Blake Books

A great supplement to my own listening and transcribing of Art Blakey. Having someone who was around him a lot and paying loads of attention to his playing really gives you a more in-depth view than the videos and records I use to learn. Now, all we need to do is have the same done for Max, Philly, Tony, and Elvin!

I also recommend John Ramsey's book on Alan Dawson and his teaching methods - it really gives you tools for your own creative synthesis - rather than just the conventional book full of beats. Both books are helpful and in different ways. Keep it up John!

Having lived in Druid Lodge, a charming early Victorian house overlooking beautiful Killiney Bay, Dublin, Ireland, for more than 20 years, and given the prominence with which Druid Lodge features in Brendan O'Cathaoir's book, I read with rapt attention from start to finish.

The story is told with genuine affection for its characters and subject matter, and provides a snapshot of Ireland in the latter half of the 19th century, a time of social upheaval and change, increasing positive foreign influences on our way of life, and captures the mood of the nation at that time.

Interesting parrallels may be drawn between the changes afoot 130 years ago and the current economic boom Ireland is enjoying.

I think as much as the writer was explaining Travolta but still we needs to know more. but i would love to read that book again and again so i encourage everybody to read that spectacular book.

I just recently reread this book, and like all good books, found it was even better than I remembered. The story focuses on Julie, a Louisiana girl returned home to direct a movie. Things become confused when she finds herself attracted to Rey who is acting as a technical director, despite her long term relationship with the movie's producer. Accidents on the set lead Julie to believe someone is trafficking drugs and trying to hide it, and Rey is somehow involved.

I thought this book was fabulous! It seems that Burleson has researched nearly every detail on this 1925-26 safari. Thus, not only is it an interesting book on this portion of Jung's life but it is also a great insight into what was perhaps the last great walking safari across Kenya. Jung traveled by truck and railroad whenever possible, but the crossing into the desert of Sudan on foot makes for some interesting speculation. I loved the entire book and recommend it to Jungians and safari buffs alike.

In Turn-Coupe, Louisiana, the peace of the recently dead is being destroyed by a war between funeral homes. The powerful Berry Association will do anything to bury its competition. Lewis Crompton, the owner of Crompton's Funeral Home, refuses to fold under the price gouging scheme of Berry to drive the competitors out of the lucrative market.

Gervis Berry sends Regina Dalton, who he blackmails into doing his bidding, to dig up dirt to be used to destroy Lewis. Regina soon meets Lewis's grandson "Sugar" Kane Benedict, a lawyer. Kane finds himself very attracted to Regina, but knows he cannot trust her because she is out to ruin his grandfather. He plans to pour on the "Sugar" to obtain the truth from Regina, who is attracted to Kane. However, she knows that her feelings for Kane cannot go anywhere because she cannot afford to cross Gervis without her family suffering grave consequences.

New York Times best selling author Jennifer Blake is renowned for her torrid contemporary novels. Her latest book, KANE, is the first in a series set in Turn-Coupe. The story line is interesting and brisk, and Kane lives up to his nickname. The support cast adds a southern authenticity to the tale. In spite of the fact that Regina is such a weak individual, Ms. Blake's fans will dig this fiction and want more in the series.

Harriet Klausner

Max Blake is awesome. The character is superb and the story is first-rate. I couldn't put down the first book in the series and can't wait to get my hands on the second. Sure hope to see a third book soon.

Beginning from Saxon England with King Egbert of Wessex and his son, King Albert the Great, to the ever-decorous Queen Elizabeth II, this book presents a comprehensive view of the monarchies of the British Isles. This small and brief omnibus of Engish, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish monarchs is divided in four parts. For those individual readers who are looking for a quick and informative history of the toils and tribulations of monarchies in the British Isles, this is the book for you! For the general reading public, this well written book will add necessary basic knowledge of the monarchies of Great Britain and Ireland to your index.

Knight of the Living Dead: William Blake and the Problem of Ontology by Kathleen Lundeen (Susquehanna University Press) William Blake's agility as an intermedia artist is indisputable. Though his individual works have often been classified according to the dominant medium in which they have been executed, his unrestricted movements among the arts of sketching, watercolor, printmaking, and poetry demonstrate his disregard of the conventional aesthetic parameters that are thought to separate one medium from another. Though Blake is just as unapologetic in trespassing the boundaries between here and the hereafter, most who celebrate the principle of free?play in his art squirm at his professed practice of the same principle in his life. His alleged sightings of spirits have by and large embarrassed his admirers, many of whom have chosen to look the other way. Blake's liberal experiments in mediumship, nevertheless, raise an intriguing question: is there a correlation between his textual and his spiritualistic practices? This study offers an answer.
In Knight of the Living Dead, Lundeen investigates Blake's work in the context of his spiritualistic practices, and shows how he attempts to create a discourse that circumvents the binary of natural and arbitrary signs. Her examination of his word?image art demonstrates that, in Blake's view, what we recognize as word or image depends upon our epistemological orientation, just as what we term "matter" or "spirit" is determined by our state of perception. It further shows how Blake critiques textual theory in both his songs and prophecies by stabilizing the two sets of parameters that are used to define and classify signs: the general and particular, and the literal and figurative. Moreover, she argues, Blake provides an epistemological alternative to empiricism and rationalism in his poetry and art. Through verbal and visual experiments he defies the logic that is rooted in sense perception and reason, and he attempts through those experiments to return textuality to a divinely literal condition. By treating spiritualism as an aesthetic practice and art as an otherworldly communication, he undermines the institutionalized boundaries in art and life, and presents a formidable challenge to the whole matter/spirit dualism upon which Western culture is based.
An Excerpt from Knight of the Living Dead: We see just how closely affiliated the verbal and spiritual realms were to Blake in his memorable comment to Crabb Robinson: "I write . . . when commanded by the spirits and the moment I have written I see the words fly abot [sic] the room in all directions?It is then published & the Spirits can read." It is common enough for an artist to claim that his work is aided by spiritual intervention of one sort or another, but to suggest that one's art is directed toward otherworldly beings leaves earthly readers in a predicament. How are we to respond to art for which we have been deemed by the artist ontologically unfit? Blake's lifelong problem of getting his work published might in part be due to his choice of readership. Writing for spirits may demonstrate one's artistic range, but it is somewhat imprudent from a business standpoint ....
Though I will not presume to reconstruct Blake's interpretive community, it might be closer to home than we realize. Heaven, to Blake, was a mode of perception=`tho it appears Without it is Within / In your Imagination"?and archangels, those who sympathized with his artistic endeavors .... [In a letter] he writes, "You O Dear Flaxman are a Sublime Archangel My Friend & Companion from Eternity." Such a rhetorical gesture mitigates the mysticism of his remarks about spiritual beings, but those remarks cannot be dismissed as mere hyperbole. The celestial referents in his writing are neither wholly literal nor wholly figurative. His language cannot be situated on the familiar tropological axis since his perception does not synchronize with a dualistic metaphysics. To Blake, the archangel Flaxman was as otherworldly as the archangel Gabriel was tangible since he regarded matter and spirit, not as polar realities but as different states of perception.

Roald Dahl in Spanish! The translation is excellent...the book loses little in the cute rhymes Dahl loves infusing his stories with. I can't wait to share this book with my classroom! The 2nd grade kids are sure to love it.