Historical Background:
A medieval Syrian with the official name and title: Al mansour Ibn Sargon, or Yuhanna Al Damashki: John of Damascus was a minister ( Vezir) to the Moslem Khaliph in Damascus, he spoke in Arabic but read and wrote in both Syriac and Greek.. Yuhanna was a learned presbyter as was the tradition for sons of traditional Christian families in most parts of the Islamic empire, he later became a hermit joining one of the monasteries in the region.
During the great schism of the iconoclasts controversy that tormented the neighbouring Byzantine empire, during the 8th century, John wrote his three apologies against those who sought to destroy icons, trying to prevent all traces of iconostatic style worship.

The Theological debate:
St. John's defense is a basic reading for Christians interested in iconography. He obviously differentiates between the veneration given to Saints and their icons from worshipping, offered to God alone. His defense of the veneration of icons is rooted in a 3rd & 4th century Church tradition of the veneration of Saints through balming, safekeeping, revering their relics. He claims," Since Christ is fully God and was fully man, he sanctified matter during his earthly ministery, including it in the scheme of salvation. The body must not be seen as evil, a reminent gnostic view in the time of early Church. St. John of Damascus refers to the theology of salvation through Theosis, as expressed by St. Athanasius, who expresses together with Cyril the Sotereology of alexandria. John claims that if Christ took upon him our human flesh, so we can partake in His Divine attributes. The Lord IC XC redeemed the whole universe. Icons, a pictorial representation of a transcendental reality could be defended in the same context. The theology behind icons is, for St. John of Damascus, fundamentally incarnational. St. John explains how the Incarnation must be safeguarded. He defended the Chaledonian position arguing that jesus the Christ was the"Icon" of the unapproachable, unconcievable Heavenly Father. The dominant miaphysite apophatic theology which appeared first time under the pseudonym dionysius the Areoopagite, was more concerned with the unity of the person of Christ, something an Icon cannot show his Divine nature.The debates on Christology in the 6th century at the time of the great Christologists Severus of Antioch and john philoponus, who was mandated to write an essay to reconcile both Orthodox factions, hence he became called the Arbiter, never died out but always burst into new shapes.He also discusses several different forms of worship, which go from absolute worship to mere veneration.

The Orthodox via Media;
The miaphysite theology dominated the Empire even after Islam . The most formidable theologian were Copts and Syrians on both sides but largely miaphysites. Severus of Antioch, Theodosius of Alexandria, john of Damascus and later Maximos the Confessor represented the main stream. that is why both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox venerate icons, the orientals put less emphasis on the rituals.
The use of images in Christian worship was controversial during St. John's time (8th Century) and is still for many Christians quite a controversial issue today. Aversion to images in Church is obviously a complicated topic and still controversial for many Christians, most protestants, some Catholics, and few Oriental Orthodox, who initiated the Icons. As for our Lord and redeemer Jesus Christ even thinking of Him in a three dimentional or spacial way is primitive since He is One with the Father in the uncocieved Trinity in Unity. I quote an Alexandrian Teacher of Orthodox faith of the Confraternity of Arsenius, Severus, and Philoponus;as stating
" The corrupted Eastern Orthodox concept of the role and function of Icons, imposed dictatorially by Impress Theodora, and the allegation that 'The triumph of Orthodoxy' is expressed in the feast of restoring the sacred art, is not only heretic but pagan.
The mystical view of the miaphysites is best reflected in abba Kyrillos Thematurge, the holy wonder maker speaking to the saints through their icon as part of the victorious Church, this theology of love and fellowship may be portrayed best by the Coptic Icon of Our Lord protecting St. Menas, a martyr? (Louvre Muiseum) I heard only from our Archdidaskalos Dr. George H. Bebawi, Director of Cambridge Institute of Christian Orthodox Studies as saying that the vital educational office of the Icons is tarnished by the ritualistic their hypocrytical lip service. He takes the pre icon arts as examplified in Dier Bawit to prove his views, in the Coptic Church that introduced Iconography, you can only learn through them, being always up on the walls or unreachable above the the iconstatis.

SUGGESTED READINGS;
to help all christians understand how some rituals originate even in pagan tradition and could be utilized to satisfy human love for beauty, music , incense, the following may be considered in its logical order,
1. Introducing the Orthodox Church, Antony Coniaris, Light & Life, 1982 (look under Icons to find how the Copts of Alexandria used a pagan Greek roman era to teach the illiterate)

2. .Praying With Icons, by James H. Forest, Jim Forest , February 1997

3. The Meaning of Icons, by Leonid Ouspensky, Vladimir Lossky, SVS ,1999

4. The Educating Icon : Teaching Wisdom and Holiness in the Orthodox Way, by Anton C. Vrame, 1999

5. The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, by Paul Evdokimov, 1989.

6. Theology of the Icon (2-Volume Set) , by Leonid Ouspensky, 1992

St. John of Damascus wrote during the height of the iconoclastic controversy during the 8th century and this little book contains the bulk of his three apologies against those who sought to destroy icons and keep them apart from Church worship.

His argument runs like this: If Christ was fully God and fully man, then matter must not be seen as fundamentally evil. In fact, (and here St. John of Damascus follows St. Athanasius) if Christ took upon our human flesh, then matter has actually been redeemed. Icons, then, as a pictorial representation of a transcendent reality should be seen in the same light: their being made is not at all heretical and the reverence that is paid to them is a way of worshiping the God they signify, rather than they themselves as created objects. The theology behind icons is, for St. John of Damascus, fundamentally incarnational.

The book is quick, easy reading that will give every preson something to reflect on. Such a short, simple text is easily accessible to both the scholar (or, if you are like me, the arm-chair theologian) and the worshiper. For those of you interested in better understanding Christian thought, this is worth having in your library.

St. John's defense is must reading for anyone interested in Orthodoxy or Orthodox iconography. St. John clearly differentiates the veneration that we give to Saints and their icons from the worship we give to God alone. His defense of the veneration of icons is rooted in the biblical practice of the veneration of Saints (which may surprise many protestant readers, but there actually is such a thing!). I cannot recommend this book enough. Buy it and learn from one of the great Fathers of the Orthodox Church. I also recommend St. Theodore the Studite's "On the Holy Icons" and Leonid Ouspensky's "Theology of the Icon".

From fallen comrades to gorilla tactics this surrealistic juxtaposition of guts and gum keeps the reader spellbound amid the characture like expo-say of the Vietnam War's artistic soft under belly.

I couldn't put this book down once I started reading it. I became totally enthralled by the ups and downs experienced by the author. There are no winners in war & this book is a very timely piece with all that's going on right now with Iraq. Great Book!!!

If you're in the right spot, war is strangely academic:
headquarters planning sections marking sector overlays
morph on cue into slick sales teams at press conferences
in Saigon,crisp of uniform and of certainty that the war
is won; the poor devils can't hold out much longer: just
look at this chart....

Rick St John walked the walk in a different Vietnam,
and his class (West Point.'66) and the soldiers they
led, paid a butcher's bill. This is war in the field,
war at the sharp end. You eat out of cans, your only
shelter a poncho that doubles as a burial shroud and
you're the one who knows it, a young lieutenant, but
very quickly, a commander, "the old man," that these
others, these brave, scared, doomed teenagers, look
to for salvation. And you can't ever tell them the
doubts that assail you; the weariness; the aching sense
of loss.
Read this book and you will know.

This book offers the most complete review of St. John's beaches that I've ever found. All the guidebooks and tourist pamphlets just touch on the surface of what St. John has to offer. If you're planning a trip to S.t John, you shouldn't go without taking this book with you.

You should definitely try to buy this book before your trip to St. John. It contains info on 40 different beaches and snorkeling sites that you won't find anywhere else. By using it I located a short trail that led me to the most breathtaking and secluded beach I've ever seen. It was unbelievable! I never would have known about it without this book. While some of the same information on the beaches can be found interspersed in Singer's "St. John Off the Beaten Track," it's much easier to bring this smaller, more concise guide with you when you're actually looking for the beaches. I highly recommend both books if you can get them. Have fun in St. John!

I purchased this book on our 2nd trip to St John, and it is by far, the only and best book describing the 52 beaches in St. John -- including how to get there, some tips, walking conditions (some are hard to get to), quality of snorkeling, etc. We found some wonderful, private beaches - my copy is so dogearred, water stained, I might have to buy another one for your trip this year!

...tick tick tick.....this is Turgenev's Fathers and Sons written after the modernist floodgates had been opened. My version of this has a Kandinsky on the cover and that is the perfect emblem to front this Russian avante garde revolution of a book. There is in it a live time bomb waiting to go off. It takes awhile to get used to Biely's unusual way with words(and I have no idea if this is a translation thing or not) but once you catch his rhythms it is a great read. We live in a much more settled civilization than the one this author experienced and documents but if you like to read things that remind you that culture occasionally does undergo monumental shifts, this is one of those works. Not perfection to our postmodernist ears but strange music indeed. Boom.

It was Vladimir Nabokov's opinion that this novel is "One of the four great masterpieces of twentieth-century prose," in company with The Metamorphosis, Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past. Andrey Bely (or Biely, I've found it spelled both ways) was the pen name of Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev. He was a leading figure of the Symbolist movement in pre-Revolutionary Russia and, in addition to Nabokov, influenced Boris Pasternak and Yevgeny Zamyatin, among others. St. Petersburg is certainly as innovative as the other works Nabokov ranks it with, using characters and even geography as allegorical symbols for ideas, and written in a nearly stream-of-consciousness prose. But to my very pleasant surprise, it is much more enjoyable than these other touchstones of Modernism.

The action of the novel, and happily there is some action, occurs over the course of two days in 1905, when Russia, having lost the War with Japan, was wracked by strikes, conspiracy, violence and near revolution. Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov is an elderly, but still devoted, Tsarist bureaucrat. His dilettantish son, Nikolai, who is dabbling in radical politics, has been given the task of murdering his own father; the chosen weapon, improbably enough, a bomb in a sardine tin. Just as the city of St. Petersburg--Peter the Great's "window on the West"--represents the point where the rational West meets the savage and mystical Orient, so this confrontation between father and son represents impending conflict between European reason and Asiatic barbarism, and the bomb itself represents the indiscriminately destructive forces about to be brought to bear on the decaying Tsarist state.

Though much of the story, inevitably in this type of modernist fiction, is obscure and barely coherent, the literally ticking time bomb gives the story a propulsive forward momentum which speeds the reader along and, though I'm certain I missed much of the symbolism, because the imagined clash between the main symbols proved eerily prophetic, we can read things into the story that Biely probably never intended. Biely's use of language and symbolism lends an almost feverish quality to the narrative, as if the whole thing were a particularly horrible dream. It is a story suffused with a sense of dread and with intimations of the chaos to come, both in the novel and in the society it depicts.

I don't know that it necessarily deserves quite the elevated position that Nabokov gave it, but it was apparently extremely influential on Russian Literature and it makes for an unusual but gratifying reading experience. You'll surely enjoy it more than you would the almost unreadable James Joyce and Marcel Proust.

GRADE : B

10 15 99

According to a review in Smithsonian, March 1987, by Michael Dirda, Nabokov called Biely's St. Petersburg the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century.

Although far less plausible and possessing characters of much less depth than Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Burrough's At the Earth's Core, despite some embarrassingly preposterous elements, is an entertaining read due to its well-rendered, imaginative fantasy setting and fast-paced swashbuckling adventure. The story is never dull, and the hideous and hypnotic bat-winged Mayars make for memorable villains. The depiction of a human sacrifice to these monsters halfway through the novel is particularly unforgettable. There is also a multifarious array of attacking prehistoric monsters, without the claustrophobic feel of the 1970's film.

Also recommended is Basil Copper's treatment of the descent-into-the-earth theme in his creepy novel The Great White Space, now unfortunately out of print.

For Edgar Rice Burroughs, life was relatively simple. Men fell into one of three categories: muscular heroes, ordinary types, and evil, greasy villains. Women existed primarily to act as universal lighting rods that attracted either the first or third category. Regardless of the universe that ERB wrote of, these constants held with predictable regularity. With the publication of AT THE EARTH'S CORE, he began yet another series that put the hero at odds with nature, evil doers, and beautiful, virtuous women. David Innes, the handsome hero, drills down to the center of the earth in a manner that brings to mind Jules Verne's tale, both of which posit a habitable, temperate core that supports a variety of lush, prehistoric life. Despite knowing that the earth's core was held to be molten, ERB did not hesitate to bend science for the sake of a good tale. ATEC possesses both the plusses of ERB at his best and the negatives at his worst. Like Tarzan, Innes is a likable, manly sort who feels at home regardless of whether home is a jungle or a tea room. The logic of how ERB gets his hero placed in an exotic locale is irrelevant and often purely unscientific. For his Martian (Barsoom) series, he merely had his hero, John Carter, gaze at the Red Planet to effect his transport there. For his inner world series (Pellucidar), Innes used a drill machine, a device that at least tries to be scientific. Once there, Innes has the necessary adventures with beasts, villains, and beautiful women, in this case Dian the Beautiful. The workings of the plot about how he finds her, loses her, and then finds her again are almost not to the point. Where ERB excels in his ability to place the reader, who is usually a 15 year old boy, in a realm that allows imagination to run riot. Events flow so smoothly that the youthful reader will probably overlook the negatives of ERB's prose style. In the world of ERB's muscular heroes, both hero and villain speak in the artificial, courtly dialogue that rings true only to the ears of the young. Coincidence runs rife to the point of ridicule. Beautiful women are haughty at first, but lusty later, and then only to the clean-limbed hero. His plots are often mirror images of one another. You can substitute the center of the earth for Mars, Venus, Africa, or wherever, and hero, villain, and lovely lady are interchangeable. Yet, despite all this, AT THE EARTH'S CORE is the kind of read that ought to be part of any kid's early mental universe. Reading Burroughs as a thirty year old requires a strong ability to suspend one's disbelief, but once having done so, the ride is usually worth the effort.

...so one day independently wealthy David Ennis is confronted by his scientist buddy Abner Peery who has just invented a vehicle that essentially drills through the earth. (If the reader is into descriptives it looks like the device Dr Evil of Austin Powers fame has devised to take over the world.) They decide, "Well, let's try it out." and the reader is then treated to a journey to middle earth which is similar to Jules Verne's, but not as serious. I would say that Burroughs brings us satire similar to Voltaire's "Candide" or Swift's "Gulliver's Travel". The inner world, Pellicidar, is one where if you are not careful, you can be awake for days because the sun never sets or rises--that sun being the molten earth core rather than the sun we all know of. In Pellucidar, the various dragons, apes, and reptiles and mutations of such, are heads of gangs, tribes and kingdoms in the middle earth. And the royalty has beautiful sorcery princesses like Dian the Beautiful, who David falls for and who leads him into an innerworld adventure taking the reader to an unforgettable serial-pulp style reading enjoyment. If you dig Robert E. Howard or Jules Verne or Rice Burroughs' Tarzan series you will definitely love this. My opinion is that this is one of those series that could stand some revamping and the reader will feel that this is somewhat dated but, I feel that it is still well-worth the investment of time and $.

This first book of fiction (33 short stories) by an ex-East German (an Ossi) has won several prizes in Germany. This is not necessarily praise - it tells you this is the kind of literature that gets prizes. The translation appears excellent.

The preface and one of the stories tell the same tale from two points of view - that the book itself is the edited version of some weekly letters written home by a German businessman working in St. Petersburg. At first, the businessman wrote of St. Petersburg life. Then, lacking material, he began building the letters around fictional tales, and this is the part of his output from which the present book was compiled. Many stories are indeed in the first person, and the first person is a German working on a Russian weekly in St. Petersburg. Put the two pictures together and you have a good idea of the general style. The missing elements are a) that many tales are fantastic and b) that quite a few are inspired by previous tales in literature.

To my eyes, the "reportorial" details are faithful and revealing, and they have the appreciable virtue of not falling for "that unique St. Petersburg spirit", though almost all the stories are set in the region. What is revealed is more often urban or village life in West Russia generally, and this is as it should be.

If you take the fiction as presented above, then it's a nice framework into which to post these observations. But if you take it as fiction, then the framework betrays a serious literary failure. In all stories, third- or first-person, the tone is that of the external reporter, and this simply doesn't bring to the prose the color it needs to carry the fantasy, and especially to breathe life into the cultural and spiritual themes that are the motive force behind it. We have fantastic themes, yes, but only the usual insights of the most ploddingly realistic fiction.

Said another way - if rich prose is prose that holds within its sentences gripping detail, deep color and complex cultural connotations and evocations, then 33 Moments is an example of poor literary prose. It's the kind of prose you would find in a long New York Times article, treating one thing at a time and always in the same tone.

The closest ambitious writer I could think of to compare Schulze with is Michael Moorcock (in his Mother London/Cornelius Quartet mode) and if you like Moorcock (who influenced comics, cyberpunk the whole noir revival in the US) you'll go with Schulze's flow just as easily. I am a fan of both writers, though not of Moorcock's fantasy, which I liked as a kid, and I've been looking for years for a writer as good. This and Simple Stories are really outstanding. Schulze is a definite heavy weight on his way up. It's been a while since Germany showed us a writer as good and as ambitious as this. Wonderful work.

each of the 33 stories in this book prvided me with vivid places and deleicate people. the stories made me cry and laugh. this is one of the greatest collections of short stories i have read and it provided me with a true sense of beauty and honesty, about peole and life and the value of moments.

That's Guinever, as in King Arthur's Guinever. This book has all the trappings of a Gothic romance novel, but without all the "...oh, oh, take, me, take me" nonsense. It is written in First Person from the viewpoint of a female character, Lydian Wentworth. The only child of Ason Wentworth... an archaeologist who hates his daughter... or so she believes in the beginning. There is danger in reading a diary and not realizing that while thoughts are frequently put forth.... not all of them are present in such text.

The story is set in the early 1900's in a palatial estate in England called, appropriately enough, Avalon. Lydia journeys to Avalon after the death of her father and marries the crippled recluse Charles Ransome. Finding out shortly before the wedding, that sex and children are not going to be a part of her life because of Charles' accident some years earlier... the same accident that killed Lydian's mother... Lydian marries him anyway and becomes Lady Ransome, with all the responsibilities that entails.

There are plenty of other rather interesting characters.... all of whom seem to have a counterpart in Arthurian legend. A love triangle such as occurs in the Arthurian myth is present as well as much of the other elements present in Le Morte D'Arthur. This too, is appropriate as Charles Ransome is obsessed with finding evidence of a real historical Arthur.

I know not where I got this book, and it took a bit of effort to get through it, but I found it worth the effort. I suspect it is a book that women would find of more interest than men would.

Dale A. Raby...

I found this book in a used book store and didn't know how lucky I was!! This book is about a shy American girl, Lydian Wentworth, left in England after her father's death. She meets and marries an old family friend, Charles, who is a scholar studying King Arthur, a subject which interests Lydian also. He is trapped in a wheelchair, since an accident, which turns out to be part of Lydian's past that she can't remember -- there's the mystery. Enter the third character in this love triangle -- Lawrence, an archeologist who is on a dig to find King Arthur/Guinever artifacts.

Lydian suffers nightmares which she knows lead to a memory in her past long-buried, a memory somehow connected to King Arthur's legend. As Charles' mental and physical health declines, she find herself turning to Lawrence more and more. Finally she sees that she is indeed reliving the love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Guinever ... to say much more would ruin this lovely book!

Though there is romance in this book, it is not a romance novel so much as a stirring mystery. What a great read!

I found this out of print book in a thrift shop -- I almost didn't buy it, but am thrilled that I did!

This is the story of shy Lydian Wentworth who has grown to adulthood alone with a cruel, unloving father. Her mother died under mysterious circumstandes when she was a child. She also has had terrible recurring nightmares since early childhood that she cannot decipher the meaning of. Her cruel father dies early in the story and she is contacted by Lord Charles Ransome, a man who knew her mother when she was young. He invites her to visit him at his estate, Avalon. He is an ecentric Arthurian scholar and genius. She is drawn to him because of her own interest in Aurthurian studies as well as his intelligence. They marry early in the story. Unfortuately he was crippled when he was a young man in a mysterious accident, so Lydian and Charles are man and wife in name only. Working for Charles is an archeologist name Lawrence who helps him search for the tomb of King Arthur. Charles' physical and mental health begin to deteriorate and Lyndian and Lawrence are drawn together -- the three of them begin to relive the triange of Arthur, Guinever and Lancelot. Eventually the story unravels the mystery of the nightmares that have haunted Lyndian since childhood, Lydian's mother's death, Charles' crippling accident, and the mystery of King Arthur's tomb. A fun to read, fascinating story.

This book was well written, full of mystery and beauty, and will remain a keeper on my shelf!

As a child of 8 or so, I read this book to myself. At first read, I thought it a rather strange book. It was only after three more reads later in my life that I finally understood the plot. This book is well worth the money simply because of the beautiful images that made me cry as an 8 year old, but save your dollars until your child is old enough to sort through the images to find the plot.

I loved RAINBOW GARDEN as a little girl. As an adult, I still re-read it every couple of years. In my opinion, this beautiful story should be considered a Christian classic. Both well-written and touching, RAINBOW GARDEN is a story about how a lonely little girl finds fulness of joy. Patricia M. St. John paints wonderful pictures of happy childhood and those little incidents that have such great meaning and excitement.

This is the story of a little girl who feels lost in the world, as her mother is too busy with her own life to care for her. Her father is dead and now her mother is taking a new job in a different country, requiring lots of travelling, without Elaine. Elaine must go live with a family of six children. Through the time she spends with them, she finds Jesus and learns to love others more than herself. An excellent protrayal of real life situations, not glossed over, but told with propiety. I read this story to my four children ages 3 to 9 and they loved it.

The St. James Opera Encyclopedia offers many mid-sized essays on important operas, composers, singers and terms: it offers a fascinating read for opera fans who wish to find out more information handily about any of these subjects. Opera fans, unfortunately, are sometimes so highly partisan and rabid in their opinions that some of the essays are not as unbiased as one would like, and if you don't know much about the person or work being discussed the entries in the St. James guide can steer you in pretty strange directions. For example, one writer's extreme dislike of Kiri Te Kanawa's abilities and performances, in his entry on her would lead you to be convinced, had you never heard her before, that she were the absolute dregs of the operatic profession--you would come away from this having absolutely no idea why she was one of the preeminent international sopranos of the 1980s.

Nice book, a lot of useful facts, stories, biographies, comments, actors, performers, theatres and etc.
I like it.

For the beginner or intermediate opera lover, this book is a great resource. Although you may not always agree with the reviewers' perceptions of an artist's strengths and weaknesses, reading and then listening will greatly enhance your ear over a period of time. In addition, composers and individual operas are covered. There is something here for everyone. Most operatic artists are covered, but not all. This is one of the best opera books for its price, and unfortunatley is getting difficult to find. I can highly recommend it and have gone back to it constantly. I love referring to it when listening to Doug Fox's program on Tuesday evenings- that's on WMNR from Connecticut- you can hear it on the net if you can't get it in the NY area (88.1FM). I have been waiting several weeks to have a copy sent to a friend as a gift. I hope it's still available!

My wife and I used this book a great deal on a recent one week vacation to St. John. The book was excellent and very accurate in detail of information. A very useful guide to hiking trails, back roads, with a very thorough and accurate review of beaches. If you know what you're looking for, this book provides an excellent reference. If you don't know, it provides an excellent resource for reading and planning. It helped make our trip more enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

I used this book to help plan my week long stay on St. John a couple of years ago. What a week! It has some excellent driving tours of the island that will take you to out of the way bays for snorkeling where you may be the only people there! It leads you on hikes through the rain forest to places that few people venture with spectacular views and interesting historical sites. If you are planning a trip to St. John and want to see the real island, from the End of the Road Stand to the Salt Pond, this is definitely the book to take along.

Rob Sparks

This book was part of the library in the villa my wife and I rented on St. John for our honeymoon. It was indispensable - It had descriptions for all the beaches, including the hard to get to but worth the hike Waterlemon Cay.

I'm going back to St. John this year, and I'll be taking this book with me.