England Books

I purchased this cookbook when it first was released and have been cooking from it ever since. Perhaps the most favorite thing from it is the apple spice cake with the carmel frosting. It is something my family looks forward to every autumn. I have found nothing in this book that is not simply wonderful. I read it and use it for inspiration every month of the year. Thank you for such a delightful, useful and delicious book.

This cookbook contains a wide range of recipes, and gives you ideas to compliment the weather that comes with the seasons. Many have become staples in our house. They have the aroma, to enhance your appetite, as well as good taste.

I've found that every recipe I've tried in this cookbook has turned out delicious! One of my favorites is a chocolate mocha cake - it's a birthday party favorite, just as the book suggests! I like the seasonal breakdown as a way to take advantage of seasonal foods. This is my favorite cookbook...and I have lots!

I am a self proclaimed bad cook, but every thing I've made out of this cookbook has impressed everyone that had it! Some recipes are a little complex, but all in all, the instructions are well written and easy to follow and the end results are fabulous! I recommend the Texas Chowder (Chili) - best chili I've ever had!

"All This Reading" is an essential addition to the libraries of Barbara Pym fans and an engaging introduction to Pym for new readers. The collection of essays features wise and sensitive insights into the theme of reading in Pym's books. Part I addresses this theme with a variety of topics, from "Love Like Bedsocks" to ". . . Metaphors of Aging and Death". Part II presents fascinating personal and literary encounters with Pym and her writing, including 'My First Reader' by Hazel Holt, Pym's long time friend and literary executor, and 'Barbara Pym as Comforter' by John Bayley, whose essay ends with a poignant personal note about the importance of Pym's novels to him and his wife, the novelist Iris Murdoch, who died in 1999.

The expertly compiled index by Hazel Bell, in addition to serving as the indispensable tool for locating references and topics, provides an revealing look at the wide range of motifs and people mentioned by Pym and her readers, from anthropology to writers and writing, from Jane Austen to Charlotte Yonge.

This is a book to keep close at hand -- readers will find themselves dipping into it repeatedly for diversion, instruction, entertainment, and contemplation.

Eudora Welty found Pym's novels to be "quiet, paradoxical and sad." I think she described them perfectly. All this Reading explores the life, novels and publication of Pym. The book comprises a series of essays by many distinguised contributors. Educated at St. Hilda's college, Osford, she joined the Wrens during WWII and was posted to Naples. Her novels draw on her circle of college friends and her military life. Her writing highlights the theme "only connect" from Howard's End by Forster.
In Katherine Ackley's essay, she suggests Pym's characters are devoted to literature. They recite passages from an Austen novel or a Donne poem. Literature is a source of comfort to them. In John Bayley's essay, he further seees Pym as a comforter. He expands upon Matthew Arnold's theme that great art calms and comforts us, and he cites Pym as such a writer. Bayley notes that Pym's confidence about the sexes comes "from her sense of the arbitrary, almost ruthless, way they join up."
In "A Life Ruined by Literature", Elisabeth Lenckos argues that reading is a central theme in Pym's novels. The related topics of reading, romance and redemption are central in her novels. In A Few Green Leaves, the heroine Emma Howick recalls Austen's Emma. She stars in her own drama of misplaced affection, rejection and humiliation before leaving romantic fantasy behind. Lenckos suggests that Pym's world is like Austen's where the gentlewomen of reduced circumstances in post-war England have moved from manor houses to village cottages, and work part time in gentile jobs as librarians, clerks and social helpers.. "Like Austen's heroines their desire is to find a loving partner with whom to share life...." Those who love literature will find the nineteen essays in All this Reading satisfy every taste in a fine collection.

In 1980, when Jane Nardin first came across the novels of Barbara Pym, as she remarks, `almost no literary criticism had yet been written' of Pym's work, while Dale Salwak, in his epilogue to All This Reading, records the `appearance since 1985 of twenty full-length book studies or anthologies, with more soon to arrive'. An extraordinary growth of interest, which is now further reflected in the publication of this stimulating collection of nineteen new essays. Part I examines the significance of reading in the novels; Part II is devoted to literary encounters and collaborations in Pym's life and works. Hazel Bell's index successfully draws together the threads running through the contributions by various hands, allowing the reader to trace, for example, references to spinsterhood in the essays of Frauke Elisabeth Lenckos, Katherine Anne Ackley, Barbara Everett, Helen Clare Taylor, Anthony Kaufman, Anne Pilgrim and Barbara Dunlap.

In attempts to pin down Pym's special quality as a novelist, she has been compared to, and with, a quite disparate list of writers, from Jane Austen to Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth von Arnim, E. M. Delafield and a whole host of other names, many listed by Lenckos in her introduction. Kaufman compares the rivalry of Belinda and Agatha in Some Tame Gazelle to the humour of E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia, and Everett commends Pym's `high originality' which sets her fiction `far above the intransigently reactionary ... Angela Thirkell'. Dunlap, tracing the influence on Pym of Charlotte M. Yonge, asserts that `Pym's fiction is steeped in the work of Yonge' (even the unusual name of the heroine of A Glass of Blessings, Wilmet, is borrowed from a very different heroine of Yonge's).

To what extent are Pym's novels autobiographical, and her well-read heroines reflections of herself? Orphia Jane Allen, writing on `Reading Pym Autobiographically', comments that `Pym was aware that she could permit herself to become like Leonora' (in The Sweet Dove Died), but Leonora represents only `one of the directions an aging, unmarried woman's life could take'. The most obvious incarnation of Pym's own personality is Belinda in Some Tame Gazelle, with her near-obsessive love of literary quotation. Pilgrim notes that, while Archdeacon Hoccleve and Bishop Grote quote aloud, sometimes not very felicitously, and Harriet `tends to be oblivious to literary references', Belinda `hardly ever quotes aloud, but silently recollects and meditates upon scores of passages, many of them quite obscure', and Nardin also finds significance in the fact that Belinda keeps her literary references to herself, `restrained by a sense of personal modesty and strict propriety at once pathological and deeply lovable'. In being made privy to Belinda's interior monologue, the reader is at the same time granted access to the author's own stream of consciousness.

As Ackley points out, Pym `often blurs the distinction between literature and life', suggesting in various ways that some of her characters have lives outside her fictional world. Dulcie in No Fond Return of Love, who cannot resist prying into people's lives, finds it `so much safer and more comfortable to live in the lives of others'. Pym's characters, says Ackley, `view the world as if they, too, were writers', and Nardin writes that `in Pym's novels, there is a tension between the impulse to read and the impulse to contextualize or interpret'.

The inner monologues of Pym's heroines reveal her own uncertainties and need for reassurance. Pilgrim comments on Belinda's habitual alternation between self-doubt, `expressed in her diffidence, timidity and constant anxiety', and self-confidence. Everett remarks on the unpretentiousness of Pym's early novels, and adds that the modesty of her approach `possibly worked to Pym's disadvantage during the period when her manuscripts were being rejected' and `makes her too easy to dismiss now'. Surveying the six earlier novels, she considers these thoroughly enjoyable but `probably minor art', while Quartet in Autumn is to her mind a major work. She finds Excellent Women the `most accomplished,... the most admirably competent', and has a kind word for An Unsuitable Attachment - it `has a first-rate cat and a wholly believable public library'.

These are only some examples of the many rich insights provided by All This Reading. Further pleasures are provided in the second part of the volume, such as the reproduction in the essay by Paul De Angelis of Pym's letters to him of 1978-9, almost up to the time of her death in January 1980, and of A Year in West Oxfordshire, Pym's contribution to Ronald Blythe's anthology Places of 1981.

Janice Rossen's essay, `Philip Larkin: Barbara Pym's Ideal Reader', discusses the crucial role played by `virtually the only fellow writer with whom she discussed her work in progress'. Larkin's influence and advice were clearly of great importance to her: not only was he able to give her very specific and practical advice, but he was a writer of established reputation who treated her as an equal and gave her `constant reassurances that her work was of extraordinary value'.

And not least, there is an account of thirty years of friendship and collaboration by Hazel Holt, Pym's literary executor, who tells us that she no longer reads Barbara Pym. `I don't need to. ...once you've read the novels, she is with you forever.'

In my opinion "All This Reading" is the best collection of essays written about Barbara Pym to date. The articles are all well written and full with insights, yet are diverse in their apprach. As a doctorate student writing a dissertation on Barbara Pym I find the articles very useful For example it was illuminating to read two totally opposing, but well thought of, views by John Bayley and Ellie Wymard,regarding
Pym's attitude to organized religion. Yet, the essays are general and interesting enough for any one who is interested in Barbara Pym.
I highly recommend "All This Reading".

Orna Raz
Israel

This is the best travel book about the London that I found. It has all necessary information that I was looking for without the tones of text and pictures. It gives you so good ideas about what you can or should see in one day that I decided just to follow the book. :)

Took 3 guides to London for our 2005 trip. This guide has the best pictures of the 3. Most of the information is very good. The walking tours are the best! It even tells you when to stop and eat.hmmmmm

The guide doesn't really cover all aspects if you are new to the culture and city. No real tips on staying out of trouble and the detailed city map is combersome. That aside, the book is well put together with wire spirals, the cover is a hard paper for good construction.

Before traveling to London, we purchased many travel books, but AAA's London guide was the only one we took with us. The book is filled with beautiful color photos, great descriptions, planned itineraries, and a fantastic detailed map. We are planning on traveling to Rome this summer and AAA's Rome guide is the only travel book we will be purchasing before we go.

My wife and I used this travel guide extensively while in London. It served as our bible, tour guide, and street map. It is laid out in a very clearly and the sprial binder makes it very easy to flip to any page. It is filled with clear, color pictures and maps. The guide is broken down into various regions throughout London, with each section highlighting Must See Attractions, and then At Your Leisure sites that are also in the area. It also has a very nice reference on how to see a region in one day. An Underground map is on the inside back cover, and a regional map of London on the front inside cover. Other nice features are sections called 'Finding Your Feet' - which provides great information for when you first arrive in London (either by plane, train, boat, etc..) and a 'Practicalities' seciton that talks about currency, clothes sizes,etc.

What really made this book stand out compared to other London travel guides was it included detailed street maps of these regions. Those proved invaluable for us once we started walking around the area. The book is compact, and fit inside my coat pocket comfortably.

I've read this book about a year ago, and it still haunts me. It's one of the most moving and gripping books I've read, and as someone has written above, I can't recommend it highly enough. All of my friends who've read it loved it. Be sure to read it too!

Once I started this book I could not put it down! A great writer for a first time novel. I laughed and cried. When it ended I was lost without it. Please read this book and I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy it so please buy it now!

I picked the book out of instinct, and then read it without any expectation. Indeed it's a very interesting book. Actually it has fascinating surprise elements, even more so if you hadn't read the reviews here!

This is a story of a mother's love for her son, and how the pair cope with an unexpected twist of life. Captivating, for getting us to take a peek at how someone like John deals with his new life, someone like Sonja perceives things, and someone like Joan handles it all.

The alternating narrative reminds me of the book "Mendel's Dwarf". Such a style of narration risks being confusing, but at the same time triggers our curiosity.

If you only read one new author this year, give Jules Hardy a try. I just loved this book and cannot
recommend it highly enough. I have bought it for severeal friends and they all loved it too. I know that everyone
is raving about Lovely Bones (which I have also read) but this is even better.) Give it a go, you won't be
disappointed.

David Hare's play is a wonderful look at relationships against the back drop of the 1980s and 1990s London art scene. The tensions of Mother-Daughter relationships forms the core of this play. Other family relationships crackle with the same intensity leaping off the page. The role of Esme is one of the few excellent female lead roles available today - strong, vibrant, sharp tongued and opinionated Esme showcases the broad spectrum of emotions women have between themselves, their children, in-laws, lovers and coworkers.

This book is a terrific reminder of an excellent theater production, reading it won't spoil the play a bit!

Hare refers to the chamber pieces written after his monumental trilogy as "Jim and Tim" plays--theatre with few techincal marvels, conflicts based on personal relationships and not external struggles, and, most importantly, a sense of character specificity not found in the archetypes of Susan Traherne and Isobel Glass. "Amy's View" is his second of these smaller plays, and it is the best of the three he has written so far.

As in his first Jim and Tim play, "Skylight", the characters are not politicians and public figures but ordinary Britons with neighbors, lovers and family. But unlike "Skylight", which examined only one theme, "Amy's View" uses its smallness to raise big issues. The piece is a play about grief and happiness, familial relations, and the price of compassion. It's about the role of the theatre, both as an artform and in modern life. It's about having money and not wanting it, wanting money and not having it, and the ultimate inability to know your life.

And, of course, the play resonates with Hare's exquisite dialogue, making "Amy's View" a masterpiece of langauge and well as of stagecraft. It is without question Hare's greatest chamber play, and in parts it even reaches the heights of his two seminal works, "Plenty" and "The Secret Rapture".

David Hare's Amy's View is a startling new play. Rich, funny, sad, absurd, and thought-provoking, Amy's View leaves the reader or audience member clamoring for more. Hare presents fascinating characters in Esme Allen, a famous West End actress; her daughter Amy, who's famous "view" is that love conquers all; her boyfriend and soon to be husband Dominic, a cultural monolith; and Frank, a devoted companion of Esme's who's actions have devastating consequences in all of their lives. This play meshes love and betrayal with the question of whether the theatre is relevant in society anymore. The reader will be astonished. But being lucky enough to see this play performed on Broadway with Judi Dench as Esme, I love this play that much more.

David Hare gives us yet another unforgettable character in Esme Allen. She reminds us that we must hold on to our ideals bravely as we could be stripped of them at anytime. A great play.

A precious follow-up to "Mister God, This is Anna", also by Fynn. Actual notes by Anna, edited by Fynn, reflecting her child's view and feelings about "Mummy", love, tears, giving, God, and herself. The deep insights and keen perceptions of this unusual girl from age 4 to 7, reveal a rare gift of wisdom, and the wonder and pure joy of living which few children are able to express. Anna's images are rapturously poetic, as when she describes Mummy's kiss: smooth as a duck's tummy, cool as the grass, and soft as a spider's web. Her sweet purity washes away adult sophistication and brings memories of our own child within. She explains how crying is good because it is like washing the windows so you can see better. She tells how an angel took her up a rainbow to a place where she learned an important lesson and had a good laugh, then he let her slide down the rainbow back into her room. "Anna's Book" affirms the good, simple truths of life. You'll want your own and one or more to give away -- I did. And if you haven't read "Mister God, This is Anna", you'll want to.

A precious follow-up to "Mister God, This is Anna", also by Fynn. Actual notes by Anna, edited by Fynn, reflecting her child's view and feelings about "Mummy", love, tears, giving, God, and herself. The deep insights and keen perceptions of this unusual girl from age 4 to 7, reveal a rare gift of wisdom, and the wonder and pure joy of living which few children are able to express. Anna's images are rapturously poetic, as when she describes Mummy's kiss: smooth as a duck's tummy, cool as the grass, and soft as a spider's web. Her sweet purity washes away adult sophistication and brings memories of our own child within. She explains how crying is good because it is like washing the windows so you can see better. She tells how an angel took her up a rainbow to a place where she learned an important lesson and had a good laugh, then he let her slide down the rainbow back into her room. "Anna's Book" affirms the good, simple truths of life. You'll want your own and one or more to give away -- I did. And if you haven't read "Mister God, This is Anna", you'll want to.

It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me read it atleast 4 times, enjoying it more each time, it made me try find it again about 15 years later, it made me name my precious daughter "Anna"

I enjoyed the book, but not as much as the other two. True to caracter, Anna confuses me a bit in some of her way off thoughts.

It is great to know what was in her boxes though...

I would recommend this gem of a book to American Anglophiles.

I found this wonderful volume when I was shuffling through a used bookstore in Raleigh, NC, while my soon to be ex was pouring over the gardening section. I came upon "The Annals of London: A Year-by-Year Record of a Thousand Years of History" just by chance. I sat down and opened it up. I was transfixed for the next two hours. It is very compelling.

This book reads like a slow-motion history of English civilization: Every page (it's organized like a newspaper) has a tidbit.

It is a gripping tale. The inevitability of the English political system is striking. The people of London ignore their leaders with a very satisfying frequency.

Interesting tidbits: Henry VIII's coffin exploded while laying in Westminster, and his remains were eaten by dogs; an article on the demolition of the Globe and a less than popular playwright; lots of flatulent monarchs and mayors; and a glimpse at the origins of the English socialist movement that is still very influential today. This book is an incredible archive, and I would recommend it to any fellow American who has a fascination for mother England.

A bit wordy and condescending in that British sort of way, but like any good newspaper, you can skip the parts that don't interest you.

This is the perfect bathroom book. Short, concise vignettes. Pick it up. Put it down. Never lose your place. I'm mere pages from finishing, and I've been reading it for 2 1/2 years.

If you're interested in London history, this book is a great way to strengthen your understanding of that great city without burying yourself in a huge tome.

So why only 4 stars? (I'd have done 3.5 if it was an option.) The author slants very heavily toward two subjects. London theatrical history and architectural history. The former is mind-numbingly ubiquitous. The latter is much more integral to understanding London as it stands today. Both subjects are important and relevant, but in some parts of the book they seem to be the only topics covered at all.

Have this book on hand anytime you are reading history of London or books set in London. I have just read London: the Biography by Peter Ackroyd and London: the Novel by Edward Rutherford and am tempted to re-read both 1000 page books so that I can follow along in The Annals. Fascinating material!

At first glance, this book with its lists of events might appear a little dry, but as you begin reading the events' descriptions, you'll soon discover pages filled with interesting historical anecdotes.

Among the events covered are institutional foundings (such as churches, hospitals, schools, theatres and newspapers), technical and medical achievements, the various floodings and freezings of the Thames, bridge and tunnel collapses, executions, assassinations, hangings, murders, fires, and more.

Even the smallest events have interesting details... such as the blowing down of Fairlop Oak in Hainault Forest in 1820. The tree is described as having branches that spread 116 ft and it is noted: "Around it took place the annual Fairlop Fair -- an event which helped to shorten the tree's life, because visitors would use the inside of the trunk to light fires for cooking."

Another entry that appears earlier in 1741 mentions the opening of St. George's Chapel in Curzon Street by a Reverend Alexander Keith who "scandalized the clergy by his readiness to perform marriages without too many questions."

Many event descriptions run for a few paragraphs and some have illustrations. My only gripe with this book is that the font size for the print is very small. (The print would be much easier to read if it was just another 2 points larger.) Aside from that, I'm sure this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in London history.

Scholarly but not stuffy, Eric Ives' book is the best biography by far I have read of Anne Boleyn. It is packed with original research and serious scholarship but at the same time is readable and easy to follow. The average intelligent layperson would enjoy reading this. Ives, Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir are all MUST READS for Tudor scholars and history buffs.

I found this an excellent read when I was studying Anne Boleyn. While never becoming too bogged down in details, it tells her story compellingly and with the necessary human touch which makes Anne's story so engrossing.

Focusing on faction as one of the major causes of Anne's downfall, we are taken from her contested date of birth to her final end, through the whims of the king, life at court and her dubious romances. Ives gives the legends a brisk working over and gives the facts clearly with all the available evidence. This is THE book on Anne to read and I strongly recommend it to anyone studying her life.

Even those who have little interest in the story of the second wife of Henry VIII could be attracted by Mr. Ives' clear writing style, wit and "proper historical scepticism". To those with a keener interest, this book is as irresistible as Anne herself. With much of the book based on original research, the text offers new and absorbing insights into a complex person and of life at court under Henry VIII. For the most part, Mr. Ives maintains a proper distance from his subject, but from time to time, he opens his cloak of objectivity to expose the admirer beneath. If you are also an admirer of glimpses of court life, both in France and England, then you should order this book.

Anne Boleyn was accused of essentially the same catalog of crimes used against every powerful woman since (and probably before) Jezebel - sexual infidelity, witchcraft, heresy, capriciousness and foul temper. As Ives explains, she may not have been physically the most beautiful woman at court, but her intellect, sophistication and worldliness (she had served at the Austrian and French courts) made her by far the most attractive. What is incredible about her courtship with Henry is the sheer number of missed chances to get a proper annulment of Hal's earlier marriage to Katharine - which, of course, would have removed the impetus for the English Reformation, and all the carnage that followed. What makes this a great read is Ives' ability to translate renaissance history into modern terms: Anne's rise and fall were inextricably linked to larger political and religious forces in Henry's court: her demise was the direct product of a temporary court alliance between the hard line crypto-Protestants (Thomas Cromwell et. al.) and the equally hard line Catholic sympathizers (Norfolk, plus the former followers of Thomas More). Once Anne was off the scene, they happily returned to their ideological trenches and resumed ploting against each other. Anne's was a vibrant life in a world which punished the vibrant and the intelligent.

I had to read and review this book for a class, and I thought it was great. I had not read any of the books referenced by Ms. Marcus, so it was difficult to tell how sucessfully she represented the authors, but thats really my problem, not hers. I would say that I don't like such heavy use of literary sources in these types of books, but it is usually because I haven't read the books.

I'm happy I chose this book to review, between the nasty review and its mention on the board, (and Ms. Marcus's rebuttal) this will be an easy book review to write.

In Apartment Stories, Sharon Marcus takes the reader on a stunning tour of the interior spaces of the nineteenth century novel. The views that Marcus offers are always exciting. Following her from behind as she weaves her way through dark regions of apartment houses is often exhilirating. Particularly pleasurable is the way she bounces around London. And although sometimes she seems to bend over to make her point, even this rewarding

There has been a recent interest in theories that undermine the undertakings of the Enlightenment and Modernism toward presenting a world made up of clear definitions and distinctions. This trend has thrown light upon those cultures and periods of history previously dismissed as irrational, decadent, or retrogressive. Further, owing to Post-Structuralist interests in language, scholars have increasingly turned towards realist novels and literature from the period being studied to unearth peculiar social environments that have remained concealed in the purely formal analyses of historical accounts.

Sharon Marcus in Apartment Stories identifies the novel as a significant mirror of everyday life. Literary criticism and cultural history, for Marcus, are intertwined disciplines that feed on each other. In Apartment Stories she uses an analysis of the nineteenth-century realist novel to illuminate a discourse about (not `on') apartment houses of the time. Employing texts that she calls `atypical', as a heuristic device for exploring the range and complexity of nineteenth century debates on domesticity and urbanism, Marcus sets herself the ambitious task of questioning conventional conceptions of the distinctions of private and public, interior and exterior, as well as masculine and feminine. She probes the text not only in terms of seeking social and physical implications of the described spaces but also in terms of the manner in which the narration itself inscribes spatial relations and establishes zones as exterior and interior, private and public, mobile and fixed.

Apartment Stories is divided into three parts. The first part, "Open Houses", discusses the apartment house as a space that refutes readability as a private, opaque, and interior space. The second part, "The City and the Domestic Ideal", discusses the cultural preference for the single-family house over the lodging houses (that resembled apartment houses) of Londoners. The third and concluding part, "Interiorization and its Discontents", deals with Paris during the Second Empire. The author claims that Paris became interiorized after 1850 and thereby challenges the established interpretation of the Second Empire Paris as one of spectacle, flânerie, and circulation. She also questions the famous notion of the Goncourt brothers that "the interior is going to die. Life threatens to become more public". Marcus, in view of the Parisian apartment house, explicates the impossibility of ever fully interiorizing the home.

Sharon Marcus's Apartment Stories provides interesting insights into the world of the bourgeois in nineteenth century Paris- though her ideas are not always convincing and not always substantiated with documentation. Her elaborate endnotes that occupy 81 pages at the rear of the book fail to provide the convincing evidence that more architectural drawings and photographs might. The book leaves the readers constantly searching through the text for `real' images of the physical character of the apartment houses to which they may correspond the analysis of the novel. In the absence of such documentation, the author herself feels the need to stop every now and then in order to summarize and locate within the overall scheme of the book what she had just written (which is also what makes the writing of the book-review easier). These impediments that occlude the understanding of her new insights are further assisted by what could be considered a methodological oversight. Her structure of discussions of the interior and exterior space rest upon the individual descriptions of interior and exterior space. The discussion does not flow from one to the other and that, I feel, strengthens the distinction between the two. A discussion of the in-between transition spaces, apart from perhaps the character of the portière, between the street and the house, that one would expect in a discussion of interior and exterior spaces, is also absent.

Marcus works from an impressive bibliography, one that partially compensates for her deficiencies in documentation and illustration. Apart from a slight error in quoting the publication date of James Stevens Curl's The Victorian Celebration of Death as 1872 instead of 1972, the bibliography, along with the book, becomes a wonderful resource for any scholarly study of nineteenth century France and England in the fields of feminist theory and criticism, geography, urban studies, architectural history, literary criticism, and interdisciplinary research on everyday life.

In an elegantly written and persuasively argued volume, Sharon Marcus uses the idea of the apartment building as a tool to comb out two sets of terms that tend to clump together in discussions about the 19th century: man=city=public, woman=home=private. In a work made pleasurable to the general reader through her clear and careful writing and her judicious use of footnotes, Marcus proposes a world of 19th century men, women, homes, and cities, that interact in more messy and interesting ways than we've learned to expect. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Well, to be honest, I'm not sure what I expected when I checked this out from the library, but it sounded interesting, so I thought I'd take a look. The story was fairly slow-going at first. In fact, I would say that it wasn't until about 1/2-way through the book that the plot actually got 'moving' so-to-speak. That's not to say that it wasn't interesting, it just seemed like there was lots of information that wasn't really connected to the plot. There were also times where I felt that certain scenes were written just to display the authors' historical knowledge, which isn't something I find particularly appealing in novels.

Also, although touted as a historical fantasy, this book is probably about 80% historical, 15% fantasy and 5% alternate reality. Honestly, if I had known nothing about Elizabethan England when I read this I would have been completely lost and, while reading, I still felt out of the loop occasionally. There were a lot of historical names and places, and it was difficult keeping them straight in my head, especially at the beginning. I can't really recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have at least a little previous knowledge of this time period, but I can say that it would be worth it to do some research for the sole purpose or reading it.

If you don't want to read about the time period, take a look at these two movies: Elizabeth w/ Cate Blanchett and Shakespeare in Love w/ Gwyneth Paltrow. They will give you a historical basis to work off of and both will give you most, if not all, of the names you need to know.

This is the best work of historical fantasy, and one of the best works of historical fiction, which I have ever read. Although the universe (an alternate history Elizabethan England where magic works and where Sydney and Marlow survived the events which killed them in our time line) is fantasy, the approach is basic science fiction "what if", extrapolated on a magical rather than physcial technology. Rather than overlaying modern concepts of magic onto their characters and history, the authors present magic as it was understood by the various classes of Tudor England, and in so doing create a world that feels like reality and avoid the one-dimensionality common to much contemporary fantasy. All this, and a great read, too.

This is a very well-structured, well-written book set in an alternate version of Queen Elizabeth I's reign. The settings are finely drawn, the characters are engaging, and the plot is gripping. I reread this book about once a year just for the pleasure of it, and I snapped up this hardcover when it came out. If you like alternate history and fantasy, and don't mind them mixed together, read this book. If you just want to read about people living in Elizabethan England, read this book. And if you just have to have any book with Shakespeare as a character... you, too, have some reading ahead of you.

I'm the cover illustrator, and I don't always like everything I read. Often, even if I liked a story the first time, I don't like it when I have to read it about the fifth time to check on the color of someone's shirt. Or I start noticing the lapses in historical detail or logic or characterization.

This book I still read for pleasure, even after I finished the cover. I read a lot of alternate history, and this surely ranks among the best.