This book takes the form of a normal phrasebook as intended for cats. Or at least what humans would expect a cat to say in various situations. It is a light and quick read and the French itself is accurte and useful, but knowing some French is useful, as a few of the “translations” are jokes in themselves.
Mon dieu! Un petit livre pour des chats! Maintenant il peut miauler en deux langues! Aucune paix pour l’homme.
John Keegan’s book provides a very thorough look at World War I. It details the politics, both international and internal to each of the primary countries, in addition to the military status, targets and goals. It also summarizes the affects the war had on the world while raising some interesting questions. It is an excellent way to learn about this war and how it affected the world, something that is being forgotten in our schools.
Thomas Foster discusses different elements of poetry to raise the awareness of the elements and the appreciation of poetry in the reader. Foster does a good job of making it interesting and easy to foolow and remember. I’ve enjoyed his other books, as his writing style is easy to read and has a lot of good information.
Foster covers a variety of styles, explaining what elements make it what it is. He uses limited technical jargon and carefully explains them when he does.
His writing is easy to read and informative. I plan to seek out other books of his to read.
This book is mostly a supportive book written in a self-help style, and almost a spiritual style. It has a lot of anecdotes detailing her experiences dealing with all the roadblocks that we encounter or put up in our own path. She has a neurotic sense of humor that makes the book entertaining at the same time.
In this book, she writes a lot about the publishing process, adding a hearty dose of reality to want-to-be writers.
This book came recommended to me, although I can’t remember the source. I felt the book got off to a slow start. The first few chapters leaned more toward the spiritual style which didn’t appeal to me, but later chapters had more useful information. Overall, I found the book an enjoyable read, even if it didn’t give me all I was expecting.
The book’s title has two meanings. The first is obvous, time travel at other than the normal rate. The other is traveling through history discussing attitudes and knowledge about time.
The first few chapters discuss historical perspectives about time, putting them in context of the local cultures. Then it gets into fiction, early suggestions of time travel cluminating with H. G. Wells and the actual consideration of traveling through time.
With Wells’ book, there is a lot of discussion about reactions to the idea, from supportive and expansive fiction to ridiculing reactions as reviews.
It expands on this idea to talk about how time travel is used to tell stories. This includes backstories and telling a story from two differnt time periods concurrently, as opposed to the current idea of time travel.
Finally, there is some discussion about the arrow of time, current ideas on time travel, and more journeys into fiction.
The book is interesting and worth reading, but didn’t provide a lot of new information of philosophical ideas.
This books is a text for a class taught by New Grounds. But it does stand on its own very well.
The book start off with a historical introduction, then chapters describing techniques to etch and print a plate. After that it goes on to describe different techniques to create and apply grounds: hardground, aquatint, spit bite, softground, crayon softground, liftground, Crisco liftground, color proofing, Chine Collé and finally curing the print. Each chapter goes into step-by-step details to create the ground, etching, timing considerations and finally some common problems and their solutions.
This is a great book for beginners as well as intermediate-level printers. Maybe advanced, I can’t speak to that.
I was disappointed in this book. It is part of a series known as The Long Earth, I wasn’t aware of that when I started the book. The premise is that there are a large number of parallel universes that can be stepped through, they are mostly similar with minor differences, mostly involving plants and animals. The plot involves an alien invasion in one of the parallel-Earths.
It felt like the world wasn’t thoroughly thought through. It is easy for people, either individuals with abilities or with devices, to step between the worlds. Yet, in a world, almost all thinking is normal within the world. Rather than build a house, then step into a parallel farm to work, they would build a normal farmstead. It would seem more interesting with four-dimensional dwellings and working environments.
The other problem was that the solution was just handed to the main characters. Someone showed up, this is how we solve it, and bang. There was a moral dilemma associated with the solution, but this, too, was solved to easily. And there wasn’t sufficient explanation about why it would actually work, muchh less discussion. Some of this could have been explained in the three earlier volumes that I haven’t read.
I would say that the series isn’t worth the time to read it, but I’d first like to have a discussion with someone who has read them.
This story is told in first person, from the perspective of an elite soldier named Conrad Harris, he has earned the nickname Lazarus because he keeps coming back from death. The book examines the future of warfare, in this story, Conrad leads an elite team of sims. This team uses enhanced clones of themselves to go out on missions, they die and wake up again. The book looks like it’s going to examine this and its meaning to humanity, but doesn’t get there.
The writing is mostly plain. The author’s descriptions go from good and interesting to the kind of bland writing you want to race through. He uses only an occasional metaphor or similie, but it feels contrived.
The characters are one-dimensional. The author does use backstory to try and fill out Conrad’s life, but it doesn’t work. Often, the actions, and more so the dialog, of Conrad and his team feel more like amateurs playing soldier than elite soldiers. The descriptions of action on a ship during combat occasionally belie an ignorance of shipboard procedures.
If action and military sci-fi appeal to you, you will probably enjoy the book. I could not finish it.
Another book in the series of Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn. In this book, Jim Chee is investigating a murder which may be related to a self-defense murder in the past. In a complex plot involving gold mines, abandoned military bases and a missing wife, Joe Leaphorn get his curiosity up and starts his own investigation.
This book starts out following Jim Chee and one of his officers, Bernadette Manuelito. These characters eventually take a back seat to Joe Leaphorn who does a lot of the investigation.
This book gets involved in some of the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni (?) cultures. It is one of Hillerman’s better stories.
I received this book as part of the Early reviewer program on LibraryThing. I was a little disappointed and also enjoyed it.
First, the images are very good. I enjoy seeing what people can do using the technology.
Then, the book has a nice layout. The cover is appealing and the pages are colored to the visible light spectrum. It is very nice.
But, there is no text discussing the images, techology, nor the artists. I was expecting that kind of information. Second, the images seem to be inserted at random, there is no organization by theme, techniques, film or artist.
Last, the book is a little small. These images demand more space, there is a lot of information in them and they would have a better appeal if they were larger.
Overall, I like to book. It is pleasing and can fill a few random minutes of your day.
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