France Books

This is a stunning book. Wonderful characters, biting humour. This would make an absolutely stunning film provided it wasnt made by an American studio, and just left unadulterated. I even started to draft a stage version when I was at school because I thought the strength of the characters could come across without even being able to realise the aerial combat sequences. Its hard not to think of ourselves in terms of the youngsters posted to the squadron, and revile in the northern cynisism of Major Woolley, but as the story unfold, you start to see the cracks in his veneer and how very hard he is trying too get the message across to his young charges, they are here not to survive, but to kill. Like the "municipal rat catcher".
They went into combat in what were basically powered kites, structural failure was common, often pilots went into action with less than 10 hours flying experience. No time to train at the front, just the hope that as "anti-Woolley" Biggles used to say, "if you survice your first couple of trips, you might survive a week, if you get to a month, then you have a chance of becoming a bigger danger to the hun than you are to yourself."
Ask youself that if you were to go into combat, what sort of leader would you like? Hopefully, you will never have to, but read this book and remember those who did.

Excellent book with truly dramatic descriptions of WW1 flying and ground wars and their impacts on British class structure.

Like most others I know of who have read Derek Robinson's novels of British fliers in WWI and WWII, I think him far and away the best writer on the subject. With relentless humor and realism he gets us to imagine what it was like to be pretty certain you were going to die there, just unsure when.

And he is unsparing of staff leadership that didn't have a clue. In Robinson's war, you fly to kill people--neither more nor less--or die yourself.

I like this novel of the 1918 campaigns a bit less well than the hard-to-find Hornet's Sting about the early war, 1915, in which the humor, suitable to the absurd reality really works. But I like it better than his best known and very good WWII book about the RAF in the Battle of Britain stripped of myth, A Piece of Cake. It is a shame that his books aren't more easily available.

It is still the same today...and probably always will be.
Retired USAF Pilot (220 combat missions per war)

I thought maybe I was alone in thinking about the indelible image that this book leaves.
Back in the summer of 1973 when at the age of 15 I read this book it captivated me in such a way that I immediately read it again upon finishing it.
I remember thinking ah! here we have something like the truth behind the glorious legends of WW1 air fighting.
Air warfare was always in our house with my father being a WW2 pilot and indeed his father serving in WW1, but something never felt right about the stories and I began to realise the sheer terror that tinged every anecdote which always came out after a few drinks at family gatherings.

Read this book and consider the world of Major Woolley.

It's closer to the truth than you might think. Cheers! Mines a Guinness.

This book is one of two Henri's books I have and the best one. The book to go through again and again. Then go shoot some pictures and go through it again. You'll be surprized how many fresh impressions you'll get every time. Very inspiring book. Highly recommended for practicing fotographers.

As my favourite photographer, Cartier-Bresson has some kind of impayable discernment. His gallery of Paris is his magnum opus. His Leica, his 50mm lens, his mysterious face... all made him a monumental legend. I bought this gallery (hardcover) in 1995 for the price of $US 50 in Hong Kong. What are you waiting for? Just click it and buy it immediately, you will never regret buying this book.

As my favourite photographer, Cartier-Bresson has some kind of impayable discernment. His gallery of Paris is his magnum opus. His Leica, his 50mm lens, his mysterious face... all made him a monumental legend. I bought this gallery (hardcover) in 1995 for the price of $US 50 in Hong Kong. What are you waiting for? Just click it and buy it immediately, you will never regret buying this book.

I have many of Cartier-Bresson's books, but this is the one I find myself drawn to.

Time and again I thumb its pages and find something in the photographs that I never before noticed.

This isn't some book full of "pretty" pictures in the conventional sense. One has to look at each picture to understand what inspired HCB to capture it.

I have a few favorites photos from this book, but those that stand out in my mind are of the picnic by the Marne and of the little boy carrying two large bottles of wine.

The Marne photo is so well layed out that, if one didn't know better, it would seem staged. That simply wasn't Cartier-Bresson's way. Although their faces are not seen, I "know" what each of the people look like.

The opposite is true of the little boy. His face is there for all to see and interpret. What is he thinking? Is he happy? Is he proud to be showing off for the little girls in the background?

Many of HCB's photos force us to read his mind and the minds of his subjects. These seemingly impromptu snapshots not only depict what HCB saw, but also depict it geometrically.

To someone like myself who has dabbled in "street photography", HCB epitomizes the genre.

As my favourite photographer, Cartier-Bresson has some kind of impayable discernment. His gallery of Paris is his magnum opus. His Leica, his 50mm lens, his mysterious face... all made him a monumental legend. I bought this gallery (hardcover) in 1995 for the price of $US 50 in Hong Kong. What are you waiting for? Just click it and buy it immediately, you will never regret buying this book.

Volume IV of "In Search of Lost Time" begins in the afternoon of the day of Princess of Guermantes's party, the one that Marcel had looked forward for so long as his definitive entrance into the world of high society. That afternoon, by spying on them, Marcel discovers with his own eyes, for the first time, homosexuality, in the form of an encounter between the depraved Baron de Charlus and the tailor Jupien, Marcel's neighbor in the property of the Guermantes. Later that evening, Marcel attends the party, attended also by a cast of characters like very few in literature: Charlus himself, a Swann close to his death, and others. The Dreyfuss cause keeps winning adepts, among them the very Prince and Princess of Guermantes, as the injustice of the sentence is revealed. In the party, Marcel continues on his way to disappointment about noblesse: they are people just like everyone else, only with grand names and big egos, but not much more.

Days later, with his mother, Marcel returns to Balbec, where, alone in his room he finally feels all the weight and sorrow of his grandmother's death, which had happened a year and a half before or so. It is a profound passage about the perception of death, everyday indifference to it, and the memories left to us by our beloved's passing away. In Balbec, Marcel reencounters with Albertine, in that perverted play of seduction and deceit, of attraction and rejection, which foreshadows a sick relationship. Disturbed by the graphic discovery of homosexuality, Marcel broods a lot about it. Two women who stay at the same hotel, and who openly show their lesbianism, awaken in Marcel a deep suspicion about Albertine's mysterious life, and so begins a torment of permanent jealousy, of anxiety and anguish which reminds the reader of the similar episode, in times gone by, of the beginning of the relationship between Swann and Odette. Meanwhile, Marcel has simultaneous relationships with a couple of maids of the hotel (literally simultaneous).

Marcel rents a car to go around with Albertine through the countryside and the coast, deepening his relationship with the capricious, naughty, annoying and elusive Albertine. In her company, he begins to frequent the little band of the social-climbing Verdurins (where Swann had met Odette years before), in the country estate they have rented from the Marquises of Cambremer. The central part of the book narrates that summer in Balbec and its surroundings, above all the wide mosaic of characters surrounding the Verdurins: insecure but arrogant Doctor Cottard and his simple wife; musician Vinteuil; the rustic and silent sculptor Ski; Professor Saniette, pathetic and constantly humiliated; and Madame Verdurin herself, presumptuous and increasingly successful in society. Over this fresco is shown the repulsive couple of Charlus and musician Morel, son of a former servant of the Prousts. Morel is the worst kind of climber and representative of sexual and moral corruption. In contrast with what happens in the first three volumes, here it seems that it is the nobles who yearn to be accepted in bourgeois society, and not the other way around. It is the bourgeois who attract interesting people: intellectuals, scientists, artists. Charlus makes a fool of himself big time, pretending everybody ignores his homosexuality, when in fact he is the target of cruel jokes and gossip. So continues the great saga of memory, sex, love, longing, and social observation of the XX Century.

Like in no one of the previous volumes, in this one the subject of homosexuality is analyzed in all its complexity. Marcel and Albertine's relationship forebodes hell. Charlus begins to sink. The bourgeois approach triumph. Like in all the previous volumes, what astounds the reader is Proust's immense power of microscopic vision to analyze individuals and dissect societies. It includes a magical reflection on dreams, as well as precious depictions of landscapes, sexual assaults, personalities and emotions.

Sodom and Gomorrah makes it difficult for those who speak of Proust and attempt to reduce his grand work to mere flowery social observation. This is a bold and often disturbing installment of la recherché, as Marcel recalls brutal homosexual sadomasochism among two of the principle characters, and has to deal with great loss and self-loathing.

The narrator also returns us to the superficial world of the Verdurins, where Swann and Odette first made their interactions in Swann in Love.

Marcel falls deeply in love with Albertine, but later discovers that she has been involved in homosexual relationships with two women, mirroring Swann's problems with Odette. There are remarkable passages on the nature of love in here: "But if something brings about a violent change in the position of that soul in relation to us, shows us that it is love with others and not with us, then by beating of our shattered heart we feel that it is not a few feet away from us but within us that the beloved creature was. Within us, in regions more or less superficial" (pg. 720)

Sodom and Gomorrah is a deeply felt and complex development in Proust's extraordinarily full and beautiful search.

I am writing here of the "Penguin Proust" translation by John Sturrock. (Much of what appears on this page is misleading, with the editorial matter referring to an audiobook and many reader reviews to an earlier translation. Even first-sentence quote is not from Sturrock's translation!)

Of the four Penguin Proust volumes I've read so far, this is my favorite--a wonderfully funny study of society (if not of sex). Proust specializes in transformations. We'll be introduced to a character and led to believe that we know everything of importance about him, only to have him turn up in a later volume as entirely different. In this volume, the remote and terrible Baron de Charlus is tranformed a pathetic tubby, besotted by the pianist Morel (himself a bit of a transformation, since he first appeared in the novel as the son of a valet).

Marcel (the narrator) meanwhile finds himself more deeply involved with Albertine, herself probably a stand-in for a male secretary of Proust's, Alfred Agostinelli. To complicate matters, I see elements of this relationship not only in the Marcel-Albertine affair, but also in the Charlus-Morel romance. It's as if Proust divided his experience into two parts, giving the romantic elements to Marcel and the comic part to Charlus.

The two romances come together at the seaside salon of the awful Madame Verdurin, who is inexorably rising in the world. In one of Proust's hundred-page setpieces, the aristocratic baron has his first clash with the social-climbing Verdurins. I found myself cheering for Charlus, whom I'd earlier learned to dislike, because he is so genuine and she is such a fraud. And I know in my heart (and through my earlier readings of this great novel) that things are not going to turn out well for Charlus. Against all logic, Proust in one of his hundred-page dissections of French society is able to keep me on tenterhooks.

The less said about Albertine, the better. I am not one of those who find her/him a convincing character. So it is with a bit of apprehension that I now turn to volume five of the Proust Penguin, containing the two books of the "Albertine cycle."

But back to Sodom (as it were): this is a wonderful translation of a riveting story. If you stick with "In Search of Lost Time" thus far, you will know that you are in the middle of one of the great experiences of your life.

"Sodom and Gomorrah," the fourth volume of Proust's masterwork "In Search of Lost Time," contains two very long set pieces that strike me as amazing achievements in the entire canon of literature. The first is an evening party at the mansion of the Prince and Princess de Guermantes attended by Proust's young narrator despite his doubt about having been properly invited, and the second is a dinner at the seaside clifftop house of the Verdurins filled with absurd but fascinating conversation. These episodes combined cover hundreds of pages of narration yet never give the impression of being stretched because Proust evokes the natural importance in every detail and human gesture, as though the course of the world depended on every little thing that transpires.

These details unify under the banner of the entire novel into a series of fictionalized memories of Proust's social life as a young man making his way through Parisian aristocratic circles and observing the events which develop his artistic conscience. These memories tend to be romanticized visions of the past, wistful dreams of what he might have really wanted his life to be: "We dream much of paradise, or rather of a number of successive paradises, but each of them is, long before we die, a paradise lost, in which we should feel ourselves lost too."

The title of the volume implies love between men and women, and men and men, and women and women. Here, the young Marcel chronicles the torrid romances of the Baron de Charlus, brother of the Duke de Guermantes, whose salon was the focal arena of the previous volume. Upon his spying--innocently, not judgmentally--on de Charlus and Jupien the tailor in an act of sodomy, he expounds on the societal attitudes confronting male homosexuality and on the ways de Charlus must go about procuring younger men for himself, such as he does with a conceited young violinist named Morel.

Meanwhile, Marcel's love affair with Albertine, the pretty girl whom he met at the seaside resort of Balbec in Volume II, is progressing slowly but not smoothly. He notices that she, as Odette used to do with Charles Swann, is beginning to play games with his propensity for jealousy, flirting first with a girl named Andree and then with Marcel's friend, the soldier Saint-Loup. As the volume wraps up, Marcel resolves to marry her, hoping to draw her away from her Sapphic inclinations.

Proust portrays a wide range of colorful supporting characters, who I have no doubt are based on people he knew in real life. While staying at Balbec, Marcel meets an eccentric family named Cambremer whom the lift-boy at the hotel mistakenly but amusingly calls Camembert and whose acquaintance provides a springboard for the dinner at the Verdurin estate. Here we experience the personalities of the physician Cottard, whose preoccupation with his Verdurin invitations affects his professional ethics; the shy, socially graceless Saniette, who is continuously bullied by Verdurin; and a pedantic bore named Brichot, who talks almost exclusively about the etymology of place names.

The motifs recurring in this volume include the society-enveloping controversy over the Dreyfus affair, the snobbery involved in invitations to certain salons, and Marcel's association with the aging and ill Swann and his wife Odette, who now have some hard-earned esteem in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. In his deeply contemplative approach to narration, Proust functions as an essayist as much as he does a novelist, but his genius is that he merges both forms seamlessly. His sentences, at least as translated into English by Moncrieff and Kilmartin, are consistently worthy of applause and inspire me to write with more sensitivity to my surroundings.

The fourth volume of "In search of lost time" (Sodom and Gomorrah) begins with the sickness of Marcel's grandmother's sickness, which will lead her to the grave. During the dissease she will be treated by doctor Huxley, whose behavior surrounding the woman's unavoidable death awakens Marcel's digressions. Once she dies, the story resumes his contact with the high spheres of society. Marcel travels once again to Balbec, where he finds Albertine again. Their relationship grows as they assist to Mme. Verdurin's gatherings. Her "wednesdays", as she calls them, now that she attends in Balbec to her group of friends. Marcel's mind games surrounding Albertine are comparable to those utilized by Charlus to manipulate his young lover, the son of an old servant of his (Marcel's) grandfather... who plays the violin. Marcel is involved in this relationship as an comunicating vessel between Charlus and his "Adonis". It is rather curious how telephones, automobiles and trains are more and more involved in the telling of the events. The encounters in the stations, the dangers of traveling in an automobile, the unpersonalized feel to talking to someone through a telephone, etc... All these entail not only technological changes, but social ones as well: how people relate to one another begins to be considered outside the reduced space of fixed spheres... now, they move all over the space, they can even be broken into pieces... their voices, their bodies, the possibility of an effective transport that also allows privacy and secrecy (such as Marcel and Albertine's travels in the car, and all the implied events surrounding this machine -involving Charlus and his young "friend").
Marcel's doubts about Albertine's likes, are more overwhelming everyday... and he finally decides to marry Albertine, to take her to Paris with him.
In this volume, Marcel Proust submerges deeper in the waters of human affections and desires. If in the second volume he began to experience love for the first time, in this one, he is experiencing love outside the protection of young idelism and romanticism... instead, he realizes the conection between love, desire, snobism and pain: the truth of love is far from being an eternal, selfless and happy feeling: it is the constant haunting of a question, the everlasting wonder about evil within and without.
It is most memorable when Marcel assists to a party and describes the unfixed nature of gender differentiation: how much can a woman look like a man, how much can a woman desire another woman... and how much like a woman can one man desire another man.

The final installment of Proust's grand `a la recherche du temps perdu' is a masterful and eloquent meditation on art, on the loss of love, and on the complex and enigmatic quality of experiencing relationships over the course of a lifetime. This is the period, the final breath of literary genius from the great Marcel Proust, who devoted his life to this great novel.

In `Time Regained,' the reader is permitted an extraordinary prolegomena on the writer's craft, a self-reflexive exposition of the literary form that prefigures post-modernity and the works of Brecht, Breton, Beckett, and all the rest of them. Proust creates a work that is more exacting, more precise and perspicacious than any work of aesthetic philosophy in the western tradition. He discloses that the art of writing is, in its essence, an act or translation.The artistic content is already contained within the mind and soul of the artist and the act of writing is an act of transporting the content to form.

This is a novel about time, and it requires time to read. In this way, Proust the reader develops a relationship with the work within the register of a temporal horizon, which mirrors the register of temporality internal to the characters and unfolding of the fictional universe that Proust has created. It is a joy to read.

Also included in this volume is Kilmartin's guide to Proust, a summation of all the central characters, events, and allusions in a la recherché for readers who (inevitably) get lost in Proust's complex literary web.

"Time Regained" is a dark ending to the "In Search of Lost Time" cycle, as Proust, sickly like his fictional narrator, unknowingly nears the end of his own life but senses its imminence. France, like the most of the rest of the world, is now a very different place. The Dreyfus affair is receding into the past under the shadow of the new war that has descended upon Europe, with Germany having ravaged Belgium and threatening to destroy London and Paris.

Many of the people with whom Marcel has associated throughout his life and whom we came to know so intimately through the pages of his chronicle are now dead, whether by disease, accident, old age, or the war. Those among the living include the Baron de Charlus, who sympathizes with the Germans and frequents a hotel that serves as a male brothel; Bloch, who has de-Judaicized his name and has assumed an English chic; and Odette and her daughter Gilberte, the latter now herself a mother, who have not so gracefully weathered the effects of aging.

Marcel himself is now an adult of at least middle age, and, as far as he is concerned, still no closer to achieving his goal of becoming a writer as he was in his youth. He has, however, started writing articles and comes to realize, as he reflects on the course of his life, that the intricate web of contacts he has made can serve as grist for his literary mill, should he decide in his waning days to take up a pen and make some contribution to letters. And, of course, over the past four thousand pages that is exactly what his author has done. Marcel muses on Time (capitalization intended), memory, and dreams as necessary elements in the creation of art, a product of so much personal pain and suffering that death can seem like a welcome reprieve.

Judging the novel as a whole now that I've finished all six volumes, I affirm that there is nothing like it, or even close to it, in literature; like "Moby Dick" or "Don Quixote" it resides in its own impenetrable legendary world of oneness. In my review of "Swann's Way," I compared Proust to Henry James, but I see now that I was way off the mark. James writes like he's throwing his weight around, imperiously demanding intellectual respect and forcing his reader into submission with his intentionally inscrutable compositions; Proust's prose, conversely, calmly and warmly invites the reader into Marcel's society and caresses him with the most delicate sensations and deepest emotions. Proust is closer to Henry Adams than he is to Henry James, but even this attempted juxtaposition is buffered by a wide margin.

Proust's style is so ornate that it is the most difficult of any writer's to describe, yet paradoxically there is nothing affected about it; he is quite possibly the most unpretentious writer in literature. He never tries to impress the reader with his erudition, even though he evidently has much, or make himself out to be something he's not; one gets the sense that what he writes is exactly what and how he thinks, as incredible as that seems. He uses humor without trying to be a comedian, sorrow without trying to be a tragedian. He is employing language simply to illustrate life and the world, and I think language has no higher calling than that.

A brilliant closing volume to the novel. It brings back the lyricism of the first two volumes. I thought in the volumes in between some of that earlier lyricism was sacrificed to the bitchiness of Proust's tone toward the aristocracy he was doubtless jealous of, and his askew view of love that stemmed from his obvious anxieties about having been homosexual. But the early lyrcism and charm of the first two volumes is largely revived in this final volume. And anyone interested in writing, as anyone who makes it to this final volume doubtless is, Proust's passages on the art of writing make rewarding reading.
The obvious flaws are that some characters who'd earlier "died" show up alive in this volume. Couples who had numerous children in earlier volumes show up in this volume having only one child; Marcel (the narrator) recognizes people and then subsequently, in the same scene, doesn't recognize them. I have NOOO idea why some editor didn't knock out these discrepancies and tighten the text. It really seems silly to me to be SOOO faithful to Proust's final manuscript as to include glaring errors. Proust was rewriting when he died. If he'd lived he would have corrected these errors and I think his intention should have been honored. But I'm still giving it five stars, since overall the experience of reading this last volume is of reading something truly brilliant.

Perhaps the most exciting publishing event of the century so far is the new translation of "In Search of Lost Time," as it is now (and more accurately) called. Finding the last two volumes is a bit of a chore, but search for ISBN 0141180366 or "Prendergast Proust" or "Ian Patterson" on Amazon. I haven't read it, but I am impressed enough by the first two volumes in this new translations that I have ordered the final two from England, where they are available in hardcover. Viking has not yet published them in the U.S. (and may not, in my lifetime) but Amazon sells the paperbacks of the British Penguin edition. They are somewhat misleadingly titled "In Search of Lost Time," which is the series title. This volume is actually titled "Finding Time Again," and the translator is Ian Patterson. (Each book has its own translator, for a total of seven. Vol. 5 contains two books and features two translators.)

I give this Modern Library edition only four stars because I am convinced that the new translation is superior. Indeed, it's not entirely clear to me who the translator is, in this case; evidently not Fred Blossom, who did the original English translation when Scott-Montcrief died before finishing the work.

The melancholy atmosphere that pervaded the close of The Fugitive is carried over into this final part of Proust's huge work. Whereas, in the preceding part, Marcel laments the loss of Albertine and his changed relationship with his long time friend, Saint Loup, the author's concerns are now much greater. France is in the midst of World War I, Paris experiencing night time air raids; and the distinction between the Guermantes' Way and Swann's Way has become even more blurred as both Gilberte, the daughter of a courtesan, and Mme. Verdurin, the insufferable salon hostess, have become members of the mystic Guermantes family. Furthermore, Saint Loup is killed in action and Marcel's hometown is occupied by the Germans. But in spite of the gravity of the events surrounding him, Marcel becomes even more self-absorbed. He still holds onto his drean of becoming a writer, but this desire begins to wane as he becomes convinced that he has neither the temperament, the knowledge nor the fortitude to follow a literary career. Then the pivotal event of the whole novel takes place: he is invited to a matinee at the new home of the Prince de Guermantes.

While waiting in an anteroom for admission to the Guermantes' reception, the author is beset by a series of sensory experiences that bring back several happy memories from his past. These recollections, both powerful and joyous, convince him that he has the ability to undertake a literary career, to be able to communicate those ecstatic moments from the past to readers of the present day. His melancholy lifted, he enters the reception to discover that his recent epiphany is only bolstered by what he finds. All around him are the decaying remnants of a fast fading aristocracy. Many of the characters that have been introduced to the reader throughout the course of the novel are met again, but now in the final years of their lives: the proud Charlus, now an obsequious old man; the Duc de Guermantes, described as a "magnificent ruin"; Gilberte, now confused with her aging mother; even Marcel becomes aware that he, too, is quickly getting old. But now seeing things with an artist's eye, Marcel becomes aware that each of these characters, as well as all those people remembered from his life, are "like giants plunged into the years, [touching] the distant epochs through which they have lived, between which so many days have come to range themeselves - in Time." Marcel's goal is clear. He will spend the rest of his life carefully bringing these giants back to life. In other words, he is ready to embark on the huge task of writing the book that the reader has just finished reading.

This part of the novel was published five years after the author's death and suffers from a lack of editing. There are many ellipses, contradictions, and time and place juxtapostion mistakes, errors that Proust would surely have tidied up if he had lived to see his work published in full. But these are paltry criticisms wthen compared to the brilliance of the total work. Unfortunately, Proust is little read these days, and many of those who attempt to read the novel are motivated by the challenge of a literary marathon more than from an awareness of the intrinsic value of the work (as I was). But regardless of the motivation, the effort (and it is an effort) is totally rewarding as the reader sees in Proust's world reflections of his own. It took me a part of seven years to read the complete novel, a period of time in which Proust's search for lost time and my own reminiscences often became linked together as the author's characters shared my own thoughts regarding things past, the specious present, and the eventual fate that awaits us all.

Kilmartin's A Guide to Proust, which is included in this volume is well worth the price of the book by itself. The guide consists of four distinct inexes to Proust's novel: characters, historical persons, places and themes. The scholarship that went into compliling these indexes is outstanding and makes it possible for the reader to spend several years (if he so wishes) in working his way through the novel without losing track of the hundreds of characters and personages included therein. One reviewer remarked, "buy this volume first"; I would only modify this advice by suggesting that the prospective reader get this volume when he purchases Swann's Way.

This is one of the best books on Country French that I've found. The illustrations are wonderful, whether you prefer the older designs or are looking for something with a more modern feel. I loved just looking at the pictures and getting a feel for the colors and styles. This is a book I'll return to again and again to get the feel of the French countryside.

Wonderful book on French Country Style. This book is packed with lots of vivid photos but what sets this book apart from all the other styling books is the wealth of information that the author shares with the reader. It is truly a must for any Provencal styling fan.

Really a wonderful book - both beautiful to look at and informative. Very interesting reading, as well as artistically lovely with wonderful, colorful photography. I am not a decorator or designer by trade, but go to this type of book for creative inspiration, and this one was a winner.

The book was very informative. It gave me many ideas on how to include my furnishings with a French feel.

I can see this book is going to sit on the top of the coffee table book pile for a long time to come. Aside from the fabulous photos of French Provincial homes, Dannenberg delicately picks apart the details that make a typical Provincial home and garden. It does the job so much better than we sitting in another continent can grasp from a few photos in a book. It teaches us how to copy this style and really appreciate the quality of each piece of furniture, artwork or chattel we acquire for own little pretend patch of France.
I love this book!

THIS STORY WAS REAL BEAUTIFUL
AND IT FEELS SO REAL.
THE STORY HAS MANY TWISTS
LOVE,PAIN,LAUGH AND TEARS...I STRONGLY RECOOMMEND
THIS BOOK FOR ANYONE WHO
APPRECIATES HEART TOUCHING LOVE NOVELS.

This is NOT your typical "romance". This is not sentimental fluff without substance. It will make you laugh and leave you crying.

Gil and Sunny's love for each other is one which is often viewed as scandalous, taboo, and yet absolutely beautiful and heart wrenching... They are first cousins.

This is certainly nothing new. Cousin romances have existed since the beginning of time, and are not all that uncommon, even in today's world. However, the subject is one that few authors have the courage to write about. Cindy Bonner handles a difficult subject with grace, compassion, sensitivity, and realism.

Set in the early 1900's, Sunny and Gil face tremendous prejudices against them. Yet love is something that can not be denied, and is worth sacrificing everything for. The couple overcomes every obstacle imaginable, and their love endures through the best and worst of circumstances.

Never has a story touched my heart like this one, and never has one echoed the thousands of voices of cousins who find themselves in similar situations so clearly.

I am writing this review because very few books and movies can leave me in tears. From the first page I was drawn in. I read this book in a day and a half and when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it or dreaming about it. You know a book is good when the characters continue to haunt you long after the last page. All through this book I felt the same happiness, sorrow, anger, frustration and a slew of other emotions Sunny and Gil went through. This book was brillant and if you're looking to read a love story that will move you and make you feel as if you are experiencing the same emotions as the characters and not just watching from the sidelines this is the book for you.

I thought that this book was incredibly well written, and very original. I picked it up in the library never having heard of the author, and I didn't put it down until I finished the entire book in one day. In a day where it is hard to find something new and fresh, this book meets those expectations. I highly reccomend this book, and it's author to anyone looking for a fresh mind!

This story of forbidden love between first cousins was so tragically beautiful. Although Sunny and Gil tried to go their separate ways, they always came back to each other, leaving a trail of hurt and pain behind. So many years wasted...I only wish they would have had more years together in the end.

I am so glad that I bought this book. After a fast food diet of KFC and Big Macs and with the extra pounds packing on this was just what I needed!

After just one week and I see results: I have lost some weight and I do not feel deprived at all. This diet should be used by everyone who is interested in not only their weight management but also those are interested in living a healthy lifestyle where processed food is a thing of the past. The food can be a bit pricey but if you use your common sense substitutes are easily found.

I loved this book. Surprised to not really hear much about it. I found it one day while playing on Amazon and reading reviews. After I read the reviews I immediately bought the book. It is an easy read. Simple and to the point. I have been trying the simple recipies day to day for the past two weeks and love most every one of them. I feel like a gourmet chef but it is so easy. My kids are still a little stand offish about trying radically new stuff but I know in time they will get more and more used to it. I love having a glass of wine now and then and I do find that I simply enjoy the taste and freshness of the food. I highly recommed. We should all shake up our diets and make them tastier and healthier.

Who knew that healthy eating could be this enjoyable? The recipes in this book are appealing to everyone in our family. The Saint-Tropez Diet offers 56 days worth of menu ideas, including snacks and desserts. Merci beaucoup!

I liked this book so much that I purchased extras as gifts for my health-concious foody friends.

The overall philosophy is sound and not extreme, and the recipes I've tried so far are delicious.

The Saint-Tropez is an excellent diet book, or better yet, a way of life.
It's very easy to follow, once you read the book.
The recipes are out of this world! Who thought of cooking spinach with pine nuts and raisins ? There are no rare ingredients, everything is at your grocery store.
This diet combines two nutrients in every meal, omega-3 and foods rich in beta carotene.
Some of the recipes have two parts like "Marinated grilled vegetables", The marinade part for this recipe could be used also as a salad dressing.
Also the recipes are not complicated,they are simple, but different.

Finding this book and getting it so quickly was just what I had hoped for!
Thanks so much

I had this series as a child and LOVED it. This particular book was my favorite in the series. I can still remember the storyline. My set had been handed down to my sister. Now that she has grown up, I'm not sure where they have landed, but I intend to get the entire set again.

My Mom used to read this to me when I was little, and coincidently, I picked it up from our library while writing my personal statement for graduate school. I also am looking for "invisible enemies" like Louis Pasteur's; I am pursuing a Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology.

This book was a vivid memory from when I was little so I had to order it. It is humorous while it delivers the life story of rabies scientist Louis Pasteur.

Presents a good lesson featuring the best scientist in history for whom I have a deep respect, but gives me nightmares since I read it as a kid! I researched the real story and some facts are incorrect. If I liked it, yes & no for these reasons. Haunting,& it changed the course of my life.

This beautifully written book is a tremendous help for cancer patients, family and friends of cancer patients, and anyone interested in good health. Carol's courageous attitude is an inspiration to all. You will not be disappointed with this book!

I read this book to gain insight into what it is like to live with advanced breast cancer. It has given me a new-found empathy. The author writes in an open and extremely honest way that is both informative and enlightening. Her tone is positive and encouraging. This book stresses the importance of being involved in one's medical decisions and challenges patients to educate themselves from a variety of sources. I think this empowerment concept can be applied to many medical conditions people face. Learning about endobiogenie is intriguing. Also, the included resource and recommended reading lists are very helpful.

I found this gem quite by accident when attending a conference on breast cancer. The title caught my attention because I have long felt that the beaurocracy of the FDA and other parties in the US have reduced alternatives available to those who hear "You have cancer."

This book is informative, yet reads somewhat like a novel. It is not only applicable to breat cancer but to almost anyone who has cancer or a family member or friend that does.(this likely is the entire population)
It details that you have to be your own medical advocate and the author's courage is an inspiration to all.

We are definately going to check out the alternative method in the book. I like the fact that there is science involved. A search of the web has so many snake oil salespeople that would want you to believe they are the next Jonas Salk, this book is informative real life, real answers.

Thank you Carol!!

I don't normally write reviews, but this book warrants one wholeheartedly. My mother was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 BC and I bought the book for myself, with the intent to read a patient's own life story and learn more about alternative treatments. I read the book in one sitting and immediately sent it off to my mother. It has been a source of TREMENDOUS comfort to her because this book is like having a friend who's 'been there' and makes everything just a little less scary because she's read about it ahead of time. A lot of books out there are targeted towards women with early stage BC (1 or 2)...this is a GREAT book for women with Stage 3 and 4 BC. I wholeheartedly recommend it. My mother references it all the time...I'm buying a replacement copy for myself.

This book would not only be a very informative read for any woman dealing with breast cancer, but truly would be helpful to nearly any cancer patient. The author has written the book from her perspective and experiences with advanced breast cancer, but she touches on issues that many cancer patients face (the initial shock of diagnosis, the disparity in examination and treatment thoroughness among doctors, chemotherapy, decision making and long-term treatment options, alternative treatments, etc.). Being someone close to a cancer patient/survivor, I found the book to be very informative and helpful in gaining some insight as to what a cancer patient goes through (mentally and physically). Mechanically, the book flows nicely and is an easy read. It can be finished in an afternoon. The chapter on endobiogene is worth the price of the book alone and should be read by every cancer patient and every doctor and/or med student.

This is a very interesting and readable account of scratch building a model sailing ship. I found the descriptions of the simplfications made in constructing the model to be very interesting and this increased my appeciacion for the complexity of both the model and the original vessel. The book is also very informative on what the possible pitfalls and problems one may encounter when building such a model..things that would not otherwise have occured to me. I cannot praise the fold-out line drawings enough, excellent! This book comes highly recommended!

WOW! That was the first thing I said after opening Amazon's box containing this book. The book is a substantial size, nice and thick and the binding quality is excellent. What a masterpiece. The numerous amounts of fold-outs are excellent, full of great info on the Victory. There are a number of glossy pages with lots of pictures of the original and the model HMS Victory. The figure list is very usefull as are all the other lists to make finding your way around very quick and easy. The other reviewers have accurately depicted the content; I felt that the rest needed recognition. If you are at all like me and don't mind spending the money you will understand this next statement. Buy two, one to keep safe in your bookshelf and one to wear out during its extensive use. BUY IT you will for sure enjoy all 283 pages. Michael

This is a great book, but it's meant mainly and despite the title, for the modeler of the great flagship of Lord Nelson. There are very few details relating to any of the other ships of Nelson, but the Victory is covered like no other book...

Details abound in this marvellous book by an author steeped in his subject. I felt as if he had been on the ways at the time of building and relating his opbservations, but from the viewpoint of an educating master of this complex subject. I thoroughly enjoyed every page and can use the details provided to better my own modeling skills. If you enjoy detail and want to read about it from the pen of a master of his subject, buy this book today!

I recieved this today.. it's a must for the modeler and a wonderful read even if your not. It's a bit pricey, but worth it so far. If you can find it used then make sure all of the fold out plans are intact as I feel they are a major part of what make the book so facinating.