Average customer rating:
- good portrait of abuse
- Like being in a bar band without the late nights & hangovers
- Subtle and poignant
- Growing Up.
|
Anything Goes: A novel
Madison Smartt Bell
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 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
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Literary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Bell, Madison Smartt
| ( B )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0375421254
Release Date: 2002-06-25 |
Amazon.com
In Anything Goes, Madison Smartt Bell's 13th work of fiction, the author follows a Tennessee country/rock cover band as it plays dives up and down the Eastern seaboard. The main character, Jesse, capitalizes on a new lead singer's abilities and the shuffling of band personnel by slipping in his original numbers (and those of the former lead guitarist), much to the crowds' delight.
Bell provides us with a strong sense of who Jesse is: a twentysomething kid of mixed race, drinking and carousing on tour and trying to cope with a once-abusive father who reappears to attempt reconciliation. Other characters, unfortunately, drift in and out, and interesting band members are left half-developed. He does, however, capture the excitement of a band when it clicks, of the adrenaline rush stemming from the audience, and of the delight in finding music for words. After Jesse and the new lead singer, Estelle (depicted as a Dolly Partonesque rural beauty/singer), have a flirtatious encounter, Jesse thinks: "Lover was the word in my mind; I had known lots of girls, women, but hadn't called them that. Or maybe it was something else in Estelle's smile. It was like we had a pleasant secret between us--except she knew what it was and I didn't." The secret, however, is not well disguised; its revelation comes as no surprise. Even Bell's longtime readers may be disappointed by the unevenness of Anything Goes. --Michael Ferch
Book Description
The only taste of life Jesse has known in his twenty years is bitter: his mother disappeared before he could talk, his father never got over being left, and Jesse’s presence seems only to kindle his father’s anger. Jesse’s talent is for music, which has given him a livelihood and a home as a bass player in a bar band called Anything Goes. Band life offers the opportunity for the dregs of experience (hangovers, mildewed hotel rooms), and the antics of his band mates (all of them older than he is; some of them wiser, some not) offer more schooling in hard knocks.
Anything Goes tells Jesse’s story over the course of a year, during which he finds his life slowly being tempered by the unexpected: by a dad who wants to make up and be part of Jesse’s life; by a female lead singer who suddenly makes the band sound a lot better than they have any right to be; and by the confidence Jesse begins to feel in his own musical talent.
A complete departure from the sweeping historical vision of Madison Smartt Bell’s Haitian novels and the gritty cynicism of his intense urban dramas, Anything Goes confirms Bell as one of the most versatile, most gifted, most surprising novelists of his generation.
Customer Reviews:
good portrait of abuse.......2005-11-13
I found this one very readable--the prose flowed right along. The handling here and there of racial issues was interesting, though I was disappointed to see another kind, decent, one-dimensional "magical black friend" helping out a white character at the center, such a typical American literary and cinematic device. But the protagonist isn't fully white, which is an interesting twist, but not one that really ends up going anywhere. Still, those quibbles aside, the movement of Jesse away from his father's abuse toward autonomy, and apparently toward forgiveness of his father, was very effective and honest. Nearly everything in this novel felt very real, and it taught me some things about making music too.
Like being in a bar band without the late nights & hangovers.......2003-02-28
A mildly engaging story about a Southern bar band called Anything Goes told from the point of view of Jesse, the bands' 20-something guitar player. We follow the band as they travel from dive to dive, losing members, gaining members and finding their groove.
Since Jesse is the narrator, the focus is mainly on him: his relationship with his formerly abusive, alcoholic father, his crush on Estelle, the band's new lead singer and his attempts to sort out his post-adolescent angst regarding family, women and music. The other band members don't feature too prominently and aren't very well-developed, although the book would have been more interesting if they were. Nor did Bell delve too deeply in Jesse's past relationship with his dad. There's also a little "surprise" relationship involving Estelle and Jesse's dad, but unless you're really thick, it won't come as much of a shock.
It seemed to me that something was missing from this story. Maybe it was the shallowness of the characters, maybe it was the meandering nature of the novel; there was no real plot, just a succession of gigs at roadhouses up and down the East coast. It was, however, a convincing depiction of life with a bar band, and that managed to hold my interest enough until the rather lackluster ending.
Subtle and poignant.......2002-09-15
"Anything Goes" drifts along, raveling out the thread of its story in a leisurely style that's at once engaging and attractive. Taking place over a year and in many locales, "Anything Goes" introduces us to Jesse, a disaffected and somewhat bitter young man traveling through his life as a member of a band called...you guessed it...Anything Goes. As a band name, the title [is bad].... But as a theme for the novel it works quite well.
Jesse, abandoned as a child by his mother and physically abused by his father, has become a man who doesn't expect good things from the world. As he matures throughout the pages of this book, he discovers himself in ways that are both subtle and poignant. This is a quiet story that stays with you long after you've read it...and I recommend giving it a read!
Growing Up........2002-08-26
Filled with themes of identity, family, and maturity, Bell's thirteen book takes place over a year, following a Nashville-based cover band as they travel down the eastern seaboard and up into Vermont, playing roadhouses a few weeks at a time. Jesse is their bassist, and for him, the ritual of being on the road creates a sense of security and family, since his mother abandoned him soon after birth, and his alcoholic father beat him all through childhood. Jesse is happy to follow the warm weather around, playing music, scoring occasional women, and then hanging out at band leader (and surrogate father figure) Perry's farm during the off-season.
This steady existence is skewed somewhat when Jesse's father shows up clean and sober, and looking for reconciliation. Part of this involves introducing him to a neighbor whose singing knocks his socks off. Soon enough, she's in the band, and they have great and greater success, all while Jesse struggles to identify his feelings for her and hers for him. Nothing earth-shattering happens in the book, but the relationships and issues are all captivating and feel true to life. Jesse 's mother was a Melungeon (a dark mysterious Appalachian people whose origins are unknown) and the band's drummer is black, allowing Bell to touch on racial identity issues here and there as the band drifts though white-trash venues all through the South. The towns, bars, and motels all spring from the page as real places, with history and grit to them.
Over the course of the year's cycle, Jesse comes to terms with his past, his heritage, and his future in a very non-soap opera way. This book could have easily drifted into sappiness (think Oprahish) and never quite does. The last portions get a touch heavy-handed, but never so much as to spoil the easygoing tone of the book. Musicians may especially enjoy this book as there is a great deal of language attempting to describe how Jesse feels about hearing and playing music, and how it infects his whole being. One last note, the first chapter originally appeared as a short story in the "It's Only Rock And Roll" anthology.
Customer Reviews:
To much detail.......2007-03-03
Moore, told a good story, but when the action would get going, and you start getting ready for something big, STOP IT ALL, with a flashback. At times one would have to reread something just to get your bearings again. Just too much detail, at the wrong time in the story.
Loved the bar fight in the middle, but the sewer fight and few pages following with the horse and the gardener, just about ruined the book. i do look forward to reading his next book on Conan, just cut to the chase.-ERIC
Extremely poor, overwritten Conan novel........2004-01-18
First, a prologue. (Almost all Conan pastiches have prologues, so why not start a review with one?) There is a mo-ment in Conan the Hunter where a palace gardener beats our hero unconscious.
Incredibly, the book is not as completely horrible as that absolutely ridiculous statement would make it sound. But it just has to be one of the most unbelievable moments in any Conan story. Go ahead, read that statement again. By Crom, I dare you not to laugh.
Now that I've set the tone, it is time to dive into the meat of Conan the Hunter, or at least the gristle.
This is the first Conan novel by Sean A. Moore, and the first of his that I've read. Like John C. Hocking, Moore was a latecomer to the pastiche series, and went on to pen a few more before the line went on hiatus. Judging from this outing, his strengths lay in crafting a clever, dense plot with immense, epic scope, and populating it with an imaginative flood of action and monsters. This novel bursts at the seams with supernatural menaces and crimson battles: A Leech beast in the sewers. Hordes of gargoyles. Repugnant, horror-laden traps everywhere. An invincible demon-sorceress trying to revive her race. A cramped duel to the death in the corridors of a palace. A henchman with a magnetic lodestone for a shield. Nifty stuff all around, candy for a heroic fantasy reader.
Yet for all this material, Conan the Hunter can be miserably slow going. Moore demonstrates two tremendous flaws as a writer that impede the novel and make it only sporadically entertaining and otherwise a chore to read.
First, Mr. Moore overwrites to an incredible degree. He fills every scene with twice as much description as it merits. I believe the author feels this is a way to imitate Howard's own writing style, which often had a thick and swirling feel. But Howard also practiced economy, an ability to make a perfectly beautiful description of setting or an artifact or an individual with a single thrust of a rapier blade. Moore goes overboard, digging in with scenes of characters preparing for journeys, characters handling swords, characters drinking, and worst of all, characters wondering about other characters. This particular flaw kills the pacing in a number of places, mostly because the information is al-ready clear to the reader. Kailash and Madesus are most prone to these long internal maunderings, and they slow the novel to a near halt whenever they start. The author should drop the speculation and move on to the action. The continual ponderings from secondary characters amounts to filler. Howard would hit the reader with only what he or she needed to know before shifting the action to the next exciting sequence. Had Howard written this story, it would have come out to novella length.
Second, the structure of Conan the Hunter is choppy and moves with a start-and-stop structure that makes it difficult to keep up continual interest in the plot. The elimination of major villain and ally at around the hundred page mark is a serious mistake; it seems as if the story should be over at this point, but Moore must now suddenly shift into another type of plot structure entirely. This first transition is the book's weakest section, as Madesus unloads a mound of new exposition to shuttle the story into `phase two.' There is an uncomfortable sense that the author is suddenly "making it up as he goes along" during this shift. Madesus, previously one of the most intriguing characters in the book, now stumbles into the generic `wise old mentor' mode after this.
The novel takes yet another shift a hundred pages later, moving the action away from what had been an interesting city-bound adventure into yet another chase across the wastelands toward a ruined temple. (And how many ruined desert temples are there in the Hyborian Age? They're like strip malls in Wisconsin!) Along the way is a nearly pointless tavern scene in Innasfaln, and the action sequence that follows is a case of overkill-we've had one too many fisticuffs at this point.
Not aiding this sputtering approach to structure is the tendency to suddenly substitute allies and villains for new characters at inopportune moments. Salvorus, the novel's best-drawn character, starts as the Conan ally, but the dull hillman Kailash abruptly replaces him. Valtresca and Azora appear to be the principal heavies, but the revived Skauraul's belated entrance (thirty pages before the end!) one-ups them, and Skauraul is too sketchy and generic a villain-really nothing more than a Xaltotun clone from The Hour of the Dragon-to work.
I also shuddered at the too-frequent interference of gods in the story. This feels distinctly anti-Howardian. Seers visit-ing Conan in dreams is one thing, as in "The Phoenix on the Sword," but having Mitra actually manifest himself to give a helping hand is something else entirely.
But Conan the Hunter does have some delicious moments where you can almost forget the overall problems. Most of the sequence in the Temple of Targol is excellent, and the blood trap is gruesome. This is some of the best writ-ing in the story. The sewer monster (source of the excellent cover) is cool, if unconnected to anything else; it at least keeps interest going in the early pages. The battle inside the palace that ends the novel's first phase also thrills, even if it goes on too long.
The finale is also well handled; a lot happens in a short time, with gargoyles and spiders and lances jabbing from the sand. The action plays out breathlessly. Yet Moore spoils it all with a cheat climax, a cheap deus ex machina so poorly hinted at previously that it almost wrecks the entire ending.
I will certainly read more of Sean A. Moore's Conan work (Conan and the Shaman's Curse, Conan and the Grim Gray God), since his imagination shows promise. Perhaps in these later works he cut some of the fat off his prose and found a better structure to tell his story.
Crom!.......2001-10-24
Sean A. Moore has done a fabulous job of capturing Conan's charater and has written a riveting story. You won't be disappointed with the latest of Conan's exploits. Robert E. Howard would be proud of this one...
A great Adventure!.......2000-06-30
I just finished reading Conan the Hunter, and I must say it was a great tale! I loved it! It was filled with edge-of-the-seat action, and Moore portrayed Conan's character more realistically than any others I have read. I especially found it refreshing to read that Conan made several mistakes in the story, and had to deal with dire consequences, as opposed to the many other stories where he seems more like a flawless machine in battle. Each of the many enemies and creatures he encountered were all very original and easily came to life from among the pages. I was also able to get deeper into the story because there was no love story incorporated to get tangled up with. Just pure adventure! I anticipate reading Conan and the Shaman's Curse and Conan and the Grim Grey God in the near future. Moore is a brilliant author of Conan! I look forward to seeing more of his work!
A Great Escape.......2000-03-13
If you are looking for an intellectually stimulating book you can use to sound intelligent at your next cocktail party, do not read this book. If you want to spend months reading a grossly over-written multi-volume fantasy series that involves characters traveling around the world a few dozen times doing the same thing over and over, do not read this book. If, however, you are looking for a quick and rousing read, this book fits the bill. Fast paced, well written, with a good mix of action, intrigue and old fashioned blood and guts. Its great.
Average customer rating:
|
Skewed Sherlock
Violet Hunter
Manufacturer: Wessex Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | Classics | Contemporary | General | Historical | Humor | Letters & Correspondence | Middle | Old | Poetry | Renaissance | Shakespeare | Short Stories
Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Sherlock Holmes | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0938501151 |
Average customer rating:
|
Andromeda Ancestors
Richard M. Vaught
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Science Fiction
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0738816442 |
Book Description
Andromeda Ancestors is about two precocious seventeen year olds (Dave and Mark) who fortuitously discover an alien spaceship and with it, the origins of mankind. Their adventure takes them from the Trinity Mts. near a San Andreas Fault area of northern California to the planet Nyrollst in the Andromeda galaxy.
Amazon.com
There was once a time when words like étouffée, tasso, and jambalaya were hardly known outside of the Cajun and Creole communities of Louisiana. Then along came Chef Paul Prudhomme, and all of that changed. Big enough to be his own force of nature, Prudhomme all but single-handedly turned Cajun cooking into a national food trend, changing forever the way many a cook thinks about spicing food. And Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen was the book that made it happen. But guess what? It's still happening, and so is the book!
Anyone looking for a primer on Cajun cooking need look no farther. Chef Paul takes the reader by the hand and opens up a world that includes four kinds of roux, Jalapeno and Cheese Rolls, Shrimp Étouffée, and the to-die-for Cajun Meatloaf. Good old-fashioned Red Beans and Rice and Sweet Potato Pecan Pie are not forgotten either.
Chef Paul tested all of his recipes in a home kitchen using common culinary tools--no professional equipment needed here. These are recipes that are high in spice, so remember to have a large vat of water on hand! --Schuyler Ingle
Book Description
Here for the first time the famous food of Louisiana is presented in a cookbook written by a great creative chef who is himself world-famous. The extraordinary Cajun and Creole cooking of South Louisiana has roots going back over two hundred years, and today it is the one really vital, growing regional cuisine in America. No one is more responsible than Paul Prudhomme for preserving and expanding the Louisiana tradition, which he inherited from his own Cajun background.
Chef Prudhomme's incredibly good food has brought people from all over America and the world to his restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, in New Orleans. To set down his recipes for home cooks, however, he did not work in the restaurant. In a small test kitchen, equipped with a home-size stove and utensils normal for a home kitchen, he retested every recipe two and three times to get exactly the results he wanted. Logical though this is, it was an unprecedented way for a chef to write a cookbook. But Paul Prudhomme started cooking in his mother's kitchen when he was a youngster. To him, the difference between home and restaurant procedures is obvious and had to be taken into account.
So here, in explicit detail, are recipes for the great traditional dishes--gumbos and jambalayas, Shrimp Creole, Turtle Soup, Cajun "Popcorn," Crawfish Etouffee, Pecan Pie, and dozens more--each refined by the skill and genius of Chef Prudhomme so that they are at once authentic and modern in their methods.
Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen is also full of surprises, for he is unique in the way he has enlarged the repertoire of Cajun and Creole food, creating new dishes and variations within the old traditions. Seafood Stuffed Zucchini with Seafood Cream Sauce, Panted Chicken and Fettucini, Veal and Oyster Crepes, Artichoke Prudhomme--these and many others are newly conceived recipes, but they could have been created only by a Louisiana cook. The most famous of Paul Prudhomme's original recipes is Blackened Redfish, a daringly simple dish of fiery Cajun flavor that is often singled out by food writers as an example of the best of new American regional cooking.
For Louisianians and for cooks everywhere in the country, this is the most exciting cookbook to be published in many years.
Customer Reviews:
Good basic recipes.......2007-07-30
Saw this book mentioned by a reviewer of another book as containing all the very basic Louisiana recipes. I am new to Louisiana cooking. There is a recipe for Pralines in here.
Tried the pork and it was wonderful. Most of the recipes in here I will never use, but I like to compare the original recipes with the lower fat/calorie ones. I ordered his lower calorie book Fork in the Road.
The basic seasonings and techniques are the greatest value to me, I always put my own spin on everything I cook.
YUM! Even for a novice this book is great!.......2007-07-04
My wife and I are certainly no gourmets. We cook a lot of boxed meals and generally enjoy them. These recipes take me a long time to make because I am not familiar with them or the techniques involved but they are SO worth it!! It's the best food I've ever cooked. Because I'm a novice I also sometimes take short cuts like using store bought broth rather than making it from scratch. So far these short cuts have not seemed to make a huge difference in the final outcome. To someone with a more refined pallet it might be more noticeable but for my family it's just fine. We've done a Dirty Rice, a Jambalaya, and a Gumbo and all were amazing.
Cajun Cooking at its Best.......2007-01-17
I have owned this book ever since I tried to impress a Louisana native date with a seafood gumbo she would never forget. And although this date never went anywhere, she (now a friend) keeps bringing up this dinner with the amazing seafood gumbo.
You cannot go wrong with this cookbook. The list of ingredients for any dish is mouthwatering, the instructions for preparing the dish are easy to follow.
In order to cook with this book you should know the cooking basics, like which ingredients take how much time to cook, how to clean veggies and how to handle a roux. Otherwise just pace yourself when you are preparing a dish for the first time, and you will have guests who eternally will admire your cooking skills.
Best Cajun Cookbook in print.......2006-09-24
I've owned this book since it was first published and it's tattered from use. I would highly recommend this for anybody who loves Cajun cooking! Prudhomme is the best.
Lip smacking delicious.......2006-08-25
Not for the weight watcher; but what a book! From the original blackened fish, many Jambalayas, sauces (especially the creole sauce), spicy fruit gravies to succulent poulty and meat dishes and sinful desserts, WOW! Chef Prudhomme recipes are detailed and his tips (lagnaippe) are helpful and all written with a passion for and love of cooking delicious and rich food. A fun book for holiday and special event cooking - a crowd pleaser! This book will make any home cook a seasoned one!
Books:
- Bangs and Whimpers: Stories About the End of the World (Roxbury Park Books)
- Bartleby & Co.
- Beyond Redemption: Texas Democrats After Reconstruction (Red River Valley Books)
- Big Book of Bird Illustrations
- Billy Boy: A Novel
- Blue Plate Special: A Novel of Love, Loss, and Food
- Bobby Rex's Greatest Hit
- Brimfield : A Novel
- Bulldog Drummond (The Bulldog Drummond Series)
- Charming Billy
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- How to Buy a House in California
- Alaska by Cruise Ship: The Complete Guide to Cruising Alaska with Giant Pull-out Map
- Southern Service on Land and Sea: The Wartime Journal of Robert Watson, Csa/Csn
- The Political Zoo
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
- Tropical Nature: Life & Death in the Rain Forests of Central & South America
- The Reproduction of Social Control: A Study of Prison Workers at San Quentin
- The Economic Impact of Tourism in the Islands of Asia and the Pacific
- Code of Federal Regulations, Title 26, Internal Revenue, Pt. 1
