Mildly interesting memoirs of mother and (gay) son, but very little exploration of either the son's coming to terms, or the mother's acceptance, or any other of the family members. Very little depth and insight in this area. Just seemed like two people wanting to write their life story.

This is the best Bonapart adventure that I've read so far

This book goes into good detail with analyses of Mark Twain's different looks and the different takes on racism from him. He talks about the racist ideas that Mark Twain used in his writings and some of the more enlightened views Mark Twain had about racism. It was an all right buy, I guess.

THE SILENCE OF JOHN PASSMORE

Strangely for a work written by philosopher who has mastered logic and close reasoning, John Passmore's memoir gives us an account of his life and times which is at odds with the basic proposition contained in its title.

Publication of "Memoirs of a Semi-detached Australian" was long promised. We were led to expect an autobiographical account of the life and times of a distinguished philosopher who is resolutely Australian while also being strongly connected to a wider world of learning and speculation.

But the memoir before us, while providing valuable insights into Passmore's early life and career in Australia and his first pilgrimage to England, tells us hardly anything at all about a crucial institutional link that did much to ensure that he succeeded in reconciling two potentially incompatible loyalties.

For the first three and a half decades of his life John Passmore was fully absorbed in the life of his native Sydney. He progressed from Manly Public School to Sydney Boys' High School. Although no sportsman, he was not sidelined as a "swot" since Sydney Boys' High was proudly meritocratic. Education and teaching were esteemed, producing an environment in which Passmore was entirely at home.

Passmore excelled as a student of Philosophy, English and History. Along with his future wife, another bright and energetic undergraduate, he was active in the Free Thought and Literary Societies, making his debut as a writer with a still highly readable pamphlet on T S Eliot. He abandoned the Roman Catholicism of his youth and gravitated to the dominant intellectual cult at Sydney University which revolved around Professor John Anderson.

Passmore's distinguished - and totally unexpected - career as a salaried philosopher began in 1935 when Anderson asked him to teach Logic (he was younger than many of his students). After the war Passmore was entitled to a year study's leave abroad. He took the "customary pilgrimage" to England although he insisted, democratically, on living in London rather than Oxford during his overseas stint. In contrast to his confidence in mastering the intricacies of academic philosophy, he was not at all certain of his ability to cope with the chilly niceties of post-war English society. A sizeable segment of the memoir is devoted to his efforts to comprehend middle-class English mores.

Amidst the pettiness and perceived snubs merit was rewarded. As at Sydney University, brains, adaptability and hard work paid off for Passmore. His erudition, gained after years of voracious reading in remote Sydney, was a prized asset in England. From now on he could count on support from the highest academic quarters when London publishers needed to commission scholarly books on philosophy.

In his memoir Passmore is at pains to point out he was never fully seduced by the charms of the Home Counties and their aloof inhabitants. His truculent Andersonian legacy reasserted itself, producing an explicit rejection of the class system in England and the commercialism of the United States.

Expatriation (other than to New Zealand for a few years in the early 1950s) was ruled out even though the temptation to apply to work in a British university was sometimes felt. Passmore's long-term objective, triumphantly achieved as matters turned out, centred on extending his new links with the international centres of academic philosophy while continuing to live and work in his agreeably egalitarian and democratic homeland. This was what being a "semi-detached" Australian" meant.

In 1955 Passmore left New Zealand, returning to take up a position at the Institute of Advanced Studies, the research arm of the Australian National University in Canberra. But by the time we reach this point in Passmore's mental odyssey the memoir exasperatingly trails off. Passmore has very little to say about the development of his ideas and his career following his return to Sydney in 1948 after his year in England. The New Zealand years are relegated to a single paragraph while his forty years and more as a philosopher in Canberra is covered off in a single sentence (there is though a photograph featuring Gilbert Ryle in Canberra in 1956). Is it possible that absolutely no incident or event worthy of comment, whether philosophical or personal, occurred in the Institute of Advanced Studies during Passmore's long stint there?

As a result of this reticence we finish the memoir with an incomplete picture of the author's career. It would have been far harder if not impossible for Passmore to have sustained his ideal of being a semi-detached Australian if he had not been allowed to enjoy the peculiar advantages pertaining to tenure at the Institute of Advanced Studies. With no undergraduates to teach and burdened with few administrative chores, he was free to roam the world at regular intervals, maintaining his personal contacts with international philosophers. He also had the time and resources to write a succession of important books.

Passmore's memoirs have been published at a time when the decline of academic culture in Australia seems to be gathering pace, not least of all in the university where he himself worked for the majority of his career as a professional philosopher. The viability of significant areas of the Australian National University is at stake.

The forces of barbarism and ignorance can only be further emboldened if a policy of reticence and unexplained silences is followed. Passmore's failure to document eehat was in fact a long and productive connection with the Institute of Advanced Studies is, as a consequence, all the more perplexing. As an exercise in Australian intellectual history and as work of art, his memoir is strangely incomplete. As a possible contribution, albeit an indirect one, to ensuring higher quality public policy outcomes in the sphere of tertiary education and culture generally in Australia, it is, sadly, a chance gone begging.

If you like stylized mysteries, Agatha Christie, Australia, or unusual detectives you will probably enjoy this book by Arthur Upfield. The setting is Western Australia of the '30s to '50s. The unusual detective hero is the half-Aboriginal and half-white Napoleon Bonaparte ("Bony"). His struggle is to fit himself into the full range of Australian life, while being an outsider to both cultural worlds.

The real treat here is the insight you get into life in Western Australia in the first half of the 20th Century. Like Christie, the book is somewhat mannered in its approach. But the detailed view of Australians trying to live an "English" life in this remote corner will remain with you for a long time.

Upfield's view of the Aborigine in Australian society was probably quite daring for its time, but today it may make you shudder at its racist overtones. Never mind, keep on reading. This isn't life today in Australia; it is life as viewed through Australian eyes forty or fifty years ago. You will find yourself rooting for Detective Napoleon Bonaparte with his Aboriginal wisdom and Dreamworld view of crime and mystery.

This book was extremely well written and brought up some very interesting points. As a resource material it was invaluable as well because of its vast knowledge that had been presented inside its covers.

I do not recommend this book to people looking for light, entertaining reading, unless you really love the Gilded Age. Even if you do want to read about this period of history, I do not find this the most easily read book. (America in the Gilded Age by Sean Dennis Cashman is slightly more accessible.) However, it does provide a good deal of information about what was happening in the United States from 1877-1890 (the presidencies, industrialism, labor movements, immigration, Populism, etc.). If you're looking for info for your American history class (as most people reading this review probably are), this book is worth checking out.

The thing that makes Buffy the Vampire Slayer such a great television shows is that it is able to combine action, comedy and drama in such a seemless manner. Once you get past the idea that all that martial arts stuff is needed to drive a steak through the heart of a vamp, the action routines are the best on television. The comedy is character driven to such an extent that a priceless funny moment can be a double-take or a raised eyebrow as much as a quick quip or arcane pop-culture reference. But the heart of the series is the dramatic undertones, always implicit in the fact that Slayers die young and reaching its operatic heights with Buffy's tragic relationship with Angel. All of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer books, whether original stories or adapted from various episodes, automatically lose the action elements. Break down the fight sequence from the second part of "Becoming" and it is going to lose something on the printed page. So losing one part of the Buffy triad is an automatic given. The problem with "Night of the Living Rerun" is that the story overloads the comedy and comes up way short of the drama. Arthur Byron Cover is not alone in this regard as this my standard complaint with the vast majority of Buffy novels.

Forget about the cute title, the heart of this story is a compelling tale: the story of Samantha Kane, the Slayer during the title of the Salem Witch Trials. How does this fit into the Buffy mythos? This happened to be when the Master was accidentally trapped in the other dimension. Buffy keeps dreaming about the past, and when the same thing starts happening to Giles and Xander the set up is for a symbolic replay of the past. The Buffy novels keep resisting the idea of having tales of the earlier Slayers without including Buffy and the gang, but this particular story idea would have worked much better either as a bookend to the final demise of the Master or as some sort of parallel story. Adding these extra layers took away from a fascinating story idea. Given the final episode of Season Four and the promise that we will learn more about the First Slayer and Buffy ancestors, hopefully we will get to the point where the Slayer mythos can sustain its own fiction without this particular cast of characters, but so far all we are getting hints and brief glimpses. There have been intriguing graphic novels that have "retold" the Batman and Superman stories in different times and places, and I have to believe that the idea of the Slayer would work just as well (but not like in the movie where they all end up looking like Buffy).
"Night of the Living Reun" is not one of the first Buffy e-Books you should download.

I bought this book only for the beautiful illustrations. Cotterell introduces the Norse deities in a strict to the point manner(which dissapointed me). I wouldn't recommend this book to any student of mythology for research. However, it would be great for beginners. Anyone of the Asatru faith (like myself)looking for great colorful illustrations of their gods and goddesses, I strongly advise you to buy this book. Cotterell also introduces many Slavic dieties such as: Baba Yaga, Veles, Svarazic, and Perun.

Written by the man who founded radio station WOR in 1922, and who started the New Friends of Music in NYC a decade later. It's poorly written, edited and proofread, and his fawning over Toscanini is a bit much. But there are some fascinating anecdotes about musicians in the period of 1920-1970.