A sweet children's book about a group of farm animals who decide to migrate to Florida for the winter. First published in 1927, the animals' adventures are delightfully innocent by contemporary standards. The bad people are rough-looking men, most people are kind to the animals (at times the tale reminds one of 1941's Make Way for Ducklings), there are few cars, and one subplot requires a phaeton. A number of passages reminded me of The Hobbit, particularly because Freddy the Pig makes up little songs about the group's adventures. In addition, a fight among some robbers evokes the fight between Tolkien's trolls. A fast read for an adult, and probably fun to read aloud with a child.
This is fascinating reading in a week where Iran is conducting missile tests. Like Bechdel's Fun Home, this memoir-in-cartoons begins in the narrator's girlhood and takes the reader through her young womanhood. Satrapi describes the Iranian revolution through a child's eyes--that is, personal concerns often supersede political knowledge. As the threat of fundamentalism grows, Satrapi's parents send her to Europe; after what sounds like a miserable adolescence, she returns to Iran. Where Bechdel's drawings are black lines on a white ground, Satrapi often works with white lines on a primarily black background. This contributes an atmospheric weight to her story, especially when all the men are dressed in black and the women are veiled. Some reviewers are unhappy with the middle European section, where Satrapi is a depressed, pot-smoking pseudo-anarchist. I thought it served as an excellent surreal foil for the equally surreal Iranian portions of the narrative that frame it.
In this volume of the Septimus Heap series, Sage continues to deliver a story that, though it uses many conventional children's fantasy motifs and devices, is fresh and entertaining. Darker than the first two books, Physik extends and deepens its world and develops the increasingly complex relationships between characters. More characters are introduced; characters mature into early adolescence, and the mysteries of this world are broadened with hints of Northern Trader culture and the hidden practices of alchemy. Civil unrest demonstrates that being a princess, or an ExtraOrdinary Wizard, is not sufficient to command the respect of a mob. Though this books action resolves fairly well, it clearly references future books (for example, the unfolding of Lucy and Simon's relationship). Whether other points a (such as what the rat-chasing mob is doing by the end of the book) were simply dropped or are relevant in a later volume cannot yet be determined. Queste (book 4) is now available at a bruising 596 pages.
Weisman's enjoyable and hard-to classify thought experiment takes as its starting point the question, what would happen to the world if all humans were to disappear suddenly, simultaneously, and not cataclysmically? Weisman attempts to answer this from many perspectives in relation to architecture, nuclear waste, animal life, and global warming, to name a few. He musters support from a variety of fields and includes both data and interviews in his exploration. The intent of the fantasy, of course, is to suggest that there are matters of pollution, resource exploitation, and inequity of which we could be more aware and which could spur proactive behavior. Other than a few editing errors (primarily transpositions), Weisman is easy to follow and strikes a pleasant authorial tone. I'd have liked a section on future geological change, continental drift, and the effect of volcanic action, but perhaps that is for Simon Winchester to write instead.
Take a close look at the cover of this book. It shows men walking hyenas and (perhaps gibbons).
I bought this book because of the juxtaposition of the title and the cover image. It seemed to promise that the places I don't want to visit might include the situation pictured on the cover, or at least something like it. However, the cover has nothing to do with the contents of the book. The source of the image is listed as Scamorama.com. Scamorama is a site devoted to instances of advance fee fraud, e.g., those e-mails you get from Nigeria that begin "Beloved Friend" and attempt to induce you to assist with a million dollar transaction. A link from Scamorama's main page takes one to this photo and several others of Nigerian men walking hyenas. A link from that page takes one to photos and a link to an essay about a small group of entertainers who are hyena handlers. What does any of this have to do with advance fee fraud? Nothing. More to the point, what does any of this, including the photo, have to do with No Holiday: 80 Places You Don't Want to Visit... A Disinformation Travel Guide? Nothing. The reasons you don't want to travel to the 80 destinations are politics, economies, and pollution. Though a scant few reasons not to travel are related to abhorrent cultural practices (such as throwing a goat off the top of a church), these examples are not the main focus of the book. Further, the 2-page section on Nigeria has nothing to do with this photo. Why not a photo of something that has to do with the book? Perhaps because this photo is more interesting than the book.
Leaving aside what the book seemed to promise and focusing instead on what it is, it is still disappointing. The content is often interesting, but highly repetitive. Summary: The US, Britain, and Israel are very bad and less powerful cultures would never wage war or civil war, commit fraud against their citizens, or pollute if not seduced or coerced into doing so by countries such as the US and Britain. The subheadings that describe the focus of each section are in small print and do not always match the table of contents, nor is the prose style of the table of contents internally consistent. The photos, most of which are public domain or from Wikipedia Commons, are black and white and uncaptioned, making it difficult at times to associate them with the section they illustrate.
I've enjoyed browsing though some of The Disinformation Company's other titles, but Cohen's poor writing interferes with my reading. Here are two samples:
"In 2004 the international press picked up the story in the Swaziland newspapers of the King's latest request to the country's parliament for $15 million. Purchased in time for Christmas that same year, a Daimler-Chrysler car equipped not only with television but more importantly a DVD player, refrigerator and solid silver champagne service is truly a sight worth seeing. Even though much of the money spent on the building and upkeep of those Royal Palaces eventually goes to Swazilanders, or maybe Filipinos. Poor people anyway."
"When Serbian nationalism, historically the spark for the great bloodletting of what Europeans call 'The Great War' of 1914-18, spluttered back into life (after lying dormant under the iron rule of President Tito's communists), a lot of people preferred to 'look the other way.'"
One's fingers itch for the red pen throughout. I don't disagree with much of Cohen's data, and can usually appreciate his interpretation even if I don't agree with it. However, the book cries out for better editing. While I'm wishing, I will wish for a relevant cover photo as well.
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Shoshana has commented on (155) products.
Freddy Goes To Florida (Freddy Books) by Walter R. Brooks
Shoshana, July 18, 2008
A sweet children's book about a group of farm animals who decide to migrate to Florida for the winter. First published in 1927, the animals' adventures are delightfully innocent by contemporary standards. The bad people are rough-looking men, most people are kind to the animals (at times the tale reminds one of 1941's Make Way for Ducklings), there are few cars, and one subplot requires a phaeton. A number of passages reminded me of The Hobbit, particularly because Freddy the Pig makes up little songs about the group's adventures. In addition, a fight among some robbers evokes the fight between Tolkien's trolls. A fast read for an adult, and probably fun to read aloud with a child.The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Shoshana, July 18, 2008
This is fascinating reading in a week where Iran is conducting missile tests. Like Bechdel's Fun Home, this memoir-in-cartoons begins in the narrator's girlhood and takes the reader through her young womanhood. Satrapi describes the Iranian revolution through a child's eyes--that is, personal concerns often supersede political knowledge. As the threat of fundamentalism grows, Satrapi's parents send her to Europe; after what sounds like a miserable adolescence, she returns to Iran. Where Bechdel's drawings are black lines on a white ground, Satrapi often works with white lines on a primarily black background. This contributes an atmospheric weight to her story, especially when all the men are dressed in black and the women are veiled. Some reviewers are unhappy with the middle European section, where Satrapi is a depressed, pot-smoking pseudo-anarchist. I thought it served as an excellent surreal foil for the equally surreal Iranian portions of the narrative that frame it.Physik: Septimus Heap, Book Three (Septimus Heap #03) by Angie Sage and Mark Zug
Shoshana, July 12, 2008
In this volume of the Septimus Heap series, Sage continues to deliver a story that, though it uses many conventional children's fantasy motifs and devices, is fresh and entertaining. Darker than the first two books, Physik extends and deepens its world and develops the increasingly complex relationships between characters. More characters are introduced; characters mature into early adolescence, and the mysteries of this world are broadened with hints of Northern Trader culture and the hidden practices of alchemy. Civil unrest demonstrates that being a princess, or an ExtraOrdinary Wizard, is not sufficient to command the respect of a mob. Though this books action resolves fairly well, it clearly references future books (for example, the unfolding of Lucy and Simon's relationship). Whether other points a (such as what the rat-chasing mob is doing by the end of the book) were simply dropped or are relevant in a later volume cannot yet be determined. Queste (book 4) is now available at a bruising 596 pages.The World without Us by Alan Weisman
Shoshana, July 7, 2008
Weisman's enjoyable and hard-to classify thought experiment takes as its starting point the question, what would happen to the world if all humans were to disappear suddenly, simultaneously, and not cataclysmically? Weisman attempts to answer this from many perspectives in relation to architecture, nuclear waste, animal life, and global warming, to name a few. He musters support from a variety of fields and includes both data and interviews in his exploration. The intent of the fantasy, of course, is to suggest that there are matters of pollution, resource exploitation, and inequity of which we could be more aware and which could spur proactive behavior. Other than a few editing errors (primarily transpositions), Weisman is easy to follow and strikes a pleasant authorial tone. I'd have liked a section on future geological change, continental drift, and the effect of volcanic action, but perhaps that is for Simon Winchester to write instead.No Holiday: 80 Places You Don't Want to Visit by Martin Cohen
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1-5 of 155 nextShoshana, June 21, 2008
Take a close look at the cover of this book. It shows men walking hyenas and (perhaps gibbons).I bought this book because of the juxtaposition of the title and the cover image. It seemed to promise that the places I don't want to visit might include the situation pictured on the cover, or at least something like it. However, the cover has nothing to do with the contents of the book. The source of the image is listed as Scamorama.com. Scamorama is a site devoted to instances of advance fee fraud, e.g., those e-mails you get from Nigeria that begin "Beloved Friend" and attempt to induce you to assist with a million dollar transaction. A link from Scamorama's main page takes one to this photo and several others of Nigerian men walking hyenas. A link from that page takes one to photos and a link to an essay about a small group of entertainers who are hyena handlers. What does any of this have to do with advance fee fraud? Nothing. More to the point, what does any of this, including the photo, have to do with No Holiday: 80 Places You Don't Want to Visit... A Disinformation Travel Guide? Nothing. The reasons you don't want to travel to the 80 destinations are politics, economies, and pollution. Though a scant few reasons not to travel are related to abhorrent cultural practices (such as throwing a goat off the top of a church), these examples are not the main focus of the book. Further, the 2-page section on Nigeria has nothing to do with this photo. Why not a photo of something that has to do with the book? Perhaps because this photo is more interesting than the book.
Leaving aside what the book seemed to promise and focusing instead on what it is, it is still disappointing. The content is often interesting, but highly repetitive. Summary: The US, Britain, and Israel are very bad and less powerful cultures would never wage war or civil war, commit fraud against their citizens, or pollute if not seduced or coerced into doing so by countries such as the US and Britain. The subheadings that describe the focus of each section are in small print and do not always match the table of contents, nor is the prose style of the table of contents internally consistent. The photos, most of which are public domain or from Wikipedia Commons, are black and white and uncaptioned, making it difficult at times to associate them with the section they illustrate.
I've enjoyed browsing though some of The Disinformation Company's other titles, but Cohen's poor writing interferes with my reading. Here are two samples:
"In 2004 the international press picked up the story in the Swaziland newspapers of the King's latest request to the country's parliament for $15 million. Purchased in time for Christmas that same year, a Daimler-Chrysler car equipped not only with television but more importantly a DVD player, refrigerator and solid silver champagne service is truly a sight worth seeing. Even though much of the money spent on the building and upkeep of those Royal Palaces eventually goes to Swazilanders, or maybe Filipinos. Poor people anyway."
"When Serbian nationalism, historically the spark for the great bloodletting of what Europeans call 'The Great War' of 1914-18, spluttered back into life (after lying dormant under the iron rule of President Tito's communists), a lot of people preferred to 'look the other way.'"
One's fingers itch for the red pen throughout. I don't disagree with much of Cohen's data, and can usually appreciate his interpretation even if I don't agree with it. However, the book cries out for better editing. While I'm wishing, I will wish for a relevant cover photo as well.