Reviews Books

An interesting collection of reviews of books you wish you could have read. I've always been interested in old books, and now, thanks to this book, I've got a couple I'm definitely keeping my eye out for

I discovered this book when I was 14, and have reread it almost annually. Many of the books Perrin recommended have become favorites of mine also, and even when they haven't, this book is still worth it for Perrin's great writing and his deep affection and understanding of what the printed word can do. It's honest, refreshingly unpretentious, and compulsively readable. This book makes you happy to be alive and glad to be an inveterate reader. I highly, highly recommend it!

Even though I worked in a library for years and read dozens of books a month, I am ashamed to admit that I hadn't read any of Noel Perrin's recommendations outlined in "A Reader's Delight". I have now, though.

In essay after wonderful essay, Perrin uncovers gem after glorious gem. From Russian Sci-Fi ("Far Rainbow") to World War II memoirs ("When the Snow Comes, They Will Take You") , from lyrical fiction ("The Bottom of the Harbor") to the next-best-thing to Jane Austen ("The Semi-Attached Couple"), many of these books are out-of-print, some truly obscure, and all of them terrific.

Startling eclectic, Perrin discuses books from virtually every genre and he does so with grace and wit. There's tales of ancient China, old journals, satires, children's books and even a poem. This is guy who not only knows good books, but adores them, and he doesn't care where he finds them. In the introduction, Perrin tells about a professor he knew who cited the "Little House on the Prairie" books among his all time favorites, and Perrin makes it clear that true book-lovers know no snobbishness.

Some of these books will be a bit hard to track down, but most can be had by simply utilizing your local interlibrary loan program. In any case, "A Reader's Delight" is a must have for those who love a good read, not only for the recommendations but for Perrin's own stylish writing.

GRADE: B+

Ande writes with the close confessional voice of Sharon Olds, the ecstatic vision of Blake and the scientific pinpoint accuracy of Pattiann Rogers. Weaving through almost every poem is her quiet yet almost slap-stick sense of humor, if there is such a thing as spiritual slap-stick. Hopeful and wise, these poems are welcome in these troubled, self-absorbed times.

Jan Lee Ande's second full-length book of poems "Reliquary," solidly enriches what the reader encountered in the poet's first offering "Instructions for Walking on Water." Reliquary, defined as a receptacle, such as a coffer or shrine, for keeping or displaying relics is such an apt title because in "Reliquary" the poet invites the reader into a showroom where they find moments of consciousness where words push up against themselves and reveal new meaning. Words are given the sacred task to speak to worlds beyond and sometimes below. I was surprised as I engaged in the depth of the journey. If we think of books as sacred objects the poems of "Reliquary" must be thought of as sacred glimpses. Each poem opens a door. The poet provides the key. I have been involved in the medical field for twenty years so it isn't surprising that I was drawn to the poem "Learning Anatomy." Here a mother, as "study partner," is stationed next to her son and a human skeleton where they take on the task of learning the bones of the body and what each one means on many levels. What is surprising is what the poet finds in her dialogue with these bones and their articulations. The poem concludes, "After the soul has fled the body, after the organs / crumble into dust, bones pass time in the urn of the earth." This is what you'll find in reading Jan Lee Ande. Surprise! Regardless of background I'm convinced a door can open for anyone who is moved to read her. She pushes the reader beyond the ordinary and into realms where the familiar is new and fresh.

Ande's Reliquary is a superbly crafted collection of poetry that cracks through surfaces and reveals the sacredness and connected nature of underlying things: the celestial mix of physical and mystical that permeates rocks, trees, hearts, thoughts and which drives science, religion, and wonder.

Ande invites us:

If you are lost in this world, bewildered
in the middle ground
between heaven and earth, stand here.

And so begins the delicious ascent into the incredible world of Ande's language and imagery, for the very first thing one notices, before one even considers poetic form, is the sheer beauty of the language and the freshness of the imagery. In her poetry, words exceed their representational function - they sparkle, they shoot like stars through the soul - and, as one rereads each piece, the words emerge and reemerge in a metamorphosis that, for all its metaphysical qualities, is at the same time as grounded in realism as the texture of the page upon which the images are so craftfully arranged.

The title poem, "Reliquary," epitomizes the book's theme of sacredness-in-the-ordinary. Ande writes:

I do not have a theca issued by the pope
- the red wax seal and a length of thread -
to prove these relics are authentic.

My theca is the pollen sac of an anther,
spore case of a greeny moss,
outer layer of the pupa of the rose weevil.

However, it is the intangible collection of reliquaries that gives the poem a deeper import: questions (Do you believe in nature spirits, / can oak trees talk, have you walked on water?) and embellished remembrances (My sky blue traveling case. Sarcophagus / of the holy bones of my black dog who could fly.) remind the reader that relics are more than carefully preserved items - they are magical, they house our dreams, they hold incredible secrets.

Ande's gift for blending concrete and metaphysical images infuses her work. Yet, there is a fine balance between Ande's poetic gifts and the poems' forms, as well. Usually filling just one page, and usually written in couplets or triplets, the poems are easy on the eye; as a result, their framework provides just the right space for the reader to perfectly engage with the spirit of the poem.

I used this book to prepare for FPGEE. clear and concise, very helpfull.

This book provides an abbreviated review of organic functional groups, with special emphasis on pharmacophores. The review is well organized and concise, and provides a primer (or review) of IUPAC and Chem Abstracts nomenclature. Recommended for anyone from the student studying for an organic final to the medicinal chemistry professional. Excellent reference.

i have been exposed to quite a bit of organic/biochemistry but this book is very well written and serves as a review to these fields as well as a nice intoduction to medicinal chemistry. i guess they all kind of blend together anyway but lemke is a fantastic author, well worth the investment.

RQ series(Parthenon Publishing Group inc) are lesser known than other board review books, but offer in depth review in a question and answer format similar to the "Recall" series books, but with multiple choice questions. RQ is a bargain for the number and quality of the questions!!

This book is absolutely, hands down, the best source of anatomy review questions! I loved using it for anatomy and it is hard to believe it is out of print. I can't imagine why they wouldn't keep printing this book. Every essential concept is covered and if you know these questions, you'll ace your written anatomy exams. Very good investment.

My anatomy exam scores differed based on whether I did the questions in this book or not (did questions=did well; no time to do questions=barely passed). There are A LOT of questions in this book - which is great, because most concepts repeat and this of course reinforces learning. It also means that you should start the questions ASAP - don't wait until you've finished reading the text, dissector, whatever. Use your text and atlas as references while you start the questions right away!

All questions are in multiple choice format, either in "standard" type A format (A-E, single best answer), or in type K format, which I had never heard of before this book but got used to it fairly quickly. There are no pictures, tables, or diagrams (that's what your text and atlas are for). The thorough explanations are on the right side of the page opposite the question.

I highly recommend this book based on my anatomy experience.

I love this book. I used Robbins before but it seems like it highlights a lot of research info than true pathology. Rubin is very illustrative, simple to understand, and straight forward. It's all a matter of preferences. I'm very visual and a very graphic book is excellent for me than a thousand words.

This book is clearly the best for learning the basics in this field. As already written, it takes a while to understand the content but works excellent as a reference.

If You have a 8 week course and decide to be the best student, You may have to put no less than 10-12h on studies each day including repeated reading. Which of course, in the long run, demands a lot of energy even if You decide to skip classes. It is, unfortunately, one thing to understand the content while You read, it is a complete different thing to have all the names, patterns, details, text boxes recalled on demand to a molecular level and still not get lost in all the data. One good method I recommend is taking key notes for concepts, names on enzymes, transcription factors and important genes while studying. (Even if all You will get in the end is some stupid names memorized it actually makes the book a lot easier to learn. It is just the way the mind works).

Remember that having a good memory requires sleep!
Some people are genius, I am probably not one of them ;-)

Simply put, this is the end-all be-all when it comes to pathologic analysis of disease states. Typically this is for 2nd year Medical School Students and/or Pathology trainees. Unless you are going into pathology as a sub-discipline, you may be overloaded with this information. If you want a concise primer on all things pathology, look into "Essential Pathology" by Rubin, which is intended as a summary of the 4th edition seen here. Of note is that the Essential Pathology does not include the CD-Rom that comes with this book, which is the best pictorial-based review I've ever seen -- worth the cost of the book alone!

To expand, IF PRESSED ON TIME, DON'T GET THIS ONE! If you are willing to spend the time and effort required for a HUGE book like this (over several semesters), your money will be well spent. As a book itself, this one has 5 stars easily; as a text for a course, I'd give 4 1/2, only for the overabundance of information for a short period of time.

I have had Dr. Rubin in classes (and some courses using the same text but with other Thomas Jefferson University professors), and the man is a genius in the field. This is just one student's opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but I mention this only to describe the wealth, if not overabundance, of information contained within this book.

This book was recommended by a professor since the final grade was based upon a final paper. I wish I had this book since 1st year. Great for people who plan to "write on" to law review as well as write any kind of legal scholarly paper. Highly recommend this.

"Why didn't we learn this in law school?!!"

Anyone who survived the confusion of case-method during first semester law school and never learned anything useful until studying commercially available outlines the night before final exams knows the feeling of relief this book provides.

SCHOLARLY WRITING FOR LAW STUDENTS is not a crutch for the lazy. It's an extremely well-organized and comprehensive guide to figuring out the precise steps required to produce quality scholarly legal writing.

Fajans & Falk don't spoon-feed you a "how-to" on scholarly writing -- they simply give you a clue and then help you find your own way. They are unpretenious, funny, and inspiring. Buying this book is easily the best investment I've ever made.

I've never written an amazon.com review before -- but this book inspired me to do so. I've bought a copy of this book for every law student I know. I refer to this book at least once a week to assist in my own legal scholarship...

Superb resource. I would suggest reading this, probably twice, before showing up for first year. I wish I had, although I got hold of this in time to make a difference in what I produced. I mean it - if you want to suck all there is to get out of the Law School process, pick this up.

I have heard through the grapevine that this book actually might make it out of print. If it does this is a must book for fans of seventies sci-fi!!

This is a great look at the best and worst of the Science Fiction films of the 1970's done with insight and humor by someone who obviously loves SF films and knows them well.

Science fiction enthusiast and author Craig Anderson's Science Fiction Films Of The Seventies is an entertaining, fact-filled reference and guide to the science fiction films of the 1970's, an era when only 5% of the box office movies were science fiction. Over forty science fiction movies are each looked at individually, including a synopsis, information about the making of the movie, and thoughtful critical appraisal. a segment of black-and-white photographs lets readers unfamiliar with certain films get a glimpse of what they were like. Science Fiction Films Of The Seventies is a "must" for connoisseurs of such great classic movies as Logan's Run and Soylent Green, as well as film history students with a strong interest in the evolution of silver screen sci-fi!

This is a fantastic book about sex -- it will make you want to have more and more of it. The book is more exciting than "Wordsmart Junior" (another Princeton Review book by Brantley), but it's written for a different audience. It's a thoughtful, intelligent, humor-filled look at sex on campus today, including the down side, like STDs and rape. Should be required reading for everyone who's going to college.

A tremendous guide for any student or parent. Worth its wait in gold

As a college student and lover of non-fiction, I found this book not only enjoyable, but a good bit fascinating. In a time when sexual activity is becoming much more public, this book has many answers that a student may find embarrasing or awkward to ask. Most books based on statistics are dull and used for reference only. "Sex on Campus" was not, putting the reader at ease with its candid language and humor. A great read.

Highly recommended for someone who has some familiarity with the plays and wants to see this terrain through sharper eyes. This is not "CliffsNotes." These are essays by a master critic who loves Shakespeare, written *for* readers who love Shakespeare. But be prepared when Van Doren plays the critic, not the worshipper. If your favorite is "Henry V," for example, keep an open mind and wince along.

A pleasant aspect of this book is that you can take the essays in any order. This means that if, like me, you know some of the more popular plays (Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Julius Ceasar), but not some of the seldom-performed ones (Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, King John, Pericles), you can see what Van Doren has to say about "your" plays and then come back when you have hunted up the others.

Van Doren's prose is familiar, easy, and full of love. It is almost a conversation, and hardly less a joy to read than Shakespeare himself.

How often have you encountered a book on Shakespeare or his works that attains a level of writing that is often heart-meltingly gorgeous, even at times comparable to the beauty of the Shakespeare quotations it contains? Probably only once, and this is the book.

A helpful introduction by David Lehman reminds us that Mark Van Doren was a celebrated professor of literature at Columbia University, and a poet of considerable accomplishment, who served as mentor to a long list of students who later achieved great things. In his courses he generally spoke without notes, and this 1939 book on Shakespeare's works was also written without notes or references, other than a well-thumbed one-volume edition of the works, printed in about 1906.

Any modest power of description which I might possess fails utterly for this exquisite book. Instead, let me give a sample of Van Doren's commentary: "It may well be that Shakespeare in 'The Tempest' is telling us for the last time, or consciously for the last time, about the world. But what he is telling us cannot be simple, or we could agree that it is this or that. Perhaps it is this: that the world is not simple. Or, mysteriously enough, that it is what we all take it to be. Any set of symbols, moved close to this play, lights up as if in an electric field. Its meaning, in other words, is precisely as rich as the human mind, and it says that the world is what it is. But what the world is cannot be said in a sentence. Or even in a poem as complete and beautiful as 'The Tempest.'"

I have always loved Shakespeare but, even though I have studied it, sometimes, he is a little difficult to pin down on what exactly he is saying or meaning and it is often hard to get the feel or mood for certain scenes. After all, he was a playwright, not a journalist! And he wrote five centuries ago in the idiomatic English of that time. This critique is absolutely brilliant. Van Doren's feelings on Shakespeare are that he wrote his plays to be enacted on a mostly-bare stage in front of a noisy crowd of Joe Q. Publics, not enacted in an elaborate hushed stage setting in front of a group of phychologist, phychoanalists, etc. I have often felt that some critics see deep, mystical, dark meanings in Shakespeare that he never intended (I feel it is more a reflection of the critic's own phyche). Not to say that Shakespeare is shallow! I feel his "well-written" plays are awesome and unmatched by anyone, anywhere, anytime. Van Doren brings Shakepeare to the light of day in a clear, logical, yet so very elegant way. This book literally brings me to tears, it's so beautiful!

Sleeping Upside Down will stun you with its poetic brilliance and raw honesty, its starry adolescent dreams and gritty farm girl observations, its unearthed and pulsing passion. Its carefully constructed lyrical poems weave the narrative threads through gardens and bedrooms and into your heart.

As soon as I began to read this slim, beautifully-bound volume of poems, I realized that I had slipped into a world of honest emotion and brilliant observations. These poems are sensual and soft as a first kiss, hard-edged and raw as the first shuddering sob after a difficult breakup with a lover. Hibbard evokes human sensuality and desire with a deceptive simplicity and clarity; second and third readings create echoes that resonate long after you have put the book down. There are poems here to delight and astonish, not only about love and loss, but about the isolation and joy of farming in the Midwest, about coming to terms with the aftershocks of rape and violence, about being middle-aged and slowly becoming one's mother. Hibbard's eye is acute and wise, her range is broad, and her hopeful vision is grounded in the physical. The title poem is one of the most original and finely detailed poems about nascent desire that I have ever read, and the opening line from "The Trouble with Language," "The trouble with language is / it follows you everywhere," could be said of the poems from this book. I recommend it both for those who already love and appreciate brilliant, well-crafted poetry, and for those who are new to poetry. Both will be more than satisfied.

I read Sleeping Upside Down under a spell of wonder. These poems are accessible but cover complex ground between men and women, women and women, and the writer and her subjects. The title poem is a beautiful coming of age poem in which the narrator describes the electricity between two teen girls on a hot night in the Midwest. Awakening sexuality is made visceral through "[...]ing/as if threaded with wires." The heat and vibrancy inside a young woman's bedroom is in interplay between the dark night outside and "the crackle and hiss of the electric fence on the all night Top 40 radio." This evokes the buzzing and heat present everywhere in pubescent adolescence. Juxtaposed against the energy of desire is a claustrophobic closeness, which captures the discomfort many of us have known when faced with an attraction that can't be expressed. What the narrator is seeking is barely suggested beyond the hint of an open "pajama top," which is remedied by "feigning sleep." The phrase, "sleeping upside down" is a superb use of metaphor for the confusion and worldview changes that occur when people recognize their attraction to the same sex.

There is a lot of humor throughout this book as well. In Fever, Hibbard expertly establishes the tensions between lovers about to split up. Certainly the idea of sex with someone we're about to leave is a compelling premise for a poem. While having sex with her male lover for the last time the narrator is distracted: "she noticed things the way she thought a firing squad victim would." The sweating and haze of fever leaves the woman "too witless and weak to argue" and "she felt a great reverence for what the body is still willing to do." Quite the opposite of pathetic, as break-ups can often be, the tone of this poem is hilarious and all too familiar to anyone who tried to leave a relationship gracefully.

Buy this book. It is delightful, brilliant, reverent, funny, and original.