Bean Books

The Fantagraphic series of Krazy Kat reprints is a fantastic journey back in time.The strange thing is that it could have been written yesterday.Anyone remotely interested in comic strips or cartoons needs to get as many of these volumes as possible.Krazy Kat came to life in his own strip in 1913.The same year Charles Chaplin made his first silent film.As a student of the Chaplin films,the first thing that came to mind was how Herrimans' comic strip reminds you of the work Chaplin did.This was not intentional I'm sure.They were geniuses of their time and in fact,of all time.

George Herriman created Krazy Kat as a "downstairs" strip to his The Family Upstairs. The devine Kat soon had a strip of his/her own, both daily and Sunday.

Hyperion press published the Family Upstairs strips from 1910 - 1911. Eclipse published the early black and white Sunday strips, 1916 - 1924, in volumes which also included the full color Saturday strips from 1922. Now Fantagraphics has published the rest of the black and white Sundays, 1925 - 1934, closing the gap between the last Eclipse book and the first full color Kitchen Sink book, which begins with the 1935 color Sundays.

The daily Krazy Kat strips are much harder to find. Pacific Comics Club has published (almost) complete years 1921 - 1923. Comics Revue monthly has published the dailies beginning in 1931 (currently they are finishing 1933). The Menomonee Falls Gazette published more than half of 1934 and 1935.

Krazy Kat ended when George Herriman died in 1944.

I have nothing to add to the praise for Herriman's marvelous creation, which you can read about in the comments below. Anything I'd say to that effect would only echo what has already been written.

Alas, the 1933-1934 volume in the Fantagraphics release has some problems. It has nothing to do with a dropoff in the humor of the strip itself -- there was none, as "Krazy Kat" never experienced a noticeable decline in quality -- but with the print quality of the Sunday strips as they are presented here. Although I'm sure Fantagraphics did their best when they went through page after page of ancient newsprint drawn from who knows how many private collections to find the best possible specimens, the sad fact is that the majority of strips reprinted in this collection are blurry and shaky. This makes it very difficult to fully appreciate Herriman's skills with pen and brush, and worst of all, makes the subtle facial expressions and body language of the characters much harder to interpret. A small handful of pages, with sharp outlines and shadings, stand in contrast to the rest.

By all means, you should become acquainted with this wonderful comic strip if you aren't already. But you'd do much better to get the next volume in the series, A Wild Warmth Of Chromatic Gravy. Along with featuring the return of sharp, clear lines, "Gravy" is in full, vibrant color (pre-1935 Sunday strips were all black-and-white) and even includes an insert that features newly unearthed, better-quality scans of a few of this volume's worst offenders. This volume is strictly for Kat kompletists.

Well, here we go again. Another sumptuous collection of one of the best comic strips ever published. Fantagraphics has more than fulfilled its pledge to keep the series going with this the 5th volume of Krazy Kat Sunday strips.

This installment, like all previous installments, has amazing bonus material. The first thirty pages include articles about Herriman and Krazy Kat, early pre-Kat Herriman strips (including "Baron Bean", "Mary's Home From College", "The Amours of Marie Anne MacGee", and "Embarassing Moments"), as well as some rarely seen Krazy Kat dailies. Also, the series editor announces that the next volume will be the first KOLOR KRAZY KAT edition. After 1934, the Kat et al appeared in amazing Kolor. So here stand bound the final black and white Krazy Kat Sunday pages.

And as always the book plumps with the justifiably famous Krazy Kat Sunday strips. Some of the strips had to be painstakingly reconstructed from papers that shrunk Herriman's original sized papers to miniscule proportions. All of the reconstructions are listed in the back of the book. Fantagraphics pulled this feat off with much gusto, as anyone can witness in the book.

For the initiates amongst us, the strip's main theme is love. Krazy, a Kat with indeterminate gender, loves Ignatz, a temperamental mouse. The only sign of affection Krazy can extract from Ignatz is a brick solidly and violently tossed at his skull. So, brick equals love to Krazy. Meanwhile, Offisa Pupp loves Krazy (in a rather repressed manner) and has made his mission in life to halt Ignatz's vile tossings. The entire strip revolves around this variation on a theme. Helplessness and hope in the face of seemingly hopeless love seeps out between the ink marks. Isn't it romantic?

Lastly, February 19th, 1933 has to be amongst Herriman's best "silent" strips. Krazy and Offisa Pupp ride a see-saw and Ignatz repeatedly picks up the brick, drops it, picks it up, etc... Be sure to translate the español on the wall separating the parties.

Carry on, Fantagraphics, carry on...

More Fabulous Beans is a great collections of recipes using beans. I'm not sure why, but most recipe books don't have a lot of bean recipes, so this book is a real find. Everything I've tried has turned out well and it's given me lots of new ideas for bean dishes, beyond the old three bean salad and baked beans.

The Russian beet and white kidney soup is fantastic. The Black eye butternut chowder is a combination I never would have imagined, but it's really good. In fact there's a whole section on soups and chowders which are just right for fall and winter meals and are great because you can double the portions and have leftovers for days when you don't feel like cooking. There are also some very good spread recipes like the hummus and eggplant or the West indies pinto spread. Some sound a little strange reading the recipes but I was pleasantly surprised by the way they turned out.

These recipes using beans are healthy, cheap and filling. I like to use dried beans but don't always remember to soak them ahead of time so I was glad to find the Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker on amazon that I use in conjunction with this book. With a pressure cooker you can get away with soaking the beans a very short time or not at all and they still come out great.

If you like beans, this book gives you a lot of interesting ways to include them in your diet.

The title of this book will lead the shopper to believe that it is a sequel to Barb Bloomfield's excellent book "Fabulous Beans".

In reality it is a revised edition. Many of the recipies in "More Fabulous Beans" are the recipies from "Fabulous Beans".

Enhanced with kitchen savvy tips on how to prepare, cook, and freeze more than fourteen types of beans, More Fabulous Beans is a vegetarian's delight offering the kitchen cook more than one hundred meatless meals. Some of these recipes are homestyle, while others are gourmet, and yet others are drawn from international cuisines. From Mexican Black Bean Salad; Lentil Stew; Soybeans in Sweet Sauce; and Pinto Bean Enchiladas; to Melted Yeast Cheeze Sauce; Black-eyed Spirals; Anasazi Beans and Rice; and Brazilian Black Beans, every recipe showcased in the pages of More Fabulous Beans is easy to prepare, thoroughly nutritious, totally palate pleasing, and highly recommended. Also very highly recommended is legume expert Barb Bloomfield's first recipe collection, Fabulous Beans!

I really wanted to like this book. I love beans, and I love the wide and wonderful variety of ways to prepare them that this book promises. I also love how the book is quietly vegan without ever uttering the word, implying a world where animal exploitation just doesn't exist. However, I just can't make these recipes turn out!

I am not an expert cook by any means, but with most of the time if you give me a good recipe I can make it turn out pretty good. Maybe I have chosen poorly, but I am now 0 for 4 with the recipes I have tried out of this book. Let me describe my experiences:

1) Pinto Bean Enchiladas - This recipe turned out bland, watery, and soggy. After conferring with some people who know enchiladas, they all agreed that the enchilada sauce portion of the recipe was out to lunch. It was edible, but not make-again category.

2) Pat's Baked Navy Beans - Edible, but a little bland and uninspiring. There are better baked bean recipes out there.

3) Curried Garbanzos - Starts off promising, but the end result is soupy and a little odd tasting. Again, there are far better garbanzo curries out there.

4) Navy Bean Balls with mushroom gravy - The bean balls were decent, despite the almost complete lack of spice, but the gravy was hideous. I couldn't even eat it.

Based on the experience of these four recipes, I find that this book has recipes that are bland, overly complicated, time consuming, and often skip over essential preparation details.

The biggest problem with this book is that the recipes sound tasty yet they just don't turn out, either from lack of skill by me, or a lack of instruction from the author. Either way, I will be sticking to my more trusted books from now on, and saving this one for when I'm feeling more adventurous than hungry.

when she's bad, her illustrations are simply mediocre.

Nothing wrong with the stories but just another storybook with okay but not great illustrations. And I want ALL of Dyer's illustrations to be as stunning as in her books Child of Fairy/Child of Earth & Girl in the Golden Bower.

This book was a disappointment since because I expected more from her. Take it out at the library. Not one I'd save room for on the home shelves.

Wonderful stories to read to your child and beautifully illustrated.

I have bought quite a few story books for my son and this is definitely the best one. The stories are a decent length and some are a little different than I have ever heard before. After a lot of disapointments in story books this was a refreshing change.

This book has stories that are not in the usual group of bedtime/fairy tales that we have purchased or received. No Cinderella or Princess and the Pea (not that they are not wonderful!). Lovely stories like Young Kate and the Snow Maiden totally mesmerize my daughter! Cannot recommend enough for 4-6 year olds!

book was like new! I appreciated the honesty in the description and prompt service.

:)

"Writing Arguments" shines like a beacon in the dark and murky waters of composition textbooks. Although some have critiqued it for its "passive" approach, I support both the approach and the layout as the best way I've found to approach basic argumentation. A solid understanding of audience (in particular) is vital for successful writing, and it's also something inexperienced, self-focused writers often lack.

Rather than pushing a "win at all costs" or "go with your gut" victory-based approach to rhetoric, the authors promote rhetorical writing grounded in Perelman's audience concepts, Toulmin's warrants, and Aristotelian enthymeme. By encouraging students to locate common ground (warrants) between themselves and their real or imagined audience, this book sets them up to engage in rhetoric as participants in a broader civic culture. And this is the rhetoric that will ultimately equip them to survive in the real world--where knowing what a client or an opponent wants and believes is critical to "winning" the argument in a lasting and productive way.

No theory or approach is perfect (not that I've found so far at least), and a rigid application of the Toulmin model or the schema as outlined in this book will inevitably bog down writers as they move into more advanced composition. But that, afterall, is why we teachers are there. By focusing students' attention on the basic principles in the book--audience awareness, orderliness, situational groundedness, etc.--rather than forcing them to memorize rules or endlessly construct Toulmin models, I may just be able to help my students develop a new respect for argumentation as discovery (and themselves as rhetors) in the public sphere. And if we can do that, maybe there's a little civil light in the civic culture tunnel after all.

I didn't buy this book because writing arguments fascinates me. I picked it up because I needed it for my freshman composition class. For that, it serves a purpose, but I do not particularly like this book.

I love to write. Absolutely love it, and I am always interested in books that can help me become a better writer.

This book, however, is a confusing read. It has a monotonous design: chapters are not easily distinguishable from one another. Sample essays are, of course, always nice, but they are peppered throughout the book to an exhausting degree. The writing is technical and uninspiring. I found that I learned more about ethos, pathos and logos by listening to my instructor than by browsing through the overly-complicated text in this book.

Some books are designed to look interesting and to excite you into reading them. This one is unfortunately not one of them.

Presented in textbook fashion, WRITING ARGUMENTS: A RHETORIC WITH READINGS, doesn't exactly make for compelling reading, but is certainly a critical source for argumentation documents. Author's Ramage, Bean and Johnson guide the reader through the process both deliberately and succinctly, covering every aspect of argument presentation, beginning with definition through source documentation.

Mine is an older edition and the technology aspect is dated, but nonetheless, I turn often to this book to guide me through argument preparation. Though certainly intended for classroom study, this book is also useful outside the classroom. I have prepared a fair number of arguments for political presentation and have found this to be a useful volume.

This collection gives the reader an ear to the authentic voices of young women who confronted their personal and socially-imprinted limitations in a wide range of circumstances. While nature often provides the backdrop and circumstances of challenge, the stories are really about struggles with teamwork and inner demons. A very good collection, and what I hope is an increasingly important "genre", from persons deserving praise, guidance, mentoring, and finally, gratitude for setting down their stories.

This book shares several inspirational stories from girls and young women who used adventure to challenge themselves beyond their prceived limits. The stories they tell are stories that come from the heart. They share how their challenges, physical, emotional or spiritual, touched and gave them more confidence to take on more challenges. They learned "they can do it" with the right attitude and desire to succeed.

The young women featured in this book can be an inspiration for many young readers. Young people are capable of making a difference in their lives as well as the lives of others. This is demonstrated in this book.

The book ends with a sequential listing of significant accomplishments women have made througout history. This provides a nice reminder that women have been accomplishing amazing things for hundreds of years, and will continue to as we strengthen their character and confidence. This is an enjoyable book for women of all ages to read.

Aventures and Challenges: Real Life Stories by Girls and Young Women is a great book! Very inspirational! The stories in the book make you want to just get up and make your own adventures. There was one story that really stood out to me, Solo by Frieghter to South America by Nellie Kelly. While traveling with people she didn't know, she conquered her fear of being alone and saw things that most people might never see. This book helps you conquer any fear that you might have about making your own adventure by helping you plan your own adventure step by step. This book is also unique because it gives you a timeline of what women have accomplished throughout the years. Adventures and Challenges is great for all ages!

I really enjoyed "Pages for You," so I was eager to read more of Brownrigg's work. This is a quiet, unassuming collection of short stories about women who do unusual and strange things. The things these women frequently do--such as chase after buses and disperse advice by shouting from a giant, red chair--are abstract and metaphorical, but always real. Even women who have tangible problems such as wanting to lose ten pounds take unusual measures. And Brownrigg makes it all work with her rich, playful language.

This collection of stories whirls about with the freshness, care and texture of a full-blown parade. The pace of the narratives, the keen eye and lucent quality of the writing made this a one sitting book. I want to know ten dozen more of these women, their friends and lovers, and I want to walk some more in the fine places where they live. I haven't enjoyed a book of stories this much since the last collection of Raymond Carver.

I love this book.

The ten stories are fresh, comic, poignant--fun and funny and thoughtful. The writing is tremendous: Brownrigg's use of language is cool and assured even as she paints seemingly outrageous pictures.

Highly recommended.

Before you pay a consultant, or even begin to get serious about opening your business, read this book. It will save you ten times the purchase price in fees and lessons learned the hard way (i.e. mistakes). This book is extremely thorough, very detailed, and as far as I can see, leaves very little out. It will give you a good jump start on what you need to know, what you need to look for, and what to stay away from.

Every aspect of specialty coffee is covered here. Its the Murphys Law Guidebook of the industry. If you sit in a Trade Show workshop and listen to problems 10 out of 10 of them are discussed in this book. The price tag is an investment into your business, so cost should NOT be a factor is deciding to purchase this book. If you own a coffee shop and you're NOT using this book, either you're lucky...or on your way into rough waters. The best investment I could have made for my coffeehouse, its like having a private consultant on your desk.

This book is much bigger than it needed to be. The print is large, many of the paragraphs are single sentences, and there is much redundancy. There is also a lot of vague information, such as "be sure to talk to your health department before making your decisions on equipment." Talk to them about what, exactly? How should this information determine which equipment I should get? There is plenty of this "advice" without specific direction. There is no discussion of specific brands of equipment, which can range thousands of dollars in cost. And there are many shameless attempts to sell Bellissimo's consulting services throughout the book. This perhaps accounts for why the information often remains vague. In a 668 page, $200, 8.5"x11" book, there could be a whole lot more practical information.

That being said, there is also a lot of very useful information in this book. Perhaps the most helpful part is the sense that the book is comprehensive: if you consider everything the book addresses, you probably won't be overlooking too much. Some sections do a better job of addressing specific issues than others, but everything you will need to know at least gets raised somewhere in the book (you may need to look elsewhere to get good answers, though).

All said, if the book were 1/2 of the size and 1/2 of the cost, I would say it was a very worthwhile and efficient investment. Still, it may be the best thing available.

This is such a terrific little guide. All the detail I needed at the time and small enough to carry around in my purse, making notes on everything I'd purchased or wanted to purchase in the future. What a great idea and fabulous writer! PLEASE GIVE US ANOTHER!

It's a pretty good book. Being new to this whole "craze," I found it very helpful in determining best prices and gauging what were legitimate "beanies" and what were garbage.

This book is really incredible. Not only was I amazed by the amount of bean bags included, the pictures and pricing information is great, too. Finally, someone who prices beanies realistically, and not according to what so-called "collectors" (a.k.a. "secondary market dealers") wished they could get for beanies--these are real prices that you can expect to pay for and receive for any kind of bean bag. I love Disney and Warner Brothers and advertising bean bags even better than Ty ones, and this is definitely the book to have. Thanks Mrs. Brecka for a great book! I hope you continue to come out with new updated books.

My son is 3 years old and he likes me to read to him, but this is the first book he really laughs out load to. He will have me read it to him again and again. So many times in fact he can read it to me. I realize it is a very simplistic book and really I don't get it. But anything that makes him laugh like this does is worth it. I'm going to buy the others now.

My 12 month old daughter picked this book up and hasn't put it down now for 6 months. It is her favorite book, she loves the cat pictures and reads along with us. Its the perfect book to start early readers on, with just enough words and engaging pictures.

We own several of the "Bean" books, but this is by far our favorite. My son, 2 1/2, giggles every time we read this book -- and we've had it for 7 or 8 months. I'm not sure he completely understands all the play-on-word pictures, but the "No, Bean!" and "No Bean!" pages elicit great belly laughs. The pictures are clear and simple, so my 15-month-old enjoys pointing out the objects she recognizes ("Kitteeeee!" "BALL!"). It's a definite crowd pleaser at our house.

Very good read! Excellent storytelling narrative by the author. Highly recommended.

Wonderful tale of Texas in the early days. Bean does a great job of capturing the period and the people of the time. Characters are fun to read about and the plot kept me involved throughout the novel. Super book!

Fred Bean does a great in his story-telling and keeping you interested in the main character's dilemma of being a good Texas Ranger and having feelings for the wrong girl. I really enjoyed the story and the portrayal of 1920's Texas oil boomtown.

Being interested in historical fiction, I think that this was a great read.