There is a short author's note at the end of "The Divinity Student" where Michael Cisco describes his notion that the act of reading induces a trance-like state, and how his ambition was to produce a work that made one feel as if the words were being dreamt rather than read.

He succeeded. Brilliantly.

This work stands as a bizarre exploration of the surreal and macabre. The story, set in a time and place which are indeterminate, revolves around a divinity student who has been reanimated from death. He is given a mission to move to an old city and take up work as a "wordfinder". That is to say, one who finds and records words which exist but are not official components of language. They are unconsciously written and spoken but never recognized or defined. This develops into a deeper quest to recover the contents of the Book of Words, which had contained the diction of a powerful, pure, and divine language but has since been destroyed. To do this, he must employ strange, mystical techniques on the decomposing corpses of the book's original compilers and thus retrieve this knowledge. As more information is acquired, the divinity student drifts farther and farther from our world into supernaturalism, black magic, and ghoulish power.

The narrative proceeds with an entirely unique cadence as there is a disquietingly smooth flow from one bizarre event to another. The pace and candor, which are sleepy and strangely matter-of-fact, sharply contrast the content, which is immensely dark and bloated with odd, frightening events and with starkly hallucinatory sequences. The reader feels as if they are drifting effortlessly and naturally from one deranged moment to the next, much as they would in a dream. Imagine a lake with a floor made from a giant kaleidoscope that is backlit with powerful lamps and has a black octopus living in the center; or perhaps a priest with eyes painted over his closed eyelids who can induce visions by blowing formaldehyde onto your face.

The details are blurry and vague at best, and much of the plot must extrapolated from the weird collection of information presented. The characters are strange and mostly two dimensional, but this level of depiction, I believe, is necessary to support the foggy, half-real atmosphere of the writing. The prose is, at times, absolutely gorgeous.

I do not recommend this book to anyone interested in a gripping narrative full of strong, memorable characters. I do not recommend this book to anyone who seeks explanation and closure from a story. I do not recommend this book to anyone with a weak stomach.

I do recommend this to someone who is willing to experiment with this odd form of escapism and experience the unique sensation of dreaming through the pages. The images that Cisco evokes are bizarre, but also fascinating in their frightening and psychedelic un-wordliness.

And then, at some point, the book ends and you simply wake up.

If Michael Cisco's _The Divinity Student_ is remembered for one thing it will be for the magnificent way that Cisco strings his words together. As a previous reviewer has already noted, this book is a feast for devotees of the written word.

I cannot claim to have fully understood every page of this novel. It is not an easy read. It forces you to read each and every paragraph carefully and even then you need to apply yourself to understand the words on the page.

The Divinity Student is thrown out of the seminary after he is apparently struck dead by lightning. He is brought back to life by a mysterious group of people who gut his corpse and stuff him full of pages from a mysterious book. He is put to work as a word-finder. He soon learns that there is a book full of lost and possibly forbidden words; 'the Catalog'. He is approached by a representative of an underground organization who tells him that he, The Divinity Student, has been chosen to do something or other with the Catalog.

The Divinity Student soon finds that the Catalog has been destroyed. He learns of 12 deceased word-finders who were the authors of the Catalog. He, along with his butcher, finds the corpses, drains them of their essence and begins recreating the Catalog.

_The Divinity Student_ is a dense story, but it is very, very fascinating. Cisco changes scenes often which makes it difficult to follow the story. His writing style is gorgeous. It makes this story worth reading for the subtle nuances of the English language alone. As I said, I did not fully understand this story. I suspect it will benefit from a re-reading or two. I do not understand the significance of the cats in the street. I am perplexed by the apparently sentient cars. Many passages in the book are made up of dream sequences, which makes it difficult to determine what is real and what is not.

I would love to read a definitive description of this book, to know what it's all about. Until I find one, I will remember this book as a masterpiece of literary wordplay. Most of this book appears to be written in the present tense, which is strikingly different from the norm. I look forward to finding more of Michael Cisco's writings. Check this book out. It's different. It's neat. It's good. Recommended.

A re-read reveals the weakness of Cisco's relationships between characters, but it is still a wonderful piece of fiction.

A book about the fascinating Natacha Rambova is long overdue. Well known as the much-maligned wife of early Hollywood heart-throb Rudolph Valentino, she was also a dancer, set designer, mystic, and art collector to name just a few of her talents. However, the author's excessively rosy view of his very complex subject makes this a good book, not a great one.

Morris works hard to reverse the numerous unflattering stereotypes and rumours built around Natacha during her life. By refusing to at least explore them, he weakens the book considerably. All negative claims are swiftly - perhaps a little too swiftly - shot down. The bare details are subtly poked and prodded into a much more pleasant picture than was strictly the case. In particular, very little is made of `Monsieur Beaucaire', the notorious flop which nearly ended Valentino's career and his rough, mysterious image. This movie represented a major crisis in the marriage of the couple, as Rambova has convinced Valentino and his studio to make the film in the first place.

The end (and for that matter, much) of the Valentinos' marriage was far more acrimonious than Morris leads us to believe, and thus the portrait of Natacha he paints remains disappointingly bloodless. One topic of which more exploration is needed by further biographers of Natacha (and I hope that more is written of her) is made evident by the numerous references to her ability to work all day having had nothing to eat, and by the stomach ailment that eventually killed her. Natacha was quite obviously anorexic, and exploration into her affliction might have told us much more about her.

Natacha was not the wilful but essentially benign artiste that Morris portrays here, but nor was she the cold-hearted, ruthlessly ambitious lesbian of other historical accounts. The truth, presumably, was somewhere in between - a person far more interesting than either cliched extreme. What cannot be denied is that Rambova was an interesting, talented, and ambitious woman whose story is very worthy of telling, and the book is worth reading for that alone.

What a shame that, even after Morris' attempt to bring her out from under the shadow of her famous husband, the book must still be titled `Madame Valentino'.

This biography is a fascinating read of the woman that was Rudolph Valentino's second wife, and love of his life (it has been said her leaving him led to his death, due to stress and increased drinking, which may have led to worsening his ulcer).
Anyone who wants to know more about Valentino, and about the way certain artists of the more 'Bohemian' set were crushed by the glove of Hollywood, needs to read this book. An astoundingly beautiful woman, Natacha's life reads like the epitome of Art Deco elegance; a schooling in Europe, a career as a ballet dancer with a Russian troupe (and a stormy love affair with its leader), and finally as confidante to the power Alla Nazimova and Hollywood art director.
Valentino fell under her spell before he catapulted to fame, they wed, and spent their time indulging their passions; animals, spending sprees (which led into major debt) on antiques and clothes, love of art and culture, and study of spiritualism.
Natacha's own independent personality and adherence to the aesthetic tenets of 'high art' led the Hollywood execs to like her less and less. The final straw, when Valentino signed his United Artists contract *banning* Natacha from the set, led to her leaving him and his subsequent heartbreak. She wanted a career; Valentino wanted a career and a family.
After his death, Natacha's life did not cease to be interesting, with her continued study into Spiritualism, and her endeavors in Egyptology, along with her second, also doomed (though this time in divorce), marriage to a spanish rebel.
The photographs in the book are numerous, some rare, and still pictures show her as a radiant, almost unnaturally beautiful woman; I could imagine what she must have been like in real life!
A well researched, well written, engaging biography that I read cover to cover with much interest.

A very well written story of a definitely demented man. The story goes deep into the mind (deeper than anyone should like to go) of a man living in his own twisted world. An excellent book.

First off, this book comes with pictures. Looking at them first will give you an idea of the highly disturbed world you are about to enter. The book is told in first person and you will quickly find that you are inside a truly damaged mind. But not in the way you might think. Not a sociopath or psychopath but someone whose mind is--askew--a bit off. This is probably THE creepiest book I have ever read. Kathe Koja is the only other person I know of that can write in this vein. This, by the way, is the author of the Blackwater series which Stephen King so backhandedly mentions in the intro to The Green Mile. I highly recommend the Blackwater series also but unfortunately it is as difficult to find as this title.

...you may want to check out this obscure little gem, if you can find it. Toplin is told from the perspective of a rather peculiar and unnamed gentleman who lives in a Kafka-esque city. This gentleman, let's just say, has a few odd personality traits. He has several identical suits in his closet that are numbered. He only reads cookbooks (nothing wrong with that really). When he cleans house, it is an exercise of intricacy and thoroughness that borders on obsessive-compulsiveness. Even his sex life is structured and monotonous with no wasted movements or wasted time. And adding to all that, he was rendered colorblind at a young age from an attack by seagulls while he worked one summer at a beach. But the story's just beginning.

The real story starts when he visits a particular diner for the first time ever and sees a waitress so hideously deformed, he believes with every fiber in his being that he has to end her life somehow. Along the way, he runs into people like an insane delivery boy who resents the fact the Army won't let him enlist and the "Tempus Fugit" street gang.

Toplin is the first of two books I've read by Michael Mcdowell, the other being the incredible historical revenge thriller Gilded Needles. Even though two may not seem like much, it was enough to convince me that McDowell is every bit as good as Stephen King or Clive Barker (two writers I greatly respect) and far better than so called horror masters like Little, Laymon, or Koontz. Toplin is not a book for all tastes with its extremely dark tone and uncovential plot, but I highly recommend it for horror fans seeking something original.

This is a POWERFUL book. A good, quick read from some of our premier modern-day American historians. This collection of essays gives us an inside look at most of the presidencies of the second half of the 20th century. A must read for any history buff.

• Edmund Morris - Last fall, Morris published the controversial biography Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. His book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt earned him a Pulitzer Prize.

• Ben Bradlee - Author of That Special Grace, a tribute to John F. Kennedy, Bradlee is a vice president at the Washington Post. He previously was the executive editor at the Post who oversaw reporting of the Watergate scandal.

• David Maraniss - A reporter at the Washington Post since 1977, Maraniss earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. He subsequently wrote the Clinton biography, First in his Class. His latest book is When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi.

The "Power and the Presidency" series was created on behalf of the Montgomery Endowment by alumnus Robert A. Wilson of Dallas, a communications consultant who put together a similar series, "Character Above All" (dealing with the impact of character on presidential leadership) in 1994 at the University of Texas at Austin.

These well written essays provide vivid glimpses of varying Presidential personalities, with thoughtful discussion of individual strengths and weaknesses. To me, especially in an election year where character is a major issue, it was an enthralling read, with highlights of qualities such as "Reagan's voice, which was a large part of Reagan's power..." or the speaking style of TR, with plosive P sounds, which "would pop with Gatling-gun force. The effect of his oratory was to bury every word in the psyche of his listeners." or the political genius exhibited by FDR who talked "at a level at which very few people could follow him and understand what he was really saying" that FDR also recognized in a young congressmen, LBJ, as "he saw Johnson understood _everything_ he was talking about." I enjoyed reading these examples of behavior and the illuminating contrasts such as: "It is hard to imagine two more different men than Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy..." or "despite the major differences in their temperaments--indeed, I would argue, because of these differences--Eleanor and Franklin forged their historic partnership..." I would recommend to readers the book "Presidential Temperament" by Choiniere and Keirsey, another well researched volume which gives an explanation of "how each President's temperament inevitably expressed itself in his behavior, both in office and in his personal life."

Surprisingly disappointing.

Not so much a companion item, rather a merchandising add-on to cash in on the success of the television series.

The book adds nothing new to the tv series, and at times reads as an after thought than a diary of events.

I found this a terrific companion to the series. It accounts for the journey day-by-day and fills in the gaps left from video editing and government restrictions (there were many areas the camera crew was either not allowed to film or weren't allowed to enter). It also gives a little of the behind-the-scenes to the series, which I always appreciate. Along with all this information, the journal is written much as you'd expect from Michael Palin and is, in itself, an enjoyable travel book.

One of the best travel books I've ever read. Former Python recreates Around the World in 80 Days, over a hundred years later, but without the help of air travel. It doesn't hurt that Palin seems quite the modest, charming traveler. Watching the trip from his eyes is truly a pleasant experience, highly recommended.

To find this book of photographs by Ormerod - already several years old - at a bargain price was a happy event. The book is roughly evenly divided between colour and black and white work. The hair-sharp colour prints, like most colour photos, you feel you've seen before (Ormerod is somewhere between Eggleston and Misrach), but a handful of the black and whites stand out for their quiet interest in a world that is clearly foreign to the English-born photographer. Here is the photographer I would like to be - direct but unobtrusive. However, both critical essays included with the works in the book feel compelled to explain its relative lack of human figures (the cover image is uncharacteristic of most in this collection), as though this is an embarrassing oversight of the photographer: a weakness about which one must be exceedingly respectful and polite. One of the two writers actually atones for the missing persons by talking about 'the implied presence' of human beings in the pictures. Why can't people bear to contemplate photos in which some fragment of their own compulsive sociality is not reflected? There is a superb floating quality in these Ormerods that is completely deferential to the need of the viewer to travel into the picture and experience parts unknown without interference. Despite the tendency of all photographers to minimise distances and to destroy exoticism because they are always in reality debt and must go, like Muhammad, to the mountain, Ormerod's pictures tell me something exquisite about the largeness of the world, like graffiti on a public statue whose authors are utterly removed from oneself. Whole country towns seen from a hilly rise: you will never know them, never see them except through him. An intense, dreamy abstract romanticism operates here that neither critic seems to see at all; no, he is just a social commentator like the rest, that dull worthy animal. Whereas Ormerod tells his viewers clearly that people as such, people as characters, are of no interest to him at all, the critics respond in an absurdly tenacious way that Ormerod must be making oblique 'allusions' to political contingency, poverty, social unrest, a nation's failed dreams, and so on - idiotically personalising his lonely, lovely car wrecks with a broken radiator-grimace. You may of course agree with the critics that this collection is depressingly devoid of signs of human life. What is the basic difference between the critics and me? Why do we see Ormerod's collection so differently? Desire and isolation, exception, endless roaming are all the one thing to me. The 'implied presence' is always erotic to me. To others, eroticism inheres in people, in overflowing gatherings and exchanged glances; to me it inheres in people's deliciously frustrating absence, their reticence and refusals. If you have always viewed photographs as opportunities to travel while imagining the forms of human life that go on elsewhere, this collection will hold great appeal. Photographic representations of absence will make the average critic think there is something polemical in the artist's intentions (rusting ploughshares in superannuated fields lead to pieties of the 'throwaway society' sort). Lonely places make them think of the great, dry political themes - hardly a turn-on. They judge accordingly. I urge you to see for yourself whether these rather restricted criteria do Michael Ormerod justice.

I had mistakenly thought that Wrox books were held to a higher standard. First getting a taste for them going through both of Rob Vieira's two SQL Server Programming books and regarding them as the finest technical books I've ever seen. However this Professional SQL Server 2000 XML is a disappointment. Part of the problem lies with having 12 different authors because it seems a bit jumpy. I think I'll really try to limit my future purchases to single source efforts. Also, no care was taken with the code examples that you can download from the Wrox website. The book shows the source but there is really no way of really matching the example to the source other than guessing the name. Often I've needed to open up all 15 or so files in the directory to realize that the particular example is not included. I'm picking my way through but it is not pleasant.

It is a good book as far as explaning what SQL Server has to offer regarding XML capabilities but it should have covered the case studies fully with the .Net Framework. Also, it covers very good the IIS configuration, and how to manage XML Templates, XPath and Schemas. The book has a migration example from ASP to ASP.Net which does not cover ADO.Net. If you want a rich source on how to integrate SQLXML and the .Net Framework THIS IS NOT THE BOOK.

I looked at two other SQL Server 2000 XML books, but found this one to be the best - covering almost everything on SQL Server 2000 XML. Very well written, nice examples help understand the technology better. The chapter on Updategrams is very useful. I wanted to learn updategrams and this chapter covers it nicely to get started using them in production.

I can't recommend this overview. I've read several books like it and this one was poorly written. It's a hollow read, no offense.

If one is searching nothing but potential cocktail party conversation about the various religions of the world, (s)he may well enjoy CIGTWR. The problem is many of us, including this reviewer, consider the subject from a serious angle. As a "church shopping" lapsed Roman Catholic, I encountered little of note between the pages. As a practical matter folks like me will be examining the mainline Protestant Churches. This so-called "guide" offers 3 pages on all the various denominations! This was a guide to nowhere! Blocks of pages are devoted to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto. This was all very nice, but with the possible exception of Confucianism, I won't retain a single iota of those chapters. To be fair to the authors, I have no doubt they meant well. The publication is very well laid out. The graphics are clear, well spaced and set in large type. It is a fast read. This is a boost to those seeking a "religion lite" approach. For these readers, 4 stars are warranted. But for we remaining searching Pilgrims, only 2.

The stated purpose of this book was "to build bridges...to increase mutual understanding" between people of different faiths. In keeping with this goal the authors deemed it necessary to omit any information that could possibly offend anyone. As such, the book reads more like a Hallmark card than a serious textbook. Rather than raise issues with which some believers might disagree, there is very little information about what the major religions have to say about spiritual issues. For example, I found it odd that none of the Judeo-Christian chapters mention the concept of eternal damnation - I consider this a significant concept and an important difference between Christianity & Judaism. While certainly not all believers would agree on this topic, to simply ignore the issue is negligent. Similarly, there is little to no information on the various faiths' views on potentially controversial topics like the nature of the deity(ies), creation, apocalypse, fate of non-believers, etc, etc. There is also scarce mention of the numerous problems that have occurred over the centuries in the name of religion - wars, persecutions, subversion of scientific thought, etc (the 3 sentences on the Crusades describes them as "a series of military conflicts"). Needless to say, if you are curious to know the various faiths' views on issues like birth control, the role of women or homosexuality, you can give this book a miss. The strength of this book is that it concisely outlines important historical facts and observances of all the major religions. This is enough information to have a polite conversation with a co-worker of a different faith, but not enough to understand their religion. Unfortunately, it is not possible to seriously deal with the subject of world religion without raising controversial issues. In choosing to show how similar all world religions are, this book does not do justice to the variety and depth of human belief.

I found this book a waste of time. Looking for actual timber frame plans, instead I found a bunch of pictures in no particular order or organization. May make a makeshift coffee table book for people to read while you think big thoughts in your completed timber frame home, but it sure won't help you design one.

Just as a first impression of this book: Some nice pictures of timber frame homes, but you will find the hideous interior decorating in most of the homes to be quite a distraction. Long on photos and short on text, this may not be the best "planning" book for your timberframe home.

As the editor of LivingHome, I have to say that this new book is a real winner. With the popularity of timberframe homes, many of the best companies put out beautiful brochures (some even charging for them), and some have Web sites, but the photos on the Web don't do justice to the soaring spaces and gorgeous interiors of these type of homes. The authors of this book have gathered some of the best photos from some of the best companies. Plus there is good actionable information and resources for those of us who say that some day we are going to build one these beauties, no matter what.