Carter Books

A wonderfully woven tale of intrigue, tragedy, suspense, romance and humor. Once you start, be prepared to stay up until you finish. A master storyteller, Suzanne Carter's writing style is light, humorous and fast paced. She's in the caliber of great writers like James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, Patricia Daniels Cornwell and Thomas Harris. I can't wait until her next book appears...

This book is one of the first that I read when I was a child. And now that I have my own child, I am pleased to buy it for her.

In the introduction Isaac Watts gives advantages to "teaching and admonishing one another by hymns and songs". The second advantage is that "What is learned in verse is sooner retained in memory, and longer recollected." I found this to be quite true just minutes ago as I read through the songs on Google books. I could very nearly recite entire verses once my memory was jogged with the first line. And somehow, Watts' poem of The Ten Commandments has been the easiest version to remember of all of those I have learned in a lifetime of Christian schooling!

Keep in mind that the subject matter is not modern, light and easy Sunday school fare. But that's the whole point of buying the book for me.

Any dog lover would enjoy this book. It is a treasure trove of masterfully crafted stories. There is very little sentimental sappiness, the collection focusing mainly on the ways dogs enhance the lives of humans. I applaud this book and hope to see more of the same caliber!

I enjoyed this original read by an up and coming author. I highly recommend this book to all.

this is again a high point for Carter's newly found aesthetic,neo this or neo that, I simply listen these days,but he had fashioned a musical language of continuation, intervallic mosaics,rhythmical structures employed over large swabs of time with the combustible emotive freedoms of here two keyboard soloists,,,the agenda here was to associate certain chamber timbres with either the harpsichord or the piano, like a timbral dialogue,latterly developed in his "Penthode"/ / / Here the "Double Concerto" it begins quite mysteriously with fragments and shards,tinkles,thuds,and chunks of percussive sounds, lightly tapped tom-toms and suspended cymbals/ / / I heard performances where the percussion cadre came to dominate the timbral space given,too loud! no the two keyboard instruments should reign supreme here with their own cadre of chamber orchestras to help them convey their content. The Harpsichord which can be amplified is first in exposition of materials,you hardly know the piano exists,lighly trying to penetrate the discussion,like some marginal prophet trying to find where it belongs, with lightly sprinkled finger cymbals and idle taps on a metal plate, there is not much sustaining power here unless you find these overwhelming arpeggiations in the harpsichord which Carter does employ, each orchestra has their own materials, their own intervallic language,timbres,rhythms to establish who they are in Cartesian formation, like a "clash of civilizations"to a degree promuligated now for greater divisions of greed and wealth, so to within the realms of the aesthetic these metaphors have some substance,The piano then comes to dominate the latter half of the piece,within its more rotund timbres to help convey its persona, trombones and lower strings and winds help this tyranny along, and lower tom-toms, these timbres do interestingly enough cross in diagonals between chamber borders, and if all these expressive emotive minutae are not sorted out you have a real quagmire on your hands/ / / if you have strong persuasive musician soloists as Ursula Oppens, the piece ceases the "double concerto" narrative. The work is compact, classic in shape and agenda,quite difficult to perform in that much happens of intervallic configurations,although Carter kept his orchestrations quite lean,and understared, at least that is my take on how to read the work, yet there are layering devices to distinguish mere accompaniment from primary material.This was Carter's first primary work subsequent to the associative achievements of context of the First and Second String Quartets/ / / there has not been yet another modern concerto of this modest magnitude, unpretencious, yet proclaiming a territory nonetheless.Too bad this work is not perfomred more often than it is by primary venues,usually student orchestras take up the cause,and as relavant as that enterprising course is, it is far from the trajectory where masterworks of modernity should reside.

I first heard of Dr. History when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. During my morning commute, I often listened to KNBR's morning show, hosted by Frank Dill and Mike Cleary. A frequent feature was a brief talk about some little-known anecdote from California's past. This was presented by Jim Rawls, who was dubbed "Dr. History" by Frank & Mike. The stories were always short, but interesting.
Jim Rawls has placed that format into book form, very successfully.
The stories are still short -- good for a quick bedtime story to a child or for that brief reading time in the quietest room in your house.
Following each story, Rawls has a section called "Something More", where he encourages you to go somewhere to experience history for yourself. (Most of the locations are in the Bay Area.)
I highly recommend this book, especially for parents who are hoping to get their kids interested in history.

Published in 1969 as a companion to Lin Carter's anthology of modern fantasy writers, "The Young Magicians," this equally superb volume provided an historical context for fantasy. The selections are uniformly excellent: excerpts from such classic works as "Beowulf," the Norse sagas, Thomas Malory, and "The Kalevela," to such haunting & beautiful poems as "Tom O'Bedlam's Song," Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and Tennyson's "The Horns of Elfland."

As always, Carter's notes & introductions are informative & enjoyable. And he makes a strong case for fantasy as a central part of literature, not merely frivolous & disposable trash. Clearly the most powerful works of fantasy deal with mythic material, drawn from the very depths of the psyche -- there's a connection here between Carter's thesis and, say, the work of Joseph Campbell.

Once again, I'm reminded of just how much the modern fantasy reader owes to Lin Carter. His enthusiasm & determination in getting so many classic works reprinted (or even collected for the first time) in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was a watershed event -- although he shouldn't be held responsible for the flood of formulaic, mass-produced junk that's flooded the bookshelves in the decades following, alas.

Much of this material can be found elsewhere, of course. But this paperback original, nearly 40 years old now, remains a seminal volume in the creation of a modern genre -- and it's one of high literary quality, as well. If you should come across a used copy, it's well worth picking up -- recommended!

Great book---I have not even left for Europe but feel confident I can now handle driving there.

this dates from Carter's Middle period; the works after the massive "Concerto for Orchestra"and the upcoming :Third String Quartet:; this "Duo" for Violin and Piano reveals that you need to locate a new context if you want the genre itself to speak to you, otherwise you resort to nefarious predictable approaches as engaging the styles of Neo this or Neo that, and when you think of the countless Violin modern Sonatas that have been written,idly boring stuff. I would think you would want the genre not to be a deadend, and it has certainly the Beo-Romantic literature pummeled the Sonata genre into the ground,with Hindemith,Poulenc,Milhaud,Rorem.
Carter here directly wants a situation where he is dealing with timbre,timbre exposed in and by-itself rather than utilizing the already given expressive shapes of this genre,and to manipulate and explore the unique characteristics of the two instruments and set up a situation where the two can be developed along fairly interesting lines of complexity, opacity and communication if possible. He allows only certain intervals to appear in each part,as a way of fixing the field of play, giving the instruments like a shape of unique colour; for example the Violin is dominated,saturated with the intervals m2,M3,tritones,P5,M6 and m7th fairly resonant producing materials,with double stops; the piano is burdened with M2,m3,P4,also tritone,m6 and M7th, there is also a Fixed Octave scheme established in the first 83 measures of the work, the tones(beginning on the g below Middle C),g,a,c,d,eb,f,ab,b,c3,e,f#,g,a,c,d,eb,f,ab,b. The rhythmic utilizations as well plays a role in defining the characteristics of the instrument, so the Violin has more a soloistic demeanor,anarchic, free with tied over the bar tones, more asymmetrical units displayed, against the sometimes more predictable percussive piano.The piano is utilized very much as in the earlier :Sonata for Violoncello and Piano:,like a time keeper/retainer, a walking bass or Baroque Trio basso continuo. You really cannot say there is accompaniment here merely another part. Carter also morvelously utilizes differign arrays of articulations in the piano, something you will find later in his "Night Fantasies", and "90+" for piano solo.
The genre of the Violin and Piano is a well trodden, well reserfed for serious discourse in some respects, with Arnold Schoenberg's "Fantasy for Violin and Piano, one of the last works he wrote in the early Fifties.Also Milton Babbitt's "Joy of Sextetts", and "More Joy".The solo Violin genre as we travel past these times has not faired much better with Boulez's disappointing "Anthemes" utilzing antiphonal dimensions with very little to exploit or reveal or say, and Nono's weakest work of his innovative late period, the "Lontano. . . for two violins with also antiphonal handlings.

A 6-session course/workshop (w/3 follow-up sessions) for helping members identify their gifts for ministry and the places and ways they can serve in and through a local church. Through Bible study members will discover the meaning of "church," "ministry" and "gifts" for the early church, and for today. This revised edition explores the New Testament texts in greater detail and includes more spiritual exercises. A practical and easy-to-use resource for helping people to find their calling in Christ.