Customer Reviews:
valuable but too long.......2006-08-31
Little else is on this topic and there is much excellent information but also much irrelevant speculation and the author is at times a bit pretentious. The illustrations are important but unhappily the reproductions are so awful that it is impossible to see what the author says is in those pictures.
Average customer rating:
- Valor's Choice
- More for kids than adults
- Valor-iffic. A great little "aliens can't fight so they get the barbaric humans to do it" story
- Different
- Strong characters, Good Storyline, Great Read
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Valor's Choice (Daw Book Collectors)
Tanya Huff
Manufacturer: DAW
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Huff, Tanya
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The Better Part of Valor
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A Confederation of Valor (omnibus)
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The Heart of Valor (Confederation)
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Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, Book 1)
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Fearless (The Lost Fleet, Book 2)
ASIN: 0886778964
Release Date: 2000-04-10 |
Book Description
In the distant future, humans and several other races have been granted membership in the Confederation--at a price. They must act as soldier/protectors of the far more civilized races who have long since turned away from war....
Customer Reviews:
Valor's Choice.......2007-01-10
A must read for all Tanya Huff fans. In her usual exceptional style, Tanya Huff takes you into the world of Staff Sargent Torin Kerr and keeps you interested from the first word to the last.
If you're new to Tanya Huff's work, you're in for a treat.
More for kids than adults.......2006-08-22
I bought this book becasue of the reviews given here, only to be disappointed.
This book is more for kids than adults. For example, the first scene in the book is a one night stand between the main character and an alien who seems to be a cross between a christmas tree and a newly mowed lawn. This managed to offend me on a number of levels.
If you like STARFIST go for it. But if you've ever read Guy Sager's "Forgetten Soldier", pass it by.
Valor-iffic. A great little "aliens can't fight so they get the barbaric humans to do it" story .......2006-05-29
A good military sf story. On the edge platoon trapped on backward planet attacked by nearly unarmed natives, who won't stop. 4000 vs. 50. Good alien races, quickly and deeply described. Well done infantry battle, without being bogged down with too intricate detail, good main character. Essentially a further along "aliens can't fight so they get the barbaric humans to do it" story (with addition of a few other fighting races too) but better done than almost any other. Could be a great series, doesn't need a sequel, but there is one.
Different.......2006-02-05
This book is a little out of my comfort zone. I don't usually read Millitary fiction and I tend to lean toward fantasy over sci-fi. However, I was getting bored with my normal stuff and ventured out a little bit . . . and was rewarded. Valor's Choice is funny and interesting. In fact it is much funnier then I was expecting and much more touching. This is an extremly well written book that I would suggest to all sci-fi and fantasy fans.
Strong characters, Good Storyline, Great Read.......2005-09-15
SSgt Torin Kerr is one of the best female characters in a military sci-fi book since David Weber's Honor Harrington. Huff has created a strong, intelligent and human character in Kerr. Kerr is surrounded by very interesting and entertaining characters from a variety of different species. Huff created a great storyline in sending a combat unit to accompany a diplomatic team as they attempt to solidify relations with a newly discovered, extremely aggressive species. The integration of all of these species into one military force makes for an interesting and sometimes hillarious story. But in the tradition of generations of great NCOs, Sgt Kerr demands and gets the best performance out of every member of every species . . . even those who are outside of the chain of command. The final battle, based loosely on the battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879, was exceptionally well written. I really enjoyed this book and want MORE on Torin Kerr!
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Martin Kippenberger (Collector's Choice Artist's Monographs: Friedrich Christian Flick Collection)
Manfred Hermes , and
Martin Kippenberger
Manufacturer: Dumont
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Binding: Hardcover
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Martin Kippenberger
ASIN: 3832175792
Release Date: 2006-08-15 |
Book Description
Beginning in the late 70s, Martin Kippenberger conceived his work as a point of intersection between artistic contexts and circulating ideas. With his characteristic blend of refinement and extreme crudity, he left very few of the problems and methods of twentieth-century art untouched. Via a postmodernist disposition, one combining humor, direct reference, communicativeness and body politics, Kippenberger seized upon the central artistic questions of the late twentieth century like virtually no other artist of his generation, and translated them into complex structures of communications. This is a beautiful and excitingly designed monograph containing reproductions of paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photographs and installation work, as well as a very strong reading of Kippenberger's work by Manfred Hermes. All of the work reproduced here is in the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, one of the best in-depth assemblages of contemporary art in the world.
Book Description
For 30 years now, Viennese artist Franz West has been in his own artistic territory, and for the last 20, he has been one of the most influential working sculptors, as confirmed by a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1997. Through his "Passstucke" (passport pieces or adapters) of the 1970s, his furniture assemblies of the 1980s and bright exterior sculptures of the 1990s, West regularly irritates viewers with parody and outlandishness, and impresses with surprising solutions to the old social utopia of art and life. The implied invitation to touch his works disrupts the museum dynamic of velvet rope and burglar alarm, and leads to different levels of engagement--bodily, linguistic, philosophical and psychological--in which the artist's sense of humor shines through. This introduction to West's oeuvre is accompanied by commentaries, interpretation and details about his most recent work, developed over the past few years.
Customer Reviews:
Franz West, Illustrated and Clarified.......2007-05-13
Franz West, born in Vienna in 1947, is one of the most influential and enigmatic artists of the post-War contemporary period. Primarily a sculptor, for many years the sculptural objects that he produced were fey and humble, inartistic and deskilled to such a degree that he did not consider them "formal" sculptures but Adaptives to be used in performance by friends and guests during happenings and awkward playlets. Usually compounded of dental gauze, wire and plaster, his objects are often displayed in communitarian settings, on stages, with furniture, as furniture, in front of paintings in museums, next to artist-designed texts that serve to further mystify or explicate the linguistic underpinnings of his artistic project. In more recent years, he has devoted himself to more "formal" sculpture, strangely inarticulate lumps of plaster and paper mache set on plinths often with the aid of an ungainly wire (like a head on a stick) or coffee can as their intervening support. Even large outdoor pieces made with sheets of painted aluminum manage to make their metallic skins look somehow off-hand and alien. Nor should the quality of his many gouaches and collages be ignored, nor his perverse sense of color, to which the cover of this book ably testifies.
This excellent volume is the latest in a series devoted to each of the different artists represented in depth in the controversial Berlin collection of Friedrich Christian Flick, a collection built on inherited wealth from Nazi slave labor and currently on display in Berlin's principal museum of contemporary art. Under these disturbing circumstances, it is astonishing to think that all of these major works by Franz West, an artist possessed of a singularly tortured and highly intellectual approach to life, are owned by a single person from such a family. Nevertheless, this book is the clearest and best illustrated explication of the several that I have read about West, one of the most important post-modern artists. Despite the many excellent points made in the essay about the link between his work and that of Vienna Actionism and the Young Wild Artists circle in which he grew, I like to think of West as a sort of European Richard Tuttle, an astute mix of fey humor and attention to material. Certainly, the formal properties of the objects derive from the process-oriented post-Minimalism of Joseph Beuys and Eva Hesse. They seem to have escaped from the madhouse into the funhouse.
Book Description
This is the ultimate pattern-name identification book and price guide for collectors of Carnival Glass.
Collectors will find a bounty of information on the origins of Carnival Glass and priceless information on identifying pieces by their shape, base colors, and manufacturers, including Fenton, Dugan, Imperial, Northwood, and more. Lavishly illustrated and full of helpful tips for identifying all forms of Carnival Glass, prices are listed both in U.S. dollars and British pounds.
Author Marion Quentin-Baxendale has been collecting Carnival Glass for more than 30 years and has researched extensively at factory sources throughout America, Australia, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia.
• More than 400 listings and gorgeous photographs of various varieties of Carnival Glass
• Up-to-date prices listed in U.S. dollars and British pounds
• The ultimate pattern-name identification and price guide available
Customer Reviews:
great book to carry when your searching for carnival glass.......1998-10-15
This book is an excellent book to carry when your scouring for carnival glass, It's paperback, yet has hundreds of color pictures for easy identification, especially European purchases. It also has brief histories of the major manufacturers of carnival and several detailed drawings as well as suggested prices. I highly recommend it!!
Book Description
Thomas Schtte has frequently cast himself into the role of a maverick--remained remote from the work of his artistic mentor, distanced himself from the statements of each ephemeral Zeitgeist and increasingly contradicted his own positions--and in so doing has become one of the most influential artists of his generation. Shifting from text to image to object to book, his work juxtaposes biographical moments with contemporary events, oscillates between the aspiration to shape the public reception of architecture and monumental sculpture and the conjunctive of model-maker, and projects avant-garde ideas onto traditional forms of art. With meticulous rigor, Ulrich Loock has observed the evolution of Schtte's output over the past 25 years. Underpinning his lucid overview is a series of intensive discussions between the author and artist on the genesis and history of particular works. This well-designed book is the most comprehensive monograph of the artist's work to date, and provides profound insight into Schtte's work through detailed discussions of the pieces.
Book Description
Description: Volume 1 in the Collector's Choice Artists' Monographs from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection features the work of Canadian artist Rodney Graham as he strolls, via his works, through Modernism. On Graham's meandering itinerary through photography, literature, music, art, film, psychology, and linguistics, we encounter Richard Wagner, Staphane Mallarma, Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud, and Donald Judd, not to mention the prevalence of cinema and popular music. The contradictions in his work--gravity and play, reverential homage and scenarized self-presentation--show Graham to be a contemporary melancholic. This is the most comprehensive and insightful monograph of the artist's work to date.
Book Description
What was the truth about Penny?
Nurse Alexandra Dobbs met a distinguished Dutch doctor, Taro van Dresselhuys, when he asked her to help with Penny, a teenager with amnesia. Before long, Alexandra had fallen in love with Taro -- and Penny did, too.
It had to be a teenage crush. Yet Taro did little to discourage the girl, and when he began to side with Penny against her, Alexandra began to have suspicions about Penny . . .
Book Description
After four years of almost exclusively repackaging his sophomoric early work for the book trade, the children's entertainer and award-winning calligrapher F. C. Ware returns to his groundbreaking 1990s cartoon series "The ACME Novelty Library," a nearly decade-long publishing experiment which more or less single-handedly demonstrated the redemptive power a fancy paper stock or a little gold foil might exert over an otherwise dull, dry visual narrative.
This semi-annual periodical originally serialized his surprisingly undismissed "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth," and now, with the 16th issue, Ware rejoins the proud, vital esthetic forum of the American comic book with his ongoing serial "Rusty Brown," a love story concerning the ambitions and mistakes of seven consciousnesses at a private school in Omaha, Nebraska, all revolving around a universally reviled child-and absolutely certain to be a favorite with readers of all tastes and biases. As told through the eyes of someone absentmindedly watching a television sitcom circa 1975, this first installment begins one January morning of that same year and describes everything of importance right up to and including the ring of the first period bell before eventually spiraling off into 1955, 2004, and toward the planet Mars, amongst other interesting and exotic time periods and locales. Riveting, fast-paced, and irresponsible, "Rusty Brown" distills the confusing and indulgent storytelling technique that led Mr. Ware's work to be referred to as "nearly impossible to read" by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. (In addition, Mr. Ware promises parallel serialization of his other work-in-progress, "Building Stories," which is actually a much better and more interesting project.)
Though originally released by alternative comics vanguard Fantagraphics Books, this new sixteenth issue is the first to be entirely produced, printed and published by Mr. Ware alone; limited to a single press run, once it is sold out, pulped, and/or burned, neither of these narratives will be available again until "Rusty Brown" and "Building Stories" are eventually edited, collected and remaindered as hardcover books. Thus, be the first in your mercantile district to own this first chapter of what years from now is sure to be a tart, possibly insincere reminder of the fragile economy and mental disposition of the early 21st century. 64 pages, full color, 9" x 7"
Customer Reviews:
Rusty's adventures from the beginning.......2007-04-10
This book is near of the "Jimmy Corrigan..." style and mood.
Visually clear and precise in order to benefit the narrative success.
There are two things that I specially enjoyed:
- The Chris Ware's cameo and his dissertation about depression
- the paralell sequence at the bottom of the page that intersect with the main story in one point of the book.
Chris Ware is a master. No doubt about it.
Great job.
A master at the peak of his powers........2006-05-30
The new Acme is finally here, and, lest I allow my excitement over its mere existence color my review, I let it sit for a little while after I bought it and then reread it. It is still amazing. The slow pace is the sign of someone who is not afraid of giving the story room to breathe. Any faster and this story would not have the same emotional impact that it already does after one all-too-brief installment. Ware's lines are wonderfully clear and his palette subdued and balanced, though the lower story does tend to strain the eyes somewhat with its nearly microscopic detail. Possibly his strongest work yet, although it seems a bit hasty to say, seeing as I'll be of retirement age by the time the damn thing's finished. But still, I am grateful that Mr. Ware is out there writing his pathetically beautiful comics.
A great collection.......2006-02-25
Much more emotional than the previous issue of ANL, this gorgeously-printed book collects installments of "Rusty Brown" and "Building Stories". The former has improved vastly since it's earlier installments---by going back to Rusty and Chalky's childhood (albeit in a sort of weird alternate universe, but then, continuity is overrated), Ware gets back to the sorrow&pity that characterized Jimmy Corrigan, rather than the snideness of previous Rusty Brown installments.
A Few Thoughts about Acme Novelty #16.......2006-01-02
I am a huge fan of Chris Ware's work, one of the few who discovered Acme Novelty way back around issue #4. This was the beginning of the Jimmy Corrigan saga, where the protaganist's perspective slides between hallucinations (the metal man), with "themes" repeated in the background (the peach!). The story telling was incredible, and the books deserved repeated readings.
As Ware has acheived the acclaim of which he is worthy, the quality of the narrative has gone down. First, there were a few boring issues of Acme with very linear storylines (ex: J.C. in the hospital getting his leg bandaged). Then, there was the repackaging of older strips in hardcover, most recently the red covered Acme Novelty Library collection. It was old stuff, padded with little gags like Dick Public and longer but unfocused stories, like the title-less "God" story.
Acme Novelty #16 falls between Ware's best and worst work. It's mostly one story (Rusty Brown and Chalky White as children), told in parallel narratives (one from each perspective). There's some interesting bits with characters we haven't seen before, namely Rusty's father and Chalky's sister. Plus there's a "cameo" of Ware himself, who prods a character in his most miserable state. (I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's appearance in "Breakfast of Champions".) There is beautiful art of a midwestern, middle class world in the snow, with Ware's trademark simplicity with detail and consistency and the feeling of isolation.
There at least one very interesting sequence where the view zooms out, turns, and zooms in to another part of the same building.
It's also interesting to see more about Rusty Brown's background, and actually feel a little simpathy for the poor kid, before he turns into a Big Jerk later in life!
What's missing is a story arc; the story is flat, starting and ending at arbitrary points.
The book ends with two shorter stories, one apparently autobiographical, with a happy tone (?!?!?) that counterbalances the bleak isolation and loneliness in the rest of the book.
The final story develops the one legged girl character who appears in the New York Times magazine. This is told in those diagrams where you have to follow the paths all over the page. (Ware fans know what I'm talking about.) (A chunk of this bit of A.N.L.#16 also appeared, minus color, in the recent "Masters of American Comics" book)
Overall, for Ware fans, Acme Novelty Library #16 is something you need to buy. Those who have never seen his work, however, would do better to start with the book Jimmy Corrigan. ANL#16 is not his best, but it is worth the price, and I'll certainly give it a few readings. And that's more than I can say about most graphic novels.
Another beautiful entry from Ware.......2005-12-31
I've been waiting for this one for awhile, so I was happy to finally get my hands on it a couple weeks after what was supposed to be the initial release date.
Overall, the ACME Novelty Library #16 delivers more of what you would expect from Ware. In this short hardback (64 pages), he delivers intertwining stories by pulling them together uniquely on the page for the first section, then intersecting the strips as the characters finally converge in the same place. As always, the drawing and design is amazing, and he gives us a small insight into his process (including what seems to be an ongoing, almost debilitating case of self-doubt) of creation.
I have just about everything that Ware has done to date, and the only reason that I'm giving this book 4 stars is because his always dreary stories are on the cusp of starting to get to me. Jimmy Corrigan was beautiful and sprawling masterwork that had a small sense of redemption at the end, but in the time since then (including The Acme Novelty Library and this new piece), his downer storylines have felt more and more claustrophobic. It's probably just a personal preference, and I know I'll keep buying his work since he's such a unique and talented artist, but I felt I had to explain my less than 5 star rating. As mentioned above, if you're a fan of his work, you're not going to go wrong with this one. You almost feel guilty getting such an exquisitely designed and printed book for such a cheap price (considering some of the poorly-conceived rags that are foisted upon the literary world).
Book Description
Want to know what your dog really thinks of you? In this hilarious exposé, Genevieve, a two-year-old papillon, takes you into the inner sanctum of dogdom, revealing canine secrets never before shared with humans. Genevieve sinks her teeth into such topics as driving tips for dogs, the tragedy of doorbells in TV commercials, measuring the intelligence of humans, finding a reason for cats, how prehistoric dogs saved the caveman's bacon, converting your house into an agility course, and productive kitchen behavior. IMPORTANT - read this book before your dog does!
Customer Reviews:
A must read for any dog lover!.......2007-06-10
This book had me on the floor laughing my butt off! I have a papillon and I can all too well relate! Telling the story from the dog's point of view of her humans and her life made for a hilarious read. Once you pick up this book you won't put it down until you reach the end. Definitely a book that you can read more than once!
Memoirs of a Papillon: The Canine Guide to Living with Humans without Going MaD.......2007-05-26
GREAT BOOK. I'm a papillon owner and a friend gave me a copy of "Genevieve's" book. I laughed till my sides ached. I read it in one
evening and then read it again. I've watched my papillons "zoom" around
the house and act just like Genevieve. I've purchased several copies to give to friends as gifts.
Funny AND full of information.......2007-05-12
I bought this book along with a book supposedly about the breed. However, this book had more information than the other book which I returned. Not only did it have information, but it was told in such a humorous way that many times I laughed outloud.
Genevieve is so funny!.......2006-06-13
This book was given to me by my sister. As a working mom to three papillons and foster mom for rescues, my reading time is limited. However, this book was so humorous that I just couldn't put it down. I could see my oldest pap agreeing with Genevieve many times while I read the book. I would pick out passages in the book and read them to my husband, and he would say "that is just like them".
Genevieve is a spunky little girl that doesn't take life for granted and sees humor in everything. Denny, her human translator, helps her put her thoughts into wording that anybody can understand.
This book is great.
Can't wait to read the sequel!.......2006-01-01
This is a great book for any dog lover, and for papillon owners in particular. I felt as though I was reading about my own dog. The author captures the quirky personality traits of the papillon perfectly - I laughed through every page. This would make a great gift for those who know and love papillons.
Books:
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- The Persian Pickle Club
- The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
- The Sunday Wife
- The Sunroom
- The Swallows of Kabul
- The Three Mrs. Parkers
- The Turner Diaries: A Novel
- The Wandering Hill: The Berrybender Narratives, Book 2 (Berry Bender Narratives, No 2)
- Timequake
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