Kudos are in order! The long-awaited John Updike Encyclopedia by Jack De Bellis is now available--a treasure trove of information on all aspects of John Updike's work and life, with a complete chronology, analytical index, and other useful features for general readers, students, and researchers.

All Updike fans will praise Jack De Bellis for bringing forth this hefty companion, chock full of golden nuggets about Updike the artist and his literary creations. That JU undoubtedly will consult this fine and elaborate synthesis of himself and his literary output countless times is perhaps the highest praise for this unique work of reference and literary history.

The encyclopedic format, with alphabetical entries, is user friendly and lets the reader choose a random perusal or a more purposeful reading throughout its 550 pages. And a very complete analytical index will point to any specific topic the reader may choose. Many of the entries are substantial enough to be essays--like the first I read, ``The Creative Process,'' that was over 3 pages long. Then I went on to read others at random, focusing on fascinating tidbits that just kept jumping off the page, many of which were little known biographical facts about Updike. Indeed, the idea that a concise biography is available in these pages came to me after spending about an hour with the book.

This book will become a lifetime companion to many of us who greatly admire the artistry of John Updike. And even though Greenwood Press's reference book price is high for this first hardcover edition, the John Updike Encyclopedia will have a long and useful life, which makes it a bargain for all of us who understand how important Mr. Updike and his work are to American literature. My congratulations, praise, and sincere thanks to Jack De Bellis for this wonderful work.

Neil McAleer

Each turn of the page reveals another exceptional view. It's easy to take gorgeous landscape photos of New England in Autumn, but Richard Creek goes far beyond that. The lighting, cloud conditions, reflections, and seasonal conditions bring out the most in each photograph. I want to frame each one and hang it on my walls, or better still, visit each place and hope to see and capture a similar moment. I hope Mr. Creek follows up with a series of other states.

Just before boarding a plane to England a friend of mine handed me a small hardcover edition of the John Updike book "The Music School". I knew nothing about Updike or his style but proceeded to open the book on the long flight. As I read I became more and more engrossed in the simple short stories that often brought a smile to my face. There were a few that I didn't particularly enjoy, but others such as the "Bulgarian Poetess", which I believe won the O. Henry Short Story award, was fabulous. Another that I enjoyed was the story "Twin Beds In Rome", a story about a failing marriage, which also has somewhat of a sequel in the book called "Giving Blood". After reading all these stories, I began a new love for an author that has been acclaimed for his unique style of writing. This is a must for any person who enjoys short stories and would like to get to know John Updike a little bit better.

John Updike has a wonderful way of putting the things people do and feel into words. In many of the stories, especially the title story, he does exactly that. He gives a great commentary of America in "How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time." Although the stories are at some points hard to follow, like all of his works, making sense of these stories makes one a better reader, and in turn a better writer. It is a good Updike starter book.

Updike's reading of "Toward Evening," from the hard-to-obtain collection "The Same Door," claims about one-half of this recording. Updike's "in-studio" readings I've found to be asceptic and mechanical. Presented with a live audience, as he is in this recording, Updike is hypnotic. His voice is recognizably that of his characters, even while the story is told in the third person. "Toward Evening" recounts all the joys and travails -- all of the richness in banality, all of the aesthetics in urbanity -- that the protagonist, Rafe, wades through on his way home from midtown Manhattan. Updike's lucid eye is, as usual, ever present. His favorite themes -- our longing for cityscapes, our struggles with domesticity -- are rendered in with Updike's signature of insight and grace. Add to all of this a recitation that is weary and sad enought to still your heart. Without sounding maudlin or sentimental, Updike creates with his voice a world that is all at once crowded, urban and romantic. I recommend it to anyone who thinks Updike's written performances are the last word on this man's amazing poetic sensibility.

A collection of short stories by the acclaimed Polish author killed by the Nazis during World War II. Unrecognized still even after the war, Schulz is in some circles now considered the finest modern Polish-language prose stylist. His stories are dreamlike reflections on life in the modest Jewish quarter of Drohobycz, the town of his birth. Both his fiction and drawings are notable for their erotic tenor and their acute anticipation of the emptiness produced by modern civilization.

I first read this long short story (41 pages) in SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS:MEMOIRS published by Knopf in 1989. It is among my favorite short stories. My wish list DOES include a signed limited edition of A SOFT SPRING NIGHT IN SHILLINGTON published by Lord John Press in 1986. I've been an Updike fan since 1960 when I became hooked on THE POORHOUSE FAIR and PIGEON FEATHERS.

Even though John Hoyer Updike was born in Reading, Pa. on March 18, 1932, he lived at 117 Philadelphia Avenue in Shillington, Pa. until the age of 13. In 1936, he began attending public schools in Shillington, fictionalized as Olinger in his stories and novels. In A SOFT SPRING NIGHT IN SHILLINGTON, Updike returns to his native Shillington at age 48 (in 1980) in route to the Allentown airport with his 25 year old daughter, Elizabeth. His mother meets them at the airport but his daughter's luggage is missing; Updike and his two ladies in tow decide to see BEING THERE starring Peter Sellers at the movie theatre in Shillington, 11 miles away, while they await the return of lost luggage in front of the theatre. Since Mr. Updike has already seen the movie he spends two hours reminiscing his childhood while walking the streets of Shillington in the rain.

The reader gets to know Updike personally through his vivid recollections of Philadelphia and Lancaster streets, including Henry's (a variety store), Gerhard's Camera Shop and the "rec hall". Recollections of school include Miss Becker and Mr. Dickinson, the principal at Shillington Elementary as well as Miss Tate. Descriptions of the A&P on Holland Avenue, Clint Shilling on Franklin Street as well as Ken Kieffer's store where one bought "fastnachts", squarish holeless doughnuts drenched in powdered sugar, are all unforgettable.

According to Mr. Updike, two sensations stand out as peculiarly blissful in his childhood--the awareness of things going by like traffic on Philadelphia Avenue or the sound of an engine and tires, or a headlight beam wheeling around the papered walls of his room. The second is a deep cosmic joy of being out of the rain.

Mr. Updike's facility with language and his voice all captivate. If you read just one Updike memoir, be sure to read A SOFT SPRING NIGHT IN SHILLINGTON.

This hefty chunk of book is a career spanning selection of cartoons and doodles from the bizarre pen of William Steig. Plenty of these illustrations and gag cartoons first appeared in the New Yorker. All of them are fantastic. Any individual page in this one should be enough to convince any sensible person that he is among the best of the New Yorker artists, his only competition is Saul Steinberg. Other good points: John Updike introduction and good biographical information by Lee Lorenz. See also: Abel's Island, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, the Steig Album. Seth's It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken is a great comic book with deep influence from the New Yorker. Choice.

No matter how many times I read one of his books, Greene just never seems to connect with me. At least in this-his one book that in his own words was "written to a thesis"-at least I understand why. Based heavily on his travels to the southern Mexican states of Jalisco and Chiapas in early 1938, Greene set out to examine faith and personal integrity. Greene's "thesis" is that even those who are sinners may still posses God's grace if they hold true to their faith regardless of personal hardship. I find that line of reasoning to be a rather tempting excuse for hypocrisy, and have to wonder what the point of being a priest is if you're going to pick and chose which rules you live by. Priests should live the gospel, not just do their best! An excellent nonfiction book that shows priests doing just that under incredibly difficult circumstances is John Kiser's The Monks of Tibhirine.

In any event, Green's plot is simple: in an unnamed Mexican state, Catholicism has been outlawed by the local revolutionary authorities due to its decadence (both alleged and real). The priests have all either fled or been executed, except for one "whiskey" priest who wanders the countryside, halfheartedly looking to escape over the border. His meanderings lead to a number of set piece encounters, including an English dentist, an English plantation owner and his daughter, and the village woman he impregnated several years before, among others. As he goes through small villages, he is compelled to hold secret masses and baptisms, even though he no longer feels spiritually fit to be God's representative to the people.

All the while, he pursued by a ruthless anti-church police lieutenant, who metes out summary punishment to villages who fail to turn in the priest. Some characterize this chase as full of tension, and call the book a thriller-I never felt that for a minute. There is never any doubt as to the outcome, which is not a criticism, more an attempt to point out that this is hardly a "thriller", and anyone who approaches it as such is very likely to be disappointed. The policeman is actually portrayed with surprising sympathy, as ruthless as his methods may be, his critique of the church is remarkably lucid and on target. The best moments of tension occur when the priest is accompanied by a sly mestizo, whom to priest refers to as ""Judas".

There is some excellent characterizations, and Greene's gift for capturing smells and textures is wonderful. In some ways, the novel is worth reading if only to feel southern Mexico come alive. However, as I fundamentally disagree with the "thesis" that Greene wrote to, it's a bit hard to actually recommend the book. I imagine those with a much stronger sense of faith may find it more rewarding and personally relevant.

I really don't know how to review this novel; there is simply too much the novel has to say to cover it all her in a short review. Anything I write will be totally inadequate. I can only say that The Power and the Glory is certainly one of the greatest novels written in the Twentieth Century.

The novel is the story of a priest in Mexico in a state which has outlawed Christianity. The priest is trying to get out of the state and away from the athiestic lieutenant who's attempting to capture him, but the priest's Christian duty keeps calling him back into the state and into danger. The priest is also waging a war within himself. He is a good man but definitely a sinner, and he struggles to cure himself of his vices and struggles to believe that he can gain salvation.

The Power and the Glory assaults the reader on all levels. Greene explores so many aspects and paradoxes of Christianity. He looks at the great beauty that can be found in sin. He looks at how love and hate can be so similar. Greene reveals how the priest's life has had great meaning even thought the priest may not realize it. Greene reveals man as living in a "Wasteland," and he also reveals the way to find meaning in it. The characterizations of all of the characters really carry the novel. There are so many insights that can be gained from reading about the priest, the lieutenant, and the mestizo. The Power and the Glory is truly a magnificent novel which should be taught and studied everywhere.

I am only now discovering Graham Greene; this was the second of his works that I've read. It is not a book to be taken up for a little light entertainment; I'm still digesting it, you might say. It stays with a person. Superficially, it is about government oppression and man's inhumanity to man; more specifically, it is about love and its dual power to transform and destroy. Read it on whatever level you choose; basically, it is about a Roman Catholic priest struggling with his faith and intense guilt while trying to elude the forces of a government that has declared his religion illegal. I came away from it moved and disturbed, which in my opinion (humble tho' it be) is the purpose of literature: to create a mirror for the reader herself. What flaws do I posess that masquerade as virtue, what overpowering desire truly motivates my actions? In this novel the main character, the whiskey priest, takes flight not only from his persecutors but also from himself; in the end he finds he can only redeem himself by returning. And there I find another question to haunt me...did the priest indeed find redemption in the end?

I have read this book three times: When I was a first year medical student I found it to be exaggerated. When I was in my intern year I found it to be an understatement. Reading it for the third time in the middle of my residency allowed me to have a more mature perspective of this book. I find it to have a striking resemblence to another classic: "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller. I will start by saying that both books are NOT great literature masterpieces . They do not stand in one line with Joyce, Amos Oz, Steinback or Hemmingway and as a work of art they therefore deserve , in my opoinion 2 or 3 stars of rating.They do share, however, a unique quality which is this: They both manage to capture in an astonishing accurracy, through sarcasm and absurd, all that is twisted, wrong and cruel in the systems they deal with. Being both a doctor and an IDF officer, I can testify from personal experience that both the military and the medical field have a lot in common , mainly that they both are a stressfull, wearing enviroments. Shem's accurate perception lead this book to being the sharpest description of this enviroment so far, just as "Catch 22" was in its times I therefore share the enthusiasm of the majority of the reviewers of this book, as much as I can identify with the ones who found it disappointing in the literary sense. It therfore gets a rating of 4.

To the lay-readers who find the book's images and points of view both horrifying and repulsive, I would say only this: As a street paramedic I fully empathize with any experienced doctor, nurse, P.A., or other medical practitioner, who happens to be a little "crispy around the edges." Medicine at any level of practice is often a mental beat-down, frequently unrewarding, and always tough. The "gallows-humor" that HOG depicts so graphically is a defense-mechanism for a lot of health-care workers. Myself included. You either succumb to its temptation, or you burn out. And in that case, you're no good to anyone, least of all your patients. If you read the book from a perspective outside the medical profession, please keep an open mind and you will love the book as much as we who are "in the know" do. And if that doesn't work, you could always try walking a mile in our shoes...

To heck with this being for med students and interns anyone who deals with patients should read House of God. I remember reading this for the first time in nursing school fifteen years ago. I've read it several more times since then and always find myself laughing out loud. In spite of it being a hilariously funny book it is also a cautionary tale and believe it or not one that I have used daily in my nursing practice. Everytime I lower the bed of a disoriented patient I think of it as preventing a turf to ortho, or (God Forbid) a turf to neuro. When I work with new medical students I often watch them "hearing zebras" and it reminds me to be supportive and helpful. I will honestly say that this book is not for the lay man. It can come across as brutal and unfeeling when in reality the point behind this book is to never stop feeling. Just don't let it kill you and always remember it's probably better to hit 'em with some 'roids. Great Book!