european

Giacomo Casanova's twelve volume memoir, History of My Life, provides a passionate and critical look into the 18th century. The term "Casanova" has become representative of frivolous love-making, however, the real man, Giacomo Casanova, was an artist, a scholar and a philosopher. His memoir reveals his desire for truth, as well as his love for women. Written during the years of the French Revolution, Casanova's memoir appeals to a wide range of book lovers. His stories are entertaining and fulled with adventure. For those interested in 18th century Europe, Casanova comments extensively on the customs and manners of all the social classes, especially in France. He gives charming descriptions of the Parisian streets, taverns, Catholic practices and even a detailed description on how to make hot chocolate (one of Casanova's favourite breakfast foods). Casanova occupied a unique place in society. Instead of trying to fit rigidly into one social class he explores the lives of the peasantry as well as the noblity, therefore, he offers a unique view of his time. Throughout his travels he reflects on universal aspects of human nature, focusing often, but not exclusively, on human sexual behaviour.

I have read Casanova's memoirs twice. The original Trask translation was only produced in a limited number.

I wish I could give this work 6 stars and not just 5. In all 6 volumes of the Trask translation. Casanova shows a remarkable gift for writing from the heart even though he was progidy. The result is a vivid and fast moving recreation of the 18th century by a lover, a scholar and a rascal. What Casanova writes the reader feels and lives. He writes as if you are there with him and he makes you feel it is so. Casanova's story is of love, of life from peasants to kings, of risk-taking adventure, of politics, of cabalistic rites and charlatanism, of dupes and dullards and endless intrigues. It has the kind of excitement that fiction can only envy.

I have read the first 3 volumes and found it to be both entertaining and informative about the life of Casanova. You can hear Casanova speak as he tells his tales of all his adventures taking him to many places and what makes him tick. His love of women comes through in a very personal way by his descriptive manner.

The best book on authentic traditional Hungarian cuisine I have seen so far. Very well written and illustrated. Aniko Gergely did an excellent and thorough job on covering the origins and traditions of temporary Hungarian cooking that developed during the last centuries. The list includes ALL the food that I would consider Hungarian and enjoyed when grew up in Budapest. I found the information accurate, the photos abundant and of very good quality. Any serious culinary traveler planning to visit the country and stay away from burgers would benefit too. If you need a single book to understand the soul and culinary traditions of the Magyars, this is it.
Recommended without hesitation.

The best book on authentic traditional Hungarian cuisine I have seen so far. Very well written and illustrated. Aniko Gergely did an excellent and thorough job on covering the origins and traditions of temporary Hungarian cooking that developed during the last centuries. The list includes ALL the food that I would consider Hungarian and enjoyed when grew up in Budapest. I found the information accurate, the photos abundant and of very good quality. Any serious culinary traveler planning to visit the country and stay away from burgers would benefit too. If you need a single book to understand the soul and culinary traditions of the Magyars, this is it.
Recommended without hesitation.

This has got to be the best Hungarian cookbook I have ever seen! The layout and photograpy is just so beautiful. Having a Hungarian background, it brings a smile to my face everytime I look through it as I did not grow up with all the traditions.I am happy that being the second generation in Canada; I can look at this book and know what I have missed. I have made the Lecso twice now and it isn't even my book! It was so delicious! I recommend it to give as a gift for the younger Hungarians that can learn about the food and culture of their background.

Wow! That is one of the best books I've ever read. If you enjoy mysteries, adventures, and espionage then this is the book for you. The setting being Spain in World War Two it gives you the inside story of the under cover world of the war. Keeping you on the edge of your seat the whole time the plots range anywhere from a love story to a crime scene. The Countess is an amazing women to have gone through all she has with such grace. I just can't wait ot get my hands on her second book, The Spy Went Dancing!

I read this book while on a boat. I could not sleep until I read the last page. The Countess wrote a vivid account of her activities which drew me into the pages and in every place she was during this period of her life. It was exciting and sometimes breath taking because of how she would place herself in danger to do the best job she could, and she WAS GOOD!! I also had the privlege of seeing her on a "Talk Show" in Seattle, Wa. USA. What a charming lady she is. Would like to read it again but my book sank with the boat. Long after I was off the boat. P.S. No one got hurt. Would like loaner. cptnRmateD@valleyint.com

I loved this book. Most importantly, anyone reading it will understand that SOCIALIZING WAS THE JOB Aline Griffith had to do. I was upset to read the Editorial review from the Library Journal where the author of the editorial sneers at the fact that the former Ms. Griffith was socializing so much in Madrid during her assignment.

I lived in Madrid thirty five years after the time the Countess recounts. Her account and vivid description unveiled for me a city gone for ever, one however, clearly discernible when I was there. Thank you Countess de Romanones for this wonderful treat!

I never cared much for poetry, but this book has changed my mind. I - who some might consider uneducated - am curious about what is experienced, within us and without us, in life. Still, I find a lot of poetry difficult to understand since an education from Oxford or Harvard seems a requirment to get through it. This wasn't the case with the poems in this book. I'm able to digest much of the words and pharses in Szymborska's poetry which evoke different images, feelings and thoughts as easily as reading fictional prose. I even had shivers sent through my body reading a poem in this book. This existential jolt happens only rarely and only when I listen to music which affects me deeply. This is poetry I can appreciate.

Ahh... where do I begin to explain why I admire, adore, and revel in Szymborska's poetry? It all began in roughly 1996-97 when I learned that this Polish poet, previously unbeknown to me, had been awarded the Nobel Prize. While I don't consider the Swedish Academy to be the ultimate authority on good literature and count only several of the previous prize winners among my favorite authors (Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, O'Neill to name a few), I anticipated that an encounter with her poetry is bound to be special. The brief biographical sketches I then read and her photograph emitted wisdom, modesty, and wit. Or at least that what I think I must have sensed at the moment. In any case, after reading several of Szymborska's poems on-line (at a wonderful site called 'Poems from the Planet Earth') I was irrevocably enamored with her verses. Since then I have read and reread them on occasions too numerous to be counted, and I've read them to friends and strangers.

I find that Szymborska writes with great clarity, never failing to gracefully walk the fine line between excessive (hmm..) eloquence and ascetic laconism. Her metaphors and characterizations are incredibly precise, and her poetry is rich with aphorisms. At the same time, it has somewhat of a haiku-like quality. Whether writing of grand and global matters or of minute things and creatures she is critical yet humane, and -- very genuine. The poems are sharp and witty but never cynical. Simply put, Szymborska's work is sheer brilliance from a poet with love for the human and the inanimate.

I wonder whether the paperback scheduled for release this autumn will contain new poems... On a final note -- all translations I have had the privelege to read (Maguire, Baranczak, Cavanagh) are marvelous -- an occurence that is very unusual, and, hence, very precious.

...Containing over eighty poems from seven original collections, this book serves as a well-rounded and pleasant introduction to Szymborska's work. This is a good choice for anyone interested in good poetry, women under communist regimes, or Polish literature.

Es uno de los mejores libros y una buena razón para leer los clasicos. Me recuerda a Don Quijote - y aún hace una referencia al libro - en que hay muchos temas que desarrollan en el cuento: lealdad, fe, venganza, honor y, principalmente, el libre albedrío.
No hay ninguna sorpresa en el final, aunque cómo se llega al fin es muy entretenido. Es muy interesante cómo Dumas teje los cuentos dispares de los crímenes en el papel del inocente Edmond Dantés. Y aunque Edmond adopta su papel del angel vengador, aprendemos que hay nuevos principios para todos que siguen las palabras: esperar y confiar. Hay varias lecciones para muchas personas de esta època.

Realmente este es uno de los mejores libros que he leído, lo considero uno de los mejores, sino es que el mejor que escribió Dumas junto con Los Tres Mosqueteros. Es una narración extraordinariamente detallada, hermosamente conjuntada y con un final totalmente sorpresivo. o creo que en esta novela, Dumas se proyecta como lo que el siempre quiso ser, un conocedor de la ciencia, un hombre infinitamente culto y sobre todo, controlador de sus emociones y calculadoramente frío. Es una lección sobre lo que es la moral de la vida, los valores y los sentimientos.

Este es uno de los mejores libros que he leido en mi vida... Todo en el es excelente.. Es realmente maravilloso como la forma de pensar de un hombre que se cree dichoso puede llegar hasta el fondo cuando se esta encerrado en un calabozo por tantos años y separado de lo que el considera su dicha. Edmundo conoce al Abate Faria y gracias a eso comienza a pensar diferente y cuando es libre la manera en que planea y logra llevar a cabo su venganza.. Esta historia no solo da una leccion de paciencia, sino que se puede ver de que la venganza no se realiza siempre como es planeada tal como podemos ver cuando Monte-Cristo trata de revivir al hijo de Villefort..

En resumen..... Excelente....

Not a review here but a note. Readers who enjoy Orlando would appreciate Anthony Powell's witty account of the moon trip in the 12th and last volume of his A Dance to the Music of Time.

Ariosto was one of the giants of Renaissance literature, and this was his footprint. Grand, touching, funny, witty, stirring -- as Dryden said of Chaucer, here is the world's plenty. Some of the greatest poets of the next two centuries (Tasso, Spenser, Milton) explicitly attempted to overdo him, and only sometimes succeeded; Byron took as much from Ariosto as he did from Pulci.

But don't read this on that account. Read it because it's a delight from start to finish. War, love, and chivalry are the poet's themes, and they're here in all their forms.

I don't know Italian, but everyone I've asked who would know assures me Reynolds's translation captures not just the essence but the spirit of the original.

(Ignore the reviews that claim that this is a prose translation -- they are from another translation.)

Before anything else is said, it should be known that this edition is a prose translation, which does not retain most poetic characteristics of the original poem although for a modern English reader this is probably the best edition yet: fairly clear and still interesting in its own way. Orlando Furioso is a 16th century epic poem dealing with Charlamgne's wars against the "Saracens" who had (if we are to take the poem as historical fact) even reached the point of besieging the city of Paris. Of course,the book was not meant by its author to be historically accurate in any way, merely a parody of chivalric court legends as the book description says. Whoever reads this book and fails to sense irony on every page, even crude jokes in some parts clearly does not understand what he is reading in the least. But Orlando Furioso is not a parody of just chivalric court legends; it also pokes fun at the Illiad, popular tales and even common peasant stories. The heads (complete with helmets) sliced in two by a single sword blow are taken from The Illiad, in which Greek champions perform similar feats, although in Orlando Furioso, literally hundreds of men meet their end in this manner to the point of becoming amusing in a way. And I found it strange to notice a very clear similarity between the story told by an innkeeper in the book and the prologue to a translation of a 13th century version of the Arabian Nights (translated by Hussain Haddawy). Ariosto had no possible way to know of the existence of the Nights, but still it is interesting to see how truly close the two incidents are: In Orlando, two men who have given up on the possibility of women being chaste, take one woman and watch her day and night, yet she still deceives them in their own bed. In the Nights, a demon has locked his wife inside an impenetrable castle, yet she still deceives him as he sleeps right next to her in bed. The two events are described similarly, with the same irony (being meant as a joke which the author denies believing in in the least). The book is funny only in the way reading Candide is funny. This is simply another example of what makes the book enjoyable. During the reading of Orlando, somewhere about 3/4 of the way into the book, the reader may wish that it would end right there and that two characters; Bradamant and Ruggiero should get married and finish the story. But the continuation of their separation and further adventures is just another parody of common legends, exaggerated out of proportion. In the end, with all its jokes and its surprisingly individualistic narrative technique, its more serious scenes (the most touching of which is when a woman named Isabel is killed) forms into a large picture, with a great deal of good atmosphere, such that when it ends (although the reader may not have been touched very much during its reading) will want it to go on.

La novela es una narración en retrospectiva que describe la muerte de un habitante de una ciudad pequeña cerca de Cartagena de Indias en Colombia, llamado Santiago Nassar. La novela describe completamente los días anteriores al asesinato, las horas anteriores y posteriores del asesinato, además el narrador entrevista a personas involucradas o testigos del crimen varios años después del asesinato. La historia inicia cuando Santiago Nassar despierta y el narrador recuerda lo sucedido el día anterior en la boda de Ángela Vicario y Bayardo San Roman un personaje adinerado que había llegado a la ciudad hacia muy poco tiempo. Santiago Nassar después de despertar se dirige a desayunar y encuentra a su madre y la cocinera, la cual ya estaba enterada de que estaba en peligro de muerte. Santiago Nassar aunque era descendiente de Arabes era de religión catolica y esperaba el día de su muerte al obispo de Cartagena de Indias por lo cual salio hacia el puerto de la ciudad a las 6:05 de la mañana. El obispo llegó al puerto pero no baja de su barco. Lo que Santiago Nassar no sabia era que Angela Vicario después de su boda había sido devuelta por Bayardo San Roman debido a que no era virgen, después al llegar Angela Vicario a su casa le dice a su madre, Purísima Vicario que ella había tenido relaciones sexuales con Santiago Nassar, pero nunca nadie en el pueblo los había visto solos o juntos, provocando que los hermanos Pedro y Pablo Vicario enfurezcan y busquen recobrar el honor de su hermana, por lo tanto deciden matar a Santiago Nassar. Y durante el resto de la noche y la madrugada los hermanos Vicario van diciendo a toda persona que ven que ellos van a matar a Santiago Nassar. La mayor parte de las personas en el pueblo sabia que los hermanos Vicario iban a matar a Santiago Nassar, las unicas personas que hacen intentos por avisar a Santiago Nassar son Clotilde Armenta, la dueña de una tienda de abarrotes y cantina en la plaza de la ciudad la cual avisa al jefe de policía y al alcalde de la ciudad, el Coronel Aponte el cual desarma en una ocasión a los hermanos Vicario pero ellos de nuevo buscan armas, en este caso cuchillos para matar a Santiago Nassar. Otra de las personas que tambien tratan de advertir a Santiago Nassar es uno de sus mejores amigos pero por una confusión no puede, además de que uno de los familiares descendiente de Árabes, pero no logra advertirlo. Después de la llegada del obispo Santiago Nassar se retira y entra a la casa de su novia Maria Alejandra Cervantes la cual también cree que Santiago Nassar había tenido relaciones sexuales con Angela Vicario, ella lo rechaza y le devuelve sus pertenencias a Santiago Nassar y el padre de Maria Alejandra Cervantes le avisa que lo quieren matar pero Santiago no comprende debido a que se encuentra confundido por lo de su novia, entonces el se dirige a su casa, y por un error de su madre con respecto a las puertas de la casa de Santiago Nassar en donde evita que su hijo pueda entrar por la puerta principal y por esto los hermanos Vicario encuentran a Santiago y lo matan a puñaladas y cuchillazos en presencia de todo el pueblo, el autor da una descripción detallada de los cuchillazos que le propinan los hermanos Vicario a Santiago Nassar, pero en realidad la muerte se produce porque nadie del pueblo avisa a Santiago Nassar sobre las intenciones de los hermanos Vicario. La novela es un misterio y según García Márquez es un hecho real pero en realidad nadie conoce realmente quien es la persona que viola o que tiene relaciones sexuales con Ángela Vicario, Garcia Marquez siembra la duda sobre si realmente Angela dice la verdad sobre quien es la persona culpable.

Sin duda una de las novelas en las que Garcia Marquez demuestra todo su talento en la narracion y especialmente en la descripcion. Es la historia de un hombre que va a ser asesinado, y a diferencia del resto del pueblo, el no lo sabe. Pero mas alla de la originalidad de la historia es la capacidad del autor al escribir la que lo lleva a uno a meterse por completo en el libro. Asi como lo hace en otros libros como ¨La Hojarasca¨, juega con los tiempos y esto hace que el libro tenga una dinamica especial y no sea denso o ¨lento¨.

I might as well write this in English. Since this site is viewed mainly by english speaking readers.

This book is not surprisingly a Very good work by G G Marquez. It is well crafted throughout, and does not bore easily like other books in Spanish (there are lots). It is so well written that you will remember it 5 and 10 years from the first chance.

The othern reviews tell very well what happens in the story. It tells our Latin American cutlure very well, from its names, sounds and traditions/folklore. I am going to purchase 'Amor en tiempos de colera', which is sadi to be a book created as sort of sequel to this one.

Santiago Nasar , and the Vicaria family, along with the rest of the inhabitants of the Colombian town in which the book takes place will startle you as one of the best cronicles written, at 105 pages only.

I was recently lucky to see the Gutenburg to Gone With the Wind Exhibit in Austin, Texas recently. At that marvelous exhibit I got to see one of Blake's original editions of Songs of Innocence. After that, I (of course) had to find a copy with the amazing poems and the amazing artwork by Blake. This edition satisfied both criteria well. First of all, the poems are brilliant. Everybody has read such works as "Little Boy Lost," "Little Boy Found," "The Shepherd," "The Lamb," and "The Tyger." These poems are just as good as they are made out to be. Each poem is excrutiatingly simple (in the style of children's verse), and each has such depth. The artwork is all in this edition, too, and it is fabulous. The colors are exactly like those of Blake's. I really think that the poems should never be read without Blake's engravings. This is a marvelous book for poetry lovers to own. It is high quality and affordable. Any fan of Blake's should own this book.

William Blake is known for some very mystical hard-to-understand poetry, but his "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience" is very different from that other work. Here in beautiful, almost child-like simplicity, he describes happy things like childhood and purity, as well as the darker realities of corruption and disillusionment. These poems are always spiritual and lyrical, full of heart and soul. The style is simple, yes, but the words and metaphors are profound and so is the wisdom, like in "The Human Abstract":

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor;
And mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

These are Blake's most popular and accessible works, by far. The poems combined with the wonderful drawings make powerful and memorable statements that stay in your heart and mind. Several, such as "The Tyger", "The Chimney Sweeper", and "London", are very well known. Each of us has our own personal favorites and love turning to them again and again.

One of issues in buying an edition of these works is that they exist in a variety of colorings, and orders. I would recommend this edition for several reasons. The selection of the King's College Copy is one of the most uniformly delightful or the copies Blake (or his wife) colored. Also, the reproduction is of very high quality. Each plate is on a right hand page with the text in print on the left hand page (in case you have problem reading the plate). Even thought the book is in a large format, the plates are reproduced in their actual size (which is surprisingly modest).

There are also a dozen plates provided from other editions. However, I would recommend that you pick up other editions based on other copies. The variety of schemes Blake used in coloring the plates is quite interesting and, well, illuminating.

The second half of the book is commentary on the 54 plates of this copy. There is an introductory essay and a list of works cited in the commentary.

It really is a beautiful reproduction and a joy to have on my shelf.

Ensayo sobre la ceguera fue la primera novela de Saramago que lei. El hombre es un genio. Facilmente te envuelve en el texto hasta hundirte en el mundo de la historia. Oracion tras tras parrafo tras capitulo -- Saramago es uno de los pocos escritos aun comprometidos con el arte de la literatura. Como estudiante de literatura contemporanea hispana, recomiendo esta novela como una verdadera obra maestra. Es una delicia de lectura.

El poder de Ensayo sobre la Ceguera no se limita a su conmovedora historia, que vuelve indispensable una lectura sin interrupciones. Las metaforas sobre la humanidad y el Estado le dan un sentido mucho mas profundo a cada pagina.Su desgarradora fuerza, su sensibilidad y una maravillosa forma de escribir hacen de este texto de Saramago una delicia!

Un libro espectacular.
Uno de los mejores que haya leido en mi vida.
Que pasa si un pueblo entero, se queda ciego. Eso incluye a todos. TODOS CIEGOS.
O acaso, talves. Este libro te haga despertar. Y darte cuenta, de que HASTA EL DIA QUE LO LEISTE.
FUISTE UN CIEGO!!!!/
disfrutenlo. Vale la pena. SAramago Un grande.

I'm a Russian Language and Literature major in Yonsei Univ. in Korea. Having lived in Moscow for around 3 years, I'd heard there a lot about Pushkin and read many of his famous works. The most prestigious of his, however, must be "Onegin." It's a great mixture of verse and prose in its form. If possible, try to read this in Russian, as well. This long poetical prose was written for 8 years and the ending rhyme perfectly matches for the entire line until the very end. Compared to others, it is definitely a conspicuous and brilliant one. "Onegin" can be the author himself or yourself. The love between Onegin and TaTyana is neither the cheap kind of love that often appears in any books nor the tragic one that is intended to squeze your tears. As a literature, this book covers not only love between passionate youth, but also a large range of literary works in it, which can tell us about the contemporary literature current and its atmosphere. Calling Onegin "My friend", Pushkin, the author, shows the probability and likelihood of the work. Finally, I'm just sorry that the title has been changed into English. The original name must be "Yevgeni Onegin(¬¦¬Ó¬Ô¬Ö¬ß¬Ú¬Û ¬°¬ß¬Ö¬Ô¬Ú¬ß)." If you are a literature major or intersted in it, I'd like to recommand you read this. You can't help but loving the two lovers and may reread it, especially the two correspondences through a long period of time. Only with readng this book, you'll also learn a huge area of the contemporary literature of the 19th century from the books mentioned in "Onegin" that take part as its subtext. Enjoy yourself!

Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's favorite among all his works, and although it seems to take a back seat to some of the great late-19th century Russian novels among western readers, Russians themselves tend to prize it above all other works of their country's literature. In case you're not familiar with the story, it deals mainly with two of the title character's ill-fated relationships: one with his friend and neighbor Vladimir Lensky, which ends tragically due to a very unnecessary rivalry over Olga Larin; and the other with Olga's sister Tatyana, which never comes to fruition because Eugene initially rejects her, only to fall in love with her later. Interwoven among all this, Pushkin himself periodically appears to invoke his muse or to digress on such seemingly unrelated topics as his penchant for women's feet.

The work can't possibly be praised enough in a single review, and I won't try to do so; suffice it to say that Eugene's provincial boredom, Tatyana's passion, and Vladimir's poetic romanticism are all splendidly drawn, and many of Pushkin's digressions have justly become proverbs in his native land. Presumably much of the reason that the novel doesn't receive quite so much attention in the non-Russian speaking world is that, due to its verse structure (it consists of 14-line stanzas in iambic tetrameter with a consistent ababccddeffegg rhyme scheme), it's very hard to translate while still retaining both the meaning and the delightfully spirited rhythm of the original. Vladimir Nabokov asserted very emphatically back in the 1960s that any faithful translation would have to almost completely sacrifice the original's lyric quality, and Nabokov's translation is notoriously dull, if extremely adherent to Pushkin's exact meaning. Not speaking Russian, I haven't read the original, nor have I read any other translations than the one I'm reviewing, so I can't say for sure how it compares, but I can say that Falen's translation is extremely good. It adheres, for all intents and purposes, exactly to Pushkin's meter, and does so without any particularly awkward diction, resulting in an end-product that must at least approach the beauty of the Russian version. Some others seem to agree with me: in the preface to his own recent (1999) translation of Onegin, Douglas Hofstadter praises Falen's translation so highly that he has to spend a section explaining why he bothered with a translation when Falen had already done it so perfectly. While most bilingual readers would probably state that to call Falen's (or anybody else's) translation "perfect" would be a stretch, it is still a delightful work, and hopefully other English-speaking readers will acquire, as I have, a better appreciation of the beauty of Pushkin's greatest work as a result of it.

James Falen has offered his version of the Russian classic, and has captured both the meaning and the verse. The stanzas flow effortlessly in Falen's hands, it may very well be the best translation yet. Of course, Nabokov is not around to cast his judgement on it. He panned every other translation that had been printed and penned his own in prose, so as not to stray too far from original meaning. But, even he said it was no more than a crib, as what Puskin had achieved in Eugene Onegin was a restructuring of the Russian language, giving it a beauty few had thought it possessed.

Orlando Figes similarly noted that Onegin was the first truly Russian lyrical novel. Pushkin had forsaken the standard French and sought to find the words expressive enough to convey the contradictory nature of the Russian soul. The novel in verse ebbs and flows as Pushkin takes you from St. Petersburg to Moscow to the Russian countryside, weaving a charming tale with many fascinating asides. The texture is so rich and the characters so enduring that this lyrical novel has attained mythological status in Russian literature. No understanding of the subject is complete without having read Eugene Onegin.

But, if language is essential to understanding Onegin then any translation will ultimately come up short. However, Falen has shown great respect for the novel and its language, unlike Douglass Hofstadter's juvenile attempt to translate it. Falen offers copious endnotes and a fascinating introduction. He tips his hat to Nabokov and the others who have translated this novel in the past. The language Falen uses is modern, giving Onegin a freshness lacking in other translations.