This little book starts off by actually teaching you HOW to read a CXR. Not many books do that ... they just assume that you can. Then it goes into the four broad categories of abnormalities: 1) too white, 2) too black, 3) too large and 4) in the wrong place which helps you to categorise abnormalities. Then all the major conditions (e.g. pneumonia, COPD, malignancies etc.) are reviewed under each category. Read this before you start you clinical years and keep it in your coat pocket along with 'The ECG made easy'. Look at heaps of CXRs and ECGs from the beginning of the year along with the help of these books. Practice makes perfect! Good luck! I wish someone had told me these things at the beginning of the year! ;)

This book teaches the basics such as pneumonia, pneumothorax, and other abnormal thoracic conditions through the use of x-rays. It explains the abnormal findings of each x-ray in a clear and easily understandable manner. Best book I've seen so far on chest x-rays.

I love this book. It first teaches the reader how to look at a chest x-ray in a simple, step-by-step approach. Then it is organized quite effectively into chapters based on the appearance of the x-ray (white lung field, widened mediastinum, etc.). A must read for medical students starting their rotations.

"The Hunting of the Snark" is a brilliant nonsense-poem. Yet Gardner has seen fit to put pretentious, geeky, ...pedantic annotations all over it. Now I like nonsense, but the vulgarly rational "sense" of some of these annotations irritates me. Do we really need to know that the word "BOMB" begins and ends with B (thereby relating it to the Boojum) and that OM is the Hindu name of God??? Do we really need to know of a political cartoon in which Kruschev says "BOO", and does Gardner have to tell us that he was trying to say Boojum??

Annotations should be done in the manner of Gardner's own annotations of Alice in Wonderland. Now those were annotations that made *sense*. Annotations that simply explained out of date concepts, gave relevant details from Carroll's own life, or obscure humour. That's all! That is what annotations should be like.

The pedantic geekery of these annotations remind me of the...games of Star Trek fanatics (or Sherlock Holmes fanatics).

The poem is brilliant, though; and the illustrations were funny, before the annotations over-analysed them.

Lewis Carroll is brilliant in this piece. First of all the poetical music is perfect, absolutely perfect, and yet the words don't mean much. Many of these words are not even to be found in any dictionary. Be it only for the music, this piece is astonishingly good. But the piece has a meaning. I will not enter the numerical value of the numbers used in the poem : 3, 42, 6, 7, 20, 10, 992, 8, and I am inclined to say etc because some are more or less hidden here and there in the lines. Hunting for these numbers is like hunting for the snark, an illusion. But the general meaning of the poem is a great allegory to social and political life. A society, any society gives itself an aim, a target, a purpose and everyone is running after it without even knowing what it is. What is important in society is not what you are running after or striving for, but only the running and the striving. Lewis Carroll is thus extremely modern in this total lack of illusions about society, social life and politics : just wave a flag of any kind, or anything that can be used as a flag and can be waved, in front of the noses of people and they will run after it or run in the direction it indicates. They love roadsigns and social life is a set of roadsigns telling you where to go. Everyone goes there, except of course the roadsigns themselves who never go in the direction they indicate. Lewis Carroll is thus the first post-modern poet of the twenty-first century. He just lived a little bit too early.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I am a fan of Lewis Carroll, but somehow was unaware of the existence of an edition of "The Hunting of the Snark" with annotations. As someone who tremendously enjoys Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice," I heartily recommend this book to like-minded readers. Gardner's annotations and introduction set the stage for the reader, putting the composition of the poem in its proper context in Victorian England, and in Lewis Carroll's life. And as with "Annotated Alice" the annotations are fascinating and amusing in their own right. "The Hunting of the Snark" is one of Carroll's lesser-appreciated (or at least lesser-known) works, and this paperback is an excellent introduction.

I noticed some confusion in the Amazon listings for this book, so let me clarify that the edition with Gardner's annotations is the paperback, and for illustrations it contains reproductions of Henry Holiday's original woodcuts from the 1800's. There are only eight pictures, and these are in old-fashioned style which may turn off some modern readers. This edition does not contain the illustrations - listed in the review of the hardcover editions - by Jonathan Dixon, nor the illustrations by Mervyn Peake also listed as available in hardcover from Amazon.

To Snark fans, though, I would unhesitatingly recommend both those editions as well. Dixon's is little-known, but excellent, the most profusely illustrated Snark, with pictures on every page in lush, gorgeously detailed and humorous pen and ink. It may still be available through the website of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, who published it in a small edition. Peake's drawings are also in beautiful black and white, and capture his own rather dark, quirky "Gormenghast" take on the poem. (A good companion, too, to the recently released editions of "Alice" with Peake's drawings.)

Michael Moorcock's science fiction novel "Behold The Man" has been in release for over 20 years, and I still find it to be one of the most shocking books I have ever read. If anyone ever decides to make a film of this novel, the controversy will make the flap over "Last Temptation of Christ" look like an argument over what dish to bring to the PTA meeting. "Behold The Man" tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a man striving to find his religious identity. Intermittent flashbacks explain many of his internal conflicts as a Christian, e.g his childhood molestation by a clergyman. The opportunity to use a time machine presents itself, and Glogauer decides to travel back to meet Jesus Christ and his contemporaries. Over a period of time, he meets the characters who populated the New Testament, but they are nowhere near the people portrayed in the Bible. Many of the depictions are incredibly shocking in their utter blasphemy; I found myself gasping at every plot twist. To give away any of the details of this story would be an injustice, so I will just say that you will never look at your Bible the same way after reading this book. Moorcock won numerous awards for this novel, and I place it high on my list of favorite stories. For those who have never read Michael Moorcock, this would make a great introduction to his very eclectic body of work

Moorcock pulls no punches in this story about time travel back to the time of christ. If you're a very religious christian AND close minded (NOT that I'm saying the terms go together...) you may be offended, but if you're knowledgable about biblical times you may enjoy the story even more. As with some of the best books I've read, this book opened up new worlds of ideas to explore. I enjoyed it and was educated by it at the same time.

It has been called many things, but most often it is called BLASPHEMOUS and HERETICAL. I say "Yes, but only incidentally." On the surface BEHOLD THE MAN is another time-travel story. Beneath that surface this book is a coral reef of ideas and issues pertaining to that elusive creature, MAN. MAN's need for history to determine his purpose and the ablility to tailor history to his own needs. MAN's need to Love and to be Loved. MAN's scientific advances vs. MAN's religious foundations. As grand in scope as these concepts are, they are only the beginning. This is one of the greatest books of all time and a must read for any serious student of human nature.

_Sleeping in Flame_ is a mystic journey, both for the characters seeking to find themselves and for the audience--who, after a few hundred pages, no longer know exactly what to expect from this book, but are absolutely delighted with every unexpected turn. It begins, much like Carroll's other novels, as a regular storyline. Suddenly, though, and without warning we are thrust into the unknown, with the main character. It seems that Carroll is asking us to follow Walker Easterling on his quest to find himself. Just as the characters learn about themselves as characters, readers learn about themselves AS readers. Not only must we encounter the unknown in this book, like Walker, we must manipulate it and force it to help us survive, to help us remain within the domain of at least partial understanding.

I think, above most things, this book is about survival. Walker must encounter a strange new world, with new rules, in order to survive. He must work magic, and sacrifice magic, in order to have his love, Maris York, survive. Ultimately, his desperate attempts at survival threaten the survival of his unborn son. Strange that a book whose main theme relies so much upon reincarnation would simultaneously center itself around the need to survive. In order to live as a normal human being, Walker must admit to himself that he is a fictional character. In order to survive, then, the characters in this novel must realize that they might not exist.

The power of this novel exists beyond the boundaries of the printed page, and might not be completely evident with a first encounter. Nevertheless, _Sleeping in Flame_ is a novel that works on several different levels. On the one hand, it is an entirely satisfying fantasy novel, complete with memorable characters and a quickly evolving plot. On the other, it offers an interpretation of reading, writing, survival, death and love that I find particularly poignant. One of the most delightful parts of this novel, though, is the way in which these interpretations are presented to the reader. Carroll is a most subtle writer when it comes to philosophy. Readers may want to think deeply about some of the thematic issues that arise from this novel. Or they can just toss them aside and enjoy it as a well-crafted fantasy story. We, as readers, have the power to decide how much we want to put into this novel. Carroll just sits back, with the knowing smirk he displays on the back cover, and waits for us to make our own decisions.

I've only read two books by Jonathan Carroll so far, this one and The Voice of Our Shadow. This is my favorite of the two, mainly because Voice of Our Shadow is closer to being a true horror novel. And I don't usually read horror. But Sleeping in Flame is one of the finest fantasies I've ever read-- Extremely fine. Consider this: The hero of Sleeping in Flame has professional ties to the movie industry. As the story begins, he's walking down a city street when he looks back. A strange little man is trying to run him down on a bicycle! The story becomes one of self discovery for the hero as he tries to unravel the mystery of the strange little guy. Typical? Nope. This Carroll guy has one truly strange story in mind, and the vision to inject it with some of the most wonder-filled moments ever. Good luck guessing the end to this twisty maze!

This is my favourite book of his and I have read them all--over and over again. The first half of the book will have you liking the characters, wishing you could meet them and go for coffee. They are nice but not too nice-nerdy; they love but not too stupidly. Then the second half begins and you are in Carroll-land. He is so good at what he does and he is also very nice (has a web-site) I realize that he's going into another 'genre' which is not as magical but his talent IS the magic. When I am ill in the hospital, I bring his books--they are so readable and ethereal. Love him and hope to get the next book coming out soon in 2001!

I've been looking for some new books to read, and when I ran across rave reviews of Jonathan Carroll's novels, I hoped I'd found an author I would really enjoy. "Land of Laughs" is the first Carroll book I've read.

It was an enjoyable read, and held my attention, but it was neither as clever nor creative as I'd expected after reading the other reviews. The dialogue seemed stilted to me, and the plot was a variation on a theme I've read many other times.

Still, it's an impressive first novel, and I can tell he's an author who writes the sorts of books I particularly like to read. I'm looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

Ok, firstly there isn't a Jonathan Carroll book that isn't good. And I mean that. No, I'm not his publisist, and no, I don't run the Jonathan Carroll web site. I am just a 23 year old avid reader, that once I read one of his books ('The Marriage of Sticks'), I had to go out, and buy all of them, by whatever means neccesary. The fact that people on average haven't heard of him, is to me incomprehendable. He is going to go down in history of one of this centurys greatest writers. The Land Of Laughs, Jonathans first novel, is a story that begins in grounded reality, and slowly slides into the realm of fantasy, just as Alice fell through the looking glass, you will find yourself on a similar journey. If you like books that treat you with respect as a reader, and understand that we the reader like to be taken somewhere new, and origional, then buy this book. If you don't like it, you won't like any other of his novels, If you do like it, get ready to spend hours on e-bay tracking them down. Oh and by the way, when you do start bidding, look out for me, I'll be right behind you. If you are wondering why I'm not giving you a plot rundown, it is because Amazon quite cleverly put it at the top of this page, and I'm not into regurgitation. If you like this book, check out Graham Joyce 'Dreamside', and a writer called China Mieville (could be spelt wrong), he wrote 'Perdido Street Station'. Happy reading.

I first starting getting into Jonathan Carroll when I read "After Silence" and was delighted to have found such an original and engaging author. Needless to say this was followed by disappointment when I realised how much of his work was out of print and difficult to obtain, so I was delighted to read on Amazon.com that "The Land of Laughs" was to be reprinted.

This story, like most of Carroll's work, starts out set firmly in the real world, but as it progresses the boundaries of experience are shifted, until it becomes mind-blowingly surreal. Somehow - and this is the true strength of Carroll's writing - I found myself accepting even the most outrageous ideas as if they were somehow natural and inevitable.

I must say that I didn't like the ending - not that it wasn't the right ending, or even the inevitable one, but I just didn't want it to end up like that for the characters involved ... or for the book to end at all, for that matter ...

I really like Alice in Wonderland and its sequel because it is so whimsical. The way Dodgson made fun of Alice so much makes one laugh until tears come pouring down. He based the character Alice, on his friend; a real life Alice. Throughout the book, he constantly makes references to her, or something related to her. For example, when a character asks her the exact day Alice replies May 4th. May 4th is the real life Alice's birthday. Alice walks through Wonderland, and she sees many strange things, but thinks otherwise. If you like poems, you will certainly like Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, for both books contain numerous poems. However, in the book Carroll takes the original poems and creates a parody out of them. Something interesting to know is that all the poems relate to the chapters. These are all minor details, but something to muse over. On the surface, Alice in Wonderland is a book where she meets weird creatures and walks away from them always feeling humiliated, as she thinks she is smarter than she really is. That is most of Alice in Wonderland.

Alice through the Looking Glass is similar to the prequel, yet glaringly different. The whole book revolves around a chess game, and so the character's actions correspond to moves on the chessboard. Alice joins in the game, starts out as a white pawn, and proceeds to move until she becomes a queen. At each square, she meets a new character, but in one chapter, characters from the previous book are in this one too. An important thing to know in this famous classic is that everything is backwards. It makes sense since Alice is on the other side of a mirror, yet she encounters difficulty sometimes in understanding this. But in the end, she manages to become a queen and to checkmate the red king. Both books are very enjoyable, and I strongly advocate both children and adults to read it. Enjoy!! Cheers!!!!! : )

If you long to be carried away to a world of nonsense and magic, talking beasts and flowers then Alice is the best tour guide you can employ. This is a book that will find a place close to the heart of a reader of any age that has a place inside reserved for whimsy and childlike wonder. As Alice travels through Wonderland and meets many unexpected characters your imagination will soar. Run a race with a dodo bird. Have tea with the doremouse and his friends the mad hatter and the march hare. Thrill at the "Jabberwocky". Alice proves to be a very level headed young lady indeed as she encounters things that become "curiouser and curiouser!" The story meanders through forests and chessboards that are life size never ceasing to amaze the reader with charm and wit. Lewis Carroll completed a masterpiece of fantasy and social comentary in this classic tale. The book is truly a gift to any one who hopes to hold onto childhoods magic.

Alice in Wonderland is a great book. It gets your imagination going. It all starts when Alice is sitting on a bank with her sister and falls asleep. From there it is all imagination and from there your imagination never stops. Alice lets her curiosity get the best of her so she finds herself falling down a long, black, well after following the white rabbit. She follows the rabbit because she heard it say "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Personally, I would have followed a talking rabbit also. After she hits the bottom of the well she finds all of these doors that she soon finds out are all locked. After she went around trying all of the doors she found a three legged table in the middle of the floor with a small gold key on it. The key was to small to fit any of the doors and she starts to wonder how she is going to get out of her. She then finds a curtain and she moves it. That's where she finds the door that the key fits. Once she opens the door she sees a beautiful garden but she is to large to fit in the door. Alice then finds a bottle marked "Drink Me" and when she drink it she shrinks. When she shrinks she noticed that she left the key on the table which now she is to small to get. Then she finds cookies that says "Eat Me" so of course Alice being as curiosity that she is she ate it. The cookie made her larger then what she was before. It made her so large that she got stuck. She started to cry which made her shrink once again. She cried so much that it caused a river of tears. Alice meets a lot of wonderful creatures and people during her adventure. She meets a caterpillar who gives her advice. She also meets the Duchess who has the Cheshire cat. Alice was confused about why the cat was smiling so she asked the Duchess. The Duchess said that he was a Cheshire cat and that it was supposed to smile. The Cheshire cat told Alice to go visit the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. The cat told her that she would love them because they were mad. Alice did as the cat told her and visited them where she sit down and had tea with them. Alice also meets the Queen of Hearts won is an evil person. The Queens tarts get stolen and she thinks Alice stole them. Alice has to go to court over this. The Queen loved to scream "Off with her head!" Alice is woke from her wonderful dream by her sister. Alice then starts to think about how her sister will be when she grows older. At the beginning when she first falls asleep it is hard to tell if she is dreaming so that is kind of confusing but otherwise this book is wonderful and very easy to read.

I loved Bones of the Moon for its imaginative and attention-grabbing storyline. I just thought this book was one of the best I've read and I gobbled it up taking brief pauses to savor the taste. The real world and Rondua are both places that are vivid and a pleasure to find yourself in with the characters who are flesh out and have interesting tales to tell.
If I were to recommend one book by Jonathan Carroll this would be it.

This book is definately my favorite! It is just so, so well written. When you read about the dreams, with the wooden mice and Sizzling Thumb, you'll feel like Carroll stole them from them from your own subconscious. And the strange, winding plot just pulls everything together so well. After reading Bones, I found myself falling asleep expectantly waiting for my own Rondua.

This is truly an incredible book. Have you ever wondered if what you dreamed was real in some other world? Can you imagine the thrilling possibilities -- and the danger? If you are fascinated by the dissolution of the line between fantasy and reality, this book is a must-read.

Cullen James' wonderful-yet-ordinary life takes a turn for the strange when she starts having dreams about a fantastic land called Rondua and a young boy named Pepsi. As the dreams become more vivid and commanding, Cullen learns that Pepsi is the child she aborted years ago. From that point on, the dreams weave themselves tighter and tighter into Cullen's waking life, until the two cannot be separated and survival in "reality" absolutely depends on success in Rondua.

Jonathan Carroll takes your weirdest mental flights of fancy and makes them real. Anything can happen, and nowhere is "safe".

Long time readers of my commentaries know of my fondness for Jonathan Carroll. He's one of the authors who I try to collect in first edition hardbacks, and I've even written an article in which I attempted to critically assay his entire ouvre. So when I say I enjoyed Carroll's latest, no one is surprised.

Trying to describe why I like Carroll's writing, however, I find myself somewhat tongue-tied. I tried to pinpoint in my article, "The Importance of Details," as a level of description that he perfectly captures, just the right amount of intimate knowledge of his characters that draws a reader in. Sometimes these details are extraordinary, sometimes mundane, but they are never uninteresting.

Thinking about it, I realize that I did leave something out of the article that explains a large part of the draw of his novels for myself. I guess I thought it obvious in context, yet I should explicitly state it--Carroll's novels are fantasies that have a basis in reality. Unlike some fantasy novels whose entire purpose is action/adventure, Carroll's stories are serious studies into the nature of being human through the analogy of the fantastic. The difference is like comparing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to something like "Bladerunner." While both are well-made films starring Harrison Ford jumping about, one is simply a fun-filled rollercoaster, while the other asks "what is it to be human?" Only one truly lingers in the mind's eye.

From the Teeth of Angels is the last (supposedly) of the interconnected novels that began with Bones of the Moon, and it shows its thematic basis a little more so than others, as if Carroll was dashing this one off without veiling his purpose as much as he did in other books. It just doesn't take very long for you to figure out that From the Teeth of Angels is about Death. Carroll has side-swiped the issue in other books (specifically, Philip Strayhorn's suicide in A Child Across the Sky), but herein he tackles it headon. The premise is simple and silly out of context--what if you could ask questions of Death, yet suffer consequences if you don't understand the answers? A bizarre concept, yet Carroll makes it work because you believe in his characters, and once you believe in them, you believe in what is happening to them.

This got me to thinking about themes. What are the different ideas associated with the "Rondua" books? From the Teeth of Angels can only be about Death--it permeates the book. Bones of the Moon is about Guilt, I believe, specifically the guilt of a terminated relationship (in the extreme case there of an abortion). After Silence is about Trust, although it could be about Time as well. I think Trust because of the opening with the cartoonist wondering about his new girlfriend, and trying to gain the trust of her young son. The ending throws that theme off just slightly. Outside the Dog Museum, probably my pick for the worst of the lot, is about Glory. Carroll tries hard to portray the search for wonder, but when he separates it from conflict, it doesn't work quite as well. I'm not sure about Sleeping in Flame, Black Cocktail or A Child Across the Sky. I'll have to think on them. Perhaps it's time to write another article?

Does Death have more power over us than we have have over Death? This is the question Carroll tries to answer in this great book.

When we near the ends of our lives, sometimes Death allows us to ask questions of him, but beware what you ask because if you don't understand the answer it will cost you... And possibly the people around you. This is the story of Ian McGann, a travel agent from London; Wyatt, aka Finky Linky the TV clown of children's hearts; Sophie, the widow and best friend of Wyatt who drags him to Europe as he is dying of leukemia; Arlen Ford, the retired actress who left her career at it's peak to live in Vienna; Rose, her best friend; Sophie's brother and sister-in-law. Death enters their lives in different ways and it comes around full circle as their stories intertwine when a photojournalist takes a break from Yugoslavia and visits Vienna and leads to the understanding of who we really are.

Carroll's prose brings these peoples' lives into your life and as is usually the case with his books, we leave with a new insight to ourselves.

While not as pleasant a read as Carroll's BONES OF THE MOON, FROM THE TEETH OF ANGELS is one of Carroll's best-written novels. A friend couldn't finish it because the protagonist is stricken with AIDS and has friends facing death as well. One of the more interesting devices is Death as a character, and the portrayal isn't the usual, somewhat flattering picture. Carroll shows death as petty, a liar and cheat. While not an easy book to read, it is immensely rewarding.

Having begun reading Carroll at the beginning, I found "Land of Laughs" to be very entertaining, with a natural, gradual, though late-beginning integration of the supernatural element into the story. Surprises encountered along the way only deepened that integration, as if periodically, the reader is made to see, "Ok, it's even more than that." The sense of something being wrong is pulled along and twisted this way and that until at the end, with the necessary understanding possessed by the hero (and the reader) at last, the final turns of the story result in what can appropriately be termed a denoument, with an accompanying, bonus twist of sorts added on.

Newly impressed by this author whom I'd heard and read much about, and liking authors often grouped with him (and since his books take about two days to read), I picked up a few more novels. What I found, for the most part, and "Voice of Our Shadow" is the prime example, is what amounts to a bunch of shaggy-dog stories. Notwithstanding the overwhelming similarity of the first-person narrative voices in Carroll's books, whether male or female, the main problem seems to be the sufficiency, for Carroll, in simply revealing a magical element to said narrative. One gets an intimate life story with a supernatural element creeping in roughly halfway through the story, and then there is a big revelation near the end, and that's all. The very existence of the magical element is the sum total of the reason for the existence of the story. In "Bones of the Moon," it's "Oh, her dream-world impinges on reality;" and here, it's "Oh, right, if there's one dead person who's 'returned' there can be another." That is all. One couldn't meaningfully say that we are forced to reevaluate what has gone before, any more than we search for deeper meaning once someone has concluded telling us a joke. The twist is just that and nothing more; any reevaluation of what has gone before is one and the same with recognition of the surprise. Most importantly, nothing takes place afterward, so there is no subsequent development of plot or hero, and we are left with only the dull idea that things will be different now. All of this only underscores the shaggy-dog structure of his middle novels. Beyond even this is the fact that in "Voice of Our Shadow," the final shock does nothing to change the hero's predicament, it is merely a redundant twist on his story.

Some of Carroll's later works, like "The Marriage of Sticks," which is even more similar than usual to "Sleeping in Flame," at least are wrapped more vividly in a package of self-revelation, with a more gradual, suspenseful working-out of the mysteries surrounding the hero's (self-) discoveries. But the stories, and problems with them, remain. The heroes are flawed, emotionally needy people, and are magically taught a lesson about who they are. It is unfortunate that someone who showed as much promise as Carroll, and who, it must be fair, still shows flashes of his ability, has essentially become a factory for "product," churning out increasingly familiar and redundant work. So do not read this one, and instead begin with "The Land of Laughs" and proceed cautiously from there.

This is a wonderfully original and understated novel: a coming-of-age story with a mystery at its heart, embellished with fantasy elements that become stronger and more integral as the book heads to its conclusion. Unlike much fantasy writing these days, there's no unnecessary padding here; rather, you're left wanting more.

The setting (predominantly Vienna) is evoked with a nicely economic style, while the (few) characters come to life naturally through their words and actions. The creeping unease builds gradually, and is never overdone - and the ending packs a considerable punch. I enjoyed it immensely, although if you like your fiction strictly explicable and grounded in reality you may find some of the developments a touch difficult to swallow.

This recently came back into print in the UK; if you can get hold of a copy, do: you can read it in an evening and you won't be disappointed.

Having read and enjoyed Outside The Dog Museum, I sat down with this book one Sunday evening knowing nothing about it except author and title - I didn't even read the back cover. And I did not leave my chair until I had finished. Seriously. Riveting, suspenseful, unexpected: few books have drawn me in to this extent.