Benn Books

The charms of Topsy can only be described by quoting a typical passage in her inimitable style. I just open a page at random from Topsy MP (NB: _italics_)

"Well my dear _meanwhile_ the Rowland was being _rather_ a burden because the _whole_ time he talked of nothing but the _internal_ organs of his unalluring car and wondering _what_ was rattling and _why_, when of course the _entire_ machine was one _tautologous_ rattle because he will keep seeing if he can get sixty out of her on a bad road..."

There. That does a much better job than I ever could of explaining exactly who Topsy is... but I'll try anyways. Briefly, she was a character that A.P. Herbert featured in a Punch column during the 1920's up until, well, I'm not exactly sure when, but she's thoroughly a Modern Girl in the flapper mode. The Topsy books are written in first person in the form of letters to Topsy's friend Trix, and they detail an endless round of dinners, dances, and society hi-jinks, all in Topsy's stream-of-consciousness style, with the sentences running together and one idea overtaking another. What I find most remarkable is that the cadences of a certain type of English speech are rendered perfectly with the use of italics.

Topsy gets inside your head! I found myself writing and speaking like her for days, and truth to tell I still lapse into Topsy speak when I'm feeling a little giddy. What she does with the English language is rather a marvel, I think. Her malapropisms fall thick and fast, yet Topsy is no fool. She's a shrewd observer of society and human foibles, and Herbert consistently employs her as a humorous commentator on contemporary times.

For the life of me I can't figure out why these books have never been reprinted. They certainly deserve to be. I found it extremely difficult to come by the three Topsy books that (so far as I can tell) contain all of Topsy's adventures. I highly recommend Topsy to fans of humorous literature, anglophiles, those with an interest in the 1920's, and oh, just about anyone with a sense of humor, really.

This isn't a how-to book; it's a photographic tour of breathtaking historical embroidery pieces. Many pieces are featured in close up so you can really see the technique. It's a wonderful source of inspiration. Many photos are full-page and most are in color.

Dorothy Sayers, a.k.a. Dorothy Leigh Sayers Fleming, one of the first women to ever be granted a degree from Oxford University, created one of the leading figures in, and indeed in so doing helped to create the genre of, the British mystery novels. Lord Peter Wimsey, an elegant, refined London-based aristocrat with a taste for books and a penchant for the piano, is again here the leading figure, in Unnatural Death, also published as The Dawson Pedigree.

Wimsey is an old Etonian, Balliol Oxford (of course), served with distinction in His Majesty's forces during the War (this book having been written in 1927, I shall leave it to your good services to deduce which War), who resides both town and country somewhat fashionably, and takes great pride in the ancient family history (by the time one gets to be the fifteenth Duke of anything, the family can be easily considered ancient). Wimsey has a vocation as criminologist, not out of necessity, surely, and not by training either (for such training did not formally exist, but, as an Oxford Arts man, he was trained for most anything intellectual, or at least, that is what an Oxford Arts man would tell you). An interesting addition to the beginning of the book is a short biographical sketch of the fictional Wimsey by his equally-fictional uncle.

All of this, of course, is but preamble to the latest mystery to come calling upon Lord Wimsey. There are the requisite features: a dead woman, Agatha Dawson, wealthy and having left a will that might not be a will, but rather a sham (a delirious woman whose nurse insists that there was no possible way of having made a will during the last month, yet oddly there is a document, complete with a witness who claims that dear old Agatha Dawson wanted nothing to do with the signing -- ah, the plot thickens here).

Of course, to most of the world, Wimsey is, well, following a whimsey of his own. The woman was after all elderly and in poor health; surely his investigations are misplaced. The doctor (not the one who tended Miss Dawson's death, to be sure, but an earlier doctor, suspicious of Dawson's sole heir, her niece) was accused of having blackened the name of Miss Whittaker, the niece, unnecessarily, particularly as no evidence of mischief had been uncovered. Wimsey with the assistance of Inspector Parker are able to rectify the situation vis-a-vis the doctor, but there is still the mystery.

Then, more death. This time the maid. To lose one woman may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two women... (well, you can fill in the rest yourself).

Of course I won't spoil it for you; perhaps my tag-team reviewers will do that for you, but I sincerely hope not. Suffice it to say, Wimsey proves himself a consummate actor in which the truth comes out (in London, and in style!).

One of the glories of Sayers work is the intricacies of her plots. She tends to get a huge number of people involved (the number of people who seemed to have trouped through the ill woman's bedchamber is in itself surprising, given the era) each with subplots and agenda that nonetheless get neatly resolved in the end. Sayers' development of character (even of the already dead ones!) is done with style and subtlety; while Wimsey is developed over several novels, one doesn't feel him a stranger by reading this one alone. The other characters fit their parts admirably (had Sayers not been a writer, she may well have made a good career as a casting director in Hollywood), in physical and personality attributes.

Her descriptions of the milieu, both in town (London) and in the country (the village and surroundings, in this case, of Hampshire, are interesting reading. Sayers is very much the cosmopolitan, and somewhat condescending toward the countryfolk. However, that is not a heavy element, and perhaps can be written off to her attempt to make Wimsey even more the worldly character he turns out to be over the course of her novels.

In all, an excellent read, a great diversion, and well worth musing over while sipping tea on a Regency-style sofa in one's dressing gown.

Terrific explanation of a time many have forgotten, when Wall Street nearly collapsed not from scandal but from hubris, incompetence, and just plain sloppiness. Remember when the markets were closed on Wednesdays so firms could process their paperwork? How about Ross Perots adventure to conquer the street? Me neither. Unless you lived it, you'll never get closer to knowing how many times the whole ballgame nearly came undone.

Donald Overfield's book is a great tribute to a great angler.

In his crusade to legitimise something as straightforward and obvious as wet-fly fishing (using an artificial fly which represents the underwater larval stage of a mayfly) on the chalk streams of Hampshire, which were traditionally only fished with a dry (floating) fly; George Skues developed a body of knowledge that inspired so many naturalists and fishermen who came after him.

Using his innovative and methodical approach, Skues accumulated a rich fund of understanding which he was never slow to share with all who cared to listen.

But equally, he went completely off the deep end when it came to using exotic and almost impossible to find ingredients for his fishing flies. It's nothing to see 'Three strands of spade feather from the shoulder of a honey dun cock'.

Donald Overfield makes a very good job of explaining to the modern fly fisher what times were like for anglers whose hey-day spanned the two World Wars, and how this modest, quirky, amusing man became something of a hero of his time.

David Powell and Tony Benn have approached a serious political theme in a serious and professional manner and have come up with a well researched (although this shouldn't be to difficult for lifetime left wing intellectual and politician Tony Benn) and debated analysis of the role of the left in the new age / new century.

The result is a work of "genuine analysis, real debate and biased conclusions", in a nutshell, a great piece of political analysis and commentary.

regards,

martyn_jones@iniciativas.com

As straight history or biography, this might not rate 5 stars, but as interesting history that captures time and place perfectly and flesh-and-blood biography that demands we observe actual people in the real world, this is a superb work. It basically relates three generations of the Holmes family of Boston, beginning with The Reverend Abiel Holmes, who lost his parrish for being too old-fashioned and hell-fire Calvinist for his congregation; his son, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, author of AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE and other works and a Harvard professor of medicine; and his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, jr, wounded three times in the Civil War, lawyer, and eventual Justice of the Supreme Court, where he became known as "The Great Dissenter" for disagreeing with majority opinions of the Court, usually arguing for less government control and more personal freedoms. Bowen does write with the point of view of a novelist, inventing dialogue and getting into her characters' heads in a way only a novelist could do. But she embellishes rather than distorts, I think. And the book is a joy to read and has the feel of authority and deep knowledge. I actually found it hard to put down, especially in the first half of the book. Highly recommended.

This is a wonderful history of great thinkers as well as a brilliantly-written masterpiece in its own right.

I love this book. He give an overview of philosophic thought but puts each story in the context of their environment. It's great for those who want a sampler plate without gorging on one thinker. Plus it's small so it's a great travellers book.

This is a good book which you--if you have any interest in philosophy--should read. Durant is a fine (albeit opinionated) writer, and the philosophers he selects for illumination are treated with scholarly respect and no (except for Spinoza) hagiography. Durant's critiques never range into unfair territory, even when he confronts philosophers who disparage views--such as socialism--which he, Durant, holds dear.

There are a few typos and factual errors (viz. Durant's assertion on page 411 that Wagner was "half-Semitic"), but the book overall has a nice organic flow, and some essential hand-holding when Kant and other obscurantist Teutons are examined.

There are numerous conspicuous absences from amongst the more famous practitioners of philosophizing ("space forbids" as Durant sheepishly admits), and one who wants the WHOLE enchilada should acquire a copy of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. If you peek into that and your hair turns gray, however, The Story of Philosophy may be the set of training-wheels which will enable you to ride Russell's more formidable and scholarly work.

*The Story of Philosophy* is a clearly written, entertaining, and illuminating survey of the major movements in western thought from Socrates to Santayana, from Aristotle to American pragmatism. Given its easy colloquial style, it's easy to overlook that this book was originally written in the mid-1920s. But one should be aware that this means there's nothing here about existentialism, structuralism, post-modernism, etc.--the story ends with John Dewey. Still what is here is presented with a light tough, colored with the author's characteristic wry humor and everyman bonhomie.

As befitting a general survey of philosophy, Durant doesn't plunge too deeply into the issues touched on in this book; but he's not entirely superficial either. What you get is each philosopher's most characteristic speculations on the big questions of life and how they fit into the overall "story" of human thought. Durant has a gift for making the complex and obscure comprehensible to the layman. Anyone who can summarize Kantian metaphysics in a handful of forthright pages and trim away all the fanciful theoretical falderal from the Hegels of the philosophical world are certainly to be commended--and appreciated. Perhaps what's best--and most enlivens this book--is the wealth of anecdote about the personal lives of these semi-mythical titans of thought. It's easy to forget that these big brains were housed in flesh-and-blood bodies subject to the same fears, prejudices, diseases, desires, and disappointments as the rest of us--and that these all-too-human factors played a significant role in their subsequent philosophy.

On occasion, Durant lets his own prejudices get unduly in the way of presenting the ideas of his philosophical protagonists--especially when any philosopher such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Spenser takes a particularly dark view of life or suggests that it may not, all in all, be worth living. Durant seems to feel it incumbent upon him to combat such negativity with a most unwelcome--to me, anyway--sunnyside-up rebuttal complete with the sort of Hallmarkian-style platitudes the more pessimistic among us have been groaning at since high school and find even *more* depressing than the hopelessness of which they were meant to relieve us. Yes, it's wonderful to hear birds singing, to watch children at play--sunrises, sunsets, and a good pork chop can all be a delight that inspires one to poetry; but are they worth the cancers, the wars, the car wrecks, the funerals of friends and loved ones, the catheters, the senility, the probes, the colonoscopies, the morphine drip, the casket, urn, or mausoleum we're all destined for when all's said and done? One can, in all rationality and good faith, without being the victim of a fit of childish peevishness, disenchanted idealism, or lack of maternal affection say no, no it's really not worth it, I'm stuck here yes and must make the best of it and enjoy what I can, still, all the same, thanks but no thanks, I'll pass, I wish I'd never been born.

Anyway, if you can ignore Durant's annoying proclivity to pedestrian peptalks and middle-of-the-road pedantry and aren't looking for "the rest of the story" of philosophy after the turn of the 20th century, than this general survey is definitely worth the while of those who want a sound introduction to the major figures of the western philosophical tradition.

I was reading this book while I'm on my vacation and to my surprise, I've fall in love with philosophy instantaneously. After all this years, I didn't know that I have shared the same dogma as the world's greatest philosophers. This book is a great introduction for those who are keen on philosophy or simply wanted to gain knowledge about the history of philosophy.

I love these books. They are amazingly unique. I was given the first book years ago and it sat on my shelf for ages. Then, for some reason, I picked it up and read it! It was so much fun. I actually laughed to myself while reading it! Of course, I had to read more and more of the books. Thank heavens there are plenty of them to read. Start with this book. You will have grand time!

I grew up in the states, but my parents lived for a time in Europe before having a family and spent many hours in book shops(their hobby). Forty-some years ago my mother (whose taste in literature was instinctive and impeccable)found a boxed set for me (who knows where) and I have memories of that being the best Christmas present I ever got. They were charming, sensitive, adorable, witty little stories that withstand the test of time admirably. The characters are unforgettable; they let their hearts out to play in a way that readers young(and old)can empathize with. And the best part is - I get to share them with my daughter, now.

After living in Finland for a while, I decided to read the Moomin series of books. The first one seems "Moomins and the Great Flood" does not seem to be on Amazon but is available (in English) at least from the Moomin store in Helsinki-Vantaa airport.

Anyways, Finn Family Moomintroll is a great children's book. It starts when Moomintroll wakes up and, together with Snufkin finds the Hobgoblins hat. There is something strange with the hat and most of the story is somewhat centered around it. I won't ruin the whole story, but the rest include boats, fish, wooden ladies, hattifratters, big rubies, fish.

The book is well written and I do recommend it for children or moomin fanatics. It also clearly has Finnish cultural influences, which are nice to recognize. So, why just three stars? It's a good book, it's not a great book (for example, not comparable to Alice in Wonderland). Also, it's not a book I would recommend to most adults.

For me this book was a mess - disjointed, self indulgent, and self important, with so many characters it left my, and my childs head in a spin. Finally managed to struggle through it, but in hind-sight, the book had little that was coherent about it, and left me wishing we had read something else. Reading all these reviews makes me wonder who is writing them - the authors or the publishers?

Its complete tripe.

A little to my surprise my seven year old son loves these moomin books - To me they seem from another age [I remember them from my childhood] The moomin world is full of gentle humour and a cast of sweetly strange characters romping through the long summer days in a Finnish forest. Good for imaginative kids who like to imagine other worlds. My son loves Anime and films like "My Neighbour Totoro" and these books have that kind of sensibility

There is no better place to start than this book if you want a solid foundation in Western Qabalah. Dion Fortune headed up her own magical order, and this book is written from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. Start here before you branch off with other writers.

This is actually the first book I've read on the Qabalah of the Western Mystery Tradition, and I'm very much glad that I began here instead of somewhere else, such as Crowley. Like most of the glowing reviews before this one, I can't recommend this book enough to the curious occultist, and especially beginners. I've been practicing Qabalistic magic for about 3 months now, and this book more than any other (besides Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig) has facilitated more wisdom and understanding within me concerning the Qabalah than I ever could have hoped for.

Dion Fortune's writing style, whilst claimed to be 'out-dated' by many, was one of my favorite parts of this book. I don't agree with her on some things, such as her views on government being a necessary institution for mankind, and that women are more emotionally inclined and intellectually lacking, but despite the flaws that I personally find within the book, the overall knowledge and beauty within this book overwhelmingly make up for them.

Highly recommended. Don't wait to pick this one up. Do yourself a favor and get it right now.

There isn't much I can add to the other positive (and nicely detailed) reviews. This is simply one of, if not the best, books you can buy regarding the western tradition. Get this, then pick up Crowley's 777 for checking details, symbols, correspondences, etc. This is a strange area of study in that, on one hand, every piece of valid information you can get your hands on is helpful, but on the other hand it's very subjective when it comes down to the practice itself.

The only thing I can think to add is that A.O. Spare and Alan Moore are the only authors that have done as much to educate me as Fortune and Crowley.

This is an excellent book. I enjoyed every inch of it. Going into the book I had no knowledge of the Qabalah. My knowledge has grown to what I consider to be more than a basic or general understanding. I own several books by Dion Fortune and I must say this is the best of them. It is very well written and also extremely practical in its approach.

First off, let me say that I love this book. My problem is with whatever nitwit or nitwits at Weiser who re-edited this book, who, among other things, ran amok with the spelling and grammar checker. The most glaring instance is how "ein soph aur" has been changed to "or, ein soph"! For an example of changes made to the substance of the text itself, see the earlier customer review: "New Edition is badly flawed." By Greg Wotton. This edition is useful for the updated material added to the back of the book, but for the main text I recommend keeping your earlier edition, or if you do not have one getting a used copy.