Customer Reviews:
Three involving, surprise-filled tales.......2002-11-10
Van Gogh's Room At Arles is a collection of three original novellas by Stanley Elkin. A wheelchair-bound professor is overwhelmed by a student party that catapults to extravagant heights; a commoner suddenly becomes enmeshed in the world of royalty when Prince Larry of Wales falls for her; and a community college professor overshadowed by Van Gogh embarks on a quest for his own identity. The three involving, surprise-filled tales comprising Van Gogh's Room At Arles admirably showcases the work of a true literary master of tragedy and comedy.
Book Description
Told in a broken shorthand voice, Mazza's language is acute, evoking a place where the patients, the caregivers, and the system are all disabled. Teri and Cleo are minimum-wage nurse-aides at a state ward for severely retarded and physically handicapped children. They are expected to feed, bathe, clothe, and carry out the required therapies for their patients in a 4-hour shift. They're working within a system where money for therapy is only continued if therapy shows improvement--and yet the state-paid therapists who oversee the ward know the patients will never show any improvement. To keep the money coming in, it is up to the minimum-wage caregivers to "see" and chart important improvements, thus keeping the therapy program alive.
Blinded in their own way by their pet-like adoption of favorite patients, Teri and Cleo struggle to remain both optimistic and realistic. As their personal failures mount--and even transpose or emulate the travesties within the state ward--Teri and Cleo, with their own unseen "disabilities" in dealing with their lives and pasts, react harshly to the breakdown in the emotional balancing act.
Customer Reviews:
Small World.......2007-01-20
What's amazing about this book is that Mazza can unfold such a tiny piece of the world into such an interesting shape.
Her characters aren't talking politics in Madrid, they're not having epiphanies in the desert, and they're not redefining cyberspace. They're small women in a small part of the world, doing an insignificant job, governed by an insignificant boss, serving people who can't respond. Instead of choosing, for her subject, people who usually find themselves being written about (those who are categorically superlative in some way - hidden or otherwise) she chooses two minimum wage nurse's aides in a hospital for the severely disabled. Mazza doesn't glorify these lives -she doesn't give them secret insights or hidden depths. They remain, outside the book, invisible. They do not articulate their own ideas about their lives or their problems. They do not triumph and they are not destroyed. What's superlative about these women emerges in a small flower for a short time, and then fades. But it emerges in excrutiating clarity.
Part of the fascination of reading _Disability_ is in seeing "behind the scenes" in an unfamiliar setting - in this case the hospital, where the children have names like "Boardboy" and "Scooterboy" and the characters detail their experiences with the work. The administration is predictably idiotic, prescribing hearing therapy for deaf patients, and most of the aides are lazy and neglectful. This book, however, is not about how severely disabled people are treated in state hospitals. The book is about taking two women, really any women, *any women at all*, and finding a story in them, finding "enough" for a novel - proving them "worthy" of having a book written about them. It's about taking up a hypothetical challenge - I dare you to write a book about *these two souls* and doing it in a way that had me turning pages intensely and reading at stop lights.
It may surprise you that the book is so compelling, given its small and honest scope, its lack of irony or plot twists. This is a story about women, told by a woman as only a woman could truly tell it. I think it's exactly what we heard about in "A Room of One's Own" - who cares about what the Prime Minister is doing - we want to hear about the girl behind the counter at the hat store. I think Virgnia Woolf would be very proud.
relentless insight.......2006-06-23
Disability was beautifully written, taut, unsentimental, insightful as regards who/what is "disabled." The novel is a powerful indictment of how we treat the mentally disabled and is also a profound meditation on the process and purpose of education not only of the disabled but of any and all, especially in light of our "accountability" driven educational system.
True Grit.......2006-02-25
I first experienced Cris Mazza's fiction over a decade ago when I read her novels Your Name Here and Exposed. Like much of her work from the 1990s, these gritty, explicit narratives demonstrate the intrinsic link between sex and humiliation, and I found them worthwhile reading, books that transmitted white-hot anger on behalf of women everywhere. Sexual politics continue to play a role in Mazza's recent texts (which include the memoir Indigenous and the novel Homeland), but this is not always the dominant thematic focus. Instead, her newer work describes a fuller range of human experience, providing the reader with a richer variety of responses. Now, rather than anger, Mazza's writing often conveys, in writer Elizabeth Searle's words, "pitch-black compassion." Mazza's stunning recent novel, Disability perfectly fits this description; it is both edgy and empathic, a heartbreak with an attitude.
Reading Disability is rather like watching an able-bodied caretaker bathe a debilitated person; both experiences painfully remind us of the human condition's inherent frailty. Just published by FC2, an independent press dedicated to experimental fiction, Disability, Mazza's 13th book, uses subtle experimentation with point of view as a conduit for its overarching theme: that all humanity is, at its essence, vulnerable and broken.
The point of view alternates between two main characters, Teri and Cleo, who work as caregivers in a state hospital for severely impaired children. Both characters' narratives are relentlessly myopic and unflinchingly graphic, choices that could have backfired if made by a less capable writer than Mazza. In the hospital scenes, readers are given no relief from the pediatric residents' physical helplessness, their urine, feces, and saliva, their twisted legs, seizures, and bedsores. Meanwhile, scenes outside the hospital offer no reprieve from the main characters' emotional handicaps: Teri's self-loathing and Cleo's crippled self-esteem. Rather than create a claustrophobic experience for the reader, however, Mazza's deft shifts between the characters' thoughts, experiences and voices enable readers to understand the characters in ways the characters can't.
First, we see that both women are as deserving of the designation "disabled" as are the children in their care. Teri-a 31-year-old woman whose own child disavowed her-is so emotionally stunted that even her narrative is written in the truncated, disjointed shorthand found on medical charts. Cleo-who, at 22, desperately clings to a distant and punishing lover-has a narrative marked by self-conscious revisions, mirroring her disastrous self-image. Mazza is ever adroit in her use of dramatic irony, and the point of view also allows us to see how the women sublimate their experiences with rejection into steadfast loyalty toward the hospital's mostly-abandoned children, a loyalty which culminates in their unpremeditated kidnap of Teri's favorite resident.
Further, readers realize that none of the characters are more "disabled" than the systems they inhabit. The hospital's residents are subjected to a money-seeking "therapy" program incommensurate with their needs; the caregivers make minimum-wage for maximum work; children are appropriated or abandoned, and everyone falls prey to others' ineptitude, dishonesty, or cruelty. Within these flawed systems, the characters have two possible reactions to one another's disabilities: they can exercise compassion or look away in disgust. Both Teri and Cleo show compassion for the children and each other, but react to their own brokenness with unmitigated disgust. One of the novel's foremost accomplishments is its ability to enchant readers into feeling compassion for the characters that the characters don't feel for themselves.
More noteworthy still is that this novel is neither didactic nor moralizing, but a rigorously complex story whose plot ultimately reveals that compassion will sooner lead to loss than fulfillment. Naturally, Mazza fans will recognize loss as a principal outcome for many characters in her oeuvre, but Disability moves beyond the particulars of fictive characters and into a broader human context. This worldview is less grim than cathartic, however, and at the end of Disability, readers may feel more forgiving towards the pieces of us all that cannot be fixed, protected or saved.
Customer Reviews:
Magic or tech? Maybe both.......2006-03-07
Fantasy has always turned on the willingness and ability of a small group of people (sometimes only one) to "change the world," and Diane Duane (one of my favorite writers), in her ongoing Young Wizards series, has always proceeded on the principle (reversing Arthur C. Clarke) that "any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." Here she gives us what may be her ultimate example of these truisms to date. Liayna "Lee" Enfield lives in a world that calls itself Earth, but it isn't *our* Earth. Here office-type high-tech is even techier than ours, "smart houses" are apparently so commonplace that even a private investigator can afford to own one, and people commute in aerial vehicles called "hovs." It isn't paradise: crime exists, right up through murder, and there are traffic jams and air pollution--but there is no word or concept for genocide, and world wars are apparently unknown, though nuclear weapons have been invented. Worldgates connect it to five other "alternate Earths," including one where space travel is so commonplace that aliens routinely visit Earth--and one, Alfheim, which is the home of both the Elves (immortal, incredibly beautiful hominids) and the allotropic ("fairy") gold that powers the Gates; there's even a fivefold UN and Interpol. It's also a world where God and Christ (though referred to in those terms) are both female, and where a human (Lee) can partner with a "madra"--a 40"-tall intelligent canid (his people were originally from Alfheim, though why they left is never explained) who, though he doesn't have hands, can speak English by way of an implant and even drive a hov, which automatically modifies itself to suit him when he gets behind the controls. And where, though no one uses the word "magic," the living Power of Justice visits the courtroom after arguments have closed and both pronounces and enforces the verdict (in the very first chapter we see a dishonest entertainment promoter literally transformed into a large weasel, apparently with its human mind still intact). Lee and her partner Gelert are psychically gifted "mantics"--private detectives of a kind, but also authorized to argue in court, usually for the prosecution--who have the ability, respectively, to See and Scent what has happened in a given locality within a certain window of time, and, as we eventually learn, to also See and Scent hidden truths about what's going on there *now*. When an Elven communications-industry exec is murdered in Ellay (their version of Los Angeles), they expect at first that it will prove to be just another investigation. But before long it morphs into a complex mosaic of conspiracy, economic and racial jealousy, and interworld moral contagion, fuelled in part by the recent discovery of "our" Earth (called Terra), and they find themselves not only saving the Laurin (the Elf-King) from a palace coup but having to help him literally restructure his entire world and race. The alternative is the destruction of Alfheim by the other worlds, contaminated by leakage from a reality (our own) where genocide is a political tool. And if that is allowed to happen, says the Laurin, "everyone in all the Worlds, everywhere" will die too.
Though the spine label describes it as fantasy, "Roses" reads more to me like sf; Elves in her Alfheim use blasters, hold jobs like humans (often even in the human worlds), and don't seem vulnerable to "cold iron," and even the Laurin's ability to "worldmaster"--anything from controlling the weather to literally summoning back the prehistoric ocean to destroy his enemies--is described by him as "how kingship works here...Those of us who could understand the World well enough to make the weather do what the crops needed, lived to breed descendants who could make it do that even better" (in other words, evolution at work), and is apparently as much a psychic process as Lee's Sight. Lee's version of Earth, particularly, is sketched with dozens of bits of techie throwaway so casually inserted into the stream of the story that the reader scarcely notices them--which, of course, is the best way to build a world: make it seem natural.
Lee, Gelert, and the Laurin eventually do triumph over the conspiracy and the leaking contagion, averting transdimensional war (you'll have to read the book to find out how), and in the end all the worlds (perhaps even ours) are changed in many profound ways. And here we see that this reality, though it's science-fictional, may well be a part of the same one that the Young Wizards inhabit, and that Lee may have unwittingly served as the tool of the Powers That Be. The slightly abrupt ending leaves room for more explication of the changes she and the Laurin have effected, and I sincerely hope that Duane goes on to write more in Lee's Universe.
Liked the world, but there are some major flaws............2005-01-07
First, let me say that Diane Duane is one of the top science fiction/fantasy writers today. This is not her best work. If you want to try her best, check out "Book of Night with Moon" or "Door Into Fire."
In this multi-dimensional world, the equivalent to our real world has psychic/magical powers. One of those is Justice which allows one with that power to speak with the voice of the dead. It certainly solves crimes. That, in itself would be an interesting and thrilling novel, but Duane has to add the second dimension, Alfheim, the Elf World. Elves are getting killed and someone's covering up. Finally, we add the complication of the Elf King. It's too much---definitely doesn't realize any of the various storylines' potential. Further, Duane's heroine's self-esteem was just plain sad. Ladies, you'll see what I mean when you read this. At the end, I had the strong urge to yell "Get a clue, sister!" into the book.
Still, "Stealing the Elf King's Roses" is well-written and worth a read if you like the rest of Duane's books. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel in this world with a bit more focus.
reads like a sequel.......2004-05-05
This book reads like a sequel -- as if you had accidentally started reading with the second book of a trilogy, perhaps. The setting is a very complex sheaf of alternate universes. The universe in which we exist enters the story only as a brief way-stop near the end of the story. The other universes seem to be structured so that they are the realities whose psychic echoes inspire our mythologies. There's a Midgarth, which might be the source of the Norse myths, for example; and there's Alfen, home of some arrogant, immortal, and impossibly beautiful people. On the other hand, there's a Xiahon, which if it's meant to match a mythos, went right over my head. Indeed I suspect there are a lot of Duane-readers who don't have the background to recognize even as broad a clue as "Midgarth".
All of what must be a very rich back-story is introduced in true SF style: never by direct exposition, only by passing references in the narrative. In reading SF, the pleasant riddle of figuring out what kind of world you're in, on your own without lectures from the author, is part of the fun. But here, I really wanted some exposition. Or, preferably, that hypothetical first volume of the series, a prequel with a simpler plot and a more leisurely exploration of the worlds of the "Five-Geneva Pact.".
Duane had done it again!.......2004-02-28
Duane had done it again! This book was EXTREMELY good, though that is not surprising. I really enjoyed it.
Like all hr other books I've read so faar.
Interesting concept; lame ending.......2004-01-16
This book has some riveting concepts: justice as a being who shows up in court, prosecutors who do thier own investigations, and an affectionate and protective but non-romantic relationship between work partners. It kept my attention until near the end when it became a major letdown. It seemed like it was finished way to fast, without a real good explanation of why it was ending that way. In fact, when I finished the last page, my main response was "Huh?" It seemed like Duane just wanted to finish it to meet a deadline, instead of taking the time to carry the extreme characterization and detail to the end for a longer but much more coherent novel. I was rather disappointed.
Average customer rating:
- A very emotive collection
|
Isaac Asimov's Christmas
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| African American
| Asian American
| Classics
| Collections & Readers
| Drama
| General
| Hispanic
| History & Criticism
| Humor
| Jewish American
| Letters & Correspondence
| Native American
| Poetry
| Short Stories
| Women Writers
Dozois, Gardner
| ( D )
| Authors, A-Z
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Asimov, Isaac
| ( A )
| Authors, A-Z
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
Paperback
| Asimov, Isaac
| ( A )
| Authors, A-Z
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
Anthologies
| Science Fiction
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science Fiction
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Christmas Stars
-
Isaac Asimov's Vampires
ASIN: 0441004911 |
Book Description
We know Christmas present. We know Christmas past. But what about Christmas future? Now, in extraordinary stories culled from the pages of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, today's acclaimed masters hurtle the holiday centuries forward.
Customer Reviews:
A very emotive collection.......1998-04-02
If you are looking for a collection of tales about Christmas, even in the far future where its meaning is lost in the past, well, this is the book. But, if you are looking for stories of hard science fiction about very imaginative futures, you should look for another book. Paulo Sunao, from BRAZIL
Average customer rating:
- Stories that stay with you.
|
The Twelve Frights of Christmas
Isaac Asimov ,
Carol-Lyn Waugh , and
Martin Greenberg
Manufacturer: Avon Books (Mm)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
United States
| Horror
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Asimov, Isaac
| ( A )
| Authors, A-Z
| Horror
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Greenberg, Martin Harry
| ( G )
| Authors, A-Z
| Horror
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
British
| Horror
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Horror
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0380750988 |
Customer Reviews:
Stories that stay with you........2006-11-30
I was actually given this book in 1985, by my 5th-grade boyfriend, as a Christmas gift (which, in retrospect, is kinda creepy!). I was just barely 10 years old at the time, and I read the whole book cover to cover... It scared the living daylights out of me. Now, one might argue that it was because I was ten, but years later, I've re-read the book, and while not all of the stories held up altogether well, there are more than a couple that would still frighten any adult.
Even though Isaac Asimov does not in fact have any of his own writing in the collection, he's helped introduce and put together a fairly impressive bunch of creepy Christmas-themed horror stories. The first one, Ramsey Campbell's "The Chimney", is (in my opinion) the best of the lot - a story about a young boy who is terrorized by the idea of a man (Santa or not) sneaking down into his bedroom's fireplace, and who goes to ghastly measures to make sure such a thing doesn't happen.
Such are the other eleven tales in the book, done by a bevy of talented writers from all sorts of genres and eras. Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim" is featured, a tale about the murder of a curio dealer on Christmas day which is beautifully written and yet still manages to make one's flesh crawl whilst reading it. There are other well-loved authors in there, too - H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Arthur C. Clarke, H. G. Wells... The list goes on. Each story is quite short, only a few pages long, which makes it an easy book to simply pick up for a brief taste of "creepy" during the holidays.
Despite it being a hard book to find nowadays, it's definitely worth picking up here on Amazon if you can. It's a deliciously creepy anthology, and it's perfect for those who don't like their Christmas TOO pretty and perfect. (There's also one called "The Twelve Crimes Of Christmas", if murder mysteries are more your thing.) With the array of authors and styles to each scary story, there'll be at least one tale in there that will stay with every reader, just like "The Chimney" has haunted me since I was 10.
Book Description
Morning and evening prayers, communion prayers, selected troparia and prayers for various occasions.
Customer Reviews:
The Book of Common Prayer for the Eastern Orthodox.......2006-07-02
Being a recent convert to Orthodox Christianity from Anglican church, I missed the daily routine of the reading the daily offices, especially morning prayer.
A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers with its beautiful language has filled that void in my daily devotions. It is similar to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer in that it has a service of morning and evening prayer to include a pause in the prayer service for the reading of scripture. Further like the 1928 Prayer Book there are prayers for other occassions along with a section of anthems and hymns for the greater feasts and saints' days.
As a new convert to Orthodox Christianity I have found the calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church very helpful in learning about the saints and feast days. Coming from the Anglican and earlier Southern Baptist background, I did not realize that there were any other saints beyond those of the Western Church. The suffering and example of the saints of the Eastern Church offer great examples of how to live and moreover the suffering the Eastern Church has suffered from its very beginnings all the way through the 20th century.
Protestants and most Anglicans do not practice confession. There is a section of this prayer manual on the order of confession. We in the Western Church may want to rethink confession. For confession of sin is part of repentance. Something we tend not to discuss in the West.
A daily routine of correct prayer is important in the development of one's spiritual life. This prayer manual guides one correctly on a path of prayer needed to sustain one in a temporal world so full of sin.
I realize that I need a copy of this to carry in my briefcase, so that during my lunch break, I can reconnect with what is important.
My wholehearted recommendation to recent converts and to all Orthodox Christians living in America.
I hold this treasure close to heart........2003-05-28
This little book of prayers has changed my life. Coming from a non-liturgical background, this book introduced a foriegn structure into my normally spontenous prayer life. Over the years, it has opened a new world of spiritual formation in my life. Along the way, these simple prayers have stirred me to a greater vision of the awesomeness of our Creator. "Holy God. Holy and Mighty. Holy Immortal. Have mercy on us."
A good introduction to Orthodox prayer, esp for inquirers.......2002-07-22
As other reviewers have noted, this book has many prayers used by Orthodox Christians in personal devotions. It also has some materials used for public worship, such as scripture lessons for the Twelve Great Feasts and for the Sundays of Great Lent, as well as certain Sunday and weekday troparia (theme-hymns).
Originally published in 1945, its language does predate today's interest in "Modern English for worship". Also, having first been published by an Anglican-Orthodox fellowship, rather than by an Orthodox jurisdiction, the book itself might not necessarily be used by large numbers of Orthodox Christians in English-speaking lands (they might use other collections of these prayers prepared by their own Churches).
However, those other collections might be less accessible to people outside Orthodoxy than this one, which can be ordered so easily through Amazon. It can therefore introduce inquirers to a portion of the rich treasury of Orthodox prayer.
The Light from the East.......2001-10-14
This small purple book (originally published in Great Britain in 1945) contains prayers of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, prayers from which any reader can derive joy and benefit and fitting words to praise the one God in three Persons, God who is Light and Life, Transcendence and Immanence, Majesty and Mercy.
There are morning prayers, evening prayers, prayers for different occasions, anthems and hymns for saints and holy feasts (troparia and kontakia), the Orders of Confession according to Greek and Slavonic uses (in English), prayers for use before and after the reception of Holy Communion, and a calendar of the saints who are honoured in holy Orthodoxy.
The "O Heavenly King" can be found on page 2, prayers to the Theotokos on page 8, a prayer of St John Chrysostom "according to the hours of the day and night" on pp. 14-15 (this prayer, or series of short prayers, quite lovely); Metropolian Philaret's prayer where he dares not ask for either cross or consolation, on p. 24; a lengthy and lovely prayer in verse by St Symeon the New Theologian, beginning on page 71, and a penitential pre-Communion prayer of surpassing beauty ("Thou hast smitten me, O Christ, with yearning; and with thy divine love hast thou changed me") on page 77.
The language is reminiscent of earlier days in the life of the Church (thees and thous), and when psalms are quoted, it is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer version that is used. This comparatively young, Western, Roman Catholic reader values this small purple book, A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, for its loveliness of language, its acute awareness of -- and profound humility before -- Divine Beauty, and its recognition (often absent in the language of modern Western Christianity) that God is Majesty, and that as we approach him, a feeling of awe is not malapert.
Best Compilation of Orthodox Prayers.......2001-09-05
This little book includes most of the prayers that Orthodox laity would be apt to use in their daily life, along with the liturgy and preparation for confession.
Clergy of other denominations interested in Orthodox ritual will probably find this book of use as well, since it points out differences in Russian and Greek usage and also gives the most complete church calendar I have ever seen in English. Anglican readers will find a perhaps unpleasant surprise - Lancelot Andrewes' "preces privatae", rather than being his own inventions, are in fact prayers from the Orthodox preparation for communion, as you will find if you compare them with the versions in this book.
Books:
- Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories
- Windchill Summer: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
- Yosl Rakover Talks to God
- 101 Double-Ended Hook Stitches: Crochet (Crochet on the Double)
- 201 Atwater
- A Half Caste and Other Writings (Asian American Experience)
- A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans
- A Time Far Past
- Abide with Me: A Novel
- About Schmidt (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Commercial Real Estate Investing 12 Easy Steps to Getting Started
- Training the Three-day Event Horse and Rider: Doubleday Equestrian Library
- Sculpture and its Reproductions
- Sensationalizing the Jewish Question: Anti-semitic Trials and the Press in the Early German Empire
- The Frank Sinatra Reader
- The Structure and Dynamics of Networks:
- The rocks in God's highway: The Sobek middle Zambezi expedition and its antecendents
- Opportunities in Part-Time and Summer Jobs
- Resumes to the Rescue: Complete Guide to Performance-Driven Resumes
- Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism
George Mills
Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers
The Franchiser: A Novel (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))
The Living End (Lannan Selection)
The Magic Kingdom (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))
