Carter Books

I enjoyed reading "Never Babysit the Hippopotamuses", to my four year old nephew. He really enjoyed the wacky chain of events in this book. This book enables a small child to really use their imagination. At the end of the story, you can ask the child, if they would rather babysit the Hippo's or their next door neighor the Monkeys? We both liked the colorful illustrations. I would highly recommend this book.

I was given this journal, and I have to say, if you are new to recovery or know someone who is, this is an excellent daily workbook for recovering alcoholics or addicts. It takes you through all 12-steps of the AA program, one day at a time, over a year period. For each day, there is an inspiring, thought provoking reading and a place to journal your own thoughts. Comes with a DVD of recovering people sharing their experiences getting into AA. It's great to watch with family -- everyone gets a better idea about what it takes to get sober.

This book has a fantastic collection of outdoor projects for the wood worker. Each step of each project is clearly explained and illustrated. Norms personality is certainly carved into these pages which makes it easy to understand and enjoyable to read. If you are a fan of The New Yankee Workshop, this is a must add book for your collection.

While I admire the "straight" photography of Adams, Weston, and the Farm Security Administration photographs of the 1930's. Now that I am older, I am drawn to the romantic, soft and somewhat dreamy photographs associated with "pictorialism." I found some examples in an old book by Paul L. Anderson. Anderson also mentions a "Struss Pictorial Lens." I would find examples of "pictorialism" at museum shows. Later I found a book entitled "Pictorialism in California" with wonderful photograhps. However, this book about Karl Struss is wonderful. Particularly his still photography prior to 1918. Struss' work with night and architectural scenes are wonderful! A revelation. He didn't "do" figures well. But any photographer interested in the history of photograhy will find a visual feast. The book is well produced and high quality images. This book explores an interesting person, who for various reasons, remains almost unknown today.

Black Coat Press continues its successful mission to bring little-known works to a wider audience, and this fun Nick Carter play is a prime example. Penny-dreadful detective Carter vs. a master villain who must be the notorious Fantomas is a formula for a Wold-Newtonish crossover that can't go wrong!

WHEN YOU READ THIS BOOK YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH NICK CARTER. THIS IS IF YOU ALREADY HAVEN'T

this is Carter's most interesting piano solo,written late;a quadruple commission; it seems most of his piano repertoire,his thinking excursis for the keyboard has been skewed toward chamber settings(The Double Concerto),the Wind and String Quintets(also late bloomer works) and the massive penumbral "Piano Concerto", that which has equally more interesting orchestrations than the content for what is played on the piano. The earlier Brahmsian/Copland-esque "Piano Sonata" from the Forties, has its points of interests,rolling rotund resonant timbres,bombastic declamations but that is an earlier Carter,formative times and a different set of creative paradigms at work actually, prior to the maturity and interest that set in after the "First String Quartet". . . The golden fruits of maturity has seen many works even an opera of mixed quality,and predictable-ness some of the solos and duets,dedications as "Espirit rude" are quite glib materials,tossed off. Here however the "Night Fantasies" is an interesting piece of music,certainly one that has entered the modern piano literature, a modern nocturne of darkness for dark times which never seem to recede,simply differing gradations of it. This work has entered the mainstream and academia naturally and you can see it played on piano competitions,although difficult to perform in that all the suggestive timbral layers Carter employs/deploys need continuous clarity.He sets a large pallette of piano attacks,mixed with an equal distributions of dynamics sustained moments mixed with more percussive effects,staccato with sustained, cloistered-like chorals deployed.If this agenda for "layering" is abandoned well the work will cohere-melt into one quite boring unadorned glob of timbre, suggestive of Schumann or Brahms having lived through World War 2.Ursula Oppens and Charles Rosen have exhibited the most interesting readings I think,and quite recently Pierre Laurent Aimard,in a nice recording with his own commnetary thrown in.I would like to hear Frederic Rzewski play this work, with his overriding dynamic approach and technical clarity he can summon to his fingers and perhaps glean the overbearing romantic-nesses from the work, making it leaner and more articulated.That is always the problem with modernity of this kind,it always tempts the interpreter into a more facile reading,more direct, more bound to the aesthetic of the romantic as Solti playing Schoenberg as Brahms or as he had done with Carter's "Variations for Orchestra" he had takened on tour.. If you bring direct unencumbered musicianship to Carter the music will reward you, and if you acknowledge its intellectual agendas you will be twice blessed.
Jon Link has done excellent work on mapping the poly-rhythmic distributions of this work,and David Schiff's excellent book to a less exhaustive degree and Yes! some can hear all of it,the poly-rhythms, layered textures if you have a map inside your head, and have some pre-requisite home study of the score prior to a listening experience, but short of that the work still harbors a neo-romanticism with an affinity for modernity, the wonderful fast furioso filigree displays, "fugitive" lines wanting to escape from the work's structural tyranny has a kind of other wordly quality.

This long novel is the weirdest of all weird literature!
It's not like anything you've ever read. Get it and read it. You'll see. Don't be put off by the rather irritating style of Hodgson's narrator (a poorly educated gentleman farmer in 19th centtury England). Stick with it! Unfortunately it is out of print and expensive even if you can find a copy. I had to pay $40 for a paperback copy 10 years ago -- from some bookshop in Canada.

My third grade son is probably not who this book was written for, but we took turns reading it aloud in bed one night and he wouldn't let me quit until we reached the last page. It has a good plot, and kids that are real. It's a page turner and funny too. Haven't we all felt the need to copy someone else's style, look, or actions? I hate that in myself, but I find it happening in the never ending quest to be liked or at least noticed. Maybe I'm insecure, like Gabrielle. This book rings true for kids and adults. It's not easy being a third grader enduring her first week at a new school. But Gabrielle conquers her fears and figures out the ultimate truth in the end... being your own person always wins out.

Its title aside, this is a book about children, an empirical treatment contra the entrenched, racially tinged "Poor Kids Can't Learn" bias. What makes these success stories more than just a "position paper" for policymakers is the human face Carter puts on seven school principals who, far from being "out of touch" with students, go to great lengths to ensure their radical accessibility. Carter provides a counterexample for everyone who believes that poor, minority students should be relegated to the Dumpster of the tired, spendthrifty DOE/AFT Leviathan. And he shows us that an intellectual but straightforward, sympathetic but demanding approach to teaching can yield not merely average, but outstanding results. Like the grass that emerges green from cracked and dirty concrete, the principals Carter studies have achieved more with hope, faith and confidence in their charges than most "well-off" schools have with mere money. Get copies for every member of your school board.