Review:Unlike some of the other reviews, I thought the story dragged in the first two hundred pages or so, but he 'got on his bike' and really took us for ride that was breath taking and imaginative! As it said on the back on my book, "Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a forest harbours soldiers... and there's a savage killing, but the identity of both the victim and the killer are a riddle". Add all the metaphysical inferences and meanings that will leave you with hours and hours of... Read more

Review:I finally finished The Magic Mountain about our aimless young Hans Castorp, who visits his cousin at a tuberculosis sanitorium in the Swiss Alps and, in a Kafkaesque twist, ends up staying there for seven years because of a mild fever. Reading the book was like catching a mild fever (in a good way), and, in taking more than a year to finish it (I was reading many other books), I feel that I, too, absurdly overstayed the length of my visit.

I read the book once, independently, with no assi... Read more

Review:I used this book in a senior-level university photography course, and it was a good read, but I feel it belongs more in a freshman class or grade school. The book is well written, and does a decent job at not being wordy where it shouldn't be, however, it's mostly basic stuff for anyone who has already experienced the fears of being an artist. Some things were new and beneficial insights for me, but a lot of it was just bringing my existing thoughts and feelings to words. Read more

Review:We are using this book for Art Appreciation. I just think "it's okay". The problem with this book is that with each chapter the same vocabulary words are repeated over and over, never teaching anything new or rarely teaching something new. The chapters are disappointing because instead of just "Chapter 1" it is broken into 1.0, 1.2, 1.3 and up to 10 which is confusing and unnecessary.
I would never pay full price for this book. I paid ten dollars with a ten dollar expedite ship. Read more

Review:This is a very thorough book when it comes to covering world art through the ages. Great for college students and a must have for anyone interested in art. Also great is the Annotated books, Mona Lisa and Arch - check them out! Read more

Review:I listened to the Fresh Air podcast about this book (titled after the book itself) and loved hearing about this largely unknown aspect of Wonder Woman. Shortly after I decided to find a full book because I wanted to learn even more. The writing style of this book was so horrible that I didn't make it more than 3% before giving up. Save your money and listen to the free podcast featuring the author rather than wasting money here. Sentences felt poorly constructed and awkward. I couldn't even foll... 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:I thought this book was lacking in two respects. First, I felt the portrait of that time in Paris when Hemingway was trying to break through was not very detailed. Many other books, most notably Hemingway's posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, better capture the atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s. So if a reader is seeking to understand that particular time in Paris, this is not the book. Second, the author states often that Hemingway was a "revolutionary" writer, but does not really back up t... Read more

Review:A great book. Gives all the information you could want out of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. History, timelines, and important facts about all the nations that make up Jordan's fictional world. It even gives the calender and holidays of the many nations. Facts and info on the Aiel, the Seanchan, the Aes Sedai, and Sea Folk. Stories from before the Breaking, during the Breaking, and after. Nothing--save the books in the Wheel of Time series--beats this book. Read more

Review:The essayist Joseph Epstein in his very negative review of this book pointed out that sentences are not ordinarily written as things in themselves but as parts of paragraphs, and whole compositions. Analyzing sentences in and by themselves may be alright for 'aphorisms' but does not make sense for most prose.
Another major error of this work is its contention that 'content' does not matter. Content shapes and content helps define the character and quality of a sentence.
The approach that s... Read more