English Classics Books

Takamura Kotaro was one of the few Japanese writers to continue publishing during the height of World War 2. He managed to do this by writing propaganda poems of the government. After the war, he found himself regretting his support for something that seemed so against his principles. This collection of poems and prose traces back his blind devotion to key moments in his childhood. Educated in France, his free form poetry smacks of French influence giving it a much lighter tone. Almost as moving as his collection of poetry about his wife, Chieko, it offers an eye opening look into one poet's remorse about his past actions.

I came across this talented poet/sculptor when I read the powerfully longing poem "To Someone [Not To Play]" p. 98 and knew that I had to have a book of his writing. I don't normally buy books and this is money well spent. I typically will borrow from the library but I had to make an exception with Takamura Kotaro! I only wish I owned a book of his and his wife's sculptures/artwork compilations!

I think e.e. cummings would have enjoyed "To Someone" a lot. I definitely find that his work is emotive, in the most creative sense imaginable. He was a Japanese sculptor, who was inspired by Auguste Rodin and worked in Paris. This book includes an incredible, insightful biography and commentary on his poems.

Chieko, his wife, suffered from schizophrenia and then later died in a sanitorium, much to his guilt. I noticed the similarities to his mother, when I read one poem [p.57 "Thinking of Mother"]. He idealized both of them, in their insecurities, martyrdom, and pure conscientiousness. His poems seemed to ask, "is a female's power wielded in ...leaving it, in leaving him?" Quite passive-aggressive.

The timeless poems, "Mountain Woods", "The Snow Has Piled White", and "Fountain of Mankind" reminded me of Robert Frost in their beautiful imagery of Mother Nature, of life as an endless experience of the seasons, both internally and externally.

"Lemon Elegy" was SO intense, you could TASTE the poem itself! The words conveyed an emotional power that could only be described as similar to the black and white, silent cinematography in "Snow Falling On Cedars". This is also one of his most famous poems and completely deserving! I will print this out and frame it, display it with a Rodin sculpture reproduction in my house, in tribute of this truly exquisite poet. Takamura Kotaro is my favorite poet of all time, after reading this wonderfully translated book that Hiroaki Sato made rich with nuance and kept authentic to the poet's character, meanings and moods. You will not regret buying this book. You will only regret not having enough copies to go around, when you want to send it out to everyone whom you share a special, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual bond with in your life.

I believe that Kotaro's experiences of guilt, grief, and frustration, even anger would be very useful for anyone whose had to cope with a chronic/debilitating illness in a family member. His wife died of TB 3 years after he had her hospitalized. Only those who have lived with schizophrenia in their families or have seen it up close in friends/loved ones can truly understand his decision and his intense guilt.

The insight this book offers is wonderful for ANYONE caught up in grief, or has experienced loss, as it is highly cathartic.

Because its author never completed most of the entries for this biographical work, and never published it, what he did set down about his varied noble and ignoble subjects is uncensored, gossipy, perhaps unsubstantiated, and delightful. If you like browsing in Pepys' diary, or are fascinated by English life in the 17th century, this is the book to leave about for the occasional free moment.

It's fun reading this collection of digressive informal anecdotes about famous (and some obscure) Englishmen. If you enjoyed "An Instance of the Fingerpost" (where some of thc characters appear) you'd like this. As a primary source for information it gets less reliable the further back it goes. Aubrey was born in 1626 so his accounts of Shakespeare and Elizathans are a generation removed, but he had met Harvey and Penn and had been through the Civil War and the rule of Cromwell.

Even though he died almost 2 decades ago, Graham Chapman's comic genious continues to awe and inspire in this wonderful volume of letters, essays and skits. Chapman was always the most Pythonic of the team, a wild man who was the re-incarnated spirit of Oscar Wilde. Both were touched with erratic brilliance and a lust for living and in this book we get to see the inner workings of Chapman's "wild(e)" side at work and at play. Not everyhting in here is hilarious, some things might raise only a smile, but taken as a whole this book is an amazing collection of items that fans of Python will want to treasure--and laugh at--for years to come. "Calcium" is a welcome addition to the Python legacy and a wonderful way to spend a few more minutes with
Chapman.

Of all the Pythons, Graham Chapman was the most anarchic in his comedy. He excelled at stream-of-consciousness humor and non sequitirs, and made a permanent mark on the comedy landscape with a stature rivaling anyone in the last fifty years. This book can be viewed as a companion to Graham's earlier work, "A Liar's Autobiography," as it contains a lot of material that didn't make it into that book, as well as many diverse pieces such as screenplays and correspondence, most of which appear here for the first time.

Graham was a complex person, and this book gives an outstanding view into the workings of his mind. His struggles are well detailed here, yet he always made the most of any situation, especially if wild parties with the likes of Keith Moon and Ringo Starr were involved. I was pleased that the bulk of this book dealt with Graham's life outside of Python, as that has been very well documented elsewhere.

The book itself has the feel of a mixed-media contemporary art piece as it is from so many diverse sources. I must admit that the title drew me in: it is taken from a piece on page 88 in the essays section. The essay does, in fact, make calcium much more interesting than in any chemistry class I have had, to wit: "Calcium...occurs naturally as the carbonate CaCO3 in limestone, chalk, marble, and in brothels...." Graham's medical training (he was a doctor, after all) comes through in other places as well, as on page 189 where he discusses disorders of the trachea and bronchial tree in a musical adaptation called "The Ciliary-Mucus-Escalator Dance." Of course, the weirdness doesn't stop with scientific and medical humor, but dwells in both the mundane (a pompous man who brags about his "fleet of atomic-powered Silko-Glyde lawn mowers - each with a sauna bath, a cocktail lounge with three adjoining cinemas, and a discotheque", page 235) and the surreal (an insurance salesman selling a man a "special Being Nibbled To Death by Okapia Policy," with correspondingly odd terms on page 245.)

My two favorite parts of the book are the monologues and the personal letters. My favorite monologue concerns riding down a black diamond ski slope in a "wretched wooden gondola" with the Dangerous Sports Club, a piece that opens and sets the tone for the book. (I recommend the DVD, "Looks Like a Brown Trouser Job" which recalls this among other strange occurrences.) The letters are all fairly deranged, but my favorites are the letter reproduced in the dedication, which is an apology to a pub owner ("Words alone will have to express my profoundly abject apology for my behavior in your pub last night. I will have the shelf repaired, and I have already bought a half pound fillet steak for Dennis's eye...") and the condensed letters of E.P. Snibbet, Esq., which conclude the book.

Graham was a genius and a loony, and I miss him. This is a brilliant book and is not to be missed by anyone fond of insane humor; I recommend it highly.

Gold was found in Alaska, the rush to obtain it required a strong constitution and many dogs to do the work that horses usually did in the states. The environment bread harsh attitudes. Also in the testing of ones mettle one finds their true potential.

Buck (a dog that is half St Bernard and half Shepherd) goes through many lives, trials, and tribulations finally realizing his potential. On the way he learns many concepts from surprise, to deceit, and cunning; he also learns loyalty, devotion, and love. As he is growing he feels the call of the wild.

This book is well written. There is not a wasted word or thought and the story while building on its self has purpose and direction. The descriptions may be a tad graphic for the squeamish and a tad sentimental for the romantic. You see the world through Buck's eyes and understand it through his perspective until you also feel the call of the wild.

The Call of the Wild - Dog of the Yukon (1997)

If you just want a copy of _The Call of the Wild_, to give to a friend, say, this is the one to get.

The elegant Library of America edition of "London: Novels and Stories" has three complete novels _The Call of the Wild_, _White Fang_, _The Sea-Wolf_, and a very well chosen selection of stories. It's great. Viking's _The Portable Jack London_, is cheap and excellent; it's edited by Earle Labor, has _The Call of the Wild_, and an excellent selection of short stories, nonfiction, and letters. If you want copies of _The Call of the Wild_ to give to LOTS of friends, the Dover Thrift Edition is just a buck.

But if you want _just_ The Call of the Wild, this edition is nice enough to give as a gift, is clear and legible, and has just the right amount of pictures and annotations. Not a scholarly work, but every time you get to one of those places where you have a question--where was Dyea? What was the "Chinese lottery?" Could a dog really pull a thousand pound sled? there's Dyer with the answer.

If you're interested in Jack London, take a look at the alt.books.jack-london Internet discussion group--see "about me" for details.

Joseph Conrad is not only a Great Master of English literature, but also a man who wandered all over the world, by sea and land, producing for our delight a treasure of short stories as intense as novels, as well as a dozen novels as engaging as fairy tales. For some readers he is above all a writer of "sea stories", for others a creator of fabulous adventures; for many, an intuitive connoisseur of the human soul who gave birth to unforgettable characters. But there is more: Joseph Conrad inhabits his books, he is a friend who shows us a path, gently spelling out about a period in human history. He talks to the intelligence and the emotions. The bunch of essays of this wonderful companion, by the Cambridge fellows, gives us precious hints for travelling with Captain Conrad through the labyrinths and waves of the physical and virtual planet in which chance has placed us to live and die.

The series "Cambridge Companions" is somewhat uneven. Some titles are excellent, and others are inaccesible, tedious and really not "Companions" at all. This "Companion", however, to Joseph Conrad is probably one of the best in the series.

Beginning with a short biography of Conrad's life, there follow chapters on the short fiction, and several on most of the important of Conrad's works, such as "Heart of Darkness", "Lord Jim", "Nostromo" and "The Secret Agent". These are followed by sections on his late novels, Conradian narrative, his influence, and others. All of the Chapters are written in closed essay form by leading Conrad scholars, are easy to read, and well documented with footnotes. The final chapter includes a fairly comprehensive bibliography that wil be most helpful for students and scholars alike. It will provide a good starting point for further research.

If you are interested in Joseph Conrad, beyond reading his novels and short stories, then this book will be very helpful. I recommend it highly.

This is truly a fine volume, highly recommended to anyone who wants a broad sampling of the academic thought that has been applied to the genre. Although it's a collection of chapters by many different authors, I thought the quality was uniformly excellent. The structure of the book results in some overlap of themes, for example with a chapter on "Feminist theory and science Fiction" appearing in "Part 2. Critical approaches" and a chapter on "Gender in science Fiction" in "Part 3. Sub-genres and themes". However, I didn't find this to be a flaw; it gives the reader the opportunity to read different authors approaching related topics from different angles.

My favorite authors and chapters included Ken Macleod's "Politics and science Fiction" and Edward James' "Utopias and anti-utopias". Farah Mendelsohn's chapter "Religion and science Fiction" was a real eye-opener for me, examining a side of science fiction that I'd been pretty dismissive towards.

Not cheap, but well worth it.

Anthologies are notoriously inconsistent. Most contain several essays considerably below the level of the best pieces and many contain a few utterly miserable ones. On the downside, no essay in this collection truly stands out; on the upside, there really isn't a weak entry in the volume. I honestly cannot think of another collection of which I can make that statement.

Whether you are a serious fan of Sci-fi or a casual reader seeking an introduction to the field, this collection will prove invaluable. I fall somewhere between those two categories. Over the years I've read a few hundred Sci-fi novels and seen most Sci-fi films that have been made, but it has never been my main source of reading or film viewing. I've read rather a lot of the historically important works such as Mary Shelly, Henry Kuttner, H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapleton, and David Lindsay, but I've never attempted anything like a comprehensive reading of the classics. And I have ready very little that has been published in the past fifteen years. Still, I found that I learned an enormous amount about the field from this book. I learned about several historical works I had not previously known of, got a better understanding of the state of the genre from one decade to another, and learned a great deal about trends in the field in the past couple of decades. I also learned something about the various literary critical reactions to the genre. For those in the academy, it is a helpful introduction to the scholarly take on things.

The book is also great at pointing the way to other books. I kept a sheet of paper beside me as I read. I have already bought a few critical books on Sci-fi based on mentions of them in this volume, while I also have compiled a list of a number of novels that I plan on reading.

The essays in the book are broken down into three separate sections. The first section deals with the history of Sci-fi, from precursor works to the magazine age to various decades after. The second and most academic section deals with various academic approaches to Sci-fi, including Marxist, feminist, postmodernist, and queer theory. The final and most wide-ranging section covers a variety of themes such as gender, race, hard science fiction, alternate history, space opera, film and TV, and religion. The writers are mainly English and mostly academic, though several are also writers of Sci-fi. Even the writers, however, are fully qualified academics. For instance, one of the more scholarly entries is that by Brian Stableford. Though most of the essayists are British, American Sci-fi has so completely dominated the genre that it automatically demands priority. If anything, I was somewhat surprised by the absence of some European writers. There is, for instance, very little discussion of Stanislaw Lem, though several deserving British writers do receive attention.

In addition to the very good essays there is also a very interesting (though certainly not exhaustive) list of chronology listing some significant novels, short stories, movies, and television series. There is also a good bibliography at the end of the book, though I wish it had been annotated.

I highly recommend this collection to anyone interested in Sci-fi either in a casual or more dedicated fashion. In all honestly I have to say it is one of the most successful volumes in the Cambridge Companions series that I have read.

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English provides a wide array of supplementary reading material to accompany lecture notes or for students to grasp overall concepts of a particular work, author, or literary movement.

Those two authors share space in this magnificent reference volume on English Literature. The sturdy, oversized Guide presents over one thousand pages of information on authors, novels, poetry, drama, and literary terms. There are interesting biographies of prominent writers and obscure ones, from Mrs. Humphrey Ward to William Faulkner.

Good plot summaries are provided for a wide range of novels. If you are a fan of Anthony Trollope, you will find no less than twenty five of his books discussed. You have to be careful, however, if you are reading the plot of a book in order to decided whether or not you want to read it - the ending is always given away. The Cambridge Guide explores many literary terms: Meter; the Bloomsbury Group; positivism; and post-structuralism. There are also entries on Literary Journals - yes, the New York Review of Books is here as well as Granta.

The Cambridge Guide is written for the average layman and avoids academic jargon. I decided to try the entry on "deconstruction" as the extreme test of explaining difficult concepts. It's hard to say: either they failed the test, or I failed it.

This book has become one of my prized possessions, and I would have been willing to buy it at twice the price charged.

Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" has long been acclaimed one of the earliest classics of the English language. His original text has been converted to modern spellings and aptly edited by Michael Murphy. Readers are treated to informative articles on the language of this edition, a brief life of Chaucer, and a short note on how the text may be read. The Canterbury Marriage Tales presents The General Prologue (Beginning and End); the continues with the portrait, prologue and tale of "The Wife Of Bath"; "The Clerk"; "The Merchant"; and "The Franklin". Canterbury Marriage Tales is a "must" for all Chaucer students and enthusiasts!

With the original Chaucerian "Old English" aptly editeed and translated into modern spellings by Michael Murphy, Canterbury Marriage Tales: A Reader-Friendly Edition presents four of Geoffrey Chaucer's well-known, racy stories of love and marriage gone awry. In this edition, however, the sometimes confusing Old English of Chaucer's day has been made reader-friendly with modern spelling and numerous notes and references. Such meticulous annotation is especially helpful considering that the four stories in this volume - The Wife of Bath, The Clerk, The Merchant, and the Franklin - are all written in lyrical verse. Ribald, lusty, yet often thought-provoking, perhaps the true soul of Chaucer's work is best summed up in his own words: Love will not be constrained by mastery. When mastery comes, the god of love, anonm beateth his wings, and farewell, he is gone! Canterbury Marriage Tales is a strongly recommended addition to Chaucerian Studies reading lists and literary collections.

Why the Norton edition -- which preserves these tales in their original Middle English dialect -- over the "translated" versions of Chaucer's classic stories? Because it's only in their original form that they retain the poetry and power of Chaucer's intent. I read these stories with a professor who could passably read Middle English and it was a revelation. Before, with translated versions, I had never quite understood why Chaucer was considered so great, so necessary to the canon. Hearing them in the original form, I suddenly understood. The tales are funny, dirty, odd stories (like an English version of "The Decameron") told in striking, blood-stirring rhyme and rhythm. Hearing them read aloud was like music to the ear. Which makes the smoothed-over versions feel flat and dead to the ear.

Buy this edition. Try to learn enough Middle English to get along. Discover for yourself the power of Chaucer's poetry.

Critical editions from Norton have demonstrated they are usually the best for me.

Matthew does a great job in showing patrons of carnival games how they can win and gives information on those games which cheat a player. I have recommended this book to the general public and law enforcement when I lecture on crooked and gambling carnival games. I have many of the games he describes in my collection of confiscated or homemade games. I am writing a book on carnival games at this time from a law enforcement perspective that exposes the secret methods of cheating. People should remember that many of the games do require practice. Just because you do not win does not mean a game is crooked. Any game can be altered to cheat a player, the trick is to watch the operator and others play. Know the written rules up front. If you feel you have been cheated, seek an officer on the grounds and make a complaint.

This books talks about over 35 different carnival games, their strategies, and how they work. Some parts are so detailed, that it is easy enough to build your own attractions from the description. Just to pick two games that can be used in the classroom, Roll Down (Chapter 10) is good for a probability exercise, and Bottle Set Up (Chapter4) is good for a center of mass lab or demonstration. This is a fun book that will cause you to look at carnival games much differently, and for the creative teacher, has extensions for use in a classroom.