Few books have ever captured the essence of a place so perfectly as Marilu Suarez' "Magic of Puerto Vallarta". The stunning photographs truly relate the "magic" of daily life here, and the text is well-researched, informative and extremely readable -- inticing you to turn page after page... As the co-author of Frommer's Mexico, and long-time resident of Puerto Vallarta, I highly recommend this book for anyone who has even been --or has dreamed of visiting -- Puerto Vallarta. TIme after time, you will find memories come to life as you revist familiar places through its pages...or discover them for the first time. I never knew a book could transmit so precisely the warmth and wonder --- and the magic! -- of this seaside paradise.

This is an unusual book about an even more unusual place. Lyrically written by someone who clearly knows and loves the uniqueness of Puerto Vallarta, it is filled with magnificent, one-of-a-kind photographs. More than just another coffee-table book, "The Magic of Puerto Vallarta" really does capture the "magic," in its sensitive portraits of people, visions of scenic places, and creative descriptions of things that make this seaside haven so special. It is a wonderful vacation souvenir.

This book IS magic. I've never seen a more gorgeous representation of Mexico's most beautiful city. The photos are stunning and the writing is superb. Highly recommended...

I have enjoyed this (and all other Danilo Kis's books) immensly.

This book of Kis' is a masterful work. The author said they are short stories but the publisher pushed it as a novel and in a way it is something between the two. The stories are seperate and there is not one main plot but a common theme runs through the work and occasionally characters from one story will reoccur or turn up in another story. They are connected though it seems in the sort of way as when someone might say it is a small world that we live in.
In his native land this book caused an uproar as the stories pass themselves off as fact but in Kis' style fact and fiction, history and imagination blend for a common aesthetic goal. This he picked up from Borges and his use of "document" in fiction.
All this helps the book stand out as a superior work of literature without even getting to the political theme of revolution and the role of individuals in mass movements.
This edition is perfect with the intro by Brodsky and William T. Vollmann's afterword.
A must read for anyone.

Beautifully written, surprisingly nonchalant portrayal of the actual driving force behind the Russian Communist Revolution, namely an international gang of charismatic professional criminals. Makes you think twice before you empathise with all the victims of Stalin's camps indiscriminantly - some of them obviously deserved their terrible fate.

I rarely review anything, but I thought this deserved a review...

If you like adventure and fantasy and Dragons, then you will love all three books (this is book number 2). All three are called Dragonlord of Mystara, Dragonking of Mystara, and Dragonmage of Mystara.

I have read this book and i liked it a lot i felt it had a lot of depth and a very good story line. I recommend this book if you like fantasy books and Dragons and are in the mood for a compelling a adventure.

I have read alot of fantasy books and I would have to rate the Dragonlord trilogy one of the best I have ever read! I only wish there was more to come.

Small enough to fit in your pocket, but full of glossy full color pages of useful information, maps, and pictures, this guidebook is quite nice. Not as thick as the other PV guidebooks, but just as useful (or more so), and easier to carry around. Highly recommended. I liked it better than the other "big name" PV guidebooks.

OK, the restaurant list is a little out of date, but then I've never found a guide that wasn't out of date the moment it was published. What really makes this book special is that the author has clearly taken the time to look around. The walking tours ("If you have one day...") are simple to follow and lots of fun. The photos are often stunning, and here and there are amusing bits of information. Best of all, this slim guide will fit easily in your pocket (I hate dragging around a big book filled with mostly useless information). Discover Puerto Vallarta cuts right to the chase. No wasted space. Highly recommended.

Kis was born in my country. This book is the most beautifool story about growing and knowing what life is. He learned very early that there is no justice in the warld, even in cats warld. It is significant story of meaning of time.

This fascinating book is reading material for all ages andgenders. Kis has managed to bring topics we have long forgotten to ourmind. Is this book for children only? No. This book provides intriguing material for thought especially for adults who have figured out what life is all about.

_The Encyclopedia of the Dead_ is one of the best short story collections of this or any century, I'm not shy to say, and it is my personal favorite of Kis' books (_A Tomb for Boris Davidovich [forthcoming from Dalkey Archive] coming in a close second). Kis' writes in a wonderful type of lyrical documentary style, mixing fact and fiction (though it is difficult to tell sometimes whether the fact is not fiction and vice-versa), reminiscent of some of the contemporary younger western writers (namely, William T. Vollmann, who himself is a big fan). In short, buy this book! (If you don't have a penny to your name and you can't buy one...you should not steal it, thought you would have it and be able to read and devour it like you need to.)

It took almost six months from the day I ordered this book, until it came out of print and I received it in my mail. It took me less than a week to read it...This is a book of stories about people who find their death in different ways. Kis mixes myths and legends of the Bible to: middle eastern legends, female intuition, patriotism, death anticipation due to long and difficult illness. Each story is setup in its own time, century, country and is viewed from different perspective. And all these situations and places combined, make up this wonderful book. My favorite story was "The Encyclopedia of the Dead". It sounds so personal, that anyone who knows a little bit about Danilo Kis' life, can see a lot of Kis himself - in this story. Mr. Heim did wonderful job translating this work. However, I was a bit disappointed that Mr. Haim did not make an effort to write an introduction for this book. Writer's notes at the end of the book were extrimely helpful in understanding stories more deeply and understanding what he wanted to accomplish with this work of art. Many of Danilo Kis' reders like to remember him as writer who had Borges for an idol. Please, let us not forget that Kis had admirerers himself - no one less than Joseph Brodsky, amongst others.

Clemente quoted De Chirico once in an interview with Vanity Fair, "What Shall I love if not the enigma." Clemente's paintings, indeed, exhibit a mysterious charm that invites the viewers into the artist's inner world of Indian mysticism and physcial beauty. Juxtaposed with Robert Creeley's poetry, this volume of fantastic and sensual paintings clearly is a must for all Clemente fans. From Napoli to New York, Clemente has wooed the jet-setters on both sides of the Atlantic, establishments such as the Guggenheim in New York, and me, a Yale College student.

This is a must have for anyone intersted in beautiful and thought provoking material. It is a thorough look at this imaginative artist's work. It will be a source of inspiration I will look to time and again!

For some reason I think of Bob Dylan in a distant way when I read this book, maybe because of the way it melts into the distance and then you squint your eyes and it all kind of falls into this pastoral, painful dream and then you realize you're gazing into the pages, like there is some kind of map staring back at you, a secret map that his father has written for you, he's whispered the code in your ear and all you can do is hope it'll come alive like Galatea

Garden, Ashes proves that after Borges someone could go beyond words, beyond meaning; defying & sculpting at the same time, celebrating & mourning, living & dying... garden & ashes

If Franz Kafka's Joseph K. had lived in the early 1940's and been ordered to wear a yellow star in Czechoslovakia, he would have resembled a character known only as E. S. in this story of wartime Hungary by Danilo Kis. The trial of an individual and his family at the hands of a vague and hidden totalitarian force are described with growing horror and gallows humor in ''Hourglass,'' a chilling novel in which time is running out for a marked man riding along the tracks of mortification.

One of the trains he takes eventually must lead to a concentration camp. But the journal of the final months of his life is told with such authority in this imaginatively constructed story that the doomed character appears to be in command of his own destiny. ''Hourglass,'' translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Ralph Manheim, is evidently rooted in firsthand family experiences. The reader is informed that a letter attributed to E. S. in the novel is based on an actual letter written by Kis's father two years before his death in Auschwitz. But the universal elements in the story - the attempt to carry on the everyday routine of life and the disbelief in an official policy of genocide - offer a parable about the extermination of the Jews by the Third Reich and its collaborative governments in occupied Europe. Trains were essential for the Third Reich to fulfill the quotas for the Holocaust, and trains play an essential part in the novel. At one point, the narrator sees himself, with trembling hands, gathering up his papers in his seat in the first-class carriage and stuffing them into his briefcase along with bottled beer and smoked-herring sandwiches. The author then transforms an ordinary train ride into an act of terror: ''Who was standing beside him at that moment? A young blond conductor, who was aiming his nickel-plated ticket punch like a revolver at the star on his chest.''

The interrogation of the narrator is bizarre. It shows the police mentality at work in a police state anywhere. The narrator is questioned about a piano in his home. The line of questioning goes: Can the piano be used to send signals? Where in the room is the piano? Can you describe what it looks like? Why was an open score on the music stand? How do you account for the fact that the piano was open and that someone had been practicing so early in the morning? Inevitably, the answers to dumb questions sound somehow suspicious and lead to more questions.

The nameless E. S. wonders how he can avenge himself against the armed police. He indulges in a small act of defiance for his own self-respect: ''Several times he had blown his nose into a newspaper with the Fuhrer's picture on it. Was he conscious of the danger he was courting? Definitely. He always folded the paper as small as possible before throwing it into dense brambles or the river, thus doing away with the corpus delicti of his insane and dangerous act.'' There are deliberate breaks in style as the author shifts back and forth in chapters that are labeled ''Travel Scenes,'' ''Notes of a Madman,'' ''Criminal Investigation'' and ''A Witness Interrogated.'' The year 1942 is a crazy time in the Danube Valley for the first-person narrator. He is trying to maintain a semblance of sanity while composing a letter to his sister that forms the spine of the story. If there is a theme in the novel, it is summed up in the last sentence of that letter:

''P. S. It is better to be among the persecuted than among the persecutors.''

''Hourglass'' owes a debt to ''The Trial'' by Kafka. In the narrator's musings, Kafka is cited: ''Everything that is possible happens; only what happens is possible.'' What distinguishes Kis's novel is its authorial independence. A conventional narrative structure is ignored; it is the author's musings and diversions that magically build suspense. Some paragraphs run on for pages, others suddenly break into short questions and answers between the omnipotent state and its helpless victims. Kis forces the reader to work for him, to pay attention. That he succeeds is a rare achievement...

Kis's novel is one of the most important in the entire Eastern-european literature. It gives an incradible picture of a desintegrating mind, following, in a way the steps of Youce and Woolf, but still making a step towards postmodernism

This book is a very nostalgic, romantic and delicate novel about life as a gay man during World War II.
The background of the novel is the siege of Florence by the American forces during WWII. The author must know this background very well because he was about 20 years old when it happened and he lived in Florence for many years.
On this background, a fictional story is constructed. An American soldier happens to fall on the wrong sides of the line. Two gay men stumble upon him, are mesmerized by his comeliness and decide to rescue him from the fascists. Although the sexual desire is there, it is sublimated. Indeed, if I were to choose a title for this book, it would be "Remembering the last days of sublime love". Other gay men get involved in protecting the US soldier from the fascists. There are many sad, sweet, and amusing moments. The characters are dealing with grueling problems, but they maintain a fairy tale aspect (both in their strengths and in their weaknesses).

This is the first novel by the author and he was in his seventies when he wrote it. He recently died of old age. Although the novel has some imperfections, I think it is a true jewel.
The author worked his whole life as choreographer for movies. He won the Academy Award (Oscar) for the choreography of Benigni's film "Life is Beautiful", and many other prizes.
It is apparent from the novel that the author is used to prepare movie-stages and actors' costumes.

All in all, an excellent read; I wish they translated it in English for a wider audience to enjoy.