Florence King Books

The essays cover a variety of topics and are excellent entertainment. I especially enjoyed her thoughts about the awful books that get published.

I loved Florence Kings 'Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady'. It was wildly funny and right on target for those of us who grew up in the South. 'Lump it or Leave it' has its moments but this time King's cutting humor goes to the bone. Sometimes funny, sometimes mean spirited. I think Ms. King is a brilliant story teller and I'd love to see more of that as opposed to her railings on random topics. Of course, Ms. King probably doesn't give a fuzzy rats butt what I or anyone else thinks anyway!

When I read the description of <>, I hoped I was getting a book along the lines of something by Ellen Kushner or Guy Gavriel Kay: historical or semi-historical fantasy with an interesting setting and a sophisticated plot.

Unfortunately, Roessner falls a little short. I'd give this 3 1/2 stars if I could, because <> has its good points: it's well-researched, a wide variety of historical actors interact on a lot of levels, and who wouldn't be interested in an alternate-universe version of Renaissance Florence? <> is a bit better than your average fantasy read.

Still, the plot meanders. Even worse (and several reviewers below have picked up on this), there's a bit too much fact packed into, or worked awkwardly into, what's supposed to be a work of fiction -- it's as if someone tried to turn a master's thesis into a novel. Most jarring of all, however, is Roessner's weakness when it comes to writing dialogue. Like a lot of fantasy authors, she mistakes stilted speech for sophisticated repartee. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that several of the major characters are pre-teens. There aren't many college professors who talk the way Roessner's characters do, much less ten- or eleven-year-olds!

Most of the ingredients for a good novel are here (this is something of a pun, because food's quite important in <>, to the point that there are recipes in the back of the book). Maybe with more practice -- and especially with more natural dialogue -- Roessner will get better in future books at stirring those ingredients together.

I really liked this book although I agree with the reviewer here that it was hard to understand the motivations of the characters (like Gentile). Still, the story is interesting and the writing well done. It reminded me some of Ellen Kushner's work.

Astra declinant, non necessitant.
The stars dispose, they do not compel.

A rich blend of history and authentic period detail with a touch of mysticism, The Stars Dispose tells the story of young Tommaso de Befanini, born into a Florentine family famed for its fine cooking. Tommaso, only 11 years of age, finds himself struggling with more than learning to properly carve a roast. The city of Florence is being torn asunder by warring factions, and the Befanini are employed by many of the important movers and shakers. This novel teems with famous characters - Michelangelo, Caterina de Medici, and Pope Clement, to name but a few. Roessner is a skillful writer, particular in her flair for description. Where this book falls short is in its plot, which is surprisingly slow and lumbering, ultimately leaving the reader hanging, a device that suggests plans for a sequel. Still, Stars is well worth reading for its atmosphere and winning characters. And if you like reading about fabulous feasts and recipes, open a bottle of your favorite vino, nibble some melone and prosciutto, and curl up with The Stars Dispose.

this is one of my all time favorite books, the imagery is so vital to the story that,i still think of this book years after i have read it and its following story. i'm a chef and i delight in her mixing of the art world and the food realm with the magic of the times she writes about, the ice sculpture scene is still one of the most emotional things i have read. i think she unveiled what it must have been like to be michelangelo at that time and place with true passion,his and the authors!i would love to see this as a movie

There was a lot about this book that I liked. I enjoyed the descriptions of Italy and the food/kitchens. I liked the character, Tommaso, and his interaction/relationship with Michelangelo Buonarotti, but that wasn't enough to raise this series above average.

I agree with the earlier reviewer who had a comment about the way people speak in both Roessner's books - it *is* very expositionally based. Rather than taking a paragraph or a few lines on her own, she has the characters do it and it comes out sounding false or forced. There is one chapter in the first book (second chapter, I think?) between Cosimo Ruggiero and Ruggiero the Older that is massive exposition supposedly in the form of an occult lesson. Because we really haven't met these people, the "lesson" seems stiff and forced, done more for the information the author needs to put out there than anything else. She seems to have a love of the culture and a lot of knowledge gained from her research, it's simply the way she shares some of it that proves awkward.

I also had a hard time caring about the characters because she never really spent any time with any *one* of them except Tommaso and he was as clueless as I felt. Gentile, Tommaso's father, is left totally in the background until he's needed to move the plot to a particular point. He's mentioned once or twice but the next time we see him, he's raving at Piera about her use of "witchcraft" and how he's not going to stand for it anymore. Huh? When did this come about besides the one line we're given about how he's never been completely comfortable (I'm paraphrasing)? Suddenly, he's rip-roaring mad enough to tear a necklace from his wife's neck and tear around in a frenzy? And, after what would be a calamitous event in any parent's life, he's suddenly raping Filomena on a regular basis? Nothing Roessner writes about Gentile in the few crumbs she gives us beforehand gives basis to any of his actions, so Tommaso's discovery of Gentile in the act felt more like emotional manipulation than emotional empathy with Tommaso. All it did was move the plot to the next point she needed: Tommaso's relationship with Michelangelo.

And Piera...when she realizes that Ginevra might not have been the one who should have received all her training, does she do anything about it? No. She just wrings her hands until Roessner can have her miscarry and ultimately die. (OK, she did manage to rescue Filomena so I'll give her that much).

The series is a pleasant way to pass an afternoon or so but it feels overstuffed by facts to the exclusion of character development. I would have preferred a bit more internal dialogue, more of the goings-on in the Befanini family or in the de' Medici family through Tommaso's, Michelangelo's or Caterina's eyes, more dialogue and less exposition...more of the feeling that the characters were *doing* something besides serving as set pieces until the author decided it was time to change the scenery. History and fiction need to blend in books like these (see Colleen McCullough's "First Man In Rome" series or Thomas Flanagan's "Tenants of Time"). The time the author writes about is a fascinating time but I would have preferred a little less history in exchange for a little more story in this case.

Another winner for Gene Florence. Wouldn't be without his books. Beautiful, color pictures on nearly every page. I have read this book and all of his others over and over again.

Author/Photographer Gene Florence has produced a fan-tastic book for the Fire-King novice or afficianado. Just a warning, though: This is a 1998 book. The gain in collectibilia and accessibilty wrought by the Internet, along with standard inflation, has rendered the pricing rather dicey to rely on.

If you are a Boomer, this is most likely the stuff of fond memories of your Momma's kitchen. Just looking at the picture of the Jane Ray Jade-ite platter (who knew that that was our hamburger cook-out platter's formal name?) makes my mouth water! On page 7, there is a reproduction of an old Anchor-Hocking ad: "Not a single item on this page costs more than 69 cents." Those were the days! It's come a long way! Reviewed by TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer.

This book has more than paid for itself in helping me recognize fire king and genuine old glass.

Until I purchased Gene Florence's book, I used black & white reference books. Those are useless to me.

This wonderful book has helped me determine if shaker lid and fireking flour piece went together (did not-flour shaker originally had a flat shaker lid the color of the writing on side not silver aluminum); if the "yellow" plate in a fire king design was old (was not (did not come in yellow) - but that yellow piece was made from fire king mold - one step up from out and out reproduction); and whether or not my 10 pieces of bakeware (some with lids) and marked Fire King were rare or reproductions. On the 10 piece baking set, I ended up e-mailing Gene Florence, and he responded that my piece was not rare - or did it even appear anywhere. The pieces are selling Very slowly - so they must not be very special.

The book is difficult to understand how to match pricing & pictures at first, but well worth the effort. I am comfortable with the process now.

If you collect or sell fire king - you need this book!

For the most part this book is an excellent resource for identifing Fire-King glassware and I would recommend it highly along with all of the author's other books. I own them all! As a specialist collector of the Anchor Hocking Early American Prescut pattern (10000pcs), I must say that I feel that some of the Prescut items listed are somewhat rarer than the book would suggest. There are also quite a few more items available in this particular pattern than are listed. I view the book's section on Prescut as another of this well known author's courageous attempts to chart previously uncharted waters and I'm sure that subsequent editions of this book will include course corrections.

This is my first purchase of reference material for my new hobby of depression-glass collecting. I found the pictures to be exellent, and the price guides informative, although a bit awkward to use at times. His comparisons of similar items are helpful, and the book is worth purchase for the pictures alone. Hope to compare it with the Kilgo book someday.

I read the book The Sorcerer of Kings, by Dr. Stein, and have a few comments on it. First of all I found the book very didactic and well organized. It also provides a good source of bibliography for those interested in spiritualism. Some passages are even comic, when you imagine someone in a scene trying to grab a spirit.!

However, in my opinion, the book is highly biased to prove that William Crookes was a fraud. Actually, right from the foreword (by James Randi) one can feel that. The author should rather present the facts, and let the conclusion to the reader. In a book of this sort this is an unforgivable mistake, just because the author tries to show that William Crookes was himself biased to accept spiritual reality.

I feel extremely uneasy to accept that William Crookes was a fraud (being this the main conclusion of the author). At the beginning of the book he appears simply stupid, an easy-to-fool person. His character then slightly changes from stupidity to quackery, which is of course a heavy charge over such a scientific personality. If he was a fraud as a spiritualist investigator, I cannot see why he would be so serious and brilliant as a scientist (before and after those years of spiritualism). I simply can't accept that. I cannot accept either he could have been fooled over and over by the mediums he tested.

So, in my opinion, remains the mystery about Sir William Crookes. I tend to believe that he died convinced about some of the phenomena he investigated, but felt not worth continuing his research, simply because the scientific community wouldn't accept that, and because he had detected trickery in many cases. The book of Dr. Stein does not prove "the truth" about him. Nevertheless, it is a book worth reading by those interested in spiritualism, in general, and in William Crookes.

I.S. Oliveira - Physicist, Ph.D. Oxford/1993

This is one of those books that makes one wonder if the author is entirely sane. The whole work is nothing but a diatribe against the famous ninetheenth century medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Stein should have selected a different medium for his attack on spiritualism, for concerning no medium in history have we so many impartial observers that verify his powers as being real. Stein's book is full of unsupported claims of fraud, for which there is no reliable historical evidence whatever. Certainly there have been fraudulent mediums, but Home was not one of them.

As to his attempt to conclude that Crookes, one of the half-dozen greatest scientists who ever lived (modern electronics descends directly from his discoveries for example), was in fact nothing but a fool or fraud... Well, such a claim is absurd on its face, and would require mountains of ironclad prood, not the journalistic hearsay evidence that Stein provides.

These modern debunkers will stoop to almost anything to discredit the testimony of witnesses in Home's favor. The lighting was bad (but Home rarely worked in anything else), his dupes were old and fat (but they included famous scientists and two emperors, Napoleon III and Alexander II), he _must_ have faked his results (but roomfuls of sceptical scientists came away from his seances in consternation that they could detect no fraud) etc.

In fact, there exists an overwhelming amount of contemporary testimony as to the reality of the phenomena that occurred during hundreds of Home's seances, but at the time religious prejudice largely prevented the public from accepting this testimony. Instead it preferred to read fantastic conjectures as to how Home might have faked his results. Home for example was stabbed three times at Florence by a religious fanatic. Today it is primarily the materialist world-view that leads otherwise sane men to reject the possibility of the existence of spirits. Indeed, they seem to take it as a personal affront that we possess a soul and an etheric body that survive the death of our physical body.

The wildest accusations were made against Home without a scintilla of proof. For example, someone using the pseudonym of 'Dr Philip Davis' published a book asserting that Home had confided to him that his psychic powers had nothing to do with spirits! But Home's widow, as well as hundreds of contemporary observers of high social standing give the lie to such charges.

Here are some better books on the subject, which are available in cheap reprints:

1. Daniel Dunglas Home: Incidents in my Life
2. Home: Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism
3. Mdm Home: D.D. Home his Life and Mission
4. Mdm Home: The Gift of D.D. Home
5. Grady: Le medium Home (in French, which has a more copious spiritualist literature than English)
6. Sir William Crookes: Experimental Investigations of Psychic Forces (His results have been confirmed by many famous psychic investigators such as Richet, Rochas, Lombroso, et al.)

P.S. Far from being a society hound, high liver and charlatan, Home was universally admired for his modesty, and his widow revealed that during his later years he gave most of his limited income away to charity.She published proof of this in the form of letters.

What an awful book! Maybe it's marginally better in the original Italian rather than in translation, but not even the beauties of the Italian language could save the mish-mash contents. I bought the book thinking it was a serious attempt to shed light on the beautiful and mysterious Simonetta Vespucci, a young woman who in late 15th-century Florence apparently inspired the painter Botticelli as well as rousing the amorous passions of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici, and his brother Giuliano. She died, probably of tuberculosis, in 1476.

What this author has produced, instead of a genuine study of Simonetta, is a disjointed fantasy in which the author himself somehow time-travels back to the Renaissance, takes up residence with the family of Simonetta's husband, and of course makes love to Simonetta. Even this far-fetched idea might have been fun, if only the story weren't full of glaring anachronisms and if the author hadn't done such violence to the major historical character of that era.

As an example of an anachronism, he has people talking and worrying in the 1470s about the epidemic of syphilis that didn't strike Italy til the late 1490s. As for defaming a historical character: he makes Lorenzo de' Medici into a monster-- not just a tyrant but a vicious sexual predator, who twice rapes poor Simonetta, except the woman he rapes isn't really Simonetta, she's...oh, never mind. The whole premise is too silly to describe, and the sex scenes aren't even convincing. As a final absurdity, the author claims, with absolutely no historical justification, that Simonetta was poisoned.

There's nothing to recommend this book-- it's a waste of time and money.