Northwestern Books

The second of a two volume series, The Northwest Best Places Cookbook: Volume 2 presents and showcases 125 of the most-requested recipes from star-rated restaurants, hotels, cafes and more which were featured in the fourteenth edition of the "Best Places Northwest" guidebook. Unique and savory dishes abound with regional flavor and range from Pacific Rim Crab Cakes with Sesame-Ginger Aioli; Penn Cove Mussels with Hard Cider, Bacon, and Apple Chutney; and Grilled Salt Spring Island Lamb Burgers; to Northwest Seafood Pepper Pot; Roasted Oysters with Hazelnut Butter; and Stilton Cheesecake with Rhubarb Compote. The Northwest Best Places Cookbook: Volume 2 is a true and highly recommended culinary celebration of fine cuisines from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.

I owned this cookbook for two yearnow, and cooked many of the recipes from each section; It seems that most of these recipes were just thoughtlessy typed up and bound together. Did Cynthia Nims actually cook anything out of here herself? Expect to cook each recipe multiple times to adjust cooking times and get a handle on prep times which can balloon out of proportion. These recipes are from restaurants so expect large amounts of heavy cream and butter in everything. Also, expect to search for at least one or two ingredients in every recipe. A quick example: "Hazelnut French Toast" sounds easy and delicious right? Well have fun driving to Langely, WA for a loaf of artisan hazelnut bread. Of course you could substitute a "rustic country bread" but then you would have "Rustic Country French Toast". That's just idiotic in my opinion. Thanks to the chefs who've created some wonderful sounding dishes, and bullocks to Nims for profiting off her rubish editing. You're better off going to these restaurants, which is probably what this book is...a glorified advertisement.

Virginia Spencer Carr is not only a fine biographer in this recounting of the life of the ubiquitous Paul Bowles, she also was a friend of a fascinating man who touched many aspects of the arts and made his mark in multiple areas of creation. Some of those areas were in his friendships and interpersonal critiquing of famous artists such as WH Auden, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, Aaron Copland, Tennessee Williams, Virgil Thompson, Carson McCullers, and Gertrude Stein. His life began as a poet, progressed through years as a composer of music that never quite found its place, and ended as a novelist of such impressive books as 'The Sheltering Sky', 'Let It Com Down', 'The Spider's House' etc.

Carr takes all this into account and serves it up with a thorough amount of information about Bowles' carefully guarded private life. Married to lesbian author Jane Bowles, Paul Bowles was one of those sub rosa gay artists who managed to bond with many other great gay artists in a time when such interplay was hardly condoned. Carr manages to give insight as to how these people learned form each other (for instance the infamous February House in New York where many of them lived communally for a while); she does this without resorting to gossip or sensationalism, respecting the fact that writing biography includes an obligation to yield a viable picture of the subject.

Bowles spent much of his life in Tangiers (this is where Carr first met him) and most of his successful novels and writings were influenced by his observations of the clashes between the 'tourists' who visit Morocco yet never connects with the realites and idiosyncrasies of that mysteriously magical place. Much the same could be said about the ambiguous persona of Paul Bowles. How much of his life was due to his inherent talents and how much was due to his integral interplay with the artists of his entourage? Carr poses some fine explanations in this very readable biography of a man who remains an enigma. Grady Harp. July 05

this book, we are told, was originally a manuscript of 1,308 pages. i mention this because one comes upon paragraphs here and there that seem part of a longer work. the first chapters are by far the best with the narrative smooth and the early years "fleshed out". however, when bowles' artistic carreer begins so do the problems, which may have to do with the tremendous job of cutting out 3/4 of the original manuscript.
the book contains no new important information or point of view but there are some new details here and there ( mainly about press runs, money matters and sexual partners).
ms. carr travelled 13 times to tangier for her research, arranged for bowles' medical operations in the u.s.a. and had her subject as a house guest for 3 months. however, bowles' literary executor refused to authorize this biography. we are not told why.

Poetic prose like that is no surprise from Gass. But somehow every page comes with surprises, sudden shifts, silly stuff and occasionally, some
twisting tickles or cutitudenous insight (well, more like a peek now and then when you don't expect it.

"(Go to a movie.) Forward and back, in and out, up and down," we skip a


b O u
T. And like that, there: in fancy frenetics.

At worst, silly.

At best, an amusing divertissement,
but only for hard-core Gass fans.

This book changed the way I look at a coffee table. It changed the way I look at fonts. It must be read, browsed and left out for others to browse. Leave it in the bathroom and see what happens. You will learn much about your guests as they sit on the pot

Cris Mazza skillfully blends her stories with elements of black humor and heart breaking humility. In "Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?" Mazza demonstrates why she is one of America's best female voices in fiction. From "In six short lessons." Where she tells the story of a battered spouse, and how this relates to her as a dog trainer. The story lines cris-cross between humor and sadness, sometimes within the same sentence. Cris breathes life into all her characters, and you can't help but to feel for them. Cris Mazza as a story teller is strangely unique. Her experiments of with point-of-view and layout are simply stunning at times. In the title story, Mazza tells the tale of a rape through the view point of two seemingly un-reliable narrators. Leaving it to the reader to decide who is telling the truth and who is lying. Through out this collection of short fiction Mazza explores the often hidden elements of relationships. We slowly get the sense of who Mazza is as a female writer, and a sense of ourselves in all her characters. Her views, at time feminist, but often even more so, they represent real women. Over all this book is a nice start to further reading.

Cris Mazza skillfully blends her stories with elements of black humor and heart breaking humility. In "Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?" Mazza demonstrates why she is one of America's best female voices in fiction. From "In six short lessons." Where she tells the story of a battered spouse, and how this relates to her as a dog trainer. The story lines cris-cross between humor and sadness, sometimes within the same sentence. Cris breathes life into all her characters, and you can't help but to feel for them. Cris Mazza as a story teller is strangely unique. Her experiments of with point-of-view and layout are simply stunning at times. In the title story, Mazza tells the tale of a rape through the view point of two seemingly un-reliable narrators. Leaving it to the reader to decide who is telling the truth and who is lying. Through out this collection of short fiction Mazza explores the often hidden elements of relationships. We slowly get the sense of who Mazza is as a female writer, and a sense of ourselves in all her characters. Her views, at time feminist, but often even more so, they represent real women. Over all this book is a nice start to further reading.

I loved this book! Mazza uses point of view to create sympathies with characters who are the cause of the conflict. This book looks beyond the political ramifications of sexual harrassment and explores some of the unlikely human reactions to the disfunctional relationships we all end up in at some point.

I was looking for help with a particular situation and thought that since this was just wirtten it would help me deal with my situation. It DID NOT help by giving me any necessary advice.

First off, Esterhazy is obviously not Hrabal the Storyteller, nor is he intending to be a Hrabal the Storyteller. In fact, he writes of a frustrated, blocked writer who is miserably *failing* to write a book celebrating Hrabal. It's a cosmic joke on mimicry; a book that ends with a jazz-loving God picking up a saxophone for the first time and letting out a horrific blurt of a note that resounds across the world.

Throughout Esterhazy's characteristically chaotic mono/dia/tria/etc.logues there are lovely, alchemic moments: "you probably know what a Hungarian sentence is like...with not a structure in sight, or a decent relative pronoun, the words all lumped together, and yet...A Hungarian sentence is this `and yet'. You have to start from scratch every time. It's as little civilized as the heart." Here, to generalize, you have a summary description of Esterhazy's own prose.

Another shining verbal moment:

"Masturbation which -- though it may never get you anywhere, nevertheless creates a universal space-time, the genesis of all creation; it is not rhythm, but throbbing!" E. loves to take the bodily(uncouth by Western standards) and mix it in with some dabs of theory. And honestly, reading *The Book of Hrabal* is *throbbing*. Largely due to my accidental run-in with this book I, a woman of no Eastern European descent, am currently learning Hungarian and pursuing graduate studies in Hungarian Literature. That should speak for itself.

This was the second of Esterhazy's books I read- the first being "A little Hungarian Pornography. (KMP)" I approached this book with great interest, not because I liked KMP but because Hrabal is one of my favorite writers. I am unclear how Esterhazy intends this as a homage to him.

Esterhazy's style is curt and doesn't flow. It appears he is trying to do some James Joyce/Jose Saramago thing, but badly- which is pretty much par for the course as his other books are written in the same style.

This is especially ironic, as Bohumil Hrabal is above all a storyteller. Hrabal's style and content are as different from Esterhazy as moon from sun. My greatest concern with the book (which I find merely annoying), and in fact the reason I am writing this review, is that I would find it a great tragedy if anyone steered celar of Hrabal after reading this pathetic attempt to cop some glory off of his name. Scrap this book and get a copy of "I served the King of England" or "Ostre Stredovany Vlaky."

The 1920s was a great decade for Soviet literature: the works published during this era are thematically- and ideologically-diverse. Yes, there are better-written novels that came out during this period. Nevertheless, Gladkov's Cement is under-rated. I find it fun to read and re-read (which is critical, since I end up teaching it a lot) and it's definitively one of the best vehicles for getting at the tensions that plagued the Bolsheviks in the early years. Pairing this with Abram Room's film, Bed and Sofa, is a great way to address questions of gender in the early Soviet Union.

It is my sincere hope that people interested in Russian literature are no longer forced to read this awful book. When I was in school, during the Cold War period, I could see some usefulness. Socialist Realism was the approved creative style in Russia and one could not come away from reading 20th century literature and think that everything was as well-writen as Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and Zamyatin's We. Yes, in order to understand the Soviet mind one had to read awful books like "Virgin Soil Upturned (proving that any hack can win a Nobel Prize) by Sholokhov, How Steel Was Tempered and yes, Cement.

When we were reading this book, and I have read it twice, there was an attempt to show in the example of the book's communist party heroine, that working women cannot have it all. Well quite frankly, the reason this heroine is unable to find love and happiness is because she is supporting the creation of a joyless utopia where no one will ever be allowed to be really happy.

The book and its essays are charming. Through these words you can feel the writer's life experiences as viewed through some association with baseball. Baseball is not the topic of this book, it is the illustration used to bring to you a number of life experiences - some joyful, others emotional - all worth reading and experiencing. Sort of a "Baseball - Soup for the Soul"!

Baseball as metaphor for life, or life as a metaphor for baseball has been pretty well covered. Unfortunately most of the writers in this book are caught in some personal vortex that can work only for them and has little to offer the reader. This collection is mostly about everyday people involved with some aspect of baseball and the inference tends to be that the essence of the game somehow lies in the milllions who participate in some form at some level. But it's a ruse, used to justify or validate many of the authors' opinions and maybe cherised moments. Not much here of merit.

Though most of the stories don't bridge the gap from the teller's personal interest to valid story telling, there are two exceptional pieces that belong in any first rate short story anthology.

They are "The Warriors," by Sherman Alexie, and "What Pop Fly Gave His Daugher," by Lynda Berry. These are excellent works. They are powerful, moving, informative, wonderful stories that happen to include baseball. Sherman Alexie brings humor, the quixotic mine fields of emerging adolesence, core questions about pecking orders, and schooling on and off the reservation in an engaging, entertaining, and authentic manner.

Lynda Berry offers a story in the life of a girl/emerging woman as she finds a way to deal with a near intolerable family. We are are shown a glimpse of the confusion and agony of this girl, and her determination and reslience as she survives and comes to grips with her noncaring and self-centered father. It's an excellent and informative read. And yes, baseball gloves, even if they only cost $.59, can work magic.

The remaining seven selections are meanderings of minimal interest. They are dull, and in the same breath as extolling the life virtues of baseball they tend justify ugliness and/or reflect/validate a sad personal perspective.

In "God's Tourney," Robert Leo Heilman treats American Legion regional playoff baseball with the devout obsequiosness of a budding acolyte of the true religion. He gives us a lot about being good enough, the quirks of the game, the usual about how baseball makes better people of those who play it, and becomes positively reverent when describing the hallowed ground of the Roseburg field. Seemingly unaware of the contradiction, he then plays the reality card: the very non amateur baseball commercial concessions necessary for legion ball to survive are dismissed as just a part of big thing called life. The official car (Buick), and so on. No dealing with reality and the obvious: you can't make nice something that isn't. Instead of letting the obvious just lie there, the author tries to validate it and somwhow attach it to the glow of those beautiful 600 wooden seats.

In "From the Church of Baseball: Different Hymns," by Timothy Eagon we have the modern blow up of all the coaches and parents who never figured out the value of games for children. While he does profess to come to some sort of epiphany at the end, he can't get past his obsession, not passion, about the game and "life."

From some dark recess he rails about the pathetic nature of T-ball and coach-pitch, everybody-is-a-winner stuff that is peddled at the lower ages. His squad is made up of nine year olds. He continues about how reality comes early for these kids - his team, which includes his daughter - about the pain the kids felt when Griffey broke his wrist running down a deep drive, or Ayala's "closings." He tells us that these kids know grit, triumph, and agony, and rambles on in a debasing monolouge, ending with "self-esteem, schmelf-esteem."

9 year old girls (and boys) just don't agonize over these things, unless they are tactical survival techniques for life at at home. With any luck, children at this age are encoureaged to learn and discover, allowed to be kids. The grit and agony too many of them know are obscene expectations to be adults by the age of nine, to validate adults instead of being validated by them, and to be bludgeoned into equating a hollow concept of "being a winner" with being valued. A quick look at the courts and social services shows us what too many 9 year olds, and younger, know about the agony of despair and abuse. That's real. Ayala and Griffey are nice diversions.

It's the game that's the thing, it's the game that rich and rewarding, unlike all but two of this collection.

right off the start, I'm at odds with Hillman. He quotes Aristotle on opening page. I favor Plato's thoughts, and avoid Aristotle. Jung's also was decidedly Platonian. I find Hillman confusing and i'm sure there are many others out there that agree, but have refrained from posting that opinion.
Why Hillman decided to re-interpret Jung , bring in his own theories, only Hillman can tell us.
Recently i was banned froma "Jung-ian-ISM" chat forum for my opinion on Hillman. No tolerance. As Hillman is a big wiz over at the Jung training center in california. many of the formun members felt my comments on Hillman, was 'in-appropriate".
Like Jung who was rejected from the Freudian worshippers, so too I from the "new american style Jungian-ISM"
btw many on the chat board were,,, atheists. How far can one go with jung's ideas and be atheist at the same time, is a perplexing thought...or was it this question to the board "was Jung atheist?" that had me "rejected by the elders".?
For one reason or another the members could not take the confrontation.
btw Jung mostly stayed alone with a very select group of friends and devoted to his studies. The main psychological "clubs" he avoided like the plague.
Jungian-ISM, is alive and well, as the atheists flock to Jung look as a substitue for their lack of religion.
Little do they understand , Jung is all about experience, Gnosis. Without this core knowledge, his words remain ink on paper, and there remain. Jung stated often his path was something to help those who had for one reason or another lost their way and found it difficult to re-connect to christianity. Those who threw away any sense of faith with stubborness, (turned atheist), Jung could not bring much success to the case. Jung did not accept every case, only those he felt a connection with.

Mr. Hillman's early works are exciting reading, even today, some 25-30 years after their original publication. Here is a true scholar, in the old ways or classical sense. Mind you, I am not one. A visionary, a brave soul, a seeker, and never removed from life; Mr. Hillman remains fully immersed within it. I love this man for his courage, and his inspiring, challenging, and wholly imaginative ideas. If the word 'imagination' stirs something wonderful deep within you, read this man's work, please. For me, it seems this piece, together with 'Re-Visioning Psychology' and 'The Dream and the Underworld' bring together the author's core vision. Mr. Hillman of course, may disagree! A great man; an even greater contribution.

The previous review of this book covered all of the important and unbiased observations one would be inclined to make of Poetic Culture, so I will try not to reiterate them.

As a book which purports to analyze the culture and cultural mentalities surrounding contemporary American poetry (and thereby to analyze contemporary American poetry itself), Poetic Culture is indeed quite flawed . . . mostly due to its distinct partisanship and glaring hypocrisy. And yet, I felt inclined to bump this book up to 3 stars, because, frankly, it's so damn useful as a psychological artifact, an artifact which provides the clearest window into the mind of the Language Poetry camp that I have yet come across.

To be more forthcoming, I believe the psychological transparency of Beach's book betrays what I consider the fundamental shortcomings of the LangPo aesthetic. It does this with such blatancy that I wouldn't be in the least surprised to hear some of the LangPo minions themselves decrying it. But decry as they might, Poetic Culture is not only transparent, it is, I believe, mostly accurate in its representation of LangPoesy. For this reason, I would recommend this book to anyone trying to come to terms with this phenomenon of Language Poetry. By "come to terms", I mean a legitimate reckoning with it, neither an outright rejection nor an unquestioning embrace. LangPo is an important influence on the poetry being written today, and should not be ignored nor dismissed (had a bit of fun with, yes, but not ignored or dismissed).

And as for having a bit of fun with Christopher Beach, let's have at it. For my first implement of torture, I give you . . . the Close Reading! Beach throws this term around quite a bit throughout the book. In his mind, he applies it to "mainstream academic" poetry. And, in fact, I found his assessments of "workshop" poetry generally sound. His gripes, for instance, against Dobyns' less than exciting language and limited or vague grasp of human psychology are acute. But, long before post-structuralist literary critics were applying "close readings" to texts, the psychoanalysts (most notably Freud and Jung), were breaking down the structures of other "texts" (literary, religious, cultural, hallucinatory, dreamed, fantasized, etc.) based on the notion that the subtext of the unconscious often speaks more succinctly and honestly than the form of conscious expression does, and even that the conscious expression can be an attempt to disguise the unconscious subtext (e.g., projection, denial, etc.). This is where Beach, and I think also LangPo, founder.

Beach applies "sociopoetic" close readings, but remains outrageously ignorant of his psychological subtext. The lack of comprehension in the LangPo school of psychoanalytic thought (sorry, Lacan is really of an entirely different mentailty), is epidemic. As a result, LangPo should strike anyone with a psychoanalytic background as profoundly naïve. Beach so extensively epitomizes this psychological naiveté that I have to admit to feeling a bit bad for the poor chap. When it comes time to comment on the poetry of his LangPo representatives (like Lyn Hejinian), his fairly sharp tool of close reading sags into the kind of abstract, empty rhetoric one might hear in a campaign speech. In fact, he levels no criticisms whatsoever against his LangPo examples. When he speaks of Hejinian's poetry, even his word choice flops over from accurate and well chosen to limp, indistinct, and ultimately hazy beyond any determinacy (please note the intentional use of Freudian subtext above in case you would like to compare and contrast).

Continued . . .

aimin to understand poetry within its sociocultural context, while at da same time acknowledgin poetry's intrinsic aesthetic nature, beach's ang proposes a middle ground betweun "sociogolical" or "institutional" models of canonicity, dig those of cary nelson, and more purely aesthetic models, such as those advocated by vendla and bloom. he begins by outlinin a taxonomy of critical strategies fa canon formation in american poetry and establishes is goal as bein "to not only describe da cultural phenomenon of poetry in dis turf, but also in some measure to analyze da social and economic structures-the structures of cultural, educational, and economic capital-underlying da poetic community in question." subsequent chapters offa some provocative analyses of ow journals, presses, universities, prize committees, and evun television projects negotiate poetry's "cultural capital," but as trenchant as some of is institutional analyses can be, beach's ratha narrow partisanship frequently obscures is ruks. though he imself protests against it, dis ang tends toward da reductive binarism of "the poetry wars" dat logenbach, fa example, describes in modern poetry afta modernism. pittin ejinian against stephun dobyns, fa example, tells us little about da majority of poets who wurk outside da polarized camps of "new narrative" and lingo poetry. is underlyin agenda-the promotion of lingo poetry and da by now ratha ackneyed denigration of "workshop poetry" (as if there were only one kind)-neglects or omogenizes ambitious poets angin outside convenient labels (beach devotes a single paragraph to da possibility of current, aesthecitally ambitious poets outside da lingo camp, callin them "experimental mainstreamers or mainstream experimentalists"). beach's attacks on udda critics is refreshingly fearless and direct, but he all-too-often deploys da same logical fallacies he attributes to udders. fa example, he arshly criticizes more constervative critics fa their "thoughtless and condescendin" dismissal of radical poetics, evun as he treats ighly ambitious and respected poets dig jorie graham in da same manna. likewise, he fails to engage da ruks of important texts closely related to is own, as whun he dismisses shetley's afta da deaf of poetry coz of qualifitacions shetley makes regardin lingo poetry. unless yous is of da ardcore lang po camp, dis book will oftun be infuriatin. sometimes innit interestin. but ultimately i found myself yearnin fa a sturdia methodology.

I want the book urgently, please tell me whether you can deliver the book to us on Thursday Nov 1st, HOng KOng time? And if you can, how much would it cost?

Please reply asap.

And one more thing, I can't find an email link so far which I can talk to your order dept about delivery etc.

This book will certainly join its two predecessors, "Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism" and "China's Media, Media's China," as the most important works on the Chinese media that have every been published outside China.--Asian Journal of Communications, vol. 11, no. 1, 2001.

Books about China's media and communications are few and far between. In particular, quality scholarly books about China's media and communications that demonstrate solid substance, provide thoughtful analyses, and reflect on conceptual and theoretical orientations are even more rarely seen. "Power, Monye, and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Contol in Cultural China," edited by Chin-Chuan Lee, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota, is one of the very few recently published books that present excellent studies about China's media and communication.
(It) has filled a large part of the gap in studies on international communication in general and on Chinese media and communication in particular. --The China Review, vol. 2, no. 1, 2002.