I'm shocked these books are out of print. I totally enjoyed them and I think I read every one. This book especially was practically prophetic from the standpoint of what the military is currently working on. Consider the year written, and it is quite remarkable.

I would highly recommend this book for young kids interested in imaginative inventions. "Creative inventors", so to speak.

Danny, loooooooong preceeding "Neuromancer", dons a helmet and gloves which give him sensations from an outside source--in this case, a mechanical dragonfly. He uses this technology to his own ends, of course. Prescient sci-fi from the team of Williams and Abraskin.

Nina Cassian's Selected Poems is a wonderful collection of her work, translated by some other great poets and translators (Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, William Jay Smith, and Carolyn Kizer). This collection isn't just about the art of poetry, it is about the art of translation. I wish there had been biographical notes on the translators, but other than that, it's a wonderful collection. I recommend it.

Nina Cassian's poetry is some of the most extraordinary to emerge from Eastern Europe in many years, and American readers can thank editor and translator William Jay for putting together this collection of samples of Cassian's best work, including some translations by the author herself. A resident of the United States since 1985, having been exiled from her own country, Nina Cassian is a poet who is both academic and accessible. Her fluid, easily grasped metaphors and poetic leaps have a charm which sets her apart from her more obscure, less emotional contemporaries.

The Practical Princess and other Liberating Fairy Tales is a wonderful book. It has all the normal things one would expect in a book of fairy tales; princesses locked in tall towers, enchanters, giants, a girl who when she speaks has gold fall from her mouth, bold knights, the un-noble blooded girl who marries a prince, and even a cockatrice.
The main diffrence inbetween fairy tales in this book and other fairy tales is the strong female leads; the princess who rescues herself from being eaten by a dragon and then goes back home to her father's castle for her Geography lesson is just an example.

This wonderfull book contains six short stories that are all enchanting. It also has simple drawings scattered throughout it's pages.

This is a marvelous book for children. Unlike typical fairy tales, the princesses in this collection of stories are not "damsels in distress," but strong, powerful women who can take care of themselves. These aren't male-bashing tales, either, but stories where women and men work together, before living happily ever after.

These stories have all the qualities of the old-fashioned fairy stories: dragons, sorcerers, knights, witches, and princesses. They are quite enjoyable, with little life lessons here and there, and everyone living happily ever after. I think any kid would enjoy these, boys and girls. And it teaches that girls are just as good as boys.

In 1916, American poets Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke had it up to wherever with Imagism, Vorticism, and several other minor isms that they thought had infected the literary world. They set out to concoct an ism to end all isms, and devised "Spectrism," a new school for experimental poetry. To that end, they published "Spectra: New Poems," with an unintelligible preface purporting to explain the name of the new ism. Each of the Spectric poems was pretentiously titled with an opus number, like a piece of classical music.

Witter Bynner wrote as "Emmanuel Morgan." Morgan's persona was full of bacchanalian, bardic blatherskite, a rhyming Whitman. Here is the opening of his "Opus 6:"

If I were only dafter
I might be making hymns
To the liquor of your laughter
And the lacquer of your limbs.

Arthur Davison Ficke wrote as "Anne Knish." The name was meant to be vaguely exotic and Eastern European; apparently not many Americans had heard of knishes in 1916. Knish is the archetypal poetess, sensual and enigmatic, vaguely scandalous. She writes free verse. Here is Opus 118:

If bathing were a virtue, not a lust
I would be dirtiest.

To some, housecleaning is a holy rite.
For myself, houses would be empty
But for the golden motes dancing in sunbeams.

Tax-assessors frequently overlook valuables.
Today they noted my jade.
But my memory of you escaped them.

By now, the basic flaw of the hoax should be obvious. Having endured much worse in the way of poetic experiment between now and 1916, the Spectric poems aren't that bad. In fact, they are rather consistently entertaining, and contain some pretty good lines. They rank among the more memorable work by Bynner and Ficke, and both writers acknowledged as much after the hoax had been exposed.

I first read this book when it came out in 1961. Its great value lies not so much in documenting the amusing history of the hoax, but in reprinting Spectra in its entirety as a lengthy appendix. Yes, the "hoax" poems are parodies, but they're careful ones, and contain some of Ficke's and Bynner's very best work!

"Asparagus grows feathery and tall; The hose lies rotting by the garden wall."

What a couplet! Buy it! Read it! Give it to your teenager as an introduction to modern poetry. Before long he'll be reading Pound.

I had done scores of diets, exercise programs, etc., and never kept the weight off. I had put on 20 extra pounds in the early 1990s, and simply couldn't get it off--not to mention that I have always struggled, dieted, procrastinated, etc., about my being overweight.

In February, 2000, I went on Acting Well. The key is using the log, doing the brief mental preparation in the morning, and understanding--just a little bit--how a properly trained actor creates a new role. It's all in the book, and it's all very simple.

Two years later? I took off around 25 pounds in the first year, going from 172 down to 145-150. I have settled in at 149 (I thoroughly enjoy weighing myself every day!), and sometimes drop a bit lower. It's important that I lost slowly, and even more important that I have NO trouble keeping it off. Now I am a thin person, and I enjoy the habits of a thin person. I know this will last for the rest of my life.

My only disappointment is that I didn't do it (it wasn't available, unfortunately) sooner.

I love my new me, which is really the me I always wanted to be. I never thought I'd make it though. Amazing!

And, incidentally, the book is a fun read; very well written. It debunks lots of stuff, medical and otherwise, and makes it clear that the problem is psychological, not physical. Calorie counting, excess exercising, dieting--they all don't work for more than a short time. This is a sensible, doable program; not a program, in fact, a life! After all, Shakespeare said that we're all only actors on a stage. With this plan, we can be good actors!

Richard

This is a great book that explains how to get the most from your All Wheel Drive (as opposed to 4wd)vehicle. It is not just for racing enthusiasts as it also includes information on how to best set up your car for road use in general. Although somewhat dated, it is well worth reading for anyone from a beginner through to an All Wheel Drive enthusiast or anyone interested in rally and motorsport in general. My advise would be to buy this book, then push the publishers to put it back into print with revisions.

Even though I read this book a little while ago, I remember it being good. I liked the whole book, especially the end and the middle.

Danny makes a ghost-detector and a robot bloodhound in this especially action-packed episode. Irene encounters a hippie. Joe opines that they should all be sleeping and/or eating. I love it!!!

An essential book for every American both young or old, male or female, Democrat or Republican. A delightful discovery on the need of God and guns (or perhaps swords) in the United States and the intolerance of a government in charge of all but answerable to noone. An undeniably perfect fit for todays culture.

Discover your roots from the men that gave their lives for the signing of the Constitution; true heroes. Their resolve was unquestionable and the love for country without reproach.

They brought us so far. We've walked away. Read it and weep. BK

A striking compilation of original, lyrical love poetry by William Jay Smith, and impressively illustrated by Jacques Hnizdovsky's fantastic black-and-white woodcuts, The Girl In Glass is a moving, heartfelt compilation of verse. An ideal giftbook for poetry fanciers, The Girl In Glass features brief yet sensual, rhyming verse about love, sex, valentines, weddings, and the heart's desire. Night Music: The Dark air rushes by us like a cry,/Slowly the branches turn and twist and bend;/The stars, dim islands, sink into the sky,/Borne downward in a broad abyss of wind/That closes quietly to draw them under./The night's deep water swirls and mounts and falls;/Rain descends in irons, and the thunder/Cleaves the thick charged air within these walls.//Now through the darkness will a careful prow/With chart and compass gain a scheduled place;/Now hands will calmly bend above a brow,/Now lips will lower to a trembling face;/And love within the constant mounting crests/Will break with equal fury from our breasts.