On-the-tape

"Her Husband" begins with the famous 'Meeting'... Plath sees Ted at a party, flirts with him, recites some of his own poetry from across the room.(Now,this would turn a man on!)
He rips off her headband, trys to kiss her, she bites his cheek, drawing blood. A lusty, sexual,intense first meeting. A memorable first meeting. Ted had the scar to prove it.

Middledbrook has broken her book down chronologically...the first meeting,the romance,struggling artists,prospering,
separating,etc...

I have read everything about Plath ... but this book adds new and fresh details into her intriguing life. For instance how she and Ted would annoy one another during the writing process..he picking his nose, she twirling the ends of her hair. Absolutely adore those kind of real-life elements.

"Her Husband" has allowed Ted Hughes to come out into the world as a human being, not just be remembered as the man who betrayed Sylvia Plath, caused her to throw her head into an oven, generated her darkness. No. He was more that that, and that is why Plath loved him.

My favorite chapters are those where Plath and Hughes are together, reading to one another, cooking great meals, talking about literature, having great sex, loving one another.

But... to be honest, Plath would not have written "Ariel" without the darkness and hopelessness that consumed her. She says so fittingling in her poem 'Edge' ... The woman is perfected/her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment.

Did you accomplish what you wanted Sylvia?

Sexton says in the book, "That was my death! She took it before I could." But then she took hers later, didn't she?

Loved "Her Husband" and would recommend it for all who appreciate Plath...

But beware...

you may appreciate Ted Hughes in this one too,
but that's alright.
With him and without him... Plath did her most brilliant work!

She portrays Hughes, not as an egotistical, philandering husband who abandoned his wife and family, but as a man and a poet, struggling with his failed marriage. In fact, how marriages fail, and the men and women who fail in making their relationships work, are part of the book's central theme. Hughes' inspired and encouraged his wife's creativity, but he also contributed to the anguish which led to her suicide. Living with Sylvia Plath was not an easy task though. Her work, her life and her death profoundly changed Ted Hughes' perspective on his own life and work.

Plath, more than thirty years after her death, has evolved into an icon of martyred feminism and is revered by her passionate following. Many believe that her tragic suicide was a result of the overwhelming societal demands placed on a woman/wife/mother/artist at the midpoint of the last century. However, Sylvia Plath is, foremost, one of the most brilliant poets of that century, with her roles as daughter, wife and mother taking second place to her art. Her death was a tragedy, not a personal statement or rebellion. Her history of mental illness, and the barbaric treatment she received for the disease, is a known fact. Her pain was a violent presence in her life, especially during the last months. There was nothing passive, quiet or calculating about it. Plath was a victim of her demons, perhaps the Furies, who finally claimed her.

During his lifetime Hughes was very reluctant to disclose information about his turbulent relationship with his poet wife, especially about their break-up and her months alone with her two children during a terrible London winter. He explained his silence as wanting to protect his children. Finally, in 1998, "Birthday Letters" was published, a volume of verse-letters about his relationship with his wife. Weeks after publication Hughes died. In this volume, Hughes breaks his silence and responds to critics, scholars, and in a sense to Sylvia. This material provided literary scholars with the perspective they had lacked for so long. Hughes, at last, describes his struggle to love and live with a beautiful, talented woman suffering from serious clinical depression. Middlebrook draws heavily on the book, as well as Hughes' papers at Emory University, Sylvia Plath's journals and papers at Smith College, and an abundance of written material heretofore unavailable.

Ms. Middlebrook also analyzes the profound effect both poets had on each other's work. She writes, "One of the most mutually productive literary marriages of the 20th century lasted only about 2300 days. But until they uncoupled their lives in October 1962, each witnessed the creation of everything the other wrote, and engaged the other's work at the level of its artistic purposes. They recognized the ingenuity of solutions to artistic problems that they both understood very well." Hughes believed that he and Plath had similar dispositions and often felt as if he was drawing on a "single shared mind." They shared tastes in literature, authors and poets. They sketched together, wrote together and were physically a passionate, well-matched pair. The author documents the descent of their happiness to drama and despair, while showing the effect of these emotions on their work.

Diane Middlebrook's insightful, literate, well-crafted biography must have been difficult to write. The amount of grief and pain contained in the literary work she researched and the lives she wrote about boggles the mind - and hurts the heart. She is a partisan of poetry - not of Ted Hughes nor of Sylvia Plath. She remains as objective as possible when drawing her conclusions. And most importantly, her focus is on the impact that Sylvia Plath's life and death had on her husband and his writing, allowing Plath's legacy to live on posthumously.
JANA

The author tells us that Don Giovanni was inspired by none other than Casanova, himself, who set up a meeting with Mozart in a Prague coffeehouse in an attempt to "sell" the great composer on the idea of basing an opera around the figure of Don Juan. That part is factual...I think. That and the characters, dates and delays in staging the opera. The rest of this marvelous book centers around imagined happenings, all contrived to urge Mozart to produce and bring Don Giovanni to fruition.

There are three main characters in this book: Mozart, of course, Casanova, and Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's long suffering librettist. All three main characters are wonderfully drawn, but just as wonderfully drawn are the "minor" characters, who really aren't so minor at all.

One of the best of these "minor" characters is Mozart's wife, Constanze, or "Stanzi," as Mozart called her. Stanzi had a few secrets of her own to prod Mozart to work and she often had use them.

Josefa Dusek, the singer, and her husband make appearances in the novel when they host the elaborate parties Mozart loved to attend. The party the night before the opera's premier is especially memorable. Opera lovers will recognize the garden scene in Act Four of The Marriage of Figaro, but this only adds to the whimsy of the book rather than detracting from it. This party night is a night of high tension as well as fun, for Mozart has yet to finish the opera's Overture and more than one character is more than a little anxious.

Even the Marquis de Sade manages to make an appearance, of sorts, in this book. Locked away in Paris, he answers a letter from Casanova and gives his own advice on living a life totally without limits. You can imagine what that advice might consist of. If anything in this book can be construed as being "over the top," it is this, but then Mozart was a genius who was, much of the time, "over the top," himself. I think it is completely within the character of the book to include de Sade and I enjoyed it.

Although Mozart does take center stage in this novel, as he should, he gets stiff competition from Casanova. In his sixties at the time, Casanova may have slowed down a bit, but he is still quite thoroughly a rake. Beautiful women seem to abound in Prague and Casanova seems to make it his quest to know them all, or most of them at least, and to let others know the details of his conquests.

I'm an eastern European and I've spent many happy days and nights in Prague. I loved Rudel's detail of Prague city life as well as his detail of the premier, itself. The details are, in large part, what make this book so charming.

The best thing about this book, however, is the wonderful and loving portrait it paints of Mozart, himself. Rudel has managed to capture Mozart in all his genius and all his whimsy. We see him as he no doubt was...an extraordinary composer, the likes of which the world will never see again, and a man who took tremendous joy in the simple pleasure of life.

This is a gorgeous and fun book, but I don't think it's right for everyone, or even the majority of readers. I do think one has to be a fan of Mozart or of opera to obtain the maximum enjoyment from "Imagining Don Giovanni." If you're an opera fan, like I am, I would certainly recommend this book. While it might not stay with you forever, it will certainly entertain you for a few hours and make your life more pleasant. And, it just might leave you wanting more of Mozart.

This short collection of stories concerns Herriot's favorite animal, the cat. In his introduction, he reminisces on his choice to become a vet, inspired by his love for cats, and how he soon found that, at the time, there were very few veterinary texts on the species and few veterinarians that practiced on them. Cats were only beginning to be treated as pets and companions rather than simply a replaceable implement to catch barn mice. This, of course, changed over the course of Herriot's career, and though he primarily treated livestock animals he was often called upon to tend to the village's feline population as well.

The stories here are some of the cream of the crop of Herriot's writing. First we meet Alfred, the large tom who was a daily fixture in the Yorkshire village's most successful confectionery, and then Oscar, the remarkable cat that attended all manner of meetings and social gatherings in town. Next we are introduced to Boris, an ornery and strong-willed individual who isn't afraid to give Mr. Herriot a piece of his mind.

The fourth story brings us to Olly and Ginny, two stray siblings that adopt Herriot and his wife, and actually appear in three of the book's stories. Spaced throughout the book, they actually take on a status as a sort of centerpiece. Undeniably feral, the two are stricly outdoor cats, and it's all Herriot can do to trick them into allowing his occasional veterinary ministations. And they, Olly in particular, clearly express their displeasure. They won't let the well-meaning vet anywhere near them if they can help it. Herriot makes it his mission to win them over, and takes over the job of feeding them every morning in hopes of gaining their trust and respect. He finally manages to befriend Olly, briefly, before tragedy strikes. Happily though, a sad loss leads the vet to share an even closer bond with Olly's sister, Ginny.

The other stories concern Emily, the beloved companion of a kindly, solitary man; Moses, a tiny black kitten found among the rushes one icy winter day, and who is ultimately adopted by the strangest of surrogate mothers, a laid-back and accepting sow; Frisk, the cat who has mysterious, recurring, rapidly-developing episodes of coma that vanish almost as quickly as they happen; and finally Buster, the Christmas Day gift from a dying mother who delights his new owner amazing dog-like antics.

With ten heatwarming feline tales (or tails, if you prefer), this book is a sure winner for any cat lover. If you're already familiar with Herriot's work, you won't be disappointed (you may even have come across a couple of these stories before), and if he is a new author to you, you may very well go on to seek out his other books. My one teensy-tiny criticism is the the editting could have been just a little bit better. It wouldn't even really be a problem except for the fact that, in one story, a cat is once inexplicably referred to with the wrong name. Other than this the book is perfect. The illustrations are beautiful and the stories delightful. A perfect read for a cozy evening by the fireside.

And if you like this, I recommend his other short-story anthologies: "All Thing Bright and Beautiful," "All Creatures Great and Small," "All Things Wise and Wonderful," "The Lord God Made Them All," and "Every Living Thing" (these titles are based on a poem with the same title as the last book), as well as "James Herriot's Dog Stories." He also wrote a variety of very nice short children's books.

Dr. James Herriot, a veterinarian in North Yorkshire, England, wrote Cat Stories. He lives in a beautiful estate on a hill with a large wall around it. He visited many animals and is well known by many people for his many adventures and his style of storytelling. Cat Stories is an autobiographical book, so Dr. Herriot is the main character in most of the stories. He has written several books including All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All, Every Living Thing, and James Herriot's Dog Stories. He retired after 50 years of treating mostly domestic farm animals. The conflicts in most of his stories are man to self or man to nature, because he tries his best to try to think of what to do for the animal and has to remember something. He helps all kinds of people, from young farmers, to wealthy old ladies. Dr. James Herriot is a good man with a large heart. In one of the cat stories, He visits an old lady, Mrs. Ainsworth who owns two basset hounds. She calls Herriot whenever one of her dogs does anything unusual. In the story there is a stray cat that comes to visit Mrs. Ainsworth. The rising action started when Herriot saw the cat and inquired about her. The Mrs. Ainsworth told Herriot that the cat was a stray and she had named her Debbie. The climax comes on Christmas Day, when Dr. Herriot gets a call from Mrs. Ainsworth about Debbie. He then proceeds to her house to check on Debbie. She was stretched out on the floor and motionless. However, she had brought a kitten in with her because she knew that it would be well cared for in the house. In the falling action this kitten grew into an energetic cat, which Mrs. Ainsworth called Buster. On one of his later visits, Herriot finds out that Buster would chase a rubber ball and bring it back to whoever threw it. He was a Feline Retriever! Mrs. Ainsworth said that Buster was the best Christmas present she had ever received In another story, Olly and Ginny, the Herriot's adopted cats, are fed and cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Herriot. He has to treat them, so they think of him as the bad guy. Later, He tries to make friends with Olly, and succeeds. Days later, however, Olly dies. The Herriots were devastated. Mr. Herriot then decides to try to make friends with Ginny, although she was the more skittish of the two cats. He slowly makes progress and begins to make friends with Ginny. After several months, He starts to pet the cat from head to tail. The two were finally friends. Mr. Herriot considered this one of his greatest triumphs. In conclusion, as you may see Mr. Herriot does many great, and strange, things. I believe this is why so many people love his books. His books seem to be larger than life, but they are actually true. I feel that his many adventures capture and mystify many people, and that is why his books are so well known. Dr. Herriot died unfortunately in 1995, but I believe he had a great life.

I really enjoyed this biography of Thomas Jefferson - the book itself. My overall impression is altered somewhat by the added dimension of having listened rather than read . . . I bought the CD version because of the many hours I spend on the road. Dan Cashman, the narrator, has a splendid voice, but I felt his reading was too slow and with too many poignant pauses for my taste. I would have liked the audio version more if he'd been more straight-forward in its reading with less tendency to pontificate. Be that as it may, the substance of the book itself opened up the world of it's protagonist in a way few books do.

Although the book meanders a bit at certain points, the reader feels he is in Jefferson's mind at times. I would have liked the author to have told us about more of Jefferson's close acquaintances and their relationships. Few of the other founding fathers are mentioned, Benjamin Franklin a case in point. Attention given to Washington and Adams is quite sparse. I felt too many pages were devoted to Jefferson's lopsided relationship with Maria Cosway whom he met after the premature death of his wife. Maria was a married woman he was romantically attracted to, but who would have nothing to do with him except as a friend. He couldn't let go of her over the years, however, and she was too polite to totally cut all communications (even though she lived in Europe and ended up becoming a nun).

One thing I liked about this book was the way Beran shed light on Jefferson's intimate interests, his way of looking at the world around him and the place he felt he occupied in it. Some of those interests and notions, or ways, of looking at people, places, his own personal psyche and health (among other things) seem alien to us today. But that is what's wonderful about how Beran puts it all together - in a way you can almost taste Jefferson's time, what was important to people and what they found motivating (people, at least, who were of the station and caliber of Jefferson - a rarity to be sure). Many of Jefferson's fears, shortcomings and idiosyncrasies are also covered, but in an affectionate way which makes him seem more human and less aloof.

I was pleasantly surprised and gratified to find that Jefferson appeared to become more disposed to the teachings of Christ later in his life, considering him the greatest teacher of the virtues of pure love who ever lived. Beran indicates that Jefferson came to believe Christ's teachings transcended those of the Greek philosophers in that Christ applied them across the board to all peoples. Jefferson even wrote a singular treatise on the subject, this after having held a largely hellenistic view of the world for most of his life.

I finished the book feeling I would have liked to have known Jefferson personally and been able to have conversed and debated with him as a friend. My reason for awarding the book only 4 stars rather than 5 is largely due to my disappointment in the audio version - If I were you I'd opt for paper.

Plenty, in fact, as Michael Knox Beran reveals in "Jefferson's Demons," his profound and exquisitely written meditation on the mind of America's most enigmatic Founder.

We typically see Jefferson as the sunny champion of reason, tolerance and liberty. But this is an incomplete portrait. At several points in his life, Jefferson suffered bouts of severe depression -- "ennui," as he called it -- that crippled his ability to act. For a man already disposed to prefer wine, books and the tranquility of his mountaintop home to bold action, such episodes could have been disastrous.

The most intense of them occurred in the 1780s, when Jefferson was beset by personal tragedy and political irrelevance. After his mostly embarrassing stint as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War -- he fled Monticello ignominiously when Lord Cornwallis sent a raiding party after him -- he watched his beloved wife, Martha, suffer an agonizing death in 1782. Congress sent him to Paris in 1784 as a diplomat; less than a year later his youngest daughter died.

Back home, the new republic's troubles under the Articles of Confederation led to the drafting of a new constitution. At that moment the country could have used what Mr. Beran calls Jefferson's "benign wizardry" for reducing "a complicated tangle of fact and theory to a few readily comprehensible truths." But he wrote little of political interest during his appointment in France, leaving his friend James Madison "to do what he himself could not."

Mr. Beran reminds us of such periods of apathy and despair not to make his subject more palatable to today's readers but rather to show us that even Jefferson needed "a philosophy that did more than reason and common sense could to facilitate the expedition of the will."

It is Mr. Beran's argument that Jefferson managed to rouse himself to action by listening to his own "demons." By this term Mr. Beran is not referring to the man's secret vices or mental problems but echoing the ancients' concept of genii or manes -- inner spirits that "either cripple a man's productive power or enable him to channel it more effectively."

Jefferson, a man steeped in classical learning, knew this concept well. Renaissance thinkers like Machiavelli and Montaigne, also classically minded, had adapted it, Mr. Beran notes, as "a metaphor to explain the complicated processes of human inspiration." From them, Jefferson learned to carry on an interior conversation with his demons, his varied interior personas. By freely manipulating these roles, he tapped into newfound wellsprings of creativity.

In Paris, he played the chaste squire-lover (found in the sentimental novels of the day) in his unconsummated romance with the married artist Maria Cosway. During his 1787 tour of southern France and the Mediterranean coast, he drew inspiration from his firsthand study of the ancients' architecture and from the "primitive rituals and blood-soaked imagery" of their cults -- imagery that Jefferson later incorporated into the friezes and moldings inside Monticello.

When Jefferson returned to America, he assumed the role of "persecuted prophet of democracy," which led to his most fertile period yet. During his battles with the Federalists, Jefferson drew deeply from another ancient source: the language of biblical prophecy. He denounced men who had been, during the Revolution, admirable "Samsons in the field & Solomons in the council" but who now seemed to have "had their head shorn by the harlot England." These "apostates" had succumbed to "heresies" (such as Alexander Hamilton's national bank) that Jefferson believed would plunge the young republic back into monarchy. The political effect of this powerful prophetic voice was to elevate Jefferson to the presidency and eventually destroy the Federalists.

Mr. Beran places the personal struggles of Jefferson within the context of his age, a decisive moment in the timeless quarrel between the Whig and Tory temperaments -- "between the realist and the mystic, between the matter-of-fact man and the artist, between the man of prose and the man of poetry." Jefferson, though the architect of a Whig revolution of liberty, "was always happiest contriving patterns of order that had about them a Tory enchantment of spirit." He admitted -- if not to others, at least to himself -- that the modern world of liberty and commerce cannot satisfy man's deepest longings for meaning, coherence and love.

In his role as a Greek poet-statesman, Jefferson believed these qualities could be cultivated in the family, local community and school. In his later years, he devoted himself "to constructing little pavilions of order strong enough to withstand the gales of the Whig world he had helped to build." These included Monticello and the family life it sheltered, as well as the University of Virginia -- where future generations could learn to master their own demons.

Like so many great men, Jefferson was engaged in an ongoing conversation with the great men of the past, with Montaigne, Homer, Solon, Tacitus, Milton, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus. Beran lets the reader overhear these conversations, and he shows us how Jefferson drew on them both in his private life and his public work.

The author's richly allusive style is itself an instrument in the communication of his vision of Jefferson: there are passages in the book in which the prose has less affinity with the rhytmically and spiritually flat prose of the present than with that of the Caroline and late Elizabethan prose-stylists. This startling use of language and metaphor prepares the reader for the book's major reassessments of whole tracts of Jefferson's thought. The book provides a nuanced reading of Jefferson's "Whig" and "Tory" qualities, shows how deeply immersed Jefferson was in a Virginia culture of decadent feudalism, and contains an ingenious reading of the connection between Jefferson's "sentimentalism" and the mediaeval romance of the rose. Jefferson's architecture emerges as something more deeply felt than the pasteboard classicism it is often taken to be; and Beran ties his analysis of Monticello and the University of Virginia to his discussion of how Jefferson tried to reconcile his civic republican ideals (the communitarianism of the classical city-state, the Greek polis) with his commitment to Whig liberalism, with its emphasis on liberty of trade, liberty of the press, and liberty of conscience.

I loved this book. It's a splendid account of Jefferson's self-culture and his attempts to apply the lessons he learned in the young American Republic, and it enlarges the number of intellectual debates in which Jefferson participated and through which he must examined.

But the book's most important message is an intensely personal one. Jefferson spoke hopefully of the "progress to be made under our democratic stimulants until every American is potentially an athlete in body and an Aristotle in mind." Beran shows the reader how Jefferson, in trying to realize this potentiality in himself and in others, aspired to the Greek ideal of the statesman who is also an educator, one who can help people to know themslves and do their work.

For those of you who have read the other series though, the beginning of "Prague Counterpoint" involves events and characters in this series during this same time frame at a crucial moment. However, the event in question is not mentioned in this book (involving Jacov and Rabbi Leibovitz), and I am wondering if anyone else noticed that. The events in "Jerusalem's Heart" makes one wonder how the characters could accomplish the event in the prologue of the former book, unless the reader is to assume it was possible.

Also, Jacob and Lori had no family members left in this series, but they both had younger brothers that escaped with Lori to England before WWII in "Warsaw Requiem". Do we ever find out what happened to them?

Email me back if you also noticed it!

Which is not to say that it's a fast-food diet. Bodie Thoene delivers rich metaphors here. From the Khamseen winds at the opening, to the Hurva at the heart of Jerusalem, this story strikes deep into the struggle for Israeli independence and the personal struggle for salvation through the Messiah. Without preaching, the Thoenes tell of powerful grace and love in the midst of horrific bloodshed. The message of valor and courage rings true in light of the terrors the Jews endured.

If you're a fan of the series, this book is a must. It'll go down quick and easy, and still leave you satisfied with the sustenance of good writing. (As a side-note, don't turn to the maps for help in deciphering the story...some of the major settings aren't even listed, such as Latrun.) With the secrets still waiting to be revealed at the end of this story, I'm anxious to plunge into the next, "The Jerusalem Scrolls."

In this, book #3 of the series, the Jewish defenders try to hold the Old City, while the Jewish army tries desperately to give aid. It's classic Thoene, great action and passion, great writing, great material.

The journey is everything. That's the shout from Warsaw, and that's the shout from this book. What stays with me are the words of a woman under siege in Jerusalem..."Life is the hardest thing...that's where real courage is. Not in dying bravely, but in living bravely."