Customer Comments

I bought this book without knowing much about what to expect: the premise is so compelling, and the author such a thoughtful artist, that I just knew I wanted to read it. On a micro-level, I loved the depiction of the intimacy of water -- how sound, movement, impulse carries so far in it. I've written a lot of underwater fiction and I admire how thoroughly (forgive the word) grounded this was in the physics of its world. On a larger level, though, what I really admire is the deep grappling with memory: with the good of history and the bad of it. The central question of this farflung what-if story is vividly, immediately relevant to our culture today: how does a society cope with traumatic history? Is it better to keep the truth alive even if it hurts terribly, or let it fade away into a comfortable ignorance? That problem is made visceral and central in this novella, and I love where it goes with it.

A well-crafted hybrid of memoir, travel book and history. It begins with Thomson's quixotic decision as a 21-year-old, untrained, to go to Peru and re-find an Inca ruin that had been discovered, then lost again. In the decades since, he's become a more seasoned explorer and a documentary filmmaker, and his love for the mountainous areas of Peru is a constant. Interwoven with his descriptions of the beautiful, punishing terrain and the abandoned complexes of the Inca are anecdotes of the bizarre characters that have explored the area, the relationship between the peoples of mountains and jungle, the demands of outsiders' tourism and spirituality on the Inca's image, and the often forgotten history of the Inca's last stand.

If I had only one word to describe Angela Carter, I think I might go with "audacious". One lonely adjective, however, never satisfied Carter or me. Carter's imagination is dark, elemental and disturbing, and it wends its way through a rich intellectual landscape. Her prose does tend towards the purple, and while that's part of her charm, it can also be excessive. It can even tire the reader so that she may miss or fail to appreciate inspired images like a tumbledown house "with a look of oracular blindness", a child with "a whim of iron", or Autumn giving the forest "a sickroom hush". At their best, however, her work exposes and owns human ugliness and opens the door briefly to primal beauties. Warning: Carter's stories are sometimes gory, and several include scenes of sexual violence

I read this as a college freshman, still brimming with my teenage tendency to shun darkness and unpleasantness in stories. The beauty of the writing here drew me in and on regardless, until I didn't want to (and couldn't) turn away.

_The Hearts of Horses_ is an enjoyable read, more page-turning than its quiet, even-tempered tone would initially give you cause to guess. It may prompt you to chuckle in company, and, when pressed, explain lamely, "Just horses being horses." It gives you a sense of these animals, these people, and even this country, even though they are invented from hoof to hillock.

This memoir is lucidly written and holds far more profound interest than a mere peek into a mental institution. Kaysen's story is told in short and focused chapters, almost stand-alone essays, easy to devour. The book raises questions not only about the biases and assumptions present in our society's mental health industry, but about the entire concept of 'sane' and 'insane'.

I'm not sure it's fair for Coupland to pick so many squirming thoughts, impressions and experiences directly from my brain and pin them to his pages, especially as he is writing about a different generation of geeks from mine. This book is a rambling, musing journal written from the point of view of a codemonkey tired of the grind at Microsoft in the early 90's. If I had to say what it is about, I'd say it's about technology, isolation, the creation of self and family, intellectual and cultural evolution, and change. So, basically, everything.

Four Quartets is one of the most astounding pieces of writing I've ever encountered. It may start off strange and esoteric, but it becomes more and more familiar through the reading, until you feel almost as if you are experiencing Eliot's journeys and musings instead of reading a poetic result of them. It builds upon itself in the most transparent yet masterful ways. An incredible experience for me as a writer and a thinker.