1099 Books

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommended it to several others. It was easy to read and the title tells it all. Grassi took the Mass piece by piece and explained how we could take just that part and make it meaningful throughout the week.

If you want to learn more about the Mass and how to weave it into your everyday life, read this simple, spiritual, 185-page book. It is co-written by a parish priest and a layman, so the book offers a wide perspective based on their different life experiences.

What's really neat about the book is its structure. Each chapter centers on a particular section of the Mass liturgy and proceeds along the following lines:

1. A slice-of-life story from one of the authors that relates to the chapter's topic.
2. A brief description of the ritual and prayerful reflection on its true meaning.
3. How to apply this part of the Mass to your life the other six days of the week.

Very beautifully written, practical and spiritual. If you want to get more out of going to Mass--a lot more--try this book.

Pilgermann is a complex and somewhat (purposefully) confused portrayal of death and theology. The story involves the final year (maybe two) in the life of a Jewish doctor--he names himself Pilgermann--during the early years of the First Crusade. Pilgermann's story involves sin, punishment (not for the sin of adultery, but for "the" Jewish sin of Christ's crucifixion), pilgrimage, near-death experiences, a significant theological/artistic undertaking, and final life-and-death encounters. Hoban delves deep into all three Abrahamic religions to provide the foundation for this book. His prose is dense and hard to read, but regularly shows brilliance and provides astonishing insights. The book is truly amazing in its depth of knowledge--I regularly stopped to read other material for sources--and in its base humanity. It resonates with anger for the injustices of life, and is blunt in the extreme in its portrayal of death. And yet, I found the story compelling and positive in its whole.

Pilgermann is a small character in spirit and accomplishment, a lonely man that seems to have no real past or future. Is he representative of humanity in general, or simply the more cynical and defeated among us? When he is not just passing unanimated through life, he is captured by the present. He is often overwhelmed by the huge universe about him. His only real interest in life seems to be a single encounter with a woman at the beginning of the book. As his story unfolds, it seems that Pilgermann comes to no significant clarity in his life, but is regularly filled with amazing insights and depth of knowledge. This is a book that asks very serious questions, and forces the reader to provide answers.

Pilgermann has very little in common with Hoban's Riddley Walker, a book that I have treasured since my youth. The English here is clear, but the story much more complex. Hoban has once again provided a very serious and signficant gem, but on a completely different plane of existence.

Hoban's adult work (which consists are far too few books) is among some of the most brilliant literature I have read, and Riddley Walker and Pilgermann are my favorites. Perhaps less comprehensible then RW, Pilgermann is a narrative of the perpetual quest for that which is unattainable (and this is far too simplistic an explanation for an author who clearly burns through Jung for pleasure reading). The story beings centuries after the main character has died (but continues to exist in one form or another) and recounts his attempts at making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I am leaving out far too much because the story is filled with a dark and unexplainable nature that sometimes comes out as terribly violent, cruel, or simply boggling. The narrator of course is sidetracked in his quest, sold into slavery (he is made a eunich too incidentally), but at last comes to a certain acceptance of the moment, despite his own wish to continue along on his journey. The story becomes caught up in the construction of 'hidden lion', a massive tile design which becomes a sacred object to the community. From here, Hoban analyses one of his most haunting themes--that of the sacred entering into the common place, it's dilution, and finally it's inevitable desicration. It would be a spoiler to say that much more of the plot itself, but in style the books reads very much as some apocryphal Christian work. There is much citing from the Quran and the book includes a 'reference' page of biblical and other religious references. Ultimately though, Pilergmann is the strangest religiously grounded work I have ever read, making Gnostic works which freaked out Philip K. Dick so much seem comparitively normal. At it's best, Pilgermann captures the hopes and fears of the all-too-small human animal who has only mistakenly assumed that he has the world under his control.

The Poem of the Cid (here translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson) is required reading for anyone interested in tales of high adventure, honor, and chivalry, for these things are the backgone of one of literature's greatest sagas: the tale of Ruy Diaz of Bivar,the Cid, and Spain's greatest knight.

Unfairly exiled from his King's country, the Cid throws himself into Moorish Spain to battle, plunder, and rebuild his name. Eventually the Cid's heroism explodes the King's enmity, and he returns home in glory. But the Cid errs in marrying his unsuspecting daughters to the craven Princes of Carrion, unleashing such suffering and dishonor on the girls that only a colorful trial by combat can satisfy the Cid's lust for revenge and heal his family's wounded honor.

Rich in medieval tapestry and flavor and a more realistic depiction of the "chivalric code" than one finds in parallel works (the Cid, for all his honor, is not above deceiving his enemies--or some of his friends!), The Poem of the Cid is highly recommended to anyone born with the spirit of a knight in their heart.

This book should belong to the universal, or at least Western, canon of all times. It is the foundation of Spanish literature and national myth. And, for those who think classics, especially medieval, are boring, surprise, it is not at all.

Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid, is a great warrior who, because of political intrigue, is dismissed by his master. He leaves and continues his fight against the Moors, who are the masters of most Spain since the 9th century. He conquers Valencia and starts forging his legend, fighting not only the Moors but other traitors to the cause of unfying Spain. One of the best and most famous scenes is the marriage of his two daughters, Urraca and Ximena. The book is written in truly epic style, full of adventures, battles, duels and, especially all the Medieval flavor that makes it unforgettable. In a good translation, the grandiosity of many sentences should be neatly perceived. It's hard to stop recommending this great work of art, a true belonger to the best classic literature the West has produced.

If you are a lover of the short story, even perhaps, a storyteller or writer yourself -- AND -- you are nuts about the game of tennis, then this book is probably the equal of such pleasures as sex, good scotch, and cigars combined.

After becoming happily tired from the work of the day, I allow my mind to sink into the literary construction of these fine stories, and identify with the familiar sentiments of the character players it contains. In addition, the second half of the book is comprised of some nifty tennis poetry. A solid buy.

I found this book, as an active tennis player, to be very insightfull and enightening. This book would be good for anyone tennis player or not. Lifes secrets are uncovered by using the maetaphor of tennis. All and all a very worth while book to read.

I decided to read this book because i had seen a play of "The Theatrical Illusion" being presented and i had adored it. So, i decided to read the book to be able to explore every verse and every line and now i like the story even more. Life is an illusion indeed, an illusion of love, hate, betrayal... Infidelity and hate is just a part of the picture of love and faith, these are all knit up in our lives. Read this book to see the illusion of reality of our lives...

Great source for the serious researcher or the Crusader novice!

The editors and the contributors have done a great job. The two-volume "Festschrift" of Jonathan Riley-Smith is well edited and it covers a huge part of modern scholarship of the field. I recommend to all students of the crusades as well as that of the military orders.

This novel is a historical fiction masterpiece! A book giving a stunningly entertaining story about medieval life and the first crusade. The writing style is a little dated but the story has action, adventure, romance and stunning battle sequences. A must for fans of the genre and all epic storytelling!A classic-Five stars.

There were two great ages of English translation: the Elizabethan period, and the last 30 years.

After the Elizabethans we had the Augustans, who suffered from straitness of form (Homer in heroic couplets? No, his River of verse won't fit into that series of Beakers of verse, though Pope's are the very Best heroic couplets), or the Victorians, who offered us either the faded roses of Augustan couplets, or of Romantic lyricism; and on top of that they bowdlerised. Aristophanes never made a dirty joke, according to his Victorian translators, and even when reading a relatively chaste author like Tasso, in Victorian guise you know that at least half of the human condition won't be there, regardless of what Tasso actually wrote.

You'll notice I've skipped an age. Yes, the Romantics were also great translators, but they translated only what they needed. Byron gives us one canto of Italian epic; Shelley gives us one Euripedes play, and segments of Dante or Goethe; neither settle down for the drudgery of translating an entire epic. (Except in the sense that Byron's _Don Juan_ is a version of Ariosto, just as the poem Christopher Logue wrote called the _Illiad_ is a version of Homer without being truly a translation.

The Elizabethans had the fire and the patience, and they had no need to lie to their readers as the Victorians had. Their freedoms, as those that Fairfax took, are justified by their immersion in the spirit of the poems they English'd.

And the greatest Elizabethan translations are... Well, Marlowe, obviously: Marlowe's incandescent version of Book 1 of Lucan's _Pharsalia_, and his versions of Ovid's _Amores_. But other than Marlowe, the great Elizabethan translation is by Edward Fairfax, his version of _Gerusalemma Liberata_.

This is one of the great English translations, counting Barbara Reynolds' _Orlando Furioso_ and Dryden's _Aeniad_. Fairfax gives us Tasso's seriousness, his occasional humour, and also (surely as much a model for Spencer's _Faerie Queen_ as Tasso's own Italian text was) Tasso's erotic sensibility. Ariosto's eroticism was frankly acknowleged, part of the life of any sane Paladin, while the sexiness in Tasso is vested in the supposedly "bad" characters, like Alcina: and thus both more powerful and more sexy.

An outstanding feature of Fairfax's astonishing translation is his concision; he finds himself time and again with spare room in his English ottava rima, which gaps he tends to fill with new similes, alliterative examples and poetic diadems, suggested by Tasso but not quite found there. Where most translators who attempt to use the same form as their model struggle to keep up, Fairfax is in such control that he has resources (and syllables) to spare. His use of those syllables gives us a kind of improvement on Tasso. (I have heard Italians say this, so I'm prepared to let it stand.) That is, there is actually more in Fairfax, stanza by stanza and Canto by Canto, than there is in Tasso. Where Tasso lists two examples, for instance, Fairfax lists three. His invention is never independent of Tasso's text, but rather decorates the original text without holding up the speedy flow of the action. We would censure this freedom in a later translation, but Fairfax's other advantage is that he is an Elizabethan. His freedom is in keeping with Tasso's own adaptations of earlier poets, and of Fairfax's own day.

But I have followed Fairfax with Tasso in Italian and a crib, and I can report that his occasional small freedoms are never in contravention of the sense of Tasso's poetic flow, but always in its service.

As well as giving us great and accurate poetry, Fairfax follows Tasso's form, presenting us with a stanza for stanza translation, eight lines of ABABABCC ottava rima for eight lines of ABABABCC ottava rima. In doing so (and in his extreme mastery of that form) Fairfax lit a fuse that travelled underground in English before exploding in Byron, and again in Reynolds' unexcelled Ariosto translation.

There are other Tasso translations, but only one, ever in the history of Englsh poetic translation, that captures Tasso's mix of lightness and earnestness, and above all Tasso's febrile religious sensuality. This is one of the three or four truly great English translations. I recommend it above any other version of Tasso. Great poem; the greatest (in English) in this version.

Cheers!

Laon

How To Restore & Repair Practically Everything by antique restoration expert Lorraine Johnson is a how-to book that expertly instructs the reader with explicit instructions and step-by-step diagrams in the skill of restoring and reparing stains, grass matting, glass, textiles, metals, paper and photographs, decorative finishes such as faux marble, and much more. A superbly efficient and practical resource, as useful for conscious homeowners as it is for those seeking to make a living by fixing up broken down appliances, furniture, and personal items. Highly recommended.