Bates Books

This book is a true benefit to those who wish to read and understand the Bible, but have had trouble getting into it because of all the 'thee's and 'thou's' therein. Most of the stories are there, told in an easily readable manner, allowing the reader to grasp the book's teachings in an easy way.
Though it doesn't purport to take the place of the Bible, it does lend itself to easing the reader into it, should the reader choose to do so.
And, if not, at least it gives the reader a good foundation in Biblical teaching. I highly recommend it!

At the end of a rainy, dreary August, the Larkins are all feeling a bit mopey and depressed so Pop decides that they need a holiday and suggests that they go to Brittany where his son-in-law, Charley, spent happy times as a child. With such a large family, they agree that it would be easier for everyone if they flew the Rolls Royce over too as it could accomodate all of them on their excursions. When they finally arrive at the small, shabby hotel, the owner, Madame Dupont, wrongly assumes that anyone who could afford to drive such a magnificent car, has to be a Mi'lord and treats Pop as such. The usual mix ups with food, drink and language occur and when the owner discovers, by means of their passports, that Ma and Pop aren't legally married, it's put down to the eccentricities of the English aristocracy. It's a very pleasant, amusing read with all of the lovable characters playing their parts.

This is a breath-taking book, about a girl, Eliza Bates, whose two brothers are serving in the first world war and their huge family worrying and worrying over them. One brother dies and the other one gets injured and has to come back home. The injured brother marries and has a baby, and, after a year of writing in her diary to her "dear reader", Eliza meets her "dear reader" moving in next door. It is like Tamryn was there when her brothers were missing, far from home, and the Bates family were wondering where they were and if they were alive.

A must-read for anyone who's done any climbing in the Cascades. This book contains lively interviews in Q&A format with dozens of inspiring mountaineers of the 20th century. The profiles include Jim Whitttaker, John Roskelley, Piro Kramar, Jim Wickwire, Ira Spring, along with early members of the Seattle Mountaineers Club, such as Norval Grigg and Harold Engles, just to name a few. Rich with adventurous anecdotes, historic perspective and poignant reflections on climbing.

Senior schoolgirls Linnie and Ming, and schoolboy Jackson are feeling down. This is supposed to be one of the best years in their life, and things just aren't panning out. The main trouble is the fake people: the cheats, the liars, the put-down artists that somehow manage to push their way to the front, stealing the happiness that belongs to others. Then Linnie has an idea: the Dead Game. To 'kill' someone you have to embarrass them in public, or even better expose them for the fakes they really are. It sounds too simple. Maybe it won't work at all? But somehow the Game works too well and things get out of control.

This is a novel of intrigue and action, with quite a few surprises. The author manages to combine scenes of ordinary school life with the extra-ordinary. The theme of justice is developed in some detail, with on easy answers or trite solutions given. The three main characters are given just about equal attention, with chapters written from their individual point of view. The book can be enjoyed by both girls and guys.

The incredibly over the top and amazing space warfare continues.

There are a handful of Second Stage Lensman, those good enough at their craft to go beyond the Gray, and receive further treatment and training from the Arisians.

Kimball Kinnison is one of them, and he and his fellows, some of the best aliens you will meet in SF books, go out to do further battle. That is not all though, as Second Stage Lensmen abilities are ideally suited to spying and information gathering. The Second Stage powers include the 'sense of perception', an ability to sense what is going on around you, which basically gives you x-ray vision and the ability to see in the dark, among other things. Mind control is another.

The time spent with Nadreck, Worsel and Tregonsee, the other Second Stage Lensmen, is quite enjoyable.

There is a tendency to think that literary criticism began with Jacques Derrida and his deconstructionist tenets. But before he popularized the notion that there was no such thing as enduring meaning in any text, there was a two thousand year history that said exactly that. From Plato to Pater, nearly every classic theorist argued that there was indeed a concrete and eternal meaning in all texts. What this meaning was and how to explain it was the job of the theorist. It is almost a biting irony that when Walter Jackson Bate wrote PREFACES TO CRITICISM in 1959, it literally never occurred to him to think otherwise. True, he noted that theorists often argued, sometimes with rancor, what a text meant, but no one doubted that it meant something. For those students who today are taking their first course in literary theory and are told to begin with the postmodernists, such students would do well to begin with the classic writers of Plato and Aristotle, and from there continue with the Renaissance writers right through the Romantics. When this self-directed reading terminates with the New Critics, only then will the readers be able to fairly judge those who say that there is no "inside" to any text or that a text means only what the reader brings to the table. In PREFACES TO CRITICISM, Bate introduces a readable and lively debate that demands the reader acknowledge that meaning is no will o' the wisp thing that exists only in the reader's mind as a pair of polar binaries. This overlooked classic is a must read for anyone who values a two millenia long tradition of thought.

The government controls everything in the lives of their citizens. They will not allow dissension and harshly eliminate opposition. However, in spite of the government's seemingly total severe control, a rebellious underground exists whose goal is to throw out the current leadership and replace it with their leaders starting with top gun Carpathia Coyle. This opposition has proven at times as ruthless as the government is.

Walter Vellum is rising rapidly up the ladder of the rebels. At the same time of his meteoric assent, his girlfriend and employee at his bar, Jennie Height is beginning to understand her precognitive skills. Her visions are the only thing that keeps the rebels alive as the government crushes their opponents at every turn.

This is an interesting combination of science fiction and fantasy in a dystopian society. The story line can become a bit bewildering to follow but for the most part is an intriguing tale of rebellion in which the critical players for each side are clairvoyants. Well written and exciting, readers initially will root for the rebels, but soon realize they offer more of the same ruthless oligopoly control as the government does. Fans of psychic thrillers in a futuristic dystopian world in which the adversaries are two sides of the same coin will appreciate Paul Bates' fine thriller DREAMERS.

Harriet Klausner

I bought this book to learn about the topic in general, and was well pleased with the information it imparted. When I take my first enameling class in a month or so, I will have enough of a foundation that I won't be too lost. The book is from the 50's and it shows; it had a more scholarly tone to it, which was fine. One complaint is that the images used to illustrate principles were so badly reproduced that they are absolutely useless. Since this isn't a step-by-step instruction book that isn't necessarily deadly, but it would have been nice to see images in detail.

H E Bates is an author whose reputation has declined somewhat in recent years. During his lifetime, and for about two decades after his death in 1974, he was one of the most popular authors in Britain. Interest in him reached a peak in the early 1990s when his "Larkin Family" novels were serialised on television. In my view, those are far from being his best works, but the series was a huge success, tapping as it did into a vein of rural nostalgia and introducing to public view the most beautiful young actress that Britain has produced for many years. Since then, however, that interest has declined and, apart from the Larkin books and one or two wartime stories, his works are now largely out of print.

I had thought that "The Feast of July" was one of those neglected works, and was pleased to see it is still in print. Its setting is a small town in the East Midlands, probably during the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The mood, however, is not one of nostalgia. Like Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", the book deals with a young unmarried mother who is abandoned by her seducer and whose child dies in infancy. While searching for her lover, the heroine, Bella Ford, arrives as a homeless and friendless stranger in town, where she is rescued and befriended by Ben Wainwright, a shoemaker, and his family. (Shoemaking is the principal industry of the area). Bella is welcomed into the family and becomes like a daughter to them, especially after their own daughter dies. Ben and his wife have three sons, and, after brief dalliances with the two younger boys, she eventually finds love with the eldest, Con. The climax of the story comes on the Feast of July, a traditional festival in the area, celebrating the first crops of the new season. Bella's lover Arch Wilson reappears in her life, provoking a confrontation that ends tragically.

The novel is reminiscent of Hardy in more ways than one. There is the book's late Victorian/Edwardian setting (although it was not written until the 1950s). There is the triangular relationship between Bella, Con and Arch, which parallels that between Tess, Angel and Alec. Most importantly, there is Bates's deep love of the countryside, which he shares with the earlier writer. Although the Wainwrights live in an industrial town, it is small enough for the surrounding countryside to be an inescapable presence in the lives of its inhabitants. The Feast, second only to Christmas in importance in the area, is celebrated by town and country dwellers alike, and the townspeople are expected to set aside their normal work to join in the harvest. Throughout the book we are made aware of the changing of the seasons; most of the chapters start with a reference to the time of year, to the weather and to the changing landscape. (Winter, when the demand for shoes is depressed, is a time of hardship even for industrial workers). As in many of Bates's other novels, the beauty of countryside in its changing moods is described with what the Times Literary Supplement described as "lyrical intensity".

It would be wrong to see this novel as merely a pastiche of Victorian writing. Bates's style is terse and urgent, rather than the more discursive style favoured in nineteenth century literature. As a result, this is a brief novel of about 200 pages; a Victorian novelist dealing with this theme would in all likelihood have done so at much greater length. This brevity of style has its drawbacks. The characters are less developed than they would have been in a longer work; Arch Wilson, in particular, is a two-dimensional figure, a plot device rather than a believable character (whereas Alec d'Urberville emerges as a complex and credible human being). Nevertheless, brevity has its advantages as well. By concentrating on the essentials, Bates develops his plot with a speed and urgency that gives the impression of events rushing to a headlong climax and makes the culminating tragedy seem all the more terrible and inevitable.

This, then, is a fine piece of writing, evidence that Bates deserves to be remembered as more than the creator of the dreary Larkin clan and as the man who unwittingly gave her big break to Catherine Zeta Jones. Let us hope that the recent decision by ITV to repeat The Darling Buds of May will lead to a revival of interest in Bates generally. The publishers could help by reissuing some of his other novels (Love for Lydia, The Distant Horns of Summer and The Jacaranda Tree are examples that come to mind).