Review:This book is bogged down with far too many unnecessary details (and repetition thereof) that I often found myself thinking: get to the storyline (or back to the storyline), please!

I slugged my way to the end of the first major story, only because I wanted to find out what happened to the alleged wife-killer - but after getting a few pages into the next story, I finally had to admit defeat, and the fact that I wasted $7 on a book that I just didn't enjoy.

Which happens to all of us... Read more

Review:Book arrived early and in great condition.

I was recommended this book by a comic artist, despite his high regard of the book I was still surprised at it's quality. It is a wonderful reference that even includes exercises to help drive home the concepts in each chapter. Most useful to comic artists, regardless of format, but also a good reference for sequential art in general. Read more

Review:First of all this was the most entertaining and believable work of historical fiction I have ever read. Everytime I read about Julian, whether through Marcellinus or in secondary works I envision him as the character presented in this masterpiece. Vidal successfully presents Julian as a strong individual, albeit a suppressed youth reacting against the anti-intellectual religion(christianity/arianism) of his cousin, Emperor Constantius II. Vidal does a good job portraying Julian as an almost M... Read more

Review:The only thing wrong with this book is its pseudo-authenticity. Graves was enough of a classical scholar to give an air of verisimilitude to an entirely too hairy and over-convincing narrative. It sounds like real Roman history unless of course you have read real Roman history. A trap for the unwary, but a corking good read. Read more

Review:A complicated and complex work, dealing with conflicting feelings of love and self-worth while trying to sort out what is real and what is not. The story reflects the lives, dreams and aspirations of a little understood, isolated, almost primitive population of people living in America. The book, however, focuses on a young girl searching for a place in her topsy-turvy world were little makes sense to her except her family, which is strong on family values but unable to protect her from ongoing ... Read more

Review:Biographies cum Literary Criticism books can sometimes be dry but Begley's "Updike" reads like something from the New York Times bestselling fiction list. `Updike" is like Madmen on steroids. It briefly covers Updike's childhood in a small Pennsylvania town and then quickly moves into his Harvard years in the `50's and on to his work at the New Yorker Magazine and his best selling, award winning, (including two Pulitzer's) novel writing career. I've never been an Updike fan though his literar... Read more

Review:This is an adaptation of the original story; the dialog is probably much more in tune with how they spoke in period but it makes for some disjointed reading. Still, it is a good swashbuckling epic from which a number of decent film adaptations have been made. If you like medieval epics, you can't go wrong with this one. Read more

Review:I know William Faulkner is one of our most celebrated writers, so disliking this book goes against the worshipful crowd. However, I found Absalom, Absalom to be so dense, byzantine and chock full of non-stop ENDLESS run-on sentences (otherwise called stream-of-consciousness) to be nearly impenetrable. If I wanted this much work, I'd sign up for a road crew.

I have a fairly fluent acquaintance with the English language, but I had to read a synopsis to understand the story. I know it ma... Read more

Review:I read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" when it first came out and have purchased many copies as gifts for my friends. Ms. Nafisi is an incredible story teller with intresting observations about personal qualities of the people she comes in contact with. She describes the events that have influenced her life with such honesty and clarity that it is hard to put the book down. I strongly recommend this book to everyone as a pleasant experience in discovering a new world observed through the author's per... Read more

Review:In The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder accompanies a team of young
engineers tasked with building a new computer for Data General. The
project is led by a curt manager with a methodology he calls mushroom
management (keep them in a damp, dark place, and feed them shit) that
would be impossible to instate in any sensible company these days. The
project is of highest significance for the company, and everything is
due yesterday, everyone working in a frantic pace to get the compute... Read more