The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma (Secret Weavers Series, Vol 10)

Amazon.com

Set in part during the elections that would eventually bring Violeta Chamorro to power, Nicaraguan author Rosario Aguilar's novel The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma jumps between two continents and several centuries as it follows the fortunes of seven very different women. One of these women, a young Nicaraguan journalist, provides the canvas upon which the others will appear as she roams the country in the company of her Spanish lover, collecting information for a novel about women in Nicaragua at the time of the Spanish conquest. Historical narrative juxtaposes against modern-day events to highlight Latin America's on-going struggle to integrate its old-world roots with new-world circumstances.

Though Ms. Aguilar does not consider herself a feminist writer, each of her seven novels has been concerned with the lives of women in Latin America. In The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma, she succeeds in reading between the lines of historical accounts, written by and about men, in order to imagine the lives of the women who, though never mentioned, were instrumental in settling the new world.

Book Description

a novel, Nicaragua, tr Edward Waters Hood

Customer Reviews:

A book about women as a subject and not an object........1998-05-20

It is a great book. For the first time somebody writes a book about women and refers to them as a subject and not as an object as is usual in male literature. This nicaraguan novelist has given this very important women a voice and a perspective in their deeds during the first fifty years of the Spanish Conquest of the New World.

Average customer rating:

The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma
Rosario; Hood, Edward W. Aguilar
Manufacturer: White Pine Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QXV910

Book Description

Fantasy books by authors from classic literature includes works of Johnathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Franz Kafka.

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-04

Moorcock and Cawthorn take a look at a list of books. The book itself is around 200 pages, which is basically a couple of pages of trivia, info, book summary and information for each of the 100 titles listed.

He starts with Jonathan Swift, and ends in De Camp Land, and others, by way of Merritt, Lovecraft, Howard, Poe, etc.

A reasonably flexible definition of fantasy, from Flatland to Black Magic.

Highly Useful and Informative.......2007-08-09

This book gives an excellent and well written overview of Fantasy, spanning stories from the inception of Fantsy thru recent entries. The
notes and reviews of individual books and authors are concise, interesting and informative. Anyone with an interest in Fantasy and/or classic period science fiction would almost certainly find this to be a highly enjoyable volume---like a good roadmap guide on a long trip, it helps show the way and gives valuable insight into the various attractions one might wish to visit!

A wonderful but poorly-titled book.......2003-08-17

Mr. Cawthorn and Mr. Moorcock do an excellent job of providing something of a running narrative of fantasy, highlighting books which jump-started notable genres such as Gothic, High Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, and Urban Fantasy.

That said, I think this book might have done better to not imitate its Newman/Jones horror counterpart, and be titled 'A History of Fantasy' or some such. There are a number of books which the two admit are absolutely dreadful reading (like the infamous Castle of Otranto) but have been included because of their importance to the genre.

Enjoy the reading, but don't take an inclusion as necessarily a sign of a book's quality.

An excellent overview of Fantasy novels from 1726 to 1987.......2001-02-20

Fantasy is much older than Science Fiction and is also much closer to classic literature. The 100 books reviewed here make this quite clear.

Fantasy books by authors from classic literature includes works of Johnathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Franz Kafka.

Fantasy books from familiar Fantasy authors include works of Tolkien, Mary Shelley, Lord Dunsany, William Morris, E.R. Burroughs, Fritz Lieber, Ursula K. LeGuin, and many others.

Each review tells about the author, the book, and its significance in Fantasy literature. This book is really an indispensible guide for Fantasy fans looking to find significant Fantasy literature from the earliest works to the contemporary.

The only major flaw in the book is the under-emphasis of Michael Morcook's works. Because Michael Moorcock is a co-author, the authors felt that his works should be de-emphasized as a matter of journalistic integrity. Too bad.

I think you will find this book much more helpful than Pringle's "Modern Fantasy" guide as Pringle's review only covers works since 1946--after so much of the world's innocence and romanticism had been lost.

huge, sublime.......1999-09-15

This book is indeed the book with everything. I was impressed with both the style and the plush storyline. The orgasmic pictures included were both cyntillating and stimulating.

Average customer rating:

should be called-best 100 horror books if you feel like digging very deep into the minds of the characters in them"
Well executed
a must-own for anyone who reads horror
Good list, no longer timely
A horror aficionado's guide to great reading!

Horror 100 Best Books
Stephen Jones , and Kim Newman
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0881844179

Amazon.com

First published in 1988, Horror: The 100 Best Books has remained the only book of its kind: a solid (and entertaining) annotated reading list spanning the range of horror fiction from the 16th to the 20th century. The device of asking 100 horror, fantasy,and science fiction writers to write about their favorite horror books might seem at first to capture an idiosyncratic sample, but through diplomacy and diligence, editors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman succeeded in obtaining short essays on most (if not all) of the well-known classics, as well as many more lesser-knowns that are well worth discovering. Readers who follow up on these recommendations will find tips about books by writers mostly known for other genres--such as Iain Banks, Robert Holdstock, Lisa Tuttle, and David Morrell.

Also valuable are write-ups on literary works not always acknowledged as horror, such as Kingsley Amis's The Green Man, Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, and John Gardner's Grendel. And the write-ups offer a fascinating peek into the minds of the contributors, who include just about all the top horror writers of the'60s-'80s. This 10th anniversary edition makes no changes in the list of 100 books, but updates the entries and includes a 9-page reading list of titles from 458 B.C. to 1997. --Fiona Webster

Customer Reviews:

should be called-best 100 horror books if you feel like digging very deep into the minds of the characters in them".......2007-09-22

crapcrapcrap. i mean come on-ok, this book is sometimes interesting but the books it cites and reviews are not scary. so far at this books suggestion i have read 1. haunting of hill house (decent but not real scary) 2. arabian nightmare-boring as sh%t 3. october country (while this book is the most interesting of the 3-and i still have not read most of it-but what i have read is not scary) and 4. the cellar-interesting to a point but still not scary and the ending is lame. it also mentions salems lot which i read before and wanted to shoot stephen king for being so unbelievably dull(but tried to overcome this by remembering that i loved the shining and rose madder). anyway, not a fan of this book so far.

Well executed.......2005-09-10

Such list books are often dull, patchy, or smug literary circle-jerks. This one dodges pretty much all the pitfalls to give something you can dip into, use as a shopping list, or read end-to-end as a history of the genre. Nothing will please everybody's taste (R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 'usual pedestrian flippancy' - how dare you sir!) but I don't think you'll come much closer than this. For both veterans and novices to the world of literary horror, this is highly a rewarding read.

a must-own for anyone who reads horror.......2005-07-30

I think the title of this review says it all. If you don't own this book, you don't love horror.

Good list, no longer timely.......2002-06-28

I have had a copy of this book since the early 90's and I come back to it often to read and re-read the comments given by the various authors on their favorite horror books. It is an interesting experience to be able to see, within these covers, the growth and evolution of horror, inspiring itself over and over to become the phenomenon of today. From The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (the first work chronologically) to Dark Feasts (the last, the book was printed in 1988), we get to see a veritable timeline of horror.

Lists of this sort are invariably subjective. The authors commissioned for this were asked to write about their favorite book, not to describe the best books so some great works are going to be left out. But it is an excellent starting point and this list (along with the Suggested Reading in the back) should keep any horror afficionado trembling for years to come.

A horror aficionado's guide to great reading!.......2001-08-23

This updated version of the 1988 Bram Stoker Award winner is appealing for several reasons. First, it's a modern classic in horror scholarship, a survey of horror literature spanning fifteen centuries, several genres, and a plethora of authors. Second, there's the thrill of reading great writers' thoughts about their favorite authors--Stephen King on Robert Marasco, Peter Straub on King, and Ed Bryant on Dan Simmons among others. Third, it's basically a big list of good books. The 100 entries combined with an extensive list of recommended titles (now updated through 1997) have enriched my reading for years. Plus, I'm always gratified when knowledgable people reel off their recommendations--their picks send me scurrying to used bookstores in search of new treasures.

In their introduction, Messrs. Jones and Newman express their hope that the book is "...informative and fun," also stating that it "should offer a guide for the relative newcomer to the subject, but also some meat for the veteran afficionado. We hope we've succeeded in giving a working overview of an often maligned field of literature." I, for one, think they've achieved their goal--Horror: 100 Best Books is a worthwhuile addition to library of any horror maven, a useful, entertaining work that belongs on the shelf next to books like King's Danse Macabre, Winter's Faces of Fear, Skal's The Horror Show and Wiater's Dark Thoughts on Writing.

Average customer rating:
Fantasy - The 100 Best Books

Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HK6926

Average customer rating:
Fantasy: The 100 Best Books.
James & Moorcock, Michael. CAWTHORNE
Manufacturer: NY: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UG1LK2

Average customer rating:

I owe a great deal to David Pringle

Pringle's Picks

Beware this title...

Not many like this

Great essays, questionable choices
Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels : An English-Language Selection, 1949-1984
David Pringle
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Classics | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Criticism & Theory | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
History & Criticism | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Literature | Bibliographies & Indexes | Publishing & Books | Reference | Subjects | Books
Science | Bibliographies & Indexes | Publishing & Books | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Fantasy: The 100 Best Books

Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia

ASIN: 0881842591

Customer Reviews:

I owe a great deal to David Pringle.......2007-05-25

Like many others, my idea of science fiction was Star Trek or Star Wars and I had never even heard of most of the novels in this book. I have now read about half the titles critiqued in this fine book and many are now some of my favorite novels of any genre. Pringle does an incredible job of including well known works and almost impossible to find works. But they are HIS favorites and very subjectively chosen. That is fine with me because, although I may not totally agree with each and every title, Ive enjoyed each novel he has recommended. I cannot say enough how vital this book has been for me as a science fiction fan.
I should also say that David Pringle is a tremendous writer. For a book like this, which is not necessarily meant to be read for enjoyment, that is rare. It is clear from the first sentence that this was a piece of work done with great care and attention.

Pringle's Picks.......2007-03-23

I wish this book had been titled, Science Fiction: MY favorite 100 novels. I can see what authors Mr. Pringle likes (Dick, Heinlein, Moorcock, to name a few) and what his taste in sci-fi is and can even probably determine his age, but objectively speaking (if I am in fact, being objective) I think a lot of novels that should have been in the top 100 were left off off his list. Of course we all have our opinions of what the best science fiction is, and if you like science fiction that usually means you love it and therefore probably have strong opinions, so if you find you share his tastes then this is the 100 for you.

I did get a few suggestions from it so it was somewhat helpful.

Beware this title..........2006-05-30

First of all, be cautioned that this list was not the result of some poll or grading system based on genre accolades...it is simply the opinion of David Pringle, one man who admits this point in the book's introduction. Although I do believe Pringle really knows the genre including gems like Bernard Wolfe's Limbo and Malzberg's Galaxies.
But there are some dogs here, given the time period. Harrison's Centauri Device is thirty years behind its time reading like a scientific romance pulp with stock characters and is extremely unimaginative for the time it projects. Ian Watson's Miracle Visitors is just poorly written, despite some keen parody of the American lifestyle. Which brings me to my biggest complaint, the decidedly British slant of this book. It also seems Pringle tried too hard to include female authors (there is a sudden burst toward the latter years). Some titles have merit -Russ' Female Man for instance- but Carter's Heroes and Villains is quite forgettable. The greatest strength of this book is the inclusion of many books that I enjoyed that are on the bubble of the genre- Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and William Golding's The Inheritors are two outstanding novels.

Find this book, find some titles you may not have sought out yourself and then see how others view those titles, not only Pringle. After all, there are plenty of ways to research these titles on the internet.

Not many like this.......2004-08-26

I suppose if you want to argue with the books that Pringle selects, you might give this 4 stars, but as far as what Pringle is trying to accomplish, I really haven't seen this book's equal. One of the biggest problems in reading s-f (or any genre fiction, I suppose) is that you have to wade through a lot of dreck in order to get to the good stuff.

Well, Pringle has selected a good beginning list of "the good stuff." He devote the same two pages to each book, and doesn't seem to favor one school of s-f over another, giving the volume as a whole a very balanced feel.

Lastly, a couple of caveats: first, the book does limit itself to the time frame listed in the title, beginning with Orwell's 1984 and ending with Gibson's Neuromancer; it would be interesting to read Pringle's thoughts on the last twenty years. Lastly, Pringle's reviews contain "spoilers;" as he's trying to write thoughtful mini-essays on the books in his list, he occasionally refers to specific plot twists while discussing them.

All in all, a very nice job.

Great essays, questionable choices.......2001-04-03

I liked the essays he writes, and the book is certainly to be valued. But... I have some serious disagreements with his choices (admittedly to be expected to some degree). To sum it up, too British and too depressing. I am not a fan of post-Holocaust novels, and he dishes them out in droves.

I will agree with other reviewers that there are some gems in here that I would have not read otherwise (Alfred Bester, Cordwainer Smith, Ian Watson, Russel Hoban), but there are some nasty ones as well.

For a bit more mainstream choices, I recommend finding those novels which won both the Hugo and the Nebula. You'll even find 5 of the 17 on Pringle's list.

Amazon.com

The Edgeworks are a 20-volume projected series containing classic works of the world's most honored fantasist. Under the author's direct supervision, each book now contains the revised, sometimes expanded versions of the previously published work, as well as lengthy new introductions. The series begins with Over the Edge (1970), a collection of short stories, and An Edge in My Voice (1985), a collection of essays. Both the stories and the essays are standard Ellison. In a word: brilliant. Ellison is one of the few writers on the planet whose own life is often more amazing than most of his fiction. Even though several of the stories are from the very beginning of the author's career, they are still quite effective. The essays (which first appeared in such diverse publications as Future Life, the L.A. Weekly and the Comics Journal in the early 1980s) speak of truths and lies as relevant today as they were then. --Stanley Wiater

Customer Reviews:

Good place to start with Ellison.......2002-04-19

This book is a great place to start with Ellison. You get two shining examples of each type of the writing he's known for: short-stories and essays. Collecting re-vamped versions of two of his classic books, you're treated to solid stories (though better stories eixst, these are fine to dabble in) and probably his best collection of non-fiction essays/editorials in one place. Some of the references may seem a little dated, but the ideas...ah, the ideas.

Incredible, smart collection for the open-minded.

Great Collection.......2000-08-25

So far there have been four volumes of Harlan Ellison's series of books EDGEWORKS books. Which is an attempt at a complete collection of Ellison's work, I believe. So far it is very good. I have greatly enjoyed each of the four volumes that have been released. I am looking forward to the other 16 volumes as well. Right now, they appear to be on-hold due to publisher concerns or some such. As soon as Ellison and a publisher get this all squared away, the better for all us folks who want to read them will be.

This first volume includes a lot of non-fiction essay's Ellison wrote over the years. In them, Ellison leans into everything he considers wrong with modern society. Because of this, if you are new to Ellison, you may be easily offended. But don't worry, he isn't doing it on purpuse, he just doesn't care if he offends you. He would rather tell the truth as he sees it than worry about hurting somebody's feelings.

Ellison is a very refreshing take in modern America, where Republicans and Democrats have decided that the only difference worth noting between the partys is who is in power at that moment.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Ellison is also one of the great writers in the modern United States.

This book is great........2000-06-08

Harlan Ellison is a credit to his species. This book contains a number of his short stories and essays were he attacks all that is evil in society. But beware this book will probably also offend many people. If you think gun control is simply a matter of using two hands or if believe that Jesus would not have wanted us to give up the Panama Canal then this book is likely to bother you. But that is what is so wonderful about Ellison, he makes you think. He invigorates the brain cells that atrophied from watching too many episodes of the Brady Bunch or Star search. Order this book immediately. "God reads Harlan Ellison and so should you."

Masterful rants from the angriest man in science fiction........1999-03-16

Edgeworks 1 is a hybrid of Ellison's terse, punchy short stories and even punchier essays. While I'm a fan of science-fiction literature, I'll confess that I'm not terribly enamoured of most of Ellison's fiction; my main interest in this (and other volumes of his work) is the essays. Ellison's rants are scintillating and blindingly caustic-- they simultaneously make me convulse with laughter and fill me with righteous indignation at the world. "Xenogenesis", his extensive analysis of the very worst of science fiction fandom, is worth the price of the volume by itself. Ignore the typos, this one's pure gold.

An Edge on My Mind.......1998-07-08

Woah. I must be denser than concrete because all I noticed was the great writing Ellison puts on the page. The articles I found to be thought provoking in the extreme. If Ellison is a "crazy uncle" than he's one who's fought the good fight against the evils of society so long he needs throwing in the booby hatch. "Xenogensis" is the scariest essay on the issue of Sci-Fi (and I use the term cynically. I hate that phrase) fandom I've ever come across in twenty years of reading. Now thats not to say all of the essays are grand and stimulating. Rereading the book I often find myself skipping his more dated pieces. But despite what you may think of the man, you have to admit this: he's passionate about the work, and he'll dare anything SAY anything to make you feel SOMETHING about issues you'd rather just slink away from. He's got guts, and his articles show it. I'm a bit new to Ellison (I've only the first 4 edgeworks books) but from what I've read the man has passion. Reccomended. END

Average customer rating:

Botti and sole

Well worth it!

Italian Wine Guide

Stuff This in a Stocking--Subito!

Vino Italiano Buying Guide: The Ultimate Quick Reference to the Great Wines of Italy
Joseph Bastianich , and David Lynch
Manufacturer: Clarkson Potter
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Spirits | Drinks & Beverages | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Wine & Winemaking | Wine | Drinks & Beverages | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Consumer Guides | Reference | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy

The Italian Wine Guide: The Definitive Guide to Touring, Sourcing, and Tasting (Dolce Vita)

Italian Wines 2006: A Guide to the World of Italian Wine for Experts a (Italian Wines)

Italian Wines 2007: A Guide to the World of Italian Wine for Experts and Wine Lovers (Italian Wines)

Authentic Tuscany (Authentic Italy)

ASIN: 1400052874
Release Date: 2004-11-16

Book Description

From the Barolos of Piedmont to the Brunellos of Tuscany, Italian wines offer an incredible range of tempting choices. But how can you be sure to find the right bottle? In this pocket-sized buying guide—the companion to the award-winning Vino Italiano—Italian wine experts Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch show you the way, with vibrant descriptions and authoritative information.

•Profiles of a wide range of Italy’s leading wine producers and their best and most accessible wines

•Facts on availability, pricing, and even dining and accommodations

•At-a-glance symbols for rising stars, great values, and truly exceptional wineries

•An Italian wine-label decoder

•Ratings for recent vintages

•Extensive appendixes with detailed information about wine regions and classifications

•A Barolo and Barbaresco vineyard guide for aficionados

Customer Reviews:

Botti and sole.......2007-07-29

Can it really be almost 5 years since I wrote a review of Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy, the original work that gave birth to this line extension? That was near the beginning of a Potter-like quest to learn as much as I could about Italian wines. And though I've been at it diligently (after all it's not my day job and it has a tendency to interfere with my day job), I still feel like I'm merely up to my ankles in the juice with a long way to go before complete immersion occurs.

As we'll explore, I think the proper way to review this book is to compare it both to Vino Italiano, so you see in what way it differs from its parent, but also the incomparable and indispensable Gambero Rosso Guide, which appears quietly in the bibliography. To save space and keystrokes, from now on I'll refer to the subject of this review as VIBG.

VIBG is a more or less pocket-sized review of Italian wine producers whose wines are available in the US. It is organized as an alphabetical list, with comments ranging from brief Hugh Johnson Pocket Guide to Wine-type descriptions to a longer entry for a heavyweight like Gaja. I'm going to devote the rest of this paragraph to the organizing schema because it's integral to your ability to use the book. It `s no easy task deciding on taxonomy for Italian wine producers. I'm telling you from experience, VIBG should receive a medal for making it easy to find the winery/wine you're looking for. Their choice to strip away all the Azienda Agricolas, but keep the Tenute, Podere, Fattoria and Castello nomenclature before alphabetizing is the most rational approach I've ever encountered and truly makes it possible to thumb through the book and reliably find what you're looking for, especially with the safety net of extensive cross-indexing (By the way, this is also the only book on Italian wines I've seen that actually defines what each of those terms above means.) Anybody who has read one of my Gambero Rosso reviews knows how frustrating it can be to use that book, which is organized by region and by town so that you have to first know which town a producer is located in to find their listing. I think another reviewer pointed out that VIBG does not group by regions, so it cannot be used to survey Umbria for example, and find all the wineries there if you are planning an Umbrian menu or a trip. That's a shortcoming that could be addressed with a regional cross-index, but you'd still have to flip alphabetically back through the book to find each individual entry. The point of all of this is there are two basic use cases for getting value out of VIBG: (1) quickly locating a specific producer of interest, for example, while perusing a wine list or browsing in a retail store or (2) randomly flipping through the pages to read comments on producers you already know or might like to get to know in the future.

Since I effectively labeled the writers of the original Vino Italiano as geniuses when I first reviewed it, it would be disingenuous now to do anything but praise the accuracy and quality of their specific assessments here in VIBG. In fact, Vino Italiano has an index of 700 or so producers in the back, so I guess they decided to beef it up and convert it into a free-standing book of its own. Vino Italiano is too big to lug around, so the idea of a portable version makes sense. I didn't count `em all, but the authors state there are roughly a thousand producer reviews in VIBG, representing perhaps 10% of all Italian producers whose wines you could theoretically buy in Italy. The list here is culled as I mentioned earlier for commercial availability in the US and the premise is that if the producer is in the book at all, it's because they deserve to be. The one drawback is that you won't find mention of a terrific wine from one of the other 9000 producers who are not in the book that just got shipped to the US for the first time last week by a diligent importer.

Like many "pocket guides," each entry in VIBG is packed with information in addition to the brief descriptions of the producers and their best wines. Also included are the following details and ratings, where they apply: wine region; relative price; relative availability; overall quality (elite, premium, rising star, value); address, phone number, and website, if any; and whether or not it has a restaurant or accommodations on the property. All of this is quite useful if you're thinking about trying to visit a winery on a trip to Italy, though I didn't notice any warnings about whether specific places won't accept visits from consumers, as can sometimes happen (A bit of advice: even if they say no, persistence and enthusiasm have been known to overcome even hardcore policies about trade-only visits...).

Also of great value are the numerous little chapters and appendices crammed with useful information and fun facts. In VIBG you get: a guide to wine labels; principal grapes of each region; a very helpful list of about 250 tried and true wines to sample if you're looking for an introduction to a specific theme in Italy (e.g., "10 great indigenous whites"); a super vintage chart through 2003 that actually has ratings for sagrantino and taurasi among other age-worthy reds, something I've never seen before; listings and brief descriptions of what must be almost every grape grown in Italy, including the most obscure ones I've personally encountered like ansonica and barbarossa; all the DOC's and DOCG's; a guide to Barolo and Barbaresco with a breakdown of the single vineyard crus and the characteristics of each producer's style; and finally a glossary of Italian wine terms. In all of this the one thing missing is a comment on vintage variation and its impact on Italy overall or specific regions. 2002 was wet in many parts of Italy and only gets a "one star out of five" rating in Taurasi. Does that mean avoid at all costs?

In sum, this book is a truly useful extension of Vino Italiano with enough differentiation in content and format to make it well worth the purchase. Its only drawback is the inevitable result of the authors' decision to focus on the producer rather than individual wines. To do so requires them to depart from a formula that is familiar to Americans and may be hard for some to swallow, and that is the individual rating and scoring of specific wines by vintage, as you would find in the Wine Advocate or Spectator. But if you can set that prejudice aside and embrace the idea that a track record is generally worth believing in, you'll get a terrific and quite portable companion to enjoying the best Italian wines you can find here.

Well worth it!.......2006-10-25

This is a valuable companion to Bastianich and Lynch's book on Italian wines. It's small; we have taken it on our trips to Italy the last few years. Their reviews are succinct and informative, and not biased to the well-known vintners. We have especially liked finding what they call the "Rising Stars." We typically lookup the winery after we've had the wine -- and have found that we usually agree with their assessments of the product.

The listings can be frustrating occasionally. There is no index by regions, so one really can't use the book to plan visits to cantinas unless you already know the names. And we have found inconsistencies in how wineries are listed. For example, Stefano Farina is listed as "Farina, Stefano", but Donatella Cinelli Colombini is listed as "Donatella Cinelli Colombini." Addresses are also inconsistent, e.g., Colombini's address in Montalcino is listed, but there is no mention of her property near Trequanda where one can sample and buy wines in very charming surroundings. Mention is made of Stefano Farina's "Le Bocce" label, but there are no assessments of the wines. And in a few cases, we haven't been able to locate a winery in the listing at all.

These shortcomings are minor compared to what the book does offer. If you have an interest in Italian wines this is definitely a book to own.

Italian Wine Guide.......2006-02-01

Great reference for Italian wines, either for use in the wine store or when traveling the Italian countryside. Small enough to carry with you yet packed with a lot of relevant information

Stuff This in a Stocking--Subito!.......2004-11-25

By Bill Marsano. Call this the perfect stocking-stuffer for wine buffs. The authors previously wrote the award-winning Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy, which I also recommend. It's confusing for many that the vast world of Italian wines frays into chaos at times--usually just when you think you've mastered it. Bastianich and Lynch manage to impose some order. The core of the book is the alpahabetical listing of wineries, to which a common-sense approach is applied. Italians are in love with long names. There is a town in Tuscany called San Macario in Piano di Ponte San Pietro; wineries, naturally, are often melodiously decorated with prefixes like Azienda Agricola and Azienda Viticoltura. The authors mercifully list such wineries under the principal part of the name. Thus Azienda Agricola Miani is under the M's. (I hope in future editions they will do the same with the innumerable wineries prefixed with Fattoria, Masseria or Castello.)

After you've found the winery you're looking for you also find crisp, accurate information on its wines, with a rough price-guide included.

There's lots of other useful stuff here: how to read a label, the meaning of DOC and DOCG, vintage charts and so on, but it's the big list of wineries (which doesn't skimp on Sicily, Sardinia and southern Italy, as some others do) that makes this book an excellent companion every time you head to your local wineshop.--Bill Marsano is an James Beard award winning wine-and-spirits writer.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books