Form-3 Books

This follows right in line with all other Calvin and Hobbes books. I reccomend that everyone read this. It made me fall off the couch I laughed so hard. GREAT BOOK.

I love Calvin and Hobbes and this is AWSOME. It follows just in line with Calvin and Hobbes books. If you don't know what Calvin and Hobbes is like here it is. It's about a 1st grader with the attitude like a first grader, but the mind of an adult. He has a stuffed tiger who's "real" to him but just a stuffed animal to everyone else. It is one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes.

Like author Patsy Light, I was intrigued when I moved to San Antonio, Texas by the strange concrete false-wood constructions that dot the city: a jungle hut bus stop on Broadway, an arbor footbridge in Brackenridge Park, a 125-foot long rail fence at the Alamo Cement Company's headquarters. Who, I thought, would do something like this? Architectual historian Light has now provided the answer in this well-researched book illustrated with beautiful color pgotographs. They are the work of Dionicio Rodriguez, a master craftsman trained in Mexico who came to San Antonio in 1924 and went on to create visionary environments all over the United States until his death in 1955. Rodriguez left no papers or plans, and Light spent 10 years tracking down men and women who worked with him to gather material for this book. The person who emerges from her interviews is a dapper and secretive man who worked in overalls pulled on over a three-piece suit and mixed his colors in the trunk of his car so that his helpers could not learn his secrets. He was prosperous enough to buy a new car every year during the Depression, and he and his crew travelled from San Antonio all over the country to create such wonders as a grotto lined with conch shells in Port Arthur, Texas, a 19th-century mill with a 10,000-pound concrete waterwheel in North Little Rock, Arkanas, and a cemetery ornamented with Biblical landmarks in Memphis, Tennessee.

Rodriguez's skill with concrete and color enabled him to create unique environments in the 19th-century rustic tradition that rank with Sam Rodia's Watts Towers and Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain. This wonderful book will appeal to anyone interested in rustic architecture, folk art, visionary environments, or just plain whackiness.

A vey complete account of the life and work of this craftsman whose work stands today scattered over the southwest. Excellent research and good photography--well done!

Book does an excellent job of leading the carver through the necessary steps of carving and painting a red-tailed hawk. However, there are some missing steps in the carving and painting in process that could lead a beginning carver to a much better product.

There is no one that does it better than Floyd. I use his books as reference because of the accuracy in descriptions and fantastic photography.

I (or the powers that be) left out an "is" in the last sentence of my review. I would appreciate a correction.

Thanks!

Lucidly, entertainingly, and meticulously, Wallace dismantles popular notions of Chaucer and (more importantly for medievalists) of the traditional division between the medieval and the early modern worlds. By tracing Chaucer's interaction with "Trecento" authors, he charts the poet's interest in a society organized around "associational forms" (the model for this is Florence) versus one structured around a single and despotic ruler (the model for this is Milan). Although many chapters focus on specific tales, Wallace does a great job of reading across all of Chaucer's works to argue his point, and the book moves in a natural progression through various themes and dialectics. (I'm thinking here of two chapters in particular: "Powers of the Countryside" and "Absent City.")

In sum, for anyone who wants some good beach reading, you should buy this book and cancel your trip. Wallace's meditation on Chaucer serious and important; it should not be taken lightly.

Bravo, an impulse purchase of this book was amply rewarded by elegant ghost stories that delighted me no end. This is a book to keep and treasure. At times the pathos is mingled with humor reminding one of the best of Hans Andersen's fairy tales. The supernatural is interwoven with much of the natural world and the symbiotic relations between humans and nature create that "bardo" between worlds in which anything can happen. The "Fisherman's Tale" is perhaps my favorite in the collection, it is a thoughtful & chilling meditation on life and death. This small collection has sent me on a journey to read all of Mr. Kwan's work.

Don't worry if you don't know about China or its history: just sit around the campfire and take a journey through strange ghost stories from another land. Unlike many awkward translations, Michael David Kwan freely retells these stories with a formidably poetic writing style, painting pictures in the mind as vivid as those that fixated him as a child on the street corners of China. Hidden throughout is a wealth of insight into the daily life and values that shaped the culture of Imperial China.

A strange and fascinating collection of stories and writings from the interface of the English language world and the Chinese language world. There cannot be many university published books that put Jackie Chan alongside Xu Xi and obscure among the obscure, Lawrence Gray!

The books is a sort of testament to the heroic persistence of English language writers in China, where they have no home market whatsoever.

I think this is a very valuable volume for it is an excellent collection of English writing by contemporary authors who're based in Hong Kong.

As a city with a checkered history, Hong Kong has recently witnessed its own transition from the British colony to a special administrative region of the PRC. The writings collected here, most of which are of a high standard, do reflect the social and even literary changes that comes with this present age in Hong Kong.

Such a kind of collection can also preserve part of the English writing legacy of Hong Kong for our future generation. Given the good quality of the editing, this book can be highly recommended.

Received my order in excellcent condtion, would use this supplier for other purchases.

This is an amazing collection of stories. All the classics are in one book. Well put together.

For historians who study the early Founding Fathers of the modern comic strip, this fine book establishes Lyonel Feininger's significant influence on the evolution of the art form.

Known famously as a founding instructor of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, Feininger is also considered an early founder of the Modernist movement in 1920's Europe. Specifically, Feininger's style helped define European Expressionism.

Several notable details of his prolific career make Feininger unique among his contemporaries. First, he was an American ex-pat -- his family moved to Germany early in his life. Secondly, among his contemporaries he was the only Expressionist painter that cut his teeth as a masterful caricaturist and published cartoonist.

Bill Blackbeard's wonderful commentary fills the gaps in Feininger's contributions to comic strip history. The story is wholly American and the definitive presentation of Feininger's Sunday pages are breathtakingly exquisite.

This is a charming collection of early 20th century comics by Lionel Feininger. His colorful drawings are enrapturing: he has a great sense of design and ability to create characters. The Kinder Kids escape their elders and embark on fantastical adventures, Wee Willie Winkie sees the world through the imaginitive eyes of a child. These comics are very funny and magical.

This book presents a set of excellent photographs of public art, duly folloied with a clarifying text. It is not a theoretical book, but a small sample of the contemporary outdoor sculpture. We can find works of art of authors like Magdalena Abakanowicz, Bruce Beasley, Jonathan Borofsky, Fernando Botero, Anish Kapoor, Mary Miss, Tone Otterness, William King, Dennis Oppenheim, Beverly Pepper, among others. It is of fact a excellent photograph book of public art.

I've just purchased my first major piece of art, a stunning bronze sculpture by Donald Wright - I look at it and think this is what all my life has been leading up to: the pleasure that this singular object of beauty brings to my household. That is what Brooke Barrie's sumptuous book is all about, the transformation of life through art. It radiates all by itself.

The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South. Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

"Geographically, that region is defined as the Appalachian range beginning in Maryland and West Virginia and extending to the northernmost hills of Alabama, plus the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri. Culinarily, those borders extend farther to include eastern Texas ... also the fingers of the hillbilly diaspora that stretched north into the factories of Ohio, Michigan, Chicago, Indiana, and south and east into the mills of the Carolina lowlands."

Ronni Lundy continues in her introduction:

"In other words, looking through the lens of real Southern mountain food -- the methods of its growing, processing and eating -- we began to see a vivid picture of the region and its people that had little in common with their most prevalent and demeaning stereotypes. ... How do you hold to assumptions of ignorance when you see a list of dozens of native greens, berries, barks and seeds that were turned into food and/or medicine? Or believe in clannishness and hostility when you hear the catechism of a Loaves and Fishes ethic that made friends and strangers alike welcome at mountain tables?"

This book contains a few recipes, but it is more about people's connection to the land and to each other, and what food says about a people. It describes families and meals: pole beans, mutton, fried pies, beaten biscuits with homemade apple jelly, pawpaws (also known as custard apples), wild greens in the spring and syrup-boiling festivals in the fall. Even possum: Joel Davis writes it "doesn't taste like chicken -- no, sir. ... To my undereducated palate, it resembles pot roast."

The book is divided into six sections: "Planting the Essential Seeds: Corn and Beans," "Raising Consciousness," "Cultivating Community," "The Meat of the Matter," "The Harvest," and "Food and Love." Poets and authors include Nikki Giovanni, Rick Bragg, Harriette Simpson Arnow, Jim Wayne Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tony Early, and Marilou Awiakta.

Two of my favorite essays: Rick Bragg tells how Cajun cooking cures a broken heart. David Cecelski sings "The Oyster Shucker's Song" about the Carolina oyster industry.

Altogether, this book is a buffet of Southern writing -- and a delicious series of meals for this reviewer.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Cornbread Nation 3: Foods Of The Mountain South is the third such collection from the Appalachians and Ozarks and blends the best of Southern regional food writings - a blend which includes poems, essays, culinary history and cultural insights aplenty. Any expecting a recipe collection alone may be disappointed; but there are plenty of Southern cookbooks on the market - and relatively few Southern collections of literary food writing, making Cornbread Nation something to relish.