Bates Books

I found this book to be very helpful on an educational and personal basis. The authors did a wonderful job of mixing easy reading with studies.I would recommend this book to anyone that has communication problems with the opposite sex.

I have been a fan of this author (also screenwriter) for some time. Pat Bates has an amazing voice that comes through in everything he writes, and these wonderful plays about romance in this moder world of ours are no exception.

In this day and age of splintered and broken schools of literary theory, where nobody seems to agree what is the right way to go about reading and discussin literature, W.J. Bate's "Criticism: the Major Texts" is a wistful reminder of the days when critics were far more certain. For several decades after its publication, this collection was the classroom standard for the subject; it still serves as the best collection for any study of the history of literary theory. The introductions are brief but exacting; the texts are chosen with judicious editing; the lessons learned are not easily forgotten. In short, a wonderful read for anyone with a literary bent.

It is a very useful text book for both clinical and Lab haematologist and other scientific personnel

The younger generations today don't know about Daisy Bates and the "Little Rock Nine" and this is a great way to learn about them. The author wrote about Daisy Bates' early beginnings without her parents and being raised by her parents' friends the Smith family in Huttig, Arkansas. Book tells you about what Daisy and her husband L. C. Bates did in Little Rock, Arkansas. The author also wrote about all the other activities that Daisy Bates was involved in Arkansas and Washington, D.C. The struggles of the "Little Rock Nine" and Daisy Bates' story should be told and remembered for generations to come.

"Destination DALLAS" is fascinating, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.
It contains:
- foreword
- introduction
- a cast list, based on the alphabetical order of characters' first names (quite a clever idea, because often you are not too aware of or familiar with second names); so if e.g. you want to find out who played Ray's "girl-friend" Bonnie it is easy to find her in the list, and the name of the actress is right next to it!
(17 pages)
- characters: an extensive list of basically every character that appeared on the show, including bit parts and one-episode appearances; with every character you get some information as to who the heck that was and what their relations to the other characters were; e.g.: "Bonnie Robertson. Barfly who slept with Ray Krebbs; Donna Krebbs found them at a motel together." I love it! (52 pages) There is also a roundup of the marriages and births of the major characters
- episodes: 126 pages of episode summaries, giving you information on the plotlines of each instalment (with extremely little comment interspersed): a very helpful overview, quite detailed enough without being overly so; the perfect supplement to Barbara Curran's book on DALLAS which had no more than one line of subject matter for each episode because the script contents are copyrighted material. I don't know how Billie Rae Bates gets away with it then... Maybe Curran, who - I believe - is a lawyer, asked too many questions, or Bates made a deal with Warner Brothers: She does print the covers of all the DVD boxes so far!
- credits for the DALLAS crew (2 pages)
- awards for DALLAS over the years (3 pages)
- "up for debate": 3 pages of controversial issues surrounding our favourite show
- information about the cast members, 26 pages altogether, the length of the individual chapters basically according to the actor's importance for the show; these seem to be largely based on public sources such as IMDB. What is interesting is the fact that you do get the odd bit of information that I at least had not been aware of, plus information on cast members that are not usually considered "worthy"
- 1 page of casting problems and questions
- the author's own interviews (obver the phone or via e-mail) with cast members Sasha Mitchell (4 pp.), Audrey Landers (2 pp.), Art Hindle (Jeff Faraday, 2 pp.), Deborah Tranelli (6 pp.), Christopher Coffey (Lucy's professor, 2 pp.), Hunter von Leer (B.D. Calhoun, 5 pp.), Joan Van Ark (3 pp.), Ken Farmer (player of several bit parts, 4 pp.), Derek McGrath (Mr. Valentine, 4 pp.)
- also an interview with Camille Marchetta about writing for the show, with an explanation about how a DALLAS script looks and works (7 pp.)
- information about the real Southfork (2 pp.)
- a list of great one-liners from the show (at 2 pp. naturally incomplete, alas!)
- a birthday calendar: cast members listed for the days of the year (with information about the year in which they were born, and died), another great idea to structure the information! (4 pp.)
- sketchy information about cast members' websites (4 pp.)
- merchandise: a list of games, books, DVDs and others stuff trying to cash in on the success of DALLAS, not conclusive, but rather detailed and very interesting, also including the various novelizations; many items are also shown in pictures, but on the whole the book would not be worth buying for the photographs it contains.
What makes this book such a thrill is the wealth of information it contains. Though there are bound to be some minor mistakes (and I have spotted a few), they pale in comparison to what is actually there. I found it highly interesting and entertaining throughout, it must be the only printed medium that contains summaries of all the DALLAS episodes!

Chances are you never heard of Dorothea Bate; she was one of those last Victorian Britons who made her way into science by the amateur study of natural history. The practice of observing, collecting, classifying, and displaying natural specimens was an acceptable hobby for gentlemen and ladies, but Bate pursued it with astonishing passion and effectiveness. As much of her life as can be reconstructed is happily related in _Discovering Dorothea: The Life of the Pioneering Fossil-Hunter Dorothea Bate_ (HarperCollins) by Karolyn Shindler. There were more than the usual difficulties of writing the biography of this important woman, and Shindler has made them part of the narrative, as the title implies. Bate's private effects, personal letters and diaries, and other mementos of her intimate life passed to her sister at Dorothea's death in 1951. The sister's home burned three years later, along with the remnants of Dorothea's life, leaving only her scientific journals and papers. It is enough, as she never married and her life consisted of her work. Shindler has fashioned an admiring narrative of a woman with many traditional feminine characteristics gamely pursuing life in the field and also in the male-dominated scientific world of the time.

In 1898 when she was nineteen, Bate marched beyond the public areas of the magnificent Natural History Museum in South Kensington, announced herself, and stated that she wanted to see the Curator of Birds, in charge of the Bird Room. The room was a male preserve, and "that she had aspirations to join them must have been one of the most astonishing ideas that any of the scientists had ever confronted." She somehow got stationed at a table of bird skins, showing her expertise at sorting them into species. She was eventually to work for the museum, both for it in the field and within it, for her entire life. She impressed the geology department the same way two years later with finds from a cave near her home, and her career of collecting took off. She traveled on her own to Cyprus, Crete, and the Balearic Islands, where her most strenuous efforts were in getting to the remote limestone caves around the islands. She found Pleistocene remains of pygmy elephants and hippos, as well as much more, and crated them up to the museum. She became a valuable in-house member of the geology department, working for the museum until her death.

Bate's scientific journals were semi-official documents that were ready to be read by others, so Shindler produces fewer actual personal quotations from them than might be expected in a biography such as this. Nevertheless, in her letters and in the memoirs of those around her, Bate does show as a woman who is "witty, acerbic, clever, and courageous." A woman who knew her at Crete said she was "one of the jolliest, most capable, and fearless girls I ever knew." She was a nurturing guide and consultant, invaluable because of her huge store of knowledge, and one later curator who tried to tally all the papers and books thanking her for her help could not keep up with the huge number. Sadly, her family never did understand her; after reading Bate's obituary, her sister admitted, "I personally never heard about many of these things she did." Shindler admits that Bate "of necessity, is defined by what she did rather than who she was," but what she did makes for a portrait of a woman happily and constructively engaged in intellectual endeavors she exuberantly assigned to herself.

A rather eerie but interesting exploration of the spirit world back in the time when Spiritism was reaching its height of interest. A fascinating read.

Right away this new release popped out at me from the shelves of the children's book section at my local bookstore and gave a very emotive first impression.

It's artwork: wonderfully expressive pencil illustration by Amy Bates, washed with active yet gentle watercolors matching the hues of the autumn season.

The story: A simple storyline about loneliness and friendship that follows the daily, solitary lives of a little stray dog and a little girl and how they find each other.

The cute pup goes to sleep each night and dreams of having a warm house with a yard and, more importantly, a friend. The girl, who works for her parents in the family bakery, spends her days delivering bread and making up stories to ease her loneliness (this is my personal favorite touch in the storyline).

Each point of view is told simultaneously and keeps it short and sweet, although, to be honest, each piece of moving artwork tells the story just fine all on it's own.

A nice addition to any storybook collection, not to mention anyone who is an admirer of watercolors.



(On a side note: Although the story doesn't exactly touch on it - and it maybe it need not be said - it can also remind the reader that you can find a wonderful companion at your local rescue or animal shelter...)

The book contains a very good summary of each English Shire covered by the Domesday Survey. Each Shire contains map and a focus on several towns, as well as, a list of all place names found in the survey. There is also a glossary of terms, a list of important personages, and plenty of pictures of landscape and architecture.