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Review Date: 10/24/2008
Helpful Score: 2
This beautiful book is nicely laid out and easy to use. It's based on a manuscript written at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the meanings are derived from archetypal and ageless images and people really still work the same way inside. It sees dreams not as prognostications, but a way your brain is working out of the events in our lives, a way to understand what you're going through. This was my sister's book and she really used it to help her sort her thoughts. Sometimes when you have a bizarre dream you need a little help trying to figure out what was going on.
Review Date: 6/12/2015
A great tale of the paradoxes of time travel, that is ten times better than the new series that was just aired on TV. The tv thingy was boring for me and didn't have the suspense of the book. Post-apocalyptic science motivated by desperate circumstances, but somehow reminds me of sending criminals to Australia: few knew exactly what they would find, but the prisoners had little choice. How do you decipher a world you have never seen before? And what will your actions make of this version of history. A great read with great twists!
Review Date: 9/2/2014
Helpful Score: 1
I want to call this an illustrated novel, but it's not. It's a puzzle and love story revealed by a collection of items found in a box, relating to the life of Louise Brunet. There are pictures of the items, which lends a certain tangibility to a tale that takes place over the First and Second World Wars. The story takes place as the finder of the box imagines the story they contain. Truly a unique point of reference. As he spends time musing over the objects, the story fills out and the puzzle is answered.
Review Date: 3/26/2012
Helpful Score: 1
Interesting style carries this book well beyond dry text and bring this part of history home on a personal level. As a blogger for the New York Times, you can understand how his style could be so informal, but the bibliography and notes (appended) show the research for facts behind the statements. Easy to understand why it is so acclaimed. Recommended.
Review Date: 9/27/2016
Examines all the known murders in London in the year of the Ripper murders. Statistics peaked in this year, but why and what were the motives. Intelligent, well-written book. Highly recommended
Review Date: 3/7/2012
A bit slow to start up, but a great read for 7th century Celtic civilization. Respect given to educated women at that time makes you wonder whatever happened over the next centuries. Stay with it and this book will certainly grow on you. So much background must be given to describe the life of the time! Thoroughly enjoyable.
Review Date: 10/24/2008
Helpful Score: 2
This book received raves from all the major reviewers and was considered one of the 10 best by the New York Times. I think you have to have the wry mindset required by satire to get 100 per cent out of this book and some readers haven't enjoyed it. But if a good witty biting bash at the absurd is what you're looking for, try reading this. It just keeps coming at ya'.
Review Date: 10/13/2012
This cheeky sendup of historical fiction will keep you laughing from "stupid jousts' to swan pie and jewelled codpieces. Narrated irreverantly in modern phrasing, it's history rewritten for today. Very amusing.
Review Date: 10/18/2012
Helpful Score: 2
Turns the tables on Sherlock Holmes, whose peculiar disguises are a great laugh. Perversely amusing. Great mystery, including riddles, odd characters and even a little romance on the side. M.J. Trow went on to write 16 titles in this series.
Review Date: 9/14/2008
Helpful Score: 1
A tale of Atlantis and interplanetary space-travel in contemporary science terms of the 20's, including Einsteins's early descriptions of television and space-time. This is one of a series of titles in The Best of Soviet Science Fiction and is introduced by T. Sturgeon. It's the love story of a soldier and a princess who meet on Mars and also the devastating battles between Martian rebels and their tyrannical government. I just love old-time science fiction! and this one's well written.
The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV
Author:
Book Type: Paperback
2
Author:
Book Type: Paperback
2
Review Date: 11/19/2013
Helpful Score: 1
A bit too much detail in some parts, but a thorough recounting of the truth behind the tales of poisoning and attendant witchcraft in the court of 16thC France (the bibliography is 36 pages). It provides the background to The Oracle Glass by the late Judith Merkle Riley. I had no idea, as I read the fiction, that it was based on actual events involving the nobility, prompted on fear for the King's life. An excellent book if you want to know more about this time.
Review Date: 9/19/2008
Helpful Score: 3
Jane Goodall has long been one of my role models, as a scientist and a human being. Her letters ("precious caches, the closest thing to perfect memory". -ed.)are interspersed with commentary that links them to stages in her life, from a young girl in 1942 to her first fieldwork in 1966. Here are Flo, Flint, Melissa, Hugo and all the other chimpanzees of "her" troupe. Great reading!
Review Date: 4/30/2011
There were mixed reviews for this book which is more a personal experience than a dispassionate set of observations. Shen Tong tells the story of his experiences with life as a student and his growing love affair with democracy. He becomes an activist and is a leader in the Tiananmen Square demonstration that was so brutally crushed. He was lucky enough to have the money to buy a passport and the airfare to America to escape government prosecution. His grandparents both committed suicide (in their 60's) to avoid the public humiliation of a duncecap parade. A stirring personal memoir.
Review Date: 11/19/2013
If you've read the others in this series, you know the truth behind the abstract above. Witty descriptions and unimaginable turns of events spice this third lusty book in the series. Totally unreal and thoroughly funny.
Review Date: 10/1/2011
Helpful Score: 1
Leaving Washington, Alistair Cooke travels south from Washington to the Gulf Coast, west to California and up to Seattle, then on to the Great Lakes, at a time before interstates and paved highways. Along the way his log reports on Jim Crow, Japanese internment and other social difficulties. His journalistic report reveals the same wry, insightful man from Masterpiece Theatre, journeying through an America that was, a different time in a different space. Highly recommended for style and content to everyone who wants to remember America, or Alistair Cooke's remarkable journalism.
Review Date: 10/18/2010
I totally agree with Matt B.s review! Thubron's personal event travel books are such an engaging readable trip. An enthusiastic but balanced approach of good happenings and bad, Thubron writes about the way people are and live, their history and current life in the big cities and villages. Interesting and insightful!
Review Date: 10/9/2012
Helpful Score: 1
Forensic science was in its early days at the time of this murder mystery: not enough was known to always solve the crime. Dr. Silkstone is called to examine a corpse considered too decayed by other doctors, but perseveres for justice, consulting colleagues and medical text available, and for the sake of the wife of the deceased. It's based on the a murder trial at the Warwick Assizes in 1781, the first knowm occasion where an "anatomist" was called as a witness. Interesting characters, plot twists and fascinating details kept me going well past my bedtime. Highly recommended as an historical tale as well as a detective story.
Review Date: 7/18/2014
Helpful Score: 4
A series of gruesome murders compel the widowed Lady Darby to step forward and assist the investigator Sebastian Gage. Because of her forced association with her husband in the dissection of corpses (horrors!), accusations and rumors swirl around her. But participation is now a way for her to possibly clear her name. Negative feelings abound in the era of the beginnings of human biological science, since corpses are usually those of executed criminals. But the lack of subjects has led to grave robbery. Several red herrings will throw you off the path, but the resolution of the mystery is very satisfying.
Review Date: 12/23/2008
Helpful Score: 2
Ashe is one of the foremost authorities on King Arthur, and his writings are entertaining and very approachable. This book examines myths, mysticism and arcane knowlege that seem to point to the legendary time of Shambhala: secret doctrines, numerology, mystical symbols. Somehow these ideas continue to thrive throughout history and shape our culture: Tarot, astrology, deep magic, and so on. This is not a book about religion or philosophy, but an attempt to show reasonably how these various beliefs came into our world view and thus understand their truths.
Review Date: 10/12/2010
These 2 novellas are linked by their setting in Victorian England, both exploring the nature of life and domestic living. One explores sexuality and the place of people in the Darwinian world, the other spirituality and the nature of communication with the dead/living. Both topics were all the rage in Victorian life, both popular because of the discussions of the nature of humanity that was brought into focus with Darwins theories that placed mankind farther from the angels. I enjoyed both these stories by keeping their context always in mind. From the greater perspective they were both magical in the facets of living at that time, and even today.
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