The Ice Storm: A Novel
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • The writing alone will keep you reading--but is that enough?
  • Listmania
  • Certainly not what the movie was!
  • sentences that make you swoon
  • A well-written, not-nice story
The Ice Storm: A Novel
Rick Moody
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

ContemporaryContemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Moody, RickMoody, Rick | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0316706000

Book Description

Winner of Best Screenplay Award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. In another family drama, after his internationally acclaimed Sense and Sensibility success, director Ang Lee takes his moving and comic sensibility to the American suburbs of the 1970s. 20 b/w photos.The Newmarket Shooting Script(tm) Series features an attractive 7 x 9 1/4 inch format that includes a facsimile of the film's shooting script, as chosen by the writer and/or director, exclusive notes on the film's production and history, stills, and credits.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars The writing alone will keep you reading--but is that enough?.......2007-06-20

I was paying particular attention to how Moody developed the characters and laid the groundwork for plot while maintaining a sense of momentum.

The structure of the book is aided by the pending ice storm that offers a sense of time and place in the novel as well as a sense of movement. The reader knows that the storm will affect the characters and we suspect that it will play a role in the unfolding plot. The storm helps to pace to the novel and Moody moves back to it often as he introduces characters and their particular hang-ups.

The book needs the storm, mainly because the real movement of the book is not immediately obvious. Without the storm, the book would seem to dwell too long on disparate characters. Though the characters are related to one another and live in the same community, the real tension in their relationships and the pending resolution of that tension is not known until the final third of the novel.

Moody also keeps our interest by injecting the text with amusing trivia drawn from popular culture and sex.

And the way in which Moody writes helps to move the text along. Moody likes long sentences full of dependent clauses. He likes lists. He likes short, declarative sentences. Likes fragments.

In the first half of the book, I did not know why I should continue reading. The moral and spiritual bankruptcy of middle class America is well documented. I have no particular interest in the topic. If I were not on the plane, I might have put the book down. But once the characters reached their crisis, things started heating up. I like what Moody is doing and I am curious to read some of his other work, though I suspect (given his reputation) that "Ice Storm" is not his best.

2 out of 5 stars Listmania.......2006-05-09

Glib. While I feel for the suburban "lives of quiet desperation" angle, however shopworn, here it feels trite and slightly exploitative. Moody makes lists in lieu of description. Maybe this is a comment on the consumerism of the culture he's limning. But it comes off as lazy, as if he did a lot of research to come up with all these pop culture references and instead of integrating them just ticks them off. Even if he lived in that place and time he would have been younger than any of his characters. I was Wendy Hood's age in '73, living in a town next door to New Canaan, and I well remember that ice storm, when we were without power for a week, when a sofa caught fire in our house after using the fireplace non-stop for days. It's not that Moody gets the details wrong exactly, but they feel researched rather than lived, like the over-obvious production design of a mediocre movie. I don't remember key parties, I can't imagine my parents or their friends being remotely that adventurous. And the kids seem if anything a shade naive sexually. I came to the book long after the movie, which somehow did manage to get a lot of idiosyncratic details right. Little things like the mesmerizing patterns of the electrical wires along the train lines or white collar suburbanites using well worn trails to cut through the woods to the neighbors'. The book was a disappointment.

3 out of 5 stars Certainly not what the movie was! .......2005-11-14

I had seen the movie, well before reading this novel & I was very much a fan of the movie. The book however was a bit different to the movie & I found that I often got lost within the story of it. I guess it was just lucky that I knew it from watching the film. The movie was concideribly better & that doesn't happen very often, which is why I wanted so badly to read the book.
Overall I did enjoy this book, I love the style of writing Rick has & I did love the characters, they were real. I love the setting of it all as well. I could see the town, I could feel the tension.
A good read, but does jumble around a bit, I found.

5 out of 5 stars sentences that make you swoon.......2004-12-25

i don't understand why exactly, but rick moody seems to make some readers angry. the characters are unlikeable, they say. the sentences are too long. does reading nabakov make the same readers angry? maybe they stumbled onto the ice storm expecting something else, something safe. ignore them.
rick moody gives us the kind of coming-of-age story we need, the weird kind. he's funny and he's sad and i would hang out in this book forever, because the ways the characters see things make me see more.
"Blundering into the kitchen, he felt sure that it would always be this way, this blunt little diorama of a life with its cessation of miracles would never change--except that it would get worse."

4 out of 5 stars A well-written, not-nice story.......2004-09-07

In the late fall of 1973 I was a twenty-nine-year librarian in Dallas, cheering on the downfall of Richard Nixon and learning to write book reviews. As Moody says, it was a very, very different time -- so different I doubt anyone under thirty-five can even imagine it. No call waiting, no cable TV, no AIDS or HIV, no laser printers, no CDs, no Reagan Revolution. The names Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin still meant something. We knew who Rose Mary Woods was, too. But still, New Canaan, Connecticut, was a very different place from north Texas. That fall, Benjamin Hood and his wife, Elena, took the final step toward the break-up of their shaky, unhappy marriage. Wendy Hood, age fourteen, was becoming known as a slut, though she wasn't a bad kid and it wasn't entirely her fault. Her brother, Paul, wasn't having much fun as a seventeen-year-old preppie, either. It was the year the key party came to the upscale suburbs. None of the characters in this painful-to-read novel are particularly likable. You might feel sorry for them, at least some of the time, but you wouldn't particularly want to spend time with any of them, or at least I wouldn't. But Moody keeps you reading, wondering how they're going to screw themselves up next. Making an engrossing story out of unpleasant people and distasteful situations isn't easy, but he manages it.
The Uncanny X-Men #210 (The Morning After, Volume 1)
Average customer rating: Not rated
    The Uncanny X-Men #210 (The Morning After, Volume 1)
    Chris Claremont
    Manufacturer: Marvel Comics
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Comic

    X-MenX-Men | Characters | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
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    ASIN: B000U1U3R4

    Product Description

    The Uncanny X-Men issue #210. The Morning After. October 1986.
    10 Novels By Nora Roberts: (1) Risky Business (2) Storm Warning (3) The Welcoming (4) Unfinished Business (5) Island of Flowers (6) Mind Over Matter (7) Hot Ice (8) The Reef (9) Hidden Riches (10) Sanctuary
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      10 Novels By Nora Roberts: (1) Risky Business (2) Storm Warning (3) The Welcoming (4) Unfinished Business (5) Island of Flowers (6) Mind Over Matter (7) Hot Ice (8) The Reef (9) Hidden Riches (10) Sanctuary
      Nora Roberts
      Manufacturer: Various
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback
      ASIN: B000VSDBMU

      Maiden Flights
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        Maiden Flights
        Margaret Carter
        Manufacturer: Ellora's Cave
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

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        ASIN: 1419952595

        Product Description

        Dragon's Tribute When her village offers Rowena as a sacrifice to the dragon who terrorizes the countryside, she expects a quick death. Instead, the dragon claims her for his mate and her adventure begins. But she disobeys him, yielding to her longing to see her family once more, and disaster strikes. Rowena and her dragon must fight for their very lives. Virgin Blood By Margaret Carter Locked in the witch's tower from childhood, Rapunzel has never touched a man until the enigmatic, ravishing Alaric materializes out of the night. He takes her lifeblood—but gives her heartrending ecstasy in return. Now they must defy the odds and escape Rapunzel's tower...together.
        The Flight of the Maidens
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          The Flight of the Maidens
          Jane Gardam
          Manufacturer: Abacus
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Paperback

          ContemporaryContemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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          ASIN: 0349114242

          Book Description

          Set in the post-War summer of 1946 in the north of England and peopled with extraordinary characters, the story centres on the coming of age of three young women in the months between leaving school and taking up their scholarships at university. There is Una Vane, whose widowed mother runs a hairdressing salon in her front room (Maison Vane Glory - Where Permanent Waves are Permanent). Una goes bicycling with Ray, the boy who delivers the fish and milk. There's Hetty Fallowes, struggling to become independent of her possessive, loving, tactless mother. And there is Lise-Lotte Klein, who had arrived in 1939 on a train from Hamburg, uncovers tragedy in the past and magic in the present. Their lives and relationships are evoked with humour, compassion and an eye for detail.
          The Flight of the Maidens
          Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
          • Only one of the three short stories is worth reading
          • Hopelessly romantic...
          • The Story of the Maidens, Without Sentimentality
          The Flight of the Maidens
          Jane Gardam
          Manufacturer: Plume
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Paperback

          ContemporaryContemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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          ASIN: 0452283345
          Release Date: 2002-06-25

          Book Description

          "Gardam can see deep into the hearts of both parents and children as the balance of power tips . . . her sly style is perfect for this muted but primal struggle." ( The New York Times Book Review)

          "This novel about a friendship among three 17-year old girls powerfully evokes the people and the period at the end of WWII...At turns hugely funny and deeply moving." ( The Atlantic Monthly)

          Customer Reviews:

          3 out of 5 stars Only one of the three short stories is worth reading.......2002-12-03

          Jane Gardam set out to write a very ambitious book about three girlfriends and their diverging lives in the summer between their last year of high school and their first year of college. The setting is England, post World War II and Gardam's characterization of post-war city life is interesting. Though the novel begins and ends with the three girls hanging out and contemplating their futures, in between they have very little contact with each other. This novel is really just three short stories about Hetty Fallowes, Una Vane and Liseolette Klein and their adventures during one fateful summer.

          Which can be a fine premise for a book. It just did not seem to work here. I felt that the author really short changed the stories of Una and Liseolette. Una is the daughter of a doctor who committed suicide and a mother who now runds the local beauty parlor ("Vane Glory"). That summer, she becomes romantically involved with her socialist milk delivery boy during the course of their long bike rides together. Liseolette, a German citizen living with kindly Quakers, discovers that she has living relative, after previously not knowing whether all of her family perished in the concentration camps. Both of these stories are potentially very interesting, but Gardham does not devote enough time to either one. The characters seem flat and unemotional; their revelations seem contrived and premature.

          It seems that Gardham's favorite character is Hetty, and as a result, mine was too. Hetty is the daughter of a disillusioned, emotionally dead veteran and an immature, thoughtless and hypocritical mother. Hetty's mother prides herself on her piety, yet is having a blatant affair with the vicar, whom she begs Hetty to confess her own sins to. Yet for all her faults, Hetty's mother loves her, and Hetty loves her mother. Desperate to escape her mother's oppresive concern, Hetty rents a room in the Lakes District under the premise of studying for her college courses. Distance gives Hetty the distance she needs to appreciate her parents for what they are and are not.

          Though my parents are wonderful people, and my mother is nothing like Hetty's mother, I could appreciate being 17 and feeling extremely ambivalent about my parents. They could exasperate me and even embarass me, and five minutes later I would be reflecting on something about them that I loved. This horrible but exciting feeling of adolescence is beautifully depicted in Gardham's story of Hetty and her mother.

          Overall, the story of Hetty somewhat redeems the rest of this "novel", which is full of superficial characterizations and excessive symbolism.

          3 out of 5 stars Hopelessly romantic..........2002-03-16

          Jane Gardam's "The Flight of the maidens" takes us back to England, post WWII, in 1946.

          It is summer, and we meet the three friends, Hetty Fallowes, Una Vane, and Lieselotte Klein. They are about to leave their safe homes in Yorkshire to enroll in Universities in London. We follow these 3 young ladies through summer, we see how they solve the different challenges they encounter, and how they prepare for college. Hetty leaves town, renting a room far out in no-where land to read the whole reading list before University starts up, Una gets romantically involved with Ray, and Lieselotte ends up in California, to stay with distant relatives.

          This is, what I would call, a hopelessly romantic book, with no other purpose than to make you feel good..

          "The Flight of the maidens" came highly recommended from a friend, and I really wanted to like this book. But honestly, it didn't take me long to realize that this was not my thing. Sorry Paul, no offence - this is not a bad story or awful writing.. this was simply not my cup of tea... (Although I have to admit that I liked Hetty...)

          4 out of 5 stars The Story of the Maidens, Without Sentimentality.......2001-12-31

          Jane Gardam's The Flight of the Maidens follows three young women during the summer before their entering university in England in 1946. That basic description may have you assuming that this novel would be a sweet, sentimental exploration of these three girls "growing up." I know that's what I thought it would be. It's not. All three young women face challenges that while completely believable, are not predictable or "canned" in any way. Each one of them surprised me in several ways, and it is this element of subtle surprise that I think distinguishes this novel. The characters are charming, without being corny; the story is entertaining, without being predictable. Enjoy.
          First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time
          Average customer rating: Not rated
            First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time

            Manufacturer: Lancer
            ProductGroup: Book
            Binding: Mass Market Paperback
            ASIN: B000H6NTK0
            First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time By
            Average customer rating: Not rated
              First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time By

              Manufacturer: Lancer Books
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Mass Market Paperback
              ASIN: B000HTUAMC
              THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS
              Average customer rating: Not rated
                THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS
                JANE GARDAM
                Manufacturer: CHATTO AND WINDUS
                ProductGroup: Book
                Binding: Paperback
                ASIN: B000S97HK4
                Maiden Flight
                Average customer rating: Not rated
                  Maiden Flight

                  Manufacturer: Harlequin Books
                  ProductGroup: Book
                  Binding: Mass Market Paperback
                  ASIN: B000HU66L0
                  Maiden Flight
                  Average customer rating: Not rated
                    Maiden Flight

                    Manufacturer: Harlequin Romance
                    ProductGroup: Book
                    Binding: Paperback
                    ASIN: B000FMP0A8
                    Maiden Flight
                    Average customer rating: Not rated
                      Maiden Flight
                      Eric Vinicott
                      Manufacturer: Baen
                      ProductGroup: Book
                      Binding: Mass Market Paperback
                      ASIN: B000GR8234
                      Maiden Flight
                      Average customer rating: Not rated
                        Maiden Flight
                        Betty Beaty
                        Manufacturer: Harlequin Books
                        ProductGroup: Book
                        Binding: Paperback
                        ASIN: B000P7RMPO

                        Grasp the Stars
                        Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
                        • Confused
                        • Can't wait for the sequel!
                        • Nicely fast paced!!
                        • Give me the next installment
                        • Um..... what?
                        Grasp the Stars
                        Jennifer Wingert
                        Manufacturer: DAW
                        ProductGroup: Book
                        Binding: Paperback

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                        ASIN: 0756402204
                        Release Date: 2004-07-06

                        Book Description

                        Pursued by members of every species, Meris-the most ancient and legendary of the Jadamiin-is a stowaway on a ship bound for the Port Earth space station. But the pursuit isn't over-and suddenly Port Earth is embroiled in high level intrigue that could annihilate the entire station.

                        Customer Reviews:

                        2 out of 5 stars Confused.......2006-10-29

                        I wanted to like this book. Great characters, great universe, great action sequences. Potentially the kind of subtle plot line that takes time to develope and is worth sinking your teeth into a la Robin Hobb. Unfortunately, I am not sure this is going to happen. Either this is a stand alone book that finished way too soon or this is the first in a trilogy that somehow included the first two chapters of the next book. Way to many subplots and characters that somehow seem to get in the authors way so she just either kills them off or forgets about them. I would wait to read this book until the sequel comes out and the pair are reviewed as a whole.

                        5 out of 5 stars Can't wait for the sequel!.......2006-02-23

                        I could tell that this novel was a first attempt, but the story was captivating from beginning to end. The synopsis on the back didn't do it justice. It was character centered and yet had a great plot. It's always nice to hear from a great new female vioce in SF. The only thing frustrating about it is that the sequel isn't out yet!!!

                        5 out of 5 stars Nicely fast paced!!.......2006-02-07

                        The author is Jennifer Wingert. I was very impressed with this book. It's extremely fast moving, and was extremely hard to put down. I finished the almost 500 pages in less than 2 days.

                        The entire book centers upon a few days at a spaceport. It opens with a female trying to escape from her would-be rapists at the Igsha Reey Spaceport. She does not remember much of her previous life as she has been drugged. She knows people are hunting her but she doesn't know why. The rapists catch up with her and an assasin from another race comes to her rescue with the condition that she becomes his slave. From there, she winds up at the Earth Spaceport, and things start getting really dicey, not just for her, but for everyone on the port.

                        The book has non-stop action, and was very interesting. If you like the Honor Harrington series or the Heris Serrano series, you'll like this book. I definitely plan to check out other books from Jennifer Wingert.

                        5 out of 5 stars Give me the next installment.......2005-06-17

                        Humans, both naturalist and stationer, aliens of many types, some mystery and interesting chemistry make this a very good first (on her own) book for Wingert. What starts as a cop story quickly delves into some political intrigue as Rachel (station police) finds herself in the middle of a number of odd incidences in a station where odd is an everyday occurrence. The cast of main characters (2 female, 3 male) is interesting and their interaction and connections to one another are complex. I read it in one sitting and am eagerly awaiting the next.

                        2 out of 5 stars Um..... what?.......2005-05-17

                        I just read "Grasp the Stars" by Jennifer Wingert. Can't say I thought very highly of it.

                        The characters were poorly developed, wtih ill defined motivations, all the aliens seemed like ones I had already read about somewhere else (more inventively described at that) and I could not for the life of me follow the spasmatic jumps in the plot. Not only that, but half the time the main characters are just "out sick", and she spends pages on it, while the action is taking place elsewhere.


                        ..Spoilers...

                        It did have a great beginning, and the ending wasn't too bad, but it's like the editor just stopped somewhere in the middle. The plot got all sketchy and jumpy and I kept wondering what on Earth was going on, and why on Earth these people were doing what they were doing.

                        She should have stuck with the initial three characters, (Meris, Rachel and Wu), rather than bringing in all those other ones, then maybe she could have developed them some. I honestly thought Rachel's romantic interest was one of the bad guys, and she never did anything to truly develop sympathy for him. Just all the sudden she thinks she's in love, and you're left wondering why on earth.

                        The one thing I did like about this book was Meris. I thought her situation was intriguing, and I wish they had stuck with her point of view more throughout the book. In fact, I thought she should have been the main character. The idea of drugs working differently on different species (but still working and not poisoning) was fairly interesting, and the concept of a memory drug that could somehow segment your memory was pretty cool. Unfortunately, it's also been done before. Although the idea of a drug simulating sleep, so you could just keep going, now that was a novel idea I could live with. Gimme some of that!


                        This book had so much potential at the beginning. Meris and Rachel both seemed intriguing, but the plot totally degenerated into chaos and confusion, and random people started jumping into the mix for no apparent reason other than to hint at (but never realize) a complex set of relationships.

                        I don't know, maybe it was because I was sick at home, but after the first 50 pages or so I just couldn't make sense of it. I kept getting annoyed because the characters' motivations and choices seemed so random and poorly explained. I wish it had lived up to the promise in those first few pages. Those first 50 pages are why it gets two stars instead of one.

                        The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)
                        Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
                        • I loved this book so much.
                        • The Subject Is Still Contemplation
                        • Fascinating journal of Christian monk encountering the East
                        • merton lives!
                        The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)
                        Thomas Merton
                        Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
                        ProductGroup: Book
                        Binding: Paperback

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                        ASIN: 0811205703

                        Amazon.com

                        This volume, the journal Merton kept on the journey to Asia where his life ended, also is a culmination of his long spiritual journey as a writer. "His ecumenism was total," the editors remind us, "and we find him ranging from Tantric Buddhism to Zen, and from Islam and Sufism to Vedanta." The book, however, is not dryly academic; rather, as the foreword suggests, "Merton's pilgrimage to Asia was an effort to deepen his own religious and monastic commitment." Merton himself was clear about this sense of pilgrimage; so too was he clear that this meant in no way a break with his Christian roots. "I think we have now reached a stage ... of religious maturity," he writes, "at which it may be possible for someone to remain perfectly faithful to a Christian and Western monastic commitment, and yet to learn in depth from say, a Buddhist discipline and experience." This book is the fruit of such learning. Including descriptions of his meetings with the young Dalai Lama, the book is meticulously edited and supplied with useful explanatory notes and appendices, including transcriptions of talks that Merton gave during his trip. Most movingly, however, the journal itself concludes with the narrative of his transformative experiences in Ceylon where he visited three colossal figures of Buddha carved from huge stones. "Surely," he writes, "my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself." A few days later he passed away. --Doug Thorpe

                        Customer Reviews:

                        5 out of 5 stars I loved this book so much........2007-06-28

                        As a Buddhist woman with several Catholic relatives, I was so curious how a Catholic priest was able to reconcile the non-dualism of Buddhism with the duality of Christianity. I was hoping that reading this book would provide that insight. Well, really, it didn't, except that maybe most Christians are misunderstanding the idea of non-duality. I don't know; I don't pretend to know. But after reading this book, I became almost obsessed with Merton; it takes such an unusual and open-minded person to just go with what he senses - sees, hears, feels - rather than by what he has been told. Such honesty is rare. His description of satori, as he experienced it, was incredibly vivid and open. And, of course, the end left me feeling that it shouldn't have been over; there should have been more. But I know that's just my attachment talking; it was as it should have been. Namaste.

                        5 out of 5 stars The Subject Is Still Contemplation.......2006-01-31

                        THE ASIAN JOURNAL OF THOMAS MERTON reads in many ways like a travelogue but the one subject which Merton manages to return to constantly is contemplation. He has an abiding curiosity about the contemplative experiences of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and virtually all mystics from any religion. Merton is especially interested in Tibetan Buddhism. At the same time he appears to remain firmly rooted in his committment to Catholicism and very appreciative of the opportunity to pursue God as a Trappist monk.

                        The editors have added much helpful material - including copious notes at the end of each chapter and an extensive glossary of terms.

                        I recommend THE ASIAN JOURNAL OF THOMAS MERTON as an intriguing book which provides a clear snapshot of Merton's thinking during the final weeks of his life.

                        5 out of 5 stars Fascinating journal of Christian monk encountering the East.......2004-03-16

                        This book is a must-read for fans of Merton, and for anyone interested in encounters between Western Christianity and Eastern religions (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism).

                        Merton achieved incredible realizations and great insight into Buddhism despite the fact that he lived most of his life as a monk and hermit isolated at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, USA. At the end of his life, invited to present a paper in Bangkok on the renewal of monasticism, Merton made what he called his 'Asian pilgrimage' and finally set out to see firsthand what he had studied in books. This journal took him all across Asia, to various holy sites, and to encounters with numerous religious communities. He met, along the way, such people as H.H. the Dalai Lama and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He records all of this, his encounters, and even more interestingly, his own reflection on Buddhism and Christianity, in this wonderful gem of a journal.

                        What would have happened had Merton lived a few more years? I often ask myself this. He was exploring not just the surface of Buddhism (even now, many decades later, the presentation of Buddhism in the West can be very superficial), but delving into its very heart -- mandalas, tantras, and so on, and probing into what their nature was and what this might mean for Christianity to encounter a spirituality that seemed at once totally foreign and alien, and yet at the same time the very essence of what Christianity means.

                        Merton was a brilliant individual. He does not succumb to easy platitudes such as "It's all the same thing" or anything like that. He respects difference. But he does also certainly see a deep and dazzling dynamic unity -- a truth -- that penetrates all of this -- and not just this, but every moment of our lives. That living power -- that is what is important, and he witnessed to this in his life and writings.

                        5 out of 5 stars merton lives!.......2000-03-25

                        I never tire of reading Thomas Merton. The Asian Journal is a poignant and tireless encampment with one of the remarkable men of letters of the 20th century. Colored throughout with Merton's search for a place of greater solitude (his dissatisfaction on many levels with the cheese factory his beloved Gethsemani abbey became being well known for some time before his death) -the redwoods of California, possibly Alaska- as the journal progresses one begins to feel in his words a kind of prescient kinship with his own accidental death, occurring in Bangkok before he had completed his Asian pilgrimage. Worthy appendices - the characteristic sweetness of his informal talk on monasticism given at Calcutta, and his lecture on Marxism and Monastic Perspectives with its prophetic last sentence "So I will disappear". Free of polemics, giving in its human searching, this is once again essential Merton.
                        Thomas Merton in Alaska (Prelude to the Asian Journal)
                        Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
                        • Ultimate Truth Revealed
                        Thomas Merton in Alaska (Prelude to the Asian Journal)
                        Thomas Merton
                        Manufacturer: New Directions Publishing Corporation
                        ProductGroup: Book
                        Binding: Paperback

                        GeneralGeneral | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
                        InspirationalInspirational | Catholicism | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                        GeneralGeneral | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                        PaperbackPaperback | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                        Similar Items:
                        1. The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton) The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)
                        2. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book) The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book)
                        3. Dancing in the Water of Life (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton) Dancing in the Water of Life (Merton, Thomas//Journal of Thomas Merton)

                        ASIN: 0811210383

                        Customer Reviews:

                        5 out of 5 stars Ultimate Truth Revealed.......2002-06-13

                        Everyone experinces in their life moments of truth. It is in these times we come to understand and realize the ultimate reality and grounding for ourselves and everything around us. Though not very long, Merton's journal entries spill out the sacramental truth he saw in Alaska. God spoke to Merton through everything around him during his stay in Alaska - the people, trees, water, mountains, etc. And in turn it pours back out of Merton in his talks and conferences. Very few things in this world we can be sure of. But the truth is never wrong and never changes - this book reveals a little slice of the Great Center which we all seek to draw near to.
                        The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                        Average customer rating: Not rated
                          The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                          Brother Patrick Hart & James Laughlin Merton Thomas edited by Naomi Burton
                          Manufacturer: New Directions
                          ProductGroup: Book
                          Binding: Hardcover

                          GeneralGeneral | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                          HardcoverHardcover | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                          ASIN: B000UDA3PY
                          The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                          Average customer rating: Not rated
                            The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                            Naomi, Brother Paatrick Hart & James Laughlin Burton
                            Manufacturer: A New Directions Book
                            ProductGroup: Book
                            Binding: Paperback
                            ASIN: B000KBLLXO
                            The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                            Average customer rating: Not rated
                              The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
                              Thomas Merton
                              Manufacturer: New Directions Book
                              ProductGroup: Book
                              Binding: Paperback

                              GeneralGeneral | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                              PaperbackPaperback | Merton, Thomas | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
                              ASIN: B000NWMHDI

                              Books:

                              1. The Last Great Dance on Earth
                              2. The Lemon Table
                              3. The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel
                              4. The Night In Question: Stories
                              5. The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library)
                              6. The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life
                              7. The Ramage Touch (The Lord Ramage Novels)
                              8. The Red Notebook: True Stories
                              9. The Snow Garden: A Novel
                              10. The Spring of the Ram: The Second Book of The House of Niccolo

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