X Books

I first read "Warrant for X" 45 years ago and have read many hundreds of mysteries since. This is still one of the best "classic" British "who- dunnits" ever. It was the movie "39 Steps to Baker Street," I believe, starring Van Johnson -- but the book beats the movie by a mile. Pure enjoyment and hard to put down. The author is more famous for "The List of Adrian Messenger," but this is a better story, in my opinion, and it grabs you from the very beginning and doesn't let go.

In Philip MacDonald's world the butler just may have done it. I was watching a movie "23 Paces to Baker Street" (1956), about a blind man (Van Johnson) overhearing a kidnap and murder plot. The credits said based on a story by Philip MacDonald. The story turns out to be Warrant for X ASIN: 0394716604.
With a few differences the story was going paralleling the film then I recognized the name of Anthony Gethryn. It turns out that this book is part of a series that includes Colonel Gethryn. I have even seen another movie with him in it that was totally different from 23 paces but matched the book to a tee. The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) where George C. Scott plays Anthony Gethryn.
Naturally the book s more complex than the movie. And just incase you come in the middle of the series as I did; there is sufficient references to earlier novels to keep you from getting lost. The mystery will keep you and the edge of your seat and just as you think they have a handle on "the who, what and why," they are off and running again.

Gyleen puts together a visual feast of quilts coupled the simple yet expansive eloquence of a handful of syllables. Wonderful.

I received this gem of a book as a gift, loved it, and within a few months sent it as a gift to someone who also loved it. This beautiful quilting book is not about instructions, but about inspiration for the eye and thoughtful haiku for the mind. I keep it on my bedside table and have enjoyed different patterns and poetry at different times. This is a book to enjoy over and over again!

From the authorship of the Society of Saint Pius X and sent to His Holiness Pope John Paul II in the beginning of 2001, "The Problem of the Liturgical Reform" constitutes an excellent comparison between the Tridentine Mass and the New Mass of Paul VI, definitively refuting the error that both masses are the same thing, one being said in latin and the other in vernacular.

This study clearly establishes and asserts the main differences between both rites: the Tridentine Mass is nothing less than the repetition and renewal, in an unbloody way, of the death of Christ on the cross, putting all the emphasis in His real presence under both species after the consecration - bread and wine trough the consecration officiated by the celebrant priest are transformed in the body and blood of Christ, such separation of elements symbolising His sacrifice in favour of a sinful mankind; on the contrary, the New Mass of Paul VI is essentially an eucharistic meal, a commemoration of the death of Christ, a protestantization of the Mass, which seriously devaluates its sacrificial dimension and minimises the real presence (in a substantial way) of Christ on it, by that reason endangering an essential dogma of faith and the beliefs of unguarded catholics.

The reviewed book is usually considered, even among traditionalist circles, as a though reading. I don't think so: any catholic with an average knowledge of his faith will be able to read this book without problems and profitably, in order to understand why the New Mass is not a good Mass.

If you have trouble explaining why the new Mass should not be accepted, this book explains it well. The Traditional Mass, known as the Tridentine Mass, is the valid Mass. This book shows how the Novus Ordo broke with liturgical tradition of the Catholic Church. And it shows how the new teachings of the Catholic Church are condemned by the traditional Catholic doctrine.

We can only pray that we can get a copy of this book into the hands of every Priest.

30 years ago reading a book by Gene Savoy changed my life.

Today I read the following news item:

Explorer who found lost Peru cities dies Sun Sep 16, 2:44 AM ET
RENO, Nev. - Douglas Eugene "Gene" Savoy, an explorer who discovered more than 40 lost cities in Peru and led long-distance sailing adventures to learn more about ancient cultures, has died. He was 80.

In 1977 Gene Savoy published Project X: The Search for the Secrets of Immortality. My wife and I were in the middle of a three-year battle with infertility that eventually broke up our marriage. I had wanted to name a boy child Orion and started to research this mythical man. I learned that he had been blinded and had been sent to the eastern shore to watch Apollo (the Sun) rise from the sea to regain his sight. I had been reading about sun-worshippers for years but had just started to understand that sun worship was often practiced as sun staring. Project X is about Savoy's theories about sun staring by the pre-Columbian Peruvians.

I never had that boy child but reading Savoy's book helped me find the personal strength to change my own name to Orion and to absorb the healing strength of the story into my life.

I now see that this one book is just a minor aspect of this great man's work. So I wonder, as I read of his passing, if others have also been changed by their contact with his writings.

I put this title right up there with The Immortal Cell, Methyl Magic, THE Edge Effect, and The Immortalist Manifesto--

"Quarantine" is a pretty good novelization, based on the Season 2 X-Files episode, "F. Emasculata." In it, a highly infectious disease is transported from a Costa Rican rain forest to a Virginian prison, killing more than a dozen inmates in the process--except for two very dangerous convicts who have escaped. Hence FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are called in to investigate. Scully's responsible for the medical aspect of the investigation--uncovering a secret quarantine that could jeopardize her life--while Mulder is left to do the legwork--tracking down the two suspects, who are not only deadly in the physical sense of the word (they were incarcerated for murder), but they could have infected numerous people as well.

It's been a long time since I've seen the episode, so I can't really compare it to this novelization. I did notice, though, that the storyline is fairly similar to Stephen King's "The Stand," so if you're into conspiracies, deadly diseases and all that, then you'll probably like "Quarantine." However, easily-nauseated readers may want to pass this one up, since there are a few descriptive scenes involving pus-erupting boils and red-orange beetles that dwell inside them. If you're a fast reader, you can probably finish this book in about the same time it would take to watch the episode. It's a breeze to read, considering the spare writing and only 117 pages to get through. Definitely for the young X-Files crowd, but older fans should like it too.

This was the first x files book I read. I think it was wrote very good and I loved the story line even though lots of the parts reminded me alot of a couple of there shows

This is the 5th collection of Pauline Kael's film reviews from the New Yorker magazine covering the period September 1972 to May 1975. In her forward, Kael mentions this time as an opportunity reviewers dream of with the work of "expansionist" directors like Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who provide audiences with the "mind-swaying sensation of experiencing several arts - at their highest - combined. We come out reeling". The book covers the end of the Nixon era where titles like Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, and Nashville have a "new openminded interest in examining American experience, an interest at once skeptical, disenchanted, despairing and lyrical". This book features 2 controversial items - her long prophetic analytical essay that stirred up a storm of contention, On The Future of Movies; and her infamous review of Last Tango in Paris, where she compared the first screening to the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed. This latter claim would make Kael's detractors salivate at their perception of her pretention, but it also confirms her passion for her craft. The collection's raves, apart from the previously mentioned Mean Streets, Godfather II, and Nashville, include Sounder, The Heartbreak Kid, Images, The Way We Were, The Long Goodbye, Don't Look Now, Thieves Like Us, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and Shampoo. Her pans include Sleuth, Lost Horizon, Papillon, The Day of the Dolphin, Mame, Lenny, and Funny Lady. The collection also includes reviews of Arlene Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Norman Mailer's Marilyn, and her essay After Innocence on the Vietnamisation of American movies. Some of Ms Kael's quips: What could be more soul-curdling than a Broadway folk operetta featuring the founding fathers, and double entendres, and national tragedy? The movie version (1776). You can't call Clint Eastwood a bad actor since he'd have to do something before you could consider him bad at it. The Night Porter was directed by a woman, Liliana Cavani, which proves that women can make junk just as well as men. And, in Airport 1975, Karen Black is so archaically helpless as the stewardess who must take over the controls of the plane, that Chalton Heston on the radio telling her what to do, keeps congratulating her if she manages to keep her hand on a lever without hysterics.

Here are the movies Pauline Kael wrote about in her book REELING:

Sounder + The Emigrants,
Chloe In The Afternoon + Bad Company,
Young Winston + Two English Girls,
A Sense Of Loss + Fellini's ROMA,
Last Tango In Paris,
Lady Sings The Blues,
The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie + Play It As It Lays, Savage Messiah,
1776 + The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book,
Black Girl + Farewell Uncle Tom,
The Heartbreak Kid + The Poseidon Adventure + Child's Play + Traffic,
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds + Sleuth + Man Of La Mancha + The Getaway + Images,
Up The Sandbox + Pete n Tillie + Jeremiah Johnson,
Cries and Whispers,
Cesar and Rosalie
Travels With My Aunt + The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,
The First Circle,
Limbo
Lady Caroline Lamb + Trick Baby + Under Milk Wood,
Save the Tiger + Steelyard Blues + If I Had A Gun,
Payday + The Harder They Come,
Ten from Your Show of Shows,
Slither + The Thief Who Came To Dinner,
Lost Horizon + Days and Nights In The Forest,
Ludwig + Two People,
Marilyn -- A Biography By Norman Mailer,
The Last American Hero,
Mean Streets,
The Way We Were + Day For Night + The New Land,
The Long Goodbye,
The Paper Chase + Sisters,
The Iceman Cometh + The Inheritor,
England Made Me + Charley Varrick,
The French Conspiracy + Executive Action,
WestWorld + Triple Echo + The HomeComing + The All-American Boy + Some Call It Loving,
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
Serpico,
Don't Look Now + Papillon,
Sleeper + The Sting + The Day Of The Dolphin + The Glass Menagerie,
The Exorcist,
Magnum Force,
Alfredo Alfredo + Cinderella Liberty + The Laughing Policeman + Bone,
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,
Thieves Like Us,
The Last Detail + McQ,
Zardoz + Blazing Saddles,
Walking Tall,
The Mother and The Whore,
Conrack + Mame,
The Sugarland Express + Badlands,
The Night Porter + The Abdication + Juggernaut,
The Gambler + The Longest Yard,
Law & Disorder + Gold + 11 Harrowhouse,
Le Fantome de la Liberte + Airport 1975 + The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three,
Phantom Of The Paradise,
Lenny,
On the Future Of Movies,
The Trial of Billy Jack + The Savage is Loose + The Groove Tube,
Earthquake + The Little Prince,
Murder On The Orient Express + A Woman Under the Influence,
The Godfather Part II,
Young Frankenstein + The Towering Inferno,
Alice Don't Live Here Anymore,
Stavisky, Les Vilons Du Bal,
The Front Page,
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins + Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York,
Report to the Commissioner,
Shampoo,
The Stepford Wives,
Nashville + A Brief Vacation,
The Prisoner of Second Avenue,
Funny Lady,
At Long Last Love + The Great Waldo Pepper + The Yakuza,
The Day of The Locust

My husband bought this book for us several weeks before we were married. Fr. Weiser explains how we can truly live our Catholic heritage within our families and raise our children in the Faith. Attending Mass and obtaining religious instruction for our children is only a small part of what we can do to establish our children in the Faith; we must live it fully at home and realize every year the riches of our liturgical year. Every year I marvel at how there are more aspects of the liturgy I have yet to learn, and there is nothing I would wish to pass on to my children more. This book has provided invaluable suggestions in practical ways to teach the Church's liturgy to our children. We are so grateful that TAN Books and Publishers was able to republish this book.

Every Catholic should have at least one book by Father Francis Weiser. His area of expertise was the devotions and customs of the Liturgical Year in the Catholic Church. This booklet is the reprint of his "Religious Customs in the Family" which was also printed under the title of "The Year of the Lord in the Christian Home." Father Weiser briefly touches on the major feasts and liturgical seasons of the Church and gives solid advice on how to implement devotions that will reinforce the liturgy of the Church into the home. A must read for the Domestic-Church library.

This book revolutionized my thinking about the Resurrection and provided an added depth to my knowledge of scripture. A master of scripture, Fr. Durrwell weaves together and systemizes ideas from the bible, and the New Testament in particular, to present much fuller explanation of the importance of the resurrection, as well as the possibility and necessity of contact with the body of Christ.

This book has influenced my spiritual development more than any book except the scriptures. It is not an easy read, and it requires a commitment of time and attention. But for those desiring a deeper knowledge of Jesus Christ and his unique role in salvation history.

Fr. Durrwell's classic is subtitled, "A Biblical Study" and it certainly lives up to its name. Durrwell divided his book into nine lengthy chapters: 1) The resurrection of Christ a mystery of redemption, 2) Incarnation, death and resurrection, 3) The resurrection as outpouring of the Holy Spirit, 4) The effects of the resurrection in Christ, 5) The resurrection of Christ, birth of the Church, 6) The Church's life in the risen Christ, 7) The progress and consumation of the Paschal Mystery in the Church, 8) the means whereby the Easter mystery spreads outwards, 9) The Easter mystery in its consummation in heaven. The book also comes with an index of scripture references, index of authors cited and a subject index.

Durrwell relates many points that you might not know. Did you know that several early Church fathers stressed that Christ's priesthood changed in character after the resurrection? I certainly didn't know that. If you can find a good condition copy for a reasonable price, this book is very worthwhile.

This book can keep you busy for a year. It will teach you how to make a great risotto (not an easy task). There are resotti for every taste, from side dish to main dish to desert.

This book is for every risotto lover in the world! the way a risotto should be.Simple,tasty and with personality. Has a professional cook i loved all the aspect of it: simple presentation,execution and great photos. even the worst cook(at home or on the job!) will become a risotto master with this little jewel.

This book is a read aloud for 4-6 yr olds and independent reading for 7-8 yr olds.

Katherine(5yrs old), loved this book. She read it with some help and loved the part when Chuckie said,"Hey! Leave him alone! He's not a nanner! We giggled throughout the book and you will too.