Book Description
Richard Rodgers was one of America's most prolific and best-loved composers. A world without "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady is a Tramp," "Blue Moon," and "Bewitched," to name just a few of the songs he wrote with Lorenz Hart, is scarcely imaginable, and the musicals he wrote with his second collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein--Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music--continue to enchant and entertain audiences. Arranged in four sections, Rodgers and Hart (1929-1943), Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943-1960), Rodgers After Hammerstein (1960-1979), and The Composer Speaks (1939-1971), The Richard Rodgers Reader offers a cornucopia of informative, perceptive, and stylish biographical and critical overviews. It also contains a selection of Rodgers's letters to his wife Dorothy in the 1920s, the 1938 Time magazine cover story and New Yorker profiles in 1938 and 1961, and essays and reviews by such noted critics as Brooks Atkinson, Eric Bentley, Leonard Bernstein, Lehman Engel, Walter Kerr, Ken Mandelbaum, Ethan Mordden, George Jean Nathan, and Alec Wilder. The volume features personal accounts by Richard Adler, Agnes de Mille, Joshua Logan, Mary Martin, and Diahann Carroll. The collection concludes with complete selections from more than thirty years of Rodgers's own writings on topics ranging from the creative process, the state of the Broadway theater, even Rodgers's bout with cancer, and a generous sample from the candid and previously unpublished Columbia University interviews. For anyone wishing to explore more fully the life and work of a composer whose songs and musicals have assumed a permanent--and prominent--place in American popular culture, The Richard Rodgers Reader will offer endless delights.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding Collection of Articles and Essays.......2003-01-28
If any college plans to teach a course on Richard Rodgers, they need look no further than this book for the perfect text. Here is a collection of essays, book chapters, reviews, etc., dealing with Rodgers in each of his eras. They range from a Time magazine piece on Rodgers and Hart in the late 30s, to a Holiday magazine piece on Rodgers and Hammerstein in the late 50s. The collection helps give the reader an even better understanding of Richard Rodgers than he does in his own autobiography, because, as the editor notes, in the interviews that make up the final section, Rodgers is much more at ease and more glib.
Some of the articles are a little technical in nature, with their study of Rodgers' musical compositions, but anyone familiar with his writings should be able to understand what they're referring to, by simply running the tune through your head as you analyze what's being discussed.
The book is hardly a whitewash, and is amazingly fair in its presentation of articles both friendly and not so friendly. For example, there's a chapter from Diahann Carroll's autobiography that paints Rodgers in a very unflattering light.
The collection is not only informative, but it's very entertaining. While this book is good for people just getting familiar with Rodgers, it's probably best suited for the well-versed scholar, who will enjoy this research packed together in a handy volume, eliminating the need to head to the library's microfilm collection. Also, the editor does a very good job of pointing the reader to other articles that were not included (usually because of the cost, as he mentions in the foreword)
but present an opposing view or elaborate further on an idea.
Great job!
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Jack the Builder (MathStart 1)
Stuart J. Murphy
Manufacturer: HarperTrophy
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A House for Birdie (MathStart 1)
ASIN: 0060557753
Release Date: 2006-02-28 |
Book Description
Jack stacks up blocks high. Two make a robot, five make a boat, and fifteen make...whatever you can imagine! Math becomes child's play as young readers are introduced to the skill of counting on, a first step toward mastering addition.
Customer Reviews:
Colorful and light.......2006-09-23
The basic concepts of addition are snuck into this colorful, light-hearted book that is perfect for the average 4-6 yr old.
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Once Around the Block
Kevin Henkes , and
Victoria Chess
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0688049540 |
Customer Reviews:
Once Around the Block.......2002-02-02
"Once Around the Block" is my favorite book. It demonstrates my lifetime goal of helping people on a daily basis in a simple, humorous, heartwarming manner. This book provides an excellent social studies lesson for children, but kids will enjoy the book for its cute story and fun illustrations.
Amazon.com
Here is a modernist novel (or anti-novel) with a vengeance. David Markson, whose previous books include Springer's Progress and Wittgenstein's Mistress, has erected a skeletal framework in which a character called the Reader contemplates the creation of a Protagonist. This process never moves much beyond the contemplation stage, which makes for a thin-to-nonexistent narrative. In its place, we get a wealth of quotations, epigrams, and literary tidbits--the pleasurable gleanings of a lifelong intellectual pack rat.
Product Description
In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind—literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities—the residue of a lifetime's reading which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth.
Out of these unlikely yet incontestably fascinating materials—including innumerable details about the madness and calamity in many artists' and writers' lives, the eternal critical affronts, the startling bigotry, the countless suicides—David Markson has created a novel of extraordinary intellectual suggestiveness. But while shoring up Reader's ruins with such fragments, Markson has also managed to electrify his novel with an almost unbearable emotional impact. Where Reader ultimately leads us is shattering.
Customer Reviews:
Experimental fiction that works.......2005-07-29
Reader's Block is a fiction, although not necessarily a narrative, of an author (Reader) determining the protagonist of his new work. (Potential) bits and pieces of the character, environment and history of the protagonist are interspered with 333 unattributed quotes of literary trivia. These quotes provide a repeating insertion of anti-Semitism into the fiction.
Sound like an intellectual playground? Perhaps, expecially given the breadth in space and time covered by the quotations. However, this is a fiction that works - that keeps the reader interested in the text and provides a significant character study of Reader through the potential choices regarding the protagonist.
top notch.......2005-06-29
Thouroughly original, highly intellectual, and finally deeply moving -- an account of the persistent odd role of adversity in literary creation.
Thought provoking and readable.......2002-12-17
Markson discards the narrative form and focuses on what's interesting, the tidbits and anecdotes. The message of the novel is what he focuses on, the deaths, the misfortunes, the tabloid-like stories of the literary and philosophical giants. While throughly readable and engaging, I didn't find this work to be revealing or insightful in the way would stand up to some of their great ones. Perhaps I'm missing his allusions, but the insight of an anecdote is in its application, and in the stripped form of this novel many of those allusions read as if from a book of quotations.
Looking for a new/ancient genre?.......2001-09-25
"Reader's Block" somehow manages to pick up where "This Is Not a Novel" left off, even though the latter was written later. This is managed by TINaN being more polished, more reader-ready, more "practiced," and is thus a good introduction to the genre; but Reader's Block is more true to the genre by being less "produced" and therefore more "honest." And yet, if you go back even further to "Wittgenstein's Mistress," the genre is exploited in the form of actual fiction-- biographical fiction, to be sure, but fiction nevertheless-- so that if one needs fiction as an introduction to the genre, one has it available, and again, Reader's Block will pick up where W'sM leaves off.
I can't speak to still earlier works by Markson, but I can say the "adventurous reader," the literary equivalent of the day-walker who sets out in strange cities with nothing more than a bottle of water and power-bar, will enjoy the adventure of discovering this genre. "This Is Not a Novel" is the packaged tour; "Reader's Block" is the nitty gritty.
Oh, by the way, the genre is called "zuihitsu." It's Japanese.
Consistently engaging, but a step back for Markson.......2000-10-25
This book only got three stars primarily because I had already read Wittgenstein's Mistress, and had seen the emotional response that Markson's style could produce, a response that he doesn't really bring off here. The style still has a certain hypnotic momemtum, and most literate readers will have no desire to put the book down (mostly for the high level of interest one has in the anecdotes), but it lacks the sense of character that the previous book had. Although he tries to create the same sense of loneliness that Kate had in W.M., the lack of a consistent narrative voice never allows us to get any sense of Protagonist or Reader as people, which is perhaps the point but doesn't really allow us to have any emotional ties with them - so the ending is much less affecting than it could have been.
And while W.M. dealt deftly with complicated philosophical issues, the issues Markson deals with here - mortality, bigotry, etc. - seemed to be handled a little heavy-handedly.
Sentences like:
He's completely alone here now.
And passages like:
Four of Freud's five sisters were incinerated by the Germans in 1944.
Four.
struck me a little overblown and pretentious, while the allusions and references to isolation in W.M. never did.
So: the book is certainly a worthwhile read, but I would read Wittgenstein's Mistress first. Probably the high point of experimental fiction in our time.
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The Block Reader in Visual Culture
G. Robertson
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0415139899 |
Book Description
Between 1979 and 1989,
BLOCK initiated and responded to key debates in visual and cultural studies, publishing writings by artists, art and design historians and cultural theorists. The journal's editors and contributors furthered the critical tradition in art history, responded to the work of contemporary artists, and brought the concerns of new cultural and critical theory to the study of art and design history. The
BLOCK Reader in Visual Culture brings together classic writings by leading cultural theorists and artists first published in this seminal journal and which are now unavailable, providing an invaluable resource for the teaching and study of art and design as well as theory and cultural studies.
Contributors: Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tamar Garb, Philippa Goodall, Nicholas Green, Frank Hannah, Dick Hebdige, Lucy Lippard, Frank Mort, Kathy Myers, Fred Orton, Claire Pajaczkowska, Griselda Pollock, Tim Putnam, Oliver Richon,Martha Rosler, Lisa Tickner, Necdet Teymur, Judith Williamson.
Book Description
Helping Young Learners Develop Concepts of Print. PreK-K. Emergent readers must master twelve essential skills, or concepts of print, before participating in a formal reading program. The hands-on activities encourage children to explore the functions of letters, words, sentences, and punctuation and to practice tracking print. Tips for evaluating children's progress and an assessment tool are also included.
Book Description
The youngest readers are introduced to exciting new in this charming tale of a frog whose work on a computer is interrupted by noise. Frog goes out exploring, but isn't able to find the source of distraction until he returns home and realizes that the sound is coming from his own computer, whose battery is running low.
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Baby's Block Book - Food with Other (Baby's Block Books)
Maureen Roffey
Manufacturer: MacMillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book
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ASIN: 0333683633 |
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A basic reader: Debuts litteraires
Phyllis Rabinove Block
Manufacturer: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0030150116 |
Product Description
David Carson's personal story of his initiation into the mysterious healing rites of the Choctaw with medicine woman Mary Gardener. Through her teachings and his own mind-bending experiences, he gives us a glimpse into an alternate reality.
Customer Reviews:
David Carson's Journey.......2007-09-06
I love this book. It was so exciting to be reading his journey into Native American Medicine. My sister, Debby Cody, is a reader of the Medicine Cards and I admire David's expertise and his boundaries of what is best for him.
A survey of Native teachings and health insights which blends a memoir with a set of special reflections.......2006-06-20
David Carson is of Choctaw descent and has studied Native American spirituality since growing up in Oklahoma Indian country, but his latest CROSSING INTO MEDICINE COUNTRY is something more than spiritual reflection. Here he pursues initiation as a ceremonial healer with Choctaw medicine woman Mary Gardener, studying plant and animal forces and human energy manipulation for three years. Health and spirituality blend in a survey of Native teachings and health insights which blends a memoir with a set of special reflections.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Incredible Storytelling!.......2005-12-07
David, Thanks for sharing your gift of Storytelling!!
The entire book was incredibly mesmerizing -- couldn't put it down. The experiences Mr. Carson writes about with his teacher Mary Gardener are quite an adventure and very thought provoking. This book helped validate for me that there is so much more beyond this 3-D world we live in and to trust and accept what we see and feel in all of our experiences.
Mr. Carson speaks to bringing back our awareness to living in
harmony with the natural world and in so doing to see and feel the sacredness in all life. Maybe in reading this book more people will be able see the separateness we as a whole have created from nature and how being at One with all of life brings forth healing on all levels-- individually and for our dear Mother Earth.
This book really inspired me and touched my heart on so many levels. Great stuff!!
This is a keeper.......2005-10-25
I've had some extraordinary experiences reading this book. It feels like I'm there on the journey with him and some really amazing synchronicities have popped up again and again. Something like a holographic journey, this tale strikes a chord that goes straight to the heart of the reader. Great work, David Carson!
Crossing Into Medicine Country.......2005-10-13
David Carson has done an excellent job of sharing the life of an apprentice, and the experiences that come with earning the title of "Shaman". This book is a treasure, a deep walk with Spirit. David shares his knowledge and experiences in such a way that I too felt I was on the journey. I highly recommend this book to the serious student, and to the curious beginner. A masterpiece. Couldn't put it down. It will hold a sacred place in my library.
Average customer rating:
- Wonderful! cant wait for the next one!
- Child's Crossing
- Intriguing...
- Uhm...a response to negativity
- Thoughtful fantasy epic
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Shaman's Crossing (The Soldier Son Trilogy)
Robin Hobb
Manufacturer: Voyager
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Hobb, Robin | ( H ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books | Alternate History | Anthologies | Arthurian | Contemporary | Epic | General | Historical | History & Criticism | Magic & Wizards | Series
ASIN: 0007196121 |
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful! cant wait for the next one!.......2006-04-27
This is also in response to the negative reviews! I loved The book! I am still reading it and cant put it down and am anticipating the next one! People who haved given negative reviews obviously have no idea what good story writing is about. Yes this is very different than her last books she has written but that is the best part! Its refreshing and different! Come on people how much can you talk about the same characters and same land? It is nice to see a different approach! I couldnt put the book down once I opened it! I htink she wrote it brilliantly to keep the readers wondering where it is going! I loved it! And to those who wrote a negative review, well you need to expand your horizons, and venture a little furthur than what you are used to and comfortable with! 2 Thumbs up to Robin Hobb! I am hoping the next book will be as good as the first!!
Child's Crossing.......2006-01-06
The book is marginally entertaining. It barely manages to hold the reader's attention, and requires one to slog through pages of "explanations" for why her characters act a certain way, instead of simply placing them in situations and letting the reader watch them make decisions.
I don't think Ms. Hobb did her homework very well on this one as the consequences of the character's actions are not in line with the actions themselves. I specifically refer to Nevarre's coming of age experience in the desert. This experience would tend to change a person, and we see none of that in Nevarre. His actions at the Academy don't reflect either the desert experience, or the training he got as the "son of a soldier".
As a whole Hobb has missed a good opportunity to develop her characters. The theme and plot are all wonderful, its why I picked up the book in the first place, but her execution is lacking. In this case the editor should have done his job better and made her go back and fill in the missing pieces.
This book is not worth paying full price, check it out from the library, or buy it from a used book store.
Intriguing..........2006-01-02
I found this to be one of Ms. Hobb's best books. Although I thoroughly enjoyed her previous series, as a whole, there definitely places where she "meandered like Melville", apparently lost in her fascination for that which she had created. This book is more concisely written without losing the impact of one of Hobb's significant talents - characterization.
Despite some of the negative reviews offered below, I can't wait for the next one!
Uhm...a response to negativity.......2005-09-10
OK, here's my response to the book and the rather negative reviews that were posted at the time of writing this.
I think that negative reviewers are looking for another Robin Hobb book that is unbearably similar to her other series. This is unfair on the author, and on the characters already written about.
I appreciate to no end that Robin has decided, for now, to write about something a little different, rather than forcing herself to dream up stories that revolve around the Six Duchies and the like. I am extremely grateful to Robin for that. I love those stories - which means I _don't_ want to be subjected to reading more of them if they've been forced. That would simply ruin the originality and beauty of those stories.
Yes, Shaman's Crossing is very different. No, there are no Elders, no Dragons, no Fools, no royal bastards.
Nevarre acts the way he does is because RH is trying to demonstrate that that is his character; it is the way he has been moulded by society, his mentors, and his tutors.
If you read the book, you will begin to notice that Nevarre is slowly coming to terms with the fact that the way he has brought up, the things he thinks are important, are in fact quite irrelevant. That there is more, far more, to the world around him than what he has been taught. And that he must open his eyes to the magic, the spirituality, and the wicked actions of his society. In a way, this is his destiny.
This is a book about the desecration of what is most important to our lives. About the dangers of over-industrialisation and militarisation.
If you've read Sherri Tepper's _Beauty_, you can have an idea of the sort of ideas that this story is trying to get across.
But, of course, RH is such a talented writer that the ideas are secondary to the story.
Yes. It is different to previous work by RH. But we should be extremely glad for that.
Thoughtful fantasy epic.......2005-08-19
Nevare Burvelle is a second son of a noble family - in the world of Gernia, this means that he is a 'soldier-son' and destined for the military from birth; likewise, his older brother is brought up as an heir and his younger brother is to be a scholar. "Shaman's Crossing" follows his childhood, family, education, and then for a large part of the novel his training at the military academy. As a character and narrator Nevare is most respects shown as an obediant son, though by the end of the book he's starting to grow out of that. Cracks start to show in the dutiful, conventional facade that he's been brought up to believe is right; and the book becomes more interesting for it - it'll be great to see how Hobb develops this in the following books.
The scene is set in the kingdom of Gernia - their western territories have been conquered by another nation and they have expanded to the east in response. In the process the Gernians have wiped out and colonised the native plainspeople, and now they're threatening to infringe on the mountains and the mystical 'Specks' who live there. Colonisation, cultural conflict, and racism loom largely, intertwining with Nevare's inner struggle between his conventional soldier-son heritage and his independence. Thematically "Shaman's Crossing" is more complex than the standard fantasy doorstop, leading Nevare and us to critique the Gernian invasion (although, thankfully, Hobb doesn't romanticise or patronise the Specks either). In fact throughout the book Hobb is adept at creating doubt about Nevare's initially conventional worldview - it's with relief that we start to see him question and struggle with the life that has been mapped out for him.
The tone is drier and less intense than Hobb's earlier books, and the descriptive passages and expositionary dialogue seem less smoothly integrated - stylistic flaws that are minor, but noticeable. The standard ingredients of the fantasy epic (magic, quests, romance) are muted, even more so then in her previous novels. When they do appear, Hobb tends to bring a twist to them and to our expectations of what an epic fantasy should be and do. She's not as successful at confounding our expectations as she was in the Assassins or Liveship trilogies, but I really enjoyed the thoughtfulness and carefulness of the world and characters she's created, and look forward to the next.
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Shaman's Crossing
Robin Hobb
Manufacturer: HARPER COLLINS 1 PAP
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books | Alternate History | Anthologies | Arthurian | Contemporary | Epic | General | Historical | History & Criticism | Magic & Wizards | Series
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Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy, Book 2)
ASIN: 000719613X |
Customer Reviews:
What a great book!.......2007-08-26
Vividly descriptive throughout. The research that Robin put into this brilliant work is amazing. I can understand how someone with a short attention span might become bored and not understand the many intricacies craftily woven throughout the story. The world that Navare and the other character live in in this book is harsh and very realistic.
Robin has taken the time to develop a thorough understanding of every aspect of the world she created -- everything from the society class structure to the most acurate and realistic portrayal of a military academy I have read.
Throughout the book I tried to guess what may happen next, but there are no routine plots here -- robin truly is a master at her craft in the way she builts her multifaceted plot that will keep you guessing up to the end.
I highly recommend the Soldier Son Trilogy to anyone who truly appreciates great fantasy and looking for something a little different than the tipical Lord Of the Rings rewrites.
Marred only by a horrid main character........2007-03-04
I've been an enthusiastic fan of Robin Hobb for ten books now; the first nine of those books being the fantastic and captivating tales of Fitz-Chivalry and the Six Duchies.
I went into this book expecting the usual mesmerizing ambiance and deep, interesting characterizations that marked all nine of her previous books. I was on the whole not disappointed; while Hobb's new world of Forests and Plains and Cavalla, Shamans and Magics warring against each other, schoolboy drama and teenaged antics reminds me of a weird cross between Harry Potter, a Civil War re-enactment and a really long game of Magic: The Gathering, she actually pulls it off, and her world comes alive and envelops you into it just as much as the Six Duchies ever did. Hobb is truly a master of descriptive writing and she has never been stronger on that account.
Her characters for the most part are equally good. The Six Duchies and the Liveships were stocked with amazing, vibrating, and most of all truly LIVING characters, that felt like actual people that you could love or hate for their own unique personalities. From Caulder to Epiny to Spink to the Tree Lady, this remains true in this book; all but for one gigantic, hideous, glaring exception: The protagonist.
As in the Assasin's Trilogy, the reader is firmly captured inside the persona of the main character. But where Fitz was deep, complex, captivating and a joy to follow along with, Nevare Burvelle is the single most boring, insipid, horrifically predictable piece of cold turkey ever to be coldly slapped across my eyes.
I mean, it's really quite amazing. As you read the book, you simply will NOT believe the depths of shallowness, contrivance, and predictability that you are excrutiatingly subjected to as you ride on this mumble-drone's shoulder for the entire duration. The image I had in my head for pretty much the entire book was of the Tree Lady actually physically materializing before him in a brazilian carnival costume and dancing the conga in front of him while slapping him repeatedly in the face going, 'I'm controlling you! I'm controlling you! I'm controlling you!' and afterwards Nevare putting his hands on his hips and going 'Gee willickers, what a strong daydream I just had.' What is really sad is that this is, pretty much literally, what goes on through the entire book. His reactions and decisions to everything going on around him, from fights between his roommates to finding Caulder drunk, are so deliciously and moronically boring that you will find yourself wondering if Hobb is actually mocking you on purpose.
Now, it might sound like I didn't enjoy Shaman's Crossing, which is far from true. I immensely enjoyed being swept up into Robin's mind and world through her excellent narration and descriptions one more time, and will certainly read the next book. Just please, Robin, ditch the Harry-Potter-imitation-wannabe and make Epiny the protagonist instead.
Zzzzzzzz........2007-03-01
I am happy that this is not the first Robin Hobb book I picked up. Her other series have been a delight, but up to this point, (about 190 pages in) Shaman's Crossing has been a tedious chore to read. The characters are uninteresting and the world she is developing does not have the same flair as her other works. I want to know more about the people and their backgrounds, not because I need more description (far from it), but because I think something is missing.
I am encouraged by those who say it will pick up the pace, but so far I have seen glaciers that move faster. I will finish the book hoping for a change and out of a sense of loyalty to an author who has provided me with many hours of entertainment, but if it retains the same flavor throughout, I doubt that I will read the next installment.
Horribly Slow and Boring.......2006-12-13
I've read most, if not all, of Robin Hobb's work: the Farseer Trilogy, Liveship Traders Trilogy, and the Tawny Man Trilogy. Hobb is not my favorite author, but I've come to expect a certain level of intrigue, adventure, and character development in her books. Shaman's Crossing is not par with her other work, in my opinion. The book follows Nevare as he ages and matures, from his life at home to his first year at the Cavalla Academy. The main problem with this book (as others have said) is that it's painstakingly slow. Even the good parts aren't terribly exciting, like when he meets Dewara or finally makes some friends when he gets to the Academy. A secondary problem, which bothers me even more, is that Nevare isn't even remotely interesting. The entire book seems to be devoted to developing his character and yet there isn't much substance to him. He's completely devoted to being his father's soldier son and is entirely oblivious (in denial) about his other self and that the Tree Woman is real and not some hokey nightmare. The end of the book is very predictable and I find myself apathetic to whatever happens in the next book. That being said, I probably won't buy Forest Mage unless I'm incredibly bored or if I happen to find it at a used bookstore.
Starts slow but ends up wonderful!.......2006-11-13
Robin Hobb's "Shaman's Crossing" is a wonderful book. I admit that it started slow but once Nevare reaches school the story picks up and becomes a wonderful tale that is continued in the second book. Worth getting through the beginning and sticking with it!
Book Description
Nevare Burvelle was destined from birth to be a soldier. The second son of a newly anointed nobleman, he must endure the rigors of military training at the elite King's Cavella Academy—and survive the hatred, cruelty, and derision of his aristocratic classmates—before joining the King of Gernia's brutal campaign of territorial expansion. The life chosen for him will be fraught with hardship, for he must ultimately face a forest-dwelling folk who will not submit easily to a king's tyranny. And they possess an ancient magic their would-be conquerors have long discounted—a powerful sorcery that threatens to claim Nevare Burvelle's soul and devastate his world once the Dark Evening brings the carnival to Old Thares.
Customer Reviews:
The Wonderful Worlds of Robin Hobb.......2007-07-19
Robin Hobb has created a fabulous series of worlds in her writing career. This new world is strangely distressed. It echoes our own current environmental problems, and has definate undertones of present day politics. It is fascinating to see how Robin has woven all this together with magic (of course) and a practical story of coming of age. I can't love the characters the way I have in some her other books so I am exploring why I feel the way I do about them as I read through the series. Robin Hobb often reminds me of Sheri Tepper the way she makes us think deeply about the inner workings of her characters, how militaristic thinking colours our world,the environment; and this series is definately of this type - it is not a comfortable read - and I am challenged by it! I love this about Robin ... read and think!!
MIlitary Academy Woes.......2007-04-08
Premise: Nevare is a second son. And as such, his future has been decided since birth - he will be a soldier. But when his well meaning father gives him over to an old enemy to learn their ways,Nevare's path takes an unexpected turn that will work at destroying that expected future. As grows older and joins the academy, not only will he find that the structured world he has been led to believe exists, is not as black and white as he'd been told, but that he could be used as a weapon to destroy all he holds dear.
Review: Wonderfully detailed world, with well constructed societies, politics, etc. The prose was smooth as silk and a delight to read. I was totally fascinated by the differing cultures and social structures as well as the hazing and other difficulties at the academy. Only difficulty I had was that the main problem was often subdued and was minimally hinted as ever getting to have an impact. When it does, it does it BIG, but it took its sweet time. Yet this only bothered me subliminally, the rest keeping me quite busy and content.
Solid, but not spectacular.......2007-03-04
This was a solid, though unspectacular, performance from Robin Hobb.
Her performance was somewhat akin to the basketball player who scores 14 points and six rebounds per game.
Such a player is a solid starter, but not a star.
this was not at all a riveting book. it took me about a week and a half to finish it. I used the book to read for about half an hour at bedtime before sleep overtook me.
I found myself skipping through the shamanistic aspects of the tale, which I did not find credible, based on how the story was told.
Some portions of the story involving Nevare and Epiny were interesting, but certainly not interesting enough to carry the book through 600 plus pages.
Zzzzzzzzzz........2007-03-01
I am happy that this is not the first Robin Hobb book I picked up. Her other series have been a delight, but up to this point, (about 190 pages in) Shaman's Crossing has been a tedious chore to read. The characters are uninteresting and the world she is developing does not have the same flair as her other works. I want to know more about the people and their backgrounds, not because I need more description (far from it), but because I think something is missing.
I am encouraged by those who say it will pick up the pace, but so far I have seen glaciers that move faster. I will finish the book hoping for a change and out of a sense of loyalty to an author who has provided me with many hours of entertainment, but if it retains the same flavor throughout, I doubt that I will read the next installment.
Mixed Reaction.......2007-02-27
I am a solid Robin Hobb fan and was thrilled when I found that she had a new trilogy out....and I read this book, cover to cover, with no skimming even when I hit the parts that did actually bore me - something I never thought Hobb could do - because her incredible descriptive abilities are almost mesmerizing and hold me glued to the page....even when a voice in my brain is screaming, "is she going to go through the bit about soldier's sons and noble's sons one more time?!" She must have gone over and over several issues pertinent to the story as though this were the second book in a trilogy and she needed to keep reminding you of this...that, or she thinks her readers are incapable of remembering the basic relationships on which her story is based (duh!)...it borders on insulting at times, Robin!
I think that the repetitiveness throughout the book is what causes a lot of the slowness and dryness and sense of boredom that prior reviewers complain of....there is simply no reason to keep repeating over...and over...and over....and over.....how the battle lord's sons and noble's soldier sons differ.
While this certainly isn't the most interesting of Hobb's worlds I've lived in......it is crafted as fully....and drew me in as completely....and that is what I look for in a book....to go somewhere different, have some different experiences and marvel at how someone can think up all that!
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- The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
- The Valley of Light: A Novel
- Third Factory
- This Cold Country (Harvest Book)
- Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond
- Tideland
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