Browning Books

From ABOUT HARRY TOWNS: "Whoever heard of lettuce that had so much bite and spank and crunch to it?"

From ABOUT HARRY TOWNS: "One in particular would gather a small group of guests and show them spanking new rough cuts of feature-length films after first distributing old-fashioned candy bars that were a foot long."

Here's what the eminently spankadelic Martin Amis said about ABOUT HARRY TOWNS: "Bruce Jay Friedman is by contrast refreshingly unpretentious, though it will inevitably be added that he has plenty to be unpretentious about. ABOUT HARRY TOWNS is a third kind of Americanese, the walkabout novel: a discursive,anecdotal evocation of the urban male menopause. Harry is between divorces, rambling from LA to Vegas to NY, coping with his wife and his kid, and fending off the girls, the crabs and the blues. It is a book that needn't have been written, which is probably one of the reasons why it's so easy to read--fluent, droll and moderately likeable."

Regarding Martin's obligatory troika of adjectives: notice the British omission of a comma between the penultimate adjective and the final adjective. I happen to detest that practice more than life itself. And I can assure you that Bruce never hesitates to throw in a comma between the last 2 adjectives. Yes, he's that kinda guy.

Unfortunately, he's also an occasional kaelifying kinda guy. Remember when Pauline Kael threw a feces-fit about Dalton Trumbo's Eternal-Dignity-Of-Man shtick? Confere the following line from ABOUT HARRY TOWNS: "He sat down, stretched his legs, and tried to get Towns into a talk about the essential dignity of man, even man as he existed in the big city."

About Harry Towns is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It is also a profound look at an essentially decent, reasonably intelligent, if occasionally silly man adjusting to a world that has become a little more deranged while he has gone about the business of living. Bruce Jay Friedman manages to balance many moods - sadness, compassion, and optimism - in this very funny look at a screenwriter who wonders just how the hell he got to this strange place in his life. Read it and weep with laughter.

Harry Towns is right out of the mouth of James Brown: "I'm a Greedy Man." He is a man who can feel sympathy for a wealthy coke dealer but want to smash in the head of a someone who tries to discipline his son. Harry Towns is a New Yorker who learns to appreciate LALA Land..he is open to experiences...he is open to coke, whores, various neuroses, random acts of violence, random acts of cowardice, all the while following a strict code of rules set up for the governance of Harry Towns...in a strange way like a noble bandit in a western, Harry Towns is governed by his own set of rules, which upon this reader's reflection are just, wise, humane and if a touch selfish serve to keep the bandit sane in a world of totalitarian, brutal, evil, materialistic and vacuous Good Citizens.

Beautifully written and illustrated, a must read for budding earth scientists from high school level through to grandparents. Reveals evidence that for the last million years, the sea level is not a steady state and more. Just Fascinating....

Beautifully written and illustrated, a must read for budding earth scientists from high school level through to grandparents. Reveals evidence that for the last million years, the sea level is not a steady state and more. Just Fascinating....

Few authors have such a comprehensive grasp of so many diciplines, and can deliver their summary in clear terms, and with such good pictures. Required reading for any who live in or exploit southern hemisphere countries.

Frank Browning's Apples is fascinating. Until I read the book, I never knew the complexity of growing and marketing apples, nor did I fully realize the richness of the apple's botanical heritage. Where I buy apples, my choice is the usual six varieties; the passion of this book reawakened my experience, not long ago, of a bag of winesaps purchased at a farmers market in New York State. If you love apples too, you'll be inspired and frustrated by this book. Beware: it has some botanical sections that are highly technical; these could certainly have benefited by some illustrations or charts. Nevertheless, a culinary book like this one that leaves a lingering taste in your mouth is well worth opening.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Browning's journeys through the world of apples are exhaustive, lyric and compelling. If you like NPR, or the old New Yorker, you'll love this book on the fruit of English Yeoman, Thomas Jefferson, French Nobelmen and Johnny Appleseed. You will never look at a grocery store Red Delicious the same again.

Frank Browning perpetuates my belief that journalists are writing the best gardening and plant books. Gardeners are not typically interesting writers and there is such a proliferation of mediocre gardening books on the market. "Apples" is a delightful book. Anyone who wants to grow apples or simply go to the grocery store and buy apples would be enlightened by Frank Browning's book.

I've read this book twice. The first several chapters irritate me because Dave trashes all things traditional. Perhaps he does this to make his point but it is somewhat irresponsible. He then goes on to lay out refreshing strategies which may or may not work in every context. The proof is in the durability of what he proposes. This will have to wait. He is an inovative leader and not afraid of a liittle controversy. This makes him more credible in my book. Life can be messy. Two thumbs up for making me think and making me a little uncomfortable.

If you are a leader in today's church then get this book and read it, then read it again. It will go a long way in helping you to think outside the box as you attempt to reach out to the lost in your communities.

This book is really five different books. Depending on which of the books you like, however, Dave will leave you hungry for more (Yes, Dave, I do think you ought to write more books).
In my view, these five books break out like this:

1. Taking the jargon of business writers like Peter Drucker and applying it to the church, or rather, the dynamics of small groups, as a starting point to think about the topic at hand. This will immediately draw in some readers, since ideas in books like The Seven Habits are irresistable and business book authors have a pithy way with words and of coining succinct phrases.

2. The success story of a giant church called Christ the King Community Church in Bellingham, WA, and how it got too big. Why is this interesting? Because Dave is a pastor at Christ the King in Burlington, WA, an hour down the road from the above mega-church, and the last person you'd expect to say it overgrew.

3. Dave's experiences as pastor of the above church, and his earlier experiences in the Bellingham church. I could read this part all day, and Dave makes it easier to read by putting these bits in little boxes sprinkled throughout the main text, a commendable deconstructing of the usual all print book layout.

4. A handbook for those ministering at above said church. This is one of the three audiences Dave identifies for his book. Oddly, it's the one I think will most grip the reader, and to which I will devote this review.

5. Something that looks like calculus symbols, which is actually Dave's response to these business models, and his coining of new words and symbols for his own business model (if we can call it that). He calls the whole thing Deliberate Simplicity, but it comes across as Unnecessary Complexity because it's really answering business models introduced in Book One above, with which most of the readers won't be familiar.

The real question in this book, while one may wish to read it cover to cover, is how to pull out Book Four. While it's not immediately apparent, Dave's made that quite simple. First, instead of a few chapters listed in the contents, there are about 125 evocative page titles with page numbers, so you can turn right to those parts. I would have liked more chapter breaks, as I like to read a chapter in one setting. The only chapters are arranged and broken by Dave's Davespeak words and mathematical symbols which for many readers will evoke the gaze of a deer in a headlight.

But in little boxes breaking up the text are questions that are worth the cost of the book. Yes, you have to read around them to get the context, but they'd be great for either journaling or small group discussions. Which, it turns out, is what they're for. At the end of each of the chapters or sections is a blank space to write in the essay question answers, although answers is the wrong word, and one would be better off scrawling and doodling in a notebook, so as to have more space and less formality.

If you don't have the sort of brain that responds to: < = - X + (and the infinity symbol), or these words: Minimality, Intentionality, Reality, Mutility, Velocity, and Scalability, around which Dave has organized the book, take heart. Hidden in the back is a very evocative, intriguing written in words tracing of the same ideas, starting in Genesis in the Bible (it's on pages 190 to 200 and is called "An Arrows Out Theology"). What's that mean? Simply put, instead of focusing inwardly on the small group, the arrows go outward to invite others into it. There's an empty chair and the group prays for whoever will be coming to fill it. It's similar to Campus Crusade for Christ's transferable concepts, derived from II Timothy 2:2. It's also how the Catholic Church got so big (see St. Francis).

Dave Browning is also not about "church planting". This causes lots of dischord because it often means a group goes into an area and invents a church (which in the Bible means "assembly" "or "group" as if there are no other churches already there, starting a sort of competition for, if not souls, then bodies in the chairs. Dave looks at a business model that says when an organization gets larger there are only two choices: a bigger box, the solution of mega-churches and big business, or more small boxes (or groups). Christ the King in Bellingham took the first way, and the Burlington version takes the second. McDonalds, he notes, took the second way, replicating small restaurants instead of making a bigger one. Some reviewers have objected to Dave's continual comments about the "traditional" church. I think this is just shorthand so he can talk about a contrasting view without having to name names and get bogged down in endless discussions, enabling him to skip to the parts he wants to talk about.

My view of this book is that it could go out to a wider audience of two sorts, both of which are not listed in Dave's intentions. I'd really like to see businesses use this book to reform their organizations to be more people-oriented, both in customers and employees, to see why small really is beautiful, to use these ideas to remain small and lean and Apple-like, so as to be able to introduce better ecological practices easily rather than needing to overhaul an ungainly, unresponsive, entrenched organization.

My second idea is even odder. Many people, particularly Catholics, don't share Dave's views in terms of what the church is or which parts are negotiable. However, the ideas in the book could be utilized by the many movements such as the charismatic movement and Communion and Liberation for small prayer groups and Bible studies, not saying this is all there is to the church, but this is one aspect of it. This is also the view adopted by parachurch movements like Campus Crusade and InterVarsity, who urge their members to also be part of a church, which may be traditional.

My third idea may be the oddest. "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly" wrote G.K. Chesterton. You may not know who G.K. Chesterton is, but Dave does. In fact, he started a Chesterton Coffee House, which co-occupies the building with the church. There are quotes from Chesterton all over the walls, but the one most evident is that quoted above. In Dave's book it's called "Real means Imperfect", and Dave uses "real" in place of "excellent," the buzzword of the business reform movement, but which he says has come to mean "fake". He's on good Biblical ground here. The word translated "perfect" in the King James Bible actually means "mature". Maturity, not perfection, is the goal in the Bible. Dave wants his church, and his coffee house to be like a family room, not a living room. A place where you come as you are, real and not fake, imperfect and, to use the Bible word, a sinner. Dave shows how to get back to deliberate simplicity, a place a lot of churches, businesses, organizations, families, and people would like to be, and that may be his biggest achievement of all.

I really love the book and the characters in it. I love the way the author made the hero not seem interested with our heroin at the first half of the novel. If you are interested in books with a love-hate relationship then this is the book to buy! Daniel Canty can't stand Talitha at the beginning and Talitha was madly in love with him promising to be a lady so Daniel would be attracted to her and not to the ladies he was involverd with. This book will make you laugh, cry and heat up with passion!

This concicely written story tells of a child found in the wilds of Africa, and handed over to (of course) a dashing, wealthy, young bachelor, who is given the assignment to make her a lady. Romance takes a backseat to storyline most of the time, (which is a plus for that rare male reader like myself!) Browning wisely chooses to write in modern English, so there is none of that insipid "tis" and "wherefore" talk here, though it is set in the 19th century. This book deserved a hardcover edition.

At the onset of this novel, Victorian wunderkind 30-year old Dr. Daniel Cantry, Esq. has forced upon him a girl raised by wild dogs in Africa. The lawyer for the family of this beast-like girl is a kindly gentleman, who sets a wager before Daniel. If he can transform the girl, Talitha, into a "normal" Victorian miss ready for her debut within 3 years, he will win 20,000 pounds from her "distant' relative, the earl of Hawkenge. Daniel accepts the wager and begins the nearly impossible task. Known for his brilliance both as a doctor and a lawyer, Daniel becomes convinced that there is more to the tale of Talitha's supposed loss in the wilds of Africa.

Without giving away too much of the plot, which has tremendous suspense and twists and turns which keep you glued to your chair, Daniel quickly realizes that Talitha is older than she appears, that the "distant" relative is much closer than he appears, and that her refusal to speak is not a sign of her lack of intelligence. Once provided with proper nutrition, Talitha grows nearly 18 inches and reaches a late puberty, but still does not speak until she is goaded to do so after many months. Once she speaks, Daniel is still confronted with the difficulty of transforming her into a proper miss and later protecting her life from those with designs against her.

Once her true character and intelligence is revealed, Daniel falls in love. But he refuses to acknowledge it and even after acknowledging it, refuses to marry her even though she repeatedly states her love for him, due to their class differences. As always, as an American reader, the class difference issue can be somewhat hard to believe, but the author does a clever job of displaying the differences between the working rural class from which Daniel came, the middle class of which Daniel is now a member, and the upper aristocracy into which Talitha was born.

This novel is one of the more original historical romances I have read in a long time, which considering that is clearly a cross between the Jungle Book and My Fair Lady, is quite an accomplishment. The plot is complex and the character development has tremendous depth. As you read, you can "see" the people and action in your mind's eye, because the author is so talented at description and evoking a scene and emotions. The ending felt a little rushed, but that is a minor flaw in an other wise masterful work of complicated plotting and character development.

Contains a number of very good suggestions not only for the classroom, but for those of us at home who use a message board and are looking to maximize the time we have with the kids.

The authors have provided an easy-to-read book for teachers who want to help students in primary grades (K-2) develop writing skills. Excellent for beginning teachers who need a starting point and for veteran teachers who want to continue to improve writing instruction. Filled with examples, actual lessons and management ideas that illustrate the "power" of shared writing.

This book helps with getting started in an interactive writing program. It contains tips for setting up the shared writing area, sample dialogues for the 3 included grades (K-2), schedule examples, word wall and other environmental print ideas, and a really neat diagram that breaks down all of the skills that can be touched on with questioning ideas. A nice bonus is a section on encouraging parent involvement at home. This book gives you the basics to get the program going without going in depth into theories.

It was 1975 and I was in the 4th grade. My teacher Mrs. Lewis read Johnny Bingo to the class outloud over a series of afternoon reading sessions. I was so enthralled by the story that it inspired me to attempt to write my own 4th grader ripoff at the time. I got about 3 pages into that project before giving up. I'm 41 now and I still recall the intensity with which the story sparked my imagination -- two boys about my age having to fend for themselves in a life or death adventure running from mobsters. Your kids will love it.

I was probably between the ages of 9 & 12 when I read "Johnny Bingo." I remember the book well to this day. I can't say for sure if that's because of the story or because it was one of the 1st books (of that length) I'd ever read. I think the story's impact is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago, at least for an impressionable child. My recollection of Norton Browning's writing style is that I couldn't put it down. :-)

Story Summary: While at the bank with Mom, a boy is kidnapped by bank robbers. Eventually he learns he wasn't the only one snagged. Who is this other person and what's going to happen to them?

This is the first book read to us by Mrs. Marion Congdon in 4th grade. She'd read one chapter every other day if our work was done. A good mystery novel full of intrigue, recommended for students in grade school.

We all should be stretching everyday. This is one of the best stretch books. It is very easy to understand. The pictures say it all. Very simple everyday stretches that everyone can find time to do! The text is easy to read and the photographs are wonderful...

This is a great book for those who have little time, but a big enthusiasm for Yoga! It teaches you simple exercises for home, the office - just about anywhere!

This book is very useful for those who want to make yoga
part of their every day life. I've done Lisa's asanas for the back since the book was published, and they have healed my back
by strengthening it. Thank you very much for this wonderful
book!

I am ashamed to say that a lot of the Jewish customs and holidays were confusing to me. However, since I read this superb anthology of mystery stories, I have a better understanding of some of the traditions and occations people of the Jewish faith celebrate.
Anyone who enjoys delightful mysteries, ranging from "cozies" to "hardboiled" private eye thrillers will find an excellent story within this collection.

"Bread of Affliction," by Michael Kahn, centers around the task of a female atorney to keep an elderly Holocaust survivors estate out of the hands of a distantly related family who have ties to Neo-Nazi groups. This story uses Passover as a backdrop.
"Comes the Revolution," by Gregory Fallis, is a delightfully funny story about a woman trying to get along with her boyfriend's adopted mother. The mother suspects that her next-door neighbor is a terrorist. Jewish beliefs are prevalent within this story.
"A Sabbath Flame," by Ronald Levitsky explores a murder within a family that occurred long ago.
"The Lipkin-Wexler Affair" by Louis Weinstein, is a hilarious story reminiscent of the Romeo and Juliet theme.
"Mom Remembers," by James Yaffee, is my own personal favorite, and involves a mother relating a story about her late husband, which aids a police inspector in solving a present-day murder. The mom is very similar to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

These are just a few examples of the extraordinarily unique and delightful stories that comprise this collection. There is also a glossary in the back of the book, which is helpful in translating some of the foreign words. This book is a must-read for those who love mysteries, and enjoy learning about different faiths. Happy reading!

I enjoy reading Jewish fiction because it makes Judaism come alive. Adding mysteries to the fiction makes them even more intriguing. I enjoyed all the stories in this collection. My only complaint was that three of the stories appeared previously in Mystery Midrash, another collection of Jewish mystery stories. That book, along with Criminal Kabbalah, were also good collections. The repeated three stories were all good, but I would just have preferred no crossover.

This is a twelve story collection that uses Jewish traditions especially holidays and special occasions as a backdrop to a mystery mostly murder. Nine of the tales appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine with six of these since 1996; two are from the 1980s and one from 1967. Alfred Hitchcock Magazine provided two entries (1995 and 1998 respectfully). While the final tale is an Arthur Conan Doyle story (not Holmes).

Each tale is fun to read as the typical Jewish event is disrupted by a crime. Most of the contributions provide insight into the Jewish religion and customs while also furbishing a fine mystery. The glossary at the end of the book describes forty to forty-five terms/foreign words used within at least in one story with simple explanations. Fans of thematic anthologies and those who want to know a bit more about Judaism inside an exciting who-done-it collection will appreciate this powerful compilation that can be savored by reading a tale or two during Pesach (the eight day Passover holiday).

Harriet Klausner

"The Ocean & All Its Devices" is a rich, lyrical exploration of William Browning Spencer's imagination. But, while the ocean of the title story provides a deep, dark setting for this collection's first story, Spencer's most remarkable explorations take place in the realms of future cyberspace.

This is Spencer's first collection of stories since 1993's "The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories," a collection I unfortunately have overlooked to date. Still, with just nine stories, The Ocean proves a splendid introduction to a writer whose short fiction encompasses more satisfying world-building and character development than many a novel. Spencer paints his stories with a subtle hue of horror that is often more unsettling than frightening, and that lingers in the back of your thoughts long after you've turned your attentions elsewhere.

Reading this collection left me wondering why Spencer has so selfishly deprived me of his writing over the years. These stories -- rich, deep and fully realized -- are the work of a writer who should, in a fairer world, be far better known and, we can only hope, far more prolific.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(n e t) editor

William Browning Spencer is my favorite writer. "The Ocean and All its Devices" is more of his incredible work.

This short story collection is a great way to be introduced to this writer if you haven't read any of his books. If I could, I would buy all the remaining copies of this collector's edition to insure this book goes to paperback, and perhaps then William Spencer will get the recognition he deserves.

Just wanted to say how happy I am to see that Mr. Spencer is still writing! I've loved all his other books with Irrational Fears being my favorite. Ordered this and once I read it will post an actual review.

Keep writing Mr. Spencer!


Update: Just finished reading this. Excellent collection! There were the usual Lovecraftian feel stories that never seem to get old or dusty in Mr. Spencer's hands and the stories that explored other themes that were just as good.

My favorites would be Your Faithful Servant, the title story, Halfway House, and Essayist (which I had read in F&SF Magazine).