Literature Books

I first recieved this book after Shelly Gill spoke at my elementary school when I was in 3rd grade. It was my favorite book! It is a fun-loving story, and it has very engaging pictures.I would reccomend this to children everywhere...
Side Note: I love this book so much that I am using it as part of one of my College reports!

Danger the Yard Dog Cat was Dangerously Extreme. It is about a cat named Danger & he lives with 57 Huskies! Thanks for the autograph, Shelley Gill.

I give this book four stars. It`s great and really funny! I don`t give it five stars because it is too easy for me. It should be for kids ages 4-6. I recommend this book for kids who like cats.

I like the book Danger the Dog Yard Cat. I recommend this book to you because it tells you about a cat that raced in the Iditarod. The pictures are funny. This book is half true and half make believe. This book is about a cat that gets saved by a dog sled racer that has a lot of dogs. The Cat has to race for the dog leader because he hurt his paw. Danger had one friend that was a dog, and his name was Mud shark.

Danger the Dog Yard Cat was one of the best books I've ever read because it's funny with a very catchy ending. Shelley Gill is funny and cool.

An English major's best friend. What did I do without it? It's fun to pick up and read snippets but mostly it comes to the rescue when I have literary term questions or am stuck on a poetry problem. I ordered it from Amazon since it beat campus prices.

I've had this book for almost a month now, and I have to say that I am very impressed. I bought it because it was suggested as an extra source of information in my English Literature class. I am still waiting for the recommended text (Abram's 'A Glossary of Literary Terms'), so this one has definitely come in handy. Each time I look in it, I find new words and phrases to learn about (including the ones I 'have' to look up), and it is a delight. My mother used to tell us that her mother's frequent recommendation was 'Make a friend of your dictionary!'and I have. I like knowing which 'big' words I can use to truly express myself, and Cuddon's 'Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory'(published by Penguin in 1999 and revised by CE Preston), is going to be a very good 'friend' indeed! In my opinion, it is on a par with Abram's text, in fact it might be more accurate to say that they complement each other. I definitely recommend it to anyone studying English Literature, and anyone who just likes to read.

This book is an excellent and indispensable resource. I've used it quite often to look up and correctly apply different terms when writing essays and looking up references. However, it's also a fun book to look through and to pick out random entries in learning more about the wide range of literary terms, concepts, and histories that are comprehensively covered in this text.

This is a handy inexpensive reference book with much more than a dictionary on some interesting items but less on lots of other things, so it is very specific to literary purposes giving special help in history of literary terms. Since it works more like a history of those terms it gives J.A. Cuddon a wonderful opportunity to display his research skills and demonstrate interesting connections that otherwise would be missed. It works well as a required text for entrance level literature classes in the undergraduate level.

As an author, have you been guilty of "log-rolling?" According to "The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literay Theory" complied by J. A. Cuddon, this literary term is: "The practice by which authors review each other's books. Vulgarly known as "back-scratching." Being retired tree farmers we have a different concept for the term.
Extensive, forthright annotations and great essays take the browser on a delightful tour of the literary arena. From Abby Theater to Zhdanovshchina, Cuddin uses both irreverence and erudition to teach us that the words and phrases we use seldom mean what we believe.
An excellent reference for the writer's bookshelf.
Nash Black, author of "Qualifying Laps" and "Taxes, Stumbling Blocks & Pitfalls for Authors 2007."

This is one of the greatest kids books ever! Especially for my son, who always thinks he has to be perfect. This book shows kids that everyone has their own talents; it might not be what you thought was perfect, but it can still be beautiful and amazing, unique and yours. I hope this book gives more children the courage to do their own thing and express themselves.

How do you teach a child confidence?
You could put their work on the refrigerator, frame it, or talk about it with others. In this story the teacher frames a small dot drawn by a child who claims she is unable to draw. The little girl is also asked to sign her work, which emphasizes value.

Society values signatures. We want the signed book, the signed football pendant, the autograph, etc. because we perceive it is more valuable. Children can relate to signatures. Children understand signatures mean something (whether it is a report card that needs signing, an illness note for school, or the need to sign a "take home" folder). Thus, immediately the little girl realizes when asked to sign her work that her dot, her creation, is also valuable.

This wonderful story teaches children about trying, about at least starting, at least making an effort, and then seeing where that start can take you... This lesson is taught through art in this storybook but reminded me of what we were always told in writing, "Write, just start.... "

Henry Ford said, "If you think you can... or if you think you can't... you're right." This simple story illustrates a message of positive "can do" type thinking.

I also especially like that the little girl passes on what she learns at the end of the story by asking a little boy to sign his work. Setting a good example and passing on your knowledge to help others is a lesson for all children!

I loved this book and can use it in my library all the time.
Thank You

The Dot is a beautifully illustrated book about a VERY good art teacher. I found it when I was already an adult, but in a way it is written for adults anyway. The book addresses those who are unsure of themselves, which occurs in adults just as often as in children. The message is clear but not didactic, and the illustrations underline the moral.

I'm a middle school art teacher. I read the book to every class on the first day. Then, I gave them a few different media to use, (watercolor, oil pastels, markers) and asked them to "make a dot and see where it takes you" We made two rules, you had to know where your original dot was and you had to work for 15 minutes. The results are great and we are off to a great start. I also own ISH by the same author and use it a little later in the semester.

this is a great source and reference book for drawing dragons.
it's also extremely cool for little kids and big kids alike.

Good book. Some what hard to read and understand in certain areas but very interesting.

This is a great book. I loved it but it was very short for the price I paid.

My son and his friends are nuts about the dragonology series. This handbook has stickers, puzzles, lore, and fantastic illustrations. The entire book is made to appear as a relic from 1893. I love the "oath of a dragonologist" included in the front. My son very earnestly inscribed his name here: "I ___ ___ do solemnly swear to conserve and protect those dragons that still remain and in no way to harm them or reveal their secret hiding places to those who do not believe in them or would wish them anything other than good fortune." It's a real treat!

Great for kids with a great imagination. My son has all of the book created by this author and loves them all!

Great craft ideas for preschoolers through grade school. Make sure to have the washable stamp pads ready for when the book arrives.

We got this for my 6-year-old daughter. She has used it well. There are so many things to do in the book that she hasn't gotten bored. We haven't had much luck finding washable stamp pads that easily wash off her fingers though! Her stained fingers are worth it though!!

As a homeschooling mom of a preschooler and first grader, I am always looking for things that are appropriate for a wide variety of age levels. The Complete Funprint Drawing Book is perfect for homeschool art! The directions are simple enough for my just-turned-four year old to follow, but the endless variety of things to make is interesting enough for my six (and a half) year old. I am looking into more Ed Emberly books to add to our homeschool art resource collection.

I loved Ed Emberley's books so much when I was a kid, I had to share them with my own children and my students.

Lucy Adams, author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny

These books are great for art projects with kids. My class is making a gift for the school using these art ideas.

I cannot imagine trying to read Proust's Everest of a novel until I've had enough life experience to be able to identify with his insights. How on earth was a man who died young and was confined to a bed for so many years able to learn so much about life and common human experience, emotion and perception? I don't know how, but I thank God that he was.

For modern readers, Proust is definitely an acquired taste that rewards patience. I never thought reading the works of one author would make those of others seem so much easier to read. But such is the case with Proust. Nevertheless, one shouldn't regard his writing as therapy or medicine; it may read like self help at times, with its frequent use of the first-person plural, but it is a story first of all. His writing is just more detailed and insightful than that of all but a handful of modern novelists.

Within a Budding Grove is a primer on patience and perception, one that will probably make you a better reader, perhaps a better writer, and certainly a more interesting human being. Struggle on patiently. You will get used to the labyrinthine sentences, paragraphs that run on for pages, and gargantuan chapters (if they can be called that) that don't really begin or end anywhere tidy. Eventually, you will likely come to enjoy it.

My only criticism: at times one does get annoyed by the slow pacing. For instance, I knew that this is the volume that introduces the reader to Albertine. But it did take about 600 pages for the narrator to meet her! That said, there are plenty of tasty morsels along the way. Read it, not so much for the simple story or the minutely detailed descriptions, but for the numerous insights and the astounding wisdom.

How can anyone summarize even a single volume of Proust's massive six volume novel? Within a Budding Grove (sometimes translated as In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) is the second installment of In Search of Last Time. We find the narrator perhaps marginally older on vacation with his grandmother living in a luxurious hotel in Balbec off the coast. This volume, paired with the first (Swann's Way), is really the introduction to the work entire if you can believe it. In it, the narrator perhaps matures slightly; he cultivates his keen awareness of art, meets new people, and ultimately falls out of love with Gilberte and falls in love with Albertine. His relationship with his grandmother is certainly expanded, and the reader comes to learn that the narrator is not merely motivated by a trivial pursuit of pleasure and bourgeois charm. He is in fact, a truly full human being, complete with fear, love, desire, and ambition. He meets one of my favorite characters in the whole book, the impressionist painter Elstir, a character clearly based Monet, Manet, Pissaro, and others. He introduces the narrator to Albertine through his paintings, and teaches him about the joys of life and art. There are some passages in this section of the book (the latter half) which I just can't resist from quoting,

"I could never have believed that I should now be dreaming of a sea which was no more than a whitish vapour that had lost both consistency and colour. But of such a sea Elstir, like the people who sat musing on board those vessels drowsy with the heat, had felt so intensely the enchantment that he had succeeded in transcribing, in fixing for all time upon his canvas, the imperceptible ebb of the tide, the throb of one happy moment; and at the sight of this magic portrait, one could think of nothing else than to range the wide world, seeking to recapture the vanished day in its instantaneous, slumbering beauty" (pg. 657).

also (how French is this?),

"For a convalescent who rests all day long in the flower-garden or an orchard, a scent of flowers or fruit does not more completely pervade the thousand trifles that compose his idle hours than did for me that colour, that fragrance in search of which my eyes kept straying towards the girls, and the sweetness of which finally became incorporated in me. So it is that grapes sweeten in the sun. And by their slow continuity these simple little games had gradually wrought in me also, as in those who do nothing else all day but lie outstretched by the sea, breathing the salt air and sunning themselves, a relaxation, a blissful smile, a vague dazzlement that had spread from brain to eyes" (pg. 669).

I certainly cannot add any insights into the greatness and profundity of this work which has not already been said by Edmund Wilson or Vladimir Nabokov. Within a Budding Grove is a deeply felt, beautiful and fleeting segment of one of the finest novels of the last century, I urge you to read it.

Montcrief's translation, is the quintisential Proust. The, beautiful, florid prose is reminiscent of a time and a place that no longer exists, and captures the French aristocracy in the advent of WWI -- full of old-world trappings, yet abounding with subtle reminders of the globalization that was to follow. Proust's style and vision are directed admirably towards his artistic goal of appreciating art through sublimation, and express his idea that a true understanding of art comes first through appreciation, and then expression through a medium. This volume is full of Proust's own philosiphies on art, life and the people who abound in both. His observations, pointed and amusing, keep this volume relevant. Considering the wave of expatriate and existentialist writers who propogated Paris after the Great War, this book is truly the last in a line of works that view life in a grand, sweeping and elegant manner. Within a Budding Grove brought Proust fame and acclaim in his own time, and in ours can be seen as a masterpiece reflecting a time past, yet glimsping assiduously into the future. For those "in search of lost time" this is truly a great read.

This is a great copy of Vol. 2 of A la recherche du temps perdu [In Search of Lost Time] or [Delving into Things Past]. Each volume in the septrology may be read individually as an independent novel. This is, of course, the very best translation available in English; probably the very best that will ever be available in English: certainly the next best thing to reading the original French.

Note: Proust is not quick reading, and one who tries to read too quickly will just as quickly lose the tread of the narrative. This text has its own time scale, and the reader must adjust his/herself to the text--not the other way around. In this stream of consciousness narrative, the narrator (/author) digresses as he speaks (/thinks): he digresses, digresses, digresses; and then, he returns, returns, returns to the point where he began. One has to follow his line of thought: this is the art and beauty of the text.

Proust's achievement is one of the greatest edifices of Western art, perhaps comparable only to Wagner's Ring cycle.

It's my experience, reading this novel, to be perpetually grateful for the miracle of Proust, grateful, too, that he waited until his maturity to write; as someone who's spent time in writing workshops, I can only imagine the dissipation of his energies into anemic prototypes had he been persuaded to publish prematurely. Lovingly written, every word endowed with love of life and maturity's distillation of life experience, it is a novel (which reads like a memoir) of a life devoted to the connoisseur's pursuit of pleasure-how can that not alienate? Proust is consciously writing for an elite of mental or temperamental sympathy. To say that reading Proust has helped me through hard times is true-yet how can I-someone who has, to paraphrase a T-shirt I saw recently, a blackbelt in keepin' it real-not resent a courtesan with three ladies to aid in her toilette-however tenderly rendered?

The mature Proust's vision of love-in this novel at least-is adolescent and self-absorbed, and there is no sense of a selfless or mature love, such as that of a parent for a child, which contains a dying to self as opposed to an expansion of self. (One thinks here of the authorial contempt for the too-giving parent, Vinteuil.) I pity Marcel: to lose oneself-the burden-to lose time-sometimes-is very refreshing indeed. Mired in the adolescent and egotistical point-of-view, without benefit of even the illusory counterpoint of an adult lover's (Swann's) point-of-view, the narrative does sometimes suffer from too much Marcel. Coddled, effete, he finely calibrates the shades of disillusionment that possession as opposed to reflection offers-the "psychological impossibility of happiness"-after having his wildest fantasies (Berma! Bergotte! Balbec!) fulfilled time and again. And he universalizes his singular temperamental trait, that inability to live in the moment.

Proust is only too conscious of his weaknesses, and as a result, we get his poetics: "I am aware that this is to blaspheme against the sacrosanct school of what these gentlemen term `Art for Art's sake,' but at this period of history there are tasks more urgent than the manipulation of words in a harmonious manner," Norpois says, and one is laughing out loud with pleasure at the dissonance between Marcel's lofty musings on Berma and the cold spiced beef jiggling in its cubes of aspic, the delicious conflict of temperaments.

He gives me back to myself-it's a long time since I've felt the sole inhabitor of my consciousness and had the leisure to puzzle out my sensations. Usually my mind is full to the brim like this: "Mommy-mommy-mommy-here comes little bear! What does little bear say?! Mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy-moooooommy! Here's little bear! Little bear is talking!" So that I don't have mental space or leisure to process even the simplest sensation, how the sun feels on my shoulders, for instance. Visiting Proust's cool room of mirrors and ocean waves returns that feeling to me, and that is precious. There is something precious in his extremity-his lack of apology for a sensitive and aesthetically-driven nature that is anathema to middle-class American values. And that rhythm like ocean waves! It gets in your head, lowers your blood pressure, no doubt alters brain wave patterns, the chemicals in neuropathways.

There is something so extreme (admirable!) in Proust's sensibility-the extremity of his pursuit of pleasurable sensation intellectually reorganized and savored-that one feels-paradoxically-something dehumanizing in his gaze. His musings on the protoplasmic nature of young girls frankly chills me! Yet I see it as part of the "green fuse," the life force pagan and repugnant at times. So, what happens in Vol.3? I can't wait, yet at the same time I hope for something I may not get.

This is an absolutely charming story set in England before the war. The Linnet children are sent to live with their staid grandmother after their mother dies and their father is away in the army. Grandmother is too strict to abide, so the children steal a pony cart to make their escape. And so their adventures begin, when the pony "delivers" them to the home of an old, grumpy man who agrees to let them spend the night.

This wonderful story is the very first book I ever owned and I never forgot the feelings of magic and wonder that I experienced reading it for the first time. Even now, as a grandmother sharing the story with grandchildren, I SO want to believe that Ezra talks to bees and that all can be right with the world.

I highly recommend this book to young and old alike!

Beautifully done story that starts off with the Linnet children running away. The story has an air of mystery and magic to it, that might or might not be.

This book begins as a delightful Victorian-style children's adventure. However, about halfway through the book, it turns to witches and witchcraft, evil spells, and an oblivious or helpless clergyman. I am glad that I proofread it before I was going to read it to my children. I will definitely be getting rid of this book.

This enjoyable tale is about 4 children who, separated from their father by war, end up spending the summer with an elder, bachelor, uncle. At the home of their uncle they have frightful adventures that ultimately lead to the redemption of the entire town. The book is well-written and could be appealing to both girls and boys. The book might require approximately a [...] reading level. It is a relaxing, entertaining read for those who enjoy Children's Literature.

I first read this book as a pre-teen. Then reread it again and again until the cover began to shred off. The only other books I have read more often are Jane Austin's novels. It is a charming, magical tale, meant to please young children who truly believe in good witches, and the protective nature of bees.

If there's anything good about a disiplinarian TB institution in the 30s (not 40s), it's the opportunity to meet so many different kinds of people. Macdonald is an observer and nailer of people's quirks on a level with Dickens (both of them, Charles and Monica). I love this book. There's one thing I would like explained, though. American readers talk as if Macdonald's "racism" was an understood and obvious thing. I see no racism in this book. OK, she calls somebody "coloured" and another girl "black". She also mentions that her roommate is Japanese and her workmate an Eskimo. Is she racist for not using today's PC terminology? She praises the institution for accepting everybody and mixing them together. She quotes some racist comments from other patients, but doesn't say she condones them, in fact "Betty" in the book answers back and disagrees. Please, please, somebody tell me why it is currently PC to say Macdonald is racist?

Betty McDonald was my husbands's aunt - her sister DeDe mentioned in this book was my beloved mother-in-law. Although I never knew Betty, I had the priviledge of knowing my mother-in-law for 20 some years. The entire Bard family was a strong group with character like none other. My children had the priviledge of growing up listening to so many other "Bard Family stories" told by DeDe, their grandmother. It's too bad we don't have that grit, humor and determination that Betty and the rest of her family had. Those characteristics would help so many of us get through the tough times we face today. She was a great author and a classy lady. So glad these books have come back into print.

I read this book long ago, have forgotten a lot of it, but just about every December I find myself singing "Deck the Halls in Old Crepe Paper, fa la la" etc. Used to confuse my kids no end. For those who haven't read it yet, look for the scenes of holiday celebrations in the old TB sanitaruims-- sad & funny.

as "The Egg and I"--her statement in that book that "I do not like Indians and I think we did a good thing in coming over and taking this beautiful country away from them." made my part-Cherokee blood boil--could write another that was so UNracist. While the author does use terms like 'colored' and 'Negro', those were (one can understand) the accepted terms in the 1930s, and while she records the racist attudes of some of the patients and staff, she apparently does not agree with them. She formed a close attachment with a Japanese patient--whom she later urges to go to college--and when an African-American (to use the accepted term of today) patient tells her that she doesn't mind being in isolation because the white patients don't want her as a roommate anyway, she thinks this absurd.

It is difficult for us today to understand how very scary TB was back then. While TB is not unknown today, if caught early it is easily treated with appropriate medications; not so, then. The only treatment was a rest-cure with pallitive measures; many people recovered, but many did not. There were some surgical treatments (collapsed lung), but they were painful and not terribly effective. It was known to be contageous, although not nearly as contageous as many people thought it was. The nearest modern equivalent might be HIV/AIDS, except that the latter is always fatal.

As other authors have mentioned, one hardly thinks that such a story would be funny, but BMacD is able to find humor in any situation. I've read all four of her books for adults and enjoyed them very much--even 'Egg'. That she was able to be discharged from the sanitarium after only about a year shows that laughter is, indeed, the best medicine.

This book is filled with an off beat sence of humor. It isn't the slap you in the face kind of humor but rather the kind of humor that hits you later. For example, I found myself smilingat something I read earlier in the day while cooking dinner. At the end of this book you feel like you know each of the people personally. I wanted a follow up to find out what happened to each person. It's that good.

Basically this book is about Betty MacDonalds stay in a sanitorium while she had TB. She can take such a serious topic that could be pretty morose and turn it into something interesting and funny.

Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing. ~Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker died the year I was born and yet she seems like a modern writer you'd like to meet and talk to for hours. While she lived a troubled life she is a fascinating study. While in France she became friends with Earnest Hemingway and soon thereafter published her first book of poetry, "Enough Rope." She writes about her friendship with Earnest in the Uncollected Articles section.

Of all her writing, her poems strike me as her true self. She reveals so much in her poetry and many times her feelings reach new levels of desperation. She doesn't seem to find as many beautiful moments as Anais Nin, but then again she manages to continue the struggle of life without taking her life in a river like Virginia Woolf.

The true irony of her life is that she dies of natural causes after spending a life embraced in a dream of death. When she wishes people were dead, it might be because she sees death as some beautiful way to escape reality.

The memorable short stories make extended points about human nature and page 48 is an especially good example of a page dripping heavily with sardonic wit. Where did all this angst come from? She is a woman living in a time where she cannot always speak her mind and she is deeply frustrated in many of her "internal dialogue" confessions.

When given the choice between creating and curing, she seems to create from a place of deep emotional pain. She seems to fall into similar patterns and actually seems to revel the idea of: "I wore my heart like a wet, red stain on the breast of a velvet gown."

Dorothy Parker's poems seem to be more of her desire to break free from the brutal revelation of life. She has a typical love-hate relationship with men and is an astute observer of cultural trends. I have a feeling she wrote many of her poems while she was in a manic state of some sort because she reveals so many of her feelings and comments so deeply on her life experience. The first few lines of "Wisdom," show her frustration.

This I say, and this I know:
Love has seen the last of me.
Love's a trodden lane to woe,
Love's a path to misery.

She seems to be having a bipolar diatribe during the story of the Telephone Call. Her mean streak can be a bit shocking at times, but she does love rain and has other sensitive qualities which seem to balance this more sarcastic and vindictive side of her personality.

Dorothy Parker wrote reviews under the title "The Constant Reader." There are quite a few reviews from The New Yorker. She reviews The Journal of Katherine Mansfield and We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirley Jackson. I enjoyed her conversational style and the way she thinks through her writing while she writes. It is as if you are observing the entire thought process. You can read her thoughts about Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband from Vanity Fair.

One of my friends reads me Hemingway and I read him Dorothy Parker poems. It is a friendship made in heaven. He also knows all about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table and has lists of books for me to read. This book is my first Dorothy Parker experience and I found many poems that I loved and quotes that are definitely collectable. This is an enjoyable introduction to Dorothy Parker that may end up with many highlighted pages.

You may also enjoy reading: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

~The Rebecca Review

This is the bible for Dorothy Parker lovers. "The Portable" contains Mrs. Parker's short stories, poems, book reviews and Broadway criticism. The book originally came out in 1944 - and has never gone out of print.

Most of Mrs. Parker's most famous writing is presented here. Her short stories and verse were chosen in 1944 and arranged by Parker herself. When the book came out again in 1973 the editors added some of her theater reviews from Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, along with selected book reviews she penned for The New Yorker and Esquire.

The only downside to this edition is the rotten introduction by the crusty Brendan Gill, who was a longtime staff member of The New Yorker and is not too kind to Mrs. Parker. I suggest skipping his intro entirely. For most Parker fans, this is the first collection they buy, and it is a good start. If you are going to own just one Parker book, this is it.

I most like her very short stories & this is a great collection. They are almost scenes more than stories. In many of her writings, definitely in my favorites ("But the One on the Right"- about sitting next to a dud at a dinner party, "The Sexes"- about a date getting off on the wrong foot, "Here We Are"- about nervous newlyweds), Parker takes people's silent assumptions, adds dialogue riddled with miscommunication, then has her characters completely overanalyze the situation. What's left is very biting, very funny and gives loads of evidence to the saying that `assuming makes an ass out of you and me'.

This has been one of my "always by my side" books for several years now. The short stories are ironic and witty, the poetry is amazing. Of everything, I would probably say the best part of this collection is the poetry. Ms. Parker has a brilliant sense of humor and she reveals an essence of feminism one can relish for years to come.

Dorothy Parker was brilliant! Sure I'd have been afraid of her and that whip-sharp mind of hers that could unleash a rapier wit with seeming ease, but I love her stories, poems, and essays. This "portable" anthology of the great lady's writings is a perfect marriage of the printed word compacted into an accessible format. This is a book to sit back and fall into, as one slips into tales peopled with a cast of (surely Hell-bound) movers and shakers, all infused with the cool, trademarked Parker style. Recommended sans hesitation!

Una novela que marca a todo el que la lee... el lenguaje en su máxima y más hermosa expresión.

La historia con Bèrthe Trépat, la carta de La Maga a Rocamadour, Talita pasando por el tablón y, claro, el capítulo 7 (toco tu boca...). Este libro me deja sin aliento. Nunca, pero NUNCA he leído nada de semejante belleza.

I really enjoyed this original book.

It has taken me years to sit down and finally make a serious commitment to read Julio Cortazar's "Hopscotch/La Rayuela." I cannot think of a better companion to devote a few weeks to, maybe even longer - hey, whatever it takes! It depends on your reading speed and the time you take to truly savor the poetry of the author's language. So, be willing to make a small personal investment in this very special novel, and the reward you reap will be a worthy one. Julio Cortazar will take you to places you have never been before in literature, and may never experience again. I read "Hopscotch" over this past summer, after a thirty year delay. I can be very stubborn about putting off what is good for me!! The author's imagination is boundless, his prose rich and luminous, his wit and sophistication rare, the dialogue brilliant, the plot...I won't attempt to describe that with a few adjectives. Wander through the extraordinary labyrinthine plot on you own - the way is yours to discover. I promise, you won't get lost!

I was introduced to "La Rayuela" about thirty years ago, when a close friend, with similar reading tastes, gave me the book. Enthused after just reading the novel, he told me that I reminded him of one of the characters, La Maga. (What a compliment...I think!). I was living in Latin America at the time. With personal interests at stake and much curiosity, I bought a copy in Spanish, which I read with some fluency back then. After experimenting with which way to approach the novel, and trying both ways, I gave up...and just read the parts about La Maga. I had little patience at that point in my life, and needed to acquire some, and to read slower, with more of a sense of play and participation. Cortazar wants his readers to participate - to make reading his book an interactive experience, not a passive one. I was and still feel touched when I remember my friend's comments regarding La Maga. She is a magnificent character and Cortazer's prose, his language, (Spanish), is exquisite. So, about a year later, I thought I'd give it another try, in English, perhaps with better results. None! I just wasn't ready, I guess. That happens to me with fiction occasionally. I have to be open to the experience. Yet, after all these years, I still thought of Horacio Oliveira and La Maga from time to time. And why not? They are truly unforgettable. As I wrote above, I did make time, at last. For an adventure of a lifetime, I recommend you do the same.

When Julio Cortazar published "La Rayuela" in 1966, he turned the conventional novel upside-down and the literary world on its ear with this experiment in writing fiction. He soon became an important influence on writers everywhere. "Hopscotch" is considered to be one of the best novels written in Spanish. The work is interactive, where readers are invited to rearrange its text and read sections in different sequences. Read in a linear fashion, "Hopscotch" contains 700 pages, 155 chapters in three sections: "From the Other Side," and "From This Side" - the first two sections are sustained by relatively chronological narratives and so contrast greatly with the third section, "From Diverse Sides," (subtitled "Expendable Chapters"), which includes philosophical extrapolation, character study, allusions and quotations, and an entirely different version of the "ending."

The book has no table of contents, but rather a "Table of Instructions." There, we learn that two approved readings are possible: from Chapter 1 through 56 "in a normal fashion", or from Chapter 73 to Chapter 1 to... well, wherever the chapters lead you. The instructions are all in your book and are extremely clear. At the end of each chapter there is a numeric indicator to lead the reader to the next chapter. One never knows where one will be lead. Due to its meandering nature, "Hopscotch" has been called a "Proto-hypertext" novel. Cortázar probably had this work in mind when he stated, "If I had the technical means to print my own books, I think I would keep on producing collage-books."

Horacio Oliveira, our protagonist and sometimes narrator, is an Argentinean expatriate, an intellectual and professed writer in 1950's bohemian Paris. He and his close friends, members of "the Club," do lots of partying, drinking, and intellectualizing, discussing art, literature, music and solving the world's problems. Oliveira lives with and loves La Maga, an exotic young woman, somewhat whimsical, at times almost ephemeral, who leaves behind her, like the scent of a light perfume, a feeling of poignancy and inevitable loss. La Maga refuses to plan her encounters with Oliveira in advance, preferring instead to run into each other by chance. Then she and Oliveira celebrate the series of circumstances that reunite them. Eventually, he loses La Maga, who loses her child. With her absence, Oliveira realizes how empty and meaningless his life is and he returns to his native Buenos Aires. There he finds work first as a salesman, then a keeper of a circus cat, and an attendant in an insane asylum.

As Oliveira wends his way through France, Uruguay and Argentina looking for his lost love, "Hopscotch's" narrative takes on an emotionally intense stream of consciousness style, rich in metaphor. Back In Argentina, Oliveira shares his life with his bizarre double, Traveler, and Traveler's wife, Talita, whom Oliveira attempts to remake into a facsimile of La Maga.

The game of hopscotch is only developed as a conceit late in the narrative. It is first used to describe Oliveira's confused love for La Maga as "that crazy hopscotch." The theme develops as a metaphor for reaching Heaven from Earth. "When practically no one has learned how to make the pebble climb into Heaven, childhood is over all of a sudden and you're into novels, into the anguish of the senseless divine trajectory, into the speculation about another Heaven that you have to learn to reach too." The variations on the children's game are described as "spiral hopscotch, rectangular hopscotch, fantasy hopscotch, not played very often." The allusions continue and include some beautiful passages.

"Hopscotch" is much more than a novel. Ultimately, it is best left for each reader to define what it is for himself/herself. Pablo Neruda in a famous quote said, "People who do not read Cortazar are doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease." I don't know whether I would go so far. Remember, I put off the experience for many years. But this is one novel that should be read during one's lifetime. It is brilliant and it is fun!
JANA

Rayuela es, junto a otras obras como "El Túnel" de Sábato, una de las pocas muestras de literatura Existencialista latinoamericana. Y el resultado difícilmente pudo ser mejor, este libro de Cortázar fue aclamado por la crítica internacional y actualmente está junto con "Cien años de Soledad" ,y algunos otros pocos, dentro de las novelas latinoamericanas más renombradas.

En la primera página de "Rayuela", el autor indica que la obra es en realidad muchos libros y no sólo uno, pero que principalmente son dos libros (dos formas de leerlo). El primero se lee en forma continua, desde el capítulo 1 hasta el 56. El segundo se lee de acuerdo a un orden específico que da Cortázar, y abarca muchos otros capítulos, la totalidad de la obra. La palabra Rayuela se refiere a un juego, y algunos críticos consideran que esta 2da opción es también un juego, una broma del autor. Incluso al llegar a cierto capitulo (leyendo de la 2da forma), te ves dirigido luego al capítulo que leíste antes, formándose así un circulo de tal manera que la obra no tiene fin. ¿Cómo leer Rayuela? En lo personal la leí en forma continua, y no me arrepiento, aunque confieso haberle dado una hojeada a los capítulos no leídos.

No quiero contarles la trama de la novela, que si bien es muy valiosa, no es lo principal y no vale la pena conocerla antes de la lectura (como en casi todos los libros, en mi opinión). Basta con decir que narra la historia de Horacio Oliveira, un argentino de espíritu libre, sus años en París y en Argentina, y sus problemas existenciales. Como en toda novela existencialista, el principal atractivo es la profundidad de los personajes y la habilidad narrativa del escritor para envolvernos en la personalidad y mente de estos; en todo esto triunfa Julio Cortázar. En Rayuela, además de Oliveira, hay otros caracteres interesantisimos, como la famosa "Maga". La construcción de este personaje es una genialidad del autor, "La Maga" termina siendo una suerte de "Madame Bovary", una mujer a la cual ni Oliveira ni el lector podrán nunca olvidar.

Que más decir, "Rayuela" es un libro infalible, genial, de lectura imprescindible para cualquiera que disfrute leyendo a Sábato, Camus, Hesse, Sartre o Dostoievski. Pero es para cualquiera en realidad, pues es un libro verdaderamente extraordinario.