Felix Holt occupies a middle-tier in the critical estimation of Eliot's novels. It is often disparaged as the "political novel," or alternatively "the one where the legal subplot is way too complicated."

At first, this seems unfair. The early introduction of Mrs. Transome is a showstopper, heroine Esther Lyon fascinates, and the detailed evocation of 19th century rural politics is through Eliot's narrative magic made riveting.

But things do go awry in the second half. A big problem is Felix himself: an idealization of a political view rather than a detailed character, the reader loves him rather less than Eliot seems to intend. The legal schenanigans are intriguing, but the tortuous plot machinations through which Felix comes to be imprisoned are near ridiculous. And finally, Esther experiences her moral conversion rather too quickly and tidily, coming to seem just a sketch for Gwendolyn Harleth in the later Daniel Deronda. Indeed, by book's end the most compelling plot thread standing is that of the unfortunate Mrs. Transome.

But to say a book isn't as good as Daniel Deronda isn't much of a criticism. For all its faults, Felix Holt is filled with excellent characters, a strong story, and unparalled insight into both 19th century England and the more universal collisions of morality and politics.

This is my 4th novel by George Eliot (after "Adam Bede", "Middlemarch" and "The Mill on the Floss") and it has become my favourite along with "Middlemarch". "Felix Holt" is so marvelously written and gave me many hours of reading pleasure - I can't understand why it's not as highly acclaimed or well-known as Eliot's other novels.

If you're a fan of Victorian literature, then you mustn't miss this brilliant work. The story's set in the 1830s and is 1/3 focused on politics (i.e. a fascinating insight into the electioneering process and the fight for a Parliamentary seat between the Torys and the Radicals), 1/3 on family and sensational issues (e.g. illegitimacy, dispute over who has the legitimate claim on the wealthy estates of the Transome family and plenty of blackmail, manipulation and betrayals) and 1/3 devoted to a love triangle.

George Eliot wrote so eloquently and beautifully that many times I find myself re-reading a particular phrase in order to saviour its beautiful words. Each chapter also starts with either a beautiful poem or some well-chosen lines from Shakespeare/the Classics. Here's a favourite of mine from Chapter 45 (a poem by Eliot):

"We may not make this world a paradise
By walking it together with clasped hands
And eyes that meeting feed a double strength.
We must be only joined by pains divine,
Of spirits blent in mutual memories".

I confess that above all, it is the suspense over the touching love story that kept me turning the pages very quickly. The hero is Felix Holt, a passionate, idealistic young man who studies medicine but chooses to quit midway and forgo a comfortable future as a doctor in favour of leading the more righteous life (in his opinion) of an ordinary, poor workingman because of his scorn for wealth and its corrupting powers. Felix is described as honest, brusque, generous and highly intelligent. He's got "wild hair", dresses simple and to his own liking e.g. not wearing a cravat "like all the other gentlemen", and sometimes looks like a "barbarian". He patronizes no one and is rather unpopular in the town of Treby Magna where the story takes place. His political views are Radical (i.e. more severe than the Liberals) but his main concerns are for the well-being of the working class and especially the future of their children. (Read the excellent "Address to Working Men by Felix Holt" which comes after the Epilogue). Felix's good intentions land him in great trouble with the law later on when a massive riot breaks out among the drunk working class directly after the election and Felix is wrongly accused of being the leader of the mob.

Early on in the novel, Felix is introduced to the heroine, Esther Lyon (the beautiful daughter of a poor chapel minister) whose vanity and high-bred manner he scorns. He rebukes and lectures her constantly in that straight-forward and honest manner of his because he cares to improve her views on what are truly the important things in life. Esther dislikes him utterly at first... she cannot understand why Felix doesn't admire her beauty and graceful manners like other young men do. Esther is vain and proud (at least, initially) and has always dreamed of leading a better life, with fineries and beautiful clothes and servants to do her bidding. And Felix Holt is definitely not her idea of a lover! But Esther is not unkind or ungenerous - she loves her father dearly and treats everyone well. Gradually, she begins to see the true nature of Felix's character and noble aims, and holds him in great esteem, despite his outward looks and manners. But Felix has declared never to marry and if he were ever to fall in love, he would just "bear it and not marry" (preferring to "wed poverty"). Later in the novel, Esther is courted by the rich and handsome Harold Transome whose initial reason for wooing her is to save his family estates. But he doesn't count on falling in love with her subsequently.

Who does Esther ends up with finally: Felix or Harold? But take it from me that the romantic scenes between Felix and Esther are the most passionate and heart-wrenching I've ever come across in a classic literature - with many kisses and hugs amidst pure longing and despair, and scenes filled with beautifully spoken words of affection which brought tears to my eyes.

For many, many reasons, "Felix Holt" makes for a most brilliant read. I urge you not to miss it.

Some might say nothing can equal Middlemarch as Eliot's greatest work but I think that even if Felix Holt doesn't rank alongside it in literature, it should be given at least an equal status.

The novel deals with provincial politics in nineteenth century England through the mouthpiece of one of the best male protagonists ever drwan in literature by a female writer. As in all her books, Eliot is sharp in her details, the satire is poignant and she doesn't miss out on humor. Feminism takes a different turn here, with telling criticisms on the way females were brought up at that time and in many third world countries, still are brought up.

Eliot is never bitter, never hopeless, yet always realistic and idealistic with this difference: she doesn't let it get out of control. Fear not: mawkish is the last thing this book is. Some details might seem to be superfluous but it adds up to showing the literary prowess of this great woman, and is very helpful in letting you understand the real stuff going on at that time. A good, very well-written socio-political novel, that depicts the atmosphere of its time with more accuracy than many other books I've read.

Eliot does have the most amazing ability to get into her characters' minds. although this book is an all rounder in the sense that it comments on most social issues, the two main intimate themes of the books are personal to the central character, Felix, the most "alive" hero of nineteenth century literature: his politics and his love interest, in herself a very compelling and subtly drwan character.

Worth reading for all Eliot, Dickens, and Hardy fans. Will definitely give you two or three new opinions: even if the time period is different, much of the philosophy of the book is still very relevant.

This is a really fun little graphic novel, loaded with great artwork and a decent storyline. I wouldn't recommend it as a first-time read for anyone unfamiliar with the X-Men - taken out of context from the overall series - it might be a somewhat confusing introduction. But for those who know the characters and have a general idea of what is going on, believe me, this one delivers the goods.

In the past, I have generally hated the X-Men's adventures in the Savage Land, or whenever they would go to outer space or get into really super sci-fi type situations. I always felt the X-Men stories worked much better when they were grounded in very normal, down-to-earth settings, because it made the X-Men themselves stand out and seem that much weirder. But this book is an exception to the rule. It's a big, crazy, larger-than-life adventure, part of which takes place in the prehistoric Savage Land, and part of which gets hyper technological, and it works out OK.

The artwork is tough and gritty. Jim Lee draws a mean, shadowy, ugly Wolverine who kills lots of villains and looks like he needs to take a shower very badly.

And Lee's women - whoa. This book contains more gratuitous cheescake shots than any X-Men graphic novel I've seen, but it's all very pleasing to the eye. Especially the scenes with Rogue, whose bare skin can kill anyone she touches and thus, understandably, was always the one major female character who kept herself completely covered at all times. This was the first storyline in the series where they finally drew her as a scantily-clad, sexy heroine. A real treat for male Rogue-fans who'd been reading the series patiently for years.

This storyline also chronicles the transformation of innocent young Psylocke into a mature woman trained in the art of Ninjitsu, and she becomes an ultra-violent, sexy bad girl. And then there are cameo appearances by other Marvel superheroes, namely Captain America (from the Avengers series) and The Black Widow (from the Daredevil series). All in all, it's a satisfying, action-packed, well-drawn, crowd-pleasing comic book in trade-paperback format.

X-Men Visionaries Jim Lee trade paperback Is a great X-Men graphic Novel by Jim Lee! the book reprints Uncanny X-Men issues #248,#256-258,#268-269,#273-277 are reprinted together in this wonderful Marvel book collection! This book contains the early Uncanny X-Men issues that made Jim Lee famous! All the issues are written by Chris Claremont with artwork by Jim Lee. These issues lead to the popular Claremont/Lee colaboration on X-Men#1 in 1991. Most of the artwork was done by Jim Lee. Uncanny X-Men #273 was done by various artists. Buy this book if your fan of X-Men and Jim Lee. Highest Possible Recommendation!

This is a great X-Men: Visionaries Jim Lee graphic Novel! This is Jim Lee's early work on the Uncanny X-Men series! This Marvel Tradepaperback reprints Jim Lee's early years when he was the comic book artist on Uncanny X-Men. In this book reprints Uncanny X-Men#248,#256-258,#268-269, #273-277. His early work on the Uncanny X-Men in the early 1990s, lead to to the critically aclaimed Clarmont/Lee work on X-Men #1 in 1991. All the Uncanny X-Men issues are written by Chris Claremont. Most of the artwork is drawn by Jim Lee. Unncany X-Men#273 is drawn by various artist. Buy this book if your a big fan of X-Men and Jim Lee. Highest Possible Recommendation.

In this historically wide ranging book, the authors overlook the large numbers of excellent programs on many of the cable channels. My understanding of the authors point of view is that the government has lost a wonderful outlet for its propaganda. Cable television has lead to the fulfillment of televisions promise, and has also rendered PBS obsolete.

If you are at all interested the history of television, and how it got to be the vast wasteland that it is, you need to read this book! It ultimately gives a glimmer of hope to those of us who think television is too far 'Down the Tube' to be redeemed.

I am the CEO of a public television station, so I read the book with great interest and in an informed and critical frame of mind. I found it intelligent, analytical, and very felicitous in its combination of fact and philosophical judgment. It's a pleasure to read, and should be enjoyable and useful to anyone nterested in television, whether as a viewer or as a professional.

This book is a great reference for residents in surgery. The subject matter is relevant, easy to read, and emphasizes salient points. This is a great book when you don't have time to read!!

Excelent book. A must have for all General Surgery resident. Covers all areas of General Surgery and OB/GYN, Urology.

This book is a "must have" for all surgery resident.

According to Webster, the definition of memoir is "a biographical sketch, usually one written by someone who knows the subject well." It is from the Latin word memoria, meaning memory. But in Inventing the Truth, Annie Dillard says, "Don't hope in a memoir to preserve your memories. If you prize your memories as they are by all means avoid--eschew--writing a memoir" (70). Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir is a sort of instructional anthology composed of six chapters written by six authors. The purpose of this book, edited and introduced by William Zinsser, is to give writers different perspectives on how to write a memoir. If you are writing a memoir, or even just thinking about writing one, this book will be helpful to you. It contains examples of good memoir writing, advice on what to put in and what to leave out, and an overview of the process of writing a memoir. The advice given by William Zinsser and the other five contributors to Inventing the Truth pertains mostly to organizing memories. Annie Dillard's chapter entitled "To Fashion a Text" is very focused on memoir writing, and would not prove useful to the average Joe. However, Lewis Thomas' chapter called "A Long Line of Cells" would be interesting for anyone to read. Unless you are thinking about writing a memoir, this book probably will not entirely interest you.

Capturing Your Memories
In the book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Writing a Memoir William Zinsser along with other well renown authors take the reader through the writing process of a memoir.
The book is divided into six sections individually composed by each author. In their own words they describe how to create a memoir that will be interesting, fluid, and accurate. A memoir is not just the facts as they are, but the facts as you experienced them. There are many other pieces of advice through out the book that add to the reader's knowledge of writing a memoir.
William Zinsser is a well renowned author and teacher. He has written and been editor for the New York Herald Tribune, and Life Magazine. Zinsser has also taught non-fiction writing at Yale University. In his book Inventing the Truth Zinsser gathers advice from many talented and experienced authors. They not only offer up advice but also describe their own trials and tribulations throughout the process. From Zinsser's boyhood in Long Island to Thomas's interpretation of evolution the book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Writing a Memoir gives comfortable and informative lessons that a writer will find useful.

Memoir writers Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, Alfred Kazin, Toni Morrison, and Lewis Thomas share their thoughts on writing memoir. The chapters are taken from a series of talks given on the subject.

The authors point out that memoir is not biography. The hardest thing about writing memoir, they agree, is not deciding what to put in, but what to leave out.

They point to Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, and each other as models of good memoir writers.

Annie Dillard says that she writes memoir to fashion a text. She advises that those who want to preserve memories will avoid writing memoir since the act of writing an event often takes more time than the event itself. She compares writing to taking care of a baby. "You don't take care of a baby out of will-power, you do it out of love," she says. It's the same, she says, with writing.

This book takes AD&D too far for it to handle the situation properly. Each of the rules is tweaked to such absurd degree that I at times lost all recognition of what exactly I was reading. Unlike Skills and Powers which expands on the previuosly available data, Combat and Tactics adds far too much of the new and the unexpected. The mix of the combat rules is almost intolerable if you know of a game that used these rules first. It is as if TSR is trying to capture the popularity of other games by mimicking them. On the other hand, Combat and Tactics contains many useful materials - the much-needed critical hits table which allows for detailed damage, updated weapons tables ( sadly, these are less extensive than those in the Arms and Equipment), and several interesting variants of the initiative rules are explained in greater completion than they are in PHB or the DMG. But by the time the book is finished you will feel that now the combat is too drawn out and it becomes so much more of a chore - nothing of the elegant simplicity of the original rules. My advice - give Combat and Tactics a try, borrow it from a friend, copy the tables into your little notes folder, and use your judgement during combat.

This book and all the player's option books should be renamed to "Dungeon Master's option" While the book allows better unarmed combat rules, this book and the others allow the players creation of the "Super Character" and in the wrong hands and experienced player could walk all over an unexperienced Dungeon Master and make his job more difficult..However the fine points to this book are the Critical Hit tables make combat more effective to the players in thinking that their character is seriously injured as opposed to losing a few hit points, and for the descriptive DM monster Deaths can be quite gruesome and epic. Plus for the PC's that are tired of the standard sword and bow, there is a veritable plethora of odd weapons to choose from, that are arranged by "Age Periods"(i.e. Golden Age, Bronze Age, etc,etc..) This also includes firearms. All weapons listed come with speed and damage stats. This book can definately add some spice to the average joe adventure..

This is a very good book, I believe that everyone who wants more realistic Combat Rules and new Strategies, Proficiency's and Tatics will enjoy a lot this book. Many things is incluided like the new Critical Hit's System and table's of critical Hit's Severity. Ignore The guy that gave 1 star to this book, he probaly never read it or even have played AD&D because if he had, he will not say a stupid thing like a Goblin with a dagger taking off a arm from a Human. So if you want good and realistic Combat to your campaign you should already had this book! GET IT!

Having graduated from a private university affiliated with the a cappella Church of Christ, ordained by the elders of an independent Christian Church, and now working in a cooperative mission project, I took pleasure in knowing that a book like this one had been published.

The contributors are known to me either personally or by reputation, a couple having been among my professors. Particularly pleasing were the contributions by these gentlemen, showing great respect for the Word of God and not compromising on the truths this movement has advocated for years. About half of the contributions from the independent Christian theologians were what I would consider edifying. The others show the marks of a general shift away from solid Biblical standards and towards evangelical generalism.

Frankly, the responses provided by the evangelical theologians were sadly predictable.

All in all, this is a good book to purchase if you are a theology student looking to gain insight into current discussions and thought within the movement that some call "Stone-Campbell," but which others of us prefer to refer to as the "Restoration Movement" or "this present Reformation."

Editor William Baker has collated an anthology of papers presented during proceedings of the Evangelical Theological Society by members of two of three "wings" of the Stone-Campbell or Restoration Movement (RM), a capella Churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. The third, the Disciples of Christ, is not represented.

The RM and the evangelical movement (EM) have much in common. As organized, identifiable movements (oxymoron?) in North America, they follow roughly parallel chronologies, springing as they did from the Second Awakening of ca. 1800. The "Stone" in "Stone-Campbell," Barton W. Stone, was one of the organizers of a Presbyterian camp meeting that is known to historiographers as the Cane Ridge Revival. One of the Campbells in "Stone-Campbell," Alexander Campbell, editorially followed the organization of the American evangelical movement early in the 19th century favourably noting points of intersection between it and the RM.

In the 20th century, like so many American Protestant bodies, the RM was split by the modernist-fundamentalist controversy into opposing camps -- one becoming the Disciples of Christ and the other the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. The editorial flagship of the modernist side, "The Christian Century," was of RM construction, and the first managing editor of "Christianity Today," launched by Billy Graham to lead the other side of the debate, was RM-adherent James DeForest Murch.

Over the past thirty years, many a capella Church of Christ exegetes have joined the Evangelical Theological Society, latterly joined by Independents. Independent leaders have been given prominence in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Although association between the RM and EM, and Baker's editorial introduction suggest a sort of "harmonic convergence" between the RM and evangelical movement (EM), the papers as published suggest otherwise. Theologically, the papers make clear significant points of divergence between the Princeton Theology-influenced Calvinism of much of North American evangelicalism and the RM on their understandings of conversion, faith, and baptism. Despite Baker's introduction, if one did not know anything of the significant interaction and sharing of resources among the RM and the EM, one might be surprised to learn of it.

A further point of divergence not highlighted is the prominence given to celebration of the Lord's Supper or Eucharist in the RM versus the EM. For the EM, faith and the book are the sole centre of attention and focus. While RM adherents claim the nickname "people of the book," the Lord's Supper is, still, given prominence and celebrated weekly (albeit, sometimes "weakly"). The absence of a paper dealing with differing views of the Lord's Supper is a weakness of the anthology.

That said, Baker does us a service by provoking discussion between two groups with parallel commitments to the book who interact at so many levels. One minor criticism: in his preface, Wheaton College historiographer Mark Noll insists on describing the RM as the "Restorationist Movement" instead of its long-standing appellation, "Restoration Movement." Is this stubbornness or merely an oversight on Dr. Noll's part?

I grew up and am still a member within the Church of Christ (a capella) branch of the Stone-Campbell movement. I found the book to be very thoughtful and engaging without being too scholarly or too polemic. The "evangelical response" chapters were nice reminders that theology is most profitably done in community. I imagine the book may not catch the interest of those outside the Stone-Campbell heritage, though I believe the book would be an excellent source of information for anyone wanting to know more about the claims and characteristics of this branch of the evangelical family.

This lavishly illustrated biography of David Gilhooly follows his career from his student years, doing ceramic sculpture at the University of California-Davis where "Nut Art," later called "funk," emerged in the 1960's, through to the early 1990's, when he established his own press and print studio. Among the illustrations are works by artists with whom Gilhooly has been associated, including Robert Arneson and Wayne Theibaud.

When I bought this book I was expecting pictures of flowers. Instead I end up reading a book on Mr. Morris' life. His love of flowers and wonderful drawings have made this book better than I could have imagined it.

In "Hamlet ESP," Paul Baker has captured the essence of William Shakespeare's masterpiece. He deconstructed the character of Hamlet so incredibly well that in his final version of the play there are actually three different Hamlets on stage simultaneously. Baker delves into the inner psyche of the mealoncholy Dane, and the result is an incredible interpretation of one of the best plays ever written.

Now and then, however, it is difficult to comprehend on the page, but when it is performed all the pieces come together and the result is something wonderful and awe-inspiring.

This book is definately recommended to any and all lovers of Shakespeare, Hamlet, or drama in general.