Blake Books

Even though I live in New York, I refer to the NYC addition weekly. On a visit to DC, I found it in some cases to be easier to use and read than those of AAA. The book format is also handy to carry around while strolling DC's neighborhoods.

I bought "Flashmaps" right before our recent trip to Washington.

Very convenient--it is just the right size for your purse or back pocket.

I found most useful the building diagrams, Metrorail map, and driving map of downtown.

With arrows detailing two-way and one-way streets, the driving map will certainly be a life-saver if you plan on exploring D.C. in your car.

Written January 16th 2004

Tanjas Darke's book is quite simply a testimony to the strength and resilience of the human spirit. This is a woman who for 20 years was degraded and sexually abused by the very person who by rights should have protected her from such horrors. Her own father.

I have read many books about abused children, but this book is the definitive of all those books, written by a survivor, it's never sentimental, it's often brutally honest to the point of it being horrific but most of all it packs an emotional punch that could polax Mike Tyson in one blow.

I actually came across this book by accident. Late one the evening I was watching a program on SKY and there was a documentary about Tanjas life. I sat mesmerised through the whole program and when it was over I went onto the Internet to find out more about her.

It was then I found out she had written a book about her life, "Flight of the Dancing Bird." Sadly it is not available in the UK and I ended up buying it second hand from the USA as it is out of print even here.

This is a book that should NEVER be out of print. It is a book that every High School Library should have on its shelves; it is a book that every mental hospital in the world should make its Psychiatric staff read.

It is a book about an ordinary girl who suffered the most appalling of abuse and had the courage to carry on living. It is also a book about a survivor who fell in love with a good man and is now in a loving relationship.

I read it the moment it arrived, from cover to cover and it was one of the most painful experiences in my life. However I don't regret reading it for one minute because Tanjas Darke is a heroine to me. Because of her I am now able to look in the mirror each day and not be ashamed of myself anymore.

Thank you Tanjas, you've helped another bird to finally find her wings...

Addendum 29th October 2005

My wish has come true; this book is now back in print, it should stand alongside "The Diary of Anne Frank" to prove that the human spirit can overcome all horrors, from the Holocaust to sexual abuse. Some people might disagree but remember this childhood can be lost in a variety of ways and its not only the Nazis in this world who have a lot to answer for.

Margaret Blake has written a romantic story with remarkable characters. It's one of those books you can't put down because the ending is never predictable. Helena was married to Andreas, a strong and successful man. The marriage didn't work out for many reasons -- her youth, his business and a haunting family secret. But even though the two are divorced, there is a strong chemistry between and an unforgettable tale that's a must read.

Anyony who has wondered why the letters on an eye-test chart are ordered in the way they are, what Sioux indians had to do with the invention of the frisbee, or why Charles Darwin was responsible for both the discovery and extinction of the dodo will find that Carroll and Howlett have dug up in 'Fourteen Zebra' some of the funniest and surprising facts ever to be recorded about our planet.

one of the most fascinating and enlightening books I've ever read on Blake.

This book's fury-driven introductory essay makes many superb points about what we're doing (okay, what we've done - the book was published in 1964) to our landscape, or rather are continuing to allow to be done by soulless "business is business" types in our devil-take-the-hindmost cultural milieu.

The 130+ b&w photos are stunning, in the best and worst senses of the word -- and not unmixed with nostalgia, as we note the smallish herds of 50's cars in situ, and realize that many of the "ravaged" sites shown are now viewable as nostalgia sets, compared with what came along in the decades that followed.

A great visual treat (if you take your Tums), and a source of some interesting cultural perspectives (e.g., the story of the Seagram Building's lost "prestige tax" court battle). A must for any American cultural history library!

Mindy Blake was the clearest thinker and innovator in golf, but his ideas never penetrated the golfing society. I bought his last book two years ago from Amazon Books, and today I hit the balls straight and long in what could be considered a most unconventional way.

The first address in the book, "Science and Imagination in William Blake", is a kind of recap of her book "The Inner Journey of the Poet" (a book I wanted to reread as soon as I finished it), so it was good to have many of its points summarized in this address. I believe it's in this address where Raine makes the point that we've turned away from eternity in favor of futurity. In other words, that we are less tuned in to the enduring archetypes of Imagination to the extent we focus on the naturalized thinking of advancing our futures in the material world. She makes the claim the Imagination is real to the extent that its archetypes are present in the minds of humanity, and that the real world is unreal because we keep dividing it into smaller and smaller units until what is most basic is insubstantial. All of her points are arguable, but they make food for contemplation.

In "Blake and Maya", Raine compares similarities of Blake's thought about Imagination with the thought of Berkeley, Plotinus and the Bhagavad Gita.

In "Mythologizing of Time", Raine discusses the Blakean character Los, who's claimed to represent Time, and sprinkles her observations with thoughts pulled from Berkeley, Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme.

"Blake, Swedenborg & the Divine Human" discusses Raine's claim that Blake saw all of humanity, all reality, as essentially being one human, not in a personified sense, but in the sense that, to the extent we are aware of anything, it must be accessible in human terms, and thus must in a way be human. She quotes passages from Swedenborg, Blake, and C.G. Jung to support what she acknowledges is a subtle argument.

"The City in Blake's Prophetic Poetry" again invokes Plotinus in describing Jerusalem as the archetypal city of imagination, with Babylon representing the archetypal materialist city of efficiency without beauty, and Golgonooza as those parts of our cities which are built in an attempt to realize Jerusalem.

"Blake's Illustrations of Job" invokes the writings of C.G. Jung in a plate-by-plate description and explanation of how Blake's vision was similar and different from Jung's.

In "Blake and Michelangelo", Raine does the same thing in comparing Blake's vision with Michelangelo's in rendering The Last Judgement. She points out that Michelangelo focuses on the damning Jesus, where Blake focuses on the welcoming Jesus.

In "The Sleep of Albion", Raine discusses how Arthurian legend influenced Blake.

Coupled with "The Inner Journey of the Poet", this book takes the reader through ideas that will probably be absorbing to those who feel a dissatisfaction with mere realism and technology, and will probably be tedious and annoying to those who who are perfectly satisfied with a materialist, scientific, technological, purely rational way of seeing things.

This is an interesting view into the UK prison system. Well worth a look at.