Bloom Books

I hope everyone will read Lily in Bloom. It has gotten great reviews and everyone is having a good time with it, passing it along and buying it for gifts, etc. It's a fun, quirky southern novel set in a famous - though fictional garden. I hope you'll join Lily as she tries to reinvent herself after suffering a category 5 domestic disaster - her husband has left her for his young executive assistant. With the help of steadfast friends, an octogenarian neighbor with a sixth sense and a handsome young gardening genius, Lily finds that there is life after divorce and that love can bloom in the most unexpected places.

Ok, I heard about this book from a friend and wasn't sure about it, but I started reading it and couldn't put it down. It's funny, entertaining and everything you would expect from a southern writer. I would recommend this book to gardeners and non-gardeners alike!!

I wouldn't call myself a beginner having read many other books on Buddhism for the past 4 years. I just happened to pick this up while browsing at Barnes & Noble, and it was the best find. It's better than "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching." The author's really done a great job in presenting the major principles and practices of Buddhism in a very well organized, clear, effective, and inspiring manner. I've underlined and highlighted sentences and paragraphs to read again. I keep it with me all the time as my Buddhist Bible and reference. I would recommend this book to everyone and to give to others as a gift.

The Lotus Still Blooms: Sacred Buddhist Teachings for the Western Mind Rev. Gattuso brilliantly summarizes the sacred teachings with personal examples that inspire. She reminds me of the Hawaiian Kapuna, the "tutu" that shares eternal Truth with conviction, excellence and experience.......a fan from Hawaii

The Moon.

Its magic? Its mystery...Its moments of surreal and ethereal light transform the nighttime sky into a liquid silver of sensation and reflection. The Moon is the ever-present companion of Earth. She is as reliable in her orbiting diligence as she is fickle in her changing face.

Set upon a journey of poetic enchantment and revelation where this pristine world of the moon acts as a primal, integral part of the human psyche and the many layers of emotion. Lover's Moon and Juniper is an evocative collection of two voices and two styles harmoniously converging into one celestial object as a symbol for personal discovery of the heart--exploring the Moon's phases, viewed through lover's eyes.

Authors, Minerva T. Bloom and Michael D. Petti write with a passionate combination of free verse, Shakespearean and Petrarchian sonnets, haiku and villanelle, merging to celebrate the splendor of our moon and it's influence on Earth.

Since the very dawn of life on Earth, the Moon has been a source of natural rhythm; a forceful declaration for oceans, a calendar and guide for voyagers, an inspiration to lovers and poets alike. More than this, the Moon is cut from the vast, cosmological flesh of the universe itself. Her sight to human eyes is a joyous and serene drop of comfort in the enormous sea of the unknown. She comfortably weds our need to know and explore as human beings to the infinity of the unknowable and unreachable.

The Moon is the faithful partner of the Earth, the bearer of the Sun's brilliance, the supreme Siren of the Night. The Moon is the essence of shadow and light; history and myth; reality and dream. The Moon haunts and mesmerizes.

And, of course, the Moon is the sylphid maiden of love. She beckons those who fall beneath her spell of romantic vision. She seduces, a temptress, with the grace of serenity and silence. She sings in harmony with the emotional music of both desire and loneliness. The Moon embraces two loving partners in the same way She and the Earth have embraced for eons...

A highly recommended read, for all poetry lovers!

Two poets here, with rare depth, range and power. These fine poems I've read and re-read. They delight and enlighten me. A wonderful book, vivid, passionate and moving. Both voices merge luminously, evoking the haunted quality of our carnal existence. Highly recommended!

We gave a copy of this book to the women who cut my daughters hair for locks of love. She loved it and keeps in her salon. The story is about a girl who wants to find something special about her self, something she can do that is unique, not just have beautiful hair. Then she sees a sign in a window and gets the idea to donate her hair. It is a wonderful story and shows the girl sitting in the chair getting her hair cut.

Everyone seems to love Melissa's long, thick shiny hair: it's her best attribute. But Melissa wants to be known for more than her hair: she wants to be known for real talent. Problem is, she can't seem to come up with anything original or notable. Suzanne Bloom illustrates the fun story of how a little creativity turns a natural asset into a talent.

This book's subject matter is right on the money. I haven't read it, but Museums have everything to do with the production of art nowadays. Museums and catalogs or big, glossy ads. Because that's where the authority of the printed page meets its audience. And Kynaston McShine is such a cool name.

I attended this exhibit at the MoMA and was thrilled to see so many great artists interpreting what museums and "the institution" means. For some artists, the act of collecting is very private...like Joseph Cornell and his many obsessive boxes, or Christian Boltanski and his melancholy installation of forgotten photographs. In another personal piece, Sophie Calle interviewed various staff members at a museum where prized artworks by the Old Masters were stolen about how they now feel in the artworks' absence. The snoop in me wished that the audience could see what all the boxes contained in pieces such as Herbert Dristel's "Museum of Drawers", which houses over 500 miniature pieces of artwork by many of my favorite artists from the 60's and 70's. The Barbara Bloom installation "The Reign of Narcissism" was hilarious and disturbing. It consists of a museum within a museum, with all pieces and decor dedicated to herself and her own likeness. Claes Oldenburg's "Mouse Museum", another amazing installation, consists of various sculptures and found "junkstore-type" objects that the artist has accumulated. The shape of the walk-in structure of Oldenburg's "Museum" is Mickey Mouse's head! An absurd and fun commentary on pop culture! This show would not have been complete without the work of Marcel Duchamp, a pioneer in calling into question the value of "original" artwork and the importance that institutions place on it. "L.H.O.O.Q." (the Mona Lisa with a mustache) and many of Duchamp's Valises containing miniature reproductions of his own work and readymades are represented here. Vito Acconci decided to use the MoMA as a post office and in a separate piece, tried to infringe upon museum-goer's personal space by standing uncomfortably close to people while they were trying to be cultured and study the 'Art'. Overall, it was a fascinating exhibit. The subversive, but good-humored mockery of what humans do with and in the presence of art made me feel somewhat self-conscious as I was wandering the galleries, but that seemed to be the point!

I wrote the Kirkus Review you will find under Editorial Reviews and I direct you to that. What I failed to note in that review was the wonderful bouquet behind the author's name, Stephen Bloom, which seems to me a conflation of the two heroes of Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. Since Ulysses was the artistic wellspring for the nonlinear New Wave French films of the sixties, in which editing dizzyingly rose above characterization, as in Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, it struck me that the same nonlinear mode of storytelling in No New Jokes, which digs into our subconscious sense of time and remembrance,was derived from Joyce and that Stephen Bloom is the pen name for some well-known writer who wants to publish something fresh without being reviewed for his earlier work rather than for this inventive new work. I'd like to know if I'm all wet about this or not, should someone know Stephen Bloom.

I nearly overlooked this, the best first novel of 1997. While Stephen Bloom's "No New Jokes" was published in the first quarter of last year, I didn't become aware of it until I read a review in the "Shepherd Express", an alternative newspaper in Milwaukee WI earlier this year.

To call this funny but heartbreaking short novel the best first novel of 1997 may be a disservice. I think it may rank as one of the best of the year, period. It lacks the epic sweep of Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" and the pretensions of Delillo's great though flawed "Underworld". At 187 pages it is dwarfed by both of them in length. But it packs a wallop, nevertheless.

The story centers on Izzy, forty-something WWII veteran, and the variously aged men who hang out at Bald Sam's diner in 1949 Brooklyn. They talk baseball, current events (the Bomb, Communism) and endlessly recycle the many ethnic (mostly Jewish) jokes, which have formed the fabric of their lives in the shadow of the Holocaust. Stephen Bloom gives us a good taste of post-war New York, much as Delillo does in "Underworld".

Izzy is not quite right in some unexplained sense as a result of the war. He has a 90% disability pension, which he supplements by playing his concertina in the streets. But we soon learn in bits and pieces that what really haunts Izzy isn't the war but a Pogrom in 1919 back in his hometown in Poland. During this pogrom, Izzy's father is brutally murdered, so bloodied that Izzy doesn't recognize his father's corpse when he first sees it.

The foregoing is undeniably grim and it is worth noting that Izzy never tells the jokes, which are peppered throughout, the novel. Nevertheless, the novel is often quite humorous. The jokes themselves are a commentary on the life struggles, both major and minor, of Izzy and his friends. The jokes point up the fact that while jokes are often told at someone's expense, they also serve to cushion life's blows.

The novel ends as it opens: life (and death) goes on.

In his notebooks, Albert Camus is truthful, intelligent, articulate, and absolutely never dull. He was the rarest of beings, especially for a man; within Camus, mind-truths and body-truths remained wedded all his days, and nights. Including the contradictions--those are married, too. The guy is irresistible. This volume of his carnets is as delicious as the ones that came before. No matter what your mood--happy, sad, bored (which is probably the same as sad)--the jottings and drafts of Camus' pulsings and articulations will take you where you are, lift and turn you, will change your life.

Nice job fuzz, now you just need to translate Hunter S. Thompson's work into French!

Why do we read books about books and their writers? Such books at the basic level provide a synopsis of the books under study; the books are usually about classics (for example, "The Book of Great Books", ed. W John Campbell, 1977 Metro Books). So, a young reader or someone who has recently found joy in reading will be grateful for books that help him choose his next book. Years later, the more matured reader will like to see what others think of the books he reads. So he looks to books about books at a higher level - those that provide some analysis or even just some extra information even though that may only be the literary equivalent of "The Making of" genre in films and the telemedia. At the apex, the writers of books about books write only about one book. Northrop Frye's "The Great Code" (1982 Harvest Book) a treatise with the Bible and literature as its theme and subject is a splendid example. In fact, Frye wrote not one but two books about the same book; his second was "Words with Power" (1990 Harvest Books).

"Novelists and Novels" ("N & N") is an in-between kind of book about books. The cynic may at once think that this is the kind of book that neither the novice nor mature reader will bother with. On the contrary, N and N is a beautiful bridge that crosses from the basic to the sublime. The friendship of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, an essence of Miguel Cervantes's epic, was analysed in just over a page. Dickens' various works were discussed in 15. N & N invites a mature and experienced reader who has read some, if not most or all, of the books discussed. It is also a book for the reader who has views of his own; and for him to see what sort of mirror N & N is to him. Would it be a clear and identical reflection or a misshapen one contorting the reader's image?

Bloom did not choose only the conventionally accepted "best" or "greatest" work of the writers under study (an exercise that is bound to be controversial anyway). When he wrote "Hesse" he wrote about "The Glass Bead Game", not "Steppenwolf" or "Siddhartha". His 21 pages of Kafka devoted only four to "The Trial", arguably Kafka's best known work. Bloom's bias shows through in many ways. It is obvious he lavishes Faulkner and patronizes Hemingway. It is a vast collection of essays on some of the finest writers and their works. In that regard, Philip Roth might have found himself a stranger in a strange land, but Bloom saved him that embarrassment with a splendid essay on Roth's "Zukerman Bound".

Finally, reverting to my earlier point, would I recommend this to the novice or young reader? Absolutely - one cannot dream of flying without gazing at the sky.

These thoughtful essays on the classics of Western literature will be thoroughly enjoyed by book lovers. I particularly enjoyed the ones on Emily Bronte and Kate Chopin. Bloom discusses diverse writers ranging from Cervantes to Stendahl to Amy Tan. Because Bloom has valuable views on fantasists and their place in contemporary literature, anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy should definitely read this book. One of the essays is on Ursula K. Le Guin.

Jack Bloom has been involved in South African politics for the past couple of decades. And he describes many of his experiences in that field. As a supporter of human rights, he has been an opponent of apartheid and an opponent of anti-Semitism.

Just as the Dreyfus trial opened the eyes of many people in France, the "World Conference against Racism" (that itself turned out to be a "festival of hate") in Durban in 2001 opened the eyes of many South Africans, including Bloom. As he says, the conference "made a big impact on me. It was a shock to see such raw hatred of Jews." It was "my own personal wakeup call" after which he did "whatever I could to counter the threatened repeat genocide against the Jews." The author also reminds us that such attacks on human rights may start with the Jews, but they do not end with the Jews.

I've read a huge number of books about Zionism, and I've noticed that many of them are simply propaganda against human rights. Bloom has "a simple test to ascertain the degree of prejudice of authors in this field." He simply checks for references to the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Since the Mufti was so central in precluding any Arab accommodation of liberated Jews in the Levant, it shows enormous prejudice to practically ignore him or whitewash his acts in a book about Zionism.

Bloom makes a number of other excellent points. Yes, there were some expulsions of Arabs by Israeli forces in 1948. But these "accounted for only 5 to 10 percent of the total Arab exodus, the result of ad-hoc military decisions during the war." Nowadays, some anti-Zionists try to pretend that there were "widespread massacres and a planned expulsion," but that, quite properly, "would have been dismissed as ridiculous at the time."

Some people claim that the Jews did not own much of the Levant prior to 1948. But Bloom explains that the reason is that most (over 70 percent) of it was State land, held by the British mandate (and prior to that by the Ottoman Sultinate). And he also reminds us that most of the roughly one million Jews in Arab lands were forced out starting in the 1940s (about 25,000 now remain), and that they lost a large amount of land themselves (which he estimates at five times as much land as all of Israel).

The author points out that UN resolution 242 is "endlessly misquoted by the media." That's true. And, as he says, "the propaganda onslaught against Israel has been so intense that the most basic facts are routinely disregarded even by many who should know better." He discusses the racism of Levantine Arab society, and the projection of many who accuse the Jews of genocide, racism, imperialism, and so on: these are "remarkably descriptive" of the behavior of those making such accusations.

Some folks complain that more Arabs than Jews have died in the latest Arab aggression against Israel. Of course, that is like complaining that more felons have died than policemen. I'd hate to be in a society in which all the police were slaughtered! Bloom explains that if one looks at noncombatant deaths, a clearer picture emerges: from September 2000 through May 2004, 280 Israeli noncombatant females were killed as opposed to 91 (noncombatant) Levantine Arab females.

Bloom mentions that there is an aspect in which the Arab slaughter of innocents is even worse than the German one of the 1940s. In the 1940s, there was relatively little open boasting of the deaths of civilians, while much of Arab society reveres suicide bombers. Meanwhile, some non-Arabs volunteer to be used as "human shields" against Israel, even though Bloom explains that the use of human shields is actually a war crime! Many in the media also support the aggression against Israel: the author mentions that "the Independent Group's Robert Fisk should have been fired long ago if facts and integrity meant anything in journalism." The word "fisking" now is used to mean "the selection of evidence solely in order to boost preconceptions and prejudices."

As for Muslim organizations, we've seen fatwas against Salman Rushdie. But no fatwa calling for the killing of bin Laden (or, I bet, for Arafat).

There is much more of great value in this book, but I'll finish this review with a couple of comments he makes that I liked. The first is from John Stuart Mill: "Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine year's lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert."

The other is from Shimon Peres. He told of a teacher who asked: "When does the night end and the day begin?" One student said it was when you could see a sheep and a goat and distinguish between them. Another student said it was when you could see an olive tree and a fig tree and see the difference between them. The teacher said it was when you could see a woman and a man (rich or poor, black or white) and tell the woman "you are my sister" and tell the man "you are my brother."

This is a superb book, and I highly recommend it.

Out Of Step , by Soth African liberal opposition politician Jack Bloom , consists of two sections -Life Story of a Politician outlines Jack Bloom's life and his career as an opposition politician opposing first the Apartheid National Party government and later the Marxist ANC government.
It gives quite a good account of liberal politics in South Africa from 1981 to today. He also deals with issues such as HIV/AIDS and morality , as well his frustration with the Marxist dogma force fed to Social Studies students at Wits University , by a coterie of mouldy , old-style , hard-line Communist professors and lecturers who still dominate the 'humanities' at that university , as with most universities around the world. He comments that he would rather have anyone in charge of government rather than the Social Studies Department at Wits University.
Outlining his student days at Wits University , he speaks of the 'dependancy theory' used as an explanation for Third world poverty , as well as the rantings about 'imperialism and colonialism'.
Bloom recalls : "My response was that there should be a free spirit of enquiry in all academic disciplines and it was not my fault that the subjects I chose were dominated by an intense political correctness. Instead of a well-rounded exposure in two years of Industrial Psychology , I recieved instead the equivalent of Marxism I and II"
Having myself attended courses in the Social Studies at Wits , I can vouch for the truth in what Bloom says.
There is indeed not a free enquiry at this university but an indoctrination in doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist dogma , that would be identical to that approved by the Soviet government prior to Gorbachev's refoprm process that began in 1985 , from the reverential quotes of Lenin to the worship of Stalinist icons like Antonio Gramsci.
The most fascinating part of the book is Part 2 'Politics and Religion in a World of War' , which tackles the new anti-Semitism in the form of hysterical and venomous anti-Zionism , Islamic intolerance and persecution of minorities-dhimmnitude , the war on terror and ultimately the clash of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic-Marxist Axis.
The first chapter in this section deals with the Conference Against Racism in Durban , in the apt description of Professor Irwin Cotler " The conference against racism that became a racist conference".
At this hideous anti-Israel hate fest , the Left demonstrated their common cause with Radical Islam ,
by embracing hateful anti-Zionist propaganda , and feverishly supporting the genocidal Program against Israel.

This evil festival of terror and hate in Durban 2001 , was the lowest point in human history , since the Nazi holocaust , and may a stain of shame always stay by the names of those who organized and facilitated this event. It is shocking to read what actually transpired at this event where anti-Semitic literature like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion where sold , terrorism against Israeli women and children where glorified and the dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the regimes of Iran , Syria, North Korea , Zimbabwe , Cuba , Iran and Venezuela where lauded. Groups who are genuinely opressed such as the Tibetans , Kurds , Berbers and Nilotic Blacks of South Sudan were totally dismissed , and attacks on Jews and Israel were the central feature.
In an e mail sent to editor of the Sunday Independent , John Battersby , one of South Africa's numerous leftwing ideologue elite and an Israel-basher of note , Bloom in protesting the media's prejudice and unbalanced reporting wrote : 'It appears to me that Jews are fair game for anything these days . and what better than to use other Jews (most of whom are half-Jews , atheists , married out of the faith or otherwise estranged from the general community , hence the odd term of "Jewish descent".) as the battering ram. This is sadly an old syndrome. Tibet can be brutally occupied , millions can die in Sudan , the indigenopus Berbers are opressed in North Africa by Arab imperialists , thousands die in Kashmir and south Phillipines and so on , but only Jews are picked on.There are 22 Arab states with Islam as state religion , supressing all manner of indigenous nationalities and other religions , but it is only the Jewish state , which is ceaselessly criticised for defebding itself against enemies who openly deny her right to exist"
Like Alan Dershowitz , Bloom outlines how the Palestinian strategy of deliberately targeting Israeli women , children and the elderly cannot be compared to the Israeli policy of strictly targeting combatants , even though Arab civillians may sometimes be killed in the crossfire, often because they are deliberately used as human shields by the Palestinian terrorists. How spurious is the repetition of statistics that more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the recent war , when an analysis of the facts reveals that the majority of Arabs killed and injured have been armed combatants and the number of Israeli women and children killed and injured is well in excess of the number of Palestinian women and children killed and injured-as many as three times more according to one study.
He refers to the appaling media double standards , illustrated by never condemmning or even reporting the miriad of cases where Israeli women and children have been shot in cold-blood by Arab terrorists.
In 2004 a pregnant Jewish mother and her four terrified small daughters where shot dead at point blank range one by one , by the type of Arab terrorists that Kushner et al admire.
A ten-month-old Jewish baby, Shalhevet Pass, was shot in her father's arms by an Arab sniper in 2001.
That same year, two boys, four- and five-years old, where shot dead together with their mother as she read them a bedtime story, in a left-wing kibbutz, by Arab terrorists.
Bloom aptly quotes pro-Israel Christian Lebanese activist Brigitte Gabriel " Once upon a time there was a special place in the lower depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimised as Palestinian 'armed struggle'. However , once such behaviour is legitimised against Israel , it is legitimnised everywhere in the world , constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of God"
Bloom also highlights the peril of international terror and defends the strong stand taken by President Bush against terror , including the removal of Saddam Hussein which was greeted by such mindless hysteria across the world .Bloom outlines always the hypocrisy of the Islamic-Left Axis.
No aspect of the Middle East conflict , and the World War IV we are now experiencing , escapes Bloom';s analysis, including the shameful and hypocritical animus against Israel and the West , that is the dominant view in SA , in government ,the media , academia and civil society.
He takes on 'anti-Jewish Jews' who find their identity in hatred of Israel and her people and support for Arab terror.He speaks of the anti-Israel campagn of hate by hard-core Stalinist Cabinet Minister Ronnie Kasrils. Kasrils is clearly obsessed with a relentless hatred against Israel and her people
His positions attempt to delegitimize Israel's very existance , as well as being an apologist for Arab terror against Jews in Israel , lacking any compassion for Jewish women and children murdered by the Palestinian terrorists in Israel.
Out Of Step raises many questions. Why do Leftists wildly denounce the only democracy in the Middle East, simultaneously siding with some of the world's worst dictatorships? And why do Left-wing ideologues, if they are so opposed to imperialism, interpret the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland as an act of colonialism.?


Bloom compares the truly multi-cultural spread and vibrant democracy of Israel to the true Apartheid practised in Islamic States in Arab countries , which is known as dhimmnitude , outlining the shocking reality and history of dhimmnitude , how Islamic societies have persecuted Jews and Chrisitians and still do today.

This book has not been well received by South Africa's leftwing establishment but perhaps this says more about the hard Left's refusal to engage other views , or to confront it's own prejudices , rather than anything about the book itself.

When I say the word, "WONDERFUL", I mean that this book captures all of Ms. Longo-Bloom's life events, hardships and trials of living with her illness in the most captivating manner. However, it even offers humor throughout to show just how some hurdles were dealt with. Most of all, Ms. Longo-Bloom's book gave me the most incredible message of hope for my future.
As far as this book being "INFORMATIVE" as well, it taught me about mental illness stigmas and all different types of methods of handeling my illness. Most of all, it taught me to accept my illness and not to be ashamed of it or run from it any longer. I thought this book was EXCELLENT AND SO HELPFUL!!!

This book was an amazing story of one person's struggle to live with and finally conquer their battle with mental illness, mostly depression. It was so interesting to read her true to life experiences and how difficult it is to live w/depression. I admire her for her honesty and her determination to get well. I think a lot of people can identify with this well-written, serious and even humorous at times, book. I know I did.