Blake Books

This gift of Roger Kirk's and yours gives me a good deal of pleasure. This is a good book.

I naturally turned to the end of the book - always much more important than the beginning, because the beginning is what was handed to you and the end is what you have made of it. The following passages I approve of because I hear an echo of the familiar.

Excerpts From the chapter entitled "Final Years".

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We took Mother to a very fancy restaurant, allegedly the best in Munich, with exquisitely presented food. It was not a great success as Mother thought our table too ill-placed for her ambassador son and "did not like food too much handled."
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Mother was buried with my father in Arlington Cemetery after a memorial service at St. John's Church. She used to laugh about the response of the cemetery authorities when she asked if she could be buried with him. "That's fine Madame; we just dig a little deeper." She only left a few instructions about the funeral. "The service is to be said at St. John's Church by the rector or any male clergyman of my son's choice. The navy hymn should be played. My name on Alan's tombstone should read `and his wife', not `and his beloved wife'.

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The instructive things about Navy that have stuck with me, I have learned from the wives. Granny used to say something like "doing and performing all manner of things thereunto pertaining." She was a good Navy wife, a person of duty who lived her life for her husband's career. So was Lydia Chapin Kirk. From the back cover on being appointed ambassador to USSR: "...He was ready to face the Russians, as he had been to face the Germans. This being so, who was I, a service woman born and bred, to object, especially as this time I could share the challenge with him."

This is splendidly put! The unofficial Navy motto is "Non sibi sed patriae." This is a good book.

John Venner is a middle-aged Doctor of Divinity who is in the process of a divorce from the true love of his life. He is also obsessed with the last colony of Shakers in New England, and particularly the youngest member of the community, 23 year old Sabbathday Wells. In a way only Smith could describe, Venner searches for real love and intimacy in a morally corrupt post-modern america. He dreams of redemption by purity, by the simple acts of hard work, and cleanliness of soul and body. His need for intimacy- divine and human- leads him on a sexual quest for the last American virgin. This book is extremely entertaining to read, immaculately written, and shows a depth of understanding of the post-modern soul which is rare indeed.

This exquisite volume contains the 102 watercolors that Blake had been commissioned to produce to illustrate Dante's "Divine Comedy". He worked on these watercolors for the last three years of his life and died with the project incomplete. Even though these illustrations are in varying degrees of completion, for people like me who love William Blake, each is a vast treasure and a joy to study.

This is fine edition that has an introductory essay by the editor, David Bindman. This essay and all of the captions are given in English, German, and French side-by-side and on the opposite page to the reproduced watercolor. The colors are rich and beautiful and the reproductions are clear and precise.

Mr. Bindman is to be applauded for the gorgeous book. It was given to me as a gift by a very thoughtful friend to whom I am very grateful.

Published in 1970 this Dover Book DRAWINGS OF WILLIAM BLAKE: 92 PENCIL STUDIES is still available and remains at a very affordable price. Compiled and commented on by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, this resource volume very completely addresses the important pencil drawings Blake made throughout his artistic career.

Though many of these drawings have been published before as Blake's illustrations for 'The Book of Job' and 'The Divine Comedy', this collection which spans his entire career expressing his own personal symbolism, his versions of the great myths, his allegories and his 'grotesques', many in print for the first time. Blake's spiritual nature, and his ability to express it in both poetry and paintings, here includes some wonderfully refined full frontal male and female nudes. But in the end it is his elusive, mystical vision drawings that will register with the reader fully familiar with the life of William Blake. In Blake's words 'Let a Man who has made a Drawing go on & on & he will produce a Picture or Painting, but if he chooses to leave it before he has spoil'd it, he will do a Better Thing'.

The quality of paper in this book is not of the highest, but it matters little. In fact the gradual yellowing that occurs in rag of this sort weds the content with the image even more mysteriously! Grady Harp, February 06

As the victim of a hit and run, Maddy has spent eight weeks in a European hospital and has no idea who she is or where she lives. The fact that nobody has come forward to claim her has her feeling unwanted and unloved. Because of the cashmere jogging suit she was wearing, it's assumed that she's well off financially and her ability to converse in French, English, and some German indicates that she most likely lives somewhere in France. Imagine her shock when reality turns out to be much different from what she imagines.

Nevis Ballantyne lives in Mandorah, Queensland - Australia. He would have been thrilled to never set eyes on Maddy again. Their marriage has been a joke right from the beginning and she's cheated, lied, and stolen from him. Maddy stole eighty thousand dollars and his mother's jewelry before disappearing to Europe. Nevis is determined to regain the jewelry but can't figure out if Maddy is pretending to have lost her memory or really did. Her behavior certainly doesn't making sense to him. She's like a completely different woman now, one he never knew.

Maddy feels like she's living someone else's life. Nothing about her life with Nevis seems real. If everything she's been told about herself is true then it makes perfect sense for everyone to hate her, even she hates the woman she used to be. Nevis is having a hard time hanging onto his hatred for Maddy and that scares him. Rather than risk falling for her again, Nevis opts to bring in a psychologist, Don Carr, to evaluate Maddy. What if she's telling the truth and her memories of their marriage and her past misdeeds are forever lost to her? Can he possibly risk falling for her again?

Margaret Blake's EDEN'S CHILD is one book that is sure to keep readers guessing. The contradictions between the `old' Maddie and the `new' Maddy are just too enormous to be ignored. To make the situation even more confusing she has flashes of memory of places and situations that don't make any sense with the lifestyle or person that Nevis and his employees describe. I loved getting to know Maddy. She's a warm caring person whom readers will love. Nevis is just as lovable but he's been burned once by Maddy and isn't about to trust her too easily. The mystery behind the difference in Maddy's before and after personalities fascinated me and kept me engrossed in the pages throughout the book, but I was spellbound at how the storyline eventually turns out. It's completely unexpected and riveting, but above all, heart-warmingly beautiful. Wonderful job Ms. Blake!

Chrissy Dionne (courtesy of Romance Junkies)

Edward Larrabee Barnes is one of the most prominent Architect's of our time and Peter Blake has done a good job presenting his work.

The Employer's Survival Guide is a "user friendly" how-to manual and guide for small business owners and managers to recruit and keep effective employees in today's very tight labor market. Andrew Blake and John Austin successfully collaborate to provide the reader with proven methods of seeking out prospective employees, what the hidden costs of employee turnover entail, hiring the disabled, federal employment credits available to the small businessman, and even how to protect the business from computer crashes. The Employer's Survival Guide is a "must" for any owner or manager of a company so small that they do not have their own on-staff human resource development specialist.

This is a sensational door stopper sized collection of the stories of every single execution in Great Britain between 1900 and 1964. 865 people paid for their crimes with their lives and you can read their stories and the stories of their victims. This isn't just a reference book of facts, although if you are researching for an assignment or something you could certainly use this book in that way and I can't think of a better book of facts for doing that.

The beauty of this mammoth sized book is that each criminal analysed is written like a short story so what you've really got here is a collection of 865 non fiction short crime stories. I also found it interesting when reading the information boxes on each execution for example James Billington was pretty much the sole executer no matter where the execution took place for the first couple of years before some of his assistants got a bit of work.

There are also tables at the back of the book showing the statistics on which crime the death penalty was implemented for, and which country within Great Britain had the most executions. There's also an index of the towns and their executions as well as a calendar so you can compare which day of the year is the most popular for executions. This book is simply excellent. No avid crime fan wether used to reading fiction or non fiction should pass up purchasing this masterpiece.

As an avid fan of ancient history, especially Egyptology I'd been searching for a complete reference work for sometime. I am very impressed with the work done here. I own more than two dozen books on Egypt and Egyptology and this single volume contains as much if not more insite and depth. Nicely done.

Recognizable by its bright blue cover, The Nicholas Blake Treasury, Volume 4, contains End of Chapter (1957), The Widow's Cruise (1959), and The Worm of Death (1961).

End of Chapter (1957): Nigel Strangeways is investigating who might have altered a proof copy of General Thoresby's memoirs, resulting in a libel case against the prestigious publishing firm, Wenham and Geraldine. Matters worsen when the flamboyant romance novelist, Millicent Miles, is murdered one evening in the publisher's office.

The Widow's Cruise (1959): The poet Nigel Strangeways and his friend, the well-respected sculptress Claire Massinger, are relaxing on a Greek cruise ship. As so often is the case, Strangeways becomes entangled in affairs that lead to murder. Seemingly every passenger has some secret, and much of the fun is sorting out which secrets are red herrings and which are indeed relevant to the mystery itself.

The Worm of Death (1961): Now living with the sculptress Clare Massinger in the small community of Greenwich along the Thames River, Strangeways is asked to investigate the disappearance of a neighbor, the prestigious doctor, Piers Loudron. Not long afterwards Dr. Loudron's body surfaces on the Thames and the case is declared a homicide.

The four volume, hard cover edition, The Nicholas Blake Treasury, includes twelve of the sixteen Nigel Strangeways mysteries. Only The Dreadful Hollow (1953), The Whisper in the Gloom (1954), The Sad Variety (1964), and The Morning After Death (1966) are missing.

The first two volumes (burgundy and green covers, respectively) were published by Nelson Doubleday, Inc and the third and fourth editions (orange and blue covers) by the Mystery Guild.

Volume 1: Thou Shell of Death (1936), The Beast Must Die (1938), and The Corpse in the Snowman (1941)

Volume 2: A Question of Proof (1935), There's Trouble Brewing (1937), and The Smiler with the Knife (1939)

Volume 3: Murder with Malice (1940), Minute for Murder (1947), and Head of a Traveler (1949)

Volume 4: End of Chapter (1957), The Widow's Cruise (1959), and The Worm of Death (1961).

The poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 -72) gained fame under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake for his stories involving Nigel Strangeways, a fictional poet with a penchant for solving murder mysteries. These well-constructed mysteries are noted as much for their witty dialogue, character development, and psychological complexity as for the puzzle itself.

Cecil Day-Lewis was professor of poetry at Oxford in 1951-56, and a lecturer in the 1960s at several universities. He was Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. The actor Daniel Day-Lewis is his son.

The Nigel Strangeways mysteries were also reissued as Perennial Library paperbacks by Harper and Row Publishers in the late 1970s.