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* Rescue Party - I havent read this story before, and found it a bit disappointing. Actually a bit pointless - just an ode to the human race.
* Guardian Angel - this story 'gave birth' to childhood's end. I havent read the book (yet), and have enjoyed the story a lot - especially the little surprise at the end and those parts of the story that show Clarke's scientific background.
* Breaking Strain - this story takes a known theme (which I'll not tell even in short so as not to spoil to those who havent read the story) into space, and the fact that it's somewhat predictable made it too long for my taste.
* The Sentinel - this story gave the inspiration to '2001: A Space Odyssey'. For some strange reason, I've never found a copy of this story in Israel in any stories collection or translation to Hebrew (though 2001 was translated to Hebrew). Though I allready new the plot, I enjoyed this story a lot.
* Jupiter V - I recommend this book just for this story. It's very interesting, and I just couldnt let the book out of my hand till I finished this story.
* Refugee.
* The Wind from the Sun - the idea of ships that sail by solar-wind race each other really caught me.
* A Neeting with Medusa.
* The Songs of Distant Earth - actually, I didnt like this one. I've read the 'none-original' version, and liked it a lot better.
Now that I take regular 1-hour trips by train twice a week and have returned to reading short stories, I'm glad I've found this book - it's very interesting reading, and shows all the good sides of short stories.
This collection was actually released about 15 years ago, as I recall. It was definitely due for a reprint, as it was in my mind an instant classic... a perfect combination of carefully-selected stories, informative intros, and beautiful illustrations by Lebbeus Woods. Cheers to iBooks!
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What starts out as a few days quiet sailing, though, quickly turns into something rather more frightening, with the children suddenly drawn into a terrifying and completely unexpected adventure, when they find themselves and their (borrowed) boat being swept out to sea by a fierce tide. For once, the Swallows face a very real and serious danger that is to test their combined courage, fortitude and seamanship to the utmost. It is fascinating (for grown-up readers, at least) to see each of the children's highly individual (and completely characteristic) reactions to their predicament. Younger readers, of course, are more likely just to be carried away by the pure nail-biting suspense of it all!
While this is a gripping and enthralling tale throughout, the tensions (arising from the danger and the worries of the older children) are lightened for the reader by the pure infectious glee of the younger pair. They, of course, are less aware of the seriousness of their predicament - especially Roger, who, as usual, is perfectly content so long as there is plenty of food around - and rather enjoy themselves!
As in all of the "Swallows and Amazons" books, Ransome's story-telling abilities are second to none, here. The narrative is at all times feasible and this book is a completely absorbing read for young and old alike. This is an inspired and an inspiring tale. Readers who have worked their way through the earlier volumes will also not be disappointed when they finally do get to meet Daddy in this volume!
Visiting aboard the "Goblin", the yacht of a young man they had recently met, they find themselves adrift in a fog, swept helplessly out into the North Sea as they drag (and lose) anchor, and then running before a full North Sea gale, with no idea where they are or where they are headed, and no certainty that they will not find themselves sinking on shoals or run down by much larger ships (In a particularly tense and thrilling sequence, just that almost happens, averted at the last instant by ingenuity and level-headedness on the part of Captain John.).
Facing the dangers they discover, drawing on their experience in sailing much smaller boats and on their own courage and common sense, they succeed in keeping themselves and the "Goblin" from harm, and even succeed in a mid-sea "rescue".
And, in the course of the adventure, John Walker (somewhere in his late teens, if i calculate aright) makes a major part of the step from boy to young man, learning valuable lessons about himself and what he is capable of, and keeping himself and his sisters and brother safe through the long, stormy night.
This is children's adventure at its best, with action, comedy, thrills and danger enough to satisfy almost any taste, but no violence, gratutitous or otherwise.
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My 4+ year-old (Mate Susan) will not tolerate other bedtime stories; unfortunately I cannot put it down, and always read a few chapters ahead after she is asleep. This ruins the suspense for me the next night...
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Debunks the myth of 'becoming'... the idea (so popular in modern culture) that people are basically 'self-made' rather than gifted by God.
A worthwhile read for anyone looking to surface their unique gifts and gain insight into how to put them at the service of the human family.
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The BEST part, to me, is the "chain reference" feature. When you get to the bottom of an article (about, say, the completion of the Hindenburg), there is a small date in italics at the end which points you to the next article concerning the Hindenburg. This is OUTSTANDING for following a chain of events through history.
GREAT reading for knowledge or leisure!
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Classical Chinese is an extremely concise and highly ambiguous language. Since any given line can have a wide range of possible and equally valid meanings, there can in fact be no such thing as a definitive interpretation, and hence, as Burton Watson has pointed out, no such thing as a definitive translation, although Arthur Waley's scholarly reading of this important Confucian classic is possibly as close to 'definitive' as we're ever likely to get.
What we may overlook when considering Confucianism, however, is that it represented an ideology very much like Marxism, one imposed by an all-powerful bureaucracy on a not-always willing population. As ideological documents of the highest importance, since they served to justify the existence of the Imperial system, works such as the 'Analects' were often engraved on stone.
And it's interesting to note that, in the many popular uprisings which have riven China, the stone tablets and drums on which the 'Analects' and other Classics were engraved often became the first target of the mob's fury. They were regularly smashed and pulverized, only to be re-engraved on new stones when the Mandarinate re-established its authority.
In addition, it goes without saying that the Communist Party, which is as it were China's modern 'Mandarinate,' also takes a very dim view of the Chinese Classics, seeing them as relics of a detested feudalistic past, a detestation not perhaps untinged with envy, since the Mandarinate was the most efficient, successful and long-lasting bureaucracy in human history.
None of this, perhaps, need bother the modern reader as opposed to the scholar, since we go to these old books to discover in them what relevance they may have for our lives today, and there is much real wisdom in Confucius that anyone can benefit from.
Arthur Waley's edition, while scholarly, is not so cluttered with scholarly impedimenta as to be unapproachable by the general reader, and is written in a style that remains relatively modern. After a brief Preface, he gives us an interesting and informative 66-page Introduction. Then follows his extensively annotated translation, and the book is rounded out with an Index.
Though Waley was undoubtedly a brilliant translator, I was weaned on Ezra Pound's more lively and idiosyncratic version, and although I've read and compared both translations, the lines that tend to stick in my mind are invariably those of Pound, lines such as:
"He said : A proper man is inclusive, not sectary; the small man is sectarian and not inclusive" (Book II, xiv).
For the same passage Waley gives:
"The Master said, A gentleman can see a question from all sides without bias. The small man is biased and can see a question only from one side" (p.91).
Both, so far as I can see, mean pretty much the same thing, although Waley is a bit more prosy and takes almost twice as many words to say it. Pound's edition, besides its greater punch, also has the merit of being relatively free of distracting footnotes, and of including two additional and very powerful texts, along with beautiful reproductions of them from the stone Classics.
Waley and Pound give us Confucius as filtered through two highly intelligent though different sensibilities, both of them valuable. My advice would be to read both. For those who may be interested, here are details of Pound's edition:
CONFUCIUS : THE GREAT DIGEST, THE UNWOBBLING PIVOT, THE ANALECTS. Translation and Commentary by Ezra Pound. Stone Text from rubbings supplied by William Hawley. 288 pp. New York: New Directions, 1951 and Reissued.
It is in Pound's translation of 'The Great Digest' that we find the striking line: "If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well governed" (p.33). And who would want to miss a line that has such a powerful relevance to the world that we see around us today ?
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Just like Peanuts characters, and others with whom we, or our children, grew up, Arthur's looks have changed over the years. What a great classroom discussion these changes could prompt! I could envision this discussion taking place, with more mature reasoning, from first to sixth grade, and I wouldn't hesitate to use the book as a writing springboard in those same grade levels.
When I first saw Arthur in his present incarnation, I thought he was some sort of a mouse. He's actually an aardvark. He looks more like an aardvark in the earliest book. That's the problem: Arthur doesn't like his long aardvark snout.
His family loves Arthur and his nose. But the kids at school, who are all different types of animals, sometimes make fun of his nose, so Arthur decides to change it. He visits a rhinologist (who is a rhino, of course), and tries out different pictures of noses. Would he be happier with a rabbit's nose? A chicken's? An armadillo's?
Finally, he decides to stick with the nose he's got.
It's a great message for any kid who feels a little different. But, look at Arthur today. What happened to that long snout? No matter, he's still my favorite. As author Marc Brown put it in the first book, "There's more to Arthur than his nose."
Especially considering the opacity for which the movie is notorious, the story is remarkably spare and straightforward. The narrator, a lunar geologist, recalls cooking sausage one morning at a research base on the Moon, when the rising sun revealed a metallic glimmer on the rock wall of Mare Crisium. He and a compatriot climbed the crater rim and found :
[A] roughly pyramidal structure, twice as high as a man, that was set in the rock like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel.
Though they initially believed it to be a relic of a lost lunar civilization (notice it is much different than the black obelisks which were eventually used in the movie), they soon realized that it must have been placed there billions of years ago by an advanced race from another planet. It took twenty years, but finally they were able to penetrate a protective shield around the crystal by using atomic upon it. Now they understand the structure to have been a kind of sentinel, waiting to alert the beings who placed it there that finally the human race has achieved a sufficient level of development to be worthy of their notice.
I particularly like the way that this tale, written by a renowned futurist at the dawn of the space age, actually resonates with age old religious concerns. The simple idea at its core is that it is by increasing our knowledge and developing our technological prowess that we will become superior beings, even gods. The geologist sagely worries, as must anyone who recalls the Fall of Man and the Tower of Babel, that the beings who left behind this early warning signal may even be jealous of our advances and may not be all that happy to find that they finally have company. Like all of the best tales of the fantastic, The Sentinel, though ostensibly about the future, illuminates the very mundane concerns we've always had about the nature of our being and our role in the order of things.
GRADE : A