Closing the final pages of Ronald Frames' novel THE LANTERN BEARERS calls forth a spectrum of emotion: sadness that this wondrous novel is finished, awe for the genius quality of writing, profound respect for a writer who can so intuitively understand the processes of music making/collaboration/relationship dissections, and despair for the simple mistakes we all have made that can result in ruin and even death of others.

At the inception of this book Frame places the narrator of this tale of adolescent social, hormonal, emotional, discovery of love, foraging self, writhing into the threats of adulthood, and ultimately the meaning of taking responsibility for actions, in the body of a cancer stricken adult who seeks atonement for a misled life by writing the penultimate biography of one Euan Bone, a composer of importance who died surrounded by mystery.

With this intriguing introduction Frame takes us back to a summer when the narrator served as apprentice and collaborator with a composer while on a summer hiatus from a strained family home in Glasgow. In this short time Neil (our 14 year old narrator) discovers the magic of music, learns the intricacies of composition, of gay relationsips, of his own awakening of sexuality, only to have that tenuous bridge to adulthood betray his new world as his voice changes from child to man. His value to the composer at an end, Neil begins to stalk his hero and ultimately is driven to create a vicious lie of child molestation which he watches burgeon into the ultimate death of his beloved hero.

While some authors would need at least 500 pages to sort out all the implications and embellishments such a bizarre tale might require, Frame's glorious mastery of words leads us steadily and compulsively through this story in a mere 224 pages, each page polished with thorough knowledge of music, of English and Scottish society, of literature, of regional terms and words that make this book so unique in flavor. There are moments when the nature of a fruitful relationship between two artists suggests Benjamin Britten/Peter Pears, Christopher Isherwood/Don Bachardy, et cetera. But that is only one aspect of this stunning masterwork. Yes, there are lessons richly deserving to be learned, insights into Scotland's beauties, hints of the creative forces in the minds of the blessed creators of the arts. But mentioning these only grazes the surface of what to me is one of the finest books written in the last decade. This book deserves a very wide audience. By all means READ THIS!

There was nothing to mar your days, if you were a boy summering in that part, but the embarrassment of pleasure. You might golf if you wanted; but I seemed to have been better employed.' [Robert Louis Stevenson, 'The Lantern-bearers,' in 'Across the Plains.' London: Chattus & Windus, 1892.] In the summer of 1962, these words could have conveyed the sentiments of Neil Pritchard, a 14-year-old Glasgow youth who was vacationing with his Aunt Nessie at her home in Auchendrennan, a seaside village in the southwestern corner of Scotland that was also home to composer Euan Bone and his partner, cellist Douglas Maitland. Mr. Bone had been setting the words of this Stevenson essay to music, and he had engaged Neil to assist him in the task. Neil lent more to the composition than his soprano voice, however, as he soon became muse to Bone.

The story actually started thirty-five years hence, when Neil met with a publisher in an upscale Kensington restaurant to discuss his proposal that Neil write a biography of a composer who had died in 1963. It was to be 'an honest account. Provocative, if need be.' Neil had other business to attend to in London before he flew back to his home in Rome; he consulted an intestinal specialist who imparted the sad news that Neil was dying from inoperable cancer. The irrefutable evidence of his x-rays prompted Neil to accept the publisher's offer because 'I had to set the record straight. I had to unblock my memory, I had to make my atonement. Two ghosts from long ago had to be laid to rest.'

'The Lantern Bearers' by Ronald Frame is a dark tale of obsessive love and betrayal. It's a moody coming-of-age story of a gay adolescent in a class society; it's set in Scotland, but it could be anywhere. The narrative is spare, but it's sprinkled with colorful Scotticisms - not a word is wasted, and no more words are needed.

Neil was at the liminal age of being part boy and part man, and his experiences that summer were to haunt him for the remainder of his life. His sexuality was awakening, and he described his ambivalent feelings by saying, ' 'Masturbation'. 'Homosexual'. There was an association in my mind.' But his recollection of a movie theatre flasher belied the insights that he had gained from observing the lives of his new acquaintances: 'I knew what Maitland and Bone were, even though I didn't understand all that the condition entailed. What I chiefly realised was that the pair were different, they didn't live by the precepts of ordinary people, but didn't go out of their way to offend them either. They had fashioned their own world, observing their own values, which they protected as something apart but to which they had a perfect right.' As Neil's voice had cracked and changed, so did the world around him. In an attempt to prevent his home life from unraveling, he told his father a lie that would have dire consequences.

About halfway through this page-turner, I decided to look up Robert Stevenson's 'The Lantern-bearers' on the Internet, because the novel's narrative is spliced together with words from this short essay, along with Neil's reflections on them. It was quite easy to find the full text; it was part of a larger work entitled 'Across the Plains.' I enjoyed rereading it as I finished the book. For, as Neil said, '[t]here was no proper narrative. In the essay, Stevenson had offered poetic prose descriptions. Bone was locating his drama in the continual shifts and contrasts of tone, the counterpointing of moods, veering and tacking over and over again.' The essay told a story of boys who had attached 'toasted tinware' candle lanterns to cricket belts worn on their waists and concealed beneath buttoned-up overcoats. 'By their lanterns the boys will know one another; they are bonded in a brotherhood by the shared secret of what they carry under their coats hidden from view.' I found this image hard to visualize until I happened to come across a reproduction of 'The Lantern Bearers,' a 1908 oil painting by Maxfield Parrish that portrayed a more fanciful rendering of a similar scene. Of course, the image is metaphorical, too, but Stevenson's descriptive prose makes one want to picture such a phenomenon.

As an author of eleven previous books, Mr. Frame shows a mastery here of the art of writing fiction about music, composers, and composition. I'm not a musician and not able to attest to the authenticity of this aspect to the story, but composer Ned Rorem has given it high praise. Mr. Frame allows the reader to climb inside his characters' skulls, thereby becoming part of the artistic and creative process of musical composition, to experience the joys and frustrations that accompany such an endeavor. 'The Lantern Bearers' is a worthy successor to the works of Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock, and it won the Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year in 2000.

Landsburg hits the nail on the head with this book. I was looking for a short and to the point explanation of economics for the benefit of my 17 year old daughter when I picked up this book and found that and more. His premise is that "people respond to incentives and the rest is just commentary." Landsburg takes off from there and explains economic concepts with simple but apt examples and deflates quite a few myths in the process(using no formulas or complicated math in his presentation but including endnotes with references for readers inclined to look behind the words).

College students would do well to read through this book before plunging into macro- or micro- economics because it puts the theory into perspective with real world examples and stories. Everyone else can benefit from having a better understanding of how our economy works.

I highly recommend this book as informative, thoughtfully written, and thoroughly entertaining.

Steven Landsburg's book, The Armchair Economist, is a simply written but deeply effective primer on the economic way of thinking. I my own self am a free-market radical, and, while I don't agree with everything Mr. Langsburg writes, his views are overwhelmingly on target. Want to know why movie popcorn costs so much? The "obvious" answer is wrong. Are you happy when your senator provides your area with a road project? You really shouldn't be that excited about it. Even the most absurd notions (Unemployment is good! Recycling is bad!) are hard to refute once you get the basics of economics down. Mr. Landsburg writes that economics can be largely defined in one terse sentence: people respond to incentives. If everyone in America knew how much that makes sense, I can guarantee 90% of our nation's (and world's) social ills would be eliminated.

I used to tell people that if everyone read the first few chapters of a standard economics textbook, the world would be better off. The same holds true for this book.

If you're remotely interested in economics, you should read this book; it's a hoot.

Not too many books on economics could be described as a "hoot." But Steven Landsburg, an economics professor at the University of Chicago when he wrote this book (now he's at the University of Rochester), has a delightfully sharp sense of humor and a gift for clear, logical exposition. He also doesn't in the least mind naming names when it comes to egregious economic fallacies and the people who commit them: he keeps a "Sound and Fury file" consisting of economic gaffes from the op-ed pages and he devotes a chapter to exposing the culprits.

His theme is easily stated, and he states it on the first page: the substance of economic science is that people respond to incentives. "The rest," he writes in deliberate imitation of Rabbi Hillel, "is commentary."

Landsburg fills the rest of the book with such commentary. His witty and occasionally sarcastic exposition deals neatly with such topics as why recycling paper doesn't really save trees; why certain statistics are not reliable measures of the "income gap" between rich and poor; why the GNP is not an especially accurate measure of national wealth; why unemployment isn't necessarily a bad thing; why taxes _are_ a bad thing; why real economists don't care about what's "good for the economy" or endorse the pursuit of monetary profit apart from personal happiness; and lots of other points that will no doubt be profoundly irritating to people who just _know_ he _can't possibly_ be right.

For example, Landsburg is delightfully allergic to the claims of the "environmental" movement and recognizes it quite clearly as a strongly moralistic religion. And contrary to the opinions of some not terribly careful readers, he does distinguish firmly between the actual harm caused by pollution and the psychic harm caused by (e.g.) the use of automobiles to people who object in principle to such technology.

Interestingly, Landsburg recognizes a problem here for his own cost-benefit approach: if economic efficiency with regard to utilitarian/consequentialist goods and bads were really the whole story, he notes, he should care about _both_ the physical harm and the psychic harm, and yet he doesn't.

Which leads neatly into the other notable feature of this volume: Landsburg is stunningly forthright about the nature -- and the limits -- of cost-benefit analysis. Unlike some economists who like to pretend such analysis is value-free and involves no commitment to any particular view of morality, Landsburg is clear that cost-benefit analysis is quite unambiguously committed to one particular moral outlook (which he characterizes and describes very neatly). And he is keenly aware of its limitations, though he is not at all confident about what should replace it.

The problem, roughly, is this (the following characterization is mine, not his). As Landsburg notes several times, cost-benefit analysis does not regard "theft" as a cost, since it merely transfers existing stuff from one person to another; society is no worse off on net after the theft than before it. (Of course theft entails _further_ costs that _do_ leave society worse off, but that's not the point here.) Economics, as Landsburg describes it, looks only at _outcomes_ and not at how we got to them. And even at that, it looks only at one abstract feature of such outcomes, namely, how much "good" there is in the aggregate.

And yet most of us would say that "society" _is_ somehow worse off after a theft -- that there is some sort of "moral cost" involved in the theft itself quite apart from its further consequences, and that it makes a difference whose "good" is rightfully achieved or acquired and whose is not. (Some of us might even say that there is something illegitimate in comparing the thief's gain to the victim's loss in the first place.) In ordinary moral discourse, it matters very much how we arrived at a given state of affairs.

If so, then economic science has two choices (this is still my opinion, not his). (1) It can throw those "moral costs" into the mix and deal with "rights and wrongs" in the same way it deals with "goods and bads." In that case, the total "good" will take account of the number and quality of right acts vs. wrong acts. (2) It can ignore those "moral costs" and continue as before.

In either case, economic science _as Landsburg presents it_ is simply insufficient as a guide to policy decisions. (Landsburg tends to acknowledge this, maintaining only that cost-benefit analysis is an important _part_ of whatever it is we need to make policy decisions.) And it is certainly not -- as Landsburg also recognizes in a wonderfully forthright chapter -- sufficient as a guide to personal conduct.

So this volume gets five stars even though Landsburg doesn't have much to say about what should supplement cost-benefit analysis. It's a terrific introduction to economic thinking genreally, and it's also a clear and frank recognition of the limitations of such thinking at least as practiced by many mainstream economists.

The book i read was bruce covilles book of ghosts it has many different stories. some are funny and some are wierd other books by bruce coville are book of monsters, book of aliens, and book of nightmares my favorite story is ghost stories. its about a ghost that was cursed to stay in a house until a soul has told him a man had walked on the moon. i would rate this book a 9 out of 10 and would recomend to anyone

Over all this book is good. If you read a few stories at night they're scary. A few are outdated or drag on and on. It's a tie between if the first one is better than this one. I recomend it to anyone who is a fan of ghost stores.

I'm a real Bruce Coville fan, and this book was a disappointment for me. I don't know exactly why I disliked it so much, but I did. I think it might of had something to do with the characters. Bonnie, the heroine, is a little slow and just not that likable. Also this book focused allot on future telling and things like that, and I have this thing against that type of stuff. I sure that lots of people will enjoy this book, but I felt like sharing my opinion with the world. If you were thinking of buying this book, don't let this review stop you.

This book was very good although it was a little confusing at times. I found it very interesting and thought it had a good story plot.

I have been reading books by Bruce Coville since I was in second grade, and I think that he is a great author for children. Now, this book certainly wasn't his best, but it was up there. I would recommend this to any child who has an interest in science fiction.

What can you say about Bruce Coville? He's been writing science fiction books for kids for years, and each one has been uniquely different, in its own way. This one is no different. Quite funny, both for kids and their parents. I'd recommend it for anyone who's ever read anything by Mr. Coville or would like to.

Each short story is like a Twilight Zone episode and most not for those given to nightmare. Fine stories but be warned, some will truely give one the willys.

Do not waste your time reading Ralph J. Acampora's book. It is another way Mr. Acampora is trying to make money is today's world. When will he have enough?

I read a lot of investment material and this is the first time I have heard of the concept of a "mega-market". Mr. Acampora provides interesting comparisons to prior mega-markets with very brief lessons in technical analysis. He has made a boring subject interesting and uses a lot of personal examples. I think it takes guts to go out on a limb to highlight a phenomenon and to have in print that you predict that this bull market will run through 2011. This is even more corageous considering he finished this book during the present market turmoil. I don't find this to be vanity but more of a desire to share his knowledge with others. You are not going to learn all the details of technical analysis, but reading his book gave me the confidence to contiue investing in this bear market.

Unlike several current books about the stock market that I've read, Mr. Acampora chooses not to make incredible Dow predictions but rather presents an excellent historical and technical argument for investor optimism. He explains the social and technology backdrop of prior robust market eras and shows the reader why everything is in place for a grand future. Bear markets and the periodic deflation of speculation are a natural occurence in the course of a bull mega-market. If anything, this book will build your confidence as a long term investor and support a committment to stay in the market during the current severe stock correction. Mr. Acampora addresses the current market and puts it in a historical context and that I found very informative. The book is very well written and I have no doubt this is due to the collaboration with Michael D'Antonio who put his Pulitzer Prize winning writing skills to work here. You don't have to learn much technical analysis to enjoy this book. Mr. Acampora makes a solid and easily understood case for it but, in my mind, his inate integrity, sense of history, and long experience find an intuitive expression through that venue. At first I was going to rate this book a 4 but after some thought upgraded to a 5 because the book's understated style truely provides a thoughtful and informative experience that will benefit the investor. Highly recommended.

Dreadful wannabe action movie attempts every cliché hurdle and falls every time. Only partially relieved by several unintentionally hilarious set pieces... the toilet elevator kidnap, the (completely unerotic) sex scene featuring Peter Weller's socks, the wet-towel-on-head ploy and the HUGE amount of noise made by our heroes as they attempt to sneak through the air ducts. Oh I forgot the laser beam/pocket mirror scene!

Oh, and the Pentagon Chiefs of Staff/NSA - the least believable casting ever. Check out the guy with the suit three sizes too big ...

Poor Tom Berenger. They can't have shown him the complete script.

For those who have a abiding reason to support the Rumanian government (who seems to have written it - Nearly every actor, down to the US Ambassador, is a Rumanian, and the credits list pages of Government offices who supported it), buy it. For all others, rent it once, and then only if you happen to have been stationed overseas at an Embassy. Besides the abysmal writing, the high-school level acting, and the plot with holes so big you could drive a movie through it, the movie has few redeeming qualities other than the vision of an Embassy that was really run like that.

You have been warned ;^P

The movie is awful, the dialog abuse against the cast, but...

...if you happen to be assigned to the (real - not the movie) US Embassy in Bucharest, and happen to be the real technical security officer (computers, alarms, and such), and just happen to have offices in the basement (where the mythical nuclear bomb is) - well, the movie is simply a scream! Boy, if only Daryl Hannah would come down to the basement and visit me some time...

I tell you, reality can never match Hollywood (either for shear moron stupidity or pure exaggeration). Not recommended unless you've been posted here, and really need to get a laugh about the old place!