Review:When you consider that most films are derived from books, and this book is the opposite. The book was written after the screenplay for the movie was done. (Any true SCI-FI buff knows that.) This book may be one of Arthur Clarke's best books. It does a great job of fleshing out the characters of the movie, and gives some really great understanding of motivations of the civilization that left the monoliths,

I am proud to have my first edition hard back in my personal library, and I recom... Read more

Review:Other ratings said that there was definitions of some of the old world words at the bottom of the pages which is why I bought this particular version. There is not, the defintions are in the back of the book which make it harder to read for someone not versed in old English. Otherwise I would have given it 5 stars. Read more

Review:What can little me add to the greatest writer in history, bar none??? Read, read, read. Go to any available performance and enjoy. If this is too archaic for you, try to find a course in Shakespeare and learn to enjoy the bard. Read more

Review:I read this book for a environmental literature class, and although it is a classic, after reading it I do not know what's so good about it. I really disliked it. I did not find it interesting. It was also unsatisfying. Read more

Review:Tedious, boring and definitely stagnant. Who really cares about the recollections of a butler who apparently isn't particularly bright. The only good thing I can say is that it is fast reading and that is because there is no substance. Read more

Review:This is a slim volume (the version I have is 246 pages) so I was able to read it in a couple days. A time period is not referenced in this book so it took a while for me to finally get some idea of when this occurred. Eleanor, the main character, co-owns a car so I assumed this was set in more "modern" times (1950s or later). It wasn't until after Eleanor arrived at the home and was talking with someone (I believe Dr. Montague) that I was able to figure out that the time period was the early ... Read more

Review:Michael Reid's review of this wonderful book (whatever it is--nightmare, novel, allegory, etc.) is very close to my own feelings about it. It defies most traditional critical approaches, just as the characters in it are themselves continually foiled and re-educated in their encounters with some of the weirdest people and situations in 20th-century fiction. It is a slam on anarchism and political mischief-making, but it is also a slam on the moralistic, "quick-fix" crusaders against rocking the... Read more

Review:If you love literature, this is a fantastic work. I also read in during a trip to India. The trip gave context to the novel and the novel context to the locations I was visiting. That's honestly the best way to explore a new country. Read more

Review:A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a book of 200 pages that could be condensed to twenty. A Separate Peace is filled with descriptions and elaborate details that could be taken out of the book without taking any substance from the actual story. Although the detailed descriptions made me think that this place actually existed, I would have rather read a story with a better plot than one with excessive description. Because this book did not have a clear plot, the author basically repeated the ... Read more

Review:i read this when i was in my teens and was transported to england and the moors in my mind...wondered if i would feel the same about the book once i was middle aged and had visited the real jamaica inn. no change whatsoever, once i opened the book, back to piracy and freezing storms and women in peril i went. i am a great du maurier fan and have never considered her novels bodice-rippers even though, i suppose, in a way they are romance novels. there is so much else going on that i never rea... Read more