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Book reviews for "Jack,_Ian" sorted by average review score:

Stop Working & Start Thinking: A Guide to Becoming a Scientist
Published in Paperback by Stanley Thornes Pub Ltd (2000)
Authors: Jack Cohen, Graham Medley, and Ian Stewart
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Buy this book, adopt this book, recommend this book!
I can thoroughly recommend this small but extremely valuable book. There is a mass of literature and expertise for all the equipment, chemicals and materials students will encounter during the course of their research but there is nothing equivalent for the most important piece of equipment, the mind!

This book attempts to provide that by persuading the reader to take a step back from the humdrum or obvious and look at their projects from beginning to end, even before it is begun!

There are real-life examples (I had great fun trying out the puzzles) that encourage the ability to ask the right questions and highlight the pitfalls so often encountered in scientific investigation. You'll be amazed at what you learn and how easily you can avoid unnecessary work. By the time you have read this book you should have a great understanding of the reality of experimental investigation: from design of experiments, through analysis and interpretation of data to presentation of results.

Buy this book, adopt this book, recommend this book!


Wuthering Heights
Published in Paperback by Oxford University Press (1995)
Authors: Emily Bronte and Ian Jack
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A great read!
This book is a classic! It is strong drama that captures your attention. It is worth reading.


A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick: With the Journal to Eliza and a Political Romance (Oxford World's Classics)
Published in Paperback by Oxford University Press (1998)
Authors: Laurence Sterne and Ian Jack
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Brilliant. Absolutely hillarious satire
Sterne befuddles and delights readers and critics alike in A Sentimental Journey. He takes the fashionable travel log of the time and satarizes it. Contemporary critics had a fit over its supposedly bawdy nature, yet some modern readers may over look its sublte innuendo. The form of the novel is quite unlike anything that had preceeded it, thus is important for any scholars. Most importanly, however, the book is funny and fun to read.

Only clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can resist it
A Sentimental Journey is a fabulous book for so many reasons. Laurence Sterne was an immensely influential writer in the 18th century--his major works, Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, were responses to the travel narrative and newly born novel, respectively. His writing is essential to scholars of the 18th century--he is referenced in Austen's Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, Brown's The Power of Sympathy, Foster's The Coquette and Tyler's The Contrast. To understand and appreciate his novel is to have a better appreciation and love of the works that built their structures on his foundation. And yet it is original, as Yorick says himself, "both my travels and observations will be altogether of a different cast from any of my fore-runners."

Yet it is not solely for historical benefit that one should read Sentimental Journey. The adventures and amours of Sterne's semi-autobiographical Yorick are delightful. One of the most romantic passages I've read in a book occurs when Yorick inadvertantly takes the hand of a woman and describes in detail the thrill of merely holding it. Granted, hers is not the only hand he will hold, but he writes so wonderfully, candidly and engagingly that it is extremely difficult to hold his passions against the sentimental Yorick. His scene with the starling locked in a cage is pertinent and a touching commentary on slavery. What a guy! My only complaint is the editor of this edition does not feel it necessary to translate the French-of which there is plenty-making some passages difficult to understand at best. However,this is a sentimental journey that I will gladly take over and over.

The amorous adventures of a gentleman in 18th century France
This autobiographical acount by Sterne of his amorous progress through France and Northern Italy is surely one of the most delightful books ever written. Composed as he lay dying of tuberculosis, the book nonetheless encaptures the author's renowned zest for life as well as the libertine spirit of the age in which he lived. The journey down through France to Northern Italy is the perfect vehicle for an excursion into the nature of human sensibility, and from the moment that this cultured Anglo-Irish cleric sets foot in Calais, the reader is treated to a seies of exquisite encounters with the fairer sex. Rarely has an author transmitted so well his understanding of the psychological complexity of women, or the pleasure he takes in their company. Engaging, perceptive and witty, this is a book whiich cannot fail to leave an imprint on the imagination.


Touch the Devil
Published in Audio Cassette by Dh Audio (1986)
Authors: Jack Higgins and Ian Holm
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Fast Paced
With a Jack Higgins book you always get a fast paced, easy to read book. He always gets the correct mix of historical facts and a new story line to make his books some of the best of the class. The thing with Higgins is that he probably is not going to go down in history as one of the best writers ever, but the stories are so good with enough action to make you lose track of time. You have fun reading this book and I bet that if this is the first of his books you read you will start to hunt down other works of his. This book is worth the time.

Nice background on some of Higgins' main characters.
This book centers around three men: Former IRA gunmen Liam Devlin, Martin Brosnan and Frank Barry. Devlin is now semi-retired, working as a professor of English Literature at Trinity College in Dublin. Brosnan is in an island jail off the French coast for shooting a policeman during an IRA arms deal. Barry is now working as a gun-for-hire to various left-wing European terrorist groups, and sometimes the KGB.

After he attempts to kill the British Foreign Secretary on a visit to France, the Prime Minister decides Barry must be dealt with, once and for all. Group 4, the PM's special missions unit headed by Brigadier Charles Ferguson, is given the task.

Ferguson enlists the aid of Devlin and, after he breaks out of the prison, Brosnan, in the mission. There is personal bad blood between Brosnan and Barry. The final confrontation is the best part of the book, when Barry tries to escape England with a stolen rocket-launcher prototype and Brosnan and Devlin hot on his heels.

This book would be enjoyable for Higgins fans, because the characters have either appeared in other Higgins books, or (in the case of Barry) been alluded to. It's nice to get some background on Brosnan, and it makes his actions in "Eye of the Storm" more clear and understandable.

But Barry is the most interesting character. He's Sean Dillon, only less charming and more cold-blooded. The relationship between Barry and Dillon was hinted at in "Eye of the Storm," where Dillon refers to Barry as sort of his mentor. That relationship is interesting, and I would like to see Higgins devote an entire book to it, because I think it could work well.

I would also like Higgins to give us some more background on the time in the late-60s/early-70s when Devlin, Brosnan, Barry, and Dillon were all in the IRA together. Hopefully he'll put out a book on that, too.

As for "Touch the Devil," if you're a Higgins fan, you'll like it. If you're not, it's a good introduction to some of his main characters, but not his best book. I recommend "Eye of the Storm" as an introducition to Higgins, because it'll get you hooked and coming back for more.

He has been called ther master by Clancy I understand why.
I have read all of the books by Jack Higgins. He is the master of world war II espionage and puts his history knowledge in every book he writes. I have read all of the books. This is a true grabber. Un-down-putable!


C Unleashed (Unleashed)
Published in Paperback by Sams (07 July, 2000)
Authors: Richard Heathfield, Lawrence Kirby, Mike Lee, Mathew Watson, Ben Pfaff, Dann Corbit, Peter Seebach, Brett Fishburne, Scott Fluhrer, and Ian Woods
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Would not recommend it.
I found this book to be very poorly written and unsatisfactory. It contained lots of bad algorithms and poor coding. Much of the code was unusable and the methods explained were very simple. I could have done without it to be honest. Avoid this book if you want to learn how to program properly

Like an orange...
Im not an advaced programmer, but reading some parts... I learned a lot of good things. I couldnt describe them here, but i will implement them on the future projects ahead. Things that I think are essential to the industry grade programmer and to becoming one.
The material was delivered clearly, not necessarily simple... but it is clear. The book is worth all my hard saved money... and im glad to have it, and its fun to read too...

Recommended Reading for Advanced C Programmers
When seeking a reference, most experienced programmers will rather buy a reference that focuses more on the advanced issues than the language concepts itself. Mainly because almost all decent compilers come with extensive help files that cover most of what the programmers might need regarding the language itself. This book doesn't explain much about C, but instead uses C as a tool to explain some very useful issues that are crucial to almost all advanced programmers.

The book wastes no space on trivial stuff like how to open your compiler or use a non-standard C function. Instead, it goes directly into what's important, explaining the concepts and giving concrete examples where appropriate, all using ANSI C.

Since most of the issues aren't dependant on the implementation schemes, almost any advanced programmer would benefit from this book, even if he/she is not programming in C (assuming advanced knowledge of C, of course). The only exceptions are the topics that talk about the ANSI C rules and code organization and optimization. The only disadvantage here is that this book doesn't cover object oriented concepts, but that's not a surprise of course as the book is titled "C Unleashed." But still for anything else other than that, this could be a great help even to C++ programmers.

The book chapters have been written by more than 10 experienced programmers, 6 of them are really good, which makes each chapter standalone as a small tutorial on some issue. The writing style of Richard Heathfield and many of the co-authors is very nice to read and clear to understand. Some parts, of course, do not have that nice writing style, but throughout the book, the technical information is very clear and easy to comprehend.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any new programmers. But for the more advanced ones, this is something they would want to check.

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid


Figments of Reality : The Evolution of the Curious Mind
Published in Hardcover by Cambridge University Press (1997)
Authors: Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
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Your mind is a figment of reality...
How could a game with such simple rules, such as evolution by natural selection, produce such complexity? Well, chess has simple rules and we still don't know a sure-fire way to play and win every game. The idea that simple rules may interact to produce wonderful complexity-"simplexity"-is only one of the brain-bending ideas authors Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart gush forth with in this rich and entertaining popular science book. The flip side of "simplexity" is "complicity"-a game where the very act of playing the game changes the rules. Hmm...this looks like evolution again! It's a wonderful exploration of the science behind evolution cast into many different allegories and scenarios, including comical heated discussions among the eight-sexed Zarathustrans, an invention of the authors that does beautifully at reflecting our own egocentric assumptions about the nature of reality -- and the figments of reality.

--Richard Brodie, author, VIRUS OF THE MIND: The New Science of the Mem

A fabulous exploration of the complexity of evolution
How could a game with such simple rules, such as evolution by natural selection, produce such complexity? Well, chess has simple rules and we still don't know a sure-fire way to play and win every game. The idea that simple rules may interact to produce wonderful complexity-"simplexity"-is only one of the brain-bending ideas authors Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart gush forth with in this rich and entertaining popular science book. The flip side of "simplexity" is "complicity"-a game where the very act of playing the game changes the rules. Hmm...this looks like evolution again! It's a wonderful exploration of the science behind evolution cast into many different allegories and scenarios, including comical heated discussions among the eight-sexed Zarathustrans, an invention of the authors that does beautifully at reflecting our own egocentric assumptions about the nature of reality -- and the figments of reality.

--Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme

Gets one thinking along new channels.
Okay, okay, I admit it; I should never argue with Steven Haines about a book. I had first discovered the title Figments of Reality while reading another author. When I finally got the book, though, I discovered that I really couldn't get into it, but Steven Haines' review was so enthusiastic that it suggested that the book might be worth the extra effort, so I tried again. I'm glad I did; it's a wonderful book. It is however, very dense with information, and like D. C. Dennett's books, requires a lot of active participation in the learning process.

Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen are a biologist and a mathematician team who have worked together to write a book on evolution; and not just biological evolution either. They discuss the origin of life, intelligence, consciousness, concepts of reality, social order, cities, and global civilization all within a 299 page volume.

Each chapter is opened with a charming quote, usually drawn from the lore of the behavioral sciences, that illustrates in capsule the content of the chapter. My favorites were the woman scientist and her chimpanzee subject, the viper with its "dead snake" pose, and the parrot whose protest over going through a boring word list made his intelligence far more apparent than reciting the list ever could.

Addressed in these chapters were some pretty heavy duty concepts. It's not that I hadn't come across them before in my reading, but that the authors' approach was novel, at least to me. Their treatment of the statistics of evolution and especially their analysis of the "Mitochondrial Eve" hypothesis were particularly enlightening. Until they likened it to the opening and ending moves of a chess game, with it's myriads of potential moves between beginning and end, I had not given much thought to how misleading are the cladal diagrams of evolutionary trees. They point out that the reductionist view, that looks for a core and a root to everything, is misleading because it neglects the total picture of what is going on in the environment and the emergent aspects of the interactive parts.

In the instance of the mitochondrial studies, they point out that a breeding population would probably have been at least 100,000 individuals, and the theory of 1 Eve and 99999 Adams, doesn't make much sense. As they note, it's much more likely that there were 50,000 of each gender, some of whom carried a particular stretch of DNA. Pointing out that there is a difference between the descent of a molecular sequence and the descent of a species they write, "Possibly there did exist a Mitochondrial Eve, but she is not the Mother of Us All: she represents a particular molecular sequence for mitochondrial DNA, embodied in a population of women possessing the molecule, from whom all modern mitochondrial DNA molecules descend (p. 88)."

More intriguing still was their discussion of complicity, which is a synergy among constituent parts that gives rise to unexpected results, sort of the old saw "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." They feel that this type of unpredictable interaction among complex variables is what has given rise to human consciousness and even to the group think that occurs in crowd behavior. As they write, "One of the universal features of complicity is the emergence of new patterns, new rules, new structures, new processes that were not present, even in rudimentary form, in the separate components (p. 245)." They note that a complicity between language and intelligence might have worked synergistically, in a lock step fashion, enhancing both characteristics and in combination with what they term "extelligence," the variously stored knowledge of generations of humans, may possibly have lead to consciousness and civilization.

In their comparison of cellular evolution and village/town evolution, they again appeal to a complicity among parts, in this case individuals-or more correctly among professions-that created towns from villages. As unspecialized bacteria specialized and commingled to form nucleated cells, the members of villages began to specialize and create a larger more resilient town and as that grew, cities.

The most unique concept they presented-at least not one I'd heard before-was the possible explanation for the god phenomenon. They suggest that someone, Abraham for instance, might have been impressed by the extelligence of the environment, that "something outside himself" that knew more than he did. As they write, "It is a very small step from 'There is Something out there' to 'There is a Being out there (P. 264).'"

Steven was right again. This is a wonderful book. It definitely gets one thinking along new channels.


The Science of Discworld
Published in Hardcover by Random House of Canada Ltd. (1999)
Authors: Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen
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$...?!
I love Pratchett and it's intriguing to think of a science book written by him but I'm not made of money.

A Brief History of the World
We are watching the wizards of Unseen University watching an Earth-like planet be created. Sounds complicated? Not really...
A brief, yet in-depth (I don't know how that can work, but it does) explanation on how it is currently believed out world works is nothing short of miraculous, especially due to the clarity in which it is explained. Interlaced with a story about the wizards' experiments with their new toy planet, this book is completely riveting and highly informative.

Fun and Frolic Through Physics and Beyond
What can I say? If you love Prachett, the wizards and have an open mind this one's for you! The science part of this book is written with humour and wit so it never sounds like one of your old college text books. The Discworld story that accompanies and introduces the science chapters is wonderful in and of itself. Putting them together in this book makes it one great educational read.


Jack Nicklaus: My Story
Published in Audio Cassette by Blackstone Audiobooks (1998)
Authors: Jack Nicklaus, Ken Bowden, and Ian Esmo
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One of the greatest tells his story
Insights into this champion and our time in golf will be read by the future generations through the Bear's eyes. Humble yet intense, this guy never quits. Especially enjoyed his sharing of what was going on inside with his famous finish at Turnberry in 1977. He's a guy you respect for his game and his person.

Very good book, hits all the highlights of his great career.
In fact, I have only very minor complaints about the book. One is that his "contributor", Bowden, uses some phrases ad nauseam. I don't know how many times we read that Jack finished the third round 3 shots "adrift" of the leader. Not trailing by three, or behind by three, but "adrift" by three. Using that term for variety is okay, but it's used to death. I think he's a golfer, not a sailor.

Again, though, that's a minor distraction that doesn't take away from the enjoyment of reading about the greatest.

An Incredibly Charming and Informative Book
Jack Nicklaus' career is one of the greatest in all sports. Especially famous are his 18 major victories (20 if you count the US Amateur), and this book is a story about those victories, and his life in between. His book is divided into 20 chapters - one for each of those major victories, and in them he discusses the events which transpired before that particular tournament, and the tournament itself. What a natural yet perfect structure for a book like this!

The best aspect of the book, I felt, was the immediacy with which Nicklaus writes. When you read this book you almost feel as if Nicklaus is talking to you, just yourself, at points.

Each chapter talks about a particular tournament and what happened before it. Particularly amazing is the clarity with which Nicklaus can recall those tournaments he describes. He describes individual key holes, what was going through his mind, and the general up and downs which accompany a round of golf. After reading this book, we know Nicklaus is a champion: he can win not only when he's up, but also when he's (to some extent) down. Also, as an interesting side note, Nicklaus also gives a few golfing tips - perhaps no one can become as great as him, but it never hurts to try!

And the last aspect of the book I found enjoyable were the photographs. True, they were black and white, but show how he changed over time, and chronicle some of the most memorable moments of his major career wins.

You come away more convinced than ever of Nicklaus' greatness. A great book to read anywhere, anytime.


The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World
Published in Paperback by Penguin USA (Paper) (1995)
Authors: Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart
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Disappointing
Not terribly impressive. The first two thirds of the book offer no new ideas, the authors just rehash material you'll find elsewhere. This part of the book spends *far* too much time on the subject of evolution and DNA in my opinion, perhaps because one of the co-authors is a biologist. How about cosmology or neurology, for example - both important fields in which low-level interactions give rise to high-level emergent behaviour ?

The final third of the book also fall a little flat, IMHO. The authors' grand insights seem trivial and unoriginal. One idea in particular seems to be 'borrowed' without acknowledgement from Douglas Hofstadter's amazing "Godel, Escher, Bach" : that a message and its context are inseparable (remember the dialogues with records and record players ?) I came away feeling distinctly un-enlightened.

One aspect that really annoyed me is the use of the awful hybrid words "simplexity" and "complicity", used to describe two quite different concepts. Every time they're used, the reader is left struggling to remember which word is which. I wish the authors had aimed for clarity, rather than playing silly word-games.

And finally, I have to mention the appalling design of the UK edition of this book. The type is far too small, and the cover (white text on bright yellow) is unreadable. There's a quote on the cover from Terry Pratchett, and his name is so prominent it honestly looks as though HE wrote the book. It is possibly the worst jacket design I've ever seen.

I really admired Ian Stewart's earlier books, but my advice is to avoid this one.

all they want to do is remake science
This is a witty and at times brilliant book. The authors argue that the reductionist approach to science, which has flourished over the last 300 years, for a more holistic or contrextual approach. In the reductionist approach, scientists have choped problems into manageable bits - lab experiments or discreet mathematical problems - that eventually they assume will be fit together into a coherent whole. Nature in this view functions as a vast machine they can reduce and separate into its component parts.

TO prove their point, the authors embark on a dazzling tour of biology, chemistry and physics. But something is missing say the authors. What we know, they claim, are tiny islands in a sea of ignorance; it is self limiting as the larger questions get neglected. It is the causes of simplicity, they say - the order that suddenly emerges - that researchers should explore.

So, they conclude, it is time for a new set of questions. Unfortunately, just when we expect something new, it is here that the book gets a bit vague, with the authors falling back on anecdotes and speculation. They try to coin a new vocabulary ("simplexity" for the old and "complicity" for theirs); offer some diagrams of what they want, including an odd picture of mixing smoke with a unicorn head; and they harp on strange and abrupt conclusions, such as the importance of squid fat to the evolution of the human brain. But they do not offer a coherent new paradigm.

An uneven effort, but fun and very funny at times.

Brilliant
I loved this book. I have never seen such a huge compilation of ideas from so many different topics compiled into one place. Not only that, but all the topics interlink to show the obvious as well as subtle connections. I especially like the fact that throughout the book, the authors manage to show numerous points of view, but without trying to force the reader to fall into any specific belief. I'll admit that not all the ideas are original in this book, but that fact is even stated within the book. For a second-year chemical engineering major such as myself, this was a real inspiration for thinking "out of the box", and really made me think about some of the "knowns" tought in science. A deffinite must. I have several friends in line to borrow this book already!


Wuthering Heights (The Clarendon Edition of the Novels of the Brontes)
Published in Hardcover by Oxford University Press (1994)
Authors: Emily Bronte, Hilda Marsden, and Ian Jack
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Wuthering Height - A Students Perspective
I recently read the novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. As a student, I would not recommend this book to other readers. Unless falling asleep after every chapter of a book classifies it as good, Wuthering Heights is only good as a bedtime story. In the novel, it is said that Heathcliff and Catherine are in love, if this is so they wouldn't have spent their times together trying to hurt one another for pleasure. Heathcliff would have not wished that Catherine not rest in piece because she didn't mention him in her last breaths of air before dying (even though she was unconscious). This relationship that the author portrays as love, really is not love. It is more of a hate than anything. Another thing about this novel in which, I did not quite enjoy was its exaggeration in descriptions of everything. It is great to describe things well enough for the reader to create an image on what is happening in the story, in their mind, but don't push it overboard. For example, Liam O'Flaherty an author of short stories and novels uses great descriptions in his works. In his stories, he was able to create a mental image of the story in reader's imaginations, without letting the story get boring, and without over doing it. The thing is in Wuthering Heights, Bronte explained things out far too well and made the story less interesting. So coming from a student, I would not recommend this book to another student.

The best book I've ever read
This is an absolute masterpiece, and I feel confident in saying that it is the best book I have ever read. I'm stunned that the average rateing is not five stars. This book is an amazing work. It was written by a woman who never married and yet her description of the vivid passion that exists between the hero and heroine in this book is so passionate and moving that you almost feel as though you can't understand the raw, almost jealous need they have for one another. It reverts to basic animal instinct. She creates characters that you love one momment and hate the next. These are real humans, not representations. They are flawed in every way that they should be and yet they are the ones you sympathize with. They truly are three dimensional, with all the motivations of love, greed, lust, jealousy, and anger that every human being must deal with. If the characters are not enough to convince you of this novel's superiority, all you have to do is look at the actual construction of it. It's like an onion, starting with Mr. Lockewood as the narrator, then Nellie, and eventually even Heathcliff and Cathy speaking to one another in the white hot core, the climax of the story. The two love triangles, emulating each other through generations, the first a tragedy, and the second resolving the fault of the parents with true love succeeding. It is absolutly fascinating how intricatly and beautifully the story is constructed to tell every aspect of the characters. This novel is so moving. It faces every aspect of ourselves as human beings, at the best and the worst of our capabilitys. It may have been written long ago, but it still holds true to problems we face every day. What emotions do we allow to motivate our deeds? That is the real question that this book asks. The images, and the lasting feelings continue long after you have finished the final haunting paragraph. That is why this is the best book I have ever read. If you think I'm simply babbling, all I have to say is read the book yourself. It will be like nothing you have ever read before.

Monstrously evil book
WARNING: reading this review will spoil some of the plot of WH.

I grinned when Sis, back in high school, told me I reminded her of Heathcliff. I remembered from the (old, old) movie that he was some evil fellow. Then I read the book. And stopped grinning. I'm amazed this book would ever be assigned to high school 'kids.' It's humorless and ultra-realistic. Every page reeks of evil and has selfishly evil (meaning normal) characters. Heathcliff was a tortured being but hardly innocent. Cathy was a solipsistic, driven fool. Even the Cliff Notes booklet for WH is surprisingly short (I read The Notes after burning through the book in a week) as if Cliff's was horrified to study this book! Cliff's good observation about Heathcliff is that his sole emotion is actually pity/affection for Hareton and that his 'love' for Cathy is, in fact, an animal possessive jealous rage. I changed after reading this book. For the better, I don't know. There is a point in the book where Heathcliff's every action evokes disgust and hatred, and then...as a man...I began to feel what he felt. For whatver his faults, I began to connect fully with his insane rage, and that his ideal of 'love' for Catherine--however warped--had been stolen from him forever. I understood his ruthlessness and love for no person or thing after Catherine's death. By the way, not to parrot the critics, but it is true that the marriage of Cathy and Hareton is NOT some kind of full circle, happier ending. It's more like holding hands in Hell. I left this book sadder than when I started it. After reading it, I doubt anyone anywhere is getting 'wiser.'


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