Classics Books

I just like Brink's stories! It is mostly difficult to have a break once you have started to read his book.

Ben Du Toit teaches history and geography in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the period of the height of the youth riots in the township of Soweto. At Ben's school, Gordon Ngubene, a native, is a cleaner and he occasionally does little chores for Ben. When Ben sees that Jonathan, Gordon's son, is showing signs of intelligence and diligence, he decides to partly finance his education. One day however, Jonathan takes part in a demonstration which ends up in a violent riot and is arrested by the police. A few weeks later, after a harrowing quest through countless offices, Ben and Gordon are informed that Jonathan died "of natural causes" while in detention.
Due to the mystery surrounding his son's death, Gordon gives up his job in order to devote himself entirely to the enquiries which have become an obsession with him. Both the Special Branch and the Security Police are annoyed about Gordon's insistence and soon enough Gordon is arrested. After numerous attempts to try to trace Gordon and speak to him, Ben and Gordon's wife Emily are told by the spokesman of the Security Police that Gordon apparently committed suicide by hanging himself with strips torn from his blanket.
But Ben Du Toit senses that the official explanations for both Jonathan's and Gordon's deaths are just a pretext for poorly disguised murders and so he decides to take matters in his own hands and starts investigating.
Mr Brink's novel is a harrowing account of a solitary man's fight against all the atrocities of the Apartheid. During this dark period in the history of South Africa, a white man had to be a real hero to fight for the right of the Afrikaners. The author beautifully captures the fact that Ben has to fight not only the resentment of the people of the other race, but also that of the people belonging to his own race - his family for a start. The descriptions of the townships of Johannesburg, particularly that of Soweto, are breathtaking in their accuracy and poignancy.

Brinks sketches the life of a idealistic man - Ben du Toit that lives his life in Apartheid South Africa on the brink of normalcy until the mysterious death of a black American friend and his son points to government involvement. As du Toit becomes obsessed with discovering the truth he becomes the symbol of Afrikaner conscience struggling to cope with the conflict and alienation that this crusade against Apartheid causes. With Apartheid being woven into the Afrikaner concept of nationhood and religion Ben finds himself not only in conflict with his family or the government but with his own history and ultimately with his own identity and even his soul. du Toit becomes a classical Afrikaner in his stubborn steadfast refusal to sway from his course , irrespective of the consequences, that he believes to be the only just and morally acceptable one.

He painfully exposes the moral vacuum of Apartheid and how it alienates not just du Toit from himself and his family but ultimately the Afrikaner from their fellow South Africans, as well as their own ideas of justice and morality.

The original Afrikaans language edition packs a powerful punch and is beautiful to read. English translation loses a bit of impact and fails to capture the finesse of the master writer in his mother tongue but is never the less worth burning the midnight oil for. It should however be noted that the story is dated and not a balanced portrayal of South Africa, Afrikaners or Apartheid.

Good fiction but not a historical treatise of Apartheid as some reviewers seem to think.

During the 1970's in South Africa, several protests were happening against the apartheid acts and the education of African natives to speak Afrikaans, instead of their chosen language. In Andre Brink's brilliant novel, A Dry White Season, he presents the brutality of the African struggle for freedom from the white leaders by telling the story of one man's effort to clear his black friend's name. When Gordon Ngubene, a janitor at the local school in Johannesburg, finds his son dead without a clue of what happened, he asks his colleague Ben Dutoit for financial help and support. After certain inquiries were developed on Gordon's behalf for his son, Jonathan, he is arrested by the police and is marked by his own "suicide". However once Ben begins to unfold the evidence that leads to what truly happened, he is caught in a jungle of lies, danger, and an atrocious form of racism.

Ben Dutoit was a simple man content with his mediocre life based on his wife, two daughters, and his teaching. Although the Special Branch had become more involved in the town where he lived, he purely continued throughout his basic routine day in and day out. Once Gordon is told by the Security Police that his son has died of "natural causes" while in a severe detention for publicly protesting, it seems that he will stop at nothing to figure out what had occurred the night of Jonathan's death. "If it was me, all right. But he is my child and I must know. God is my witness today: I cannot stop before I know what happened to him and where they buried him. His body belongs to me. It is my son's body."(Pg.49 A Dry White Season). Throughout this time period, whites naturally assumed themselves superior to that of the African race, and ruthless acts were brought upon the blacks daily. Brink vividly described the numerous cruelties aimed at the "inferior race" due to such instinctive racism. The author conjures the understanding of the reader to see how simple it would be for Ben to turn a blind eye on Gordon's tragedy. Yet after Gordon is accused of strangling himself by tying bits of torn blanket together, Ben is convinced that it was torture that killed the prisoner, and Ben just cannot let the case go with injustice. One can sense just how stubborn Ben truly is regarding the truth of his friend's alleged murder, mainly because of the emotions depicted by Brink that the reader can pick up on. Assembling as much evidence against the Special Branch's summary of Gordon's arrest, with the help of taxi driver and informational guide Stanley, Ben attempts to prove that the police are sadistic liars that have crossed the line of racism and have entered a territory of the highest form of hatred. Publicity of his "Negro loving" efforts have provoked such racists to seek ways to harm Ben and his family, such as sending bombs in the mail and shooting through his windows at night. I simply cannot comprehend the motive of someone to physically or mentally abuse another for their own views. However nothing could frighten him from completing what he had started in the first place, not even the terrifying Captain Stolz who had threatened him many times during the case. The thorough detail Brink constructed to picture the startling police officer was amazing, admitting a very clear idea of just how alarming this character must have been. Aware of his immense caution in his own case, he presented one of his old college friends with pieces of information in order to write a biography of Ben Dutoit. Two weeks later, Ben was killed in a hit and run car accident, but fortunately for him, his story would not be left untold. I personally found myself having to read certain paragraphs repeatedly in order to really grasp what was happening in all of the excitement, which I appreciated from the author. The plot was persistently heart pumping, giving off the effect that South Africa's horrifying and unfair history was not given the deliberate attention it deserved.

Before this misfortune had happened, Ben had been conceived as having a rather introverted personality, spending most of his time alone playing chess in his den. However the demand for real facts about what had definitely taken place seemed to have changed his behavior. Suddenly Ben was actually offering his true opinions back to those that he would not dare before, such as Captain Stolz, no matter how harsh or unsettling. After this unexpected alteration, Ben began to become more aware of his surroundings, more observant of his daily routines that he had developed into over the years. The author made sure to explain Ben's strange emotions in noticing things in his life that seemed unfit to him. "All at once this is what seemed foreign to him: not what he had seen in the course of the long bewildering afternoon, but this. His garden, with the sprinkler on the lawn. His house, with white walls, and orange tiled roof, and windows and rounded stoop. His wife appearing in the front door. As if he'd never seen it before in his life."(Pg.99 A Dry White Season). If you take a considerable amount of time to glance at your own life, as I have done from the direction of this book, you perceive things that might belong to you, though they might seem impossible to be yours. The process is difficult to explain, until you try to complete it yourself. Brink wrote the character as if his own qualities were shifting along to the varied events of Gordon's death case. The author seemed to have used Ben's life as symbolism of how one moment could alter anyone's life as they know it. A calamity such as this could happen to anyone, even I, and this thought makes me wonder. How would the way I act now be changed?

The Soweto protests of the 1970's in South Africa led to many empty lots filled with tear-gas, public shootings, and violent massacres of black citizens. In the novel A Dry White Season, Andre Brink tells the tale of one honorable man that knew too much information for his own good at a time era like his generation, which guided him into a vast land of moral corruption. Ben Dutoit's story has captivated my imagination, gripped my heart, crossed my frustrations, and stirred my tears. This book has taught me, as well as numerous other readers as well, to follow your instincts and never let justice go unserved. "Perhaps all one can really hope for, all I am entitled to, is no more than this: to write it down. To report what I know. So that it will not be possible for any man ever to say again: I knew nothing about it. (Pg.316 A Dry White Season).

i read this while i was a high school student and i can honestly say it has been one of the few books that have made an impact on the way i view society. read it! you'll love it!

In the spirit of the Bronte sisters, this novel delights and entrances. An enjoyable read.

Wonderful! I could read the book and watch the movie over and over! Treat yourself to a vacation in an Italian paradise with real characters and a physical beauty you could reach out and touch. Von Arnim makes this simple plot so magical and warm it makes you want to visit San Salvatore too!

Just got through watching the wonderful movie; not as wonderful as the book, but very good. Have now read this book at least three or four times, and still adore it every time. Has to rank as one of my all-time favorite books. Must rent an Italian castle on the western Mediterranean coast some day. The writing is so witty, and warm, the story so imaginative, the moral so wise. Love is all; just to love, not expecting anything in return. It opens people up. Lotty, Rose, Lady Caroline, and Mrs. Fisher all live in these pages. And the gardens, the flowers, the utter beauty of San Salvatore. The author quite obviously loves flowers. Even the servants are clearly drawn, Francesca and Domenico. Lotty becomes a truly original character. Love, love, love this book!

Always celebrated for its beautiful evocative setting in Portofino, THE ENCHANTED APRIL has also to some extent been dismissed as a sentimental trifle. It is not: for all its surface charm, it is also one of the most searching fictional works ever written on the nature of goodness, and its effects upon selfishness and acquisitiveness. Two Hampstead housewives, Rose Arbuthnot and Lottie Hawkins, advertise for two other women to share in the costs so that they may rent an Italian castle for the month of April and escape their loveless lives; when they and the other two women (the dazzling Lady Caroline Dester and the rigid bluestocking Mrs. Fisher) arrive at the spectacularly lovely castle, they begin to discover that not only have their spirits been refreshed but also that their value systems have changed through what amounts to the dispensation of the castle of a kind of secularized grace. Elizabeth von Arnim accomplishes this very probing study of modern British mores through the very subtle and unobtrusive psychological realist use of extended interior monologues. The result is a novel that is not only completely beguiling but actually quite thoughtful. A greatly underappreciated little gem.

Well, you've already heard about the story. Just wanted to add that the characters were so real, it was as if I were really there with them. A wonderful turn of events at the end. Caught me off guard. Very enjoyable. Beautiful writing. Now I've got to rent the movie.

Shwartz is a Boston trail lawyer with an unabashed love for the well-written word. In the introduction Shwartz wrote about reading, "I would read, as readers do, to tame the unfamiliar or see the familiar through new and enlightened prisms; to see how different or eerily familiar, another person's interior life could be from my own."

This is a book of short commentaries by 115 writers on the books they love most. And indeed it is hard to flip many pages without finding the word love. Shwartz set out to produce the very book he couldn't find in bookstores!

This is truly a book that your reading group could share. Buy one copy and bring it to meetings. It can give you a wealth of insights and ideas for books to read- read a book written by one of the 115 authors interviewed and then select a book to read that influenced that author. The bibliographical index is reason alone to buy this book. Shwartz has said that he always found himself asking what the authors themselves read; and here you'll find that answered both in text and in the index.

Penelope Fitzgerald, author of "The Bookshop" wrote in her commentary that "Fathers& Sons" was one of the books that made the greatest impression on her, "I still feel close to weeping when I get to the end. . . " John Irving, author of "The Cider House Rules" named "Great Expectations" and said, ". . .the intention of a novel by Charles Dickens is to move you emotionally- not intellectually . . . " And Anna Quindlen, author of "One True Thing" said, "The books I've loved most were the books I could inhabit."

Our interesting word selection was "Verity"" The quality or state of being true or real. Faithfulness to aesthetic truth.

Our favorite quote was by Anne Fadiman: "I was so ludicrously unprepared for Humanties 190 that the course nearly proved my undoing. With a doggedness born of panic, I defaced nearly every line of Aristitle's poetics with citron Hi-liter and crammed the margins with felt-tip notations."

Shwartz wrote that it was his hope that his book "might inspire people to read more. . . " Oh yes!

Anyone who has ever wanted to be a writer will hear from writing instructors all about the importance of constantly reading. Books on writing theory state the same thing as do works about writing by published authors. The importance of reading cannot be disputed, but many writers may wonder what would be appropriate to read. Fans of great writers may also wonder what would be a great next read. Ronald Shwartz has edited a book that answers these questions for all who wonder, what do great writers read and what books have inspired these writers to write?

The book includes many well known authors of both fiction and nonfiction, including notables such as Anne Bernays and husband Justin Kaplan, Robert Coles, Joyce Carol Oates, Penelope Fitzgerald, John Irving, Norman Mailer, and Anna Quindlen just to name a few. Some of the writers simply list the books, others explain why they include the books. Most of the entries are short and to the point, and all the entries are insightful. I only wish Norman Mailer had a bit more to say, but since he just published a book on writing, any questions I may have will probably be answered in that book.

Ronald Shwartz was curious about what books writers read, how and what influenced them, so he set about to seek answers. This book contains 115 different viewpoints. Each chapter, written by a different author, begins with a brief biographical blurb followed by two or three pages describing the authors' choices. Some, like Mario Puzo or Norman Mailer, were quite terse, just itemizing their choices, but most of the other entries were a bit more revealing, giving us a feel for what the books meant to them, when they read them, etc. Their passion for books and reading were truly inspirational.

I kept a pad and pen handy as I read this book to make a list of the books mentioned that sounded interesting to me. By the end of the book I had a huge list of books that I wanted to find and read.

This book not only served as a great source for recommended reading, but provided a wonderful window into all of these authors' lives.

A wonderful collection of some of the most remarkable authors likes and dislikes and what books influenced them most. From childhood memories to adult appreciation, each author shares their favorite titles as well as how they came to appreciate reading and the written word.

As a fellow author, I felt like I had a window seat into the soul of many great writers. "WAR AND PEACE" won many votes as a favored choice.

Some authors distinguish between historic works and current favorites. Most agree that readers make writers! Each author seems to highly respect the written word.

Truly enjoyed the stories told about what was viewed as the catalyst to an early appreciation of books. My only negative comment would have to be on the size of the text. Personal opinion is that with so much written word on a page, you can lose the interest of the reader. These stories should be appreciated and read.

Easy to see why this would make an excellent choice for any adult book/reading group.

the only drawback of this book is that it will rob you of precious hours devoted to reading other books! i'm being facetious, of course -- this is a wealth of reflections to (a) place by your bedside table, (b) in the glovebox of your car, and (c) dare i say, in the bathroom to savor whenever you get a spare moment -- or to enjoy simply for its own sake. it's very much like sitting down face-to-face with a garrulous, self-reflective author (or grandparent) and hearing a lifetime of wisdom squished into a few minutes. so grab a pencil -- you're going to need one! -- and mark what sounds interesting. funny how often "the brothers k" gets mentioned, "moby dick" etc. but so many wonderful surprises in store, too. thanks to kurt vonnegut's (brilliant) short essay, for example, i picked up "candide" and am much the wiser. oddly enough, no one recommends "les misérables" -- i can't imagine why not -- or "musashi" for that matter. but "the tale of genji" is recommended, so all is forgiven. "for the love of books" = beautiful!

There is no story it's equal. When I think of a man truly loving a woman, this book comes to mind. It's the most deeply intimate telling of one man's heart, mind and soul. Is it possible love like this is possible by a man or a woman for the other? The story is to be nestled and protected for its lofty ideology. I view the Harvesters love for the woman as many saintly priests and nuns have loved God...deeply beyond what most of us can grasps with our worldliness. I might buy this book for my teenage nieces--they should read this story. Why? I wonder if they could, in their wildest fantasies, imagine a young man loving them similarily. Perhaps they may be more choosy in whom they date.

Gene Stratton-Porter is an excellent author. His books hold your interest and take you to a time where stress is far less an issue. His characters are fully developed and richly represented. An excellen book for peaceful reading.

I loved this book, although it definitely did not compare to The Girl of the Limberlost which is my all-time favorite.

I first read this book 37 years ago. It was the original book published in 1911 and belonged to my 1st husbands grandmother. It was written of a quieter time, the slower paced, clean living and was very inspirational. I loved all the information about the nature and plants. I started out trying to recreate the "Yellow Garden" several years ago. I now have a gorgeous garden with many of the same perennials and herbs listed in the book. The garden has certainly evolved from just yellow to every color in nature. I have passed down the love of gardening to my daughters by sharing the flowers and herbs from my own garden. I have thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I can't count the number of times I've read and re-read this book. Pretty sentimental by today's standards, but the basic story tells of a country man of character who falls deeply in love with a city girl who has issues. That description doesn't do justice to Gene Stratton-Porter's touching romance, but if I had to pare my library down to just 20 books, this one would be in the "keepers."

If you know Suzanne Farrell you will love and respect the lady even more after reading this book. Many artists can relate with her experiences and feelings. I'm sure anyone who was in the arts in college knew of someone who had this type of relationship with their teacher.
Honesty and truth abounds in this volume. Ms. Farrell has an accurate memory of the past. We have proof of that in her restoration project of Balanchine "lost" ballets. She is putting together choreography that she danced in her early twenties.
A remarkable lady!

Farrell had a rather dramatic climb into the spotlight so this is not the book to learn how a young dancer makes her way up through the ranks. It's also a little I-danced-this-then-I-danced-that, which makes it hard to remember important roles early in her career. That being said, she is a brilliant dancer, with an unusual career and the truest sense of Balanchine's choreography. If you're interested in Balanchine, American Ballet or the New York City Ballet, this is a must.

I stumbled across this book by accident almost a year ago and have been touched by it ever since. I'm not sure that I can explain the specialness of this of this story but it feels like a real life fairy tale. You can feel Ms. Farrell's emotions and passion of what it must have been like for her to work with her teacher, George Balanchine. What a dynamic duo they must have been together. I would recommend this book to everyone, whether you have been exposed to ballet or not, as a special glimpse into a very public but very private life. Truly a lovely story.

how i enjoyed this book...why more people have not read this inspiring story is - as they say - beyond me. what is not beyond me is how imparticularly this book brings the world of suzanne farrell - during her years as george balanchines principal "muse" and dancer - so inspiringly into my own thoughts. she has written her account of that time in a simple and straight forward manner, until it is finally evident that what she experienced at the new york city ballet was truly euphereal and transcendent...i certainly felt as if my own life was enriched through reading her words; it reminded me of the decency which must be cultivated and conveyed as we all live out our jouneys: it matters to believe in love; it matters to create - for ourselves, and others , from that take- off point. i have read five or six accounts from other dancers lucky enough to have known and worked with the obvious enigma that is george balanchine. this book , importantly, stays with the reader. why is that ?

i read this book as a young adult, when i was entrenched in the rigours of technique and training and it inspired me in many ways. from farrel's honesty and dedication to her art to the descriptions of balanchine as both a person and an artist. i love this book and i highly recomend it.

I've just finished reading The Search for Lost Time and I'd like to share a few thoughts.

First, commit to reading the whole thing, all seven volumes, all million+ words. However if the commitment frightens you (as it should) first read Swann's Love, the middle part of the first volume.

Second, if you commit don't be afraid to take a break and leave the book aside. I began reading it fifteen years ago, and read Swann's Love several times before finally getting a one volume omnibus and reading the whole thing. It took me eight months, during which I freely allowed myself to read other books.

Third, don't read Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life until you're reached the final volume. It's a wonderful book, but if you want to read the Search, then De Botton's little book is a "digestif" that will help you put Proust in perspective.

Fourth, you don't have to read Proust. No one does. If you don't enjoy reading the Search, leave it alone. Proust never liked the title "The Search for Lost Time" and I think he might have actually preferred the now discredited original English translation title "Remembrance of Things Past".* In French Lost Time (Temps Perdu) implies a waste of time, and Proust was very conscious of having wasted the first forty years of his life.

Lastly, I wouldn't worry too much about the translation. I read the Search in French and it struck me that translating Proust wouldn't be much harder than reading him. The essence of Proust's style is not dramatic rhetoric, it is patient and painstaking descriptions and explanations. He wants the reader to understand something very complex and subtle: his or her own self. You'll find the drama in his philosophy. His sentences are long, convoluted, dreamy, full of meandering turns, but Proust doesn't use French the way, for instance, La Fontaine or Hugo do. Most of Proust's meaning will survive the translation, very little will be lost.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

*I was wrong there, Proust hated the "Remembrance..." title. See the comments for details.

Vincent

Like others who've read and reviewed Proust's opus here, I did not read it in one consistent long read. I read the first ten pages and put it down for a year. I then read up to page 100 and put it down again for six months. Thereafter, pregnant with my first child, I read through all the rest.

I found Proust immeasurably easy and pleasant to read. The long sentences are almost musical and facilitate rather than impede understanding of Proust's deep insights.

Further, despite Proust's own unhappiness, I have never been happier reading a book. Nor have I ever felt so "let into" a person's life as I did reading him.

But, as important as my joy in reading Proust was the fact that it was Proust's masterpiece -- and most especially the last volume (Past Recaptured, by the old title) and particularly Chapter 3 of that volume -- that confirmed much of what I already secretly and silently knew and had begun developing into a method for finding one's own already-existing characters inside oneself, which I had already started teaching and continued to teach for twenty years (first in my own business and then at the New School University in NYC) and finally developed into my book Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious.

Proust's value for me was not in his exquisitely minute and drawn-out descriptions of drinking tea or misstepping on a cobblestone (which both triggered the reliving of lost moments for Proust). It is a misunderstanding of Proust to think that that is all he is about. (There was, in fact, an entire acting method developed out of this view (called "method acting").)

Rather, I found Proust's understanding of character valuable. He knew the power of juxtaposition -- which he called "mental gymnastics" and "the miracle of analogy."

I found his articulation of the "extra-temporal being" or "the man freed from the order of time" valuable -- that which I have called to my students: the "author self," the self that knows the whole story of all one's characters: the beginning, the middle, the end -- without having to wait for anything to happen -- a knowledge that almost presupposes the non-existence of time, in an Einsteinian sense -- and something which I have found is naturally developed through the use of the skill I called "arkhelogy" or "doing archetypes."

The habit or skill of "being in the moment" -- something that is a primary skill enumerated in my book -- is also something of what Proust reveals (he calls it a "minute freed from the order of time")

Proust practiced suspending moments in his mind in order to reclaim his past, but it is also a central skill possessed by all great novelists -- for, how do you experience the life of another if you do not grasp and suspend in your own mind the moments in which that person lives and breathes?

And this brings me to another concept that Proust knew and realized in his work (but did not express in the way I do), which was something I had learned from my years in the theater: analogy. Proust talked about analogy in the context of the juxtaposition of two moments. But analogy is also about making analogies between oneself and others (something which Proust called "substitutions"). In other words, finding how to "relate" to another, how to feel what the other feels. This, of course, is a human ability, but it is also a skill that can and should be encouraged and practiced. Proust achieved this level of understanding of his fellow humans to a high degree.

Finally, there is Proust's recognition that "in fashioning a work of art we are by no means free, that we do not choose how we shall make it but that it is pre-existent to us and therefore we are obliged, since it is both necessary and hidden, to do what we should have to do if it were a law of nature, that is to say to discover it." Similarly, one of the main premises in my book is that one's character's and their stories already exist and that one needs only to learn how to find them -- which is, of course, what all the rest of Proust's novel is about (and my exercises teach one to do).

I owe a great debt to Proust. Apart from my sense of love for his language, his words, his phrases, not to mention his insights into people and events, Proust was for me the major impetus behind the development of both the book "Archetypes for Writers" and the course out of which the book grew.

I finished Proust's magnum opus a couple of years ago. I read Swann's Way, then got about a quarter of the way through Within a Budding Grove, before stopping and taking a year's hiatus. When I returned to it I read straight through the remaining 6 volumes. Proust became for me, not so much a duty, or even a quest, but an addiction. There is really not much to add other than the fact that these books affected me more than any other books I have read. Once you are drawn in there is no escape. What one encounters within are some of the most fascinating and frustrating people one can imagine, and the most profound ideas and greatest insights on human nature ever recorded.

There are a number of themes explored here..memory, fidelity, love, obsession, jealousy, homosexuality, and the nature of art. It has been designated as semi autobiographical, but maybe it is the greatest autobiography ever written, since it portrays in detail, the truest possible representation of the author's heart, mind, and soul. It is perhaps, the most important and influential literary work of the 20th century.

Reading Proust is a major undertaking, a life-changing event for some, if only the committment of time is considered. This edition is superbly translated from the French, and loses very little (as my undergraduate French is concerned). The text[s] allow one immerse in Proust and the turn-of-the-century life of an upper class family. As an academic I see so many uses for this material, but as a reader it's a pleasurable experience to take in a true genius who can spend seven wonderful pages describing and elaborating on taking tea. Well-worth the small amount of money.

If someone told me ten years ago that one day I would read 4,000 pages of dense, hypeliterate ramblings, filled with single sentences that sometimes go on for at least ten pages, I would have thought myself more crazy than the guy who wrote them. Two years after reading all of Proust, incredibly, I find myself longing to spend afternoons again immersed in it. Such is the beauty of this momumental work.

While James Joyce's Ulysses deserves to be considered the best and greatest novel of the 20th century, I think it's fair to say that it's doubtful that any writer will ever reach the majesty and breathtaking beauty found in Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". Proust is not great for the 20th c., it's great for all time.

Heavy/Light book - hard to explain. There is a realness to the characters that made me say "Hey, I know that person!" and sometimes even, "Eeek! Too like the self I don't want to be!" This ain't no fairytale collection. This is life, complete with trips to the toilet. Not exactly anti-heros, the main characters show their flaws unknowingly as they search to move forward, often even unsure what direction is forward or which way to up. Some do successfully navigate towards up. There is some hope. But some also stagnate and a few slide further down. The stories hang in my head weeks after reading them. Thankfully, Bannan has a wonderful dry wit that helps us do more than muck our way through human exposure. We can wade along splashing, enjoying the lightness of the weight that reveals our world to us and makes us think.

Keith Banner, just reviewed in the New York Times for his "Smallest People Alive," also from Carnegie Mellon University Press, says on the Inventing Victor back cover: "Jennifer Bannan's Inventing Victor is a sharply written collection of funny, unnerving short stories that never settle for easy answers. Bannan's characters, self-reflective losers negotiating their ways through life with the low-volume enthusiasm of pro-bowlers, narrate each story in deceptively simple voices. But the stories themselves are never simple or deceptive. Bannan is after a kind of truth most literary writers try to avoid: brutal honesty in the face of all the bad things human beings do to each other. The title story alone is worth the price of admission. Fast-paced yet creepily intense, hilarious and very sad, it tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who can't stop lying, even while she knows this lying is slowly destroying her life. As you read this story, you start questioning all the lies you've ever told in order to impress people, all the ways in which dishonesty is sometimes all you have to keep yourself interesting, and maybe even aware of who you are."

This is the kind of book you want to give as a gift to all your friends. In fact, I did that. It's a beautiful collection of witty and moving stories, with characters who are so vividly drawn they seem like people you might have known once. It's the kind of book you'll read more than once; the kind of book that makes you remember why you love short stories. I highly recommend it.

We've all read stories that wipe out any trace of energy by trying so hard to be profound. And then there is gorgeous prose that doesn't manage to say much of anything. And then there is Inventing Victor. With pitch-perfect language, fresh takes on familiar insecurities and fantasies, and one wicked sense of humor, this one stays with you long after you're turned the last page. A really stunning debut.

Ms. Bannan's style defies categorization in that her stories are seemingly unrelated and there is no recognizable theme unifying them, which makes for each story its' own unique read, and makes for a small book packing an assortment of refreshing voices. She also embodies a literary style that is both masculine and feminine, vulnerable and pragmatically caustic. She is a fine teller of stories, less focused on melodic writing than on luring you in with the guts of the story itself, with the guts of the characters' thoughts and actions, and thus you are anxious to know what precisely is going to happen next. Written with a good deal of assurance, confidence and downright moxy.

Inspite of age of interview, the resultant product is of the finest quality, and we have the privilege of listening to the voice of this legendary person.

Not quite what I expected. Tolkien reads a great many of the poems and verses that is in the Lord of the Rings and some excerpts from the book. One reason why not more of the book is not read as it was just being published when these recordings were being made. May be they wanted folks to read the book. This is also very good for those who like to explore the background of his imagination, the history of Middle Earth.

I am so glad these recordings were made by Tolkien, and that they were preserved and released. i had heard some of these on an old record i borrowed from a library once a few years back, and only recently was made aware that it finally came out on cd. Its really a brilliant and wonderful little collection. Tolkien's voice and his singing really incredible. A personal favorite is Sam's song of the Troll. Tolkien was a true genius.

Who better to read Tolkien than Tolkien?

What I find so delightful in this compilation is the variety of mood and tone that both J. R. R. and Christopher bring to Tolkien's work. J. R. R. has real fun with the poems and narratives (especially of Sam and Gollum). The riddle chapter from The Hobbitt is an absolute treasure. J. R. R.'s vocal characterization of Gollum is genuinely first rate; no actor could have done it better. And his reading of the charge of the Rohirrim to the aid of Gondor is fully heroic.

But J. R. R. is always rustic whereas Christopher is erudite. The contrast is remarkable and somehow effective. Christopher's reading from The Silmarillion gives a sense of the depth of history of the Elder Days. His Oxbridge accent (after all, he grew up in Oxford) is perfect for the great persons he gives voice to. And of course he knows his father's work better than any person alive.

If you've ever enjoyed *reading* Tolkien, you owe it to yourself to *hear* Tolkien. You will love it! (And your kids will love Gollum!)

I absolutely love this group of CDs! Hearing Tolkien himself reading exerpts from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings make reading the stories themselves even more wonderful!
And when Christopher reads from The Silmarillion, it's just amazing, especially for someone who's been reading these stories since I was a little child.
I'd recommed these CDs to anyone who wanted ot listen to a true master of words.

When I was in 5th grade (25 or so years ago), our teacher, Mrs. Smith had a reward system where if the class got enough checks, we could redeem them for various treats. Time after time, once we got enough checks, we'd beg her to read to us from this book. I don't recall our class ever asking for anything else. I'd strongly recommend this one to parents of kids of any age. This, to me, is as good as American fairy tales get.

This book is very dear to my heart. The stories told in this book came from my family, R.M. Ward. I grew up hearing my grand parents, father & Richard Chase tell these tall tells. I read them to my kids now and I hear my relatives in my head so I begain tellin-um like they told me.My hope is that these stories live on through the generations of my family as well as other families.I love hearing my daughter ask for just one more just like I did.

I remember reading an earlier version of this book as a child. The collection of folk tales is as enjoyable to read as an adult as it was years ago. In fact, I can now bring my children the tales of the Appalachian Mountains and let their imaginations run wild with giants, witches, talking animals, and a witty little scoundrel like Jack. The tales are preserved in a very close "mountain vernacular" language. There is a noticable difference between some stories in the use of terminology, but this helps me to envision another storyteller spinning the yarn in his/her own fashion, which is part of the fun of listening to folk tales. My only complaint is that the collection is not larger.

I had this book as a child, and loved it so much that I bought it for my own children and read them a story out of it every night until they had heard all the stories it offered, and they loved it, too.

I heard about this book from a teacher who used to sub. in inner city schools. She said kids always remembered her for it. It's a compilation of short stories that are supposed to be told orally. They use HEAVY Appalachian dialect and I had thought that might be a problem for my second language learners, but THEY LOVED THEM. The stories tell of how Jack (from the beanstalk) outsmarts giants in different situations. His tricks often have a violent description, but because he's doing it to giants, it's not very traumatizing. A terrific oral language developer, and a whole lot of fun!!

This is one of Dr. Seuss's earlier works, in the style of The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins. The King's Stilts is an engaging story that explores the importance of balancing work with play, showing how neglecting play in order to work harder can lead to unhappiness and thus to poorer work. This lesser-known Seuss definitely deserves more attention.

Great book to read your children. It is unique and endearing.

No Seuss collection could be complete without this classic tale about a King and his responsibilities to his kingdom and his people. Seuss is ahead of his time in this environmentally sound story with Katrina disaster overtones and gripping suspense. Hard to put down.

This is more of a personal note than a review, but it serves to show how a children's book can resonate through an entire lifetime.

My first encounter with THE KING'S STILTS was hearing my mother translate each sentence into Hungarian for me. I was less than five years old, and lying in my crib. As she turned each page, she leaned the book toward me and showed me the picture. I remembered those pictures, and that fragile world under sea level -- a world constantly under threat of annihilation by wicked black birds who attacked the trees on the levee which were protected only by cats.

The place was Cleveland in the then Hungarian neighborhood around Buckeye Road. Because everyone around us was Magyar, my parents never taught me English until I got sent home from kindergarten with a note pinned to my shirt: "What language is this child speaking?" Needless to say, Mrs Idell was not one of my countrywomen.

Throughout my life, I was always impressed with levees, as when I read William Faulkner's story "Old Man" and John McPhee's essay on keeping the banks of the Mississippi in place in THE CONTROL OF NATURE. One day, I had a madeleine-like damburst of memory: I saw the book almost entire in my mind's eye and used a search engine to reveal the title. Reader, I bought the book; and it was exactly as I remembered.

I have read it several times since and love it for the reason that it stuck in my memory for more than 55 years. Of course, it's a rollicking good story, too, with an excellent moral: Never give up the things you love.

Theodore Seuss Geisel, using his famous pen name of Dr. Seuss, wrote and illustrated his first children's book, "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street," in 1937. Two years later he wrote "The King's Stilts." Even at this early point in his career Dr. Seuss was able to emphasize the idea that reading could be fun without have to be moralistic and that it was important that the illustrations actually had a close relationship with the text of the story. Geisel once declared: "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities." Certainly "The King's Stilts" evidences that point.

The story begins with the point that King Birtram on the Kingdom of Binn NEVER wore his stilts during business hours and that he worked very hard, continuing to sign important papers of state even while he was taking a bath. However, the king's most important job was caring for the mighty Dike Trees that protected the people of Binn from the sea. Their heavy, knotted roots held back the water. However, those roots were also very tasty to Nizzards, a kind of giant blackbird with a sharp and pointed beak. If the Nizzards were to eat the roots of the Dike Trees then the roots would soon give way, the sea would pour in, and every last soul in the Kingdom of Binn would drown. But King Birtram did not allow this to happen and by gathering together a thousand of the largest and smartest cats in the world to function as Patrol Cats (wearing badges that say "P.C."). These cats were so important that the Cat Kitchen was bigger than that of the King and even had the best cooks in the land.

Every day from seven in the morning, when he watched the changing of the Cat Guard, to five in the afternoon, the King inspected every root of every Dike Tree in the kingdom. Only after that important task was finished each day would King Bitram hurry back to his castle to get his red stilts and start racing through his marble halls and garden stairs. The people thought it looked strange, but they knew the king worked hard and well as his job and if he wanted to have a bit of fun then he should be allowed to do whatever he wanted to do. Unfortunately Lord Droon was the one person in Binn who did not like fun and who sulked long enough that the decided to steal the King's stilts, which is when things start to go bad for both King Birtram and his people.

What makes this an interesting book is that, as is usually the case, Dr. Seuss is telling a story that imparts lessons to both young readers and older readers alike. If anything it is the latter that are the target audience for this story, since we see that being able to play is as important as hard work. As long as someone works long and hard they deserve to do what ever their heart desires when it comes to having fun. Meanwhile, younger readers would be getting the opposite lesson, learning that being able to have fun as an adult is dependent upon earning your enjoyment (which makes it clear that "The King's Stilts" is really more for adults).

I was actually surprised that "The King's Stilts" was written in 1939, because if I were trying to guess at what inspired Dr. Seuss to tell this particular story it would have been the concern in the press about President Dwight D. Eisenhower playing golf so often (I thought King Birtram looked a bit like Ike). But evidently Dr. Seuss was going for a more universal idea here. Meanwhile there is the entire subtext of how a kingdom might be lost because of a pair of stilts the same way as the old story about the battle lost for the want of a nail, which only serves to prove that with the good doctor there are always multiple levels to the story and its lessons.