Daniel Cohen's book is a short history of the horror film. It does not contain many details but rather explains only basic plot elements for a number of films. It covers the silents up through the thirties in adequate detail, but then glosses over the 1950s and skips ahead to the seventies. It also mentions some of the greatest horror films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) in only one sentence and describes them as "violent" films which offended many people. Horror Movies includes multiple photos of films that it barely mentions in the text. After chapters on the topic of horror films, it sums up their importance in one paragraph. Since this book was published in 1984 and obviously cannot include more recent movies, and in light of its brevity on some of the most important movies, I would not recommend this book.

INFINITE REQUIEM was a book that I thought had a very strong beginning with a lot of potential set up early on. Initially, I enthusiastically turned the pages, extremely curious as to what was going to happen next. By the time I got to the end, I was somewhat disappointed and had ended up simply not caring what any of the characters did. The process of getting from one reaction to the other was so gradual that I really didn't notice it happening at all during my first read. But each time I picked the book back up after taking a break, it was with less eagerness than I had felt before. I can't describe any specific plot-point or event to say that this is where I got fed up; it just seems to be a case of too much build-up and not enough pay-off.

The beginning has a large portion focused upon events taking place on modern-day Earth, and it was these sections that I found most enjoyable. As the book progresses, the attention shifts towards future and outer space settings. The farther away the action drifts from Earth, the less interested I became in the events that were unfolding. By the time the story has reached the part where everything takes place in the distant future, on a far-away planet, in some strange virtual reality thingy (or whatever), I had just gone completely past the point of caring. This really is a shame, as Blythe tells the modern-day Earth sections with real heart. Once that setting is abandoned, the book becomes much poorer for it.

There are a few other things about INFINITE REQUIEM that I enjoyed. The Phractons are quite an interesting creation, feeling like proper aliens and far more worthy of attention than the vastly overrated and boring Chelonians. I also liked the follow-ups pertaining to events in the previous adventure, SET PIECE. One gets the impression that Kate Orman sent Blythe a checklist of all the bodily injuries that the Doctor and Benny had suffered in that book so that he could go through the bruises one by one. Blythe handles the sections dealing with the recent departure of Ace as sensitively and maturely as one would hope for.

There are also a few things in the narrative, their reason for inclusion being one that I just couldn't fathom. Benny finds a holographic projector that displays a simulation of the Doctor, and this projection becomes a running plot-strand in the story. Why is this in the book? I don't know; it doesn't add anything and only becomes annoying as the pointless distraction keeps getting pulled out. A character from Blythe's previous NA (THE DIMENSION RIDERS) comes back. Why? I don't know; he's an all-right character, I suppose, he just doesn't strike me as being interesting enough to merit a return appearance. The narrative goes to great lengths to expound on the familial relationship between two of the characters. Why? I don't know; I suspect that the story was going somewhere with this, but it just ended up being angsty and misplaced.

This isn't a particularly awful story, it just has an unfortunate inconsequential feel. Certain parts read as though they weren't thought through as fully as they should have been, as if the author came up with some potentially great ideas but never got around to integrating them properly with each other or with the story. I wouldn't mind seeing Blythe return to the Doctor Who book range. If he weren't attempting to squeeze too many science-fiction concepts into his work, I think he could produce something fantastic.

7/23/99 PM-after reading the introduction and first three chapters of Daniel White and Gert Hellerich's Labyrinths of the Mind: the Self in the Postmodern Age. (95 pages).

This book is refreshingly clever. In the introduction, the authors went off on our current consumer culture. They continued this campaign in the second chapter, playfully entitled, "Nietzsche at the Mall: Deconstructing the Consumer." This second chapter is a witty and up-beat sort of introduction to Nietzschian thought. To give a feel for what the authors do here, I will quote my favorite part.

Escaping from that gap in the mall's glittering, woeful stream, we reenter the consumer traffic, the souls rushing as in a stampede toward what at first seems to be an apparition; but, our guide explains, "What with all their might they would like to strive after is the universal green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, comfort and an easier life for all" (54). We are taken by our host's prophetic powers, too, when his very words are soon echoed by another person selling, this time, the images of suburbia from a real-estate booth, high above us up a glittering escalator, emblazoned by the skylight. As we ascend amidst the herd our guide bids us to listen, and explains that the celestial music we hear is actually the sound of Musak augmented by the strains of an electric fountain with plaster boulders and "real" plants. He also explains that suburbia is where the souls go who, having escaped the tortuous delights of the mall, seek a place of rest and so are given the simulations of "home" that best fit their (our?) televised imaginations and budgets (31).

In the second and third chapters of this book are much less impressive. They are still written very well, but they loose a lot of their wit by trying too hard to be "deep". In the third chapter, we have a sort of recapitulation of Foucault's History of Madness, only with even less attention to history and even more of a weakness for unsupported conclusions. The third chapter is little more than a history of literary criticism on Kafka. I am sure that this chapter would be very inspiring if I were into literary criticism, but I just don't see what all this has to do with the philosophy self. Scanning the table of contents for the rest of the book has motivated my curiosity, however, so I will press on. Besides, I just looked on the back of the book and read that Daniel White is from UCF.

7/24/99 AM-after reading the rest of Labyrinths of the Mind. (100 pages).

I don't think I have ever been so ready to be finished with a book in all my life! I told myself that I would read the whole book, no matter how annoying, simply because a UCF professor co-wrote it and it began with such promise. Now that I am finished with it, however, I can only say that I have wasted a good deal of time.

I don't think that I got anything at all our of this book that I could not have gotten out of the introduction. It was entirely predictable and utterly void of anything even remotely like argumentation.

After reading this book from cover to cover in less than two days, I think of it much like one thinks of a cute song that the radio stations play into the ground. I was rather amused with it at first, but as it continued to drone on and on I became consumed with the solitary thought of getting on with life.

In summary of my reading, it is sufficient to say that in the last 100 pages of this book, all the authors do is try to defend Nietzsche against charges of madness, anti-environmentalism, and male chauvinism. This defense is made, however, more on the basis of religious loyalty than sound philosophy.

I am not the worst chef in the world. Given proper instruction, I can actually make some impressive dishes. So why is it that every dish I prepare from Curnonsky's cookbook is a fiasco? I've tried simple dishes (Watercress Soup), accompaniments (Béarnaise Sauce), and dishes with pictures in the book (Scallops with Mussels Nantaise). Not once have I been satisfied with the result. The Scallops, for example, looked nothing like the picture and tasted like butter melted with more butter and laced with white wine. Am I missing something? Are there steps that Curnonsky leaves out that are obvious to French chefs? With patience, I am sure that one of the 1,200 recipes would turn out fine, but I don't think I am that patient.

Were it not for the fantastic list of suggested wines that accompany each dish and the translation of fishes, dishes and meats into French -- a handy reference -- this cookbook would merit only one star.

I bought this book in hopes of getting an overview of Kohlberg's Moral Development theory. While there is a brief discussion about his initial work and theoretical basis, this book lacks content in this area. The majoity of the text explores the ways in which Kohlberg and his collegues designed a Moral Education program in a school. If this information is of interest to you than I will assume you will have a different experience with this book than me.

This book is a nice sketch of the life of Daniel Boone, first published by the University Press of Kentucky in 1978. While it does not compare with the larger and more valuable biographies of Draper, and Bakeless, and lacks the primary value of Boone's own account of himself in Filson's "Kentucke" (1784), it is a nice survey, and may be more appreciated by younger readers, or by those new to the subject, than the larger volumes.

Nice photos on most pages, but the author jumps around and goes into topics that I'm not sure anyone will care about. Text is sappy and meaningless most of the time (example: "Ladders are pure potential energy: they just stand there waiting for that moment when they feel the weight on the first rung, then the second, etc. Imagine being a ladder. It must be what a fireman feels like: a life of expectancy."). You're better off with the triumvirate of nicely photographed AND written "rustic lifestyle" books: Cabin Fever; Adirondack Style; Rustic Style.

Daniel Hardie's "The Loudest Trumpet" is a valuable and informative book extremely poorly produced. There is no evidence of its having been proof read, the dearth of commas throughout the text makes it difficult to read, the photographs and musical examples are poorly printed.

That Mr. Hardie's excellent work should be so poorly presented is shameful. He has been ill served by his publisher.

Remember when Nasa Held a press briefing 2 years ago decribing an "interplanetary highway" charted by mapping the projected positions of planetary and solar gravity wells? This "highway" charts the least fuel costs needed for interplanetary travel by using gravity assists to send space probes to their intended destinations.

Tony Daniel took the report literally, and his characters travel through physical highways strung between the earth and mars, earth and the moon, earth to mercury, etc etc. Nevermind that such planets spin around the sun, and the cables between planets would plunge into the sun when the planets they are connected to are in solar opposition. All these plot problems are solved by the modern magic of nanotechnology!

Tis a shame, as the rest of the book's ideas about the civil rights of artificial intellegences are sort of interesting.

_Doug

This books was released just after the four books in the Malaussene series. The problem is, the author tries too hard to make it different from his other novels. (Mind you, it IS different, in the sense that this is the ONLY novel that doesn't deserve five stars.)

Basically, this novel is written like a play (hence the name "au theatre"), and it features the main character, Benjamin Malaussene, talking to his baby. The thing is, to understand all the topics mentioned in this book, you HAVE to have read the four previous books. And if you HAVE read the four previous books, then all 'Malaussene au theatre' is doing is repeating these events. But instead of happening, the events are merely told to another person (the baby) as if they were stories.

If that isn't bad enough, Malaussene tells things to his baby that he had already told him in some of the preceding books (where he was talking to his baby while his baby was still in the womb). The only difference now is that the baby is OUT of the womb. But there is no difference for the reader, who learns nothing new.

Basically, I'd call this book a waste of time, although you can hardly call it that: it's under ninety pages long.