Mussel Books

Cockles and Mussels is a story of life in Dublin in the 50s.It depicts a week in the life of a medical student just prior to graduating as a doctor. It is a rollicking tale of Bob Shannon's difficulties with the authorities and with the Catholic Church. Told in the idiom of the time, it is at times uproariously funny and at others serious and even sad. The heroine is who else but Molly Malone whose statue now stands at the bottom of Grafton Street. There is no statue YET to Bob Shannon!

Cockles and Mussels is a story of life in Dublin in the 50s.It depicts a week in the life of a medical student just prior to graduating as a doctor. It is a rollicking tale of Bob Shannon's difficulties with the authorities and with the Catholic Church. Told in the idiom of the time, it is at times uproariously funny and at others serious and even sad. The heroine is who else but Molly Malone whose statue now stands at the bottom of Grafton Street. There is no statue YET to Bob Shannon!

This Book is for the student of malacology or professional. It has magnificant photos of the representive mussels in the region and the author (Cummings) is the national expert on Unionids. A must get for the professional, Student, or thoes who wish to know more about these Freshwater Friends.

No dichotomous key but excellent descriptions and useful color plates. Physically small in size, will fit in a back pocket.

"Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System Are We on a Collision Course?" by Anthony M. Davis USCG, Ret. is an interesting book on the challenges our law enforcement and other agencies have to keep the USA safe.

The book describes the agonizing steps the officers have to go through to determine if the incident in question is a crime or a terrorist act.

The book will educate you on the new laws passed due to terrorism.

Anthony M. Davis does a wonderful job explaining why the Middle East does not get along with the Jewish people. The fact may surprise you that it is not about religion.

The book further describes all of the work we as a nation need to be doing to keep ourselves protected. There are so many areas that terrorists could threaten our citizens.

I am glad I read this book to further educate myself. We as citizens of the USA need to be aware of what is going on to keep ourselves safe. I suggest you read this fascinating and educational book. Then writing our congressmen to make the necessary changes to keep our families safe!

Brilliantly written to easily read and understand.

I have to admit that I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System, but I am so glad I read it! Anthony Davis obviously has the background to put together such an awesome piece on a topic that, to my knowledge, hasn't been full covered before.

I learned so much about the military, how terrorism can and will affect us, security, and even the ships themselves! I've learned more in this one book than I've ever learned from reading any other reference piece before.

After reading Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System, I have a new found respect for those in the field and I'm thankful that Mr. Davis has put this book together to educate the public without making the content dull or boring. I found it difficult to put this book down as I wanted to keep learning more through every turn of the page.

Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System is an honest-to-goodness factual book written by my good friend Tony Davis. I think that his writing style not only keeps you aware of what can happen and has happened, but what can be done to reduce the risk from his actual hands-on experience and background. Tony's factual accounts of what are encountered in our cargo and the security as a whole makes this a valuable book. [...]
He reiterates some great reminders, what could have been done and experiences with what he lived and worked with from 9-11 forward. I highly recommend this book for pleasure or for a reference book.

This book is one of my favorite seafood cookbooks. It has a Continental European flavor and contains many beautifully photographed dishes. The recipes are easy to follow and are full of flavor. This is probably one of the best seafood cookbooks on the market.

This story is so typical of feelings when you were young in the summertime and wanted to hurt your best friend, (or sister or brother) with the excuse "I didn't do it on purpose, honest!" Remember that summer? If you don't, this will tug at your heart as you read this story about two best friends. You almost feel like you are there and want to step in to stop a disaster. I think this a very appropriate for an adult to read to a child while discussing, throughout, questions of correct behavior and attitude. It's short, so you won't fall asleep reading it to your child either.

Bob Howells is "The Mussel Guy" for Texas. This book, co-written with Raymond Neck and Harold Murray, is the most comprehensive publication on the status of freshwater mussels in Texas. This is a valuable resource for aquatic ecologists interested in mussels, which are a conservation concern due to declining abundance across the state. This guide presents species accounts with black-and-white photographs on each species present in Texas. Descriptions, geographic distributions, and ecological information is included. Introductory material covers everything from mussel anatomy and behavior to collecting gear and commercial uses. The guide is indexed and fully referenced. Several pages of color plates in the appendix are a nice extra. No self-respecting student of Texas mussels should be without it!

The control strategies decussed are good for industries. Overall a good read. R. Gregg II Qualis

Absolutely one of the best novels ever to come out of Ireland. A love story involving three people, O'Flaherty's story is as wild as the Atlantic waves, as scorching as a baker's oven, as compassionate as a cow with her calf.

No one has ever written about the personal and social ramifications of adultery so feelingly.

This is a novel way to incorporate important information about the perils of genetically modified foods and human relationships. My main complaint about the novel is this: One of the characters is French (or French-Canadian?), and when she speaks her native language, putain, she sounds like an idiot. Why couldn't the publisher find someone--anyone--who speaks French to proofread this text? It's embarrassingly bad, even if you haven't gone any further than high school French. And I can guarantee readers that the bad French wasn't intentional... come on, pay attention. Some readers do.

I was intrigued enough by Ozeki's "My Year Of Meats" to give this sequel of sorts a try, to see if she could improve on her fresh, amusing satirical style. The result is a small improvement, but not in the way I had hoped and not enough to make me a fan; Ozeki develops her characters better in this effort. You could say that I have had "my month of Ozeki," and I've had enough.

"All Over Creation" is remarkably similar to "My Year Of Meats." It has the same set of quirky, flawed characters, the same fun sense of satire in the first part followed by the same kind of preachiness and tragedy in the second part. Perhaps Ozeki is a meat and potatoes kind of gal, given that her first novel is about meat and this second is about potatoes. But if you read these two novels and take them to heart, you may not want to eat meat and potatoes. How concerned do we really need to be? Who knows? But I do know that the much more serious danger to Americans' health comes from their general diet, not from tainted meat and mutant potatoes. Ozeki has a cute, spunky style that would shine more without the overreaching sermons and tragic melodrama.

To me this book feels like a failed attempt to recreate the wonderful "My Year of Meats".
It seems to have the same ingredients: environmental issues, feminine issues, leading characters with similar backgrounds, whacky supporting cast.
Unfortunately, this is not enough. The glue, the magic and most of the sharp humor of "Meats" is not there.
The result is a boring book and a huge disappointment.

I admire Ruth Ozeki for taking on serious social and environmental themes in her novels. She has doubtlessly done a great deal through her novels to make her readers aware of the destructive economic and social trends that are currently trasnforming our planet. Furthermore she accomplishes her campaign for public enlightenment with great subtlety.

Having said that I wouldn't rate All Over Creation as a great literary work. The major problem for me as a male reader was that the characters are way too 'cutesy' - you have protagonists with names like 'Puddle', 'Poo' and 'Yummy'. Then you have the portrayal of the activist group the 'Seeds' as nothing more than a group of lost, scummy individuals who epitomise all the worst cliches usually attached to hippy culture, including a teenager who appears to have suffered significant intellectual impairment at some point in his life. To make matters worse the plot is strung between lenghtly domestic scenes which see the book played out predominantly in the kitchen, sickroom and garden. While I realise that these aspects of the novel may simply reflect the fact that it is aimed at a specific demographic I still feel this sickly sweet aspect somehow detracts from the pace of the narrative and the overall feel of the book.

I read My Year of Meats several years ago and loved it. I wasn't sure if I would feel the same about All Over Creation. However, Ruth Ozeki has managed to write another brilliant, sensitive and well informed novel. The characters are deeply human - idealistic and flawed yet somehow lovable. Ozeki manages to enlighten and educate on the subject of factory farming and genetically modified organisms without sounding preachy or self righteous. I did not want this book to end!

The despot, the octopus, in Frank Norris's forceful novel is the Railroad Cy (RR), which monopolizes the transport of agricultural products and sucks the life out of the farmers: `He searched for the true romance and found grain rates and unjust freight tariffs.' More, the RR owns big chunks of the land alongside the railway, which it `optionally' sold at a modest fixed price to the farmers as a counterpart for developing and exploiting the land. But the RR breaches the contracts.
The farmers are not as indifferent as the vast majority of the masses and try to get control of the Board of Railroad Commissioners through bribery. A brutal and deadly fight explodes between the organized farmers and the delegates of the RR ...

Frank Norris sees two great evils in modern America: the lethargy of the public and the aggression of the trusts. The trusts are exploiting the masses because `they are allowed to do it'.
His analysis of the nation is devastating: `They swindle a nation of a hundred million and call it financiering; they levy a blackmail and call it commerce; they corrupt a legislature and call it politics; they bribe a judge and call it law; they prostitute the honor of a state and call it competition.'
The overall mentality of the public, the spirit of the West, equals a policy of `after us the deluge': `The miner's instinct of wealth acquired in a simple night prevailed. They had no love for their land. When the land, worn out, would refuse to yield, they would invest their money in something else.'

But, astonishingly, for Frank Norris this is all part of nature, `the gigantic engine, the leviathan with a heart of steel, knowing no forgiveness, no tolerance. Men were naught, death was naught, life was naught. Force only existed, force that made the wheat grow. It was the mystery of creation, the stupendous miracle of re-creation.'
For him, `falseness dies; injustice and oppression fade. Greed and cruelty, selfishness and inhumanity are short-lived. The individual suffers but the race goes on.' Everything (e.g., the brutal slaughter by the trusts) is for the good! Man perishes, but the wheat remains.
Frank Norris forgot that for the wheat to grow human arms are needed. Man is part of nature.

`The octopus` is a forceful, naturalistic and brutal novel, with now and then sentimental and melodramatic passages and, in any case, a controversial optimistic and contradictory end.
Not to be missed.

I bought this book for my 13 year old granddaughter's 8th grade history class. It is on the required reading list for this year. I did not read it and am in no position to rate it.

Norris flounders around for two thirds of "The Octopus" until he begins telling the story. We don't know who these characters are until we're well into the novel and their lack of first names makes them hard to keep straight initially. Who is the novel's protagonist? Presley? Annixter? Magnus Derrick? I would have liked a little more character development. Presley IS Frank Norris, but we don't see him as anything more than a dilletante until nearly the novel's conclusion. We really don't know why Lyman Derrick sells out his father, or how the "league" bribes his way onto the Railroad Commission. Vanamee's obsession over his dead girlfriend adds nothing to the story. (What the heck are "heavy lidded eyes" anyway?) I expected "The Octopus" to be proto-Steinbeck. It is a story Frank Norris had to tell, but it seems he was writing to satisfy the conventionalities of his time. The conclusion that good prevails after what these people have endured may have rung true 100 years ago. Now it seems contrived. "The Octopus" is worthwhile if the reader can stick with it; infinitely superior to Zane Gray's "Desert of Wheat", which isn't saying a whole lot.

Certainly a novel with a capital "N", from a time when authors wrote grand, sweeping, "epics of the soil and those who work the soil". Norris was inspired by the work of French novelist Zola, which is funny because some of his harshest writing takes to task San Francisco society matrons attempting to appreciate French style landscape art.

I read this book after reading Kevin Starr's "Californians and the American Dream". While this novel does culminate in a retelling of the infamous "Mussel Slough" shoot out, where a group of "squatting" ranchers shot it out with representatives of the U.S. government and the Marshalls, it is most notable for its classic descriptions of California ranch life circa 1880.

The character's at the center of the Octopus are broad: Vanamee, the "Hebraic" looking sheep herder/mystic who yearns for the sweet embrace of his departed lover; Presley, the would-be poet who gets wrapped up in the affairs of the world, only to turn away from the world in the end; Annixter, the rough-hewn young rancher who is transformed by the love of a woman.

The Octopus is also notable for the supporting cast of minor characters. They reveal as much about life in California in the 1800's as do the major characters.
Still relevant for its historical value, but let's face it... the prose is dated. Also, I agree with other reviewers in that this book is too long by about a hundred pages. Probably a must read for people who are serious about the history of California.

First off, "The Octopus: A Story of California (Twentieth Century Classics)" edition has several spelling errors and typos. certainly a book of this quality deserves a better editor than it received. Also, Frank Norris has a tendency to repeat himself. Not just occasionally but routinely. Even using the exact same phrasing within a few pages of the last time it was used. It certainly could have been slimmed down, probably by about a hundred pages or so.

The story is a phenomenal one though and deserves to be read in spite of the sloppy editing.