry is the glue that keeps the story line focused as he admires Frank’s courage and mentoring skills while also fears he will take his mom with him leaving her son behind when he goes on the lam. Fans will relish three seemingly losers finding something special during the long weekend together even as each anticipates no happy ending (the Sword of Damocles always lurking during the holiday) ;instead they expect to pay a steep price for six days and five nights of a fairy tale.

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In a cramped basement flat in Moscow, a beautiful young Norwegian woman is watching her first images of war on a black and white television screen with her Russian hosts. There are images of charred bodies, the outlines of children frozen into the ground and burnt-out tanks.
Asne Seierstad, only 24 at this time, is just starting out as a free-lance journalist. She writes rather confused dispatches based on the television images, learns how to spell “Chechnya” and finally decides she has to go there to understand what is really happening.
Talking her way onto a Russian military aircraft heading south, she sits on a folding seat between two pilots who will soon be bombing Chechen rebels in ravines and mountains, mostly hitting civilians.
With incredible courage, Seierstad then spends most of the next year reporting on Russia’s dirty war from the viewpoint of both Chechen families and fighters. She also narrowly avoids being raped by a soldier with a Kalashnikov.
That all happened 12 years ago. The book that she has written – The Angel of Grozny – is about both her first experience of war and her return to the brutalised city a decade later.
This time, she slipped illegally into the Chechen capital and took up residence in an orphan age run by a woman called Hadijat – her “angel” – with a flock of traumatised street children.

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