Untameable (Zebra Regency Romance)

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tr Jeremy Parzen, intro Luigi Ballerini

Sonoma Coast: North of San Francisco : the untameable coast

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Sonoma Coast: North of San Francisco : the untameable coast
Robert W Matson
Manufacturer: Robert W. Matson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0916310051

La Aventura Formidable Del Hombrecillo Indomable/ the Formal Adventures of the Untameable Little Man

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La Aventura Formidable Del Hombrecillo Indomable/ the Formal Adventures of the Untameable Little Man
Hans Traxler
Manufacturer: Grupo Anaya Comercial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Infantil y juvenil | Libros en español | Formats | Books

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Sonoma Coast: North of San Francisco; the untameable coast
Robert W Matson
Manufacturer: Sea Wolf Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006D5GL4

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Promising new author

Pleasant but forgetable

Good World, Fun Read

Enjoy the Singer's Crown

Very Satisfying Read after slightly rough start
The Singer's Crown
Elaine Isaak
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Epic | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0060782536
Release Date: 2005-10-11

Book Description

A riveting fantasy debut about an unlikely deposed prince who must reclaim his kingdom, in the epic tradition of bestselling authors Mercedes Lackey and Elizabeth Haydon.

With the help of a disgraced prince, a female wizard, a powerful magic–breaker, a fiancé he doesn't want, and the man in love with her, Kattanan finds an unorthodox way to reclaim his kingdom and win the heart of his love. Well–realized characters, lush storytelling, and riveting intrigue make The Singer's Crown a remarkable debut from an author with a strong new voice.

Wonderful epic fantasy: This is very commercial, very well–written court intrigue fantasy by a great new voice which takes beloved fantasy elements – a deposed prince, court intrigue, sinister magic, and a dashing adventure – and gives them its own new spin. These same elements have made Robin Hobb, Mercedes Lackey, and Sara Douglas extremely successful, popular authors.

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When his uncle murders his family to take over the kingdom, Prince Kattanan duRhys is the only one of royal blood left alive...at a terrible cost. Mutilated, he can neither longer claim his throne, nor sire heirs to reign against the tyrannous new ruler. Trained as a harmless singer, Kattanan falls into an impossible, secret love with the Princess Melisande. But her jealous fiance has his own nefarious plans, including a dark conspiracy with Kattanan's traitor...and a sinister magic that could destroy the kingdom. Banished, betrayed, rescued and revealed, Kattanan becomes the focal point of his grandmother's obsessive plot to depose his uncle. But can he gain the throne? And at what price?

With the help of a disgraced prince, a female wizard, a powerful magic-breaker, a fiancé he doesn't want, and the man in love with her, Kattanan finds an unorthodox way to reclaim his kingdom and win the heart of his love. Well-realized characters, lush storytelling, and riveting intrigue make THE SINGER'S CROWN a remarkable debut from an author with a strong new voice. "

Customer Reviews:

Promising new author.......2007-07-13

"The Singer's Crown" is, like so many fantasy novels out there, full of the same old storyline. Still, it's got enough twists and turns to keep you interested.

The story follows Kattanan duRhys, the youngest prince of Lochalyn. When his uncle takes over the kingdom, Rhys (later known in the book as Kattanan or Kat) witnesses the murder of his mother and faces mutilation at the hands of his uncle's men. Now a eunuch, Kat gains a reputation as an amazing singer, but is forever barred from his kingdom. When circumstances throw him together with the nobility of the former court, he faces gaining a crown and kingdom he's not sure he wants.

After a slow beginning, Elaine Isaak throws in enough action to keep you interested. I found myself eagerly turning the pages, especially once certain characters reappeared. But while Isaak gets credit for a solid storyline, some things are a little weak.

For one thing, while everyone's horrified that Kat can't father children, they never really explain how this could truly prevent him from ruling (unless you count the fact that he'd never produce an heir). I would assume that he'd be able to appoint a successor, even if it was out of the family bloodline. But for some reason, the whole eunuch thing is so terribly important that a big elaborate plot is concocted to cover it up. Since the author never stresses purity of bloodline or anything, it just seems a little much.

Kat and Melisande (the princess of the neighboring kingdom) both grow through the adversity they face, but since Melisande is so annoying throughout most of the book, you have to wonder what Kat sees in her. Plus, in his initial interactions with her, they don't really share much of their lives with each other - all Kat does is sing for Melisande. So I thought their romantic relationship was a little forced.

In fact, the characters I cared about the most were Wolfram (he had a great substory going there) and Jordan and his love interests. (Another weak point in the story - the author pulls a total fast one on you and you never see the setup, so you're wondering why Jordan chooses the way he does.) It's not good when your minor characters outshine your leads.

Overall, a good read for the beach or to pass the time. It's not necessarily a keeper, but I am looking forward to the sequel.

Pleasant but forgetable.......2007-05-14

"The Singer's Crown" centers on a young, eunic slave with a marvelous singing talent. His latest owner is a selfish young princess, whose family is threatened by a magical curse. The singer's past catches up with him, as you'll no doubt read on the back cover.

The pace is liesurely, with descriptive prose. There is plenty of action and events, but still, the pace seems measured and with more detail than I prefer. Little magic in this book, mostly personalities and political maneuvering. The singer's attitude is formed by his status (slave) in a consistent way that I found charming; that is his place in life, and he accepts it. Overall, a pleasant read.

Good World, Fun Read.......2007-02-25

I really enjoyed the world-building, and I thought this was a nicely done transformation of a weak-willed and passive character to someone who becomes a hero. I'll certainly be picking up the next book - I'm intrigued by the idea at the heart of it, the more so because I hope we get some hint of Kattan's fate, post-Singer's Crown.

Enjoy the Singer's Crown.......2007-01-13

My reading tastes run to murder mysteries, spy novels, intrigue and suspense. I was delighted to find all these combined in this wonderful fast paced fantasy novel. I found it difficult to put down. Even if fantasy isn't your genre, you should give this book a read. The characters and plot line are well developed and complex.

Very Satisfying Read after slightly rough start.......2006-06-30

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters were complex and interesting, although at times a little bewildering. The world-building was good--there was a strong sense of a developed and unique culture and magic system.

The prologue is intense and moving--beginning with a mother, a queen, trying to save her last child from the usurper of the throne... and failing. The first part of the tale seems like a second prologue where we see the child grown a bit, but still very much a child, lose yet another bit of stability in his life. It's an important scene in his development, yet it really isn't part of the main story, which truly begins when he meets the princess, Melisande.

Both Kattanan/Rhys and Melisande seem very young and immature, even then. It's a little frustrating waiting for them to grow into themselves, but it's worth it. As the characters experience all the tumultuous events (evil and not so evil wizards, plots and machinations, betrayals and loyalty, death and destruction, friendship and love, forgiveness and revenge), I grew to like them more and more--even the "bad guys."

I will definitely look forward to the next book.

Collected stories: A friend of Kafka to Passions; A friend of Kafka & other stories; A crown of feathers & other stories; Passions & other stories.

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Collected stories: A friend of Kafka to Passions; A friend of Kafka & other stories; A crown of feathers & other stories; Passions & other stories.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: [New York], The Library of America, [
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OUVKF0

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magical stories from a lost era
great short stories
each story as if captured within a crystal
Timeless Passions, Ancient Powers, New Forces

A Crown of Feathers
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

magical stories from a lost era.......2007-03-03

Polish Jewry under Russian rule, the Jews in post-1918 Poland, the exiled survivors of the Holocaust in New York---all these are times and people of the past. Nothing of them really survives. Yiddish is but a pale shadow of its former self. So even the words are like pink clouds of last week's sunset. How they struggled ! How they loved, fought, schemed and sacrificed--the writers, the revolutionaries, the holy men, the pretenders, the warped geniuses, the dispossessed. Unless we have a writer of the stature of Isaac Bashevis Singer, all this is gone forever. We are left with dusty tomes, the photos of Roman Vishniac, and some Holocaust museums with their tragic rooms telling of mass murder. But if I want to know what the world of my ancestors--your neighbors' ancestors--was like, you have to read Singer; this book or any other. Devils and nasty spirits haunt the pages, along with believers in occult rituals and spirit mediums. A woman under a curse loses everything and finally disappears herself. The ferment that shook Jewish life in Poland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lives here---new ideas of democracy, Communism, equality of the sexes, secular life shook traditional Judaism, still sunk in prayers, study of the Talmud, and the eternal wait for the Messiah. Sons full of new energy return to the village from America, full of plans, only to find that somnolence rules supreme. Tradition is happy. [But doomed.] In America, the surviving writers and would-be writers hang out in cafes and delicatessens, talking away their days over tea and rice pudding. It's a far cry from Hemingway ! Some lecture, write, publish--others only argue and go home to cramped apartments in decaying Manhattan buildings. Lovers lose their chances, have their older mistresses die in their beds, they fade, come to life, and fade again. There is no explaining why people do things---everything is contradictory when it comes to behavior. The ironies of Fate rule supreme. We read of endless permutations of the human condition. In A CROWN OF FEATHERS we not only find Jewish life and tradition, but we find all humanity represented, just as in the work of the world's finest writers. That is appropriate, because Singer was one of the world's finest writers. If you haven't read him, you can start with this book. None of the stories are bad, but some are breathtakingly, amazingly good.

great short stories.......2003-12-15

an excellent collection of short stories by mr. singer

each story as if captured within a crystal.......2001-05-16

Singer is a genius at creating tiny worlds, self-ecapsulated and yet part of a wider whole, as if subject to immutable laws of nature. You could argue that all of his characters are subtly different or that all of them are the same, so perfect is each world. There is also a unique mixture of realism and mysticism, the unseen world that operates behind appearences and yet is never fully explained. Simply brilliant.

Highly recommended.

Timeless Passions, Ancient Powers, New Forces.......2001-01-23

The late Isaac Bashevis Singer was a storyteller of genius, and "A Crown Of Feathers", is one of his finest collections of short stories, and because of its variety, serves as a superb intoduction to this master storyteller. This was my first Singer book. I picked it up at a garage sale some time back after reading a brief synopsis of the book and a quote stating that Isaac Bashevis Singer is the "greatest writer alive today" (this edition of the book is quite old, as Singer died in 1991).

The stories had two qualities which I found highly enjoyable. Firstly, Singer's combination of modern realism with Jewish folklore and fantasy is what first got me hooked, as I myself am Jewish and have a great interest in our religion, folklore and mythology. Secondly, the simple, direct style in which the stories were written. It was as if Singer himself was sitting in front of me telling a story. The book certainly did not disapoint and I finished it in a matter of days. It was such an enthralling read, that I raided most the second-hand book shops in the neighbourhood for Singer books. Now I have quite a large Singer collection of both novels and short stories - all of them works of art in their own right. This collection of twenty-four stories is varied - ghost stories, fables set in little Polish-Jewish villages and stories set in pre-World War II Warsaw and post-World War II New York. Although most of the stories have a distinctly Jewish flavour, many of the themes, including love, lust, politics, greed and family life are universal. Some of the tales end in twists, which can often leave you surprised or spooked, not that this is a bad thing, of course.

My favourite stories are as follows: "A Crown Of Feathers" is a phantasmagoric tale of a young woman losing and then trying to regain her faith. It's full of witchcraft, sorcery and violent imagery and it might disturb the average reader on first reading, but it is a very moving and rewarding read. "Property" is an interesting look into the political theory of anarchism. "A Quotation From Klopstock" is a love story with a twist. "The Magazine" is all about holding on to dreams and aspirations and following them. These are just a few of the great stories included in this book. It is a shame that "A Crown Of Feathers and Other Stories" is now probably out of print, but have a look around for it, it will be well worth the search. I highly recommend this book.

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Crown of Feathers
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OJRGJA

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A Crown of Feathers
Isaac Bashevis SINGER
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IK1X4Y

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A Crown of Feathers
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: Fawcett Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000KWHEAM

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A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OP4T5S

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Secret Agent Jack Stalwart: The Caper of the Crown Jewels (Secret Agent Jack Stalwart)
Elizabeth Singer Hunt
Manufacturer: Weinstein Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Action & Adventure | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1602860130

Book Description

In this action-packed series, nine-year old secret agent Jack Stalwarttravels the globe in search of his missing older brother Max while solvinginternational crimes for the Global Protection Force.In The Caper of theCrown Jewels, Jack is summoned to solve a matter of grave nationalimportance: the theft of the Crown Jewels of the British Empire from theTower of London.Arriving on the scene, he is greeted by a traditionalTower guards, a Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater, who explains what's missing:The Imperial State Crown, the Sovereign's Orb, and the Sovereign's Scepterwith the cross containing the finest-cut diamond in the world, the diamondof the Culliinan I, the Star of Africa.The queen is not pleased.Jackidentifies Ivan the Incredible and his assistant Jazz as the thievesimmediately--but puzzling out how they did it is stickier.The infamousTower has the most advanced security in the world, and even using hisimpressive gadgets (the Encryption notebook, his Heli-Spacer, Rock Corer,and Rope Tornado) Jack is flummoxed by how jewels were spirited out.ButJack can conjure up more than gadgets--he foils the evil magicians withsome powerful mojo of his own, dispels an invisibility enchantment,narrowly avoids the executioners block and some other murderous ploysbefore restoring the jewels to the crown and earning the gratitude of theQueen herself!

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The Singer's Crown
Elaine Isaak
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OESHUC

Stockholm University Singers` American Tour 1925. Under the patronage of H. R. H. Crown-Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden.

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Stockholm University Singers` American Tour 1925. Under the patronage of H. R. H. Crown-Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden.
Stockholm University Singers.
Manufacturer: Stockholm:
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IV1EZ6

Book Description

At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations had come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation had proved victorious; and now they retum to Hari Seldon's long-established plan to build a new Empire that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all-and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now the two exiled citizens of the Foundation-a renegade Councilman and the doddering historian-set out in search of the mythical planet Earth. . .and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile someone-or something-outside of both Foundations sees to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!

Customer Reviews:

The Foundation is Alive!.......2007-08-17

The late Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi writers. He pertains to the old "hard sci-fi" school that populated the `50s and a successful member of that community by the way.

This story is the first step in the second "Foundation Trilogy". Pressed by editors and fan's claim, after almost twenty-five years Asimov reassumes his famous "Foundation Saga".
He maintains his traditional storytelling structure, approaching each character in separate chapters and following their paths until final convergence.
However this new trilogy is more dynamic than the original one and ties all Asimovians universes into a coherent one (Spacers, Empire, Foundation, Robots and Eternals).

The story is as follows: after the last great Foundation's crisis involving the Mule's disruption, occurred around 120 years before the present tale, events are realigned into Seldon's Path.
The "perfection" of this realignment disquiets young Councilman Trevize at Terminus, First Foundation's capital and young Speaker Gendibal at Trantor, Second Foundation secret capital. Both of them start a (forced) search that will lead them to uncover a new main mysterious player: Gaia.

This book is a landmark in Asimov's sci-fi career.
Enjoy his second disembarkment on Foundation shores!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Disappointing.......2007-05-31

I guess that I should make it clear from the outset that I do not consider Isaac Asimov to be a very competent novelist. He was a fantastic short story writer, but mediocre at best when it came to writing full-length novels.

For one thing, Asimov's writing lacked style and he openly admitted such. His cold, distilled sentences are more reminiscent of encyclopedia entries than the rich narrative prose found in most modern novels. In addition, Asimov seems to have constructed his stories like an engineer, mechanically piecing the story together from blueprints, rather than as an artist that builds the story up in layers. As such, his characters often became little more than irrational slaves to the plot rather than the driving force behind it. Lastly, many of Asimov's later novels, such as this one, suffer greatly from the author's rather hamfisted attempt to force all of his Sci-Fi stories to fit into a single continuity.

As a short story writer, Asimov's condensed prose really served him well, but in the form of a full blown novel it gives his work an unpolished quality. Like many of his stories, Foundation's Edge really could have been improved by undergoing a few more rewrites before publication. As it stands, the story makes sense, but it is quite choppy, inconsistent, and underwhelming. The cast of characters are merely cardboard cutouts who seem to do the most ridiculous things based purely on "intuition".

IMHO, the Foundation series began its slow decline when supernatural elements such as the "Mule" and the "Second Foundation" were introduced. Happily, Foundation's Edge makes some effort to explain some of the major inconsistencies and plot holes which those elements produced. The first half of the novel actually has an interesting storyline that adds a sense of depth and realism to the Foundation universe. Unfortunately, halfway through the book, I got the impression that Asimov had suddenly had a brainstorm and decided to take the story in an entirely new direction. That choice was ill conceived. The moment that Asimov moves away from the Earth plotline and begins to explore the ridiculous "Gaia" concept, the novel begins to unravel.

To be frank, the ending of the story is absolutely terrible. It is illogical, underdeveloped, inconsistent with the Foundation Trilogy, and laughably contrived. The Gaia plotline is just plain ludicrous. It seemed to have come out of nowhere and I honestly have no idea what purpose it was supposed to serve or what point Asimov was trying to make through it. In his waning years, Asimov seems to have fallen in love with his robots to such a degree that he decided that humanity should strive to become more like them; benevolent automatons without free-will, controlled by a hive mind. Sorry, but that is not my idea of a bright future.

In conclusion, Isaac Asimov should have quit while he was ahead. Almost all of his early fiction was brilliant, but like many aging authors he eventually allowed his work to be overshadowed by his personal beliefs at the expense of the story he was trying to tell and his loyal fans.

One of the best sci-fi book series available.......2007-04-11

Asimov's Foundation books are well-crafted, masterfully imagined, and peopled with fascinating characters. Spanning some several thousand years, and multiple generations of characters (often more than one per book), the author does a fantastic job keeping each set unique and captivating. The stories follow the progression of Psychohistory, a technique for predicting the future behavior of masses of people, and the people set up to use its information to further the birth of a greater galactic empire. Space battles, intrigue, mutants, telepathy and mind control, as well as personal triumphs and failures run throughout all the novels. They are, in my opinion, among the best crafted series in the sci-fi genre ever produced. Read them all, and try to read them in chronological order.

Great! Asimov is hard to beat!.......2007-01-02

Iassc Asimov remains one of the greats of Science Fiction. The original Foundation trilogy still ranks as the best of the best, and this book is an expansion of the original story into a grand saga. The entire 7 book Foundation series is still my all-time favorite SciFi!

Fantastic!.......2006-01-26

Listen, no one likes really long or ending spoiling reviews, so here it goes, short and sweet.

This book is my fav. of the series, and I suggest you read.

The end.

The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics

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We are all synchronous dead+alive Schrodingers
Just an illusion?
Science Fiction Not Science
Boring Indeed
Not Very Good

The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics
Julian Barbour
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Quantum Theory | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Relativity | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Time | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0195145925

Book Description

Richard Feynman once quipped that "Time is what happens when nothing else does." But Julian Barbour disagrees: if nothing happened, if nothing changed, then time would stop. For time is nothing but change. It is change that we perceive occurring all around us, not time. Put simply, time does not exist. In this highly provocative volume, Barbour presents the basic evidence for a timeless universe, and shows why we still experience the world as intensely temporal. It is a book that strikes at the heart of modern physics. It casts doubt on Einstein's greatest contribution, the spacetime continuum, but also points to the solution of one of the great paradoxes of modern science, the chasm between classical and quantum physics. Indeed, Barbour argues that the holy grail of physicists--the unification of Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics--may well spell the end of time. Barbour writes with remarkable clarity as he ranges from the ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, through the giants of science Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, to the work of the contemporary physicists John Wheeler, Roger Penrose, and Steven Hawking. Along the way he treats us to enticing glimpses of some of the mysteries of the universe, and presents intriguing ideas about multiple worlds, time travel, immortality, and, above all, the illusion of motion. The End of Time is a vibrantly written and revolutionary book. It turns our understanding of reality inside-out.

Customer Reviews:

We are all synchronous dead+alive Schrodingers.......2007-04-10

This book, which is flawed & a bit messy, is a fascinating mind-game about what happens if we nix Time or rather Time directionality. We get time-stop-photography wave-function "manifolds", eigenstates, machine-thought, reductio ad absurdum. Humans see at 70 frames/second, so, no chance of us handling light-speed + quantum, unless we get implants.
I like Barbour's Platonia analogy of "quantum stasis" (P.305). Also his Zen-like Gaussian "becoming-ness". Time is a self-referential human artifice (Leibnitz). To explain Barbour's dogmatic idea of illusion, he posits that the stasis-Platonia is 'fixed' like the 3D turntable of Manhattan in Lauryn Hill's 'Everything is everything". Except the turntable is quantum-flux static. There can be no real Alpha point or Omega point, so one assumes the Big Bang was an illusion. Quantum particles do not obey distance or time & are 5th dimensional. In reality, all 'snapshots' are synchronous. Hence, we and all things that ever were, are alive and dead at the same time in the ETERNAL NOW. Just with "Platonian" separations.
Heisenberg's dE * dt > h means time is subordinated to energy flow. How we "see" a movie (film strip) is because of the film strip's movement (energy) creating a forward sequence. Time-v-energy is determined by E = mc2 so that the 'now' of different objects is different. One needs a grasp of Mach's principles here.
If absolute time is DEAD, it means revising all previous metaphysics.
Also "time travel" becomes a whole different prospect, & curious questions then arise. I don't think Barbour has anything like the total picture, but he's dipping into a Pandora's Box of quantum weirdness. An open mind is categorically required for this stuff.

Just an illusion?.......2006-10-25

Barbour's thesis is that time is an illusion, and doesn't really exist. According to Barbour, the universe is a timeless thing existing in configuration space; it doesn't "move through time," but rather exists as an infinitely dimensioned manifold (my word, not his, and I may not have accurately captured his meaning) in configuration space, where each point on the manifold represents the universe in a unique configuration.

Many of the key concepts in this timeless universe were developed by earlier scientists, particularly Mach. Indeed, one of the benefits of reading this book is the many historical highlights and anecdotes provided by the author. Even if you don't subscribe to his timeless universe hypothesis, the books background material in Newtonian dynamics, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics makes it worth reading.

The first part of the book lays out general concepts, including the notion of configuration space. I particularly liked Barbour's method of using three points (a "universe" with just three points) as a metaphor for the timeless universe he imagines. In this simplified three-point universe one can define a history as just a path through configuration space - thus eliminating the need for a time variable (at least as far as describing a history is concerned, anyway).

One of the traps in both reading and writing this book is that the concept of time is so permanently ingrained into our minds that it seems impossible to discuss the issue without recourse to phraseology pregnant with the very thing (time) that Barbour says doesn't exist. His wording is literally dripping with time-impregnated words as he describes a timeless world. He understands, even apologizes for the problem - but it persists and was a source of distraction and confusion for me throughout the book.

I think the author does a better job of showing how to eliminate time (or at least think in terms of a timeless universe) within the context of Newtonian dynamics, than in a relativistic and quantum universe. The explanations from an Newtonian point of view are pretty straight forward, but as he progresses through special and general relativity, and on to quantum dynamics, the picture - and figures - become more sparse and (it seems) more dependent on speculation.

At an intuitive and philosophical level I find myself largely in agreement with Barbour. There's something weird about time. It doesn't quite fit. I've often caught myself toying with the notion that it's an illusion. On the other hand, we can measure it, and all our measurements seem to be consistent. It's hard to see how we can measure a second so precisely if it's just an illusion.

On another level I'm almost inclined to think the whole thing is based on semantics. After all, if someone told me that pain is an illusion - that it's really just electrical impulses transmitted to my brain - I'd reply that that's an explanation of what pain is, not an argument that it doesn't exist. Similarly, the universe may exist in timeless configuration space, but my consciousness certainly doesn't. Maybe what we mistook for the universe (and us) moving through time is really just us - our consciousness - moving through configuration space. We mistake our travel through configuration space as movement through time the same way someone floating down a river might mistakenly think the trees are moving past them, and they are just standing still. In fact, I wonder if that might be a characteristic of consciousness - something that moves through configuration space - and perhaps the "laws" of the universe look the way they do because our consciousness is constrained, by virtue of its existence, to travel through configuration space along histories (paths in configuration space) that have certain characteristics (increasing entropy, for example).

That's just speculation, of course, but that's what a lot of Barbour's book is, too; a lot of speculation. Not that that's particularly bad, it's just that, in the end, there's nothing really testable here to evaluate.

Science Fiction Not Science.......2006-06-04

I found this book rambling, difficult to understand, and not particularly well written. The main thesis that all that exists is NOW (see the other reviews for more detail) was not proven in the book and, as far as I can see, cannot be proven empirically (mathematical proof without experimental proof is not adequate). In my opinion this book's theories belong to the realm of science fiction. If you want to let your imagination roam, anything is possible. Maybe everything is an illusion. Maybe I am the only thing that exists in the universe. Maybe there are all sorts of simultaneous universes that are constantly breaking in on each other. Etcetera. If I tried hard enough, I could probably support each of these ideas with concepts from quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

I don't think it's unusual for theoretical physics to cross the line from science to conjecture: This book is in that tradition.

Boring Indeed.......2005-12-04

I have read many cosmology books despite I am not a trained scientist or the like .. I found this book extreme boring and very frustrating to read and understand , It jumped from A to B and back to A with diagram which are hard to understand . The author is trying hard to convince the reader on his believe but lacks the tool to do so in a "friendly manner" . I laboured through this book and in the end I found myself learned nothing .In fact I am hesitated to even pass this book to my friend to read .

Not Very Good.......2005-10-04

If time didn't exist, or more specifically motion, then I wouldn't die after putting a bullet into my head after trying to get through this boring, boring book, right?

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Foundation's Edge
Isaac Asimov
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000I1367A

Foundation's Edge, Fourth Novel in the Foundation Series

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Foundation's Edge, Fourth Novel in the Foundation Series
Issac Asimov
Manufacturer: Doubleday,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Foundations of Parapsychology: Exploring the Boundaries of Human Capability
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Manufacturer: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd
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Manufacturer: IWA Publishing (Intl Water Assoc)
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Edge of Illusion (Aperture Periodical No 100)

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Aperture Foundation
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Binding: Paperback

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Five books by Isaac Asimov: All five in the Foundation Series: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth.

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Five books by Isaac Asimov: All five in the Foundation Series: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth.
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Manufacturer: Dell Ray, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Compass for Your Heart.......2000-12-17

If anyone would like to know the kind of love that would be willing to stand in the fire with us and not turn away... you have found a light that will show you the way.

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