Ah, the delectable Susie Bright. This book, though several years old, is fabulous. In it, Ms. Bright cunningly explores several themes and individuals with wit and intelligence. Her description of a discussion she had with adult film (and I do mean film) director Andrew Blake on her dislike of his lack of realism in his films' lesbian scenes is right on. Another great tale is her fantasy involving Dan Quayle. Yes, that's right, J. Danforth himself is lucky enough to have been the subject of one of Ms. Bright's sexual fantasies, or, at least, she will have us think so.

As is true of all of her books, Sexwise by Susie Bright is not to be missed.

"So what size are they?" I heard a voice asking. Blinking in the Queensland sunshine I looked up from my book and smiled when I realised what my questioner meant. "There's only one way to answer that question" I said, and proceeded to read the opening paragraph of the book aloud, while my questioner listened, spellbound.

Back in rainy Britain I'd woken up with a dry mouth and aching head after one of my farewell parties in a friends house. Desperate for something to read I spied this book upon a shelf. Attracted by the tasteless pink and orange cover adorning this particular edition I picked it up and immediately disappeared, enthralled, into the lumber-room of someone else's mind. This charming book is filled with some of the irrelevant bits and pieces that somehow sneak into our brains. We turn them over from time to time, pulling them out of our subconscious like a paper covered boiled sweet from a fluff-filled pocket.

The author leads you down the byways and alleys of his thought processes, challenging and amusing you by turn and always asking questions that you wish you had thought of. This gentle philosophical meandering leads you to look at your surroundings with fresh eyes and broadens your horizons because you suddenly understand how at least one other human being thinks. It's a charming book to suit a wistful mood, a beach, a cloud, a river. Pack it in your holiday suitcase and wander gently through it at a holiday pace when the mood takes you. You won't be disappointed.

A weirdly eclectic mix of topics, each of which stays with you.

The essay on card catalogs makes me want to scream and tear my hair out. I have a few friends who are librarians. I have raised Baker's issue with them, and they are to-a-t EXACTLY how he would have predicted. "Well, we're not really archivists."

Wonderful, compelling stuff here.

After reading this book, you will never clip your toenails again without marvelling at the fine and delicate engineering that went into the noble toenail clipper. You will develop a nostalgia for flipping through the card catalog, and for the days when consumer items did not come in fashion colors and an overwhelming number of forms. We are unaccustomed to the results of such honed and loving attention paid to the quotidian. Who knew such pleasure could be gotten from the history of film projectors, or the semantic evolution of the word "lumber?"

For a book that begins with the perennial favorite "What are you Wearing?", Vox quickly devours the prototype of phone sex caller as disrespectful loser, instead presenting characters with mature, if slightly bland, personalities. Is this a good thing? Well..yes and no. While it is refreshing to read a sexual novel without a torn bodice on the cover, I found much of the dialogue to be just as contrived and unbelievable as any number of generic 'swashbuckling pirate saves the girl' page turners. Add to this disability the suspension of belief required to believe that these individuals would pay 3.99 per minute for three hours only to reveal Jim's preoccupation with Tinkerbell's wide hips and Abby's unchecked love of creamed chipped beef and you have the reason for this three star review.

Still, I admit to being intrigued by the concept of revealing sexuality to a stranger over the phone and must praise Baker for having the audacity to attempt such an undertaking. Unfortunately, the tiring details of this book render it unsexy as the characters take themselves ,(and their fantasies), far too seriously. The book reads like an indie art house hit- one that has been subjected to a lot of hype. And I feel the same muddy daze as when I leave an art house after wading through two hours of heightened plastic emotion. While I'm glad I read the book, (or saw the film),...I still feel a bit cheated that style won out over substance.

Nicholson Baker always amazes with his descriptive ability, even in a novel like The Everlasting Story of Nory that departs from his usual style, and Vox achieves this at a bit different level than many of his other books. The Mezzanine and Room Temperature are so filled with description that sometimes you almost forget there is a novel in place there (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you), but when Baker focuses on sexuality in Vox and The Fermata, he shows a brilliance beyond just being able to pen a metaphor. He is able to capture reality in his dialogue as well. Granted, the dialogue is from a phone-sex line here so it's going to have a different type of feel than regular conversation, but it still manages to capture something very human that even the most mundane books miss out on. If you're in it for shock value, read elsewhere. If you want a nice introduction to a brilliant author, give this one a try first. If the description (not talking here about how explicit the sex is)is too excessive, Baker is not for you. If you end begging for more, then try The Mezzanine and see where it takes you.

nicholson baker wants to make sex as complicated as possible. By dividing the simplicity of actual sex from the seemingly endless boundaries of foreplay and anything sexual that is not actual sex, Baker emerged with Vox. The book is a story which unfolds like a ribbon through the dialogue of two people on a private chat sex phone line. And all the dialogue put together is a 165 page description of verbal intercourse. Vox has been made to be a statement about safe sex ( via phone), technological sex, and the line between literature and smut. Vox is a version of foreplay and a document of some of the thousands of ideas that can turn both the male and the female mind on. The mind is the sexiest organ, Vox proves it, and is a great read as well

I reviewed this book hoping to find a decent introductory overview of the history and basics of music. At the start, this text looked promising. It featured an accompanying interactive CD set with samples of the music overviewed in the text and appeared to cover a wide range of music.

What I found was thoroughly dissappointing - not necessarily the material itself, but the way the book was written. A reoccurring theme of political correctness made me want to gag at times, and at others it prompted only dissapointment at important parts of the history of music that were neglected in the place of politically correct anecdotes about multi-culturalism and entire chapters devoted to obscure composers who are included solely because they happened to be female.

The politically correct themes of this 500 page book ranged from the casual use of extreme PC terminology such as "Before the Common Era" (BCE) instead of the now politically incorrect "Before Christ" (BC) to more bizarre ventures into the realm of modern artistic "Electronic Music." At times the attention paid to modern eccentricism is an embarrassing reflection upon the author in my mind. He names and gives brief biographies of more obscure post modernists, figures in "electronic" music, and neo-romanticist composers than he does for the ENTIRE BAROQUE AND CLASSICAL PERIODS OF MUSIC COMBINED.

The detriment of doing this does not go unnoticed. The author completely neglected any mention whatsoever of the contributions of significant composers including Georg Philip Telemann, Dimitri Kabelevsky, Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan), William Byrd, and Gustav Holst. Similarly the contributions of Correlli, Johann Strauss, Elgar, Couperin, Gluck, CPE Bach, Orff, Borodin, and countless others recieve only brief mentions of a line or two.

Amazingly, after having left out so many significant composers, the author finds room to devote the better part of an entire chapter to the obscure Baroque era harpsichordist Elisabeth-Claude Jaquet De La Guerre and even features a composition of hers, even though she was known more as a musician than a composer and even though her musical contribution was far less than any of the above mentioned composers who were neglected by the author. Jaquet De La Guerre, at best, is an obscure footnote in the history of music, especially compared to giants like Johann Strauss (who was largely neglected) and composers of some of the most significant works of music in history, such as Holst (the Planets), Orff (Carmina Burana), and Corelli (father of the concerto grosso, an important musical form itself that was also discussed in only a sentence or two by the author).

Almost laughably, the author, in light of all his omissions, takes time out to mention modern "ska" music, Curt Cobain, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Ice Cube," Michael Jackson, and the Jefferson Airplane. At least the reader can rest assured that the Jefferson Airplane got paid more attention by the author than one of the most prolific composers in history (Telemann)!

There is a newer version - eighth edition

I had read this book when I was a music student, and thought, at the time, it was one of the most interesting books ever assigned by any teacher. I am now a music teacher and have been recommending this book to the students who came to me asking for a good music appreciation book. To say everyone is happy with the book is to understate the fact. The book, indeed, speaks for itself!

I bought this book the way I used to buy Beatles albums in the 60's...what can I say? I'm a fan. So it isn't with greatest pleasure that I report that this book was a major snore...yes, I guess he does write books to put grown-ups to sleep(the fictional father's occupation is thusly described by Nory). I don't want to say it has all been down-hill since THE MEZZANINE but after a sort-of sophmore slump with his cozy domestic second novel, ROOM TEMPERATURE, he did some great non-fiction(U AND I and the New Yorker piece on card catalogues)but seemed to get lazy(or just cynical about what sells)with his sex books. Nonetheless his writing was still great. Now more of his laziness, or just parental goofyness, has lead Baker to take his childrens' language and imagination for this latest effort. I was initially amused by Baker's clever and accurate recreation of Nory's language but as I realized that was all there was ever going to be in this novel, then I felt cheated. I'm a parent and a Speech&Language Therapist working with elementary school-aged children so I'm pretty burnt-out on the linguistic charms of the young and that's about all this book has going for it.

Here's a challenge: write a book for adults about a 9-year old girl of medium intelligence who is happy, well-adjusted, and very creative, and make it interesting. This book is full of anecdotes in the stream-of-consciousness style of Nory, whose main problems are handling bad dreams, adjusting as an American child in an English school, missing her old best friends, and trying to figure out how to stop the bullying of one unfortunately scapegoated classmate. Baker tells Nory's stories as she tells them to herself, with the anachronisms that a creative young child would put in. It makes one wonder how life would have been different if we'd had better parenting.

For those who remember the charm of Nicholson Baker's first two fictional novels The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, Everlasting Story of Nory brings back that innocent rambling charm. Told thru the eyes of his 9 year old daughter Mr. Baker takes us thru the amazing imaginary and real world of pre-teen life. In his rambling style he brought back many funny memories of the quirks of the social mannerisms of children. For those who were partially turned off by the sexually explicit Fermata and Vox, this is pure G rated fun. Also, don't forget to check out his recent book of essays "Lumber", which is a fun read until the last lumbering chapter!