Ophelia's Fan: A Novel

Book Description

Irish actress Harriet Smithson, inspiration for Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, is also the muse for this mesmerizing novel.

Christine Balint reimagines the bittersweet life of Harriet Smithson, the tragedienne who brought Shakespeare to the French. Born in County Clare, Ireland, in 1800, Harriet is left in the care of the elderly priest Father Barrett, and is brought up on Lamb's Shakespeare, lime-sherbet sweets, and prayer. A child of traveling players, her ultimate inheritance is Covent Garden, London, the green room, and the theater's rough magic.

With the arrival of Charles Kemble's English Theatre troupe in Paris in 1827, the Odéon Theatre is awash with the drama and music of Shakespeare. Harriet is Ophelia. The French Romantics swoon, traffic stops, and the high-society women plait straw in their hair in honor of her mad Ophelia. The fiery composer Hector Berlioz falls in love.

In Ophelia's Fan, Balint re-creates the texture and breadth of the nineteenth century and brings alive Harriet Smithson—the actress and the woman, her roles and her loves.

Customer Reviews:

a fascinating life.......2005-09-05

but the boucing back in forth in time during the book made it choppy reading. Still, a good story!

A wonderful book.......2004-11-19

Millions of people, at some time or another, have read at least a little bit of Shakespeare. He is the most popular English playwright in the world. The time in which William Shakespeare lived and worked is infinitely appealing to most people. Christine Balint has successfully brought Shakespeare's time to life in her latest novel. In Ophelia's Fan, Balint does a brilliant job of portraying the life and times of Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who is credited with bringing Shakespeare to France.
The setting was spectacular. It was very interesting and well written. Balint made the small town of Ennis, Ireland come to life. Not only Ireland, but England's Drury Lane, and Paris, France were exceptionally developed. "This city opens my ears. Everything happens in waves of sound. Even voices, as I walk down the street listening to their strange music, crescendo and decrescendo as evenly as they would under the hands of a conductor," says Balint of Paris, an excellent example of her sensory images.
The hardships, the plot and the setting are all realistic. Perhaps this is because although the story is fictional, the character is real. Everything in this story is historically correct and very believable. Harriet goes through many of the same problems that a struggling actress would go through now.
The plot is very smooth and usually easy to follow. It was amazing to see how Balint imagined this woman's life may have been like. The basis of the plot was very real and easy to relate to. Balint did an excellent job in creating Harriet Smithson's life, and molding it to fit the story and still made it very appealing to readers.
Balint gave Harriet a real strength and plenty of energy. She was always encountering problems and pulling through. Not only did Harriet have to make a life for herself in the theatre, but support her mother and handicapped sister as well. She also had to deal with a bad reputation for being an actress and trying to make a decent marriage. Harriet was overworked and all odds were against her, but she persevered and it paid off for her in the end.
On the darker side of things, the book can be considered slightly boring by some. There were points in the story when nothing was going on and nothing was changing, and it was difficult to get through. For example, Harriet stayed in Drury Lane, not getting any more or less popular, for a very long time, hoping to get a break, but still in the shadow of other actresses. "I have spent three years hanging about backstage, waiting for some new opportunity. I wonder whether Fanny Kelly may marry and retire from the stage, allowing me my own attempt at fame. If they would only let me have a season at her roles, I know I would have as much success as she. But how am I to be noticed when I am on the periphery of the company?" says Harriet.
Balint did not describe the information of some aspects of Harriet's life that I'd hoped she would. She did not tell what happened to her marriage, or even tell of her son for that matter. This part of the book was very disappointing. It was also hard to read and slightly confusing at this point. Trying to get as much information as you can out of her letters to her son is very hard to do. She says only that she is having problems with her husband and leaves the rest up to the reader's speculation.
There was also some skipping around with the time and setting of things. It would go back to Harriet's childhood in Ennis randomly, and confuse you for a while. It was also hard to remember where she was, why she was there, who was with her and why. It wasn't always easy to remember the people and their relationship to her either.
This book was a wonderful was to learn more about the 19th century theatre and still enjoy a fictional story. I appreciated how Balint weaved historical events into the plot and everything was so detailed and accurate. It was beautifully written and the characters were very developed and well rounded. The little inserts of Harriet's characters' stories was a genius idea and I loved knowing more about the people she played on stage. When Harriet got to Paris, Balint used many French words or phrases. I thought this was a wonderful touch and made the story that much more authentic. It was not at all hard to follow. All in all I thought Ophelia's Fan was a wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone.

(3.5)Ophelia as muse for genius.......2004-07-29

Ophelia's Fan is quality historical fiction, written by a talented author, who skillfully brings the past to life in vivid detail; the contrast between poverty and wealth, the importance of education and humanity's impotence against the vagaries of an indifferent fate.

Beautifully rendered, the novel traces the historical journey of Harriet Smithson, an eminent Shakespearean star, on the stages of London and Paris. Born in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland in 1800, Smithson is raised, at the request of her actor father, by an Episcopalian priest, given all the advantages of education so that she might better herself and the fortunes of her family. Thanks to the efforts of the Reverend, Harriet is saved from a life of poverty, but at a certain cost: she never really knows her parents or siblings intimately, having only the occasional visit until she begins her stage career ion London, just after her father's death. At that time, the support of the family falls to the young woman.

With her family in dire straights, Harriet decides to take them with her to London, lest they parish in squalor and poverty. The time has arrived for Harriet to repay the family for her years of good fortune. Hardly glamorous, work in the theater demands long days of rehearsal and memorization, bleak and tedious endeavors. Young Harriet plays a series of numbingly similar female roles, constantly preparing for the few opportunities to play Shakespeare that come her way. Studying diligently, the beautiful actress is almost unaware when gentlemen flock to her side, but soon she is dreaming familiar scenarios of love and marriage.

After some success in London, Smithson removes herself to Paris, where she expends her energies, much applauded for her depiction of Shakespearian heroines. It is in Paris that she comes face to face with her future, in the person of the composer, Hector Berloiz, who is obsessed with the actress as Ophelia, desperate to have her as his wife. The unworldly Harriet is carried away by the composer's unbridled passion, tricked by the dramatic emotional roller coaster of the courtship into believing such extreme feelings can sustain a marriage.

The bulk of the novel concerns Harriet's life, pre-Berloiz, tracking her early years in Ennis, where she was saved from poverty, to the uncertain years in London, where she had difficulty attaining the start status that fills her dreams. Later, in Pairs, Smithson knows a few brief years of success. Through a series of letters to her son, an older, wiser Harriet tries to explain the circumstances of her marriage to Berloiz and their intense attraction to one another. At the same time, she must confront the reality of their lives together. During her decline, acting and youth relegated to the past, Smithson has ample time to consider the harsh life she has led, with little enough choice, after all.

Drawing from the few sources available, the author fills in the details of life in the theater, both the demands and the rewards. Smithson's blooming years are all too brief, but she does enjoy the accolades of her peers and the citizens of Paris for some seasons. Although the actress avoids poverty during her childhood, the family is dogged by a lack of adequate funds until her Parisian success. While the author portrays Harriet Smithson as Berloiz's muse, little is known of their lives together and whether she continued to inspire his music after their explosive and brief courtship. The letters to her son indicate the opposite. Still, this is a fascinating romp through the backstage door of theater life and the endless struggle for recognition. Perhaps as Ophelia, Smithson knows her finest hour. Luan Gaines/2004.

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He's right, Twilight Zone it is.

NOT DICK'S CUP OF TEA

Fast paced, imaginative.

You Are Now Entering the Twilight Zone (Cosmic Puppets)

Introduction to Philip Dick
The Cosmic Puppets: A Novel
Philip K. Dick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Dick, Philip K. | ( D ) | Authors, A-Z | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1400030056
Release Date: 2003-11-11

Book Description

Yielding to a compulsion he can’t explain, Ted Barton interrupts his vacation in order to visit the town of his birth, Millgate, Virginia. But upon entering the sleepy, isolated little hamlet, Ted is distraught to find that the place bears no resemblance to the one he left behind—and never did. He also discovers that in this Millgate Ted Barton died of scarlet fever when he was nine years old. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that it is literally impossible to escape. Unable to leave, Ted struggles to find the reason for such disturbing incongruities, but before long, he finds himself in the midst of a struggle between good and evil that stretches far beyond the confines of the valley.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

Customer Reviews:

He's right, Twilight Zone it is........2007-02-22

I am going to search around for the level to which the 1950s were Twilight Zone domain. This could well have been a TZ script. Very nicely done, very much a "lifting the veil of perception" type of book.

NOT DICK'S CUP OF TEA.......2007-01-11

THE COSMIC PUPPETS is not Dick's usual genre. It belongs to the J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter bunch which, of course, it preceded. It is occult -- pitting good against evil -- the eternal struggle. Few of Dick readers are familiar with Zorastrianism, with Ahriman, the the destroyer god and spirit of darkness, with Ormazd, deity of goodness and light, or with golems, formed from inanimate clay. So it was an experiment, a showing off, that really didn't pan out.

In the story he presents only one or two human characters, Ted Barton and William Christopher, neither very convincingly. Most of the story is revealed from behind smoke and mirrors. The two gods, Good and Evil, have decided to play a game using the town of Millgate Virginia, to see who could maintain their version of the streets, parks and buildings. There is, of course, no such town outside of Dick's imagination.

Did it make any difference whether the real, older town of Millgate or the fake town won the game? Besides being entertainment for the gods, was there any point to the transformation or to returning the town to its original shape and form? Did this story matter to anyone reading it? Yes, it mattered to establish the real identity of two of its characters, but the reader couldn't readily relate to either of them. The whole story could have reminded one of ghost busters, searching an old house for a ghost who wasn't there.

Fast paced, imaginative........2006-10-09

The Cosmic Puppets starts out with a fairly standard science fiction opening. A person is confronted with unfamiliar people, places and things instead of those that are expected. In this instance, New Yorker Ted Barton rather impulsively visits his hometown of Millgate, nestled in a quiet valley somewhere in Virginia. But all the streets, buildings and people are foreign to him. Absolutely nothing is as he remembers it to be.

As the fast paced narrative unfolds, the author introduces a number of bizarre plot elements. Children with magical powers, tiny golems fashioned from clay, talking bees, etc. All of this leads to the dramatic ending where Barton finds himself playing a key role in an epic battle between good and evil cosmic entities. As the book reaches its climax, it takes on an almost religious quality. Though I find myself at a loss in identifying which particular religion is being promulgated.

The author clearly demonstrates great skill in vividly describing all things from the mundane to the wildly abstract. Nonetheless, I would have to classify The Cosmic Puppets as a lesser work of the PKD canon. My most serious objection is that events occur without discernible ground rules on which the reader can anchor his or her understanding of the plot.

Imaginative, entertaining in places, but ultimately less than satisfying.

You Are Now Entering the Twilight Zone (Cosmic Puppets).......2006-04-19

Not one of his best, but I loved it. Ted Barton decides to make a slight detour and visit the town he grew up in. Strangely everything is different and no one ever heard of him or realizes that anything has changed, except the town's drunk. Also, some of the town's children have seemingly godlike powers. Ted and the town drunk work to try and restore parts of the town to its origins. Could the problem be due to local gods having a spat, nah that's too weird.

Introduction to Philip Dick.......2006-03-03

The town of Millgate has changed. Ted Barton discovers that strange forces are at work in his home town. He is determined to find out the truth, especially as he discovers that he is supposed to have died at the age of nine from scarlet fever.

Enter young Peter Trilling who seems to have strange powers, the Wanderers who drift through the town, oblivious to physical barriers, and Will Christopher who remembers part of the past and is using it to reconstruct his surroundings. Then all hell breaks loose and it seems Millgate is the starting point for Cosmic battle that has been pending for ages.

This is Philip Dick starting out and experimenting with the various themes that will emerge much stronger in his later work. The story of the Cosmic Puppets is unpolished and moves ahead at break-neck speed but it is highly accessible (contrary to Philiip Dick's later work).

Cosmic Puppets and Sargasso of Space (Two Complete Novels)

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Cosmic Puppets and Sargasso of Space (Two Complete Novels)
Philip K., Andrew North Dick
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000U884L4

Book Description

Three-time Prometheus Award winner Victor Koman (Millennium: Weeds), who sicced an assassin on God in The Jehovah Contract and imploded the abortion controversy in Solomon's Knife, brings us his epic novel of humanity's next stage of evolution: the jump into Space.

Tammy Reis, beautiful NASA Space Shuttle commander, works for the most highly funded, technologically advanced space program in the world. So why do nightmares of the Challenger disaster haunt her sleep? And why is NASA incapable of recapturing the stunning successes it once achieved?

Visionary spacecraft designer Gerry Cooper struggles at his tiny rocket company in the Mojave Desert. Who in the world wants him stopped -- or dead?

One-armed billionaire playboy Laurence Poubelle hopes to build his own orbital X-15. Can his keen marketing skills overcome a nation hostile to wealth and contemptuous of adventure?

Meanwhile, the horror of the Challenger tragedy threatens to repeat itself on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Standing at ground zero, NASA engineer Jack Lundy races the countdown to prevent the deadliest space disaster of all.

While bureaucrats and businessmen publicly battle for the high ground, a young descendant of the legendary Davy Crockett secretly constructs a single-stage-to-orbit rocket deep inside an abandoned warehouse in the South Bronx. Will he and his NYU classmates survive when NORAD detects the launch that blows the lid off the greatest conspiracy in the history of mankind?

Tammy Reis -- stripped of her astronaut wings for defending herself against a congressman's zero-gravity rape -- is recruited by the National Security Agency to infiltrate the stronghold of a er-rich smuggler who schemes to place a massive space station into orbit with a single, spectacular launch. When she discovers the true nature of his secret plan, she faces an impossible choice between duty to her government or freedom from her -- and humanity's -- nightmare.

Customer Reviews:

Adolescent space opera with a twist.......2006-01-25

This novel would have fit right in on my teenage bookshelf in 1980. It has all the grittiness and technical detail of Niven, Pournelle, Pohl and Hogan, overlaid with the libertarian elements that show up in some Heinlein stories. It lacks Bester's economy of prose, but does have a tight plot. Like many authors of the golden age of SF, Koman comes off as both cynical and romantic. In real life, this story's heroes wouldn't stand a chance. (Dude! Building a spaceship is hard!) But its villains are surprisingly close to the mark. Teens and NASA employees may bristle at the NASA-bashing, but every decade that goes by with zero progress in human space flight proves the point.

One of the Best.......2005-10-05

Like much of the great science fiction of the past, this book has a definite libertarian theme. My only faults with it were 1) lost of sleep while reading it because it is one of those books that you can't put down and 2) one rape scene that I considered a lot more graphic than it needed to be and thereby precludes my recommending the book to younger readers. One might object that many of the characters in the book are too black and white, but I would maintain that Koman may be closer to the truth here than many are willing to admit. The reality is that evil exists and most politicians are scum. "Kings of the High Frontier" immediately flew into my top 10 fiction list. Victor Koman seems a worthy successor to Robert Heinlein.

Read this to encourage the publishing of a next book ...........2003-07-28

As one of the other reviewers stated this is one of the best books no one has read. I came across it in July, 2003 by chance in a small bookstore. Once I started reading I could not stop until I reached the end. It has interesting characters (and they are characters), good guys you cheer, bad guys you would like to shoot, inter-weaving storylines, an interesting story to tell, plot and subplots. The writing keeps all of the stories flowing along pulling you into the stories and along to the end of the novel. All in all a totally enjoyable read. Now some may find the libertarian ideas of the author annoying but they form an intergal part of the story and reminded me of L. Niel Smith at his best. And the conspiracy angle is well enough set up and argued that you are left thinking it makes perfect sense. Perhaps the best recomendation is that, as this was noted as book one on the High Pilgramage, I was extremely disappointed that no book two (or three) had been written. So let me conclude by suggesting you get a copy read it, tell your friends to get copies and get book two on its way for me to read!

Wonderful book, shame about the conspiracy side........2003-02-14

Victor Koman writes very good fiction, with "Solomon's Knife" being one of my favorites. In many respects he has done it again with this novel. It has both greatly inspiring and truly horrific scenes, and has certainly changed the way I feel about the space program (with the recent tragic loss of Columbia only underscoring this). He tells a rousing tale, and does it well. Many of the characters are fascinating, and I agree with the other reviewers who have pointed out the similarities of the arch villan to Rand's Ellsworth Toohey. I loved the wide range of competing private space projects, and the group of college students, while I felt were the most implausible builders, did inject a valued dose of humor into the story. I also loved the SSTO space station.
Where I disagree with the author is in his painting of a giant conspiracy by NASA and the United Nations to keep mankind earthbound. I well know the temptation of this, having given in to it myself. Government is incompetent. They can't operate a successful conspiracy to bug the offices of their political opponents! Sure these sad little losers would hate to see humans forever beyond their reach. But they are infighting twerps who cant think beyond the next Federal election. Not grand masterminds of evil with the power and ommiscience of gods. Having said that, this is well worth reading, and I'm very glad I did so.

Most of the most beautiful wriiten novels about space.......2002-03-29

From the first sentence you are hooked. That's how good it is.

Victor Koman, who I have the honor to have exchanged emails with once, is a (extreemly unfairly) overlooked author of a first-rated talent. In this Kings of the High Frontier, we are introducted to wide varisty of characters who are fated to meet in one way or another in their struggle to achieve their common dream: to reach space. In his and her own way, each have to contents with powerful and bloated beast of the Federal Government and its lapdogs at NASA and national security gangesters who fears the potential of private space transportation because in space, men and women will gain access to unlimited wealth and freedom with many resources in the system waiting untapped. It's rather tough to regulate and to tax free men when a station can simply pick up and move to another location farther out, not to meation like how will you settle the issuse of which states to do the taxing. Short answer, you can't.

But to get there, you have to create a private transportation first.

That's the heart of this novel. Different people, from graduate school at NYU to internet to the dusty sands of White Sands testing ground, take the proved concepts from various sources and build their own version in the race againest time, each other, and the NASA to be the first private ship into low earth orbit. Everythng is here, ambition, passion, coruption, power struggle, friendship, joy of challenge and romance. Romance is the emotion that engerize this novel, romance of freedom, of space and of love.

Book Description

Clarence King (born 1842) of Rhode Island rode horseback across the continent in 1863. In California, he was hired to work on Whitney's geological survey of the state, beginning the adventures recorded in this book. Includes ascents of Mount Tyndall, Mount Shasta, and Mount Whitney; survey of Yosemite Valley; and field trips in the Merced Valley as well as anecdotes of the mountains' people and natural history.

Customer Reviews:

Bold Tales, Well Told.......2007-03-30

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is essential reading for anyone who both loves those mountains and wants to get a glimpse of life there before it reached the level of settlement it has today. Whether or not all the stories here are strictly factual, they are often both gripping and entertaining. Additionally, they bring the reader some sense of what rural central California life was like at that time.
Clarence King was a gifted wordsmith. His hilarious, politically incorrect descriptions of western characters are reminiscent of some of the best incisive commentary of Mark Twain. Then his descriptions of climbing in the mountains are so intense that you may even wince as you are carried along as he describes some of the most hair-raising brushes with death. Those who have been where King describes will certainly feel what King has written as they read along.
One reviewer, though entertained, seems to doubt what King says. I don't. Though there may be a little hyperbole in King's description of events, the reader should remember that at that time the average guy was far more physically fit than the average guy today. You had to be or you didn't make it, because every day in the wilderness was fraught with challenge and physical danger.
All in all, you could say that this book is a collection of bold tales well told. I particularly like the stories of his crossing the desert coming to California, of the hog farmers, of his escape from determined bandits, of his ultimate conquest of Mt Whitney, and of all the colorful characters he meets in his path both in the Sierras and at Shasta.
And though some might take him for a bigot because of some of his comments about the natives, remember that he saves the sharpest point of his pen for the most worthless characters of his own stock who abound in the California of his day. Whatever you think about what King has written, once you pick this up you'll find it hard to put down until you've finished the last paragraph.

Tall tales and true fables?.......2006-04-06

Clarence King sure knows how to tell a good story. Whether they are true stories, well that's for you to decide. But really, it doesn't matter. You'll read of him dangling from the edge of great cliffs and running from wild west bandits, all the while keeping the reader wondering how he'll ever live to tell the tale. Overall the book is a collection of stories by a man who loved the Sierra Nevada, for it vast wilderness was his playground.

Quite a storyteller--but not all told!!!.......2001-08-02

This classic work by one of the great yarn-spinners of all time includes some wonderful descriptive information about California places and people in the early 1860s and some gripping, heartstopping tales about King's own mountaineering exploits. Even in his early 20s, Clarence King was recognized for leaderhip and intellectual ability. He served with the Army Topographic Engineers on the survey of the Western United States along the 40th parallel and was an intimate of Henry Adams and his wife in their small social/intellectual circle in Washington D.C. (See Patricia O'Toole's "The Five of Hearts"). He established his national reputation for being a shrewd, practical man of science when he discovered and exposed a stock swindle based on salted ore and fraudulent assay samples when asked to evaluate a mining promotion in Colorado. "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada" is a non-chronological, semi-autobiographical reconstruction of some of King's time (circa 1862-63) with Josiah Whitney's Survey, commissioned by the State legislature to catalogue and evaluate California geologic and mineral resources. It is an entertaining and engrossing narration of one foolhardy, death-defying exploit after another. Like those of John Muir (another classic, albeit overrated talesman of the Range of Light), Clarence King's numerous renditions of his own hairsbreadth escapes from impossibly precarious positions by the power of luck, pluck and sheer physical prowess, while entertaining and enthralling, were made possible only by his own chronic rash foolhardiness, if not by tremendous powers of exaggeration. A better man was his fellow draft-dodger (the Civil War was going on back East all the while they were dancing around in the mountains of California, after all), William Brewer. Brewer served longer, harder and more responsibly than King in the Whitney Survey. Brewer also wrote a factually more thorough and reliable description of conditions in the young state of California in a series of letters home to his family in New England (collected as "Up and Down California"), with none of King's histrionics but just as entertaining in its own way. King's book does include some unique insights. One is his near-comic description of the "Piker" rubes (from Pike County, Missouri), rural folk residing in the foothills of the Southern San Joaquin Valley, which can be read as a precourser of all hilarious mountain folk descriptions, from Li'l Abner through the Beverley Hillbillies to Deliverance. But truth be told (rarely enough, one suspects), this book is mostly about the indefatigable King and his own personal exploits in the Southern Sierra. While King's literary talent was substantial, his writing (and indeed his entire public life and historic reputation) were seemingly unilluminated in any way by his own domestic arrangements. These included a life-long love relationship and common law marriage to a black woman, Ada, with whom he maintained a household including their several children. Not only did he keep the marriage secret from all of his prominent social contacts, but he kept his own notorious identity and true name a secret from his wife and children until just before he died. Still, under the constant strain of maintaining a double identity, he continued to support his family and maintained an exhausting schedule of international travel, geological consulting and writing until he died prematurely from consumption at the age of 59. (See Thurman Wilkins' "Clarence King"). You won't find any mention of King's real family anything King wrote for public consumption, or even for the consumption of his well-placed friends. Altogether, this book makes for a slightly less than satisfying cud to chew over, but it tastes pretty good the first time on the way down.

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A Must Have for True Game Hunters

Kill It & Grill it

More than just a cookbook

Reading This Book is a Meal in Itself

A one-of-a-kind cookbook

Kill It & Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish
Ted Nugent
Manufacturer: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Game | Meat, Poultry & Seafood | Cooking by Ingredient | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0895261642

Book Description

In this cookbook, Ted Nugent shares his favorite recipes for such exotic fare as wild boar, pheasant, buffalo, and venison. Kill It and Grill It is filled with hunting anecdotes, detailed instructions on cleaning and dressing your game, helpful hints for those new to hunting and cooking wild game, nutritional information, and of course, recipes.

Customer Reviews:

A Must Have for True Game Hunters.......2007-01-09

Very well written recipes and the stories are awesome - both Ted and Shemane's. This is a must have for the sportsman who enjoys the "spoils of his kill"

Kill It & Grill it .......2006-11-03

Book in excellent condition. Fast delivery. My son, the hunter, loved it.

More than just a cookbook.......2006-03-23

I bought this book mostly for the recipes. It is full of the "philosophy according to Ted" (which I love by the way). The book may leave you wanting more if all you want is a wild game cookbook. I do have to say that the recipes are excellent. My kids beg for the Deer Stroganoff. It is also one of my all-time favorite dishes to eat with the deer that I harvest. I have tried several recipes from the book and all were accurate and very tasty. Thanks to Uncle Ted for creating more than a cookbook - I read from it while I am cooking.

Reading This Book is a Meal in Itself.......2005-12-28

I don't hunt and haven't yet prepared big game dishes, but I'm always on the lookout for new recipes with which to expand my repertoire. This book made me resolve to take up cooking big game.

But I don't know if that's necessary. Ted's descriptions of preparing and eating big game are so savory, eating this book is like enjoying a multi-course big game meal!

A superbly-written cookbook. Ted Nugent is a very gifted writer; perhaps that is his true gift.

A one-of-a-kind cookbook.......2005-06-27

Love him or hate him, the rock & roll legend Ted Nugent is probably the most outspoken advocate for "blood sports" today. And when he turns to the domestic side of hunting -- the preparation and cooking of wild game meat -- you'll find it a lot harder to hate him because you'll love the dishes he prepares and the way he talks about them.

The attitude of this book is "Life is a BBQ" (a direct Nugent quote), and most of the 22 chapters are followed by one or more recipes. Underlying the cooking theme is Nugent's reverence for wildlife and his unapologetic explanation of what it takes for wildlife to thrive in the modern world. Nugent argues that habitat destruction, not the hunter, poses the greatest threat to wildlife; that the cruelty of nature offers no reason for man not to participate; that hunters are the greatest conservationists; and that wildlife is a renewable resource. These are truths that hunters should shout from the mountaintops.

Kill It & Grill It is worth having in your kitchen. It's a unique cookbook for sure.

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