McDonald's Books

I was really impressed with this anthology of morbid short stories themed around tombs and the macabre of death. Forrest J. Ackerman introduced the book to us. It's not for everybody. It's kind for an audience who prefers science fiction, horror, and thriller to melodrama. Some of the material is not for children or for squeamish adults.

The Contents Read as Follows:
Tomb Swift by Forrest J. Ackermman
In trust: Ben Bova
The Amber Room: Ian Watson (One of my personal favorites)
THe Butterfuly Effect: Kathleen Ann Noonan (remember the AShton Kutcher movie, I wonder if it's the same story.)
Epistrophy: Michael Bishop
No Ordinary Christians:
White Lady's Grave: Lisa Tuttle
Burial at Sea: Larry Bond & Chris Carlson (about a submarine's final voyage, another good story,)
The Unchained:Kathe Koja, Barry Z. Malberg (one of my favorites about a gay man dying and his partner in the hospital)
The Time Garden: Ian McDonald
He on Honeydew: Stewar Von Allmen
City Deep: Jeremy Dyson (a great story about the London underground.)
But None I Think Do There Embrace: S.P. Somtow
Tales of Brittanica Castle: Christopher Fowler (another great story about a woman who wants to be free but can't because of her family's past)
Heartfires: Charles De Lint
Drowning with Others: Gary A. Braunbeck ( a sad, disturbing tale about a brother's strange relationship with his younger sister.)
Station of the Cross: Colin Greenland
Queen of Knives: Neil Gaiman
God's Bright Little Engine: Stephen Gallagher
The Darkest Doctrine: Brad Linaweaver (another personal favorite about the truth below the Vatican.)
The Land of the Reflected Ones: Nancy A. Collins
The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey: William F. Buckley Jr.
Blue Flame of a Candle: Storm Constantine

Some good stories, some truly bad, but nothing really stands out. There's nothing really to say more than that, since it's an anthology--read the ones you like, skip the others. Some of the good ones--"White Lady's Grave" and the one about the Church and the dying businessman (can't remember title). The others were either okay or completely a waste of time, but having just read "The Earth Strikes Back", even the worst ones looked okay. I'm not sure if you'd want to spend your money on this--it's not that good, so why not borrow it from a library?

I don't read too many anthologies. Certainly, this one will only inspire a moderate amount of enthusiasm for me to go buy more.

It's published by White Wolf, which also is responsible for highly successful and intricately detailed RPGs such as Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. (One of the weaker stories in the collection is by Steward von Allmen, who appears to be a key White Wolf founder.) I believe I picked this book up at GenCon; it's now out of print.

The anthology starts off very unpromisingly, with an embarrassing little number from beloved sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan Forrest J. Ackerman. This is the lowest point of the book, but luckily it rebounds from there. Ben Bova offers a story that has a perfect "Twilight Zone" twist, and Michael Moorcock tosses in an excursion to his Eternal Champion milieu in a tale that has a bit of an "English Patient" flavor to it. Ian McDonald in "The Time Garden" gives us an enchanting and lyrical exploration along the border of Faerie in a story that is reminiscent of the works of Robert Holdstock. (I believe, in fact, this may be why the basic Amazon review shown above claims that Holdstock is a contributor to the anthology, when in fact he is not.)

Jeremy Dyson's "City Deep" is another macabre tale with a dark cinematic flair such as would be found in one of the TV anthology shows. Two other stories are almost poetically elegant yet starkly simple: Charles de Lint's "Heartfires", about wandering Native American spirits losing their way in the present-day U.S., and Stephen Gallagher's "God's Bright Little Engine", with its beautiful and haunting ending. The story provided by Storm Constantine, "Blue Flame of a Candle", while not entirely successful, is nonetheless packed with intricate detail and manages to create a rich history with merely a few suggestions.

Other stories are much less powerful. The joint effort by Kathe Koja and Barry Malzberg is frankly unreadable, while that of Larry Bond and Chris Carlson is at best workmanlike and much more suited for a military-themed collection. Other stories are plain silly or sadly bland. The one by William F. Buckley (!) can only be considered an interesting experiment. Ian Watson's "The Amber Room" never comes together, and Christopher Fowler's "Tales of Britannica Castle" reads like a pointless pastiche of "Gormenghast".

While there is indeed good material to be found here, the lesser works really drag down the overall level of quality. A few of them should just have been jettisoned to save the rest.

Still, this is a suitable sampler for some authors who are rarely seen, and it definitely shows that some, such as Gallagher and McDonald, are worth following.

There are plenty of illustrations in this book, but they are only sketches or drawings. This book has some ideas that may be outdated or simply not economical. For instance, making an entire darkroom sink, painting it, preparing it for sealing, and all that, not to mention the worrying about leaks, etc. Could be better suggested that an economical sink under 100.00 be purchased... Too much time and effort into something that "might" save you time and money isn't worth it for me.

This book is probably not practical for those who don't already own woodworking tools (i.e., sabre saw, circular saw, clamps, chisels, etc.). However, if you are looking for an excuse to buy some, here it is. I actually built the sink and I have to say that it works like a charm, I use it constantly and the whole process of building it was gratifying. The down side is that I wouldn't say this is the way to go to save time or money. The time and cost estimates provided in the book are not very realistic. For the big projects it would be wise to set aside a weekend or so to complete them. You could probably buy a fiberglass or stainless steel sink on an online auction and spend roughly the same amount of dough. I also built the basic table, which I like very much. Probably the most useful aspect is that you can tailor the designs for your darkroom. If you get a sense of satisfaction from building things and you can't find the right equipment to fit your space then this is the book for you.

Written in 1970's it's really too old to apply to todays lifestyles and trends on fry cookery but it does have some classics. Glad I bought it used-but shipping was more than the price!

You can't go wrong with a Mable Hoffman cookbook in your cookbook library.

Mary Ann's book is easy reading for all. She has made it possible for a beginner in dove keeping to understand the proper care and housing needed to raise a very wonderful bird. I Raise several different types of Doves, and Mary Ann's book is one of my favorite to fall back on if I need an answer. It's a good read!

While this book is nicely bound with beautiful pictures and informative text, it is written for elementary school aged children. I was very disappointed with the book as I was led to believe it was a good resource by reading other reviews. I will be returning it - it is of no use to me.

Compiled and edited by Barry McDonald, Every Branch In Me: Essays on the Meaning of Man is an anthology of profound, thought-provoking essays that search for the essence and purpose of existence in human life itself. Regarding various religious teachings, modern history, and philosophical dilemmas with evenhanded scrutiny, essays such as "The Role of Culture in Education" and "The Survival of Civilization" stretch the boundaries of commonly held wisdom in search of a deeper unifying truth. Every Branch In Me is an impressive compilation and highly recommended reading for students of religion, philosophy, and metaphysics.

This book is a collection of articles that have been previously published in other magazines. Ostensibly about the Meaning of Man, it's real thrust is about the need to return to a traditional religious culture. The authors include Prof. Hossein Nasr, Schuon, Burkhardt, Huston Smith, Brian Keeble, Joseph Brown, Grey Henry, Marco Pallis, James Cutsinger, just to name a few. If you are already familiar with these authors and their writings you could probably skip this book.

The articles cover a wide variety of topics from dress, art, holy fools(a good article), modern psychology, Christianity in and its relation to Perennialism, education.

Brian Keeble has a fine piece on 'Work and the Sacred' the same with Thomas Yellowtail's work entitled 'Loss of Our Traditional Values'. Both are short but powerful.

Some of the most poignant for me were written by Grey Henry and Lilian Staveley as both wrote from the heart so to speak. Both pieces are quite moving.

Some are a bit outdated though. For example Titus Burckhardt rails against modern psychology which was defined in his time as Freud and Jung. However truthful neither Freud nor Jung theories mainstream anymore, western psychology has started to realize its limitations and now admits mankind's spiritual aspects with Transpersonal Psychology. Its not perfect but what is in this world?

Though I have some major qualms about of the articles and writers.

One is James Cutsinger's piece, which is a eye glazing head nodding attempt to show that one can be a Christian and still support Perenialism. He does this by invoking the obtuse Trinitarian dogma and using the works of Schuon. Whom is not recognized by any Christian doctor as a authority on Christianity.

The fact is unless one reduces Christian theology to the consistency of chewing gum as Cutsinger does, you cannot say that all religions are valid. A Christian if he is to be honest must state that only his religion is the only valid path and only his way will lead to salvation. Orthodox Christianity may always be the exception to the rule of Perenialist thought.
I'll take the works of Anthony Bloom or Philip Sherrard over Cutsinger anyday.

Now some of the writers like Linbolm and Mark Perry come off as polemical or shrill. Tage Linbom who is in essence a spiritual brother to Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. He seems to yearn for the good old days when the Church and tyrants were the ruling authority in Europe and democracy is abolished. Simply put everything post Reformation is bad and has the mark of the Devil on it. He has nothing good to say about anything in western society. Overall his critique of modernity is shallow in comparison to Lewis Mumford's , Ellul, or Theodore Roszak. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom or Bishop Ware would have been a much better and saner representative for the classical Christian point of view than Linbom.

Mark Perry seems to combine both polemics and contempt, he delights in showing how brilliant he his by using Buddhist, Hindu, neo-Platonic and even Christian terms in a single sentence or paragraph. His prose is generally obscure and meanders through a variety of subjects giving each one only scant attention, each of which deserves a chapter of their own. Like Linbolm he too has a intense dislike not only of everything western but is also contemptuous of many religious practitioners in the west ranging from Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus. His implication is that they don't have a clue about their practices and since they are not practiced in a sacred culture they have no effect. Prelest anyone?

I've generally been a avid reader of Traditionalists like Hossein Nasr, A.Coomaraswamy, Smith and Schuon. But these newer authors like Perry and Linbom are a whole nother kettle of fish. They lack the heart and intellect that I found so attractive in Prof. Nasr's and Schuon's works.

As a result Perenialists, especially in the wake of 9/11 are taking a serious risk of alienating the very people they intend to reach with the inclusion of perennial fundamentalists like Perry and Linbolm and will be written off as a bunch of contemptuous, cranky religous elitists.

Who would benefit from this book? If you already familiar with many of perennial authors , this book won't add anything you don't already know. If you're new to the perennial idea, this is a advanced tract and not meant for a non-scholar type, unless you're comfortable switching between Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist and Christian terminologies. Stick with Huston Smith's "Why Religion matters", "Forgotten Truth" or E.F. Schumachers "A Guide for the Perplexed". Then get Hossein Nasrs "Knowledge and the Sacred". Read Schuon last, he's a difficult read and suffers from bad translations from French.

Presidents don't just drop off the face of the earth when their term ends! "Homes and Libraries of the Presidents" takes a look at the homes, libraries, and other endeavors of the presidents. In a newly revised third addition, Homes and Libraries of the Presidents" contains new information that is promoted as less than a week old when the book went to press. A must for anyone looking for the most up to date information possible on the post-administration lives of the presidents, "Homes and Libraries of the Presidents" is highly recommended for community library reference shelves.

I didn't read the entire book, and most people I would guess also wouldn't read it cover to cover. This book is more like a travel guide to the burial sites, libraries, and birth homes of the presidents. I was interested in the book to see if there were any presidential sites near me (there are only 2), so the usefulness of this book was limited by the fact that I cannot visit 99% of the places discussed. For each of the presidents the author gives a brief snapshot of the person. There is about 1-2 pages devoted to each of the `lesser known' presidents and about 5-10 pages for the likes of Washington, Lincoln, etc. You are also given travel information - city/street maps to locate the places (which aren't very helpful), and museum hours, admissions, etc. The best part of the book were the color photos of the presidents' homes and the US map that shows the distribution of the presidential monuments. I'm not really sure I even get the purpose of this book - it doesn't offer any information that is new or interesting. I wouldn't recommend this book because all of the information it contains can be found with far better accuracy and depth on the Internet; via the museum or library websites you would get much more background information about the President you need information on with up-to-date info on hours, admissions, etc. *This review is for the 1995 edition*

A beautiful Lunar/Astrological calendar printed with vegetable inks on recycled paper. Each month begins with a New Moon and includes the next 29-30 days. Full Moon days are clearly marked, with phases depicted graphically. Each day is packed dense with a wealth of information: holidays, Lunar rise/set times, VOC/ingress times, and mundane astrological aspects, with an emphasis on Luna, and secondly the inner planets, but also including the outer planet (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). Each month is illustrated with beautifully renderered B/W artwork both ancient and modern, along with extensive poetry by the great Masters (Shakespeare, Coleridge, Ovid, Shelly) and sundry symbolic imagery from the imaginal realm. Areas of improvement are that is it difficult to find the dates the Sun enters the next Astrological sign (the Solar Yang to the Lunar Yin); and, it would all be more legible if only a little larger (8.5" x 11" is a bit small for a wall calendar). For these reasons only, I give it 4.5 Stars. Still, it is head and shoulders above every other Astrological calendar I've seen. Highly Recommended.

I was looking forward to receiving this calendar, as it is organized according to lunar cycles and not solar months. I may have still bought it if I'd been able to see images from inside first, but perhaps not. The only color in the entire calendar is on the cover, and the rest is grayscale. That's okay for some of the pictures, but some images are really hard to make out much detail.

Moonrise and moonset are given for each day, as are some bits of astrological information for that day. Some of the poetry is nice, but in general, it looks like they just took a photocopier to the pages instead of going for quality. All this calendar really needs to make it lively and interesting is clear, visible images and COLOR!

Ian McDonald, as usual, comes up with a fascinating idea for a novel and manages, with a few pitfalls, to write a wonderful book utilizing it. Featuring an ensemble cast, Out On Blue Six traces the adventures of several dispirit groups through the canopy and subterranean levels of a self-contained futuristic city.

The dis/utopian nature of the society reads somewhat like an optimistic version of Brazil, or a function version of the Paranoia games. Avoiding pain is the highest priority of the computers that run the society, so people are told what is best for them with no ability to argue. A few vignettes in the novel focus on this, but a great deal more is focused on the edges of the society.

The one downside to this book is the treatment of the ensemble. My favorite character, a Yulp comic artist, who starts the book, seems to fade into the background as characters with stronger survival skills are introduced. Other than this small issue, the book is a truly fantastic piece of work. It's a shame that it's out of print, but it still is readily available and worth a read.

After my review of McDonald's short story collection, Speaking in Tongues, several people, among them Michael Sumbera, recommended to me what they felt was McDonald's best novel, Out on Blue Six. There was also some attention focused on the novel on rec.arts.sf.written, because of its similarity to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." The comparison is not misplaced, although McDonald has a different agenda than Gilliam. Both stories feature a huge government that relegates people's lives, in which a small mistake can wreak human lives. That is, both stories are satires on present governments and governmental ideas. But whereas Gilliam plays the satire to the hilt, and goes beyond simple governmental poking, but also poking at individuals within it, ultimately ending on an extremely cynical note, McDonald still feels there's hope to be had. Out on Blue Six is an extremely pyrotechnic novel, full of unknown words and weirdly impossible SF ideas; again, like Snow Crash, this isn't a hard SF novel, but rather a novel of adventure and philosophy. Stephenson pulls it off slightly better, mainly because he isn't concerned with wrapping things up in a denoument, which McDonald does with his story.

This book along with Glen Flear's Improve Your Endgame Play are perhaps the best available, most easily readable endgame books. Lev Alburt's book is just plain awful, a real page turner. Most endgame books are either too easy or contain too much information, McDonald's book is short but enjoyable. I have a 2200 rating in blitz chess (5 minutes per game) and a 2000 rating in speed chess (30 minutes per game). More difficult books are Endgame Secrets by Lutz (Batsford, 1999) and Endgame Strategy (published 1985 by Cadagon books).

This is not the right book if you're looking for a fun and easy introduction to the most important technical endings! It was one of the first I bought, when I was still only a 1200 player (I am now rated 1700). However, I quickly realised that the book was not the best place to start for a beginner like me.

The chapters 1 "Pawn Endgames" and 2 "Essential Knowledge" really do try to give that basic knowledge I was looking for. Although the illustrative games are quite good, the overall impression is dry and boring, with no visual aids, info-boxes or emphasized rules. You could learn the same (and more) quicker, easier and with much more fun from "GM Secrets: Endings" by Soltis or "Just the Facts!" by Alburt and Krogius.

The rest of the book (chapters 3-7) turns to the realm of endgame STRATEGY, and was completely over my head when I first tried to study it, though I am beginning to understand more of it now. This section really is quite good! McDonald explains the most important themes with emphasis on how one should think during actual play, and frequently shows the play all the way from the middlegame to the final, technical finish. The examples are all from modern GM practice, but in my opinion this does not compensate fully for the boring, conventional layout.

To conclude, the first part of the book is for the beginner, but too dry and boring, while the rest could work as a (much) lighter alternative to Shereshevsky's "Endgame Strategy". This may be usuful for the 1500+ player who does not have the time to study that great standard work.

Born in 1883, Spielmann was among the top world-class chess players in the early part of the 1900s. Although he never held the top position for long nor achieved the legendary status of Lasker, Alekhine, or Capablanca, in most matches he held his own with them, losing by narrow margins. Spielmann made a mark historically and is studied by competitive and ambitious chess players of each generation for his sacrifices or combinations which in his own words were not always "necessarily sound but [leave] your opponent dazed and confused." This tactic can be seen in half of Spielmann's recorded games; whereas by comparison it was employed by other chess masters in only every fifth or sixth game. McDonald--chess coach as well as player on the international circuit--analyzes in detail many of Spielmann's games against top opponents focusing on his use of particular pieces in the kinds of sacrifices and combinations that distinguished his characteristic, formidable style of play.

There appears to be a movement gaining ground nowadays in the chess publishing world, that all books published on the game must be _instructional_ books: actually directed, whatever their putative topics, toward the more mundane goal of improving the readers' practical level of play and gaining him more ELO points. Biography, history, the philosophical aspects of the game, compositional artistry, general enjoyment --in short, everything peripheral to the game that an earlier and more literate era would have referred to as "chess culture" can be bowdlerized, scrambled, or jettisoned outright by an author and his database in the pursuit of elusive ELO gain.

There is not much chess culture in "Rudolph Spielmann Master of Invention". People expecting a biographical games collection of Spielmann, like the 3-volume Spence collection of Spielmann 30 years ago, or a biography-plus-games collection of the sort that has become very trendy in recent years (Pope on Pillsbury, Hilbert on Napier for example, or even Ehn on Spielmann in German)will be sorely disappointed.

McDonald's research and narrative gifts do not seem to extend to history, nor to biographical narrative. The volume includes a patchy and incomplete biographical "essay" with much of the usual suspect anecdotal material, lucid analysis of a small group of games McDonald considers to be Spielmann's best (here the author, as an undeniably gifted instructor and coach, does his finest work, though even these games are ripped loose from most of their biographical and historical moorings), and various chapters with some games, many game fragments frustratingly bereft of their openings, and numerous single problem-like positions organized on instructional thematic grounds so that the student can assimilate what McDonald feels to be the essential elements of Spielmann's play and incorporate these features into his own games.

Now it is perfectly possible to write a very good biographical games collection with almost no delving into history, biography, or similar, at all. Andy Soltis proves this in his excellent (if apologetically titled for the instructional audience) "Why Lasker Matters". But what McDonald has given us is a hodge-podge of a book that really should not have seen the light of day at all in its current form. The reader wishing to be instructed can find any number of books to instruct him in whatever aspects of his game that need polishing, and these dedicated manuals will do the job better than twisting a historical figure into a pretzel for the purpose. On the other hand, the reader wanting a good (or even a coherent) biographical collection of Spielmann will have to keep waiting, because this title definitely is not it.

Only the small chapter of Spielmann's "best games" presented for their own sake earns this book two stars. Without it the marking would have been still lower.