Shadow Books

It's often said that there is nothing new to say about abortion. Harrison has something new to say -- said over two decades ago and foolishly ignored. Viewed from our perspective, "In The Shadow of the Curette" seems a chilling prophecy.

It's often said that there is nothing new to say about abortion. Harrison has something new to say -- said over two decades ago and foolishly ignored. Viewed from our perspective, In The Shadow of the Curette seems a chilling prophecy.

This extraordinary book presents 113 sepia-toned photographs, with commentary, of the people, architecture and landscape of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sikkim, taken by a career British officer in the late 19th and very early 20th century. Anyone with an interest in this region should be enthralled by his remarkable photographs of these remote mountain worlds. The photos represent an important historical record, and give us a fascinating view of these mysterious hidden kingdoms. The book is beautifully designed, and the authors provide important historical background on the photographer (John Claude White), his life and times, and the history of the region.

this book shows the above counties'sights by photo from 1883 to 1908.you may say this is an old records.however,especially the kingdom of sikkim,
the records on this book are very very variable and important matwerial even if you have not any interest in this country.because many people never heard the name of "sikkim",that's the important point.we thought we know all countries around this small globe,but it's not correct.because we never know about sikkim at all,even the name of this coutry.I hope you agree with me about this point,at least.today you can touch and know every countries at book stores except sikkim.hope you may have the same feeling and thoughts about this small black hall in this world.how can i say...we have to know more about sikkim any way . thank you.

Who better to write about the Children of Holocaust Survivors than a Clinical Psychologist who is a Child of Holocaust Survivors himself. The opinions and attitudes of Children of Holocaust Survivors are shared in this book. The truths that Second Generation Children hold on to become quite evident.

I am one of those rare creatures: a non-Jew who is very interested in the legacy of the Holocaust on the Jewish people. In one place, the author states that Jews view the Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy, while non-Jews see it as another example of "man's inhumanity to man." This is a generalization. I see the Holocaust as complete devastation for the Jews of Europe with traumatic effects that extend to Jews in many other places in the world. This does not mean ignoring non-Jewish victims; Charlotte Delbo, a non-Jew, wrote a painfully honest account of her time in Auschwitz. But I do recognize that there was a difference between those victims who were selected for complete annihilation and destruction of their culture, and those who, while subjected to persecution as individuals and perhaps within their families, were not meant to be elimated from the Earth.

Plus, anyone who is familiar with the awful history of European anti-Semitism will know that the Nazis took many of their techniques, such as Jewish stars, denial of rights to Jews, refusal to allow Jews into professions or even speak to Gentiles, and ghettos, straight from Catholic (and to some extent, Protestant as well) treatment of Jews during the Middle Ages.

The Holocaust was uniquely horrific; I'm not doubting that. but it's cheap for Christians to absolve ourselves by saying it's "man's inhumanity to man," given the long legacy of anti-Semitism, forced conversions, murders, etc.

That having been said -

Hass is a child of survivors and a clinical psychologist who felt that the literature on children of survivors was too skewed towards pathology. So he interviewed adult children from the general public. He did not find the level of pathology that some other psychologist authors have found, but he did find heightened mistrust. He states that three words he heard from just about every person in his 48-person sample were: fear, mistrust, cynicism.

He directly takes on the complex issues of remembering the Holocaust, the guilt induced by many survivor parents ("for this I survived the camps?"), strong and sometimes conflicted feelings about Jewish identity, relations with the Gentile world, and passing on the legacy to the "third generation." He addresses the nightmares of being chased, being behind bars, etc. that many children of survivors have, while also realizing their good fortune compared to their parents, which often leads to considerable guilt due to having easier lives, while their parents suffered so much. Even those children who rebelled against their parents felt this guilt.

At the same time, children of survivors often did not have their own emotional needs met because their parents experienced an overwhelming lack of support in the years following the genocide, meaning that further indifference and refusal to hear about the Holocaust made mourning diffiicult and enhanced the sense that the world was against the Jews. There was often little energy left over to appropriately emotionally nurture the children, especially when survivors saw their children living out the normal lives that were denied to them. Conflicts resulted for survivors: they wanted their children to be happy and they also displayed signs of their extreme suffering, even when they spoke little about the Holocaust. This led to confusion on the children's part. I think the indifference of an uncaring world, that went right on without much notice that the Jews of Europe had been destroyed, played a large part in this continuation of suffering.

He writes with compassion, honesty, and understanding, and is honest enough to tackle children of survivors' conflicted feelings about Gentiles, which expresses their pain and fear of persecution without descending into racism, though he reports some prejudiced statements from some Jews, such as that all Gentiles will sell them for a loaf of bread. While uncomfortable for me to read as a non-Jew, such statements represent the reality of what many of the survivors experienced. Other children of survivors go out of their way to understand Gentiles and work on behalf of oppressed groups of all ethnicities, because they want to bring their sensitivity to persecution and willingness to fight it to the larger world.

The book concludes with some moving thoughts on the third generation as described by his relationship with his young daughter, Rachel. He describes the need for Jews, even children of survivors who often don't learn much about the Holocaust intellectually, to keep memory alive. And he asks for increased dialogue between children and their aging parents so that the children understand their parents' lives in context, though he expresses the hope that the parents will express their experiences in a straightforward way, without trying to induce guilt, which would only make the children more defensive.

An outstanding, thoughtful book - highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand the legacy of persecution and the resilience that allows people to keep living despite it.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE VOLCANO: ONE FAMILY'S BAJA ADVENTURE is adventure reading at its best: in the early 1970s the author and his family explored Baja, living in a tiny hut they constructed on a remote beach. But that didn't end their adventure: in 1985 they revisited the area with their sons ages and 8, living for a summer in another beachside hut. Their first-person adventures offer warm reflections on local culture and family experiences alike.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I loved this book--his descriptions of the beauty of the place they lived really made me want to see it. I have not traveled in Baja but now I want to go to Bahia de Los Angeles where they lived.
I especially liked the way he wrote about the wildlife and the different animals they owned, the burro and the chickens and their dogs. The whales and the dolphins that swam in the bay nearby, too.
I think they were a brave couple to take their little boys to live on the beach. It sounds like it was good for them bonding as a family, though, and what a great place to spend your vacations!

It seems almost humorous now to think back to the Cold War days of a divided Germany, but not to the few who made it over the Wall alive.

This was a great story of a young man who escaped East Germany over the Berlin Wall. The book is easy to read and gives great insight into the life of a young person growing up with freedom a stone's throw away. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a vision of East German life.

I stumbled across this book in Memphis, Tennessee where the author now lives and ordered a few copies of it for my friends thru Amazon. It is about a young man who, along with three friends, jumped the Berlin Wall in 1987, just two years before it came down.

The book is cultural anthropology at its best and a wonderfully thrilling story about a brave young man.

I just began reading Reck's book and it seems to me that it will be very informative and enjoyable. I suppose I have no buisness writing a review when I haven't even completed the book, but I can recommend that Reck's voice be heard by all interested in the effects of globalization on independent cultures through the anthropological scope. I am in one of Reck's classes now, so I can put my word behind this novel. I know what he says is not only out of great knowledge of what he's talking about, but also of tremendous compassion for his subjects. Read this book.

I had the benefit of taking some of Dr. Reck's anthropology courses and reading this book. From what he tells me, there were many who were reluctant to call it anthropology at the time it was written because it was written as a story rather than a positivist ethnography written with a "voice from nowhere." One might criticize the book for not going far enough and demonstrating reflexivity by including himself within the text, but this is a minor point. This book conveys something about the culture in a readable way, which is the essence of a good ethnography in my opinion.

Penguin's new translations of "In Search of Lost Time" were just the nudge I needed to read Proust's masterwork again. I was particularly impressed by the job the American writer Lydia Davis did with "Swann's Way". By contrast, I have a few complaints about James Grieves's rendering of "In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower". Where Scott Moncrieff translated "petite bande" (of girls) with the expected "little band," Grieves uses "little gang," which to an American ear sounds rather tough. He mangles one of my favorite quotations. And there's a typo on the bottom of page 95: "not" instead of "now"!

Overall, though, I like the liberties Grieves takes with the text, and we were certainly overdue for a freshened-up translation of one of the most important books of the 20th century. Unlike Proust's French, Scott Moncrieff's English has come to seem dusty and overblown. (For example, he rendered the title of this volume as "Within a Budding Grove", the literal translation being too racy for his 1920s audience of post-Victorians.)

The American edition (from Viking) is particularly handsome. The four volumes now available are uniform in appearance when it comes to their cloth covers (grey and black with silver lettering), and the dust-jackets, though following a general theme, are distinctive enough that you're not likely to mistake one volume for another. Altogether, a wonderful gift for your library or that of a friend.

-- Dan Ford at readingproust dot com

For the second book of Proust's masterpiece, 'In Search of Lost Time', his attention turns away from the black and white realities of childhood to the greyer realms of adolescence, and with that, the deep, burning sensation of unrequited love. In essence, the second book is a 530-page essay on the different forms of young love, from deep obsession to airy neglect, from the savage loneliness of rejection to the dizzying heights of a love returned.

The book is split into two rough sections, the first of which is called 'At Mme Swan's'. Here we are introduced to Gilberte, Proust's first great love. The feelings he harbour's for her are ridiculously exaggerated, and oh so reminiscent of most people's teenage years. Every action, every word, every glance is analysed, studied, explored for meaning and intent. If, one day, Gilberte invites him to tea, the implications and potential meanings behind the invitation are debated internally for pages. If not, then even more pages are spent examining the pit of despair that Proust' soul fall in to. On top of this unhealthily obsessive love, we have his infatuation with Mme Swan, Gilberte's mother. There is almost a sense that Proust loves Gilberte because she is his age and he 'should' love her, whereas his affection towards Odette Swan is more real because there is no obligation or pressure from anyone, but less likely because she is twenty years older than him, and married.

When Proust's love for Gilberte is over - as it inevitably must, in those tender years of a boy or girl's life - the terrifying lows to which his emotions descend is as remarkable as the highs of his spirit not twenty pages previous. He obsessively analyses the ways in which he will get revenge, plotting to make her love him again, just so that he can reject her, to let her know how it feels. He tortures himself emotionally, visiting Mme Swan and purposely avoiding Gilberte.

What we have in this first part is a fascinating study on the tormented, melodramatic loves of early adolescence. Proust is too young at this stage to understand that love may not be forever, and can speak only in grandiose, exaggerated terms. If not for the fact that the prose is written with such grace and intelligence, his despair would come across as teenage angst at its very blackest.

In the second part of the novel, 'Place-Names: The Place', Proust and his grandmother retire to the beach to aid in the recuperation of his body and mind. Always a frail child, the rigours of new love have taken their toll on the young man. He rejects love, deciding that he shall become a writer once more, a passion that he had denied himself when his love for Gilberte had seemed so real and assured. He is introduced to a variety of characters which, we are told during the narrative, will come to play a great part in his later life: Robert de Saint-Loup, the Baron de Charlus and of course Albertine.

It is in this second section that Proust falls under the shadows of young girls in flower. He meets a group of girls, a 'gang' he calls them, and befriends first one, then all of them, reasoning that out of four or five girls, at least one would be worthy of love. Keeping with the true spirit of adolescence, he falls in and out of love with them all, needing only a stray glance or a casual smile to move from one girl to the other. Only two of them, Albertine and Andree, seem to return his emotions, and even then, everything remains chaste.

Interspersed throughout, we have long, insightful remarks on what love can do to the body, to the mind, and to the relationships we have with other people. Speaking as a male recently finished with his teenage years, I can say that Proust has captured the depth of feeling, the obsessiveness, the surety that everything in the universe will be perfect if only the love is returned, the electric thrill of acceptance, the deep darkness of rejection with such skill that perfection is a word that springs to mind.

Other topics are touched on throughout the novel. Early on, Proust is introduced to an author he holds in high esteem, one Bergotte. He is crushed upon discovering that the man does not exactly coincide with the image he had created while reading Bergotte's books, and ruminates on the fact that a man need not display the same intelligence and wit in reality as he does on the page. We must all focus our attention on achieving either a great reality or a great fiction, for Bergotte, his attentions were focused upon the fiction, and his personality and demeanour when interacting with flesh and blood people suffer. For Proust, it is an introduction to the idea that people can have two - or more - identities, and that a certain one is presented to a certain group of people.

The writing is, of course, typical Proust. Sentences are long, paragraphs are longer, and not very much happens. Dialogue is scarce, action scarcer. The reader is there to observe Proust's thoughts, not to use him as a mirror to the world he inhabits. Luckily for us, Proust's thoughts are never dull or boring. He says early on in the novel, 'For genius lies in reflective power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected', and Proust's reflective power more than reveal the truth of this maxim.

In Tami Parrington's, IN THE SHADOWS OF LOVE, she continues to build strong characters with a story that makes you want to keep reading. This author has a great future.

Having read the previous book 'The Road To Paradise' by Tami Parrington, my expectations were high. The new novel 'In the Shadows of Love' is equally excellent and like 'Pardise' I couldn't put the book down. You find yourself from the onset rooting for the main characters of Sarah and Nathaniel no matter what obstacles come their way. It's a rich love story of joy and heartache that is all consuming in a wonderful way.

I was swept off my feet by this book. It is a love story between a man and his wife, Roberta, who was fighting the battle with Alzheimer's, and between both of them and God. The author's faith grew even as the strain of taking care of his wife increased. His training as a psychologist enabled him to reveal his feelings in many difficult circumstances and to empathize with the horrors that his wife was going through.  At times I cried and at other times I laughed.  This is not a how-to book.  Rather, it is a book written from the inner experience of the caregiver as he accompanied his wife day by day from the earliest days of her journey into this horrific disease, until the day he placed her in the keeping of professional caregivers.

Many of my friends have watched their parents disappear into the strange world of Alzheimer's disease, and I read this book to try to understand a little more what they are going through. It is wonderful! The author is a trained psychologist, but he writes with tender romanticism about his beautiful, brilliant wife. Although we meet her as she is teetering over the edge into the darkness of dementia, he brings her vividly back to life by telling us about her as a young woman, a mother,a musician, college professor, community activist and good friend, so that we mourn with him as he watches the woman he knew disappear. He offers a lot of insight into how to understand the Alzheimer's patient and what kind of help the caregiver needs in order to make the right decisions. This book is not a downer, but ultimately a moving message about how great faithfulness makes life's sorrows bearable.

Jack of Shadow was the original "sword and sorcery" book. Later, Zelazny would incorporate many of the images and ideas and character types from Jack into his wonderful Amber series. "Jack of Shadow" is one of the few great original science fiction and/or fantasy books ever written. It is out of print at the moment, but hopefully will be republished and it is occasionally obtainable from 2nd hand or rare booksellers ... and probably from your library. SO worth the read!!!!! GREAT book.

This remains one of my favorite books, possibly the best work of fiction Zelazny ever wrote. At the time it was written (1971), the booklists were just starting to get their heads around the combined yet markedly different fields of fantasy and science fiction. Zelazny wrote a seemingly effortless work that casually crossed from the mists and shadows of the former to the reason and bright lights of the latter, then back again.

The basis of this freedom lies in the ambiguity at the heart of imagination and impulse to discover, along with the moral ambiguities of the antihero. Zelazny makes us feel the torments and trials of the leading character, Jack of Shadows, as he attempts to undo the treachery that leads him to the grave and then beyond it at the outset of the book. The coldness and utter devastation of his revenge brings up us against the limits of our own humanity, and at the moment of his own vulnerability as he reaps the chaos he has sown, our ineffectuality as well.

The scope of Zelazny's imagination is apparent in the architecture of the book's premise. A planet of human beings is rotating a sun with one hemisphere forever facing toward the light, and the other away. The world of light is the world of science, reason, and a very 1960's cosmopolitan culture with automobiles, computers, and universities. The world of darkness is the world of magic, reincarnation, feudalism, monsters, and an aristocracy of sorcerors eternally competing in petty fiefdoms.

A great source of interest and amusement lies in the differences between each culture, and how they view each other. The scientists of the light side maintain a shield to keep the sun from cooking the planet to a crisp; the sorcerors of the dark side maintain a spell to keep the planet from freezing. Neither side seems to believe that the other's science or magic is effective. On the twilight border between the worlds, an enigmatic figure stands guard, trapped in stone, waiting to be released by some world-changing catastrophe.

What is most fascinating about this premise is how un-clichéd the fantasy world is. Magic is used in the most practical, utilitarian way. People speak normally, and are motivated by very understandable pettiness and self-interest. The processes by which the world works are considered so natural by its inhabitants that it's easy to forget that there is anything unscientific about it. And the story rolls along in the most clear and economical way, allowing circumstances and outcomes to evolve naturally out of the characters and premise of each situation. It is highly operatic writing, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

I would highly recommend this book, especially to an entry-level science fiction reader. Some devotees of fantasy might find it lacking in romance and high concepts, and its protagonist too hard to relate to. But it makes perfect sense in a science fiction arena as a book that works off of the logic of a set of presumptions, and then goes for broke on sheer entertainment. In that way, it anticipates the works of Stephen King and Anne Rice, though I would hasten to add that the Zelazny of this period was a man of fewer, more impactful words. There is not one boring page here for me.