No comments about Artwise Rome Museum Map - Laminated Museum Map of Rome, Italy - Streetwise Maps (Artwise).

No comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Reykjavik (Wallpaper City Guides) (Wallpaper City Guides).

3 comments about The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales (Penguin Classics).

1. If I was writing a book set in Medieval Wales, I would not be without this book. Descriptions of the country and its people are given, as are extensive biographies of many of the famous rulers and clergymen of the day. On the other hand, it isn't the easiest reading. The material is easy to comprehend, but at times the text itself is dry.



2. Giraldus Cambrensis was a curmudgeon with a vivid imagination. He has an eye for detail and an ear for a good story. As such, his works combine many different elements -- travelogue, miracle tales, slander, complaints, and puffed-up pride. I love him for all this; Gerald is a very real person, warts and all.

   This book serves as a great introduction to medieval writing in many ways. First of all, it is relatively short and is full chapers. Each one could be read in connection with the others or solo. One chapter might be about the lay of the land. The next might have to do with a miraculous lake of birds. The next might include scurulous reports about cannibalism. This book, then, is not a history book, not a religious book, not a travelogue, but instead the notes and jottings of a mind interested in many topics. While a lot of the writing speaks of God, Christ and miracles, not all of it does -- this will help give a general reader a broader understanding of the medieval world-view.

   Give him a try. You might find the Middle Ages a truly engaging time, a time when people, then as now, were people.




3. 
   First, I want to say thank you, wherever he is today, to Mr. Jones, himself a Welsh patriot, for recommending this book to me nine years ago. What these two books (collected in one volume) are is an invaluable resource that takes a reader on a village-by-village, region-by-region tour of 12th century Wales. Gerald, a Benedictine monk in royal service, had a scholarly eye and a novelist's touch in describing what he encountered on his trips thru the westernmost nation on the island of Britain. Gerald tells of a Wales still independent from England, still Celtic and very much a fiercely independent state in its own right. He describes the hair styles, clothing, dining preferences, architecture, religious and historical sites (including a legend of the burial place of one King Arthur) and does it in a way that never loses the spark of immediacy, even for those of us centuries in Gerald's future. This book reads a lot like a piece from National Geographic, only it's nine-hundred years old! Without Gerald, we never would get to meet so many interesting human beings who once lived out lives in a time and place far removed from where we dwell today. This descriptive memoir is an improbable survivor, and a treasure in the collective library of the human race.

No comments about London Sticker Book.

No comments about Fodor's Croatia and Slovenia, 2nd Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1 comments about Classic British Literature: Boswell's Life of Johnson, complete, all six volumes in a single file, with active table of contents.

1. This e-text is taken from a good edition of the Life of Johnson - the problem is that the text has been entered page by page, footnotes and all, so that after reading one page of text, you sometimes have to move through two or three pages of extensive footnotes before you get to the next page. I suppose it would be useful if you are searching for a particular passage, but it is not useful if you just want to read the Life of Dr. Johnson.

1 comments about Italia: The Art of Living Italian Style.

1. ITALIA: THE ART OF LIVING ITALIAN STYLE is a title that may be misleading. This is not a 'decorator's source book' (though it certainly is an indispensable resource of information for any designer of interiors or exteriors!): this is a book rich in the Italian ambience that marries a respect of history in all forms while providing some of the finest photographs of a wide vista of Italian towns and gardens and homes. It is unique in its approach and a most rewarding read as well as a picture tour through Italy.
   
   Edmund Howard utilizes the gifts of photographer Oliver Benn in partnering this leisurely journey through all parts of Italy.The writing and the visuals are equal in quality and when paired as they are here they are inimitable. Howard divides the book into chapters: 'Towns and Landscapes' surveys the various regions from the north (Venice) through Tuscany to the south with Rome and Sicily; 'Architecture' details the forms or buildings as they have developed through centuries; 'Interiors' span the humble with the grand; 'Gardens' are explored in all varieties. Then Howard and Benn swoop down on a chapter titled 'Details': here Doors and Windows, Frescoes, Fountains, Colors, Stonework, and Mosaics are scrutinized with word and image, a point where the reader gains more information about the Italian style than in any other source.
   
   Realizing that the book will seduce many to visit the land of all this beauty, the book closes with a 'Visitor's Guide' which succinctly outlines the most interesting places to see in all of the Italian and Sicilian towns, villages and cities surveyed in this book. This is a photographic feast and a completely entertaining and readable as well as informative book. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, January 06

1 comments about Dresden (Bradt Mini Guide).

1. Very portable and going into 2008 very accurate, considering Dresden is in considerable flux from extensive rebuilding, with varying availabilities of their collections and exhibits. The nearby attractions of Meissen and Moritzburg are presented very well too. The author's greatest strengths are his thoroughness in necessary information and his eye for architecture; his weakest is his lack of interest in shopping (except for books and music).

No comments about Florence (LUXE City Guides).

5 comments about Orient Express (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition).

1. I find Graham Greene to be almost unreadable. I know that this is going to be considered near blasphemous, since literary critics have heaped such praise upon him and so many reviewers here have done likewise.
   
   However, in a word, I find him depressing. His characters suffer from interminable analysis of their every thought and action. The larger story is merely a vehicle for these internal monologues that, frankly, I don't find particularly insightful or interesting. It was V. S. Pritchett who first remarked about Greene's 'perverse and morbid tendencies'. While Greene is no doubt highly intelligent and capable of a very high level of writing, the end result, for me, is something very unpleasant.
   
   I first read 'The Heart Of The Matter'. God, what an endlessly depressing scene! Nor was there any particular character I could sympathize with or even care about. In spite of my negative reaction to this highly praised work, I thought I would give him another try with 'Orient Express' (a.k.a., 'Stamboul Train'), thinking that in this 'entertainment' as Greene called it I would actually be, well, entertained. Instead, I get a trainload of depressing characters whose every thought is scrutinized to an excruciating degree.
   
   Example (from Myatt's suspicions about his business dealings):
   
   'It was odd. He had chosen the samples with particular care. It was natural of course that even Stein's currants should not all be inferior, but when so much was suspected, a further suspicion was easy. Suppose, for example, Mr. Eckman had been doing a little trade on his own account, had allowed Stein some of the firm's consignment of currants, in order temporarily to raise the quality, had, on the grounds of that improved quality, indeed, induced Moults' to bid for the business. Mr. Eckman must be having uneasy moments now, turning up the time-table, looking at his watch, thinking that half Myatt's journey was over. Tomorrow, he thought, I will send a telegram and put Joyce in charge; Mr. Eckman shall have a month's holiday. Joyce will keep an eye on the books, and he pictured the scurrying to and fro, as in an ants' nest agitated by a man's foot, a telephone call from Eckman to Stein or from Stein to Eckman, a taxi ordered here and dismissed there, a lunch for once without wine, and then the steep office steps and at the top of them the faithful rather stupid Joyce keeping his eye upon the books. And all the time, at the modern flat, Mrs. Eckman would sit on her steel sofa knitting baby clothes for the Anglican mission, and the great dingy Bible, Mr. Eckman's first deception, would gather dust on its unturned leaf.'
   
   Lord have mercy. This stuff is like fingernails on a chalkboard!
   
   William Golding called Green 'the ultimate twentieth-century chronicler of consciousness and anxiety'. This does not, however, make for entertaining reading. Greene's writing is an examination of the human condition totally devoid of lightness, humor (at least as I understand the word) or romance. His characters are an unpleasant, unhappy bunch.
   
   Ultimately all his writing reveals is the real Graham Greene.



2. I have enjoyed a number of Greene's novels, but was disappointed with Orient Express. For a better read and more compelling characters, I recommend Greene's later work including The Quite American, The Comedians or even The Heart of the Matter.



3. Of course far from his masterworks, this novel is still better than most which plague the bestsellers lists today. It is one of the first novels written by Greene, on of which he calls "entertainments", to distinguish them from his more serious novels. Nevertheless, here in an early work his recurrent subjects loom already: hope and regret; the moral loneliness of each individual; the inevitability of fate; the consciousness, or lack of it, of good and evil.
   
   A group of people are travelling from Ostende (Belgium) to Istanbul, each one with their fears or illusions. During the long way they meet and interact, love and forget each other. Carleton Myatt, a young Jewish merchant, is on his way to solve a problematic business situation with his employees in Turkey. During the trip he meets and seduces (through kindness and sacrifice) a young starlet of nightclubs who only dreams of love and welfare. Dr. Czinner (sinner?) a socialist revolutionary from Yugoslavia, is on the same train bound for Belgrade, but he is discovered and harassed by Mabel Warren, a British, alcoholic and lesbian journalist. The interaction between the characters creates an increasing tension which is only resolved, for good or evil, when each one of them meets his or her particular fate. Foremost is the heartbreaking story of the young dancer, who loses love in the middle of a snowstorm and political intrigue of which she understands nothing. In this book, Greene lets us see the great qualities that would later lead him to write his great novels.



4. Orient Express is a time capsule. It was written in the early 1930s and, as such, captures the world of the inter-war period in continental Europe. The book's strengths and weaknesses spring from this perspective. The strength are that Greene shows us a world that was rather bleak and yet vibrant. The downside is that anti-Semitism and class-based prejudices are evident both in the character's and in Greene's attitudes. However, as a time capsule of a lost era, this book is worth reading.



5. Graham Greene the eminent British novelist published this minor, suspensful and entertaining work in 1932. In Great Britain the novel is entitled "Stamboul Train". The novel is short but has a murder and interesting characters to keep your attention. The characters are well sketched and the novel has deeper depth than the typical spy thriller.
   Among the players are:
   Coral Musker-a beautiful but poor chorus girl traveling from England to appear in a musical in Istanbul. She falls in love on the train and becomes involved in the pursuit of a Yugolslavian Communist leader Dr.
   Czinner. Coral is the most human andsympathetic character in the whole business. She is touching, pathetic and deserving of a better fate than the one she receives.
   Carelton Myatt is a young businessman from London. He is on the way to Turkey to cement a business deal. He is also a womanizer who initiates Coral into sex. Later he sets his cap for Janet Pardoe a half-Jewish niece of Mr. Steiner a wealthy businessman. Myatt is a despicable character who seeks his own ego satisfactions not trifling with such things as true love. As the novel ends his future looks bright but we the readers do not like him. Greene chose to make him Jewish opening himself up for charges of Antisemetic caricatures. Much of British society in the 1930s was adverse to persons of the Jewish faith. The novel was written shortly before Hitler became German Chancellor. It should be stated that Greene served bravely in World War II as a spy for the British Government. I do not think he was overtly antisemetic.
   Mabel Warren is a lesbian and obnoxious journalist who is eager to interview Czinner and Savery who is a popular novelist. She travels with Janet Pardoe but when dumped sets her sights on Coral.
   Josef Grunlich is a robber and murderer who flees Vienna escaping to Constantinople. Grunlich is a despicable human being.
   Greene manages to interwine the lives of all these people into an exciting narrative. This is a minor work but is written in the author's cool style with colorful use of metaphor and a good use of mirror imagery. Penguin has reissued this novel in a beautiful edition for the Greene 100th year birthday celebration which was held in 2004. Christopher Hitchns the acerbic critic has a fine introduction to the novel included in the Penguin edition. This book is a good introduction to Graham Greene one of our greatest modern novelist.