In one memorably ruined production this was the director's obsession, so he gave the actor playing Lear tiny, birdlike movements.

Alas! The set designer strongly disagreed and burst forth with a magnificently bare stage relieved only by a giant phallic monument at the center.

His vision being that King Lear was: "A Man Lost in a Wilderness. "

They never did reach an agreement.

But, as Green points out, it really wouldn't have mattered, because if one is brilliant enough to be obsessed about Lear being 'A Man Trapped In a Tube', neither Shakespeare, the cast, nor the audience has much of a fighting chance. . .

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This book is a deliciously hilarious spoof of the British stage, with heavy emphasis on 'cultural' amateur societies. It is a satire on producing as well as acting, directing,--and the gurus who teach it.

But in a wonderful twist of irony, it is now required reading with many Theater Arts depatrments in universities around the world.

( "Do NOT go to acting school!"--- Eleonora Duse )

As well it should be. Filled with outrageously improbable anecdotes , it nevertheless hits home too well for anyone in the profession.

It is a true masterpiece of ham, which offers marvelous advice for directors on how to succeed through obscurantist doublespeak.

No director, for example, should EVER say anything that remotely sounds 'practical' such as : "Well, frankly, I have to get 'em to speak up. "

Far, far better, according to Green, is to say things that sound profound but mean nothing, such as : "I'm not interested at all whether the audience hears my actors, but---it is vital they should hear them thinking. "

Heavy . . .

( "If a director writes in his notes: 'The Oedipal complex is obvious in this scene, must discuss with the queen'; the sooner he is packed and thrown out of the theater, the better it'll be for everyone! "-- George Bernard Shaw )

Shaw has an ally in Green who, based on personal experience, is convinced that the director's primary job is to weed out the obvious psychotics in the cast during the first week of rehersals.

As to actors left on board Green believes he is far more practical than Stanislavsky, whom he does not admire on the grounds that 'these method people are so vague.' He advises actors should carry a chart (1. Speak Slower. 2. Speak Faster, etc.) for whenever the director goes off into interpretive raptures, Oedipal or not.

Simply ask him to point to which number he wants.

Ah! And who could possibly forget the classic: "How To Steal a Scene Though Unconscious" which puts anything ever written by Constantin to shame. . .

An very, very funny book, which suprisingly does contain unexpected gems of commonsense.

Five stars are not enough.

This tome is full of useful information for the coarse actor, including "How to Steal the Scene, Even though Unconscious," "How to be a mere Spear-Carrier, and still ruin a scene," "Basic Makeup Tips for the Coarse Actor," and the useful diagram on set building "The Human Cleat." Anyone who's ever been in a performance of "Arsenic and Old Lace" will appreciate this book -- as will anyone who's ever sat through the show. (Not that I'm slamming "Arsenic and Old Lace," I think it holds up remarkably well.)

Should be required reading in all theatre coarses. Oops, I mean courses...

I first read this book as a teenager, while spending much of my spare time in amateur theatre, and have become Green's slave for life.

Whole segments of the book are quotable, and painfully - hilariously - familiar to anyone who has ever been involved with the stage, paid or unpaid. I remember reading excerpts to my brother over the phone, while both of us cried because we were laughing so hard ... because although these are not your own experiences, they might as well be.

Every actor - amateur or professional - will have come across a coarse actor in their lives: somebody who "knows his lines, but not the order in which they come", leaving everyone floundering; the blatant scene stealer who takes everyone's eyes away from the real action; the sets that collapse when they shouldn't, or don't collapse when they should.

I could go on. But you'd be far better served by reading the book instead, and keeping a box of tissues handy to wipe away the tears of hilarity.

Read the four novels that make up The Book of Bebb, and you'll never forget The Rev. Leo Bebb, one of the best-drawn characters in modern American literature. He lives, he breathes, he exposes his private parts, he raises the dead, he stands before the congregation with a Bible in one hand, reminding them that "charity" is the greatest virtue---and he's got his other hand out to receive the bounty of that charity.

A half-holy conman who seems sincere down to his questionable core, Bebb is a blend of Jimmy Swaggart, WC Fields, Walt Whitman, PT Barnum--and there may even be a dash of Huck Finn and Fielding's Tom Jones mixed in there somewhere.

If you stop and think about it, isn't it amazing what people can and do believe? People worship everything from stone gods to trees and rocks to Elvis Presley and space aliens, and they've always had "guides" such as priests and ministers to lead the way. The Bebb stories encourage us to question what we believe, who we believe in, and how we can possibly put our faith in anyone or anything these days----when we're faced every day with further evidence that people and their feet of clay generally stink.

These stories were written in the 1970s, and in many ways they look forward to the media-exploded days of the 1980s and 1990s, when tv programs and internet content virtually replaced the "landscape" of daily life in middle-America. Leo Bebb is essentially a charismatic, Bible-thumping evangelist from the 1940s wandering in the wilderness of late 20th-Century America. He reminds me of those ubiquitous radio preachers on AM radio coming out of Lubbock, Texas, or somewhere down south, imploring all within the reach of their syrupy drawls to accept the love of Jesus--and to send down the cold hard cash. Although there was something creepy and unsettling about those messages, there was also some strange comfort in knowing that somebody out there still found a reason to believe.

I first read these four Bebb novels in 1991, and upon re-reading them in 2003 it strikes once again me that Buechner's stories and characters are timeless. More so now than in 1991, I think these are American stories about American characters who are trying to "get ahead" in a big country filled with a roughly mixed cocktail of races, cultures, traditions, and values. They're all busy with the business of life, but they're looking for something to believe in, even in such a crazy place as modern America. Every one of Buechner's characters seems to have one foot planted on the ground and one foot stepping tentatively toward the gates of heaven.

This is a find. Buechner is a fine writer with impeccable ears; but his special quality is a kind of humanity that gives merit to the meritless, rejoicing as he has us shake our head, chuckling at their goings-on. His religion is germane, and if this matter is quite different from G.K.Chesterton's, and his voice and ego less resonant, nevertheless there's an assurance here that reminds one of the latter. Fine work, and it's a heathen here that says so.

I read these books at at the same time I was dealing with reconciling my spiritulaity with my sexuality. Fredrick Buchner crafts such a lovely story with heroes so flawed and utterly lovable that you can't help but identify with every one.
These characters became so important to me, that I had to put the final book down because I was so mad at one of them.
Buchener has such a way with discription and characterization.
I find these and maybe The Storm the easiest of his books to read.
Lion Country (the first book of Bebb) really helped me at a tough time in my life, I really recommend it to anyone... it will make you laugh and cry at the same time.

I truly enjoyed my time reading Book of the Hopi. It is low on cutesy Native "folk tales" and packed with actual information about Hopi clans, ritual, and migratory history. It walks you step-by-step through a series of ceremonies in striking detail.

I admit that I found Frank Waters writing style to be clinical at times, but the information he is presenting was interesting enough to overlook this.

By the time you are done with this book, I imagine there is very little you won't know about the Hopi.

Frank Waters' excellent BOOK OF THE HOPI is probably the most complete collection of Hopi stories, language, rituals, and photographs in one place. Waters wrote this book with assistance from thirty-two Hopi elders back in 1963. Much time has passed since then, and while the way of the Hopi remains mostly unchanged, access to their sacred ceremonies and rituals has been greatly reduced in the last several decades.

While BOOK OF THE HOPI was written through the eyes and ears of an outsider, it contains much of the spirit of the Hopi, and countless fascinating insights. One such example is the explanation of how one sacred ceremony (the Ya Ya) was profaned and is no longer performed, since much of its powers were taken for evil. "When you receive a wonderful power and use it for evil you lose the power. You have to use it for good to keep it."

I love the richness of information contained in this little book: symbols, the tablets of the clans, a glossary of Hopi words, thrilling tales about the creation of the worlds, and detailed descriptions of sacred objects such as the Paho (prayer-feather). This attention to detail is marvelous, but it's the heart of BOOK OF THE HOPI that makes me feel at home with the Hopi and at one with their spirit.

I give this book my highest recommendation.

This book is my first exposure to the historical, spiritual and cultural history of the Hopi, both prehistoric and modern. A must read for anyone interested in the honorable traditions of the first American inhabitants whose history predates that of European biblical history, and how the introduction of the European has completely altered their ritualistic practices. This book has opened my eyes to a people whose lives are rich in dedication to the preservation of peace for all living entities on this planet and throughout the cosmos.

Who this book is not for is the UFOlogist, Hollow-Earth and Alien-Conspiracy theorists who believe the Hopi people have come from the purported middle-earth where an evil alien civilization still exist to this day. However, who this book is for are those who respect life as the Hopi respect life and who want to these peoples through the early migrations. From this book you will see that the Hopi have traveled throughout all of the Northern and Southern Americas, as well as Canada and the Artic polar regions long before the European traveled to these parts of the globe, and whose religious practices are older than that of any religion in the world. Where the Christian religion (through the teachings and historical records of the Bible) only know of two worlds the Hopi civilization have memories of four worlds, but both have records of the exact same destruction of the last world, i.e., its destruction by water. Also the Hopi are privy to the knowledge that we will face three more worlds.

I rate this book wonderful, enlightening, educational and spiritually edifying.

Ms. Fredericks has written a much needed book for helping families spend time together cooking. The recipes are easy to prepare and include ideas and information from many cultures. I found this to be educational for my own children and encourage parents to buy and use this wonderful cookbook

I love this book. Parents hear all the time about getting our kids eating right and getting some variety in their diets. Well, here's how to do it. Fredericks's practical strategies are helping us out: we're broadening what our kids will eat (because they have a hand in cooking it); we're cooking with fresh ingredients (amazing what you have time for if the kids are with you in the kitchen!); and we're figuring out how to be a team. On top of that, her recipes are really good; not just child's food. Dad is getting to be a better cook, too, thanks to the way she instructs.

As a Mother of two, I was pleasantly surprised to find a cookbook w/ exciting recipes from around the world that were easy to prepare (w/ my kids) but satisfying for adults as well as children. I applaude Ms. Fredericks for her dedication to her kids as well as helping other families w/ similar struggles. A really great cookbook with an interactive family approach to cooking.

"Dancing on the Glass Ceiling" is the perfect combination of intuitive and practical advice - just like a woman! The real world examples make the information relevant to any working woman, and lend credibility to the authors' advice.
Jam-packed with great information - all of it useful - this book is well organized with easy-to-implement recommendations. This book is a terrific guide for not just your working life, but your overall life as well! After doing just one or two things the authors recommend, my life has shifted dramatically.

"Dancing on the Glass Ceiling" is the perfect combination of intuitive and practical advice - just like a woman! The real world examples make the information relevant to any working woman, and lend credibility to the authors' advice.

Jam-packed with great information - all of it useful - this book is well organized with easy-to-implement recommendations. This book is a terrific guide for not just your working life, but your overall life as well! Even if you do just one or two things the authors recommend, your life will shift dramatically.

Dancing on the Glass Ceiling is the best "how to" book I've read on women in management. Thirteen women and two men report to me and we're all reading it. I just wish it had been available ten years ago when I was with a different company and coming up through the ranks; it would have saved me a great deal of frustration and heartache.

Now, the book is helping me to deal not only with my bosses but to effectively manage the people under me. Easy to read, not preachy. Everyone in business should read this book.

This is the first Blandings Castle novel, and the first novel in what we now think as the true P.G. Wodehouse style. For the first time, the interplay between absent-minded peers, quick-to-anger relatives and friends, and those amazing good-natured yet good-for-nothing younger sons come together in a comic dance of quick assumptions, identity switches, flirts with embarrassment, and, oh yes, love.

If Wodehouse wasn't so widely admired by the critics, I would have to claim him as a guilty pleasure. Although I can quote style and form with the best of them, the real truth is that I read Wodehouse because he amuses. In Wodehouse's hands, the sly wink equals the over-the-top exaggeration, and only one will work in the place that he puts it.

I tried to slow my reading speed down on this book, to gain an understanding of the flow and the way the language worked. I failed miserably--before I realized it, I was caught up once again in the action of the story and I wasn't observing but enjoying. I'm thinking that to truly study a novel, I am going to have to force myself to retype it.

If your acquaintance with the wonderful world of Wodehouse begins and ends with Jeeves and that bit of a thick-o, Bertram Wilburforce W. then it's high time you came to Blandings Castle to meet Lord Emsworth and his idiot son Freddie,what?And "something fresh" is exactly where you'd want to start.Structured like a detective or spy novel and woven ever so tightly,it leaves you wondering....could all this bally intrigue be about something so incredibly silly? (and I'm far and away from meaning silly as an insult).Lighthearted and romantic without ever being lightweight, beautifully written and zanily paced, you'll want to spend a holiday as a guest at Blandings castle as soon as possible.Go ahead,satisfy your anglophilic urges...read some Wodehouse!

Something Fresh is the first book of the Blandings Castle series, and in my opinion, the best. It is about a person named Lord Emsworth who accidentally steals a millionaire's scarab. The millionaire also happens to be his son's future father-in-law. The millionaire hires a man to find it, while the man's friend also gets information on the scarab. So both try to steal, while the Lord Emsworth's secretary, not knowing that it is the millionaire's, tries to prevent them from recovering the scarab. The encounters between the man,his girl friend, and the secretary will keep you laughing. Not only I, but also other people, who have read this book after I recommended it, share the view that Something Fresh is an extraordinary book. Get your hands on this book as fast as you can, and soon you will be famished for more books by P.G. Wodehouse. It will, and I am totally serious here, make you laugh until you have laughed all the laughs you can laugh, and cried all the tears you can cry. Hope you enjoy!!!! Cheers!!!!! : )

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the statistical models and algorithms used for speech recognition. Jelinek sets up the speech recognition problem in the traditional way as the decoding half of Shannon's noisy channel model. While Jelinek glosses over signal processing, he provides an excellent overview of the symbolic stages of processing involved in speech recognition.

After a quick introduction, Jelinek digs into the statistics behind Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), the foundation of almost all of today's speech recognizers. This is followed by chapters devoted to acoustic modeling (probability of acoustics given words) and language modeling (probability of a given sequence of words), and the algorithmic search induced by this model. There are also advanced chapters on fast match (widely used heuristics for pruning search), the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for training, and the use of decision trees, maximum entropy and backoff for language models. He covers several auxiliary topics including information theory and perplexity, the spelling to phoneme mapping, and the use of triphones for cross-phoneme modeling. Each chapter is a worthy introduction to an important topic.

This book does not presuppose much in the way of mathematical, computational, or linguistic background. A simple intro to probability and some experience with search problems would be of help, but isn't necessary -- you'll learn a lot about these topics reading the book.

All in all, this is the best thorough introduction to speech recognition that you can find. Read it along with Manning and Schuetze's "Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing" from the same series; there's a little overlap in language modeling, but not much. You might want to start with the gentler book by Jurafsky and Martin, "Speech and Language Processing", before tackling either Jelinek or Manning and Schuetze.

This book provides an excellent overview of speech recognition technology using Hidden Markov Models. Although Jelinek is clearly speaking with respect to his experience at IBM - he might as well be describing any other commercial speech recognition framework in the world. As a researcher and programmer in the area of speech recognition I regard this book as an excellent reference. It is concise, and I would say that anyone with a reasonable grasp of mathematics should have no trouble understanding most of the topics. In some of the more advanced areas some readers might need to refer to one of reference papers described in the book. I agree with the first reader - destined to be a classic!

This book is possibly the first of its kind - exclusively devoted to Statistical Speech Recognition. The author is a pioneer in the area - one of the 'fathers' of the field,as it were. Thus one expects the text to be authoritative, and it is. The 'information density' is very high - it's a small book, but absolutely packed with information. You'll learn a lot about Hidden Markov Models and their use in Speech Recognition, but it also addresses many other issues, like language modelling and grammar, making it much more than a mere 'speech maths' book.

However, this is definitely not meant for absolute newcomers to the field of speech processing, and it does assume some background in advaced mathematics as well, especially in probability.

If you're looking for other aspects of Speech Recognition or code, you've come to the wrong place - but please don't spoil the rating of an excellent book by complaining that it doesn't have what it never promised to :-) - if you want a solid introduction to the field as a whole, i'd suggest 'Fundamentals of Speech Recognition' by Rabiner & Juang, and if it's code that you're looking for, there's lots of excellent open source stuff available on the net, notably from CMU and Cambridge, and there are some recent books in the market exclusively devoted to implementation of speech recognition systems.

To sum up, if you have some exposure to speech recognition and want to learn the maths & concepts behind the Statistical approach to Speech Recognition, this is your book.

This has been one of the most moving texts I have read in many years, both emotionally and spiritually. No book has touched me to the core at this point in my journey than "Telling Secrets" - for Buechner has pricked my heart like no other.

In an unassuming style and a tender but poingient language, Buechner draws out of the reader their own secrets, portraying the healing that comes from vulnerability, and helping us become human along the way.

This is not merely a Christian or spiritual book, but a book wrapped around humanity which encompasses our faith, feelings, hearts, minds and bodies.

Thank you Fredrick for your secrets.

In this little reflective book, Buechner shows us the importance of recollection... the redeeming quality of memory. As in all of his autobiographical work, Buechner is remarkably transparent and honest. Whether or not you have enjoyed his fiction, (and I have) I believe there is something here for us all to relate to and identify with. Two passages in the book are very TELLING as they apply to the SECRETS that we all have: Firstly, "We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings." Secondly, "It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later."

Reading the first two books in the memoir series (The Sacred Journey and Now And Then) are not prerequisites to enjoying this one, for its message is self-contained. But if you start here, you'll want to look into the others.

Buechner is an overlooked author who produces profound insights and writes in a vivid, accessible style. The book opens with a recollection of his father's suicide when Buechner was a boy. It is told without a trace of self-pity, yet captures a youngster's perspective. He writes of his mother's damaging narcissism without any of the rancor typical in contemporary memoir, most likely because he can place his life story in the context of his Christian faith. While he writes from a Christian viewpoint, his story and its theme about being open about our complete selves will touch anyone who has felt loss and doubt.

It is a slim volume, written with a novelist's eye for detail. If only all theologians could communicate like this.

As a mystery reader, I find many authors whom I most enjoy are women. This time it's a man's turn to dish a charmer. There's plenty here to make the pulse race too. Boardwalkers has elements of both a murder mystery and legal thriller. I could do with less of the latter, but there's a splashy beginning, big ending, and interesting characters, young and old, who kept me glued. I was intrigued by the deep characterizations and the way so many divergent lives intertwined. I especially enjoyed following immigrants, Tony and Lena, from their teen years through their lives together, and "blue-blooded" Paul, who develops a more mature understanding of his roots. Most of all, I found main characters to feel at home with in a story that kept me guessing who did it. Clues are fed, ever so slightly, but continually, in a puzzle that's not solved until the last chapter.

The story starts wonderfully and ends with vivid imagination. A lawyer I know told me "Boardwalkers" was very good and true to Atlantic City's quirky court system. I expected a legal thriller with an underlying murder mystery, then found that and more. A satisfying love story and a unique tie between the two main characters - that can't be revealed in a review - turns the story into an unexpected treat. Unlike some of the more recent John Grisham books I've read, the finish in this one had me rushing through the final pages to a climatic end.

Schofield gives one a strong opening, and a sustained story line that accelerates about one-third of the way into the story -- until it races toward an exciting and unexpected finish. A very satisfying end is as effective as the beginning. The Boardwalkers well covers Atlantic City and surprisingly takes some quick twists onto foreign ground. Whether close to home or around the world, Schofield makes you feel as if you're actually there with his characters -- living their lives as they face daring odds. The result is a believable story of redemption that delves into previously unexplored themes. For example, a killer with a capacity to love is the guiding force that tries teaching a lawyer, who is wrongly charged with murdering his own wife, where to find his heart. A fallen minister tells the lawyer where to search for his soul. It's spiritual growth that he'll need if he's to beat the false murder charge that could send him to his death. But the reader should not worry about the newfound idealism; one is carried along with underlying humor, the sheer thrill of the chase, and the tensions of a well-paced legal drama. The story manages to instruct while being thoroughly entertaining.

Tired of all those solemn "memoirs" and "remembrances" that are on the library shelves? Well, this one will knock your socks off!
If Boswell were alive today and using videotape instead of a quill pen, the talk shows would have him as their constant guest.

I'm not sure if I'd want to have known him, but this lecher, alcoholic, and moocher had a keen eye for London high- and low-life that will keep you hanging on every page.

To anyone who, like myself, has found a real and deep enjoyment in reading the Life of Johnson, I can only recommend Boswell's own diaries. The first volume - his 'London Journal' starting in the year he met Johnson - is pure delight. Boswell always saw himself as a character acting in the drama of life, and he could be almost excruciatingly honest and objective about himself. His voluminous diaries record all the trivia, triumphs, and despairs of his own life, day by day and year by year.

My own opinion is that Boswell is a far better diarist than Pepys, though not nearly as well known in this respect. There is a fascination about seeing his whole life recorded from youth to shortly before his death, with all the same force and liveliness that went into his Life of Johnson. His inner life is at least as entertaining as his outer life. He seems totally determined to write about himself as he wrote about Johnson - warts and all.

It's this courage and honesty about himself that makes us respect Boswell even when he is at his most foolish or debauched. The diaries make it extremely clear that he was no idiot, and that the Life of Johnson was no fortuitous masterpiece. From his diaries he comes across as a deeply sensitive, romantic, self-conscious man. Charming, likeable, and often playing the clown to his acquaintances; but often filled with self-doubt, frustration, insecurity, and a deep depression that he concealed from all except his closest friends.

We see Boswell puffed up with vanity at some silly social success, and the same Boswell quietly devoting large amounts of time and money that he could ill spare to helping people in trouble. We see Boswell in love again and again with totally unsuitable women, and eventually marrying the cousin who had always been a good, close friend rather than an object of wild romance. We see Boswell in his vibrant youth, and his tragic final years, as an alcoholic filled with bitter shame and despair, yet unable to reform.

His diaries are certainly one of the great undiscovered treasures of literature. They deserve to be a lot better known than they are.

It has been quite awhile since I have read this book but and can remember few details. What sticks in the mind is the complete humanity displayed by its author. Frankly, Boswell is unlikable and hardly to be admired but his passion and candidness make this book very readable today. Not many tomes from this era can make this claim. It is a must read for both those interested in Johnson and those students of the human condition.