Oregon State University Books

Amanda Garrett gets some inadvertent shore leave with an Indonesian pirate billionaire! The characters are great fun in this installment of the series, but Cobb has unfortunately written himself into a technological corner. Or, rather, the United States Navy has. Its machines and budgetary advantages over any possible opponents are so huge that Cobb has trouble creating scenarios where the bad guys have a chance of survival, let alone a chance of victory. This takes most of the tension out of the action scenes.

Amanda's dalliance with the pirate king, on the other hand, is a absolute hoot. So is reading all the reviews talking about her being "seduced" from her duties and behaving like a "slut." Ah, if she were a male captain and her seducer an exotic Asian lady of mystery, how many of the readership would do anything but cheer the hero on? What we have here is a playboy pirate who thinks he is playing Errol Flynn's role in the story, but Amanda knows better. Her sturdy middle-class American morals and sense of duty are always with her and her "who does he think he's dealing with?" comments to herself after every romantic encounter had me laughing out loud.

Amanda Garret is a wonderful character and it is a pity that there are unlikely to be any more novels in the series. James Cobb doesn't seem like the type to have the Wizards of Ancient Atlantis or the Sinister Sea-devils From Sirius show up to challenge the USN, so I think he may have run out of foreign enemies for Amanda and her crew to battle. A civil war breaking out in the United States would level the playing field a bit, or a conspiracy involving some of the armageddon-bound religious fanatics currently troubling the military, but would Cobbs' readership be offended or enthralled by a political plot twist of that sort? We will probably never know. Amanda will become a middle-aged admiral and marry someone of her own rank, and we have to be satisfied with that.

Book was delivered as advertised. The srory continues the fine writing he does of the military and including both sexes in its characters.

In Target Lock, Amanda gets involved romantically with a modern day pirate, whom she helps capture (eventually). The suspense comes from not being sure which way she'll jump when the decision has to be made. This book is an interesting continuation of her story, but I'm still wondering WHEN she's going to notice that the Admiral is interested in her (I see echoes of Honor Harrington here).

Target Lock represents a return by Cobb to the form shown in Choosers of the Slain and Stormdragon. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy SeaFighter, it just felt a little longwinded and didn't have to same pace and drive as the earlier two. This one however had me hooked from beginning to end. I brought this when I was holidaying in London and wasted far to much of my valuable holiday time reading this book when I should've been out enjoying the uncharacteristicly(sic) English weather. As one of those Aussie obsessed with Bali (even moreso since the bombings) to have at least part of the story set there, just gave it that extra "umpf". The open ending of this story annoyed me no-end at the time and I eagerly await the conclusion.

You know the person I mean. They know literally everything about a subject and insist on telling you about it, whether you want to hear it or not. You can walk away and they will follow you, continuing to try to impress you with their knowledge. No matter what you say or do, or even try to change the subject, they will continue to bombard you with useless, boring facts about whatever it is they are `hung up' on.
That's the feeling I got while reading Mr. Cobb's Target Lock. Half the time I did not know weather Mr. Cobb was writing this book to tell a story, or because he needs to show off his obvious intricate knowledge of the US Navy. Mr. Cobb takes a lot of pains to explain, in detail, every aspect of every gun, boat and piece of military equipment in his book. Eventually I was able to recognize when he was about to launch into one of these types of descriptions and skipped ahead two paragraphs. I fail to understand why I, as a reader, need to know the EXACT nomenclature, design, color, shape and country of origin and manufacture of every single piece of military hardware in the book. Whether a cannon is 75mm or 65mm or whether it was made in Japan or Korea and how much the weapon weighs has no bearing on the story whatsoever.
I understand that this book is in an ongoing series. If so, I'm glad I missed its predecessors. Sorry to say I will also miss its future sequels.

This book is very insightful, like other reviewers I do not agree with a few things, but over all the book is filled with interesting and historical views on Angels, dreams, resurrection, and religion. I really enjoyed the section on near death experiences, and Freud's ideas of dreams were a bit strange but I am not well read on Freud's psychoanalysis work however sometimes I wonder if he was drinking a bit too much Absinthe. I am also far from anything of an expert on Judaism, Islamic Sufism or basically any other beliefs outside of Catholic or Christian, so the chance to learn a bit on all of them was a wonderful opportunity. The last section there was some part that he brought up the fact that some religions predict the end of the world, like Millerites and Jehovah's witnesses by the way how many times did they predict the world was going to end? I have to ask them the next time they come to my door. Over all I have to say what a wonderful book.

Harold Bloom, as I imagine most everyone reading this review knows, made his mark with a work of almost unbelievable insight and genius, The Visionary Company. In it, Bloom effectively disemboweled and laid to rest the dried up "New Criticism" and "Neo-Classicism" that was in the ascendant at the time. He did no less than knock T.S. Eliot off his critical pedestal: a dragon-slayer indeed! The Visionary Company took its title from a line in a Yeats' poem referring to several poets (some, like Lionel Johnson, of exquisite merit) who shunned material success and followed their own visionary and masterful style of poetry and ended up dying young, drunk and destitute. (L. Johnson, for example was such a classical languages genius that he was offered a position at Oxford when he was barely over 20! Instead, he decided to pen his masterful poetry while drinking himself to death. He died after falling off a barstool at around the age of 30).- The full line from the Yeats' poem is "I would be one with the visionary company."-But the reader will take note that neither Yeats nor Bloom consumed himself with his genius in such a way. This, in Bloom's case, is somewhat unfortunate (I'm not going to delve into Yeats here.). After The Visionary Company, his prolific works can be graphed onto a parabolic downward swoop ending with this book...In the middle of said swoop, you can find works such as The Western Canon which, while idiosyncratic and a touch pompous and presumptuous(understatement?), still makes one catch one's breath at times at the profundity of the insights contained therein....But OK, first of all, Omens of Millenium is not truly Bloom's book at all, but a kitschy rip-off of The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas (Note how many times Jonas is mentioned in Bloom's book.). The problem is that Jonas was a painstaking scholar and wrote as such, and most readers will find him inaccessible to some extent, just as some readers found The Visionary Company. SOOO, Bloom solves everything by writing this nice little book relating Gnosticism to Western literature...Right?....Wrong!!...Bloom himself is guilty of what he dismisses the New Agers and such for: ill-informed boot-licking of the mass culture's obsession with all sorts of ridiculous things.-Sorry Harold, if you can't take it, don't dish it out.-My advice to readers is just to go back and read any of the great Romantic poets. They and the Gnostics are essentially the same on a spiritual level, and the writings of the poets are much more beautiful.-But please go ahead and check out Hans Jonas if you really are interested in the historical and technical aspects of this fascinating worldview.

While I disagree with Bloom on a great many topics, his opinions are always thoughtful and challenging. Such is the case with this book which, to me, represents an acme of such thought before the millennium. His ideas, of course, are far more refined and careful than your average streetside shaman but a proof of the point that all such thought on angels, resurrection, and magic is superfluous; the trophy of our imaginations.

In early 2000, after the roaring crashes of worldwide electronic mayhem, the second coming of Jesus, and our long awaited deliverance from the mire of this world we should reconsider the prophetic tone of this work. Just kidding. As we all know, January 1, 2000 was no different than any other day nor will there be any supernatural interventions into world history. World history has been, is, and always will be a history of geology and protoplasm engaged in the evolution of species. The quote from Durrell that opens Bloom's book is terrible and true--there is no supernature behind all this hubbub. Shall we then drift into our wildest imaginings: ancestral mythology, Christian sci-fi and the like? Or shall we create a new philosophy of man?

Find out Bloom's answer by reading this interesting book.

Omens of Millennium is a personal and erudite synthesis of Gnosticism, Hermetism, Sufism, and Jewish Kabbalah (and Emersonism). Prof. Bloom writes with the conviction of a "believer" and the rigor of a disinterested scholar. I first read this book three years ago and since then I have come back to it in many occasions. Omens of Millennium is a wake-up call to Knowledge. The book also introduced me to the extraordinary works of Hans Jonas, Mose Idel, and Henry Corbin.

Omens of Millennium is a consistently enjoyable, delightful work. Bloom is especially insightful when discussing Freud, and in his focus on the relationship of Enoch and Metatron. I don't agree entirely with everything Bloom says, of course, but still, this has been an enormously influential, important and loved book for me. I highly recommend it.

I have no idea what the hell this book is trying to say...it's so damn cluttered that I can't seem to follow it. It's boring, to say the least, and I don't really give a rat's a** because you could just go to Wikipedia and get a much clearer interpretation of the case/contract. But what do I know, I'm just a first year JD student trying to get through law school so I can make money.

It is a class textbook. You just have to have it to show up in class.

I agree with previous posters that the cases are well selected. That is possibly the only saving grace for this book. Of all my first year books, this is by far the worst. It's lack of organization and direction is confusing and unhelpful, especially to a first semester 1L.

First, it approaches contracts from a somewhat backward and non-linear direction. Instead of discussing what a contract is and its various parts in an ordered manner, it essentially presents the concepts in a jumble (similar to a large bucket of Legos dumped on the floor) and expects you, a poor oblivious fool of a 1L, to put them all together without any direction. I understand it's law school, and that if you can't figure things out you probably shouldn't be in law school. But this takes unhelpful to an unnecessary level.

Second, Farnsworth seems overly taken with the Restatement (2d) position. Perhaps that's because he was the reporter for it. He presses quite forcefully at times for its position, without giving due credit to alternative views or opposing positions.

Finally, while I see the reason for having three levels of case discussion (principle cases, secondary cases, and cases discussed in the notes), it's net effect is unnecessary confusion. If it's important enough to discuss, give the case. If the concept is all that's important, put it in a note. The way most other successful casebooks do.

Farnsworth may have been a great teacher. However that does not make him a good textbook writer. Other's I've talked to have agreed. Perhaps it does take a very special professor to make good use of this text. If that is the case, then the book is largely useless to the general 1L population.

This is a law book that many 1L's will come across this year and years to come. Having said that if you're reading this review you probably are shopping for a law book because it is on a reading list for a class. When I purchased this book through Amazon, with the expedited 2 day shipping, it was still cheaper than other comparable law websites (lawbooks.com, barristerbooks.com etc). Having said that the book was the right edition and brand new for a price that was slightly less than what I would have paid at the bookstore (considering I was in NY and the law school was in MA that wouldn't have been prudent). So if you are wary of buying used; stressing day-in-day-out whether the seller is going to send the book or if they'll send the right edition or numerous other problems that may run through your mind when purchasing a used book from an anonymous source without even seeing the product, then buy this new edition. You'll be happy to know you got a great product for a reasonable price. Plus without the notes or highlight marks that may distract some readers (present company included)

So you have K and you have the book you have to read for K. Well 1st I must say that this is a great K book.

However, it strays into some IP (I think) space with the ProCD case. Thus, my K teacher skips a lot of cases not out of time concerns but for content. There are a lot of international cases which are more or less worthless in my class. It is amazing how the UK cases are simply spoken from the bench and not written yet the prose is of immense quality.

Also there are lots of sub cases that are not bolded. Often I miss them as I am briefing so you have to keep your eyes open for them.

It's not just recently scientists and people who care about the environment have talked against clearing rain forests. How could one not be moved by those seemingly endless stretches of trees in the southern tropical countries of Brazil and Malaysia? After all, they're home to tons of plants, bugs, birds and animals, along with some native peoples.

What's recent is the attention to another kind of rain forest, called the coastal temperate. It's a rain forest that needs cool summers. It also needs a total rainfall each year of more than 55 inches. This kind of rain forest used to be found on the west sides of continents. Only Africa and Antarctica never had them. Ireland and Scotland used to be famous for them. Norway still has them in pockets. There's also quite a bit along Chile, New Zealand, and Tasmania. But the greatest of them all runs from Kodiak Island in the Alaska gulf south, through the Alaska panhandle and Canada's British Columbia coast to Vancouver Island.

Alaska's rain forests are a breathtaking sight. They're also good for the world. They build up and store more organic material than any other forest on earth. Some of that material drops into the nearby ocean. That's why Alaska's waters are full of the most scrumptious shellfish, salmon and halibut around.

And yet for over 40 years some of those forests were logged quickly and uncontrollably. Other forests were likewise logged some 20 years later. Salmon-spawning streams and black-tailed deer homes were ruined. Poorly built logging roads brought about landslides and brought in poachers. Caves underneath the trees were an archaeologist's treasure chest. But cutting down the trees caved in caverns and buried a part of our world history.

By the end of the 20th century, almost 1 million acres worth of trees were gone. It wasn't just muskeg, conifer and alpine scrub. It was western red cedar, western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and Alaska yellow cedar. The sad thing's no matter the tree, it was turned into pulp or 2-by-4's. That meant a lot of big, old, strong, tall trees cut down to make low-priced wood products that could have been made from lower-quality wood from elsewhere. Fewer trees could have been cut down and more money could have been made if the goal'd instead been turning out custom and specialty wood products for higher prices.

Pressure from nature supporters, native peoples and area residents put an end to TONGASS PULP POLITICS AND THE FIGHT FOR THE ALASKA RAIN FOREST might be won in the 21st century. Adventure packages, cruise ships, food production, handcrafts, small-scale custom and specialty logging, and tourist accommodations keep people employed and communities afloat. Forest service workers are cleaning up streams, redoing bad roads, and watching second-growth trees. So for the time being, there's more respect to what Virignia Tech master gardeners call the wildlands-urban interface of where people and nature meet.

Author Kathie Durbin's book is well-organized. It has clear examples and telling photos. It ends with a good bibliography and index. It's aimed at nature-supporting and community-building readers.

Kathie Durbin reveals the irresponsible and corrupt practices of the U.S. government, the Forest Service, and the pulp mills it was in bed with in Southeast Alaska, and how their destructive logging practices politicized a whole contingent of people to stop the decimation of our last temperate rainforest. Read "Tongass" and your blood will boil over what happened there, and what is still happening in many of our other forests today.

I have lived in the Tongass,, The Tongass is being sold out to the tour package industry,, this industry is no different than any other. The people who live here through its most harsh winters are being dictated to by feel good (my Disney Land) visitors. Many wonderful Alaskan familys have been displaced because of this myth.

Journalist Kathie Durbin has written one of the finest investigative works that I have read. I'm a lawyer with biology and chemistry degrees and I find the extensive endnotes, legal references and her penchant to seek out and cite primary sources refreshing.

There is nothing here that supports any label of the author, save that of professional. This work has disturbed me for years. I have become more active in the fight to preserve the ONLY temperate rain forest left in North America because of her clear and concise use of well-supported facts.

The most disturbing fact not in the book is that the lumber industry is now nothing but a byproduct of the pulp industry.

Ms. Durbin shows us how Salmon spawning grounds destroyed out of greed and carelessness by logging right up to the spawning streams and destroying the shade that the Salmon's Redd's require, and by the disposal of low pH waste into bays and estuaries and by the effects of runoff from clearcuts (damaging sub-arctic land and water: a fragile environment, indeed).

There is no room to debate the facts...only the policy. Calling this work or its author names simply illustrates the old adage: if you can't win on the facts attack the fact-finder.

Read this book. ANWAR may be the cause celeb today, but the damage to the Tongass is going on NOW.

As a 50 year resident of Ketchikan, I was curious how a "tree hugger" would portray the fight for the Tongass--known in these parts as the fight for a reasonable standard of living. Ms. Durbin quotes environmental organizer Donald Ross on page 172: "It doesn't take much, when you're a congressman from Kansas and you've never heard of the Tongass, to get you to vote for trees." When all is said and done, that was the tactic of the environmentalists. On page 246, she says, "Most who did [find job after the Sitka mill closed] were forced to make do with a lower standard of living than they had become accustomed to on pulp mill wages." How easily she dismisses the plight of those who live in the Tongass. There's a lot Ms. Durbin doesn't mention like the fact that only the wealthy and refugees from the 60's can afford to experience up close & personal the pristine beauty of the nation's First Park. The environmentalists have won. Sierra Club, kiss my ax!

I bought the book because it was supposed to be based on my ancestor, Elbridge Trask. It was a big disappointment because I felt the author blew it when it came to good history and the dependence of the early pioneers on God. Really way out there with the spiritual thing--men and women back then believed and relied on God, not some out of body, out of mind experience. Too bad.

I WAS A PERSONAL FRIEND OF DON BERRY AT THE TIME HE WAS PUBLISHED. HE WAS, IN FACT, MY SON'S GODFATHER.

DON WAS ONE OF THE MOST INTELLIGENT AND SCIENTIFICALLY DEDICATED MEN I'VE EVER KNOWN, AND WAS BLESSED WITH A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR, (AND GREAT PATIENCE WITH MY OWN "GROANER" PUNS AND TURNS OF PHRASES!).

"TRASK" WAS ONE OF THE FIRST WELL-RESEARCHED WORKS OF HISTORICAL FICTION TO BE USED AS TEXTBOOK MATERIAL FOR THE OREGON PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM IN THE SEVENTIES. BERRY'S WORK ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN FUR TRADE ("ALL OF THEM SCOUNDRELS")WAS EXCELLENT AND COMPREHENSIVE. HIS GREAT WESTERN TALE "MOONTRAP" WAS OUTRIGHT STOLEN AND PRODUCED UNDER THE SAME TITLE IN AN EPISODE OF THE OLD WESTERN TV SHOW "RAWHIDE"

DON AND HIS FAMILY LIVED ON THE OREGON AND WASHINGTON COAST FOR YEARS, OFTEN SUMMERING (YES, THE WHOLE SUMMER, RAIN AND ALL!)IN A TENT IN PRIMITIVE, BUT BEAUTIFUL SETTINGS. HE WAS A MAN WHO KNEW WHAT HE WROTE ABOUT, AND OFTEN EXPERIENCED THE PHYSICAL LIVING SITUATIONS PORTRAYED IN HIS BOOKS (YES, HE WAS THE KIND TO LIVE IN A TREE JUST TO SEE WHAT IT WAS LIKE!). IF THERE WERE, FOR EXAMPLE, SOMEONE WHO KNEW ABOUT DRYING A WOOL BLANKET OVERNIGHT UNDER WET CONDITIONS, HE WOULD HAVE KNOWN. MY OWN READINGS RE. THE ETHNOBOTANY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST FOUND NO GREAT DISPARITIES IN THE NAMES AND OLDTIME USES OF LOCAL PLANTS THAT WERE INCLUDED IN BERRY'S BOOKS.

I've been hearing about "Trask" for years, mostly from people who had never read it. If you love adventure stories this is probably a good choice. The novel moves right along and I finished it. But it isn't beautifully written and it isn't entirely accurate and (since I live in the area in which it's set) I can guarantee you that Don Berry hadn't actually been many of the places he claims Elbridge Trask goes. Wrong tree species, total ignorance of tides and seasonal changes in beaches, no mention of wet feet. Dry a soaked wool blanket overnight--outdoors in April on the Oregon Coast? Please! With all his details about rocky ground and salal, sleeping under a muddy bank and spirit quests, he won't convince anyone who has actually lived in a place where rainfall runs 65-180 inches a year.

If such mistakes don't bother you... and you like Trask, maybe it will be a wonderful read. I didn't care much for the main character. I didn't believe him as a settler and I didn't understand any better than he does why he wants to travel south to Tillamook Bay. I was offended by Berry's tendancy to kill off characters I did like and to judge them based on appearance (bigger is better apparently--pretty is better if you're a woman, but not if you are a man... ).

In paying his respects to native cutures, Berry was way ahead of his time, but the upshot of the novel is that people are ruined and their culture will be and I am supposed to be satisfied that Trask has achieved some sort of spiritual enlightenment over their dead bodies. I wasn't.

For a better novel about early white settlers in the Pacific NW, try "The Living" which is excellent. For a better novel set in Oregon try Le Guin's "Lathe of Heaven." "The Jump-Off Creek" by native Oregonian Molly Gloss, is set here in the last century, and it's a wonderful, realistic, and adventurous read. Her new novel "Wild Life" gives a realistic picture of the lost magic of the great forests. I don't know of a good historical novel about native cultures set in Oregon, but James Welch writes beautifully and with authority about Montana in "Winter in the Blood."

We have many, many astounding novels written and set in Oregon. This one really isn't bad, but I would be sorry if readers accepted "Trask" as the best we had to offer.

"...Trask, is ground breaking in its combination of historical research, real-life characters and settings, and Eastern philosophy. It is also a rip-roaring adventure story that Glen Love, a leading scholar of NW literature at U of O... [says is] the best novel ever written and set in Oregon." REED magazine Feb. 1999

This book manages to be both easy to read and to reveal important and complex insights about the rainforests of North America. Pynn is a natural storyteller who weaves his experiences travelling and talking with everyone from loggers to scientists to create a compelling read. Highly recommended.

Although the subject matter of Pynn's book is fascinating--the last old growth stands of forest left in North America, Pynn's writing leaves a lot to be desired. Pynn, who cut his teeth writing small pieces for newspapers, needs to gain experience in writing full-length books before tackling another major topic. He does, however, provide a quick glimpse into an important topic, and one hopes that a more seasoned writer will carry the banner from here.

I wouldn't normally post a review of a book but I stumbled across the previous reader's opinion and could not let it rest unchallenged. Mr. (or Mrs.) Kelowna leaves readers with the impression that Pynn is a neophyte writer who went straight from Journalism 101 to attempting the arduous task of researching and authoring a book. Nothing could be further from the truth. Already the author of The Forgotten Trail: One Man's Adventure's on the Canadian Route to the Klondike, Pynn has spent almost three decades as a prominent and award-winning BC writer. His prose is crisp, concise, laced with humour and a genuine, down-to-earth human feel. And all while tackling a subject that, admittedly, would normally be as dry as a Prince George winter. Had Pynn authored the biology and chemistry texts of my high school years I might have chosen not to drop those courses. There are few people who can take a reader on a journey through often incomprehensible scientific data and make that reader feel welcome. While Pynn's environmentally left-of-centre leanings are perhaps evident when he affords himself the luxury of editorializing (and why not, it's his book!), he nevertheless provides evidence for and against both sides of an extremely important issue on the Pacific Coast...allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind. Overall, an excellent book for anyone looking to explore the current state of our temperate rainforests; it will make you laugh, perhaps make you weep, but ultimately enlighten you.

With regard to the above comment, I'd just like to point out that this book is an atlas of Oregon wildlife, not an identification guide. If you've ever tried to scope out the range of a species from the tiny maps in most field guides, you'll appreciate the large size of these maps.

I was disappointed that a book this size had such limited descriptions of the animals. Nearly half of each page was devoted to a map which showed the areas where the animal might be found. The pictures of the animals are black and white sketchs with no color descriptions in the text. Can you imagine trying to identify birds without knowing what color they are? If the map had been scaled down there would be plenty of room to give more detailed descriptions of the creatures. The idea is very good, but the book is a disappointment.

i really like the Fords book cowritten by horowitz, so surfed his other books. this one may be great for the kkk scholar, but for the casual history buff who wants to learn something about the life inside the kkk in the 20's........it's about as interesting as a phone book.

David Horowitz has provided the scholarly community focusing of the Ku Klux Klan with an incredbily useful tool; the actual minutes from a Klan in La Grande, Oregon. With his brilliantly edited volume, Horowitz provides interesting insights into Klan functions, dress, politics, commerce and attitudes as told by Kligrapp Harold Fosner. What is more amazing though is that these records have survived, and through Horowitz's dilligence, they have been recovered from the Oregon Historical Society and made available by Southern Illinois Univeristy press. The historigraphy of Klan study has been altered greatly thanks to Horowiz's work, as speculation in past work can be either confirmed or refuted by examining Inside the Klavern, if in fact the La Grande Klan is a true representation of small town Klans nationally. A terrific read for all.

O'Doherty has researched his Viennese courts well, and his Mozart and Ben Franklin; the descriptions of Anton Mesmer seem so real, I'm pretty sure I've read them before. Not that it's a criticism to say he cribbed from contemporaneous descriptions; the blending of borrowed reportage with fictional text is actually done pretty well.

However, O'Doherty waxes much too purple for my taste when he lapses into streams of consciousness that seem to turn into whirlpools from which he cannot extricate himself. More unfortunately, while he has done tons of research on the details of say, seventeenth century Viennese table legs, he hasn't read too many diaries from the time. His prose seems awfully Victorian to me. Or pseudo-Victorian. Actually, there were times when it reminded me for all the world of Elinor Glyn.

His problem is that the novel isn't a seventeenth century form, and stream of consciousness, moreover, is a twentieth century construction. Still more incongruously, O'Doherty appears to have his eye on eighteenth century fictive diary prose such as Charlotte Bronte writes in Jane Eyre. However, he can't even separate the first person narrative of early novels from the stream of consciousness that readers today are familiar with. In addition, he uses three-point narration (Mlle. P., her father, and Anton Mesmer) and seems to be trying to do something along the lines of The Moonstone, yet another form that didn't exist in the seventeenth century. O'Doherty has set himself up for massive leaps of invention. Sadly, he never quite does what he sets out to do, and the thing shrivels in the bud.

I'm just addressing his prose style, though. If you can stomach it, then you have the pleasure of the devices he uses to work Mesmer, Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, Empress Maria Theresa, and most of the rest of the Hapsburg court, plus the French Revolution into 240 pages. They are actually pretty artful. So if you like that kind of stuff, and aren't fussy about the mode of communication, this might the book for you.

On top of that, there's sex, lots of it, and a blind girl Mesmer is trying to cure, and some neat messages about talent vs. function.

However, if you read for style and rhythm of language as much as plot, this will set your teeth on edge.

This novel may be technically out of print, but you can still buy it in many bookstores...There are probably lots of warehoused copies. Since it's on the Booker shortlist, there's a good chance it'll come back into print. Nonetheless, if you're interested, you ought to grab it while you can.

This is an absorbing little tale of an unorthodox doctor treating a blind, aristocratic young lady who possesses considerable musical talents. It takes place in the Austrian royal court at the time of Mozart's own prodigious childhood.

While there are horrific moments highlighting the destructive effects of ill-conceived parental control, O'Doherty sheds light on the mysterious penchant talented people have for falling into the hands of suppressive creeps. The doctor seems sincere enough, but even he cannot keep his hands off the lovely musician.

Chapters told by different characters, the story is a fine exercise in viewpoint and voice. O'Doherty sets his scenes with amazing conservation of adjectives. The language and syntax alone paints vivid pictures of court settings. This reader really got the impression O'Doherty did his research meticulously.

Now that the author's shortlisted for the Booker, we have good reason to snap up this out-of-print novel!

Without a doubt, this book is a big undertaking and doing it well has to be very difficult. There were a number of interesting chapters, but the style of writing, compound sentences combined with hyphenated phrases that went on for line upon line, made it very difficult to read and follow. This was probably the most frustrating book I've ever read, and I only finished it as a matter or principle.

This book gives alot of good information about the settling of the west and about many key figures who influenced the settlement of what was a vast wilderness area. The writing style is sometimes a bit too pedantic and this is not light reading that you'll go through quickly. However, the volume of information makes this book worth it. The closing of the American frontier and the settlement of the west are interesting subjects and this book does a good job of covering them.

I welcome feedback on this and all reviews at wstrnlibwarrior@yahoo.com