literature

Going from a teenager to a young adult, I read the book T. A. for Teens. I wished I had learned about transactional analysis throughout my school years.It would have helped me deal and understand my behavior and that of others, as well as be a happier person. Now, I am a mother of a wonderful little girl. I'm looking for T.A. for Tots, to start her out earlier than I did. BUT IT IS OUT OF PRINT!!! Please, please, please bring it back. So the new generation of kids can get an early start on understanding warm fuzzies and cold pricklies, and how to comunicate their feelings in a possitve, constructive way. Looking forward to seeing the book available again. Thanks. Liza

This book was a important and crucial piece of my childhood development. Growing up with TA for Tots tought me the basics of interaction, and the emotional effects of my actions on others. Abused and overused, my copy is now a crumpled and withered mess of pages but it lies waiting for my own children to discover its wonders. I am dying to share this book with my friends and their children. one of the best gifts you can give someone, even a kid, is the power to discover what lies within. PLEASE BEG THE PUBLISHER TO REPRINT!!!!!

Many of my teacher/student interactions throughout my career have been based on Transactional Analysis, having studied the T.A. books for tots, kids and teens, as well as "Im OK - You're OK" and "Games People Play". The strategies are as relevant and useful now as they were in the seventies. Today I was discussing these strategies with my son, now a student teacher, and recommended the books to him; Shock! Horror! Not available? How can this be?

Growing up, my father had a copy of the original vinyl recording of this from the 1950's. Every Christmas it came out and was played, and now I can't think of Christmas without it. After being unavailable for decades, I'm delighted to see this record once again available. Few people know that Dylan Thomas gained fame in his lifetime as a radio personality, and the dry, droll voice of his takes his fantastic prose and breathes a life into it that the simple words themselves cannot demonstrate. A classic, recommended to all.

Christmas so often disappoints us. And why not? How could it ever live up to the sappy and maudlin presentations it suffers so often on TV, in the movies, even in commercials! Along comes Dylan Thomas (well he came along a while ago) and captures elements of the holiday that we can still live today. There is a town shut up against the cold with the occasional hardy soul braving the elements. There are families, rich in generations, sharing a day punctuated more by the telling of tales than the exchange of gifts. There are children overcoming their own fears of the unknown to give "Good King Wenceslaus" to a spectral figure behind a closed door. And there lies, on the final page and in the final line, an ending that captures all of what is best in the holiday and, maybe, what is best in all of us. Granted, until you hear the poet himself read this work, you will never capture the full effect, but you will come close. And you may be more ready for Christmas than you have ever been before.

Who hasn't read this short tale of magic about Christmas past in a village in Wales, Dylan Thomas' most beloved book? I've read it to myself perhaps 20 times; I've read it to my children and laughed over the pictures maybe 10 more times. But, till now, I've never experienced the joy of hearing the poet himself read it to me. Omigod, what a pure pleasure. Recorded in 1952, this new release is all cleaned up and is a real keeper. Thomas' cadences, inflections, emphasis, pauses, and his marvelous Welsh accent make a listener close her eyes and just get lost in the humor and love and reminiscences of a bygone era.
There are quite a few other selections in this collection - and they're good - but even if you buy it just for A Child's Christmas in Wales, it'll be money well spent.

This book just blew me away. To have a book be so funny and so thought provoking is amazing. People always say this book or that book is representative of a generation. Well, this one really IS. Trust me, read it. You won't be disappointed.

This was a savagely funny and moving book of power and artisitc integrity. A journey into the hell of mental illness as well as the hell of modern life - often times you can't tell the two apart. It ridicules all that is false, primitive, and vicious in American life and points out the hypocricy we all see. But it also is beautiful as well, especially the poetry.

Diatribe searches for true meaning in life. Genius.

Got turned on to this from some firends who were talking about it and it was absolutely worth the read. Hope he comes out with another book soon.

"Ed Emberly's Drawing Book: Make a World" really takes me back. From my earliest days in elementary school (early 80's), I remember this book. I did not then, nor do I know, have any appreciable artistic talent. Yet, this book made very common objects, people, and places very easy to draw with a fundamental step-by-step instruction. It gave even the least talented wanna-be artist an outlet for creative production. I simply loved this book. I had it checked out of the school library (with constant renewals) for almost an entire school year until the librarians put their foot down. My parents were kind enough to buy me my own copy, and I carried it with me every day. Even when I wasn't drawing, the setup of the book is creative enough so that a reader can almost come up with their own stories based on the drawings. I have no idea where my old copy of this book is, but you can be sure that I am psyched to buy it again.

I can easily remember the dozens of times I took this book out from the library when I was a kid. I would draw for hours. There wasn't anything that this book didn't tell you how to draw. Cars, boats, houses, people, bridges, and hundreds of other objects. And the best part about the book is how easy everything is. Any kid who has the ability to draw lines, curves and circles can draw everything in this book. From chairs and desks to fancy boats with many sails, from bicycles and tricycles to tractors and tractor trailers, this book had it all. I would recommend this book to people of all ages. It is guaranteed to keep any young artist occupied for hours on end. The best book of its kind.

I have always enjoyed making tiny drawings in the borders of my notebooks at school. And as an adult I still doodle during meetings. This book is for those who love to doodle. It shows you how to make the coolest little doodles and drawings of everything! There are hundreds of people, buildings, vehicles, boats, and animals to draw. An as always no one teaches you an easier way than Ed Emberly! This is the best series of books for learning to draw, and when you want to thinkl about drawing for more than just fun you can move up the the Jack Hamm books, the logical next step after you finsih all of these. As an adult, I still love this book. I love it more now that it makes my 5 year old so happy that he can draw such neat things as castles, with dragons and knights in 2 minutes!

One theme I found to be particularly compelling in this book which has not been directly explored in the reviews currently posted is the search for identity which seemingly each character in this novel is engaged. Lewis Moon, a man who existes on the fringe of the dominant culture of the US, longs for validation in the culture of his ancestors, a culture which is tragically unavailable. The missionaries, Protestant and Catholic alike, seek identity and validation in the people they seek to convert, including the endless "conversion" of their own families. The other characters have their own identity issues. The most compelling of these searches, to my mind, was that of Lewis Moon who, without any feeling of loyalty to any culture available to him, seeks identity in an indiginous culture not yet eradicated by the dominant Chilean culture of European origin. (Perhaps he thinks he can help them avoid the fate of the culture of his ancestors.) The novel explores each character's basis for self-perception and what they do when their basic assumptions about their role in the world are challenged. What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American who has had his citizenship revoked? What does it mean to have faith? What if the dogma of your denomination appears to produce results that seem "un-Christlike?" What does it mean to indentify as a member of an indigineous people? What does that mean when you are among members of another indiginous people? All these questions (and there are many more) posed in the book have lead me to a better perception of who I am and why I think so. One of the best books I've had the pleasure to have read.

Not since the reading of Huxley's "Brave New World" have I read such a powerful and ironic novel as that of "At Play In The Fields of The Lord". This book is a first rate masterpiece! Its subtle irony and dramatic content are the creation of literary genius. Rarely have I ever found an author whose work so moves me to not merely observe the characters, but instead BECOME the characters. Indeed, as the book's storyline progresses, the reader is drawn into a web of spiritual doubt and political corruption which leads the reader to question his own faith, morals, and even deeds. After all, at least once in our lives we shall become Lewis Moons for at least a brief moment. Whether this fleeting instance destroys an Amazonian culture or simply estranges your inlaws depends upon that person's individual circumstances. In the end, the reader *becomes* each of the novel's characters as we struggle to discover our purpose & self identity. In the end, it is the reader who is left asking, "Why?"

In Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Lewis Moon, the mysterious and elusive mercenary with a good heart, steals every scene in which he appears. The story, in a nutshell, concerns the clash between 4 forces in a remote South American jungle reason: misguided Christian missionaries, corrupt local politicians, the near Stone Age jungle natives, and Lewis Moon. Beautiful progress of a story in which it's hard at any moment to know who to root for, a story in which no one really comes out a winner, and therein lies the moral.

Herman Melville's Benito Cereno is a story about a Spanish slave ship taken captive, and the unfortunate American whaling ship that discovers them. The American Captain, Amasa Delano, and his crew cross paths with the Spanish slave ship, the San Dominick in a bay off the coast of the island of Santa Maria. Captain Delano is immediately astonished at the disrepair of the San Dominick, and especially at the poor health and mental condition of her captain, Benito Cereno. Captain Delano's emotional reactions to what he witnesses while aboard the San Dominick; curiosity, anxiety, and suspicion are excellently described by Melville. Throughout his stay on the San Dominick, Delano is constantly worried that Cereno is planning to attack him, and the liberty the slaves seem to enjoy concerns him as well. The story of Benito Cereno will keep you guessing until the final pages when the mystery of the San Dominick's crew and cargo is unveiled. Despite difficult language, I would recommend this to anyone looking for a great adventure story.

Herman Melville spins a great tale that's easy to read. It's a story about five men, and the main character is just as much the narrator as it is Bartleby. The narrator is an attorney who hires three people to work for him, and each one is a real character. All the men are described in great detail, and they are terrific thumbnail character sketches that will stay in your memory bank for years to come! The last man employed is Bartleby, and he is really a strange duck! Bartleby is an excellent copier of legal documents, and initially he does a fine job. However, as the story progresses Barleby acts very strange. He responds with the words, "I'd prefer not to," when asked to proof-read manuscripts, and this response continues whenever the narrator, his boss, asks him perform the ususal office tasks such as going the the post office or doing small errands. The climax of the story comes when the narrator finds Bartleby in the law office getting dressed one Sunday morning. It appears that Bartleby is using the office for his lodging, and the narrator later comes across his personal belongings and shaving kit. As the story progresses, Bartleby does less and less work, and soon he's nothing more than a fixture in the law offices. When the narrator dismisses him and pays him a salary plus a tip, Bartlby refuses to leave. Finally, the narrator is about ready to go crazy -- the man won't leave. So, the narrator moves his law practice to another location and leaves Bartleby at the former work site. The end of the story describes Bartleby in the Tomb, and asylum. Rumor has it that Bartleby was once employed as a clerk in a Dead Letter Office, and this seems to explain his forlon state. Melville explains that a dead letter office is a terrible place to work; no doubt Bartleby was depressed being surrounded with letters that never made their intended destination. These letters could have contained money, promises, stories about weddings, happy tales written to people who failed to receive them. The symbolism in the story is interesting. Bartleby, like the narrator, live in a cold, impersonal world, set off by a series of walls and dark buildings. The symbol of walls without windows are the boundaries for the disconnected solitary work the five men face. Like hermits, each one rarely interacts with the other, and Melville shows the awful effects of a compartmentalized modern society. What would he think of Americans today who sit at computers and interact only by e-mail? What sad, solitary lives have we wrought? This story is rich with details, and I think you'll enjoy it!

I must respectfully disagree with the Boston reader who asserts that Bartleby is "a case study in clinical depression." That's definitely one way to interpret the story, but it defuses a great deal of the tale's power. If we believe that Bartleby is simply a victim of mental illness, we might begin to believe that if only doctors had Prozac in the 19th Century, poor old Bartleby would have chippered up and gone home dancing.

Bartleby's refusal, his famous "I prefer not to," seems more like a deliberate and sane NO. People did know what depression was back then (though it was generally called melancholia, instead). Bartleby's condition (our condition?) is something much deeper, much more terrifying-- the possibility that one can observe the world from a completely rational mind and decide that participation is not worth it.

If we decide that Bartleby's problem was depression, must we call Kurtz a paranoid schizophrenic? All of Beckett's characters could use a Xanax prescription, because they seem pretty bleak, too.

Bartleby is fascinating because of what we don't know; Melville is the great American exploiter of Negative Capability, Keats's term, defined as "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

It is because Melville is willing to refrain from that "irritable reaching after fact and reason" that Bartleby (and Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick) is a story that lingers in the imagination. If we knew why the man simply quit the business of life, if we knew it was a deficiency of chemicals in his brain or whatever, we would not be so haunted by his fate.

This book was assigned reading for a Hispanic culture class I'm taking. I read the English translation, and I actually kind of enjoyed it. Gallegos has written a very interesting commentary on life at that time in Venezuela. Santos was probably my favorite character, next to Dona Barbara, of course! I would recommend it to anybody who would be interested in learning more about ranch life in Venezuela or who just wants to read a good book.

It is impossible not to be mesmerized by the witchy Dona Barbara. Her misterious and sinister personality, unusual in itself, was even more incredible considering that the story takes place in the Venezuelan llanos (plains), a male domain, and at a time when a woman's place was considered to be at home. Even if you don't like the story, which I found wonderful, the character of Dona Barbara alone is reason enough for buying this book. The ending is also great, it couldn't have been better.

exelente, refrescante y muy intensa que nos lleva a un punto donde la acción ya es denasiaso y los personajes nos llevan a un punto de climax total.

This story is so suspenseful, that I was kept on the edge of my seat the entire time! This time-travel book, involves a young, thirteen-year-old girl by the name of Abby Chandler, who mysteriously and magically escapes a horrific fire, in which her family was killed. Abby does not know it, but a small, magical, stone flute carved in the shape of a phoenix, given to her by a Native American woman, Willow, saved Abby from dying in the fire with her family. But the flute did not only save Abby's life, it also threw her ahead in time by at least three hundred years! One second Abby was living in the colonial era, and the next second she was in a field of snow, without any knowledge of the buildings and houses around her.

Eventually Abby crosses paths with a young, fifteen-year-old girl, Mandy Browne, of Massachusetts. Unknown to both girls, but the day these two meet is the day Abby is rescued from her seemingly inevitable fate of living forever.

Mandy discovers there is something about this girl that isn't right. Whenever Mandy hears Abby hysterically crying, she goes to her room, but Abby is not there. What is even more strange, is that Mandy's parents do not hear Abby's wretched crying. In addition, Mandy discovers pictures of Abby's dating back hundreds of years. The strange thing is though, is that in all of the pictures there is a girl who is the splitting image of Abby, with the exception of clothes from each time period.

Twice, Mandy confronts her parents about Abby's crying, and twice Abby somehow returns back to her room, denying all of it, to which Mandy's parents take sides with Abby. Abby now knows that Mandy can unquestionably hear her crying when she has traveled back to her home of ruins. Since no one else has been able to hear her crying when she has been there, she decides to tell Mandy what really happened to her. Shocked and surprisingly moved by Abby's story, Mandy has no idea what to say and she is left speechless. Abby thinks that because Mandy can hear her crying, she will be able to help Abby save her family.

The rest is up to you to figure out what happens to the two girls. I loved this book and I know that anyone who reads it will too!

This book is the best one I have ever read. I would recommend it anyday. The author, Kathryn Reiss is my favorite and if you read some of her books maybe you will think of them the same way. I would rate this book a 10+!

This was a GREAT book! I loved it! Reiss did a wonderful job unfolding her story about Abby, a young puritan girl unable to move on to the next world, trapped by her own reluctance. Her only hope is almost 300 years later when Miranda discovers her secret and tries to help, but not until the two learn to get along after Miranda's parents decide to take Abby in. A very inticing story and definitely worth reading! I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did!

I think this book suffers mostly through translation because I've seen the Russian film versions any number of times, and found "The Twelve Chairs" to be utterly hilarious. However, the humor seems lost in the Northwest translation. I think of Mark Twain who lamented that "awful German language" for so badly maligning his "Celebrated Jumping Frog."

I think the Northwestern Univ. Press translations in general are weak. Imre Kertesz has recently taken them to task for the translations of two of his works. It seems that Northwestern's heart is in the right place, trying to capture some of the lesser known works in world literature, but that their selection of translations is rather shoddy.

I've read the novel together with its sequel, The Golden Calf, in Russian about a dozen times. Now I simply have to get an English copy to share it with my non-Russian speaking friends! It is true: the speech of an average Russian contains quite a few quotations from the novel (also due to a number of film versions). Twelve Chairs is something definitely worth having in your home library: you can open it at any time and start reading on any page. In minutes, you're guaranteed, if not to laugh, then to smile.

I never read this in English,so I'm not going to comment on the quality of the Northwestern U. translation,but I did read it in Russian. First off,everyone needs to read this book in order to understand Russians better. I re-read it many times in my teenage years simply because if you live in Russia(or any other Eastern European country for that matter),you will be able to understand those countless quotes taken from this masterpiece and incorporated into everyday language. The characters are hysterical in the least, and the story so seemingly simple contains much bigger messages than available to the naked eye.Please,read this book,and if you understand the humour and sadness of it,you'll be well on your way to understanding not just Russian culture but humans in general.

My 5 year old son brought this book home from the school library. We read it that night and I couldn't put it down. What a fresh, new way to look at some very well read nursery rhymes! The illustrations were colorful and creative. Also, the way they intertwined the nursery tales allowed me to pull out even more stories to read to my son. It was engaging for him and entertaining for me. I have already given this as a gift to friends. Thank you, Janet and Susan, for creating such a wonderful place for my son's imagination to wander.

My 4 1/2 year old daughter absolutely loves this book. We originally borrowed it from the library, but she was heartbroken when it had to be returned. Although we've read it at least a dozen times, the story, familiar nursery rhymes and whimsical, beautiful pictures continue to grasp her interest. Parents will also enjoy this book, since it is written in a manner for both adults and children. I especially like the point where the characters traveling down the path come to a fork in the road, and it is actually a "fork" in the road, which will help them look for "spoon". I am always delighted when my daughter, Kelly, chooses this book for her bedtime selection.

The school that I teach at is performing this play tonight. It has come along great and going to be very cute live and in person. Very good book!