Nicholson Books

One has to give credit to Ms. Nicholson for taking on the daunting task of giving an introduction to not simply Mayan and Aztec religion, but to Central-American mythology as a whole. Nicholson draws upon a variety of sources to present a guide to the ancient cultures, the rituals and tenets of the various religious systems, and a fair sampling of the art, handcrafts and architecture that make the ancient cultures of Central America so fascinating. Even so, Nicholson seems to have a tendency to force her own ideologies on these belief-systems, characterizing the god Quetzalcoatl as a Christ figure, for example, or by comparing his warrior cult of the jaguars to the Knights Templar. At other places, Nicholson comes across as naiive, especially when her conclusions are compared with the results of contemporary archeological findings. Her premise that the Mayans were fundamentally peaceful and opposed to the idea of human sacrifice is discredited by strong evidence to the contrary. And her conclusion, for example, that the recumbent Chac-mul statue at the temple of the warriors at Chichen-Itza bears a hollow area in order to collect rainwater is laughable in light of recent findings which conclusively prove that its true purpose was to catch the hearts of victims of human sacrifice during blood/fertility rituals. More reliable data on the Mayans can be found in Michael D. Coe's "The Maya."

First of all this is my second Drabble book. I read "The Seven Sisters" and was delighted. Drabble has the bitter tone down cold. Simply put, I like how she captures the emotion of "heartlessness." But in "The needles eye" i've been having a hard time not getting distracted. It's not as followable. It reads like an old novel, like something people might have liked to read one hundred years ago. I keep forgetting who is the central character- rose or simon- and what's going on- and why I care about the Rose's legal problems. And why does Simon seem to be enamored of rose, and is there going to be an illicit sex scene here or not? And if Simon is just realizing that Rose and her ex-husband are meant for one another, what is the point? Who is Emily? I'm disappointed that it's not compelling enough. I want more exploration of Simon.... He is too invisible and yet he is the only thing that holds my interest .

I have very mixed feelings about this book. First, the positives:

The book is very readable-- none of Hawthorne's tortured circumlocutions or heavy-handed doubt. The scenery and setting descriptions are remarkable, painting perfectly clear word pictures. The characters, especially Pearl, are interesting and worth getting to know.

But they're not Hawthorne's. If you just read this book for its own sake, it works fine, although it would help A LOT if you were previously to read the prequel [both to this book and to The Scarlet Letter], 'Hester,' by the same author. But to read it as a sequel to Hawthorne's masterpiece is to invite massive disappointment.

This 'Pearl' simply won't work as Hester's daughter. First of all, she doesn't leave Boston till she's twenty, whereas in The Scarlet Letter both she and her mother leave when Pearl is just seven. Secondly, she leaves her mother behind, whereas in SL it's stated very clearly that they left together. I have no idea why Bigsby decided to impose this alteration on the story, but it doesn't work-- it effectively prevents us from 'buying' the notion that this is a sequel.

But that's just the beginning of the problem. There's also the fact that this Pearl has insights that no young woman of the 1600s could possibly have-- insights that are appropriate to the 20th or 21st centuries, but not to Hawthorne's time in the mid 1800s, let alone the time of the story. The author tries very hard to 'explain' this inconsistency, but it just won't wash.

The biggest problem, though, is something else entirely. It was to do with organization and structure. The author is so in love with his own ability to draw humorous caricatures of minor characters [think Dickens to the 8th degree] that he spends massive numbers of pages indulging himself in this exercise-- so much so that by the time we are halfway through the book, we've just begun to encounter the central plot. And then the central plot itself could be summed up in about twelve words, which I won't because I'm opposed to spoilers. Suffice it to say that it isn't very profound, and is entirely predictable once all the characters are in place.

In short, Hawthorne is probably bored to death in his grave.

What makes you laugh? A twist in the tale? Bizarre behavior? Self-destructive foolishness? Love stories? Hate stories? Parodies? or pure humor? If all your answers are YES, you can safely pick up this book and laugh your way through. If not, well, you're in for some surprises.

There's no doubt that the collection is wholesome. The only problem is with the title. Looking at the title, many a reader will be forced to think that it's a collection that's going to send him/her rolling on the floor with laughter. It will not. As the editor rightly qoutes Sigmund Freud in the introduction - "Comedy is a complex human phenomenon. It has to do with pain as well as pleasure, anxiety as well as delight, cruelty, victimization and chaos..."

For someone looking to sketch the history of modern comic fiction, this book is a reasonably rich (29 pieces, to be precise) collection. The average reader though, in my opinion, would have loved more of the "Nobody Will Laugh" (Milan Kundera) or "The Champion of the World" (Roald Dahl) variety.

I was expecting a book that explored the history of twelve towns in the UK through its architecture, and to some degree, the book delivered. The illustrations were wonderful and I enjoyed flipping back and forth between the text and the drawings following the narrative through the towns. What I wasn't expecting was the author using this as a forum to criticize various towns planning commissions, one grocery (I assume) chain, and various social practices through the ages. Being from the United States, I wouldn't be surprised if he found himself sued by the aforementioned chain. He seemed to delight on criticizing their practice of removing supposedly historic buildings and putting in their mega marts. Don't get me wrong, I value historic buildings and am always upset when one is lost to parking lots, and mega stores, but he even seems to criticize one instance where a new store was built on an already empty lot with sensitivity to the surrounding buildings.

He also seems to go on a couple of rants about the treatment of workers during various points in history. He also seems to somehow feel that a town populated mainly by retirees is a bad thing. I'd hate to see how he'd handle some towns in Florida and Arizona that I know of.

The other thing that I found a little difficult were references to things that I assume are common knowledge in the UK, but for those of us in the US meant nothing. I can't really hold that against him, that's just a warning.

Bottom line, read the book for the drawings, architecture, and history. Skip over the rants.

My star ratings:

One star - couldn't finish the book
Two stars - read the book, but did a lot of skipping or scanning. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection or search out other books by the author
Three stars - enjoyable read. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection. Would judge other books by the author individually.
Four stars - Liked the book. Would keep the book or would look for others by the same author.
Five start - One of my all time favorites. Will get a copy in hardback to keep and will actively search out others by the same author.

Good text, very useful, but I found the text at another locale that sold Collison for a lot less and returning the hardcover was a hassle within fraud giftwrapped in passive aggressive angst.

Sarah Bradford's biographies are a joy to read. Her admirable prose style, her ability to recreate a very different era or level of society, her thorough but never tedious research give a wonderfully full-rounded picture of the public figures about whom she writes. The fact that this biography is less satisfying than some of Bradford's other works has nothing to do with any weakness on her part but instead is the result of her choice of subject. This shy, repressed monarch for much of his life seemed a fairly colorless figure, overshadowed by the stronger personalities around him (his casually arrogant elder brother, his formidable mother, his extraordinarily charming wife). George VI comes accross as a conventional upper-class Englishman, the sort of bland personality about whom no one would have dreamed of writing a biography had he not been a monarch's son. When George VI is involved with exciting external events (as in the sections of the book devoted to World War II or the chapters dealing with his elder brother's romance with Mrs. Simpson and subsequent abdication) Bradford's biography becomes compelling reading. However, much of George VI's life was comparative uneventful or dedicated to fairly tedious subjects (to me at least) like the role of the monarchy in British constitutional law or the symbolism of goodwill tours to the dominions. Nor can Bradford uncover that much of the inner life of an extremely diffident man who apparently only felt comfortable confiding his true feelings to his wife. Despite its perhaps inevitable limitations, this remains the best biography of George VI I know (but for a clear sense of what Bradford can do with a livelier subject, have a look at her biography of George's daughter, Elizabeth II).

Allegedly, this book was dictated by the deceased mind of F.W.H. Myers to, according to Maurice Barbanell in his book This Is Spiritualism, Geraldine Cummins: "a non-professional medium [who] is the greatest living exponent of automatic writing". Barbanell further states, "I witnessed the production of writing from Frederic W.H. Myers, the distinguished classical scholar who was a convinced Spiritualist. Myers continued an essay started at a previous seance. It covered nine pages of foolscap paper and was written in beautiful prose as if it were all one word. With great rapidity the pen moved to the edge of the paper, never slipping, although the medium could not see."

OK, so that's how this book was written then, but what do "the experts" reckon? On its dust jacket is a quote from Stanley De Brath, editor of Psychic Science, who states, "I am convinced of its value as a communication from Frederic Myers, throwing much light on the After-life." Myers's friend Oliver Lodge is quoted: "I feel at liberty to commend this book as a serious attempt to give information about a future life and the stages through which earnest people may expect to pass. The accounts which F.W.H. Myers goes on to give of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh States are remarkable." Sounds promising so far, but then I read a quote from The Bookman: "Particularly worthy of attention are the references to the grouping of souls to form the vehicle of one spirit; and to the bearing of this conception on reincarnation and 'Karmic debts'". Then I realised that this book can't be taken completely seriously as there's no evidence for reincarnation, something that Myers declares in vol 2 of his Human Personality book.

My impression of this book is that it's the product of a combination of communication from Myers and ideas present in the mind of Cummins. In it "Myers" states that "the inner mind of the medium shapes the message according to the fertility of that mind", and also that mediums are discussed on the "other side". I see that Cummins also used her "psychic gifts" to write the books The Childhood of Jesus, The Manhood of Jesus and The Resurrection of the Christ ("An explanation of this Mystery through modern Psychic Evidence"). Given the absence of evidence supporting the notion of Jesus's Christ's physical existence, it seems logical to conclude that he never walked the earth and that therefore Cummins's books on Jesus are a creative invention. Therefore, if she made up these books then it seems reasonable to conclude that she may well have made up at least some of The Road to Immortality.

According to "Myers" in this book: the etheric body is nourished by a light which isn't sunlight; spirits are coiled up in earth memories, like "swaddling clothes" initially; humans exist on various planets, but their material bodies vibrate at different speeds due to being subjected to a time that is different from earth time; spirits live in the fantasy created by their stongest desires on earth; believers in organized religion individualise on lower rungs o fthe ladder of consciousness, clinging to the line of thought that was theirs on earth, living in a "stagnant pond", confined in a prison of their own ego; time and appearance are conceived of as one symbol; the ego is the arithmetic sum total of the physical needs of man; those who enjoyed inflicting pain on others on earth suffer very terrible distress due to having no power to inflict pain in the spirit world; purgatory can exist for those who come to experience satiety following creation of their fantasies; certain primitive souls experience reincarnation.

to me, they seem a bit contrived because he insists on having an english rhyme scheme and meter which makes me think he probably gave away something in translation.
The introduction is a good basic introduction to the biographical data and accuracy available about the poet, some of his influences, and subject matter.
I usually shy away from rhyming translations, but this is pretty good, and there are some excellent poems and stories in here...

This is a straight forward narrative of an expedition into the heart of the Tuareg controlled Hoggar Mountains northern Africa. Led by a French officer, Paul Flatters, the expedition set out with the hopes of being the first Europeans to enter the Hoggar Mountains, while surveying a route for a proposed railroad. Instead the Tuaregs allowed them deep into the desert while providing guides who deliberately misled the group and put them into a situation where the party had to split up. At that point the Tuaregs attacked virtually wiping out the French leadership and many of the group. The survivors were forced to hike, on foot and without water or food, for over 600 miles pursued the entire time by the camel-mounted Tuaregs.

But there's nothing that's really different or gripping about the story....if you've read one story about a group of people stuck in the wilderness who go to drastic lengths to survive then you've read this story. The only difference is the historical context of European relations with the Tuaregs and their culture; it's an interesting lesson in two cultures with divergent value systems clashing violently in a harsh land.

Having said that, if you have a particular interest in the Tuaregs, European expansion in north Africa, or the colonial period in general you'll probably enjoy the book. If not, you won't. Even then I'd recommend you checking it out at the library.