Novalis Books

This book has been all that I hoped it would be. I use it as a tutorial one day and a reference the next. I was a beginner Access VBA developer and now with this book I have become much more comfortable around VBA. So much more comfortable that I have developed 4 financial Access applications that are going to be used by multiple departments. I recently picked up the Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set which is a little more advanced but I keep coming back to this one.

I upgraded from Access 2000 to Access 2002 and wanted a 2002 reference so based on reviews from other sites I bought this book. I have turned to it time and time again only to be disappointed time and time again. I haven't learned really anything from this book and judge the $60 I spent for it a total waste of money. A MUCH better book is the Access 2002 Developer's Hanbook by Paul Litwin etc.

I started using Access a few years ago as an adjunct of Microsoft Office, creating simple databases for my Christmas card list and such. Then about a year ago, because of work, I had the opportunity to dig deeper. Where to start? I began with Alison Balter's Mastering Access 2002 Desktop Development, a frustrating and disorganised tome that seemed to be missing all of the secret handshakes, signals and knowledge I longed for to unlock the supposed power of Microsoft Access. Every time it appeared Ms. Balter was going to get to the actual point and impart the wisdom I was seeking...she swiftly moved on to another topic. The book didn't even serve to help me clarify the mind-boggling vocabulary necessary to describe and understand the application. To me, Ms. Balter seemed like somebody whom, if they possessed a lot of knowledge, wasn't giving any of it away. A job change took care of my deadline but I was still intrigued and inherited a larger project when I committed myself to writing a custom database application for my partner's administrative needs. I needed help and serious instruction to achieve the application designs I had in my head.

I turned to Getz, Litwin & Baron's Access Cookbook (1st edition), thinking I could hi-jack some off the shelf solutions and, if not actually learn to write Access VBA, at least tweak the code they supplied to suit my starry-eyed custom application needs. Not a bad idea. Problem was, as intriguing as the book is, it's really for experienced developers looking to take their skills in another direction (skyward). Very strong on methodology too, which is important, but it wasn't exactly getting me off the launch pad (it wasn't even getting me off my mouse pad, to be more accurate).

Seven months on, two books later and still no real understanding of Access VBA. I checked out Getz, Litwin & Gunderloy's Access 2002 Developer's Handbook Set and was ready to dig deep...but one really needs to know the basics and fundamentals of Access VBA to keep up (otherwise it's like reading a foreign language of which you have very little knowledge). One hundred pages in and I sensed that I had skipped a grade and it wasn't going to get any easier. Even Ken Getz & Co. were repeatedly pointing me toward Novalis & Jones' Access 2002 VBA Handbook (useful for 2003 as well) and I can honestly say, after a few months procrastinating and about 2.5 - 3 weeks of focused study, without any previous programming knowledge or experience, I can now read an Access VBA procedure and understand what is actually going on. It's like I'm speaking their language!

Novalis and Jones are thorough and precise to a fault. Despite the repetitive vocabulary of Access application development, they do a stunning job of continually moving the reader along, down what is, it has to be said, a very tricky and treacherous path. ("Each AccessObject object has an AccessObjectProperties collection object, sometimes just referred to as Properties, a collection object that stores custom properties for the object. Each AccessObjectProperty in the AccessObjectProperties collection object itself has two properties: Name and Value." Don't worry, by the time you get to Chapter 13, from whence that comes, it'll just make you chuckle instead of sweat.) If you've ever tried to learn Access VBA and have been left scratching your head wondering what some author's glib explanation is supposed to actually mean, you won't be disappointed in this book. Novalis and Jones will not leave you behind.

The experience of reading the book is like one of taking a university course called Access VBA 101. You have to concentrate and focus while you do your reading. There are procedures aplenty throughout the book with step-by-step demonstrations and explanations about how to write Access VBA. The book is very well structured with regular variation between activity and explanation. (You will be inclined to start writing customisations and applying your newfound knowledge to the code samples as the book continues.) All of the samples are immediately applicable to the kind of useful procedures you'll want to include in your custom database application--in very simple form. This book is about foundations, however, it is an end in itself because you could finish it and start writing your own procedures. I have 12 different sections specifically earmarked for functionality that I want to include in my application, which is pretty useful. Their section on Creating and Modifying Database Objects (Chapter 14) has given me plenty of ideas about coding tools I want to write to flesh out the VBA IDE and write my code faster. Did I mention that 3 weeks ago I couldn't even read Access VBA?

If at times the book feels like it's hard going, it probably has more to do with the subject itself (maybe I should've taken a few more breaks). You will hit a few walls but everything is surmountable; I made it all the way through the book (save the DAO Appendix) and all of their code worked for me (be careful in Chapter 13 "Working with Groups of Records...", however, because a couple of their early procedures in the chapter will break some of the later ones). Not a quick start and at least a month or so of Sundays but for those looking to lay a solid foundation in Access VBA, this is a wise investment of time and money. I now feel that I know the depth and power of Access using VBA programming and when you're trying to learn and utilise something this complex, that's half the battle.

I am in chapter 3 and have decided to set the book aside and look for a more hands on approach. It's my learning style. I learn a lot more from a technical book (on a new topic) where you work through more examples. Once I have gone through a book with more examples I suspect that the theoretical approach will be more meaningful. I will come back to read this book at a later time.

You have done the graphical interfaces of Access to the limit and You need more theoretical knowledge to climb a step further, so your projects can advance for their accomplishments.This book will give You high quality information, meaning knowledge that is in harmony with other sciences, for instance mathematics.You will not find usefull new examples of code, once the book is based on the Access Samples (Northwind), thanks God! You wont find the icecream shop, or the whisky bottlement, or the video rent,etc.These originalities are meaningless to the understanding of the structure of VBA. You will not find that a number divided by zero is zero, or that x = x + 1, without further explanations, and that programming has a special type of logic that blows up whatever You thought credible. So I would advise to buy the book because it is an excellent work, linking the many areas of knowledge in a deep way, although the subjects are managed with as few words as possible, enough to You understand how VBA is conceived.

This author offers a very intresting explanation for the problem of evil(theodicy). The residual chaos from Gen 1:2 lingers on, causing cosmic problems ranging from storms to diseases. This is a very smart book by an Anglican priest, theologian and scientist, Sjoerd Bonting; but I don't necessarily agree with some of his conclusions. He denies creation ex nihilo (from nothing)disagreeing with the interpretation given to some New Testament verses that seem to indicate he is wrong (if taken at face value). He points to the apparent fine-tuning and contingent nature of the universe, and the similarities between Gen 1 and evolution, as evidence that God really did create the universe. Bonting is no fundamentalist and this is no Josh McDowell-like case for creationism. Expect a quick (106 pages) accessible and smart read.

"The Doctor Will Not See You Now" is an interesting autobiography of the first blind physician in Canada. Dr Jane Poulson suffered from ill health but kept up her zeal for life through great friendships, a rewarding career and deep faith. The author uses amusing anecdotes from her medical career, and provides insights into how faith can be maintained in the face of obstacles.

In this small but insightful work, Jean Maalouf offers encouragement, words of affirmation, and specific relfection exercises to examine the many types of love relationships, both human and spiritual. Each chapter includes prayer, inspiring quotations, and specific directives. The ultimate encouragement is that if our love of God permeates all other aspects of our lives, we will have the tools we need to combat loneliness and many of life's troubles along the path.

I bought this book not sure whether or not it was translated. I found that it was all in German, however it looks beautiful on the bookshelf and it smells different than American new books so I kept it. I later found the translated version here at amizon. Just search for HENRY VON OFTERDINGEN instead of Heinrich.

Early in the Introduction, Margaret Mahony Stoljar proclaims, "In his original, unprejudiced, and undogmatic questioning of any issue that interests him, Novalis displays to a remarkable degree the kind of innovative thought that will characterize the Romantic movement throughout Europe. Being a practicing scientist and creative writer as well as possessing a comprehensive approach to theoretical inquiry that in his time was what was meant by `philosophical,' Novalis engages with a wider spectrum of questions than do most of his contemporaries. But it is his readiness to subject any philosophical concept to radical interrogation that marks his published and unpublished work as of enduring interest. For contemporary readers accustomed to the critique of the categories of reason that has followed in the wake of Nietzsche, Novalis's writings can seem uncannily pertinent. They address issues that in recent years have continued to expand the parameter of our thinking on truth and objectivity, language and mind, symbol and representation, reason and the imagination. In form and style too, Novalis's manuscripts demonstrate the associative fluidity of thought characteristic of Nietzsche." (pp. 1-2). There are no entires in the index for Nietzsche and Derrida. In this translation, Novalis sees philosophy as a progression from passive thinking to magical idealism, at least in number 33 of the Teplitz Fragments:

"An empiricist is: one whose way of thinking is an effect of the external world and of fate--the passive thinker--to whom his philosophy is given. Voltaire is a pure empiricist and so are several French philosophers--Ligne tends imperceptibly to the transcendent empiricists. These make the transition to the dogmatists. From there the way leads to the enthusiasts--or the transcendent dogmatists--then to Kant--then to Fichte--and finally to magical idealism." (p. 107).

There is not much of a story in what happened to Novalis because he died young, in March 1801, while Kant (1724-1804) was still alive. By the time Novalis published POLLEN in the winter of 1797-1798, Kant had accepted a ban on publicly speaking or writing about religion, but he was about to declare that he did not consider the ban binding after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. Novalis's first fiancee, Sophie, died in March 1797 at the age of fifteen. "King Frederick William III and Queen Luise of Prussia ascended the throne at the end of 1797." (p. 16). Papers were eager to publish anything that would make this look like a great event, and soon thereafter "Novalis had already achieved a degree of notoriety as a political thinker with his second published collection of fragments, FAITH AND LOVE OR THE KING AND QUEEN, which appeared in July 1798 in the Berlin journal `Yearbooks of the Prussian Monarchy.'" (p. 16).

Frankly, the attitude I find most clearly in FAITH AND LOVE OR THE KING AND QUEEN reminds me of the works of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who had a doctrine of correspondences that arose from a spirit similar to a selection on the first page of this work by Novalis:

"4. One finds what one loves everywhere, and sees similarities everywhere. The greater the love the more extensive and manifold is this similar world. My beloved is the abbreviation of the universe, the universe is the extension of my beloved. To the lover of learning, all its branches offer garlands and remembrances for his beloved." (p. 85).

Finding ourselves in a modern world, in which shock and awe have become the standard tactic for dealing with anyone who has claimed kingly powers for too long, and a people who have always been promised perfect innocence are often driven to wipe the slate clean after observing the monster which has been created since the preceding last act, thinking about royal situations, we are apt to remember the incineration of Nagasaki, near the end of World War Two, as a gift to the emperor of Japan, which would allow him to openly advocate unconditional surrender without any loss of face, because atomic bombs represented a power superior to anything that a mere royal highness might possess. Most readers might leave such thoughts unthunk, but this book is a blend of political thinking with poetic power that stumbles mainly because it can no longer be our book. Death is in the index, and mentioned early in this book's first selections, MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS:

"11. Death is a victory over the self--which, like all self-conquest, brings about a new, easier existence." (p. 24).

This might not be true for people who try to talk about it.

I picked this book from an approved list for an Executive Leadership Training Program because I am already a biblical scholar and a Christian. One aspect of business that has bothered me for awhile is the cut-throat attitude of getting ahead at the expense of others. My moral compass wouldn't allow me to do that. This book reinforces aspects of my previous supervisor that I respect - sharing credit, building up ones followers to become leaders, not feeling threatened by the success of others, celebrating each person as a child of God and essential for the success of the whole, and maintaining ones integrity and honesty in challenging areas.

I would recommend this book for anyone that wants to see how the human condition has not changed much in 2000 years. Truths can be found in this book.

What a shame that this book has gone out of print! While Forstman's reading of Schleiermacher relies a bit too heavily on the (I think) misguided notion that Schleiermacher's primary influence was Romanticism, overall the book provides a good, solid, well-researched look at the interaction between Schleiermacher and the Early Romantics (who were his friends and even roommates in the very early 19th century). Forstman does a good job with the geneaology, expertly connecting some of Schleiermacher's more significant contributions to theology, philosophy, and hermeneutics with Romanticism. Anyone who is interested in Schleiermacher and/or German Romanticism will enjoy this book.

This is a great study (a Master's thesis) about the history and origins of Waldorf Education. There is a considerable amount of background on Rudolf Steiner and his theological / spiritual beliefs. In this sense, the subtitle, "Theory and Practice" is apt.

I would caution any teachers interested in exploring techniques or methodology that this volume is rather slim on that type of information. In this sense, the "practice" part of the subtitle is inacurate.

That being said, I would heartily recommend it to serious scholars of education history and theory. Others would find it too didactic and decidedly not a good read.

This is my first time reading a Penelope Fitzergerald book, and I have to say that I am charmed. Her style is economical and witty. I am something of a fan of spare writing - I always like that tension that comes from what is left unsaid.

Why is Fritz, the future poet Novalis, so taken with Sophie, a plain, not-especially intelligent 12-year-old girl? The back of my book mentions the 'irrationality of love' and the 'transfiguration of the commonplace.' Does Sophie have something incomparable, something that makes Fritz instantly fall in love, or is she a blank sheet that he can project his romantic ideals upon?

"On Silvesterabaend, six days after Christmas, Fritz received a letter from Sophie.

Dear Hardenberg,
In the first place I thank you for your letter secondly for your hair and thirdly for the sweet Needle-case which has given me much pleasure. You ask me whether you may be allowed to write to me? You can be assured that it is pleasant to me at All Times to read a letter from you. You know dear Hardenberg I must write no more.

Sophie von Kühn

'She is my wisdom,' said Fritz."

Sophie is not just wisdom, but Philosophy, fate, a guardian spirit, darkness (her hair) and light (her skin), and, with her eager, bright expression, the essence of being alive. When you are all that, it doesn't matter what you write in a letter (or do not write - Sophie "must write no more" because she "scarcely knows how to," her education being not much of a priority.)

I would definitely recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that speaks with no ambiguity and makes all explicit, perhaps you should avoid it. If not, I should mention it has the added bonus of each chapter being only a few pages long! For myself, I will read more of P. Fitzgerald in the future.

Full disclosure: I am an English professor. Penelope Fitzgerald is probably my favorite writer, and that is not an easy determination to make. I love many writers.

But Fitzgerald is extraordinary in a number of ways. She lifts us up. She imagines the spaces in between history and story-telling. She imagines the spaces between what actually happens to us and what we tell ourselves about the things that happen to us. Her compassion, her ability to empathize even with characters whose moral choices are sordid and degrading, quite honestly, helps me live.

Her work is nuanced, subtle, compressed, and makes demands on the reader. Frequently, if one is looking for easy answers, one leaves her novels feeling frustrated.

But her thoughtfulness, her kindness, her generosity to the sorrows of human beings? These can help one live. She will make demands on you. Give in to them.

Also? She has inhabited Novalis to write this novel. In another book she writes about a poltergeist. It seems to me Fitzgerald is quite familiar with a number of different kinds of hauntings.

Her work haunts me.

Having obtain some information about the lives of Byron, Shelley, Goether, and the like I lived convinced that the Romantic poets usually lived up to their name. Penelope Fitzgerald sadly proved me wrong. Their life was mundane, boring, without flair, and they were rather lucky to die young. Fortunately, she needs only mere two hundred pages to bring this truth home. She does so in a charming style and some of her descriptions and information is quite amusing (the washing - one per year) but otherwise the book is flimsy and fluffy. Don't expect to learn much or understand much. According to the blurps on the back cover "the unspoken speaks through this book" - I must be part deaf then.

Wonderful insight into the heart and mind of a poet. Very sad love story.

This is a Bildungsroman about Friedrich von Hardenberg, son of an impoverished aristocrat, whose poetry, published under the name Novalis, would come to define the mystical side of German Romanticism, a quest for an ideal harmony of man and nature symbolized by the Blue Flower. But Fitzgerald merely hints at the poet's later (but short) life in this lean, succinct book. Instead she shows him at home with his strict religious father and many siblings, impressing his professors at Jena with his curiosity about the latest thinking in seemingly every field, living with the family of a regional magistrate to study administration, making friendships, and falling in love. This love for a girl who is only twelve when he meets her is so absolute on his part, so little motivated on hers, that it becomes the embodiment of his philosophy of the ideal: that the qualities of an object of desire depend more on the beliefs of the beholder than on what it may be in itself.

Ultimately, the book is about that ideal, or about the notion of reaching towards a romantic ideal, the blue flower, the distant horizon. But the Blue Flower of the title is only mentioned two or three times, in a quotation from the opening of Novalis' unfinished novel HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN. Fitzgerald knows that to establish the horizon, one first has to map the ground at one's feet. (This is especially true of Novalis, whose romanticism was not an escape from the real world, but a belief that everything in it -- human beings, animals, plants, even the rocks -- might communicate with one another on an equal footing.) Much of the book is concerned with daily life and domestic details, but its first impression can be disorientating. Fitzgerald writes in a clean but curious style that seems at times like an awkward translation from German (the definite article before some people's names, for instance, or the use of "maiden" instead of "girl"); oblique references to Kant and other thinkers of the day are tossed in but never explained. The reader is plunged into life in full spate, a busy repetitive life where the details of daily routine serve as ballast to flights of intellectual enquiry. But the strangeness wears off, the writing simplifies, and the book's ultimate effect is to give the stamp of absolute authenticity to everything that the author describes.

This is not a conventional love-story, or indeed a conventional novel in any sense, although it is filled with memorable people. Ideas are sketched in with a few deft strokes, then left suspended. The author assumes that readers have either a good knowledge of the political and intellectual history of those watershed times, or that they can pursue these things on their own. She does not use the novel as a means of explaining history, let alone an aesthetic, but attempts a much more daring task: making you experience it at first hand -- even without quite knowing what you are experiencing. Perhaps a bit disappointing at first, this turns out to be a depth-charge of a book that stirs the mind long after the ripples of reading it have disappeared.