literature

One of the greatest novelists of all time, Balzac was most at home in the Paris of Post-Napoleonic Paris. In a time when the middle class was showing its strength and starting to reach towards the aristocracy, Balzac shows just how selfish and grubby and greedy humans can be in attaining and how treacherous they can be in keeping their all important upward mobility.

Colonel Chabert is a man disfigured in the Napoleonic Wars who was left for dead on a battlefield. After digging his way out of a mass grave, he finds that he has no legal right to his title or his massive estate. Nobody will believe his true identity. For ten longe years he goes about trying to communicate his plight to anyone who will listen. They only see a crazy bum, and his wife rebuffs his letters. She already has a new husband and kids. Finally Chabert is able to convince a lawyer named Dervilles to accept his case, namely that of reclaiming his title, lands, and wife. The problem is that noone is really interested in his life being resurrected. Most people would rather that he remained dead. So begins the ludicrous battle of a man against the law to prove his own existence.

This short but great novel, or novella, is a tragic take on the world's thirst for social status and the judgement by visuals that our society is only too guilty of to this day. If it walks like a bum, talks like a bum, it must be a bum. Colonel Chabert has such a hard time convincing people of his identity because of how they perceive him. It sounds echoes of Frankenstein in that a good man is reduced to a monster when all he really needs is love. The fact that even his wife wishes he were dead just drives home the isolated suffering of the book. As in all Balzac novels, you feel a world moving under the mantle of the book. The Human Comedy of Balzac is one of the crowning achievements of literature and ranks right up there with Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy.

"Colonel Chabert" is the story of a soldier--a great favourite of Napoleon's who is left for dead following the battle of Eylau. Chabert literally digs himself out of a mass grave and is nursed slowly back to health. Unfortunately, Chabert's severe head wound caused permanent memory loss, and it is years before Chabert clearly remembers who he is.

After fragments of his memory return, Chabert contacts his wife--unfortunately, she has remarried and is now the Countess Ferraud, and it is in her best interests that Chabert remain dead and forgotten and that she remain the sole wealthy recipient of the Chabert fortune. So she ignores the letters Chabert sends.

Desperately poor, in bad health, and nursing a growing sense of injustice, Chabert seeks out the services of an ambitious and fascinating young lawyer named Derville. Derville is intrigued with Chabert's story and decides that Chabert is either the victim of a terrible injustice or "the most accomplished actor" he has ever seen. And so Derville sets out to regain at least a portion of Chabert's fortune....

Balzac is one of my favourite authors, and I've read many of his works. "Colonel Chabert" is novella length, but it is better described as a sketch of a novel. For anyone trying Balzac for the first time, I recommend starting with either "Cousin Bette" or "The Black Sheep." "Colonel Chabert" is perhaps not the best Balzac novel to start with as it is certainly not a good example of Balzac's extraordinary talent, but the novella certainly serves nicely as a later supplement to Balzac's better novels. I have to say that the film version is actually even better than the novel--and it's usually the other way around. In the novel, Countess Ferraud is a grasping, selfish, pitiless ambitious woman--in the film, she is portrayed much more sympathetically. Also, the visual media of film allowed much greater scope for such scenes as the dead on the frozen battlefield--this was not conveyed with such power in the novel. Nonetheless, "Colonel Chabert" follows Balzac's favourite themes--greed and human motivation---displacedhuman--Amazon Reviewer.

Balzac, one of the greatest writers who ever lived, did not trip up with this one. I read it with great pleasure and conclude, as people so often say, that the movie based on the story did not equal the original. Ever the cynic (some might say 'the realist') Balzac portrays here the efforts of a noble-minded soldier, who rose from an orphanage to serve his country under Napoleon in Egypt and eastern Europe, only to reap the all-too-common fate of dedicated and true warriors---to be forgotten and ignored. Death (which he accepted) might have seized him, but he found a living death, a denial of his sanity and identity, as the reward of his service. Reported killed at the battle of Eylau, against the Russians, after a heroic action, the soldier literally crawls from his grave to a kind of shadowy survival. In his earlier life, Colonel Chabert had raised a woman to his own status, but now finds that she is unwilling to let others learn of her origins and does not want to recognize that he is, in fact, her long lost husband. Honestly thinking she was widowed, she married a highborn aristocrat who knew nothing of her humble beginnings.

The tale is one of greed, intrigue, loyalty and disloyalty. As usual, Balzac manages to cast a light, pitiless and bright, on every rotten corner of the human condition, while offering a few inspiring examples in contrast. Every detail of a lawyer's life in 19th century Paris is scrutinized, every glimpse of urban dairyman or elite country squirehood rings true. No wonder I admire him so much, no wonder I have no hesitation in urging you to read COLONEL CHABERT and any other volume of Balzac you can lay your hands on.

This work of Sir Conan Doyle clearly shows that detective stories did not limit his interests. An excellent adventure and a well written one. What else do we need in a good book? This is very solid five stars.

I expected to be disappointed with these stories since I knew that I would be comparing them to the Holmes stories. But, quite frankly, I enjoyed Etienne Gerard as much as I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and when I had finished the book, I found myself wishing that Doyle had written more stories about Brigadier Gerard. Gerard is a very different character than Holmes, but the characterization is just as brilliant. I highly recommend these stories.

How Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can write a character that is irritatingly arrogant yet, charmingly loyal and naive is beyond me. The depth of Gerard's character rivals even the great Sherlock Holmes. Just as with his more famous counterpart(Holmes), Gerard is not just a hero(although there can be no questioning his bravery),he can also be a clown,(without ever realizing it)a ladies man, the greatest swordsman in the Grande' Armee(or at least so he tells us). With exciting short stories we venture through Gerard's career as a cavalry officer. He quite often bumbles his way into situations an officer of his rank should never allow himself into yet, it is these situations once gotten out of(after much daring and a little bit of luck)that build not only his career but, the readers passion for his character. These stories are an excellent companion to the more famous Sherlock Holmes stories. Where have all the writers with skills like Doyle's gone?

Jim's gentle, but funny, personality shines through every page. Best of all, Jim has a fresh and unusual way of perceiving the world. He can find comfort, joy, and meaning in the smallest aspects of everyday life. When I finished reading, I felt uplifted, comforted, and enriched by a new sense of how to see the meaning of life!

In this high tech age, it is so easy to forget the really important things in life. Jim Reed's observations are heartwarming, nostalgic and sometimes hilarious. Reed has the ablitity to take the reader out of the humdrum of everyday life and transport him or her to a more peaceful time. His choice of words actually makes the reader he or she is actually there. It is truly a rare and wonderful gift to be able to give meaning to the most simple things in our world, but Jim Reed has it. There is no doubt that it belongs in every home. Chris Lee (author of COLLEGE PLANNING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY)

Faye Burgess of Birmingham, Alabama, just read DAD'S TWEED COAT and emailed this message to author Jim Reed: "I can only say that if indeed 'this small book evaporates into the ozone layer' then the ozone layer will only be improved by its addition and perhaps you will have solved the rain forest predicament once and for all...as far as I'm concerned DAD'S TWEED COAT is a Necessary Necessity (see page 116) for reminding us what is real and worthwhile in all of us. Thanks for writing it. It was and is...a good Reed."

Sometimes you just have to ignore what critics say and enjoy the thing itself when you find some truly funny stuff. Who can read Kafka's "Verwandlung" and "Ein Bericht fur eine Akademie" without laughing him/herself to death? The same case with Gogol. Just ignore what critics call symbolism or allegory or whatever and enjoy the tales themselves. Have a good time.

This is the kind of writing that makes me questions why movies even exist. The style, the sentences, the humor, the feel is all something unique, unpredictable, and unmistakable. These plots are bizarre, intriguing and it is nearly impossible to guess the endings. All this coming from a translated work is a success for the writer and the translators.

The Overcoat, Diary of a Madman, & the Nose are some examples of Gogol's short story brilliance. These stories are realistic yet surreal, imaginative and impressive. Gogol shows you the roots of what Russian writers continued to excel at later with works like Metamorphosis (Kafka). He calls his stories tales (there are the Ukrainian Tales and the Petersburg Tales), and they most definitely are tales. They are the kind of stories you can tell around the campfire -- they are that unnerving and exhilarating. Yet they are social commentaries as well. These stories work on many levels because they are detailed, feature fantastic characters, and delve into fantasy. All the while you find unexpected twists and occurrences. It's sheer genius.

This book is a fabulous introduction to both Russian literature and the works of this unique genius.

of course wonderful stories, but the translations are excellent. If you're going to read Gogol in English, use Pevear as your guide.

I had found these fairy tales to be filled with beauty, wit, irony and sarcasm. All things inherit to Wilde's work. Not all these fairy tales end on a happy note and these really make you think. What I loved most is that the most importaint beauty found in these novels is inner-beauty. The best beauty of all.

Anyone who's seen the Oscar Wilde biopic starring Stephen Fry as the great wit will have noticed him narrating "The Selfish Giant" to his children. At first, I thought he was telling a story someone else had written, but when I heard a brief narration of a story in the movie Tesis, and discovered that it was from an Oscar Wilde story, I wondered if the giant story had been written by him. Discovery of this book confirmed that fact for me.

This collection comprises both the Happy Prince compilation and the House of Pomegranates compilation of Oscar Wilde's short stories. The Happy Prince contains these stories:

The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Selfish Giant
The Devoted Friend
The Remarkable Rocket

The House Of Pomegranates contains these stories:

The Young King
The Birthday of the Infanta
The Fisherman and His Soul
The Star-Child

These stories are suitable for adults as well as children. Wilde's adherence to Fabian socialist philosophy is seen in many of the tales here. Basically, equal distribution of wealth, accompanied by tolerance, humility, and natural love would lead to true individualism. Many figures will have to become Christ-like martyrs to achieve such a world, regardless of whether the receiver of the gift will appreciate their sacrifice, as is the heartbreaking story of "The Nightingale And The Rose."

Examples of this include The Happy Prince, where the prince, a living statue, gives up the jewels of his sword, the jewels making up his eyes to those less fortunate and finds himself happier as a result. The same motif can be found in "The Selfish Giant", who builds a wall around his garden to keep the children from playing in it; as a result, Spring never comes to the garden and it's perpetual Winter. The giant realizes his selfishness and tears down the wall. And like the giant, the title character in "The Star-Child" goes from being proud of his good looks and standing, adopting a philosophy like the Remarkable Rocket (see below), then undergoes humility and suffering when those are taken from him, and becomes selfless and repentant as a result of his suffering.

Other main characters never see beyond their selfish egotism. The Infanta in "The Birthday of the Infanta" is amused by a dancing dwarf, who is hunchbacked and ugly to behold. She and her companions are doubled with laughter at his entertainment. The poor dwarf, whom the Infanta has given a rose, thinks the Infanta loves him, and also, raised in the forest, is blissfully unaware of his countenance. It is only when he looks in the mirror that he dies of a broken heart. The Infanta then declares that no one should have a heart.

A denunciation to the upper class of the British Empire, who have an aura of self-importance around them, is given in "The Remarkable Rocket" The Rocket's philosophy, "the only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everyone else" is telling of the misguided romantic mentality of this upper class.

But only in the psyches of certain individuals does true social consciousness arrive, such as "The Young King" whose dreams of the horrible cost of ordinary people who have suffered so that the upper class may prosper, deeply distresses him to the point that he refuses wear the luxurious signs of power symbolizing the raiment of the king. "...on the loom of sorrow, and by the hands of Pain, has this robe been woven. There is Blood in the heart of this Ruby, and Death in the heart of this pearl." "Shall a man not eat bread till he has seen the sower, nor drink wine till he has talked with the vinedresser" adds the King, in a foretelling of the sweatshops and maquiladoras of today.

And BTW, for those who have seen Alejandro Amenebar's Tesis, "The Birthday Of The Infanta" is the story Chema tells Angela as they are walking down the hallway of the college's movie archives.

Reading these stories and realizing how the Fabian society's dreams of a compassionate world is far from been fulfilled should give one pause to think what kind of world we live in.

The nature of a fairy tale isn't that they end happy; it's that they end comically, rather than tragically. Oscar Wilde knew this and that is one of the reasons that his fairy tales are so memorable. He wrote "The Happy Prince and Other Tales" prior to THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY and "The House of Pomegranates" just after the novel and the development of his skill as a writer can be seen in the two different collections. The stories deal with love, art, faith, and loss. They explore what it means to truly live and whether or not faith and aestheticism can coincide. They are also full of biting social commentary and insight. The first part of this book includes "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket". "The House of Pomegranates" is the second collection in this book and includes the stories: "The Young King", "The Birthday of the Infanta", "The Fisherman and His Soul", and "The Star-Child". The illustrations that accompany the stories are beautiful, but because of the inexpensive way in which this collection is published, the pictures are very hard to make out. The book also has an insightful afterword by Jack Zipes which I found rather informative. My favorite stories in the collection were "The Happy Prince", "The Selfish Giant", "The Young King", and "The Star-Child". I loved reading these stories and highly recommend them.

1000+ pages is very intimidating. I know; someone suggested it to me, and the first thought I had was what!? me, read that!?!?

I'm not really fond of literature/classic kinds of books, so the Count and I didn't get off to a good start. I WAS a bit curious though..

All in all, I found it an amazing book. I especially love how Dumas protrays each character--true, they can get a bit mixed up at times, but it didn't deter me!--with deep thought for each of their personalities and proper actions (At least, I thought their actions were very appropriate in proportion to the descriptions of them).

Also, the plot is interesting and intense enough to keep you immersed. Sometimes Dumas explains things a bit too much, but skimming through those parts hasn't damaged the story (for me, at least). I highly recommend The Count as a leisure book, or for anytime, really. If you've got time to read, and want to enjoy it, read this! (Plus, you can say you learned some French history--even if it's just a bit--to boot!)

:) hope YOU enjoy it

The introduction to this excellent Modern Library edition says, "The long journey of Edmond Dantes is one that we should all take at some point in our lives." I couldn't agree more. This novel easily ranks among the greatest epics--The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, War & Peace and The Brothers Karamazov come to mind as works of comparable scope and moral grandeur.

My only advice is: set aside some time. With 1500 pages, a complex web of characters (including many with shifting identities) and more than a few dispensible subplots, this unabridged edition is a challenge--albeit a rewarding one.

The novel tackles all the great themes: war, revolution, love, power, money, justice, evil, God. But in a word, it's subject is REVENGE. A good-natured young man of exceptional promise, Edmond Dantes is betrayed by his erstwhile friends, unjustly imprisoned by an ambitious magistrate, and left for dead by the woman he loves. The first three hundred pages of the story are fast-paced and almost cinematic, from the wrenching scenes of betrayal and imprisonment, down to Dantes' miraculous escape and rebirth as a remarkable new man, the Count of Monte Cristo.

The Count is part 007, part Stoic philosopher. He'll drop you in a duel, match wits with you in the salon, concoct potions from recipes in a dozen languages, be in three places at once, with three different identities, and exercise a kind of foresight and control over human events that we normally associate with gods and conspiracy theories. Oh yeah--and he's loaded, too.

Dantes burns with a desire for revenge, but it's an entirely different sort than the Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson variety. Instead of blasting his way into Paris with a semi-automatic (or less anachronistically, with a really big sword), Dantes methodically plots the downfall of his enemies using even more lethal weapons: the evil that lurks in their own hearts.

All this takes a long time. There is a big drop off in intensity in the middle chunk of the novel, as Dumas transitions from the swashbuckling Napoleonic days to a more traditional European novel of manners set in the 1830s. A whole new set of characters are introduced. Later, we discover their relationship to Dantes' earlier antagonists--but for a time we are totally at sea. Meanwhile, Dumas launches various digressions that will occasionally cause the reader to wonder whether he was getting paid by the word (probably).

But don't despair. The last half of the novel gathers steam like a freight train, as Count of Monte Cristo moves in for the kill. The suspense builds--not because we wonder whether Dantes will get his revenge, but whether he can avoid turning into a monster in the process.

Ultimately, Dumas offers as sane and humane a message as you can hope for from 1500 pages of injustice and vengeance. In a novel where fortunes shift, names and titles are granted and extinguished, and identities are transformed on turns of luck, the old Stoic wisdom shines through. It's not what happens to you, good or bad, but how you respond to it, that determines true virtue in this world. One suspects this would be true even without an avenging Providence, even if Edmond Dantes' triumph were less complete.

This book is probably the fastest book I've ever read through. I checked out an old copy with near 1500 pages and read it in six days. I could not leave this book alone. I read straight through some less interesting classes in high school. This book deals with vengeance on so high a level, I had never before imagined anything like it. Dumas has great skill in description, and i enjoyed how he intertwined history into this classic fictional piece of literature. I recommend this book to all adventure seekers. I give this excellent novel five out of five stars! Try it, you'll love it.

A superbly written insider's look at the Russian revolution. Babel can convey the horrors of war with very few words. I enjoyed the best his sarcastic treatement of the bombastic communist rhetoric in such stories as "Salt" and "Treason" (maybe because I was exposed to it myself at one time).

I stumbled across Isaac Babel because of a single line quoted in Paul Johnson's "History of the Jews". And then I was forever hooked.

First, a caveat. Be sure you understand when reading Babel's short stories that you are not reading his autobiography or journal. He did in fact listen to our creative writing teachers; he wrote what he knew. He knew the Russian revolution. He knew the Cossacks. He knew war. He knew living inside and outside the pale. His world jumps off the page because he lived it first.

The stories contain autobiographical material, actively mixed with the yeast of fiction. Use this aspect of his writing to chase rabbits. Follow up this book with his biography or find out more about the Russian revolution. Both of those topics will make more sense after reading his collected stories.

As a writer, I stand in awe of Babel's stingy use of words. Some scenes are so hugely horrible that I would have been tempted to throw in appropriate adverbs and adjectives in an attempt to convince you, my reader, just how hugely horrible it really was. Babel simply tells the story, and you gasp when you are done, horrified when you peak through the keyhole (and I would have blasted a hole in the wall).

When you read Babel, you must be willing to go at the stories with an open mind, not expecting him to flatten the Commies, defend the Jews, or paint the picture the way you want him to. He will not do that, no matter how many times you try to make it so. You will hear no overtones of right or wrong, get no definitive answers about the people on either side of the Russian revolution.

For that, I am most grateful to Isaac Babel. Nothing about our world can be easily distilled into sharp black and white. His stories give us the real world in astounding color.

The frightfully ugly picture on the cover of this edition (what in the world were the publishers thinking?) might keep a lot of people away, but the few brave souls that look inside will find one of the great 20th century craftsmen of prose. I can't think of another writer than chooses his words more carefully, that can pack more into a single sentence. "Pierced by the flashes of the bombardment, night arches over the dying man." Single words can take your breath away - the choice of "arches" is the one that does it for me - but you'll probably have others. The brutality of the world he describes may seem foreign, but it never becomes oppressive, mainly because the writing is so good. The stories themselves are rather difficult to love - there is very little hope to latch on to, there are very few characters one can feel close to; there are very few real characters at all, except the narrator. Even under these horrific circumstances, though, Babel creates emotions than one can identify with - pride, love, lust, anger. He has a thorough understanding of human character. It is apparent that the circumstances of war don't create new emotions, they just amplify things we feel anyway.

This book is a necessary read for anyone that wants to learn how to write poetically without being florid, compress pages of description into a few words. This compression is one of the reasons that the stories stay in mind long after they've been read. Buy the book - or get the other edition in a used book store, so you don't have to look at that awful picture.

This book is not much larger than a paperback. I am 25 with perfect vision and I still feel I should use a magnifying lense with this book.

The Complete Works of Irish poet Oscar Wilde, which is published by Collins, is a must for a private library. It is an excellent book even if you only want to check one of Wilde's witty quotes - and there are plenty. The book includes Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which caused a fin-de-siecle scandal about a century ago because of its underlying homoeroticism. There are also all his famous plays which he wrote and was loved for by English society such as The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband as well as Lady Windermere's Fan. In addition, there are stories, poems (such as The Ballad of Reading Gaol - the jail he had to go to for his affair with Bosie Douglas), essays, and letters such as De Profundis. This newly illustrated centenary edition also incorporates recent revisions to the text, which probably only experts will spot.

Oscar Wilde was a self-described man of paradox. He was, simultaneously, a man very much of his time, and also very ahead of his time. He was a highly moral man who wrote clever epigrams about how good it is to be wicked ("Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.") He was a happily married man who happily loved his two children but also led a gay life on the side and wrote hilarous satires of love and marriage ("Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.") This huge book, which contains practically everything that Wilde ever wrote, shows the man in all his glory. After the introduction by his son, we are first launched into Oscar's stories. His one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a classic and a masterpiece. A devastating moral tale, this one deserves to be in everyone's library. His shorter pieces, however, are of a more questionable quality. Consisting mostly of moral ancedotes dressed up in the thinly-veiled guise of fairy tales for children, these works are the least exciting part of Wilde's oeuvre and of this book, and seem to lean heavily on his oft-spouted crutch of "Art for Art's sake." After the stories, we meet Wilde in the guise he was destined for: that of a dramatist. His play were an integral and ackwnoledged part of his genius, and their influence upon modern drama was enormous. His type of high, farcial "drawing room" comedy has left a permanent mark on the stage. It is easy to see how even the modern Hollywood sitcom sprung from these plays of Wilde's. However funny and biting the satire may be, though, the high point of Oscar Wilde's plays was always his epigram-laced dialogue - whatever the plot may be. Probably the finest - and most biting - aphorist the English language has ever produced, Wilde is probably quoted - whether people realize it or not - more often than any other source in the language, aside from The Bible and Shakespeare. The Importance of Being Earnest and Salome are his ackwnoledged masterpieces, but other plays - such as A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband - are very good plays as well. He also has some very fine and underrated less original works, such as The Duchess of Padua that are quite well worth reading. From here, we move into Wilde's poems. Although, as he himself admits, they sometimes contain "more rhyme than reason", there is no doubting that Wilde was a master of language, and a fine poet. He won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry while at Oxford, and his "Ballad of Reading Gaol" is one of the finest poems in existence. What's left are his essays and letters. The most famous of them - indeed, one of the most famous letters ever written - is De Profundis, his strangely moving and tragic love/hate letter to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. This is a shocking and immensely moving piece of work, and deserves to be read by one and all for its unique look into the human psyche - particuarly that of a man under intense suffering, and possibly on the brink. The letter is fascinating, and should put a different spin on Wilde than many people inaccurately have of the man - he was obviously of a very high moral character. Several interesting essays are also included - among them are The Critic As Artist and The Decay of Lying, two masterful pieces of Plato-istic dialogue, putting Wilde's severe wit and intimidating intellectualism on full display for all to see. One may wonder how much he actually believes of what he writes, but what he writes is brilliant. Another interesting essay is The Portrait of Mr. W.H., in which Wilde puts forth an interesting and unique theory about Shakespeare's sonnets. Also, while Wilde was not generally known for his political opinions, it is quite interesting to read his essay on political and social reform, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, as well as two letters he wrote about proposed reformations of the prison system.

All in all, this is a collection of masterful writings from one of the most tragically overlooked and underrated writers in the whole of literature. As another reviewer has pointed out, while Wilde rarely gets the credit he deserves for his work - and is often ignored, overlooked, or simply dismissed - his works are also widely and frequently plagarised - not to mention quoted legitimately - and were obviously extremely influential. You owe it to yourself to read the man's writings if you are not familar with his works; I guarantee you you won't regret it.

Brautigan's excellent novel is definately worth the quick read, and then worth a second read to catch all his language play. Having grown up near Big Sur, this book was particularly funny as I believe Lee Mellon is still in residence there.

Brautigan's description of drugs, drinks, frogs and the commas of Ecclesiastes are all done in a straight forward style that made me laugh out loud.

One of my favorite paragraphs: "He broke the seal on the bottle, unscrewed the cap and poured a big slug of whiskey into his mouth. He swallowed it down with a hairy gulp. Strange, for as I said before: he was bald." A great read.

BRAUTIGAN AT HIS BEST, in his use of humor IN an ABSURDIST NEO NINETENTH NERVOUS CENTURY VENTURE INTO THE TWENTETH CENTURY COINAGE SQUALOUR,in an ARCADIANIAN LIKE GARBAGE HEEP HANG OUT FOR SQUATTERS, everwhere 1950s ARSONIST guierilla condederate idealist/relic, confronts conspires aghast in stumble bumble berry bush brambble,ICON AS HELL STALLION MELON DEAD DRUNK eXpire hearFIRE TILT TIRE echo, footsteps leading back past fast,TREAD MUTATED SURREAL.ABSOLUTE ABOMINATION THE GHOHSTS OF THE PASS MERGE WITH THE REGRET OF THE NEAR AND DIRECT PRESENT IN FOLKLORE, LEGEND IN PROISE by the ocean in BIG sur,

If there's one thing the world lacks, it's a good supply of well-written, funny-as-heck books. Luckily, aside from A Confederacy Of Dunces, we have this little gem. The characters are drunks, druggies, skanks, prostitutes & nutzoids. The pace is brisk and the imagry vivid. Most of it seemed to be part of my own life, but just where do you find weed that's so potent that 4 people smoking 5 joints stay high for well over 2 hours?! If you want to spend a day or night having a good laugh over a great book, pick this one up. You'll laugh out loud. And as Martha Stewart says...."It's a good thing".

This book was a favorite of mine as a child. I was very disappointed in the new edition. First, there are none of the delightful pictures from the original. Second, the cover looked like it was a library book - plain blue, not even a title printed on it. It's the same wonderful stories, but if you remember the original, you'll be disappointed in the way they are presented. 3 stars for the stories, no stars otherwise.

This book was a childhood favorite. My grandmother's mother used to read it to her and so on... Her copy was tatterd and torn. I went through great measures to find another copy in better condition for my grandmother two years ago and finally did. You can imagine my excitement to find this brand new reprint is available! I have told all my aunts and uncles and expect they will order a copy, as well. Don't let this one get by, as I am sure it will go out of print again!

I Wrote a review of the "Counterpane Fairy" by Katharine Pyle in June of 1998. The audio tape was wonderful but it would be so nice to be able to read the book again. Please see if there is anything you could do to have this beautiful book reissued. Thank you.