Bloom Books

It was 4 scandolous friends that formed a paper chase pact, Keisha,Desiree,Pam,and Tasha, who look for male victims with that paper and stick em up. Hurt you or Kill you it's up to you how you act at that moment. One start falling in love and having doubts about the pact, will she stop her dirt and fall for the love from New York? or Will she keep riding high w/her girls through the Dirty Dirt?? J.M. Benjamin this was my first read and it won't be my last, thanks for bringing out the dirty South. Excellent Read.

This book is a page turner from start to finish! This is my first book by J.M Benjamin and he did his thing! Keep up the good work my dude!

Keisha, Trisha, Tasha and Teefa were all childhood friends who made a pact to get that money. Each girl suffered their own trauma by a man and decide to use what they got to get it all. Becoming the grimest stick up girls they drain every heavy weight in the game in the dirty south as well as out of towners regardless if it leads to blood shed. But what happens when you have the perfect mark ready and but one of the girls falls for him?

This novel was a great read. Although I was not happy with the ending, I enjoyed the book. It was filled with great sex, drama, and it was just raw! I will say that it is a definite must read!

Down in the Dirty by J.M Benjamin is full of grime, grit and backstabbing like never seen before. This is a tale of four childhood friends who grow up scheming and conniving their ways into men's' unsuspecting hearts, minds and wallets. Keisha, Desiree, Tasha and Pam stay true to the old line "use what you got to get what you want". These divas have no standards and will kill if need be.

Styles and Stacks are new to "The Dirty", and one night in the club they come face-to-face with these devious beauties. Trying hard to pick them up and see what they are about, the ladies let them know they cannot be handled like other southern belles. Scheming and plotting on the dynamic duo has these ladies foaming at the mouth, but the tables turn when Desiree falls head-over-heels for Stacks. In the midst of all this chaos can love be found? Will Styles and Stacks turn the tables on these divas? What happens in "The Dirty" stays in the Dirty!

None of the ladies are looking for love until one is hit with the love bug and falls short on setting up the sting for the next target. Will the girls stick together? Or will they feel betrayed? Their motto is "one for all and all for one", so while these poor men come down south to set up shop they are about to get more than they bargained for.

I recommend Down in the Dirty to all street lit readers; this fast-paced drama will have you up all night trying to solve the ending. This is a must read.

Reviewed by: Cheryl H
APOOO BookClub

Keisha, Desiree, and sisters Tasha and Pam have been friends for long time. Each has had issues with men where they were mistreated and now it's payback time. This crew's main objective is to have the ballas fall for them gaining the trust of unsuspecting men. They pick their prey by how the guys floss then as a team the girls rob them and will kill if they have to.

At a club one night the girls run into potential victims brothers Stacks and Styles with their friend Don. Keisha and her crew see money written all over these guys and begin to plot their next robbery.

Things don't go as they planned when Desiree falls hard for Stacks. Should she foil the plot for the love of her life or does she ride along with her girls and maintain loyal to her friends???

Author JM Benjamin did an excellent job with this book. His portrayal of these cold hard as nails girls was very real. Lots of twists and surprises and what a great ending...I wouldn't change a thing...after all everything can't be so perfect...someone has to pay the price!

Locksie

ARC Book Club Inc.

I received the book in a timely manner. The book was in the
condition advertised.

A friend of mine highly recommended this book, and since I had already read "Eight Cousins" (which I didn't particularly care for, at the time,) I decided to give "Rose in Bloom" a try. What a pleasant surprise! I adored it so much that after reading it, I went back and re-read "Eight Cousins." (I would warn readers that while the plot isn't that complicated, don't read this book until you've read "Eight Cousins." Knowing the characters from the first book makes the sequel so much more enjoyable.)

Returning to America after two years of absence, Rose soon discovers that a lot has changed while she was away. Not only is 19 year old Rose now old enough to inherit her parents' money, but she's also at a marriageable age. What's a young, rich and pretty girl to do? Of course her guardian, Uncle Alec, is there to give advice or lend a listening ear. And, of course, her boy cousins have turned into young men. The bookworm, Mac, still isn't "polite and sensible like Archie, nor gay and handsome like Prince Charlie, nor neat and obliging like Steve, nor amusing like the `Brats,' nor confiding and affectionate like little Jamie," but nevertheless, I like him the best. He is sensible and intelligent, unlike Cousin Charlie, who is as good looking and charming as he is reckless. Rose tries to improve Charlie's morals and Mac's manners; all while learning what it means to live a wise and honorable life.

This is a delightful book! It made me smile, laugh, cry and fall in love. More than that, it inspired me, as I think it should all young women, to live life to the best of my ability. As Louisa May Alcott states in her preface: "Rose is not designed for a model girl, and the sequel was simply written in fulfillment of a promise, hoping to afford some amusement, and perhaps here and there a helpful hint, to other roses getting ready to bloom."

The book arrived my home on time. Same as the estimated arrival date when I bought it. Also, the book was perfectly protected. Nothing was damaged during transportation. I am really glad with it. For sure, I will buy something through Amazon in the future!

Eight Cousins This novel is a sequel to a very nice book for young people.This book is a well written 19th century romance by a classic author.Even with some tragedy , it is still artificially sweet by literary realism standards of today. The romance is marred by the modern genetics of recessive trait doubling in which, practically, first cousins shouldn't marry and have a family. The romance is nice in which the geek wins out by becoming a doctor and a poet.

If Eight Couisins was great, Rose In Bloom is classic! I left the child-hood friends in great anticipation of meeting them again as adults. At the same time, however, I felt an ominous sense of foreboding. . . Would Charlie and Mac ruin their friendship in vieing for their sweet cousin's hand? I could not imagine Mac striving with anyone over anything. So . . . what then? Would the romantic and debonair Charlie simply sweep Rose off her feet, while Mac stands in the background and sighs with dissapiontment? No. That didn't seem to fit, either. As it turned out, the good and noble Mac did win Rose's heart over his hansome and undiciplined cousin. I - like Rose - first fell in love with "the Prince". And like her, I came to see, through tragic circumstances, what true love really means. . . finding someone you can look up to, instead of lift up.

I received this as a birthday gift and love it! I'm just a little surprised at the selection that made it to the 101 shows included in the book. No Rent? Really??? Regardless of your opinion on the show, it is surely one that should make it on a list of 101 greatest shows..

I ordered this book as a birthday present for my boyfreind because he is really big into musical theater. I placed the order late Thursday afternoon and the UPS man delivered the book Friday evening, it was the fastest service I've ever experienced.
Not only does the book have tons of colorful, glossy pictures but it's packed with quite a bit of commentary and information. He loved it! Great product, I reccomend it for anyone who is a fan of musicals.

Whenever I encounter a new version of a book, my primary concern is "what has changed?" Included in the hardcover, but not seen in this edition were "A Connecticut Yankee," "Destry Rides Again," "Dubarry was a Lady," "George White's Scandals...," "Full Monty," and "Les Miserables." Included in this paperback version (not in the hardcover) are "Avenue Q," "Drowsy Chaperone," "Grease," "Grey Gardens," "Sunday in the Park with George," and "Wicked." Having seen each of these musicals, I cannot believe that anyone of an educated opinion finds "Grease" to be more artistically significant than "Les Miserables." Further, while "Grey Gardens" featured one sensational performance, it was far from a peak achievement as a musical. I find the need to own both editions. People who don't may prefer this more conveniently sized paperback with its updated photos and inclusion of more recent popular Broadway artists.

While praising this book's really extraordinary collection of rare photographs, many of the Amazon reviewers seem hung up on the selection of shows. One almost feels that they expect books to reflect their personal taste, whereas books naturally reflect the taste of their authors. In fact, the authors have been rather conservative in what to include. Imagine if the choice of titles were as madcap as some of their photo captions. The 101 Greatest Shows might then have included Portofino, Buttrio Square, or Illya, Darling. There really isn't a lot of wiggle room in the first 101--but how about a second volume? Then there would really be questionable inclusions, bones of contention, readers in quandary. I'm dying to see two pages of stills from The Vamp.

If you saw Dori Berinstein's illuminating 2007 documentary, Show Business - The Road to Broadway, you got close to an all-access peek into the 2003-2004 Broadway theater scene that gives you a sense of the chaos, diligence, exhaustion, and luck that goes into mounting a musical. Two of the four shows spotlighted, "Avenue Q" and "Wicked" are still running as of this date, and unsurprisingly, they are included in the list here. The other two, "Taboo" and "Caroline, or Change", did not fare as well, at least at the box office, and such is the fate of most efforts trying to make it to the Great White Way. Co-authors Ken Bloom (also a Broadway musical performer) and Frank Vlastnik have compiled an eminently entertaining coffee-table book describing what they consider the 101 greatest musical productions staged on Broadway. They seem to have a thing for such lists because last year, they compiled the genuinely addictive Sitcoms: The 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time.

Both books share the co-authors' enthusiasm for their topics. Most such entertainment reference books stick with mainly the facts of the productions, but Bloom and Vlastnik go beyond the relevant statistics about each show and inject plenty of behind-the-scenes information along with a surprisingly sharp level of critical commentary on how justified the legacy are of these productions. The challenge of this tome, however, is that most of us have not seen the original-run productions discussed and can't really provide a personal response to the co-authors' collective viewpoint. For me, among the 101 shows, I have only seen "Sweeney Todd", "Dreamgirls", "Avenue Q" and "The Drowsy Chaperone" during their original runs. At the same time, the co-authors give you a palpable sense of what probably were incandescent performances onstage - Fred Astaire in "The Band Wagon", Vivienne Segal in "Pal Joey", Gertrude Lawrence in "The King and I", Ethel Merman in "Gypsy", Julie Andrews in "My Fair Lady", Gwen Verdon in "Sweet Charity", Michael Crawford in "The Phantom of the Opera".

The rarely seen black-and-white and color photos make this an indispensable record of these lightning-in-the-bottle shows. There are sidebars for particularly noteworthy performers and other creative dynamos behind the curtain. Similar to the approach taken with "Sitcoms", the co-authors devote special pages to infamous flops, guilty pleasures, great scores from so-so shows, star turns that have become mythic, film stars who tried to conquer Broadway, and even shows with T&A. There are opening remembrances from luminaries like Angela Lansbury ("Mame") and Chita Rivera ("West Side Story") and an introduction carried over from the 2004 edition by the late Jerry Orbach ("Promises, Promises"). Naturally, some shows you would expect to be included are not, arguable candidates such as "Rent", "Les Misérables", "The Producers" and "Hairspray". Moreover, the one flaw with the approach here is the somewhat arbitrary exclusion of musicals whose scores were created for another project. That's why you won't see long-running shows like "42nd Street", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "Mamma Mia!", and "The Lion King" in the book. Regardless, this book is a fine document for any musical theater aficionado with a penchant for breaking out into a show tune.

Like the other great American playwright Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams was not afraid of creating controversy through his work. Touching on themes of money, social status, and sexuality, Williams presents the dark side of each character. While it is hard to like any character, it is difficult not to be compelled by them.

Brick Pollitt is the favored son. Failing to recover from the death of his best friend and fight the demons that come with booze, he has no desire to gain the good graces of his dying father and inherit his wealth. His brother Gooper and his wife Mae, that "monster of fertility", are engaged in a competition for the father's favor. But even nearing a sixth child, they can not measure up to Brick. The climax comes as Big Daddy and Brick attempt to reach the resolution that Brick has no desire to attain. Accusations of homosexuality and an inability to let go of his days as an athlete are among the reasons that Big Daddy suggests for Brick's inability to settle down and expand his family. Yet the resolution is not Brick's choice.

The explosion at the end is hardly as stinging as the process of getting to the conclusion. The ultimate question is whether the cat (Margaret) will choose to stay on the hot tin roof or seek refuge. The fast paced drama moves at an unflinching pace that will make readers anticipate the direction of each page. It may be difficult for some readers to disengage from this drama.

I believe Tennesee Williams is the most versatile modern playwright who truly exemplifies the dysfuctionality of family morals. The Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof are indeed his masterpieces. I found Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to be my most favorite. The characters were memorable (who can forget Margaret "aka Maggie The Cat," Brick, Big Daddy, and Big Mama?) and the lines truly classic ("What's the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can..."). Also, just like Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof touched upon subjects that were controversial then and just as controversial now (homosexuality, child molestation, prostitution, etc.), which makes Tenesee William's works highly relevent. His plays age well with time. Not to mention that there have also been INCREDIBLE movie adaptations of all of his famous plays. After you read Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, or Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, watch the movie as well. There is no other modern playwright (except Oscar Wild and Anthony Wilson)whose plays will truly have a place in my heart for years to come.

This play is the usual extreme histrionics that I have come to expect from Tennessee Williams. In this book set on a Southern Plantation we have the obligatory hysterical woman, an alcoholic and a homophobe. After a while one cannot help but get the impression that Mr. William's works all consisted of the same stock, cardboard characters and he only changed the settings and their names.I do give this book 5 stars because I have always liked Elizabeth Taylor who starred in the movie of this play although she is in fact a Real Life Serial Monogamist as the Sociologist would refer to her .

Tennessee Williams was a genius. This play runs the full spectrum of human emotion-desire, frustration, depression, denial, grief, longing,need, inadequacy. Its all laid right out in shocking bursts of deep naked revelation. This is my favorite play of all time.

Only Williams could have gotten away with naming his hero "Brick," as names were always his strong suit. He found comfort in names, and a wild exotic beauty, and even in his last faltering years was usually able to pull a final name out of his hat, something perfect. I remember seeing CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF on stage, with Elizabeth Ashley, some time before I read the play, so naturally my experience of the text is colored by Ashley's sizzling interpretation of Maggie the Cat, all hisses and feral screams. She was so strong I can barely remember who played Brick or Big Daddy in that production. I think it was Keir Dullea from DAVID AND LISA. Maybe Big Daddy was the man from the MUNSTERS TV show. What we, the audience, cared about was if Maggie was going to get her wway and triumph over all the mendacity and the "no neck monsters" that were swarming the plantation.

Maggie gets angry, but mostly we value her for her tenderness. Even when she knows her husband has lost his heart over a long-gone teammate, and that he's probably gay, she never gives up the ship. She knows that without her in his corner 100 per cent, he'll give up, drown in his own sorrows. He needs her to kick his ass and bring him back to the land of the awake. She wasn't going to be an enabler, she would always discourage him from drinking from the time he got up in the morning till he passed out at night, his crutches tangled up in his boxer shorts. For Brick, drinking is a way out of his tortured memories of Skipper, the boy he loved in high school and college. Taking a drink is "like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on and all of a sudden, there's peace." Secretly the family has a plan to ship his butt off to Rainbow Hill, sort of a Betty Ford Clinic without the mercy.

We love Maggie trying to semaphor the truth into his thick skull by screaming, "Skipper is dead but I'm alive! Maggie the Cat is alive!"

this is one of the best books I've read. Clayton Taggart was such a romantic guy, never giving up on the one he loves. Jackie Fontaine was one tough girl. she alomost gave up but love kept her going. this is a really great book and really suggest it if you are into romance and the love of God.

One of the best books that I have ever read! A definite page turner. There was so much that happened and so many suprises. One of Lori Wick's best! I recommend this to anyone.

Lori Wick has done it again with her deep and romantic tale of Jackie Fontaine and Clay Taggart. Jackie took a little getting used to, but who couldn't but instantly fall in love with Clay? This book also helped me learn a great lesson: if you have faith, the Lord will provide for you. And if you have faith, you will find eternal happiness and love with someone wonderful. Huzzah for Lori Wick and her amazing characters!!!!!

This is my first book, but definitely not my last, of Lori Wick's that I have read. How adorable and beautiful this novel is. A valuable lesson in this is to be learned and that is that we can make it through any struggle we have with the Lord's help and ONLY with the Lord's help. How beautiful and marvelous this novel is. I gave it 4-stars because I had a difficult time staying awake at several points throughout the book. But, great read overall.

This book is definitely one of my favorite Lori Wick books. It seems to be "deeper" than the rest. It is the story of the Fontaine family and Clayton Taggart, set in the 1870's in Colorado. "Where The Wild Rose Blooms" focuses on the romance between Clayton and Jackie, one of the Fontaine girls. I particularly liked the characters in this book. They were certainly not perfect (especially Jackie) and seemed much more believable in their flaws than some of Lori's other characters. Because of the "believability" and development of her characters, we really enjoyed the romance a lot more and felt very rewarded when it happened-even though we knew it was coming. This is a nice, fun, and sometimes thought-provoking read that you'll enjoy.

I am a cinema person, but I do love Eugene O'Neill's work, mainly because there has been 3 film adaptations of his work, and all 3 have been marvelous. This is arguably his greatest play, a marathon of sadness, despair, and disillusionment. I loved how a reviewer said that this play couldn't be written today, as people think we're so cool and cynical that there is no earnestness and sincerity anymore. I agree with that to some degree, but after 20 years or so of smug detachment (similar to the Larry Slade character, who has placed himself, like he says, in philosophical detachment, content to watch the cannibals do their death dance, even though Larry still feels something), we might be in line for some real sincerity. I hope. Is that just a pipe dream?

I have to object, though, to the cover. It has a cute little ice truck on it, giving an erroneous impression that this play is about Mr. Ice and his cute little truck. Hopefully, all those who buy this play will know what they are in for. It isn't a cute tale about an iceman, for sure. It's one of the greatest American plays ever written.

Being a person who doesn't read a ton of plays, I enjoyed Iceman very much. Focusing around a bar full of broken dreams and dreamers in Manhattan, O'Neill's dark classic tells a story that is really present in most people - that of living off of dreams but never following them with actions.

Interestingly, though, the story goes without resolution in a clear way, allowing the readers (or viewers) to decide for themselves whether the characters "pipe dreams," and their own, are worth persuing, or simply worth dreaming about.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this play is the cast or characters. Ranging from war veterans to anarchists to travelling salesmen, an eclectic cast to find in the same room at any time, it is fascinating to watch each and every characters sets of values completely break on from act I to act IV. This is particularly relevent in regards to the anarchist tramp, Hugo, and his desire to drink wine under the willow trees.

The dreams (and illusions) of the very wretched of the earth are different from those of you and I. Or are they? This is the true subject matter of Eugene O'Neill fine play. Very little action, lots of drinking, lots of dreaming, lots philosophizing by the bedraggled cast of characters in a low down gin mill to boot do not sound like the makings of a great American play. But they are. The narrowly focused story line turns into a microcosm of the underside of American society in the early part of the 20th century. These are not the `robber barons' of historic fame but the jetsam of the early stages of industrial society. These are the ones that cannot cope, for one reason or another, with the new ways and seek solace and comfort in the back streets of urban society. For lack of a better word these are what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat. Not Jean Genet's hardened rough and ready sailors, pimps and male prostitutes but on the margins nevertheless. In neither case will they will not make the revolution. But the have their dreams too and O'Neill is there to chronicle them.

Between shots of whiskey the denizens of this small world exhibit all the emotions, contradictions, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of life that the rest of us `normals' have to face. Except, for dramatic effect, these flophouse devotees get their noses rubbed in it by one Harry Hickey- traveling salesman and sport- formerly chief denizen of the `resort' who now has gotten `religion' and wants to spread his newfound `glad tidings'. Spare us from the Hickeys of the world-a little dreaminess and a couple of illusions never hurt anyone. Did they? Although in O'Neill's hands the dialogue is a little stilted and the characters are a little stereotyped (the seemingly obligatory house philosopher, renegade anarchist, token immigrant, day workers, runaway with a hidden past, Irish cop and floosies) and wooden the point he is trying to make gets across just fine. This is a must read on your American drama list.

[Cue music]
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows your name . . .
[Music fades]

O'Neil's play, "The Iceman Cometh" is a 1912 version of "Cheers", that is if Sam was a bitter old agoraphobic, Norm and Cliff were disgraced military officers, Carla and Rebecca were prostitutes, Woody was a pimp, Frasier was a disenchanted former anarchist, and the bar was a dark, destitute hellhole in the slums of Manhattan where drunks go to wallow in their own self-pity. Ok, perhaps it's the antithesis of "Cheers". However, O'Neil performs a brilliant job in delivering a potent tale of a cast of characters and their broken dreams and hopes.

Throughout the play, O'Neil explores the idea of "pipe dreams" and their role in providing hope to an otherwise miserable life. Although these pipe dreams will never be fulfilled and the dreamers know it, it at least provides some rationale for their existence. The drunks are most happy when deluding themselves into believing their pipe dreams. Only when they are forced to confront these and break their own dreams are they at their most miserable and depressed. Indeed, the one who forces the patrons of the bar to confront their pipe dreams, Hickey, is the most hated and reviled, for he forces them to strip bare their lives and realize their own cesspool of existence.

The theme of death pervades throughout the play. Larry, the grand philosopher, is the one who preaches the most about death. Yet, he still hangs on to life, albeit by drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey. When Hickey comes, he attempts to deliver the patrons from their miserable lives to achieve a fleeting resurrection, yet his efforts are futile, as the patrons soon return to their zombie-like drunken stupor. Hickey, who himself has a dark secret, is viewed as the Grim Reaper. The bar, itself, is referred to as a morgue and mausoleum, and for good measure, as the drunks there are dead inside and merely waiting to die.
"The Iceman Cometh" is a depressing look at the wasted lives of alcoholics and their miserable pipe dreams. And although it is set nearly a century ago, the same issues prevail today. This is a great little play to read and dissect.

O'Neill's intense play, The Iceman Cometh, is a character-driven philosophical rumination upon the entwined nature of hope and self-deception. To participate in forgetfulness, it seems, we must be willing to indulge our lies and those of our pals. If we do this perhaps we can enjoy the moment with a laugh, a tease, and another free drink: some of the ways of reaching deep into ourselves and thumbing our noses at the rage and guilt that fuel us...and perhaps the only way to stay sane.

The characters are memorable, archetypes abound: we have the old philosopher and his eager student (who reminds Hicky so much of himself), the general, the captain, the white/black gambler, the pimp, the revolutionary, the whore, Jimmy Tomorrow, and that last curse of Pandora's box, Hope; in this case Harry Hope. These deadbeats and washouts live off of Hope--literally--without his generosity we couldn't imagine them lasting long, out in the cold. We're continously brought back to love and freedom: why does love always prevent freedom here?

All the characters are hopelessly stuck, having given up on life completely and existing only by grace of their pipe dreams--the various ways they've conjured up past or future glory, finding meaning anywhere but here, anytime but now. Good naturedly, they tease each other but each knows that his existence continues only by virtue of his fellow drunks.

Once a year they are treated to the attentions and generosity of their wayward friend, Hicky, an always-on-the-move salesman and born psychologist gifted with the ability to size a person up, play to his vanities, and procure a sale as gratitude. Hicky indulges himself in this periodical binge, eager and happy to become what he really is, a lover of drinks and drunkenness, teases and jokes. But this year, as Hope turns old, something is amiss. Hicky's late and when he finally shows up he seems a good natured, if bad mannered, Messiah convinced it's his duty to wake his old pals to reality. He wants them to admit and then relinquish their lies and pipe dreams. With a wink he jabs them in the heart, seeing right through all their clever dreams. If they'll do what he's done, as he commands, then they'll enjoy the peace and contentment that he's found on the other side of lies and drunkenness. Hicky's motivations are mysterious but we're given more and more clues to the awful deed that sparked his transformation into the sober minded, lie eschewing prophet that he's become. We also learn that behind his peace and contentment is a sort of mad dog rage and self repudiation that allows him to see through everyone and everything, including his own sorry self. Though he wants nothing more than to help, at the end he realizes his mistake as all his friends are now unhappy and incapable of becoming drunk, so he permits his pals to write him off and return to their drunken pipe dreams.

As an exercise for the imagination, it's interesting to replace Hicky with Nietzsche (Theo-dore Hick-Man from Hick-town, son of a minister), his all loving, all forgiving wife with God (Evelyn, Elevyn, Y-elevn?, J.C.), the world renouncing philosopher who awaits death with Schopenhauer, and Hope with, well, hope. Doing so makes The Iceman Cometh an especially Nietzschean play, something like... Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The film with Lee Marvin as Hicky is quite good, now I'd like to see the Kevin Spacey version.

I am not going to review the famous poem. Such a review, from an Amazon customer, would be unnecessary and preposterous. (It astonishes me so few of my fellow reviewers have realized this). This is a review of the selection of texts this Norton Critical Edition has annexed to the poem.

The editor of this book has (a little lazily, perhaps) simply concertinaed Eliot's sources and a sampling of critical essays into 280 pages. The reader receives little to no editorial guidance from Michael North. But the approach is simple and it works. If you are determined to understand Eliot's poem, then all the pieces of the exegetical puzzle are here, in one convenient volume, to be pieced together. That piecing together, let me emphasize, is not done for you. But then, I wonder if any other approach to Eliot's poem is possible.

I have given the book four stars instead of five for the inclusion and the placement of the rather long-winded essays on the publication history. What passages, words, punctuation marks Pound chose to excise (de-exise and re-excise) and when, and where, and even in what colour pencil does little (I did not say nothing) to enrich our understanding of the poem. There should have been less of this, and it should not have preceded the more illuminating and explanatory critical reviews. The result is that the reader is overwhelmed with the minutiae of Pound's twiddling and tuning before everything has been done to help the reader understand the already sufficiently knotty FINISHED poem.

In conclusion, I found this book to be imperfect, but helpful.

Recently in this space I reviewed Allen Ginsberg's modern 'beat' classic Howl. I have in the past written admiringly of the metaphysical poet John Donne and of my hero revolutionary Cromwellian Commonwealth political activist/poet John Milton of Paradise Lost fame. All poets in their ways different but held together by one common bond-the ability to sense the beauty hidden in the English language and to put it in symbolic form. Eliot is in that company. To a great extent, at least in the modern era, T.S. Eliot's little poem is the one that permits all following poets including Ginsberg to explore and explode the possibilities of the language. No bad for a bank clerk, right?

I remember first reading, halteringly, Wasteland in high school straight up without notes. We spent a lot of time on the arcane references Eliot sprinkled throughout the poem and we collectively had a project to dig out all the unfamilar symbols buried in the lines of the poem. That, my friends, was serious work. In fact one classmate argued that the Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail was child's paly by comparison. We definitely could have used the copious notes provided here to speak nothing of the various critical interpretations presented. Well done. With the availability of this reference work do not, I repeat, do not fly solo with the Wasteland. It is too important a poem of the modern age to lose its meaning for lack of knowledge of some arcane references.

I'm not really qualified to review TS Eliot. First of all, I couldn't be impartial---I made a special trip while in Somerset to visit the man's grave (actually a little plaque). Secondly, the corpus of his work represents one of the greatest pinnacles of the English language. I'll let Oxford dons review Waste Land.
This book of essays, however, was extremely helpful to me as I studied this poem, this monument to our decaying culture. I really think that it was instrumental in allowing me to reach a certain level of understanding, a level of comfort, with one of the most dense poems in English. However, it's not cheap, and no easy read in itself. You have to want it!
If you are serious about your Eliot, pull out the VISA and go to town. If you are just passing through, your local library has a copy you could check out before spending the money.

I read The Waste Land and find that most poetry that comes after it is self-indulgent, limpid nonsense. The Beats? Who are they? Rubbish, all of it. Philip Larkin? Wimpish nonsense. But TSE and Ezra Pound, there you have the meaning and message of modern poetry. Since them and then, poetry has gone downhill into the personal, the confessional, the onanistic. Poetry MUST be difficult, not accessible, not transparent and easily understood after one reading.

Norton Critcal did it right with this edition. With enough essays and criticism to help anyone get a deeper understanding of Elliot's poem, this edition is a must have. Rainey's essay on the publishing of the poem is particulary interesting.

This was Honoré de Balzac's last great novel. Within a few more years, he would be dead of overwork. His last great scheme -- the marriage with the Polish Countess of his dreams -- finally came off, but poor Eveline Hanska had nothing on her hands but a ruined hulk of a man who had given everything for his art and had little left to give her.

COUSIN BETTE is about "love in all the wrong places," to quote a popular country & western song. Baron Hulot d'Ervy is a former Napoleonic officer who now serves as an official in the Ministry of War. But mostly, he serves Cupid. At the start of the novel, his faithful wife Adeline is besieged by a rival philanderer who tries to make a play for her, even as the Baron is getting dumped by his current mistress Josepha -- who was taken away from him by none other than the Célestin Crevel who is currently besieging his wife.

Two very important things occur that set in motion a diabolical scheme for revenge on the part of a poor old-maid cousin living with the Hulots, one Lisbeth Fischer. She has a protegé in a young Polish count named Wenceslas Steinbock who has shown some talent as a sculptor. Lisbeth has him practically caged up in his studio because she believes that (1) he has talent and (2) he might one day come to like her, though she is by far the older of the two. When Hortense, Baron Hulot's daughter, learns of Steinbock's existence, she becomes intrigued and takes some trouble to locate him, throwing a wrench into Lisbeth's plans when they fall in love with each other.

Enter Valerie Marneffe, Balzac's most accomplished villain. A young housewife married to a complaisant older husband, she makes a play for Hulot, who sets her up as his mistress. But Valerie's ambitions in love are truly Napoleonic: she also snares Crevel, Steinbock, and a returning Brazilian ex-lover of hers called Montes de Montejanos. And probably a couple dozen more unnamed co-conspirators. Living in Valerie's house as her housekeeper, advisor, and mother confessor is none other than Lisbeth Fischer.

When Valerie becomes pregnant, the real fun begins. She brazenly tells each lover that he is the father of the child, and each commits a princely sum for an annuity. (As in most Balzac novels, the trail of the money is fascinating to follow.)

The over-leveraged Hulot is the first to fall. Even before meeting up with Mme Marneffe, he was teetering on the edge of bankrupty. he falls so hard that he has to go into hiding, even from his family. Curiously, Adeline actually manages to make a comeback in a small way, though she is apparently in the beginning stages of Parkinson's Disease.

Marneffe's transgressions are now beginning to be talked about in society, and finally they catch up with her. I don't want to spoil the story for anyone, but suffice it to say that not even Herod had a worse come-uppance than Valerie and her husband.

And Lisbeth Fischer? She, too, is ultimately foiled: First, her desired beau, Field Marshal Hulot, commits suicide; and second, she herself sickens and dies, but without anyone ever discovering her treachery to the family.

I have read COUSIN BETTE twice now, and it only grows better on re-reading. This is one of the handful of Balzac novels that stands at the pinnacle of literary greatness. The novel's vision of the ruin of great families from indiscriminate womanizing is almost cosmic.

Balzac is often cited as the father of realism and I would have to agree, though I think Flaubert and Tolstoy took the form to new heights. This immensely rich novel begins with a devastating scene of psychological rape; M. Crevel has entered the home of the Baron Hulot and he has ransomed his wife for having stolen his former mistress. This novel exposes the hollowness of the post-revolution French bourgeoisie, as nearly all of the characters are despicably charlatans and libertines whose only interests are sex and money. This is a wonderfully entertaining read, it is impossible not to imagine the rich landscape that Balzac has so brilliantly created. However, his political diatribes are a bit pedantic and often detract from the otherwise perfect narrative. This novel is clearly a precursor to Proust, whose brilliance for detail would take the novel form to another plane altogether.

I guess people in the 19th Century had alot of time on their hands to spend reading a long book that goes over the same material again and again.

I read this as a book on tape. The book for me was alittle longish and dull so I doubt I would have been able to read it in its hardcopy form without giving up on it. However, thanks to books on tape, I was able to stick with the book until its end.

Yes, do read the book! Apparently Balzac, poor fellow, was himself a victim to debts and even penury. I read in the bio that he never made much money from his writing. I was sorry to hear that. In this book there are innumerable mentions about the financial plight of his characters----their debts, going into debt, mortgages on houses that can't be paid, borrowing money that can't be repaid, the threat of debtors prison and arrest imminent. So, if you think you have "financial problems" your "problems" will seem miniscule compared with the characters in this book!

Yes, this book is worth reading as long as you are patient and don't get bored too easily. I at first gave it 3 stars but then I felt sorry for Balzac so I raised it up to 4---I suppose a 3.5 would be more a more accurate guage of my opinion about this book. Actually, it is well written. Don't let me dissuade you from giving it a try. You'll find alot in the book to enjoy and you will learn about what life was like in Paris during the first part of the 1800's. The courtesans sounded interesting to me...but don't tell my wife! :o) Email Boland7214@aol.co

This is a wonderfully convoluted plot with the insight and delightful prose you would expect of Balzac. A couple of times you wonder if perhaps Balzac changed his mind on the direction of the plot in "mid-stream." But his firm grasp of the characters makes you care about all of them. His novels "wear" well in our time.

Moreover, there is a masculinity about his novels as he gives you the background about the ins and outs of the financial machinations of the characters in a way a Jane Austen, for example, never could. So, you see a well-rounded view of what makes 19th century Paris work (or not).

Lacking the chastening (and socially cleansing) effects of the Prostestant Reformation, there is an amazing dichotomy in the character of the Parisian men: they take some of their obligations (usually the public ones such as providing a dowry for their daughters to allow them to marry well) very seriously while not-so-privately they dart from one expensive mistress to another with no apparent thought for their obligations to their wives or the effects of such financial misadventures upon their families.

Balzac brings home the morally debilitating effects of the dissolute Parisian lifestyle.

Don't miss Balzac!

This novel examines the effects of virtue and vice on the involved characters as well as commenting on the temper of the times. Balzac's style can be melodramatic but at his best he is able to put the reader in the scene and reveal the complexities of inter-personal activity. Bette serves a doorway between the upper middle class existence of the Hulot family and the demi-monde of Josepha, Jenny Cadine and Valerie. These two worlds mingle and collide in a Paris which is transiting from Empire to Republic. The structure of the novel can be choppy as Balzac is prone to long dissertations on a variety of subjects, happily, most of which are interesting.There is no moral to this story only a cynical overtone with elements of schadenfreude. There is an appeal to religious sensibilities but it doesn't ring true.I think in later ages Balzac might have developed into a psychologist since he fascinated by the workings of the human mind.

This is Musils philosophical masterpiece set in 1914 prior to the Great War and collapse of the Ausro-Hungarian empire.
The story line-for what its worth-concerns Ulrich (the titular man without qualities) involvement in the 'Parallel Campaign' with many sub plots and themes concerning the sex murderer Moosbrugger; Ulrichs estrangement from his childhood friend Walter;his affair with Bonedea;his sisters leaving her husband. Entwined around this framework, Musil explores what is reality? What and how are morals made or come by? The pseudo realities we create and exist in, how little of truth we can actually attain; how history and who's in power shape and alter morals.
This is a monumental work,still unfinished when Musil died, and having read all 1130 pages, I couldn't help thinking that it was still in draft; that Musil was merely pouring down his ideas en masse to eventually edit down to a 4 or 500 page novel.The thin story line means this lacks any pace and often you read pages of (albeit, facinating) philosophical treatise without having any story line to anchor them to as so little develops.
At the risk of sounding snobish and big headed, you have to be well and widely read before taking this book on. Its deep complexity reminds of 'Moby Dick', but once read you find your mind resonating with 'Musilisms' and an enormous pool of philosophical knowledge. A kind of philosophical rosetta stone!

Of all the great European novelists of the first third of the century -- Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Knut Hamsun, Herman Hesse -- Robert Musil is far and away the least read; and yet he's as shapely as Gibbon, as mordant as Voltaire, as witty as Oscar Wilde and as indecent as Arthur Schnitzler, a fellow Viennese writer who gets more attention. "The Man Without Qualities" is an extraordinary amalgam of the formidable, the delicious and the unfinished; and no doubt each of these attributes is in some measure dissuasive.

If we take it that the characteristics of 20th-century life are fatuity, doubt and confusion; the "barbaric fragmentation" of the self, where "impersonal matters . . . go into the making of personal happenings in a way that for the present eludes description"; a crisis of individual identity and collective purpose -- then it is Musil's astonishing achievement to make a comedy of all this.

The book begins with a baroque meteorological description; its first action is a car accident; the hero is first seen looking out of a window, stopwatch in hand, conducting a statistical survey of passing traffic. Can there be any doubt that it is a prophetic book about our world? Musil is us. The world of "global Austria" in 1913 and "the Parallel Action" -- the plan, in the novel, to claim 1918 for the jubilee celebrating the 70th year of the reign of the Emperor Francis Joseph before the Germans get it for Kaiser Wilhelm's 30th, made nonsense of by the intervention of World War I -- is our world of the United Nations International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction and other fatuous schemes. While Musil's contemporaries Proust and Joyce chose interiority and the private world of memory, Musil is uncannily prescient about modern life, where sportsmen and criminals are indifferently idolized, where quantity sits in judgment on quality, so that an author, as Musil puts it, "must have an awful lot of like-minded readers before he can pass for an impressive thinker," where we sit and stew among "bobsled championships, tennis cups and luxury hotels along great highways, with golf course scenery and music on tap in every room." So "The Man Without Qualities" is satire; as one character says, "The man of genius is duty bound to attack." However, it is not harsh satire, nor is it sour. There is something loving about it. Musil's tone is unlike anyone else's. Partly it is the Austrian melancholy that underlies the book, the melancholy of a defunct empire, of a closed conditional: what was to happen did not. WHAT if, the novel implies, instead of expressing itself in the carnage of World War I, human folly had chosen another form? Partly it is the equable irony that plays over every character, institution and group in the book that makes reading Musil such an exquisitely flattering experience. No characters in the book escape mockery -- especially for taking themselves so seriously. All of them are skewed and partial, but none are caricatures; perhaps the book's almost complete lack of physical description plays a part here -- and yet, in spite of that, you feel you could pick them out in a lineup. They are Musil's puppets.

In his early career he wrote stories, plays and novels that had a certain popularity. But none of those prepare a reader for the expanse of "The Man Without Qualities". It took up the last two decades of his life, before he died in self-imposed exile in Switzerland in 1942, at the age of 61. It is a quite overwhelming novel, quite indeed...

I would give this excellent set of critiques, edited by the estimable Harold Bloom, four stars except for its misleading label. Despite the byline, this is NOT Robert Musil's work or even a condensed version. These are very helpful commentaries, but if you want the original, you must go elsewhere.

This book says: by Robert Musil's, but it is not. Review carefuly before to be sure it is the one you are looking for

"The Man without Qualities" is a strange work indeed. It was left unfinished at the author's death, but nevertheless runs to well over 1,000 pages. There is very little in the way of coherent plot. The action is set in the latter part of 1913 and the early part of 1914, the last months of peace before the outbreak of World War I, and what plot there is centres upon the activities of a committee set up to explore ways of celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the accession of the Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, an event which was due to occur in December 1918. In the event, of course, no celebrations for this anniversary ever took place, for two reasons. Firstly, Franz Josef was to die in 1916. Secondly, the Austro-Hungarian empire was to be swept away at the end of the war in November 1918.

The "man without qualities" of the title is Ulrich, one of the members of the committee. Ulrich is a handsome, wealthy and intelligent young man of good family, yet is described as being "without qualities" because he is bored, cynical and indifferent, dependent on the outer world to form his character. He has tried three different careers, as a soldier, engineer and mathematician, only to abandon them all, and accepts a place on the committee largely to alleviate the boredom of his existence as a wealthy layabout. In the course of the book we are introduced to the other members of the committee, such as the Prussian industrialist-intellectual Paul von Arnheim, Ulrich's idealistic, spiritually-minded cousin Diotima who becomes Arnheim's lover, and General Stumm von Bordwehr, forever trying to use the jubilee celebrations to further the interests of the Army. We also get to know a number of Ulrich's other acquaintances, including his friend Walter, his mistress Bonadea and (towards the end of the novel) his sister Agathe. Another important character is the insane murderer Moosbrugger.

Much of the early part of the book is satirical in nature, the principal targets of Musil's satire being the nature of bureaucracy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. The committee is a prime example of bureaucratic inertia, forever holding endless meetings without ever achieving anything or even agreeing on the form which the celebrations are to take. (The only character who ever seems to take any positive action is Moosbrugger, and his actions are purely evil). The Empire is renamed "Kakania", a pun on the German pronunciation of the initials K.K. (for Kaiserlich-Koeniglich, or Imperial and Royal) and the word "Kaka" meaning "excrement". "By its constitution it was liberal, but the system of government was clerical. The system of government was clerical, but the general attitude to life was liberal. Before the law all citizens were equal, but not everyone, of course, was a citizen." In one memorable passage Musil compares the Empire to a red, white and green jacket (Hungary) matched with a pair of black and yellow trousers (Austria). Like many people looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Musil saw the collapse of Austria-Hungary as something inevitable. In fact, that collapse was the product of two chance factors, the murder of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 and Haig's defeat of the German armies in the autumn of 1918. Had the First World war been avoided, or had it had a different result, the Empire might have lasted much longer. We might even be celebrating this year the eighty-fifth anniversary of the accession of Emperor Otto von Habsburg.

In the latter part of the book, the tone becomes less satirical and more that of a novel of ideas. Musil introduces lengthy discourses, either in the form of conversations between his characters or passages in which he addresses the reader directly, on social, political, religious and, above all, philosophical topics. Ulrich suggests the formation of a "General Secretariat for Precision and Soul". This may seem like a joke, the yoking together of two incongruous ideas to produce an absurd effect, but in fact it reflects one of Musil's main preoccupations, the need to reconcile the rational and scientific approach to life ("precision") with the spiritual and imaginative one ("soul").

I note that most of the reviews the book has received on this page have been positive ones (fourteen out of seventeen awarded it five stars), so I find myself very much in the minority when I say that this was not a book that I enjoyed. My initial thought was to call my review "The Book without Qualities", but that would have been unfair to Musil, who was clearly a writer with many excellent qualities. Many of his philosophical discourses are fascinating ones, and my attention was frequently caught, even in the midst of passages that I otherwise found tedious, by a flash of humour, an original aphorism or brilliantly expressed thought. "Philosophers are despots who have no armies to command, so they subject the world to their tyranny by locking it up in a system of thought". "To believe with not quite complete disbelief that something-cannot-be-ruled-out has today become the basic attitude in matters of faith".

It struck me, however, that Musil's ideas, often of great interest in themselves, could have been better expressed as a series of essays rather than in the rather clumsy framework of a novel. The problem with "The Man without Qualities" is that, even allowing for the fact that it is unfinished, never seems to be going anywhere and lacks the form or structure evident in most well-written novels. Even in other unfinished novels, such as Dickens's "Edwin Drood", one can see evidence of the author's structural plan at work, just as one can see evidence of the architect's handiwork even in an unfinished building. "The Man without Qualities" resembles less a building than a vast, baroque folly, incorporating many beautiful carvings but with no discernible shape or structure.

The title is apt: there are powerful ideas in this book. I recommend it to anyone doing consulting or who wants to take their organization to new heights.

The book, written by Appreciative Inquiry (AI) pioneers and current thought leaders who continue to fine-tune this approach, provides an excellent overview of the AI philosophy and is accompanied by concrete examples that show its value and application.

I was disappointed to find what I felt was a marketing treatise consisting of little other than relentless cheerleading. I could not find any details that would help really understand AI (Appreciative Inquiry), let alone allay the qualms of a potential skeptic. After reading about half of the book before giving up, I could not find the how-to's that would, for me, define a path to AI success nor any cautions that would yield clues as to when AI would not be likely to succeed. The book seems to me to be written to sell consulting, not explain the topic. I am now motivated to find a better book rather than to try to use AI.

For all the power of Appreciative Inquiry, I'm still waiting for a book or an article that presents the topic in a direct manner. While I did learn a great deal from this book, it was only after wandering around the subject in the discursive way that seems to be the ingrained habit of the AI authors I've encountered. Although the book begins with a chapter titled: What is appreciative inquiry, at the end of the chapter, I'm still not sure precisely what it is. It starts to feel like a zen koan, a little too elusive for my western mind. The second chapter launches into a menu of approaches to presenting AI in your company, yet I still don't clearly understand the concept we're giving approaches to. By the end of the book, a lot more was clear, but if you don't start with a pretty good understanding of AI when you pick up the book, you'll probably find it as frustrating as I did. If you are already an devotee, the book is likely very clear to you. Oh, and btw, I am conscious of the fact that by criticizing the book, I'm probably failing to practice AI. I'm not sure what to do about that. If the book was clearer to me, maybe I'd have an answer.

Appreciative Inquiry is a process that I feel is one of the most powerful there is for - as the subtitle of this book says - offering a practical tool to create positive change. It's easy to talk in abstract terms about change and improving the world, but it isn't often we come across a way to actually make it happen in concrete terms. AI is one of those tools. This book offers a very thorough guide to the history, mindset, methodology and diverse potential use of this powerful process. In addition, it was instrumental in the startup and methods that I now use in my own coaching, consulting and training firm. It was both an inspiration and a way of approaching the world that has helped me grow tremendously.