Louise Brooks Books

It is very hard to review this book without spoiling it. So I will attempt not to.

It is about reality, the self, immortality, adventure and love. All in a very compact format, with a mind bending ending.

If you liked Philip K. Dick's UBIK and other of his short stories of that genre, you may actually love this book.

This novel is a metaphor about interpersonal communications, and tells about the transformation of an individual trying to be accepted by a society to which -initially- he doesn't belong. It is based on a wonderful idea, that in my opinion is enough to classify this book as a masterpiece, even if the writing style is not particularly rich. The book has two different layers: its appearance and its not-openly disclosed messages. The appearance is an intriguing novel based on a sci-fi type of idea: a fugitive man escapes to an island populated by people that are totally not interested in him. His initial fear and attempts to hide from them slowly transforms into his desperate wish to interact with them, pushing him up to the final limit when, understood that the people are inanimate, endless cyclic tridimensional representation of a party that happened years before (and that, due to the radiations ejected by the special movie camera used, lead to the death of their actors) the man sacrifice his own life by simulating being one of the group, filming himself with the special cameras and preparing to die for that.
This may be read as a metaphor of the compromises that we accept in order to be part of a society: in the end our feelings, our dreams, our goals are only representations and, when we are finally part of it, our individuality expires.

I bought this book via amazon as I heard it was the basis of the TV series "Lost," which I love. Borge's also gives a blurb saying it is "a perfect novel." (But despite the praise he receives, I find Borge's writing to be extremely abstruse, so maybe I should have been more wary of his recommendation.)

I'm not sure if it was due to the translation, but I found some of the writing a bit choppy, unclear, and incoherent--some of the sentences just don't really make any sense in the paragraph they are in.

I won't give anything away, but not much happens in the story, and the end is just a convoluted explanation of the confusion (which I found became quite repetitive early on) the main character experiences during the first half or three-quarters of the novella (it's only 100 pages). And I found the conclusion totally unbelievable anyway. This could have been just a short story.

In short, I wouldn't recommend buying it, as the money could be used for a more satisfying and real novel-length book.

The cover picture and the blurb on the back indicate that Louise Brooks had something to do with it all....And so, knowing this, I brought what I knew of LB to my reading of 'The Invention of Morel'. As a result, I don't find fault with the character development (as other reviews here do) - why should I? This tale is about the elusive nature of beauty, the mystery of cinema, the hard to pin down quality of a great silent movie actress. To imagine what the narrator experiences - the coming to life of someone who's charisma and beauty resembles that of Louise Brooks - against the backdrop of a strange island, the eerie repetitious jazz music on the phonograph, the at once lush and deadened landscape - is descriptive enough. The narrator never knows the characters - Half-crazed, he doesn't even know himself! This is an absolutely brilliant, highly atmospheric tale.

My interest in this book stemmed from Sawyer on the tv show "LOST" reading this book on the show. Thought the writers might be trying to tell us something so I gave it a read.

It is about a man on an Island running away from the law, convicted of life imprisonment. He finds an island that is inhabited with people he cannot make contact with. Approximately three buildings exhist on the island, a museum, a chapel and mill. A marsh and reef encircle the island with a map given as guide. This book is really ahead of its time being written in 1940!! It definately has some LOST weirdness in it. It has buildings with machines that carry on functions that are mysterious. I wonder if the writers of LOST will incorporate some ideas of this book in the story. Recommended for any LOST fan.

Kenneth Anger once described Louise Brooks as "one of the loveliest visions ever to grace a screen", and his description should be taken as gospel. Louise was a shimmering beauty, but she was more than that: she was an opinionated, intelligent, thoughtful human being who knew that Hollywood breeds crap and who believed in film as art. . .positions she ultimately couldn't reconcile. Who couldn't love Lulu?

A good companion to the movie Pandora's Box

This book was a present to my children from my mother for Christmas. She was very excited about it and said it reminded her of her childhood. It gave me and my children great insight as to what it was like for my Mother and her family growing up in the 30's. My Mother read it aloud to my children when she gave it to them. The part about Christmas morning made us all cry. The book told about a Southern Family in the 30's preparing for Christmas. But it was more than that, the love that was felt between the family members and the simple pleasures that were enjoyed during the trying times of the 30's was touching and ment a great deal to me and my children. We were able, for the first time to explain to our children what it was like to grow up back then, to do without and to make do with what you had. It amazed my children that people could be so happy with so little. I would recommend this book to any Grandparent to give to a Grandchild or to anyone who has parents or relatives who grew up in the 30's.

I read this book to my two nieces, aged 2.5 and 5.

I always enjoy the "story-within-a-story" motif, and seeing how different the narration is from the child's actual memories (even though he "was a baby" and "wouldn't remember"!) is funny as all heck to me.

Doesn't grab my nieces. They just aren't that interested in it.

This fascinating book by an award winning Irish author and illustrator is a story that works on multiple levels. It is a colorful short story of two "tribal" boys in a dry wilderness having a game of king of the hill, and it is a powerful demonstration of how words can hurt...or heal. It has also on a deeper level a clear anti-war/anti-violence message.
Words in this book have a life of their own and literally transform, in multi panel form, almost like animation, to become the visual agent of change. Words shape themselves as birds, they tangle and twist into dividing barbed wire, they clot together and dam a river, causing a flood, and they form into a destructive dragon and breath fire. And ultimately, they form into redemptive rain that brings beautiful poppies.
This is a book that can be enjoyed for it's sheer exuberence and artistry, or treasured for it's deeper message of respect and peace. One need not come from a land of sectarian violence such as Ireland to appreciate it's thoughtful lasting impression. Buy it!

The book "I Am I" by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick is a wonderful book for young readers everywhere. This is a great book to buy and read to your toddlers. They would simply love it.
There are many bright colors. The boy on the cover page has colorful hair that is yellow and blue. It is a heart-warming story. This is because the two little kids learn how to share and that helps them in life. It helps you make friends! This is a very easy book to read so almost anyone can read it. The vocabulary is very simple. An example sentence from the book to show this is, "I am I king of all the sea."
Anybody could read it, such as kindergarten and up. The colors are beautiful and will catch the eye of many young toddlers. It teaches a very good lesson in sharing and not to fight. If you want to teach your own children how to read, buy it!

I work in a children's library and have rarely found a book more bizarre than this one. I can see no way that a toddler or even a preschooler could begin to comprehend the illustrations. Additionally, I was very disturbed by the words, "I HATE YOU, HATE YOU, HATE YOU which are exchanged by the two boys. A very disappointing addition by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick.

The people said the book was in good condition...there is highlighter throughout the book along with writing inside. The ends of the pages are worn and the cover is worn.

Out of all the books I have been required to read in pursuit of my PhD, this by far is the worst book I owned. Its very difficult to follow at times, and the author places these "exercises" within each chapter in attempt to enhance the understanding of the material. In actuality, its cumbersome and often times not relevant to the material previously presented. I could write a full review of how bad this text is, but as with the other recommendations, I would stay away from this text.

The one thing the book does well... It starts at the most basic level of introduction to research and goes up through statistical forumlas.

The problem is the information is sloppily put together. The author knows little or nothing about logic, and this, misuses it in ways that will damage the students ability to function in reasearch if they have no previous experience. There are also lots of nice charts, that you have to fill in yourself, making this feel like a paint-by-numbers rather than a textbook.

The author also lumps interval and ration data sets together. While when using formulas they are interchangable the one sentence inclusion of the two together does not give justice to the very different applications of interval and ratio data. Once again, if you take a stats class after this, you will suffer from the learning.

Highly NOT Recommended.

This is NOT a very good book. It is very basic, and at that, it can't get it right. The book is very poorly edited, which causes a lot of confusion.