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top 100 novel on the subject of the Wandering Jew & Jewess
With fascinating social commentaries
Celebrates the story of love through Time and Space.
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A new Father's thoughts.
Sleep Talk works
A Wonderful Tool for Childrearing
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Great BOOK - Great INTERVIEWThis book was so well written that I felt like I really got to know 25 of the best business leaders; the only thing better would be to have interviewed them myself.
I did interview George Ritcheske on "The Inside Success Show" and and what a treat that was. His book is powerful because he took the time to really discover the secrets of True Leaders - You'll love it!
Here's some of what you'll learn from the book:
** Why you should aim toward becoming a 'True Leader'
** What you can do right now to make people respect you
** How you can avoid the BIG mistakes of BAD leaders
** Why you should lead with passion and trust your intuition
** How you can succeed by treating learning like 'dirty dishes'
** And much, much more ...
Randy (Dr. Proactive) Gilbert
Author of "Success Bound" and editor of "Proactive Success" ezine
Learn from success stories!Kudos to authors Bette Price and George Ritcheske for presenting a fresh approach on the leadership topic!
Can't put it down!
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A classic for all ages.
A Treasure!This book is a treasure for your library. It brings endless pleasure, and is the kind of story that spans all ages.
It is the tale of a boy and his dragon who lives up on the Downs. In spite of the bad reputation dragons have, the boy and he become quick friends. Saint George shows up to do battle with the reluctant lizard, and the boy arranges a mock battle, unbeknown to the villagers that pleases everyone.
Andrew's book ReportBEACOME FRIENDS THE DRAGON TELLS THE BOY STORY AND NONE ARE
TRUE. BUT ONE IS TRUE THE DRAGONS FAUTHER DIED WHEN A KNIGHT
FOUND OUT ABOUT HIM WHEN THE DRAGON WAS LITTLE. THE KID
HEARS ABOUT A KNIGHT NAMED ST. GEORGE HE TELLS ST. GEORGE
ABOUT THE DRAGON. THE NEXT DAY THE KID SHOWS ST. GEORGE THE
THE DRAGON THE DRAGON DID NOT WHANT TO FIGHT. THE NEXT DAY
ST. GEORGE TOLD SOME OF THE DRAGONS TALES TO THE VILLAGE.
THE TALES WHERE ABOUT KNIGHTS AND DRAGONS FIGHTING. THAT
AFTER NOON THE DRAGON HID IN THE CAVE AND ST. GEORGE FAKED
TO KILL THE DRAGON AND WAS FAMOUS.
(...)
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The Sicilian Gentleman
With insights into Sicilian culture and culinary styles
Sicilian Cooking and Salty OpinionsThere's much more of the same in these pages, and plenty of recipes--many of them unusual and delightful (Sicilian cooking is ine of the richest and most varied cuisines in the Mediterranean basin). The pages are large, the type is clear, and there's only one recipe to a page. So whether you try the cauliflower recipes--or the cardoons or the meat and seafood dishes--you're in for a treat. Still, the best part of this book is the salty talk of two Sicilian gentlemen--the one who wrote it and the one who inspired it.
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THE BEST VEGAN COOKBOOK EVER!!Like I said, this is the best book for meat lovers who have gone vegetarian. I love my vegetables and all, but it's a good change from eating tofu all the time (even though I'm a tofu fanatic). With the techniques in this book, you can make almost any dish from other cookbooks. I love it!!
Anyway, I'm through rating and raving.
Peaces
:-)
The canonical un-meat cookbook and moreBeyond his gluten techniques, all the other sections are great, too, and quite a few of the recipes are very simple and fast to prepare, which for me is a very important factor in purchasing a cookbook.
One important distinction is that while some vegan cookbooks embrace the view that vegan cuisine is fundamentally different from omnivorous cuisine, this cookbook is something of the opposite. Much of its focus is on using vegan foods to emulate meat, dairy, and eggs.
That's great, and I'm often in just the mood for the BBQ gluten (which is a spot-on match for good barbeque, incidentally) or any of his other great meat substitutes. But it's kind of a novelty, at some point, and so it's not one of those cookbooks for which I could say, "This is the only cookbook I ever use!" or such.
Still, that's not much of a detraction. Sure, sometimes I have to turn to another cookbook for what I want, but *Simply Heavenly* covers many areas, and it's the superlative for all of them. Put another way: I have never been disappointed with a recipe from this cookbook.
If you can find a copy of this, snatch it up quickly. It's inexpensive, contains great information, and fills what would otherwise be a very notable gap in my cookbook collection.
Soo Good!!!! This book has EVERYTHING!
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Whither Arnold's "Sweetness and Light?"Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor. The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success. Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand. Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist. Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel. Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.
Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13). In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process. He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality. By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius. Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile. But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction. Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).
Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon. Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian. However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38). In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production. A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius. Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed. Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.
The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy. However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers. One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption. Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output. Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche. Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all. Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste. While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father. Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable. Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.
The Hateful Spirit of Literary RancourThe anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost. His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction. Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame. Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.
Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it. As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel. As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours. At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made. This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive? The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence. For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.
"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself. For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance. The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim. They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.
"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time. As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair. The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way. Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day. Very highly recommended.
Grimly Realistic Novel of Literary Life in 1880s London"New Grub Street" is the contrapuntal narrative of two literary figures, Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist who aspires to write great literature without regard to its popular appeal, and Jasper Milvain, a self-centered, materialistic striver whose only concern is with achieving financial success and social position by publishing what the mass public wants to read. As Milvain relates early in the novel, succinctly adumbrating the theme that winds through the entirety of "New Grub Street":
"Understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I-well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. . . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lives in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy."
Gissing brilliantly explores this theme through the lives of his characters, each drawn with stunning depth and verisimilitude. There is, of course, Reardon, whose failure as a novelist and neurasthenic decline destroys his marriage and his life. There is also Reardon's wife, Amy, a woman whose love for Reardon withers with the exsanguination of her husband's creative abilities. While the manipulative and seemingly unfeeling Milvain pursues his crass aspirations, he also encourages his two sisters, Dora and Maud, to seek commercial success as writers of children's books. And intertwining all of their lives are the myriad connections each of the characters has with the Yule family, in particular with the nearly impoverished Alfred Yule, a serious writer and literary critic, and his daughter and literary amanuensis, Marian.
It is Marian--struggling to reconcile the literary demands and expectations of her father with the desire to lead her own life, struggling to escape the claustrophobic world of the literary life--who ultimately, pessimistically challenges the verities of that life while sitting in its physical embodiment, the prison-like British Museum library:
"It was gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm, headachy air. . . . She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any individual could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be any more than a commodity for the day's market. What unspeakable folly! . . . She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. . . . This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print-how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit."
It is Marian, too, who ultimately becomes the romantic victim of Milvain's aspirations, the powerful language of Gissing's anti-romantic subplot twisting into almost gothic excess as he extends the metaphor of London's fog to Marian's sleepless depression:
"The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colorless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber."
"New Grub Street" is deservedly regarded not only as Gissing's finest novel, but also as one of the finest novels of late nineteenth century English literature. Grimly realistic in its depiction of what it was like to be a struggling writer in late nineteenth century London, it is also remarkable for its historical accuracy and its literary craftsmanship. If you like the realism of writers like Harding and Zola, then "New Grub Street" is a book you must read!
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A Fasinating read while transiting the Canal
Leisure reading while cruising the Panama Canal
Perfect combo of writing and art
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pretty funny
favorite author of all time
Pat McManus....outdoor humor champion
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AHASVER CD-ROM ISBN 1895507901 (SALE)! "THE JEW" (I-IIII):
"...Audacious and magnificent." "The book is in both substance and method of the highest originality; it is both fascinating and brilliant; the historic pageant is unrolled with a colorfulness and clearness that astonish me. And I am delighted too by the play of implicit wit, the quaint malice of the innuendos, the symbolic pattern sustained throughout." "...fascinatingly interesting and instructive...very ingenious conception and treatment of the various psychological and philosophical themes...I am particularly impressed with your ingenious way of presenting the various phases of psycho-sexuality....A great work." "It is a remarkably interesting idea to present the pageant of the World as it unfolded before the eyes of the same man during two thousand years. Also, to keep him a young man instead of a doddering grey-beard. It is like reading a series of entrancing short stories with the added interest of logical sequence. Their erudition is amazing, and it is presented in a manner that lures one on-and-on, as well as inducing the pleasant belief that one is learning something really worthwhile. It is a big thing to have attempted, and as far as I have gone there is certainly nothing to cavil at." "The book is gorgeous in its epigram and cold satire. It is one of the most brilliant books of sophisticated World-wisdom ever written. It sums up the case of intelligence against life. Isaac Laquedem is the Ulysses of your brain." "`My First Two Thousand Years' looks to me like a big thing." "Instead of leaving the reader stimulated, this would-be entertaining and philosophic tome leaves you prostrated...quality-of-life, so difficult to define to any healthy piece of literature, is absent." "The story captures the reader's interest in the beginning, holding it enthralled through every short chapter to the very end of five hundred and one pages. This number is significant. It recalls those gentle tales of one thousand and one nights." "The halfpenny cynicism in which the authors revel is the type resulting from protracted adolescence. The greatest mystery of it all is that the authors if not their book comes recommended, however guardedly, by no less than Sigmund Freud, George Bernard Shaw, and Havelock Ellis." "`My First Two Thousand Years' has occasional defects, but, out-weighing these, are pages of beauty, clearly seen and transcribed; and chapters of adroit and smiling satire...throughout there persists the restless reach of man toward a forever elusive finality." "This is in may respects and astonishing book, and in all respects one that deserves attention." "Cartaphilus's speculations and comprehensions about life, as without growing older, watching others grow old and idle; his amatory experiences, his judgments of great men of history, his increasing self-knoledge...all these give the book substance and intellectual stimulation, as well as very occasional brilliance. But in no major sense does the book triumph over its inherent difficulties. It is not history surveyed from high philosophical peaks, but history regarded by two intelligent minds. It is all human experience collected and annotated, but not interpreted with any profundity. So is its irony without depth, and its wit without freshness." You would think that anyone might, in two thousand years, grow weary of tryingto solve the riddle of life through sexual orgies, especially if, along about the middle of the fourth century of it, a Chinese adept has taught him two hundred and eighty secrets of love. But not Cartaphilus...undeniably an eenormous achievement." "...a work that must not be measured by ordinary standards....It will be read and thoroughly enjoyed by any lover of good fiction no less than by him who has a preferment for history and biography." "...As a work of creative imagination, Viereck and Eldridge have written a fascinatingly unique and alluring story. It is done with a spareness of words that sometimes approaches the beauty of the Greeks....In summing up the book...it is the story you remember." "...an unusually good story...some readers will detect a slight suspicion of Kraft-Ebbing; our respectable ancestors would have burned the book -- and perhaps the authors -- with a clear conscience. But a good many moderns will read it with enthusiasm." "...too colossal, too powerful, too broad in scope to be tarnished by the tired adjectives of reviewers....No detail is left untold; no intimacy is too delicate to go unrelated....A great work."