european

After recently spending 2 months in Greece and thoroughly enjoying the Greek cuisine, I was delighted to find this comprehensive yet readible guide. The author shares insight into the essentials for setting up a Greek kitchen and preparing the recipes in the traditional way along with modern preparation tips. I loved her way of sharing the fellowship and joy of the Greek dining experience. Flavors of Greece made me homesick!

I have visited Greece many times, and have wanted a cookbook that had recipes for the delicious food I have eaten there that would allow me to prepare this great cuisine at home. This is the first cookbook that has met my needs. The recipe for pork souvlaki is outstanding, and I have never had a dish turn out less than wonderful from this book. It needs to be reprinted!!

A few years ago, I did a course at college in Modern French Drama. It was mostly the usual doom-and-gloom stuff (Becque, Giraudoux, Sartre, Camus, Beckett), with no place for the most popular of 20th century dramatists, the farceur Feydeau. This marginalisation, presumably because Feydeau was both populist and generic, tells us a lot about elitism in academia in these post-post-modernist times. What should be made clear is that Feydeau is not only more fun than the above-mentioned, but both more theatrical and more radical.

Farce is the one genuinely theatrical art form - it doesn't read very well on the page, and rarely works on screen. Whereas 'realist' drama has tried to make the mechanics of drama less transparent to foreground the content, the primary pleasure of Feydeau's theatre is these mechanics: the vertignous interplay between character and plot on the one hand, and the formal choreography on the other, with its fusillade of entrances, exits, disguises, mistaken identities, verbal wit, physical violence, revolving doors, multiple stairs etc.

Feydeau's art has been compared to clockwork, but that emphasis on mechanical precision doesn't do justice to the way he makes the characters plausible and their actions motivated, so that every disaster seems like a natural development rather than an imposed contrivance.

But even these levels of enjoyment would be rather superfical. Where Feydeau truly excels is as a dissector of marriage and bourgeois society (one of the great joys for me reading the play was imagining the cast of Bunuel's 'The Discreet charm of the Bourgeoisie' in the roles): the games, hypocrisies, impotence, violence, ennui. There is much fun in the play's central double role, where the confusion of the bourgeois patriarch with a drunken porter leads to many of the play's confusions, and subversively undermines the middle-class dependence on firm status and identity. What emerges most clearly is the fragility of the intricate social structure when a rogue element threatens to destroy it. In the end, that's all it is, a structure, one that offers a safety net against chaos and chance, but one that doesn't leave much room for personal freedom or happiness.

Like Ionesco et al after him, Feydeau locates the decadence of this society in the breakdown of language, and much of the comedy comes not only from characters with cleft palattes and thick Spanish accents, but in the misinterpreting signs and modes of communication that are supposed to make this world ordered and coherent.

Finally, a plot with a comedy Spaniard and a violent hotel manager must surely have influenced 'Fawlty Towers', one of the few non-theatrical works to replicate the technical precision and emotional undertow of Feydeau's work.

I reccomend this book to EVERYONE! It is the best play I have ever read. I enjoyed it so much that I directed the play myself! Buy it today!

-Davé!

This book claims to take on, for the most part, the position of women in contemporary Algeria. But you can see many people's lives and how they're affected in this book. The narrative switches back and forth between Sultana, an Algerian woman doctor who lives in France, and a Frenchman in Algeria, Vincent. From the first, shocking few pages, to the very end, it captivated me. It is so hard to understand the FIS (Front Islamique du Salut, a radical Islamist Algerian group) and the way they see things. Sultana is an extremely dignified woman with much credibility and worhthy of anyone's respect, yet she is called a whore by her fellow Algerians when she walks on the street or goes to a bar or does ANYTHING really. The very end is the most surprising act of repression of all.

But there are so many glimpses of hope in this book as well, the little girl character of Delilah, the nurse Khaled. It seems that Algeria is torn between the strong, fundamental belief in their faith, and the changing world and people not wanting to be oppressed (who would?). Maybe fundamentalism is always a negative thing when it comes to faith and sprituality. Nobody has the right to force their ideas on others. I wish I had some idea of what I think would be something that could help Algeria. The language conflict (french and arabic, and to a lesser degree, Berber) seems difficult enough to tackle.

I'm sure this book was much better in its original French language text, although the translation is very good as well. Highly recommended, Algeria is facinating.

One of the very best works of contemporary fiction set in the Maghrib. Raises the issues you would want for class discussion without the aggressive "eradicatory" anti-Islamism of most Algerian writers.

James McFarlane's and Jens Arup's translations of Ibsen have long been classics and are arguably the best. Although they were published in England almost forty years ago, they still sound remarkably fresh and will be in print for many years to come.

In "A Doll's House" (1879), Ibsen casts us into the world of Nora Helmer, a young Norwegian housewife and Nordic Madame Bovary. Highlighting the restricted position of women in male-dominated society, the play sparked such an uproar in Scandinavia when it appeared that "many a social invitation during that winter bore the words: 'You are requested not to mention Ibsen's Doll's House!'" In fact, Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, the actress who was to play Nora on tour in Germany, was so appalled at the ending of this play -- at this female "monster" -- that she demanded Ibsen write an alternative one in German, which he did (a "barbaric outrage", in his words). McFarlane has appended this German-language ending (and a translation in English).

Based on the theme, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children," "Ghosts" (1881) is one of Ibsen's most riveting plays. Like "A Doll's House", it, too, was denounced on its début ("crapulous stuff", "an open drain", one London reviewer called it -- certainly a Victorian exaggeration). As in most of his plays, Ibsen probes the hypocrisies of patriarchal society, which he deems to be rotten at its core, and stultifying provincial life ("Doesn't the sun ever shine here?"). Typically, he also casts women in a favorable light.

"A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" established Ibsen's reputation as one of the finest playwrights in Europe, but his next two plays -- "Hedda Gabler" (1890) and "The Master Builder" (1892) -- gave him undisputed international fame. As McFarlane points out, the 1890s "were the years when the publication of a new Ibsen play sent profound cultural reverberations throughout Europe and the world." "Hedda Gabler" marks Ibsen's shift away from highly controversial dramas primarily concerned with social and sexual injustice to "domestic" plays that addressed the struggle of individuals to control each other, people who "want to control the world, but cannot control [themselves]." "Hedda Gabler" is a thoroughly electrifying drama about a married woman's devouring sense of decay and confinement. "The Master Builder", which Ibsen coupled with "Hedda Gabler", is his riveting look into sexual potency and the domination of youth by age.

These plays are not as dark and dirty as they might seem. Whatever reviewers may have said about them when they came out and whatever gloomy stuff psychiatrists have written about them since, if you're at all familiar with prime-time television, they won't offend you -- in fact, you probably wont even lift an eyebrow. Still, I found myself glued to them for hours and I've read them before. Find a copy for your shelf!

Actually, I've only read two of these plays before but I did
want to list the names of the four included in this volume:

A Doll's House;
Ghosts;
Hedda Gabler;
The Master Builder.

Masterful social drama (to sound like a back-of-the-book blurb).
Seriously though, Ibsen's plays are wonderful.

Tomaz Salamun is one of the most stunning and original poets alive, and anyone at all interested in poetry should get this book: it is subversive, shocking, and outrageous as well as tender and beautiful.

Slovenia has always been a nation of poets (the oldest known musical instrument, a Neanderthal bear-bone flute, was discovered there). As their country was annexed, subdivided, and subjected to one conquerer after another, the Slovene language and literature held them together.
Of the many fine Slovene poets writing today, Salamun is probably the most prolific and best-known -- and deservedly so. This anthology presents a well-chosen overview of his work, put into English by a variety of translators. My only criticism: their styles are so different that a reader may be left uncertain whether the dizzying variability of the diction is Salamun's or theirs. (An out-of-print volume, "The Shepherd, The Hunter" translated by Sonja Kravanja, I felt gave a better sense of Salamun's distinctive "voice.") Still, this is a good selection, nicely presented, and well worth reading.

This book takes a closer look at the forms in nature, and deriving architectural design from it.

It is a valuable book for designers who wish to stimulate their creativity through visual inspiration, drawn from nature.

Be inspired by the the source of designers' products.. not their final product...

ON THE SURFACE OF THINGS by Whitesides and Frankel, is another book with extraordinary images; though it doesn't refer to architecture and design, it is very inspirational.

This is a beautiful book. Beautiful not in the sense of our usual architectural books that show you Mr. or Ms. Who-and-Who just made another billion dollar project that has a golden ball on top. This book belongs to another category.

This is a book that gets you thinking.

In a way summarized Frei Otto's life-long quest of looking in mother nature for inspirations. The images are stunning. And you do not see them in architectural books. But why do we go only to Corbu or Wright or Calatrava for inspirations while leaving out the world?

Architects are always looking for ways to get out of the box. In terms of inspirations, I think it doesn't get too much better than this.

A highly recommended, benchmark contribution to academic and literary reference collections, French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror And Pulp Fiction is very nicely enhanced throughout with numerous illustrations.

refurbishing of the Casino, Alberta Campitelli's discussion of designs for the short-lived Museo di Gabii, the villas's other antiquities museum, as well as b/w and color photography. Making A Prince's Museum is informative, engaging reading and highly recommended to students of architecture and the history of 18th Century museum development.

Ably edited and translated into English from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and others, and enhanced with an informed and informative introduction Peter Constantine, the poetry by Luljeta Lleshanaku compiled in Fresco: Selected Poetry offers a voice that is clear, strong, and remarkably apolitical for someone who whose family were brutally oppressed during decades of Albanian communist regimes. Yearly Snow: In this city the yearly snow/leaning on sparse, lonesome trees/doesn't mean a thing./It signifies nothing more/than the meandering of a veteran/leaning on a wooden crutch.//The same war story told a hundred times/the same brand of cigarette distributed by friendly hands/and those same eyes hovering, dark and lazy./Only that. And the dry rhythmic knocking/until his silhouette disappears/amidst the shadows cast down by rooftops/their melting snow dripping/in terrible slowness...

How to make poetry out of the nightmare of recent Albanian history? Luljeta Lleshanaku explores some of the ways in which public and private realms of experience meet and merge, in poems that haunt and delight in equal measures. What was once forbidden now comes into sharp focus, as in the mingling of philosophy, erotic memory, and religious imagery in the title poem, Fresco.

I think this "We Both Read" series is great. Whatever mood my boy is in when bedtime rolls around - whether he's working with me or against me - this concept works. I read the (difficult) left page in each two page spread, and the child reads the (easy) right. Teamwork. And even though these make no mention of Power Rangers or Batman Beyond, these are my boy's favorites. Along with some math books from Singapore(sgbox.com), and a learn-to-read series called "Now I'm Reading" by Nora Gaydos, these books are a great experience for your child. After your child has finished reading and they climb in bed, give your child something to strive for... turn on your booklight, turn off the room lights, and read your child a chapter or two from a more advanced book. Treasure Island, Harry Potter, anything by Roald Dahl... That's what works for my boys and I.

This series of readers really works. I've been running through them at bedtime with my six-year-old, who adores taking it in turns with me to read her page after I've read mine. It turns reading into a collaborative game, with plenty of play-acting (doing the different voices of the characters) thrown in. At my daughter's stage of reading, a short book can be a long haul, when she has to do it all by herself. The "We Both Read" books break up the text into manageable segments, and give her time-out while I do my share of the work. I'd like to see more and more titles quickly added to the series. I am baffled as to why Amazon should inflict a $1.35 surcharge on the publisher's recommended price--it seems to run entirely counter to the Amazon way of doing things. But the books themselves are splendid.

My husband and I both read this to our boys without the other knowing it. We later commented on the fact that it's our favorite fairy tale. The pictures are beautifully-illustrated and with fine details. The story itself is beautifully-written and entertaining for our little boys. It is a keeper in our collection!

The Czar orders his three sons to shoot an arrow and whoever is holding it wherever it landed will be that son's bride. The youngest got stuck with a talking frog. He was rather disappointed, but his bride wasn't who he thought she was. Because of his ineptness, he lost her and had to find her again. The basic moral of this story is true love always prevails. And it's a neat fairy tale ~~ a readaption of the ancient Russian folklore.

If you are interested in having your children learn more about different cultures and their stories, this is a good place to start. With beautiful illustrations and a lovely story, your children will be entertained just as you will be.

10-15-03

I collect fairy tales and folk tales for their illustration. This is the best book I've found for beautiful, intricate artwork