Book Description
Ben Flesh is one of the men "who made America look like America, who made America famous." He collects franchises, traveling from state to state, acquiring the brand-name establishments that shape the American landscape. But both the nation and Ben are running out of energy. As blackouts roll through the West, Ben struggles with the onset of multiple sclerosis, and the growing realization that his lifetime quest to buy a name for himself has ultimately failed.
Customer Reviews:
Elkin at the height of his art.......2005-08-29
At one point in the Franchiser, the book's central character, Ben Flesh, says with a whimpering exhale: I want my remission back. Ben's flesh, literally, and Ben's small empire of franchises face imminent death in a 1970s America of rolling blackouts and gas shortages. Ben has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis; his franchising fund, controlled by his godcousins, has been diagnosed sub-performing and unfit.
The back-story of Ben's franchise building ability is laid out in a wonderful early chapter, but what draws us to Elkin, and why we'll read anything he wrote is the language-writing that is grabbed by the jugular and dragged like prey across the page. Like all his characters, those in The Franchiser speak in a colorful and idiosyncratic vernacular, and in Ben's case the dogmatisms of business school and manias of endless entrepreneurship. If you are a Midwesterner, especially one from Kansas City, you will smile at Flesh's analysis á la Roland Barthes of the Crown Center Mall. Read Elkin's Franchiser: laugh, cry, and marvel at it all.
This is the most accurate Bicentennial picture of America........1998-02-07
You won't come acoss a more side-splittingly funny portrait of America in 1976 than what Elkin gives us here. I don't know which is the more: the humor in America that is depressing or the depression that is humorous; in any event, the book is a must for anyone who likes his or her humor bitersweet, his or her prose lush, and his or her mind to be stimulated and entertained!
Amazon.com
A Cavern of Black Ice opens J.V. Jones's Sword of Shadows trilogy. (Her first novel was The Baker's Boy.) The story is set in a land divided among small warring clans of hunters and more sophisticated southern cities whose lords covet the clan territories.
Young clansman Raif has a touch of "old blood" magic that guides his arrows to the heart. Bad times come when a hunting party that includes his father and clan chief is wiped out by a supernaturally aided attack, and Raif's open suspicion of the brutal new leader eventually drives him into exile. Meanwhile, Iss, overlord of Spire Vanis city, keeps a chained-up sorcerer whose powers he channels by revolting means, and has unexplained but shuddersome plans for his "foster daughter" Ash--herself an unwilling focus of dread forces. Raif and Ash find themselves fleeing together through wintry, hostile clanlands, pursued by Iss's vilest henchmen, seeking the dubious goal of the Cavern of Black Ice.
What lifts this tale far above routine quest fantasy is Jones's deft characterization, relentless intensity, and unsparing depiction of pain and slow-healing injury. She has a flair for memorably horrid images. Here a sorcerer gloats over one of his nastier tricks: "A man could not fight when his corneas were snapped from his eyes like badges from a chest."
This hefty volume is over 800 pages long, but the narrative grips hard once it's gained momentum, and the pages turn increasingly fast. Strong meat. Next comes book two, A Fortress of Grey Ice. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
HIGH ADVENTURE ON THE SWORD EDGE OF DESTINYAs a newborn Ash March was abandoned--left for dead at the foot of a frozen mountain. Found and raised by the Penthero Iss, the mighty Surlord of Spire Vanis, she has always known she is different. Terrible dreams plague her and sometimes in the darkness she hears dread voices from another world. Iss watches her as she grows to womanhood, eager to discover what powers his ward might possess. As his interest quickens, he sends his living blade, Marafice Eye, to guard her night and day.Raif Sevrance, a young man of Clan Blackhail, also knows he is different, with uncanny abilities that distance him from the clan. But when he and his brother survive an ambush that plunges the entire Northern Territories into war, he yet seeks justice for his own . . . even if means he must forsake clan and kin.Ash and Raif must learn to master their powers and accept their joint fate if they are to defeat an ancient prophecy and prevent the release of the pure evil known as the End Lords.
Download Description
It is said in the Known Lands that when one prophecy dies in its fulfilling, somewhere another moves into place. When Jack, the baker's boy, successfully fulfills the prophecy that centered around his birth, a new prophecy arises to the north, where lie other lands, harsher places, populated by people just as intriguing and complex as those we met in the Book of Words trilogy. Two young residents of the northern territories--Raif Sevrance, member of the Clan Blackhail, and Ash March, a girl who is suddenly overtaken by powerful dreams--find themselves first drawn together, then swept up in a series of events that will bring their peoples into a vast war. Dark magic, great bravery, treachery, danger and heroism join in a three-book series that brings to a new level the writing talents of J. V. Jones.
Customer Reviews:
great characters, lackluster storyline.......2007-09-13
Jones creates a great fantasy world, but falls short in her storyline. What great characters she produces, she brings them down to the typical evil is coming, must fight it. As well, although the novel is a trilogy, there is little to no lead in into the next novel. Decent read,but not the best.
extremely slow and overly descriptive.......2007-04-24
I am amazed at the numerous positive reviews. I can only conclude a lot of people like excessive descriptions and a slow pace. Compared to other fantasy book the one has the pace of a halfstarved, half dead, handicaped turtle. Jones uses 300 pages before we find out what the plot is. During those boring 300 pages very litte happens. Someone in here wrote that Jones must have family members come on and rate her book. I would say that needs consideration.
Author of mixed brilliance.......2007-02-15
J.V. Jones's Cavern of Black Ice is an unusual book even in the field of fantasy. She's an adept world builder and her words easily bring to my mind the frosty winter hunting grounds of Clan Blackhail and the sprawling decaying expanses of Spire Vanis. The story Ms. Jones has started is very original and epic on the same scale as Wheel of Time or a Song of Ice and Fire. Her characters are well written, they have distincts personalities, and she writes each chapter from a dfferent point of veiw, incoporating that person's motivation and logic (much like George R.R. Martin).
My biggest problem with her writing is that she puts too much information and detail into her work. It's obvious she a broad knowledge of how things work and are arranged in her world. This book is very well researched and it shows, but her obsessive effort at storycraft made parts of this books almost unreadable. There were times when I wished I could have screamed, "GET TO THE ACTION," at her. I have a short attention which doesn't help any since this book is a read which requires your FULL ATTENTION. The violence is pretty graphic and may be troublesome to other readers.
Over all, this book is very stimulating even if it requires nothing less than your complete attention. Pros outweigh the cons here.
If I could give it 6 stars I would.......2005-11-25
I must totally disagree with a previous reviewer by saying that the "constant" references to how cold her world is was one of her greatest strengths. A break from the mideaval world with a touch of magic thrown in was in order! I have never experienced a world like hers and (shiver) it was truly a memorable experience. A cavern of Black Ice is absolutely brutal. Know that before you buy. There are images painted in her world that I will never forget. Its dark fantasy at its best and all driven by her artic world. George RR Martin has a cold world but it never really touched me and it didn't affect the characters or the world he created. JV's cold is....not conducive to life. The characters fight daily to survive the weather. The things they ate routinely...and the conditions they lived in were simply horrifying. I found myself shivering under my blankets and sweating at the same time. I was so wrapped up in this saga I thought I was cold too. I regret now how many books I have given 5's and wish I could downgrade them to fours to show the difference between them and this novel. As I said in my title it really deserves a six. It is truly original and unforgettable. If dark fantasy is your drug of choice as it is mine then purchase this novel, brew a cup of good java, gather your comfiest blanket and prepare to be very, very cold.
Black and cold search for evil.......2005-11-09
A romance and fantasy at the same time. We are transported into an imaginery world in which you have old primitive germanic-like clans, city kingdoms organized on a feudal tyranical pattern, a world beyond normal human conditions in which the human beings living there possess special powers that have to do with witchcraft as well as with the control and domination of supernatural forces living behind, beneath and inside all things and people, then a dark world of the damned and two beings who can bring the wall that contains them down. The whole novel is well written and perfectly constructed avoiding the moments when things would become too slow, too long, repetitive, hence using the ellipse as a plot-pattern. That makes it a page-turner, even a chapter-turner. And this first volume comes to the end of all the situations presented and to the conclusion of the fate of practically all the people met along the way, except of course the main hero Raif, the main heroin Asarhia (she has the power to free the damned onto the world), the members of Raif's family, the main leaders of the clans, the leaders of the main cities, the Sull (this supernatural human species), and the newly born Baralis who liberates the dark forces that Asarhia had tried to destroy. What happens then will be in the next volume. One remark though. The author speaks too much of different « races » of human beings. They cannot be races, only particular subspecies of the general human species. This is a little bit irritating, and politically incorrect, when the word race is hammered into our minds too often. A last note : if you don't like the cold, don't enter that world. It is a world of ice, snow and extreme antarctic winter.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Parus Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
Customer Reviews:
Super Reader.......2007-08-04
Cugel has made a mistake. He has been caught, and by a wizard that could pretty easily blast him into being an ex-Cugel.
Instead, the wizard sends him on a quest. Said wizard will let
Cugel live if Cugel can bring him back one of the Eyes of the
Overworld. A lot easier said than done, of course.
Dying Earth : 2 Eyes of the Overworld - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 1 The Overworld - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 2 Cil - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 3 The Mountains of Magnatz - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 4 The Sorcerer Pharesm - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 5 The Pilgrims - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 6 The Cave in the Forest - Jack Vance
Eyes of the Overworld : 7 The Manse of Iucounu - Jack Vance
Cugel busted and drafted.
3.5 out of 5
Poison, no magic and monsters.
3 out of 5
Cugel finds female companions vexing.
3 out of 5
Stone patterns and philosophy.
3 out of 5
Bemusing bunch with a spot of swordplay and harpooning.
3 out of 5
Collared into spelunking.
3.5 out of 5
Mastering magicians can make poetic justice boomerang.
4 out of 5
An old soldier's barracks review.......2006-01-30
I first read this engrossing story when I was 18 and living in the barracks in Germany in 1975. After I read it, almost everyone who could read in my Tank Batallion(killer tank, not water tank) read it and I never saw my copy again. It brings back so many memories to read again of Cugel the Clever and dream of the cusps. Tho' now I am 50 years of age.
Cugel the Clever.......2002-07-20
Set in the time of Vance's Dying Earth series, when our sun is on the verge of going dark forever, we are introduced to one of Vance's more remarkable creations: Cugel - a/k/a, Cugel the Clever (as he refers to himself).
In the annals of fiction, Cugel is without doubt in a class by himself. He is anti-hero rather than hero - egotistical beyond belief, selfish beyond all doubt, vain as a peacock, and with an inflated sense of self-worth that would put a greek god to shame.
Caught in an attempt to steal from a powerful wizard, Cugel is exiled rather than slain, sent by that very magician on an impossible quest halfway around the world. In a world populated by monsters, madmen, magicians and mayhem, Cugel's odds for success are almost non-existent. Added to his burden is the fact that the magician, in an attempt to spur Cugel to success, has attached a demonic creature to Cugel's spleen; if Cugel delays overlong in accomplishing his mission, the creature will kill him. But Cugel, who aptly styles himself "Cugel the Clever" is nothing if not resourceful; with pluck, bravado and Narcissian vanity, he sets about accomplishing his mission via outrageous schemes and outlandish scams.
In short, the book is an absolute delight; laced with action, humor, and magic, it is an easy read that you won't easily forget and won't want to end.
A great, if unconventional read.......2000-04-27
Jack Vance's Dying Earth Series, of which 'The Eyes of The Overworld' is an integral part, takes place far in the future when the sun is a bloated red orb that may wink out at any moment. Denizens of this time are a technoglogically backward and disaffected lot. The setting of this story is when human history is at its end. Everything possible has been tried and tried again. Indeed, every molecule of air has been breathed before by countless individuals.
Anti-hero of this decaying world is Cugel, raconteur and self-serving everyman. Through the caprice of a magician Cugel is sent to a far-flung corner of the Dying Earth to retrieve items that the magician covets. His return, if it is to be effected, will be by any means that he can manage.
Vance's descriptions of his world are vivid. The plot is picaresque and linear and Cugel's motivation(s) to get home adds momentum to the tale. Vance's underlying philosopy may seem mordant to those raised on the Hollywood ethos, but the reader eventually realizes that no one cares for Cugel but Cugel. The Dying Earth stories take up an oft-neglected theme in literature; that of the individual against everything. Antagonists abound and surcease of life's travails seems almost impossibly far off.
However, what really distinguishes Vance's work is his use of dialogue. Best described as mannerist, characters speak in an archaic, overly-detailed mode that is at the same time descriptive, emotionally evocative., and humorous. While a pleasure to read, it is doubtful that this dialogue could ever be convincingly spoken. Accordingly, one should not expect audiobook formats of Vance's work anytime soon.
'Eyes of the Overworld' is followed by the excellent 'Cugel's Saga' wherin the same plot is reworked in an entirely different way. The other main component of the Dying Earth stories is a collection of short stories with the same name as the title of the series. The series is not for everyone, especially those who favor Harlequin-type plots and characters.
Leave the mundane behind for a few hours with Cugel !.......1999-12-04
I first read "The Eye of the Overworld" in 1965 in the serialisation in MF&SF when the name Jack Vance meant little to me. A generation later my original soft-cover copy has fallen apart with over-use...fortunately a later copy still serves me well when I want to forget about mortgages and school fees ! I can dip into the book at almost any part....Azenomei Fair, the river, the Silver Desert, Iucounu's manse....to be transported for a while to the strange world of the dying earth. Cugel must be the most engaging scoundrel in fantastic literature, combining low cunning, self-interest,and innocent amorality with the survival instincts of a sewer rat.The great humour of this book is brought out by Jack Vance's mastery of English and love of resounding phrases, when even an inn-keeper speaks like a character from Jane Austen.I mean, would you like someone to answer,"Such was the specific appelation" or "Yes"? The combination of bizzarre characters, creatures, and situations makes "The Eyes of the Overworld" my favorite Vance book,a book to read again and again as the wonders therein are unending.
Average customer rating:
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The Eyes of the Overworld
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000HTUC66 |
Average customer rating:
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The Eyes of the Overworld
Manufacturer: Mayflower Books/London
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000E3A8UU |
Product Description
Science Fantasy
Product Description
Limited to only 1, 500 copies issued. Gregg Press is the First hardcover edition. ACE printed the first paperback edition. They came out upon the roof of the antique castle. Darkness had long since fallen over the land. Up and down the valley of Xzan faint lights glimmered, while the Xzan itself was an irregular width darker than dark.
Book Description
Today we find him in a high-level physics report, illustrating phenomena that can't be described in ordinary technical terms. He appears in psychology textbooks, illuminating the workings of the mind in a way no straightforward explanation can.
In three definitive volumes (The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, and The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin) Idries Shah takes us to the very heart of this mysterious mentor, the Mulla Nasrudin. Skillful contemporary retellings of hundreds of collected stories and sayings bring the unmistakable - often backhanded - wisdom, wit and charm of the timeless jokester to life.
The Mulla and his stories appear in literature and oral traditions from the Middle East to Greece, Russia, France - even China. Many nations claim Nasrudin as a native son, but nobody really knows who he was or where he came from.
According to a legend dating from at least the 13th century, Nasrudin was snatched as a schoolboy from the clutches of the "Old Villain" - the crude system of thought that ensnares man - to carry through the ages the message of how to escape. He was chosen because he could make people laugh, and humor has a way of slipping through the cracks of the most rigid thinking habits.
Acclaimed as humorous masterpieces, as collections of the finest jokes, as priceless gift books, and for hundreds "enchanted tales", this folklore figure's antics have also been divined as "mirroring the antics of the mind". The jokes are, as Idries Shah notes, "perfectly designed models for isolating and holding distortions of the mind which so often pass for reasonable behavior". Therefore they have a double use: when the jokes have been enjoyed, their psychological significance starts to sink in.
In fact, for many centuries they have been studied in Sufi circles for their hidden wisdom. They are used as teaching exercises, in part to momentarily "freeze" situations in which states of mind can be recognized. The key to the philosophic significance of the Nasrudin jokes is given in Idries Shah's book "The Sufis" and a complete system of mystical training based upon them was described in the Hibbert Journal.
In these delightful volumes, Shah not only gives the Mulla a proper vehicle for our times, he proves that the centuries-old stories and quips of Nasrudin are still some of the funniest jokes in the world.
Customer Reviews:
YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY PUT THIS BOOK DOWN.......2007-06-04
In the introduction to the book, the curse placed upon Nasrudin as a child by his teacher is related. Caught talking in class, holding all of his classmates enthralled with his stories, Nasrudin and his listeners received the eternal curse that no one from then on could hear one of his stories without hearing seven.
I could not put down this book. As usual I tried to browse,and tried to go back and forth among my usual half dozen books, but I could not put this book down. The ancient curse still holds. I had to read it all and all over again, taking notes and paraphrasing. Elsewhere a reviewer complains about the translation. So, hey, what's the big deal? REWRITE IT ALREADY!
Some of these stories were stolen directly by Henny Youngman and Milton Berle for their famous one liners (I am NOT making this up!). You can even uncover the source of Mark Twain's famous quip about the reports of his death being greatly exagerrated. Or do we all share the same source, with jokes about wives, donkeys, thieves and other work? Many of these brief stories remind me of the apophthegmes of the early Catholic Desert monks in Egypt and the absurdities related about them with great seriousness. Unfortunately in English we most often find them through BEnedicta Ward and The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian studies 59). I prefer Solesmes's Dom Lucien Regnault's five volume collection, no longer in print. Other reviewers find an element of the Zen Koans here. Whatever they are, you cannot put this book down.
At first I found the elaborate cartoony pen and ink line illustrations by Richard Williams and Errol Le Cain offensive and even dare I say sacreligious (actually I do not dare to spell it!). But then I checked the copyright page and discovered they come from the original 1968 edition, and they became comprehensible within their historical context. We forty years later will never see the likes of this again. These were done by sheer human talent, without the aid of computers, with only a page and a stain. Amazing, and frequently incorporating the intricate scrolls of a Persian rug or mosque filligrees.
For this body of universal tales comes from the Sufi mystic branch of Islam. Nevertheless it could be often Il poverello Saint Francis of Assissi here riding a donkey in rags and disturbing everyone's accustomed and unjust modes of thinking. In this way it does serve as a Zen koan, to break us out of superficial and unhealthy thought patterns, to liberate us to the ground of all truth. And it is very funny stuff, which you cannot put down, and some of which you have heard on stage in old vaudeville and talk shows.
Look beyond your preconceptions. For your own enjoyment, and enlightenment, find this book today. With Nasrudin we would have no more ideological nor cultural nor genocidal nor religious wars for resources. We would all together be too darn busy listening and laughing to his great stories. It's a curse his teacher placed upon us all, long long ago!
For example:
Nasrudin was at a loose end. His wife told him to go for a walk. He started up the road, and continued walking for two days. Finally he met a man walking in the opposite direction. "When you arrive at my house," he said to him, "go in and ask my wife if I have gone far enough, or if she says I must walk further."
Rather reads like the Tao of Pooh, as well, no?
Also here is the origin of the Seven with one blow story.
The opposite of Hassan I. Sabbah.......2006-11-22
An impoverished madman who often rode his donkey backwards, yet brutal kings dared not take offense when he spoke against them. And though all these stories can't be directly true, he was real.
This is in contrast to the master of the Hasshishans "assasins" who in his day commanded kings by fear. Yet in another age he will be forgotten, but likely Nasruding will have endured. "The works of the mighty and powerful are cast down and forgotten, but the works of a beggar shall be enshrined forevermore".
Anyone reading about this man might check out "The Thief and the Cobbler" on YouTube and look it up on Wikipedia. Originally, he was going to be the star of the movie, made about him and he has a cameo in the first part. The "Mullah Nasrudin" script is awesome.
The Moslem answer to Yogi Berra?.......2004-10-03
This is a collection of Sufi (Islamic mystics) teaching stories. Shah is famous for his many collections of them. I've read 10 of his books. They are invariably entertaining. The Sufi masters are referred to as idiots--they can appear as such to the uninitiated. Reminds one of some of the Hasidic and Elijah stories, Yogi Berra's quips, Tibetan Buddhists masters of Crazy Wisdom, and the Peter Sellers movie "Being There." It's sometimes hard to tell if the protagonist knows what he's doing or not. Some of the stories are easily understood by the reader; some are more like Zen koans. I found this book among the best of the ones I've read of his. You might also try his "Wisdom of the Idiots" or "The Dermis Probe." The latter is Shah's term for the dilemma of the 3 blind men differing over their descriptions of an elephant.
Sufisnm and more.......2002-12-12
What an incredible book! If you really want to understand what it means to be caught between the esoteric and exoteric traditions, I suggest you read this....
Those Darwin awards stories aren't anything new..........2002-07-17
The trend during the last few years towards stories about stupid people brought us such non-classics (but entertaining reads) as "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said", "The Darwin Awards", and others. But what few people know is that such stories were circulating 1000 years ago in the Sufi storytelling tradition.
These stories are the equivalent of our "Urban Legends". Oddly enough, as I read this, I wish that I could view the world in such simple ways as the Mulla Nasrudin, who is the character in all these stories. His views, often twisted, very often completely at odds with his surroundings, are also very pragmatic, and make perfect sense in his mind.
These stories are tremendous fun, and rather thought-provoking.
Enjoy!
Books:
- The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)
- The Incomparable Atuk (New Canadian Library)
- The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These
- The Stolen Child: A Novel
- The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)
- The Trickster of Liberty: Native Heirs to a Wild Baronage
- The View From Pompey's Head
- The Warrior's Apprentice (Vorkosigan)
- To Swim Across the World
- Toward the End of Time
Books Index
Books Home
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