Victoria Books

I just reread this the other day and laughed out loud - something I rarely do when reading. Corby knows how to conjure up the most hilarious situations for her characters. And the characters themselves are wonderful. Laura is a loveable Brit who "attracts trouble without meaning to." She and her former step brother, James, get into a funny, madcap scrape with his former girlfriend, Cressida, and her jealous Italian husband, Stefano. There are stolen antique artifacts, a wild trip to France, shady characters, and the simmering attraction between James and Laura. It's a marvelous example of British chick lit at its best. Corby only wrote three novels and then hasn't written anything since. But, the three novels she wrote are gems. Try to get and read all three. You won't be disappointed.

With its historical sweep of more than 4000 years, Chinese ceramics is one of the great achievements of world art. It was, after all, the Chinese, who invented porcelain, and that is why we speak of "china" generically today.

In my judgment the wares of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) constitute the summit of this achievement. To be sure, they are something of an acquired taste, for their austerity lacks the immediate interest of the Ming blue-and-white and the spectacular show pieces of the Qing Dynasty. Still, in the splendid photographs of this book, one can attain a kind of secular mystical experience, which has no parallel that I know of.

The text is good too, neither too long nor too short, not too technical, not too simple. Carefully, painlessly the author presents the information gleaned from recent research and excavation in the People's Republic. For anyone interested in Chinese ceramics this book is a must.

D. H. Lawrence excels in presenting human emotions of love and lust, hate and hope, faith and passion. The main protagonist, Paul, is said to be an autobiographical account of Lawrence's own self, and perhaps that explains why Lawrence is able to present his array of emotions as well as he manages to do in this novel. The novel is about the relationship between mother and sons, and about the lovers of the respective sons.

The character of mother is actually the one around whom all the story is woven. No one writes about the feelings of woman as well as Lawrence does, and like in other novels, he captures the feelings through delicate and beautiful descriptions of seemingly trivial events. Paul's brother William and the woman he loves Gypsy, present the life of London in backdrop of romance between a highly intelligent male, and a blonde-like bimbo. Paul's own romances with Miriam, a simple, homely girl, who is religious and respecting, and with Clara, a much older than himself and modernist in views female makes this novel a classic study of passionate love and sexual attraction. Among all this, is the role of mother whose compensates for her unhappy marriage by devoting all her energies to her sons, and then in later years has to deal with loves of her sons that threaten to tug them away from her.

The story is also a story of struggle of a family, where a young wife must come to grips with a drinking husband, where children must grow in shadow of the strained relationships of their parents, where Paul, William and the other siblings will grow from childhood into an age where they will fall into love, find vocations and finally the family will grow into a happier, richer bunch. Like typical Lawrence, all relationships are treated with rich and emotional descriptions, and the innermost thoughts of characters are spread out in beautifully written prose. The novel captures commotion of love and lust quite well, and eventhough Lawrence has refrained from talking about sexual attraction in a way that cause much consternation in his times, the descriptions are lush and unforgettable.

I have always loved the way Lawrence describes nature. Sunlight, leaves, forests, evenings, stars in the night sky, clouds, sea and seashore: all nature itself is woven into the fabric of this novel in very artistic fashion, very poetically and imaginatively. Lawrence, I repeat, is the novelist of last century that no one ought to miss, and trust me his world is run by universal emotions that only writer of his talent, perception and feeling can write.

Lastly, this is a classic, it requires time and effort. The beauty of the writing is in the descriptions, rather than the sequence of events. From seemingly mundane lives of few family members, and using seemingly trivial daily events, Lawrence tells a story of romances, relationships and (I believe one of the best accounts of)mother-son relationship. Its a kind of story that stays with you, makes you understand yourself better, and is wonderful to remember!

Women loving Women - a passion which exists in all cultures and throughout time. Sparkling Rain affirms this truth, bringing us, for the first time in English, the writings of Japanese lesbians. The fact that in Japan's notoriously patriarchal culture, women who love other women still dare to write about their love, gives us all courage. This diverse collection begins with an overview of the rise of lesbian literature in Japan. Then comes a wonderful array of stories, from the tender and painful tale of first love, set at the eve of the women's movement, to a contemporary outrageous lesbian manga cartoon strip.

I've read a lot of first novels and usually they're okay, but not outstanding. This one, however, is definitely the exception. Sparks Might Fly is a deceptively simple novel -- at least on the surface. But there's so much more going on below the surface. Newport has incredible insight into the act and art of creativity and what happens when it is lost.

I would recommend this book to anyone.

Excellent! I was not aware that there was such disagreement about the implications of Darwin's work among his earliest followers. The book was fascinating from historical, philosophical and scientific points of view. As a person in the medical field I found chapter six especially interesting.

Amazon has this listing for the rare occasion when an expensive first edition of this work comes available.

If you're simply interested in reading the content of this important speech, you can find an exact facsimile of the original in an inexpensive book you will find on Amazon: Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull. In that book, you will also get facsimiles of five of her other major speeches on eugenics and excerpts from newspapers articles on her speeches in the U.S. and the U.K.

You may also want to read the companion volume. In Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Early Speeches of Victoria Woodhull In the early 1870s, Victoria Woodhull justified her free love ideas by advancing strange, mystical ideas about sex and childbearing that link it to eugenics. She also advocated radical social change in an effort to make free love seem more practical. Those changes included an end to legal marriage, payments to mothers for childbearing, and the rearing of all children by the State. In a very real sense, Aldous Huxley's classic Brave New World is a criticism of those ideas as they had evolved by 1932.

Woodhull later abandoned her ideas about free love and married a wealthy British banker. But she retained her interest in eugenics, becoming one of its earliest advocates. Over time, her ideas about eugenics became less mystical and more scientific. In 1927 she would praise a U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared forced sterilization constitutional, noting that she had been advocating that idea for fifty years.

Amazon has this listing for the rare occasion when an expensive first edition of this work comes available.

If you're simply interested in reading the content of this important 1871-72 speech, you can find an exact facsimile of the original in an inexpensive book you will find on Amazon: Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics the Early Speeches of Victoria Woodhull, due for release in mid-December 2005. In that book, you will also get facsimiles of three of her other major speeches on free love, two letters she wrote the New York Times on the topic and the New York Times' report on this Steinway Hall speech.

In Free Lover Victoria Woodhull justified her free love ideas by advancing strange, mystical ideas about sex and childbearing that link it to eugenics. She also advocated radical social change in an effort to make free love seem more practical. Those changes included an end to legal marriage, payments to mothers for childbearing, and the rearing of all children by the State. In a very real sense, Aldous Huxley's classic Brave New World is a criticism of those ideas as they had evolved by 1932.

Woodhull later abandoned her ideas about free love and married a wealthy British banker. But she retained her interest in eugenics, becoming one of its earliest advocates. Over time, her ideas about eugenics became less mystical and more scientific. Her major speeches and pamphlets on eugenics can be found in another inexpensive collection: Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull, also available from Amazon.

i think that this book is the best kids book of all time.

I found this tape to be very helpful in developing better communications with my Spirit Guides.