Fabian Books

While conducting research for "Genre in Popular Music" author Fabian Holt was surprised to learn that most musicians rarely discuss or even think about this subject. According to his sources, this was a topic that was most commonly discussed by educators and writers. Yet, these same individuals were quite curious to learn what Holt had discovered while researching this book. They understood that how music gets categorized could have important consequences for their careers. As a collector of popular music for more than four decades I was also quite interested to learn what Fabian Holt had uncovered in more than one year of research for this book. The fact of the matter is that "Genres In Popular Music" focuses on a subject that very little has been written about.
Now whenever anyone attempts to categorize a subject as broad as American popular music there are sure to be disagreements. Fabian Holt comes up with a total of 9 different genres. I would beg to differ because he fails to make mention of one of my favorite categories which is doo wop/group harmony. Nevertheless, his list is quite interesting to be sure. Much of "Genre In Popular Music" focuses on the period from the mid 1950's through the mid 1970's when so many changes were taking place on the American music scene. Holt spends a considerable amount of time discussing how two major categories of American music, namely country and jazz reacted to the emergence of rock and roll. Powerful influences in the country music industry seemed to come to the conclusion that "if you can't beat'em, join 'em" and as a result brand new sounds like country-rock and folk-rock would gain in popularity. On the other hand the folks active in the jazz scene in this country largely resisted and resented the emergence of rock and roll. For one thing, rock and roll was cutting deeply into their market share and as a result many jazz musicians found themselves struggling just to survive. Having said that a few jazz artists such as Miles Davis and the group Weather Report would embrace this music and create new sounds all their own. I was also very interested to read the comments of Bettina Richards, President of a small Chicago indie label called Thrill Jockey. She dislikes identifying her labels recordings with a specific genre because "Once you name it as something, certain people say "Oh, I don't like that!" As such, she would much prefer that each one of the recordings her label releases be judged solely by the listeners response to what they are hearing.
Towards the end of the book Fabian Holt introduces us to Jeff Parker, a fascinating musician born in Virginia, educated at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and currently making his living playing a variety of music with a number of groups in the Chicago area. Parker plays traditional jazz, improvisational jazz and rock and roll. Parker is an outstanding example of a musician who would be very difficult to pigeon hole into just one genre. Despite the fact that I have very little interest in jazz I am quite intrigued by him and am seriously considering purchasing one of his albums.
Since I have had no formal musical training myself some of what Fabian Holt discusses in this book was a bit foreign to me. But overall I found "Genre In Popular Music" to be a very important addition to the literature of American popular music. I have gained valuable new insights to this very broad and extremely interesting subject. Recommended!

Hutcheson's work is important for the history of aesthetics and empiricism, and therefore it is wonderful to find an inexpensive edition of his works, which languished in library-only authoritative editions and Grove reprints. The apparatus and introduction to this edition is good, if limited, and serviceable, but the oddity comes in the form of the publisher. Liberty Fund publishes this volume, and you may well guess their agenda. The work is part of their "Natural Law" series. Someone forces Wolfgang Leidhold to turn the discussion of the work toward its role in Revolutionary America and its importance to the idea of "Lockean" natural law.

Hutcheson is not particularly invested in the revolutionary ideas that Locke had licensed, but the publishers want him to be, and Leidhold complies with their wishes to the degree that Hutcheson will allow.

If you feel funny about giving money to the "Liberty Fund" so much that you would deprive yourself of a good, portable Hutcheson text, then so be it. For myself, I am pleased that I have a chance to own a pivotal philosophical text on a poor scholar's budget.

I'm relatively new to comic books. I've only been reading them for the past 10 years so I missed out on a lot of "golden" era of comics. It's interesting to see how far comics have come in storytelling from the 60's (when Mr. Fantastic married the Invisible Woman). The stories seemed so one-dimensional (good guys vs bad guys with women waiting for a man to save them). They are a little bit laughable but interesting at the same time.

We get to read the wedding stories of more than just what the back of the TPB says. We see Reed and Sue from the Fantastic Four, Wasp and Yellowjacket from the Avengers, Quicksilver and Crystal from the Avengers, Betty Ross and Bruce Banner from the Hulk, Mary Jane Watson and Spiderman, and Scott Summers and Jean Grey from the X-Men.

I think the X-Men story was the best wedding story (but then again, I'm partial to the X-Men so maybe I'm biased).

This book contained relevant information regarding many Spanish speaking countries and their cultures. Also had a very easy to use and understand format.

This is a fun book--not serious literature--but a crap load of fun. The Thunderbolts, a super team made up of villains turned heroes, are re-formed in the wake of the Avengers disbanding. As they learn to work and fight as a team, they face off against the Fathom Five, a rogue Atlantean terrorist group who have launched a series of attacks against New York City. While they are a serious terrorist threat, mind you, they attack with giant sea dragons and other things they can round up from Atlantis. Various subplots ensue, including an attack on the United Nations while Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, is there to denounce the Fathom Five. By the time all is said and done, a vast conspiracy is uncovered involving HYDRA, the international terrorist organization... and by "uncovered", I mean the heroes finally figure it out once HYDRA launches a full scale nuclear assault on New York City, with the intent to sink Manhattan island to the bottom of the sea!

I've never read a Thunderbolts book before, so it's not necessary to know their back story, BUT I think it would help to be familiar with the Marvel Comics universe in general(Atlas's powers stem from Pym particles, developed by Giant Man, for example--but even this is explained in a more scientific, less comic-related manner anyway).

The dialogue is pretty good, the story is a lot of fun, you've got dragons and helicarrier-type attack ships, nuclear explosions, and Wolverine even shows up to "snikt" someone to death. There are a couple humorous moments, where some of the Thunderbolts realize that they essentially suck as super heroes because all of their powers come from their suits--which occasionally break down. In the end, I really enjoyed seeing the second (third?) string heroes try to pull themselves together to save the world, now that they have the chance to show their stuff. So pick up the comic and give them a shot!

I am not a Noble Causes fan. I have never read another issue before. The reason I bought this particular issue because I read that Invincible (another image character) had a guest appearance. (As a note for other Invincible/Kirkman fans, Invincible appears for 2 panels and has no lines or real involvement to the story. Brit also makes a slightly less brief appearance. And Robot, Atom Eve, Rexsplode, and DupliKate are there with Invincible.)

On to the comic. Having never read Noble Causes before I think that this book seemed to do a good job of introducing you to most of the main characters and giving you a glance at what they are like. You get an idea of who has a problem with who and who tolerates who. Since it's made of all short stories though it felt like there might not be to much substance for long time readers who are probably already familiar with the characters. Most of the short stories were good, I especially liked the first one and seeing Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker's almost Hellboy like short on Krennick was very entertaining. (As I'm a Kirkman fan, I may be a little biased) I have to say that the Zephyr short story was my least favorite. It was extremely tragic and felt a bit pointless to me. I would go as far as to say it was simply for shock value.

Again over all a good read. There's good artwork and good writers. A good read for someone new to the Nobles but as I said previously there might not be enough substance for long time readers to really enjoy.

This book is ostensibly about finding jobs for people with disabilities, but it is actually a very well conceived, organized, and written textbook on the subject of job development that is useful to anyone interested in the subject. It's main point is to MEET THE EMPLOYER'S NEEDS. Don't try to sell your client on the basis of his/her needs, which is to sell charity. Rather, find out the employer's needs for skills and provide a candidate meeting those needs. That's a classic maxim from the sales profession and it is well presented here.

I'm bias in this review because I'm a big fan of Peter David and his run on the X-Factor during the early 90's. The humor of the series is one of the things that made it stand out when the comic first came out. X-Factor was a comic book about the first five X-Men coming together again then after the Muir Island Saga it become about a goverment supported and funded team of mutants with the same name. It sounds like a difficult thing to do but it suceeded because of Peter David.

this is a great artist but the book couldve been better, there were not so many paintings in there.

This is one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's most obscure books, I managed to borrow a copy and read it. I thought it was excellent book. This is not really a science fiction book, it's more about the relationships between characters and their development as people. It starts out in the future in a time when Earth (Terra) is even more overpopulated and so every year they pick six of the brightest students from a class of 40, who are the best and have trained for many years, to go on a survey ship to find a new planet. We have six distinct people: easygoing Teague, free spirited Moira, the roboticaly perfect Ching, sensitive Peak, the quick Fontana and the spiritual Ravi. This book is how these people survive together in a confined space and working together in spite of their differences. In a way this book is a prequel to Darkover Landfall because they appear to take place in the same universe but Darkover is still very far into the future.

In all a good read especially if you like the way Marion can turn science fiction into a rich story where the focus is on people, not the fact that it is in the future.

Story:
In the future the united space program selects talented young children to become future space explorers. These children go through years of training and in their 18th year, 4-10 of the children in the class (the best of the best)are chosen to crew a survey ship that goes out among the stars to find habitable planets. This is story of Survey Ship 103. This crew of 6 must survive themselves, the dangers of space travel, and a faulty star ship in order to complete their mission and help humanity spread to the stars.
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Well the first thing I'll say about this book is that it is missing some of the pieces or it was meant to be part of a series. It is well written but most of what happens in the book seems to set the stage for a climax later.... that never happens. This story seems to be more of a "situational" story about what would happen if you took a bunch of super educated 18 yr olds, who have been sheltered from the world since they were selected at a very young age (usually 5 or 6), and turned them lose in a space ship and said find me a planet or don't bother coming back. The majority of the book deals with the crew "growing up" as they try to deal with not having any supervison for the first time in their lives. That is the part that makes the book interesting. If your looking for a space disater novel this is not it (try Voyage of the Star Wolf, Midshipmans hope, or The Helmsman Novels), if on the other hand your looking for a situationl novel that deals with people trying to understand themselves in a new world this novel might work for you.
m.a.c

The book was okay but the pictures were not that great. I read it when I was 12 and it seems to have alot of bad things in it for young adults. There is too much phornography. Other than that it is a good book

Sometime in the future, the human race realizes how much the population is outgrowing the planet and decides to train people to go explore the galaxy to look for other inhabitable planets. The trainees are chosen for their intelligence at a very young age, then spend their entire childhood learning a skill such as medicine, engineering, physics, etc. When they reach adulthood, the best six of them are sent off to other star systems to spend the rest of their lives searching for a place that may be hospitable to humans. This is the story of one such group.

The premise is good, but I think this story had more potential than it lived up to. Too many details seemed unbelievable and the characters remained undeveloped. Better written novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley include The Mists of Avalon and The House Between the Worlds.

Excellent character study of three gals and three guys (covering the gamut of sexual orientation) locked aboard space ship headed for nowhere. Death is certain--but when? The head game going on was why any of the six were picked from a class of forty. Group psychology and future sociology study of humans cut off from mankind. Only the outer space setting qualifies story to be labeled sci-fi. Good read.