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Story Cards: Aesop's Fables
Raymond C. Clark
Manufacturer: Pro Lingua Associates
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
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ASIN: 0866470867 |
Book Description
Aesop's Fables
48 of Aesop's wonderful, classic stories, some very well known (The Fox and the Grapes, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, and The Crow and the Pitcher) and others that may be new to students (The Old Man and Death and The -Hare and the Hound). These are tales full of wit and wisdom that have been loved by children and adults alike for over twenty-five hundred years.
Book Description
This boldly contemporary love story combines sex and seriousness, physical lust and spiritual longing. Raymond and Hannah hook up at a party; a one-night stand expands into a weeklong passionate and surprisingly deep love affair. Then Hannah leaves for a year in Jerusalem. With six thousand miles separating their bodies, the energy of love and lust must be sublimated to the written word. While Hannah immerses herself in Torah and the Orthodox world of Jerusalem, Raymond remains in multicultural Toronto, working on his dissertation on Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Over the school year, Hannah's growing love for her Jewishness is more and more at odds with her love for a blond, blue-eyed WASP. And Raymond, pining in Toronto, seems to be living out his dissertation before he's even written it. Can this new love affair survive distance, cultural dissonance, and out-of-sync, late-night e-mails?
In this remarkable debut, carnal love confronts religion and culture, and modern passion finds its counterpoint in ancient texts.
Customer Reviews:
So many words to describe this (audio) book..........2007-06-04
...unfortunately, the words that come to mind are mediocre, lame, lazy, shallow, and a phrase: falling way short of its potential. Did the other reviewers even read (listen to) the same book I did?
Where to begin. The characters of Ramond and Hannah are NOT fully nuanced, ever. Their lives away from each other are not vivid and developed. They are incredibly shallow characters-- not because of the week of sex-- although that part could have had some more emotional depth, too. They seem to have no real interior lives, and so they have nothing to share with each other.
I'm very critical of reviewers who review the book that should have been written instead of the book that WAS written... but I'm going to do that very thing. The premise was good. Two people meet, have a week of passionate connected sex, fall in love, separate to two very different lifestyles. Can their love sustain the separation and changes? Good idea.
But when Raymond and Hannah separate, their emails are one and two liners most of the time. This is why I say they are shallow and have no interior emotional or intellectual worlds to share with each other or through which to connect. I still have one hour to listen to, but up to this point, they only talk on the phone ONCE. Hel-LO! In love? I don't think so. They don't pour out the details of their lives the way people do when they're newly in love and want to know everything about each other. This is why I called the book "lazy." I think the author was just too lazy to do the work of filling out his characters. The novel has NO conflict. I would say this is just a very long short story, but even short stories have conflict. One of the reviewers above called this a "prose poem." Give me a break. That's just more laziness on the part of the author. I reminds me of kids in school who think that if they just write something out in lines with a capital letter at the beginning of each one, it automatically becomes a poem. And those long quotes from "Anatomy of Melancholy"? More laziness... let's increase the word count by quoting extensively from another book. Yeah, I'm sure those passages had something to do with the "plot," but by that time I didn't care about the characters any more.
I found it completely unbelievable that after only a few months in Jerusalem she felt familiar enough with Hebrew to read from the Torah at a service after only *one week's* focused preparation! People take months to prepare a Torah reading. To prepare herself in a week-- did not compute.
BTW, the ensemble of readers who performed this book made several pronunciation/usage errors (English words, not Hebrew words) that were pretty major. I don't know if these were editing mistakes or reading mistakes. I can only remember one of them: the comment was that someone was of a certain ethnic "extraction," but the reader said a certain ethnic "abstraction." There were a few others that escape me.
Edited to add: I finished the book, and alas, the last hour didn't offer anything to change the opinion I expressed in my review earlier today.
Before I comment on the last hour of the book, I must mention something that was INCREDIBLY annoying, and that was the incorrect presentation that emails back and forth get repeated "RE:"'s added to the subject line. That does not happen. When something is forwarded on repeatedly, you will get a chain of "FW: FW: FW:"'s, but that does not happen with "RE:." You can email back and forth with the same subject and it will still just be "RE: pie-baking," or whatever, no matter how many emails go back and forth. Geez.
I have comments about the last hour of the book that contain spoilers, so I've added them at the very bottom.
***WARNING! SPOILER FOLLOWS!**
Okay, so finally Raymond sleeps with someone else, a month before he is to go visit Hannah. There was NO inner conflict on his part leading up to this. Yeah, it's believable, but why now? Why not sooner?
And where is Hannah's struggle? The only conflict she's revealed so far is wondering what to do with her new Jewishness after the Institute. Hmmm... I gather there are quite a few Jews in Toronto. Now if, after Jerusalem, she were headed to North Dakota, or West Texas, then she might wonder how she would nurture her Jewish identity in those places where there are few Jews, but in a major cosmopolitan city-- no problem. Why doesn't Hannah form any major relationships in Jerusalem. She has some girlfriends, but their conversations never get very deep.
Judiasm is a religion of action, but her new discoveries about the ritual details haven't (so far) led her to making a commitment to *tikkun olam,* working to mend a broken world. Yeah, she's real high on candle lighting, but ritual gestures have to be accompanied by a Jewish life that extends out into the world. Maybe she figures this out during the last hour of the book.
Now, if Raymond had become involved with Laura much earlier, AND if Hannah had started an affair with her married rabbi Jack Katz, or contemplated becomine ultra-orthodox and staying in Jerusalem permanently, or met a very attractive and Jewishly committed Israeli man, or decided to join the Israeli Defense Forces-- THEN we might have some actual plot elements.
I realize I still have an hour to go, so maybe there will be some earth-shaking events before the end of the book. I keep listening because I can't believe how bad this is, how lame, how mediocre... but I said that already.
If I have any major insights after I finish the book, I'll be back with more comments. The way I feel now, I suggest you avoid this book.
Edited to add (after finishing the book):
Raymond confesses to Hannah that he slept with Laura almost immediately after it happens. But she still wants him to come to Jerusalem. That doesn't work for me. But anyway, he goes, their visit is awkward except that they fall back into the pattern of the first week-- lots of sex and eating but no talking. These two don't have a real conversation at all in this book. Maybe this is really "Last Tango in Paris."
One strange thing really stands out: the trip to Hebron. That is so vivid and such a compelling narrative that I'm forced to conclude that this author didn't write it. He probably knew someone who took a trip to Hebron and emailed him about it, and he just lifted their entire narrative. Sure enough, when Raymond and Hannah get back to Jerusalem, the book slips back into the pseudopoetic oneliners and terse, cryptic dialogue.
After Raymond comes to Jerusalem, he and Hannah never once declare their love for each other (she is still pissed about the affair, but not too pissed to sleep with him), and yet at some point out of the blue, Raymond states that he wants them to be together and they can raise their children Jewish. It's not clear if he is addressing this declaration to her or to himself. And what was the basis for this change of heart?
Raymond's couple of diatribes against religion are also out of the clear blue sky and no basis is given by the author for Raymond's point of view. Why does he feel this strongly? Is it emotion-based or logic-based?
Anyway... enough. This is one of the most trivial and worthless books I've ever read, and it's sad because the premise was a good one.
Surprisingly good read.......2006-07-22
This elegant story tells of a romance with nuance, charm, wit and some depth. The characters ultimately feel very real, despite the seeming unreality and coincidental nature of their meeting. The marginal notes that seem almost like journal entries on the side of the action add to the text, like a third voice in a three-part chord. Quickly, these notes become comfortable for the reader, as brief commentary on the action. The story concerns Hannah, who is Jewish and "finding herself" in Israel and Ray, who is not Jewish, a graduate student who remains in her native Canada at this time; the story describes how their relationship is affected by their separation and their separate challenges. In the end, the story also very quietly, without much fanfare suggests how the trajectory of the relationship very subtly echoes the pain and possibilities in the cultural and political situation Israel confronts with its Arab neighbors. This is a quiet subtext, yet appears to be present and nicely surfaces near the end of the text. In the end, the story may be about all such encounters with difference where there is also deeper relationship. It was a surprisingly good read, a romance with some depth. Like a fine dessert, it's sweet, a little bit rich and textured, yet not unhealthy.
Raymond and Hannah exposes the boundaries of religious differences.......2005-09-24
This novel is a clear and honest portrayal of love in the face of culture clash - Raymond, the academic aesthete versus Hannah, in training to become "a good Jew". Whether or not the "love conquers all" mantra applies here is for the reader to find out. The unusual format might at first seem distracting, but pulls you in the more you read. An engaging first novel from Stephen Marche.
Disappointed.......2005-08-12
I have never listened to a story told in this fashion. It would have been a great story but for the CONSTANT INTERRUPTION of a narrator setting the next scene. It was so distracting I lost interest for the entire story! I never want to listen to a story told like this. It was almost painful to listen to. I barely got through tape 1 before I packed it up to give to my local library. This was a total waste of my money.
A quirky, original, bold, love story & a compelling read!.......2005-07-13
Raymond is a doctoral candidate writing a dissertation on Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" at the University of Toronto. Hannah, another Toronto resident, is going to Jerusalem in six days to study Torah at an Orthodox egalitarian Institute. The two hook-up at a party. Neither expects more than a one-night stand. But the attraction between Hannah and Raymond is an intense one and continues far beyond one night. They are passionate together, physically, emotionally, intellectually. They laugh a lot. In short, they're falling in love and have an extremely brief period of time to do so. They are aware and stressed by the limitations of their situation.
Raymond is an atheist. He expresses himself with irreverent humor, and eloquence, on Judaism, Christianity and Islam in a memorable passage, which I would quote here if it weren't so long. On the other hand, Hannah has trouble explaining her journey to Raymond, and to herself. "What it is is a program for North American almost-assimilated Jews like me, who are messed up about their Jewish identity and want to deal with it. And they tell you, this is what being a Jew is, and you are one. Oh, and here's how you do all the things that make you Jewish."
Their six days together take place in her sunlit attic apartment, bare now except for a bed, like an island in the middle of the room. They also spend some time at Raymond's place, a dark basement flat, and at a cottage on Enigma Lake, north of Toronto. Meals are shared at various ethnic restaurants, and in bed. They visit funky bars, drink wine, bourbon and crantinis, and explore each other's bodies, histories and minds. Can two people find true love in less than a week - a love which will endure nine months of separation - especially when one is a Jewish woman who is going to study religion in Jerusalem, and the other is an atheist "goy?" Or is this just a fling?
Most of the novel takes place while the two are apart. Their communication, and some of the narrative, is conveyed through a series of emails between Israel and Canada. However, in between their correspondence, the book offers vivid and convincing glimpses of both characters' lives. Hannah's euphoria at her spiritual and cultural development comes across with enthusiasm. She wants Raymond to visit Jerusalem during the last month of her stay, to see the extraordinary city for himself, and to learn about Israel. Both of them want to find out whether their relationship is still viable. Raymond's melancholia contrasts sharply with Hannah's exuberance. He is bogged down with his writing. Toronto is always dark and cold in winter and he, unlike Hannah, is not making new friends. Their polarities and irreconcilable differences are brought to the fore, just as their connection and similarities were initially. Yet, the couple remains drawn to each other, in spite of the impediments of geographical distance, culture and newfound, (newly made), personal problems.
Author Stephen Marche uses an interesting writing format for his novel. The margins act as a venue for a minimalist narrative which runs parallel to the main storyline. "Raymond considers Hannah's departure." "Hannah considers homesickness, desperation and loneliness in the past tense." "Hannah thinks about the name God." "Raymond address the peoples of the Book." It's a clever literary device that adds depth and wit to the novel. I wonder if Marche purposefully used the marginalia, because it so resembles Talmudic commentary.
"Raymond and Hannah" ("A Love Story") is a most compelling read. It is hard to believe this is a debut novel. A quirky, original, bold, love story, it is certainly contemporary, combining physical lust, spiritual longing, and intellectual quests, as well as a search for emotional intimacy. The landscape of Israel, its contrasts and contradictions, where the elements of modern life meet history, is beautifully, realistically, and often ironically depicted.
JANA
Product Description
48 of Aesop's wonderful, classic stories, some very well known (The Fox and the Grapes, The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, and The Crow and the Pitcher) and others that may be new to students (The Old Man and Death and The Hare and the Hound). These are tales full of wit and wisdom that have been loved by children and adults alike for over twenty-five hundred years.
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Raymond and Hannah.(Book Review): An article from: Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal
Jon Kertzer
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B000E6EQE6
Release Date: 2006-01-12 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2005. The length of the article is 809 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Raymond and Hannah.(Book Review)
Author: Jon Kertzer
Publication:
Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 37
Issue: 2
Page: 130(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Artforum International, published by Thomson Gale on February 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2098 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Salons de refuse: Hannah Feldman on Raymond Hains and Arman.(PASSAGES)(Biography)
Author: Hannah Feldman
Publication:
Artforum International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 44
Issue: 6
Page: 35(3)
Article Type: Biography
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Mother of the president: Hannah Milhous Nixon, 1885-1967
Raymond Martin Bell
Manufacturer: R.M. Bell (1506 First Ave. North, Coralville)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
United States
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ASIN: B0006FCOOO |
Book Description
It's not what she imagined, but it's everything she's always wanted. . .
Looking for real life. The scrawled graffiti on the bathroom wall was innocent enough, clichéd even. But for
Claire Wilder, it was a wake-up call: start searching for your roots and find the happiness you lost long ago. Divorced from her high school sweetheart,
Claire has wasted too much time waiting for
Andrew to come back, and in the process has lost the flavor of her own life.
Leaving behind her fast-paced life,
Claire ends up in her father's hometown of Valentine, Oklahoma, for a brief stay at the Goodnight Motel. But her arrival is like a pebble tossed into a pond, its ripples affecting the town's eccentric residents who like to think things just fine the way they are, thank you. Gradually the days turn into weeks, and before
Claire knows it, she's discovered something she had almost forgotten existed: a place to call home.
Just when it looks as if things might finally be falling into place for
Claire, life throws her another curve:
Andrew shows up unexpectedly in Valentine--to woo her back! Now
Claire must decide: return to the home and security she once knew, or stay in Valentine with the promise of a new life and the possibility of a new love. . .
Curtiss Ann Matlock's funny, touching stories set in the not-so-sleepy town of Valentine have captured the hearts of readers everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
A Place To Belong.......2006-06-10
Sweet Dreams At The Goodnight Motel by Curtiss Ann Matlock is a 4 star
book. It was good. It had me wondering what was going to happen.Claire
is a woman in her 40's and she leaves her home in Shreveport and goes
to Valentine,Oklahoma. And through the book Claire comes to terms
with things and also finds a place she belongs.
Just a great fun read.......2005-08-13
I LOVED this book! It was just a nice, fun read. Light but not mindless. This is the first book I've read by Curtiss Ann Matlock and today I am off to the library to find more :)
Another Great Chapter in the Story of Valentine, OK.......2004-11-01
Curtiss Ann Matlock does not disappoint in her latest installment on our friends in the little town of Valentine, Oklahoma. The story includes the usual cast of interesting characters like Vella, Winston, Maralee, Tate, Corrine, etc. and adds a few new ones like Claire Wilder, who finds a way to move beyond her failed marriage as she learns to trust her heart, and Sherrilyn Earles a naive young women who needs someone like Claire to step in and offer unconditional friendship, and to show her that she can make her own way in this world. I can't wait for the next book!
Sweet Dreams.......2004-10-31
Proving that inspiration can strike anywhere, anytime, Claire finds hers scrawled across a bathroom wall. Urged to find a life, she takes off to find her long absent father. Shreveport no longer feels like home since her husband dumped her. However, her destination, Valentine, gives her what she was missing- surrogate relatives from parents to a pregnant teen who needs mothering herself, and an interesting man who is interested in her. Just when life has a more rosy tinge, her cheating ex realizes that she was worth holding onto and how foolish he was to let her get away, making her wonder if the way back is the way forward.
Eccentrics give the novel color, much like Steel Magnolias or other Southern chick lit might have. The emails between Claire's surrogate mother and her love interest throw the narrative off a bit, however. It does, to on the positive side, have a good heart to power the story.
warm tale .......2004-09-29
In Shreveport, Legal Secretary Claire Wilder receives an epiphany when she reads a message on a bathroom door of a truck stop about "... looking for life". Claire concludes she wasted the last two years of her life working for a crappy boss while waiting for Andrew, her former spouse of almost two decades, to realize he made a mistake leaving her for a younger woman. She decides to leave town to find her estranged father who she has not seen since he walked out on her and her mother when Claire was a little girl. Just before leaving Andrew tells her he wants to come back to Claire, but she says she will consider this when she comes back from Oklahoma.
After quitting her job, she travels to Valentine, Oklahoma, the last place where she knew her dad lived. In Valentine, few people remember her dad and those that do recall very little about him. However, Claire is adopted by nonagenarian Winston Valentine, becomes close friends with septuagenarian drugstore owner Vella Blaine, and "adopts" abandoned pregnant teen Sherrilyn Earles even as Deputy Sheriff Travis Ford keeps a close eye on her. Claire is happy with her new relationships until Andrew arrives expecting she will take him back.
The latest visit to Valentine is a warm tale starring a coming of age (though Claire is middle age) woman seeking a modicum of happiness in a life that she feels has past her by with little contentment. The support cast in Louisiana and Oklahoma enable the reader to see the transformation of Claire through their eyes. The story line is character driven as Claire seeks her roots and finds a life.
Harriet Klausner
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- Disappointing - not a good book at all!
- The Unraveling Carpet
- a bit worn and trampled of a plot
- Many stories woven into one and a good read
- What other foreign gems are we missing?
|
The Carpet Makers
Andreas Eschbach
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Contemporary
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Sun of Suns (Virga)
ASIN: 0765314908
Release Date: 2006-02-21 |
Book Description
Since the time of prehistory, carpet makers have tied intricate knots to form carpets for the court of the Emperor. These carpets are made from the hairs of their makers wives and daughters; they are so detailed and fragile that each carpetmaker finishes only one single carpet in his entire lifetime. This art has descended from father to son since the beginning of time itself. But one day the empire of the God Emperor vanishes and strangers begin to arrive from the stars in search of the hair carpets. What these strangers discover is beyond all belief, more than anything they could have ever imagined . . . .
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing - not a good book at all!.......2007-07-24
Wow, first let me say that I am a huge Orson Scott Card fan so his endorsement and forward in this book was a key factor in my buying it. I'm not sure what he sees in this book, but I hope he doesn't emulate anything from The Carpet Makers in his works anytime soon.
So why do I think this book is so bad while others rave about it? I'm not sure, but I'll tell you what I found unforgivably flawed about the book and maybe you can decide for yourself whether it would interest you.
First, let me start with what was good. It was an interesting premise with a fresh way of looking at things. For a while I was seeing (imagining apparently) analogies to man's belief in God and religion, or perhaps some subtle analogy to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. But ultimately the book became trite, boring and contrived and for those of you who felt it had an Orson Scott Card "twist" at the end, I beg to differ. The ending was pure cheese. Ender's Game left me with my mouth agape and my eyes wide (and a little teared up as well.) This book left me thinking that I couldn't believe I had read to the end just to learn the secret of the Carpet Makers was so lame.
Now, on to what I didn't like. ;-) First, there is NO character development. How can there be? Eschbach kills off most every character that you are introduced to by the end of each chapter. As I started each new chapter, trying to figure out who the new character was, and how he/she would fit into the story I became frustrated as I soon realized that I was better off spending my time wondering what horrible end would befall this new character.
There is no continuity or flow as a result of this and I was never able to invest in the book because how can you really care about what happens to these people when the author doesn't care enough to let them survive past a chapter himself?
Additionally, most of the characters were cardboard cutouts. I've seen this referred to in reviews before and I usually think the writer of that review is some snobbish reader that demands too much. This is a book that finally let me see what a wooden or cardboard character really looks like.
Seriously folks, without giving away too much of a spoiler here, but a beautiful researcher, after a cheesy talk with her mom, decides to throw herself at a humpbacked librarian and ends up in bed with him so that he can then take her to the secret vault and tell her the entire story of the Carpet Makers in a few paragraphs???
Another horrible character is the happy go lucky space pilot who lands on the carpet maker's planet to explore. This character would blow over if a breeze were to blow he was so underdeveloped.
I don't know how much was lost in translation, but I suspect that isn't the problem. This author hasn't mastered character development and this story is plot driven - only. There are no characters to care about and for me that means no story to care about.
If you don't believe me, buy it used and save a few bucks and see for yourself. This one's a stinker!
The Unraveling Carpet.......2007-06-03
Most of this book's rave reviews probably stem from the uniqueness that is highly evident at its surface. However, uniqueness doesn't always translate into deeper strength or consistency. It's hard to tell if Eschbach's style of plot construction is truly exotic and different, or if there is a problem with the translation from German to English, but in any case there are real problems with the way this story is put together. Granted, the idea of the carpet makers, who spend entire lifetimes weaving carpets of astonishing beauty for mysterious imperial purposes that they blindly accept, is an interesting premise for the novel, and Eschbach reaches some great insights as he explores the long-lasting human drama of tyranny, power, and corruption. But on the other hand, even though the all-powerful emperor's cult of personality and the blind unquestioning faith of his subjects is a useful allegory, Eschbach doesn't transcend the basic possibilities of the idea, many of which are standard sci-fi fare that was defined ages ago. (I was particularly reminded of Herbert's Dune saga and Asimov's Foundation novels.)
Meanwhile, this book badly unravels about halfway through. Eschbach's method is to mesh nearly self-contained chapters into an interwoven storyline, with many chapters focusing on characters and events that are unique to that chapter and add subtle detail to the overall plotline. This works well for a while, except that the method is not applied consistently and a few of the vignettes in the later portions of the book have very tangential and questionably useful connections to the main story (for instance, note the extended absences of any mentions of the title characters). Eschbach starts to wrap things up fairly well at the book's conclusion, but like some other reviewers I found the final resolution of the story's underlying mystery to be pretty nonsensical and unsatisfying. I agree that this book signifies Eschbach as a unique new sci-fi talent who deserves to be discovered by the outside world, but to achieve true greatness he needs to weave his interesting ideas into a more consistent overall storyline. [~doomsdayer520~]
a bit worn and trampled of a plot.......2007-01-28
Card's name used in the marketing and his recommedation got me to buy this book. While I'm not sorry I did so, I cannot provide it with the high value given by other readers. The narrative mirrors the central plot device. The book is composed of brief chapters, woven together to create a broader overarching pattern and motif. Except when this narrative carpet is finally completed and is fully visible to the reader, it fails to stimulate much more than an "oh, that's interesting" response to the "question" that threads its way throughout the novel. I was disappointed. The characters are two dimensional and the more intriguing ones disappear without resolution of the briefly generated story lines. Multiple plot devices have been borrowed from earlier sci-fi works and you will find yourself sometimes thinking, "Haven't I read this bit before?" Someone has noted that this novel began as a short story. It should have remained such. The elaborated telling does not add to the effect. Its like an extended Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode when the "twist" at the end fails to satisfy the time spent on viewing. Thats not to say its a complete failure. I may well read this author again, but not with the heightened expectations that Card communicated to me. I am more disappointed in him and his high praise than in the novel.
Many stories woven into one and a good read.......2007-01-22
This book doesn't read like a translation from another language. The writing is fluid and vivid. On a forgotten world in the far reaches of The Empire since time immemorial men have woven carpets out of human hair for the palace of The Emperor. It takes an entire life-time to weave a single intricate hair carpet.
This novel is essentially a set of linking stories that when taken as a whole, like a carpet, weave a larger picture than its individual strands alone show as it takes us into the true history behind the carpets. This novel has a well deserved reputation as good read and the twist at the end really makes you question the fruits of unlimited power.
What other foreign gems are we missing?.......2006-09-09
New books often excite me about cultures, disciplines and ideas that were unfamiliar to me. I usually react to such discoveries with zeal, finding whatever resources I can both online and in the library (I read every meaningful web site and encyclopedia of heraldry after first reading George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones).
It seems that my latest reading will require me to learn German.
The Carpet Makers, translated into English from Andreas Eschbach's German original, is a unique book--and one that cries out to me for more of Eschbach's work, none of which is available in English. As Orson Scott Card points out in the foreword, this is a travesty.
Eschbach has written novel of digestable length with a story on an epic scale. His interwoven vignettes are linked tightly enough to move the story forward while giving the reader insight on more than one corner of his universe. He explores numerous ideas with fluency and insight--none of which seemed to break down in the translation.
There are some weaknesses. I felt like the end was rushed and broke the steady pacing of the book, and not all of the stories fit congruously with the whole. But all together, the story's prismatic look at power and its uses on scales both vast and minute makes this a great read.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Industrial Engineer, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1184 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Rug maker revitalizes.(Case Study)(Colonial Mills Inc., Rhode Island Manufacturers Extension Service)
Author: Rory Sharrock
Publication:
Industrial Engineer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 39
Issue: 3
Page: 50(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Carpet maker (Real people at work)
Ruby Diamond
Manufacturer: Educational Research Council of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
Readers
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ASIN: B00071Z8BI |
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Carpet Makers
Manufacturer: MELIA PUBLISHING SER
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GNSU1C |
Book Description
In each inspirational book, meditations are presented in an opulent two-page color spread consisting of a devotional thought and related encouraging scriptures from the Psalms.
Book Description
In each inspirational book, meditations are presented in an opulent two-page color spread consisting of a devotional thought and related encouraging scriptures from the Psalms.
Customer Reviews:
The title says it all!.......2006-03-22
I received this book as a gift and am ordering one to send to my granddaughter, who is going through a difficult time in her life. Especially if you love the Psalms as I do, these readings speak to your heart and point the thoughts to The One Who has all the answers, comfort, and peace and is there waiting to give it to you. It's a comforting, thought provoking, and just plain great book.
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