Literary Aficionado

ANNIE

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:43:00 +0000

To live and die: the Vietnam 'Conflict' and its permutations

Review by Grady Harp

War and being on the frontline of war blisters the integument, grenades bodies, fractures the mind, alters the psyche permanently and breaks hearts. It changes people, not only the soldiers who are in combat, but also the support groups who offer medical care in the precarious Medevac stations and hospitals, the fraternal friends in the combat zone, and the family and loved ones back home. War is a cruel beast with no brain, only knee jerk responses. Ron Mahaffey knows this from his experience of serving with the US Army in Vietnam during the worst years from 1967 to 1969, and it is this visceral response of his personal losses and memories and bruises that inform every page of this novel, ANNIE. Though he creates fictional characters for his novel it seems very much based on his own experience as a combat soldier and the history of his personal life after Vietnam.

Novels about war are not easy to write or to read - post traumatic pain lingers. But Mahaffey writes in a very clear and candid and frank manner, and while he is able with words to mold a landscape or set a scene both in the war zone and in the US with accuracy, he never allows his prose to become flowery or extraneous. The cover photograph that forms the cover of the book is Mahaffey's own photo of Glenna Goodacre's sculpture, the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington DC, a work deeply influenced by the Pietà of Michelangelo, is an apt description of the theme of the novel - an army nurse holding the injured (or dead) body of a soldier, the victim of the Vietnam War.

Mahaffey opens his novel in medias res with Cody Miller on patrol in Vietnam, selecting the wrong path in an attempt to reach the safety of helicopter evacuation at the nearby LZ, a choice that leads to his close friend JJ's sustaining a crippling injury from a landmine. Of note, Cody is in love with an Army nurse Ann Wilson who is waiting to receive Cody and his patrol back at the Medevac hospital. Once the patrol is in out of immediate danger Cody and Annie feelings for each other intensify, but an explosion from VC incoming all but destroys the hospital and Cody falls on top of Annie to save her from harm. Cody is severely injured and is medevaced to a stateside hospital where for four months he is in a coma. When he awakens and is discharged, his depression, thinking that everyone about whom he cared was killed in the explosion that injured him, paralyses him emotionally and he simply wants to wander the wilderness. But of course discoveries happen and the story comes to a solid and tender conclusion. To tell more would diminish the impact of Mahaffey's book.

If there is a problem with Mahaffey's novel it is the manner in which flash forwards and flash backwards provide unnecessary bumps in the linearity of the story. Yes, that is a technique that in some ways mimics the manner in which past injuries alter memory, and the way combat soldiers deal with the stigma war imprints on the mind, but to carry that technique into describing the details of how Cody and Annie first met and the progressions of that relationship at times feels like wordy intrusions into the effects of the novel. But despite this (probably personal) response to his style, this is a book from a Vietnam vet that is a strong testimony that soldiers can heal despite the trauma of military experience, and at this juncture of time, such concepts are comforting to read.

Grady Harp, Amy 2013

TITLE: ANNIE
AUTHOR: RON MAHAFFEY
PUBLISHER: OUTSKIRTS PRESS
ISBN: 9781478711292

THE FRIEND FROM MEXICO

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:11:00 +0000

'Futility's enemy is life itself.'

Review by Grady Harp

The passion for Paragliding as author Apostolos Mavrothalassitis lead him on a bizarre journey that he has been able to recreate in this fascinating, surreal book. From the first pages we realize that something very strange is happening as our author attempts to make sense of the sensations and perceptions of being in an induced coma state. Writing such as this can only be compared to the writings of the magical realists such as Günter Grass, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Italo Calvino, John Fowles, Angela Carter, John Banville, Michel Tournier, Giannina Braschi, Willem Brakman, Jorge Luis Borges and Louis Ferron. The major difference between the school of magical realism writers and our author is the fact that Mavrothalassitis is writing `reality' rather than fiction: his story is as he remembered observing the world in a brain altered state while he was hospitalized following a collision in the air while paragliding In the 2009 World Championship in Mexico.

The Friend from Mexico is actually the reborn author who survived terrifying odds, multiple surgeries and an extended induced coma to control the pain and to allow the healing in immobilized status. He saw imaginary gypsies, observed strange rituals, had a `front seat' in the manner in which ICU staff talk and function when they think a patient is unconscious and unable to hear the conversations! That part is a bit shocking....

Not only are we privileged to take the journey from near death through the ICU process but we also are able to observe the `resurrection' of Mavrothalassitis and the response of his family to his episode. Then at the end of the book there are excellent portions where the physicians and surgeons who cared for him explain in detail the processes he went through - very enlightening.

This is a rare book, the manner in which it is written (short one or two sentence paragraphs spread over the pages like random thoughts) adds greatly to the reader's response to the tale. He shows use that giving up is not an option and that message pours out of every page. And to prove his point even further, we discover that despite being wheelchair bound he has managed to become a pilot: he is the first person with disabilities in Greece to get a pilot's license with a specially modified hands-only airplane! No, this is not the great novel of the decade, but in its own fashion it is even more. Much of the success of this book must be assigned to the translator David J. Horn: it is a masterful job well done!

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: THE FRIEND FROM MEXICO: A True Story of Surviving an Intensive Care Unit
AUTHOR: APOSTOLOS MAVROTHALASSITIS
PUBLISHER: CREATESPACE
ISBN: 9781481034913

NUDE MEN: From 1800 to the Present Day

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:30:00 +0000

The Decade of the Male Nude

Review by Grady Harp

The Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria has just presented a controversial exhibition titled NUDE MEN: From 1800 to the present day, and this very handsome book mirrors the substance of that exhibition. Though this time around it seems as though Europe is lagging a bit behind the US in quality publications that address the artists who have had the courage to painting the male nude both in contemporary times and historically (the popular quarterly art journal The Art of Man, the books Powerfully Beautiful, 100 Artists of the Male Figure, Eros & Adonis from Firehouse Publishing to name but a few), this museum exhibition garnered great publicity not only because of content but also because of the huge photograph of a reclining male nude that covered the entrance to the museum.

Including works of top-class artists the exhibition "nude men" spans the period from the Enlightenment in the 18th century until the present, supplemented by important reference works from ancient Egypt, Greek vase painting and works from the Renaissance. The exhibition and book show different artistic approaches to the subject, competing ideas of the ideal male model as well as changes in the concept of beauty, body image and values. Beginning with Ancient Greece as a standard and a pretense for later sexually explicit images, the exhibition then addresses the depiction of bathing men at the end of the 19th century. Another focus is on the nude self-portraits of the Expressionists Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl as well as the change in the perception of naked men after 1945. Some of the works on display and captured in this book include Albrecht Dürer, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Rodin, Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch, Giovanni Giacometti, Egon Schiele, Maria Lassnig, Andy Warhol, Alfred Hrdlicka, Günter Brus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Heimo Zobernig, Eugène Fredrik Jansson and others.

As one reviewer summed it up, `Thanks to loans from all over Europe, the exhibition "naked men" will offer an unprecedented overview of the depiction of male nudes. Starting with the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century, the presentation will focus mainly on the time around 1800, on tendencies of Salon Art, as well as on art around 1900 and after 1945. At the same time, the exhibition will also feature important reference works from ancient Egypt, examples of Greek vase painting and works from the Renaissance. Spanning two centuries, the presentation will show different artistic approaches to the subject, competing ideas of the ideal male model as well as changes in the concept of beauty, body image and values.'
Though the emphasis of the book is sharing images of the works that comprised the exhibition, the book it self is rich in information with essays and commentary by Elisabeth Leopold, Wolfgang Schmale, Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat, Michael Frapf, Thomas Röske, Diethard Leopold, Jonthan Weinberg, Elke Freitsch, Katharina Pewny, and Erich and Pia Kirchler. The plates are divided into a Prologue (The Long Tradition) and three foci: The power of Reason; Classicism and Enlightenment; Classical Modernism; After 1945. Short biographies of the artists are shared. This is a very rich and fine resource for all art lovers and for Europe it is a landmark book.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: NUDE MEN: FROM 1800 TO THE PRESENT DAY
AUTHOR: TOBIAS NATTER AND ELISABETH LEOPOLD, EDITORS
PUBLISHER: HIRMER/LEOPOLD MUSEUM
ISBN: 9783777458519

THE CLOCK OF LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:39:00 +0000

'Jason Lee, the clock of life is always tickin towards the funeral parlor'

Review by Grady Harp

`I mean, whatever you do, make sure you stay one step ahead of the second hand.' These are just some of the wise and wily words spoken by Uncle Mooks, our main character Jason Lee's Vietnam War veteran uncle, and this terrifically successful book is just brimming over with such bits of insight and wisdom and humor and a true taste of the Southern lingo. The theme of time ticks through every chapter and phrases such as `Time make the decision, not you' bounce off the page as little gems of writing that author Nancy Klann-Moren offers in this her first novel.

When we come across such polished skill as this novel demonstrates it is wise to look into the background of the author, and in doing so the following was found: `While traveling for my work in advertising and marketing, I began to write short fiction. That led to signing up for writing classes, writer's conferences and local workshops. The goal was to create unique stories told in a distinctive voice. My short stories evolved, and were my primary genre until the day I stood up in a workshop and read an excerpt. The instructor said, "What are you doing the next couple years, because what you wrote is a novel." I took up the challenge and produced the novel, "The Clock of Life." My collection of short stories is titled "Like The Flies On The Patio." I'm now working on a new novel tentatively titled "In Search of Doris." ' It is that kind of success when it catches up to a writer of such warmth and honesty that makes us want to eagerly follow her incipient career.

THE CLOCK OF LIFE opens in 1974 in Hadlee, Mississippi where we meet seven-year-old Jason Lee Rainey, a young lad whose best friend is an African American boy of the same age - Samuel Johnson. Jason Lee lives with Uncle Mooks and Mama (twins at birth) and we learn that his father was killed in Vietnam. In these facts - the South during the Civil Rights movement and the post Vietnam War era - lie all the intricacies of the tapestry the author has woven that the clock of history imposed on this country and us. It is a coming of age story but not only for our little hero: this is a coming of age story for a nation, a family, the rampant racism in the South, a revisiting of the lynchings and the loss of friends and loved ones, and the haunting memories of never having known a parent and the odyssey to finding that core of self that somehow in this setting is all the more poignant.

Share no more because the book unravels its tale so well. This is not only a fine read, this is an important novel by an important new voice in the art of blending fiction and fact and making sense of it all. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: THE CLOCK OF LIFE
AUTHOR: NANCY KLANN-MOREN
PUBLISHER: ANTHONY ANN BOOKS
ISBN: 9780988494411

THOREAU IN LOVE

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:20:00 +0000

The lost pages, the secret thoughts of Henry David Thoreau

Review by Grady Harp

John Schuyler Bishop has written a startlingly new and fine novel about one of America's icons, the brilliant thinker, writer, philosopher, environmentalist, abolitionist Thoreau. Bishop reconstructs Thoreau's 1843 six-month sojourn to New York from the 250 pages missing from Thoreau's diary written during that time and in doing so he has unveiled a splendid love story about a `love that dare not speak its name.' It is a wondrously entertaining and tender reconstruction of a missing segment of Thoreau's life and flows so naturally that THOREAU IN LOVE abruptly becomes a credible missing link for historians to address.

A bit of history from the encyclopedia before discussing this book: `Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book `Walden', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay `Civil Disobedience', an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown.

Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on Staten Island, and tutored the family sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative Horace Greeley. Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to do for most of his adult life. He rediscovered the process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire and bought in 1821 by relative Charles Dunbar. (The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, was patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795).'

It is this sojourn to New York, or rather to Staten Island, that Bishop addresses in his book. Bishop offers evidence that Thoreau had always had same sex inclinations as a young boy and into his college year when he roomed with an openly gay Stearns in college and had attractions to young men in Concord but forever resisted his inclinations because of the fear of discovery by the puritanical society, especially in Concord. But when he accepts a job with his idol Ralph Waldo Emerson's relative William Emerson and his disconsolate wife Susan in their home on Staten Island, he travels by boat with Susan and there he meets the 16 year old stunningly handsome sailor and Captain's Boy Ben Wickham and immediately there is a mutual attraction which by the end of the trip to Staten Island has blossomed into a profoundly memorable love affair.

Once separated form one another at Staten Island Henry attempts to adjust to his role as a tutor of the Emerson children while at the same time questioning his aching longing for Ben, deciding that would be no respectable life for a man who longs to be known for his writing. He dates women, seeks publication of his essays in New York, but all the time he writes love poems to Ben, writes and receives love letters with Ben, adjusts to the life on Staten Island, befriends a gay minister who is married - a situation Henry finds unacceptable - and finally receives Ben as a guest in this attic room in the Emerson household where the two spend a couple of weeks in bliss. But Henry's inability to be truthful about his sexual preferences and Ben's open acceptance of his own ultimately causes a separation. Ben leaves and when Henry searches New York for his lost love he discovers the futility of his affair and Ben by letter advises him to return to Concord to the woods that Henry loves so dearly - and in doing so Walden is born.

John Schuyler Bishop is a gifted writer, able to weave a story from chards of missing pages of a diary and connecting those poems and letters with Thoreau's own established inclinations in a manner that makes the great Henry David Thoreau far more interesting on a humanism level that ever before. How much of the story is rigid fact is really of no consequence: the elegant manner in which Bishop makes his case has created one of the strongest novels of the year. It breathes atmosphere, poetry, history, romance, and the incredible changes that fortunately are beginning to alter the manner in which same sex relationships are viewed. This is a magnificent book on many levels and Bishop deserves kudos and acknowledgment for opening a window into the life of the brilliant Thoreau.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: THOREAU IN LOVE
AUTHOR: JOHN SCHUYLER BISHOP
PUBLISHER: CREATESPACE
ISBN: 9781624887048

HERO: THE PAINTINGS OF ROBERT BISSELL

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:35:00 +0000

`Animals are good for thinking' Claude Lévi-Strauss

Review by Grady Harp

First and foremost, Robert Bissell is a very fine contemporary painter, a fact that may go unobserved due to the immediate emotional impact of his majestic paintings of animals in magical, at times surreal, yet always warmly heartwarming stories in paint. Yet the word `fine' here applies to his technical gifts - the way he handles paint, the intuitive correctness of his compositional concepts, the ever-engaging of the viewer's imagination of tracing that fine line between praise of the animal kingdom and anthropomorphism. Some may glance at the cover of this new, beautifully designed and published monograph and sense that it is about illustration, about a book for children - and yes, it is that, if `children' applies to the childlike wonder in each of us hopefully not completely bruised by the contemporary realities of the world. But it is much more.

Opening with a Preface from Bissell in which he eloquently shares the connection between his happenstance experience with a coyote in the wild, a sharing of isolated unencumbered encounters that forced him to appreciate the sameness of all living things. He also hails the importance of American mythologist Joseph Campbell on his work, the theme of this book being derived from Campbell's `The Hero with a Thousand Faces'. And Bissell adds, `This book presents my animal paintings over the past five years or so as stories that fit into a larger narration: our own journey as human beings, the callings we have, the quests we undertake, difficulties we share, helping hands that appear out of nowhere (it seems), and finally the elations and conclusions we all have in common.'

There is a fine biographical introduction written by Carl Little who follows Bissell's journey from his birth in England, the traumas and accomplishments of his early years, and his eventual migration to and settling in the Pacific Coast of the US. It is that kind of biography that finds the meaningful moments in an artist's life that brings us into Bissell's mindset of today. Then the volume opens with the extraordinarily fine paintings of Robert Bissell, paintings that some may at first view as simplistic illustrations meant for decoration, but with continuous growing into these luminous masterworks the ideas and philosophies and, in the end, the elegant talent of the artist emerges.

The paintings are divided into ten Campbellesque categories: Genesis/Birth, Vision/The Calling, Journey/Setting Out, Crossing/The Threshold, Test/Te Trial, Initiation/Receiving Advice, Oracle/The Helper, Apotheosis/Divine Knowledge, Return/Embrace, and Elixir/Blessing. Filling these pages are the wondrous larger than life animals of Bissell's creation - animals singly and with butterflies, animals in flocks, animals in majestically beautiful landscape paintings, and animals in encounters with shadows of holy men. In order to understand and appreciate what Bissell has been and continues to create can only be grasped by adding this book to your Fine Art library. This book is a bonafide treasure for the eye and the mind and the soul. Highly Recommended on every level.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: HERO: THE PAINTINGS OF ROBERT BISSELL
AUTHORS: ROBERT BISSELL, CARL LITTLE
PUBLISHER: POMEGRANATE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
ISBN: 9780764964565

ELEGY OWED

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:52:00 +0000

Musings on death and loss and aspects of enduring

Review by Grady Harp

Bob Hicok surprises us on every page of this latest collection of his poems. He deals with death and mourning in his own language, his own perspective and the result is some of the more initially tough and yet beautifully constructed poems we are finding at the moment. Some background: Bob Hicok is an American poet, born in 1960. He currently is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech. He is from Michigan and before teaching owned and ran a successful automotive die design business. Gritty, complicated, and earnest, Elegy Owed breaks--then salvages--the rules for mourning. While poet Bob Hicok remembers the departed as ephemera or skin cells, fog is invited to tea and the beauty of dandelion fluff is held for ransom. Hicok's language is so humid with expectation and fearlessness that his poems create a clandestine manual to survival.

According to the Poetry Foundation, `Hicok's poetry is known for its accessible, meditative style. Narrative and associational, his poems are at once funny and wry, poignant and silly, smart and sad: they offer varied portraits of the lives and stories of working people, violence, pop culture, unexpected beauty, and trenchant observations on human nature. Over the course of his career, Hicok has evolved into one of contemporary poetry's most popular poets.'

Some examples of Hicok's poetry follow:

THE ORDER OF THINGS

Then I stopped hearing from you. Then I thought
I was Beethoven's cochlear implant. Then I listened
to deafness. Then I tacked a whisper
to the bulletin board. Then I liked dandelions
best in their afro stage. Then a breeze
held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one
throws a Molotov cocktail better
than a Buddhist monk...

from NOTES FOR A TIME CAPSULE

The word terror
I'll bury the word terror
to be free of the word terror......
If terror is said
seven times in a row, it loses meaning becomes
humdrum, a mere timpani of ear.
If terror is said seven hundred
thousand million trillion times, I am being raped
by a word.

ODE TO ONGOING

I'm driving along,
or painting a board or wondering
if we love animals because we can't talk with them
more intimately that we can't talk with God
and the whole time there's this background hum
of sex and devotion and fear, people telling
good-night stories or leaving their babies
in dumpsters but mostly working hard
to feed the future what it needs to grow strong
and prefer sweet over sour, consonance
to dissonance, to be the only creatures who notice
the stars or at least use them metaphorically
to go on and on about the longing we harbor
in such tiny spaces relative to the extent
of our dread that we're in this all alone.

This is a book of powerful, exquisitely crafted poetry, poems that we can't ignore if we are to find a meaning to existence when all else is contradicting our attempts at positive thoughts. Bob Hicok is a major poet.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: ELEGY OWED
AUTHOR: BOB HICOK
PUBLISHER: COPPER CANYON PRESS
ISBN: 9781556594366

IMMORTALITY

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:18:00 +0000

A marriage of art and words: Introducing a mature craftsman

Review by Grady Harp

So much of what IMMORTALITY: Meditations on the beauty of this finite life is right in front of us, on the cover, in the art - which happens also to be the work of the writer (Josh Barkey is an accomplished satirical painter and draughtsman with gifts that have only begun to gestate): a man/boy sits on the edge of a high cliff, head bowed in frustration, while in one hand he holds a string attached to a floating anvil (in his original art the floating anvil includes a paused riding butterfly) - inconsistencies, dissonances, paradoxes, and a touch of madness.

What happens in this little miracle of a debut is the discovery of Josh Barkey, a young imaginative iconoclast who has such a fine way with words that each of these twenty two stories - in some ways related to the fact that despite the bumps in the road, the fleeting moments of incivility, the occasional kick to the gonads - is another way of affirming that Life is beautiful.

In his initial title story (which feels more than a bit autobiographical) about two immigrants from Peru who find work in Vancouver planting trees: `Something about it clicked for Joey...The raw, unmitigated communion with the wild woods. The daily battle against the land, the sky, and most of all, himself. It was like he was born to put trees in the ground. Joey sank into that world. He `became' planting.' Something about the strange occupation, the words, the comma placement makes us think there is joy here. But as is so often the manner in which Barkey opens a story, the real message is in the first sentence: `Nobody ever blamed me for it, but love can kill you just as quick as anything. He [Joey] was there, after all, because of me.'

His topics range, from a very strange reunion of old friends in `A Thinly-Veiled Gray', a very brief but pungent story `The Hookup' in which a farming culture family is given a computer - and that changes everything about destiny, in `Perspective' the process of dying (`death always comes as an ugly lonely lie') is explored and includes the life of a lizard, a kestrel's movements, and God, and in `When Twice Again They Died' we follow the path of a teddy bear Paddy passed from first boy owner to next boy owner that speaks volumes about father son relationships. And Barkey can even write himself into a corner, obviously: in `Thurman Bellwether and the Morning Paper' he ends a rather impossible story with a courtroom statement in which our main character states `I have been thinking, your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Thinking deep, and hard. And you know what? I have concluded that all of this is happening to me because of a man named Joshua Lawrence Barkey. And do you know what else? I don't believe he exists. In fact, this story is OVER!'

How many authors can get away with that? That, among countless other reasons, is why it is so fine to meet Josh Barkey, a model-handsome, witty, wholly artistic and yet down to earth philosopher. Catch him on his video, look at his paintings and drawings, and then step back into this very fine collection of short stories and soak them up again. This, fellow readers, is a gifted man! Watch him grow.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: IMMORTALITY
AUTHOR: JOSH BARKEY
PUBLISHER: Self Published
ISBN: 978148261174

TEMPLE OF A THOUSAND FACES

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Fri, 03 May 2013 20:28:00 +0000

No matter where he takes us, he gives us a rich story

Review by Grady Harp

John Shors travels. That fact is certain. Not only does he travel to the exotic places from which his intricate and exhilarating novels are seeded, but he obviously travels to the libraries that hold the compendium of historical data with which he embroiders his tales. This is his seventh novel, and with each new novel his maturity as an artist grows.

The dependable factor in owning and reading a John Shors book is that in addition to weaving a fascinating story that includes all facets of human relationships, the reader will learn facts from history that sadly are not readily available in our schools. Take this current novel - TEMPLE OF A THOUSAND FACES - for example: in this hefty but fast reading book he explores the history of Cambodia, the building of Angkor Wat (believed to be the largest religious structure in the world), the geography of Southeast Asia in the 12th century which incidentally includes the warring nation of the novel, Cham, as the progenitor for the current country of Vietnam and Siam as the current Thailand, insights into the cultures of the various countries of the region - including clothing, food, manner of battle, royalty, lineage, etc.

Shor's technique of storytelling is to firmly establish place before beginning his novel, and in this book he opens the first chapter in `Angkor, Late monsoon Season, 1177' with a history of the temple of Angkor Wat and the manner in which it was built, a careful description of its towers and structure of sandstone (apparently 40 years in the making) and references to the God Vishnu. Gradually he adds his characters and leads us into the incipient war between the Khymer and the Cham, carefully sculpting his heroic lovers so that they become visible. From there the story not only sweeps us away with the passion that leaps from the pages but also maintains a vantage of offering decisions on the part of the reader as to what is right and wrong, just and unjust, worthy and unworthy.

Much of the joy of reading John Shor's books is that experience of entering an unknown era and learning more about another time and another culture while reveling in the major themes of the story. To summarize the plot would take pages. It is enough to say that this book, along with all of John Shor's novels, is richly rewarding. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: TEMPLE OF A THOUSAND FACES
AUTHOR: JOHN SHORS
PUBLISHER: NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
ISBN: 9780451239174

THE FEMALE GAZE

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:36:00 +0000

A long overdue major museum exhibition of art by women

Review by Grady Harp

There are several approaches to evaluating this very well designed, well written, well documented, extravagantly illustrated book that serves as a catalogue for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition of art by women. Some will shout `Bravo! - it is about time women artists were honored in such a manner, others will say that other museums in this country and in Europe have already curated such an exhibition, others will say that too many important artists were not included, and still others would say that presenting the art by women artists makes them appear as a subgroup of real art - that women and men together in an exhibition that perhaps honors women's role in the arts would be more dignified. And each stance deserves respect and credibility.

But there is an important factor in this exhibition and catalogue THE FEMALE GAZE. The actual exhibition honors an inspired addition to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' venerable holdings. Collector, philanthropist, and artist Linda Lee Alter has donated over 500 works in every style and medium imaginable. Alter began collecting art by women in the mid 1980s after finding a dearth of female artists represented in museums and galleries. She collected a variety of art in different styles and media. This collection, along with PAFA's existing collection, which many critics have praised as having a 200-year history of justly exhibiting art by women, makes this exhibition of rather singular importance. The works in this exhibition catalogue may be all by women artists but the label ends there: the art here includes works from the schools as follows: abstract, representational, conceptual; personal and political; militant and conventional; academic and outsider.

The book opens with an erudite introduction by Robert Cozzolino, Senior Curator an Curator of Modern Art, an informative essay by Diane Burko about the artist and donor Linda Lee Alter, an extended conversation between Cozzolino and Alter, and essays by Anna Havermann, Janine Mileaf, Melanie Anne Herzog, Anna C. Chave, Joanna Garner-Huggett, Jodi Throckmorton, Glenn Adamson, Michele Wallace and more by Robert Cozzolino. These very readable and informative essays cover the many aspects of women in art including feminism, breaking racial barriers and gender barriers, and in general, a solid history of art In America which now finally includes, automatically, art by women!

Then the feast begins. Included on this succulent volume are the works of well-known women artists as well as women artists too early forgotten and those yet to gain international acclaim. The effect is staggering in the way the book is designed and with the high quality of color reproductions of the art on display. Each artist in this collection is honored with a brief biography and image assembled by Mey-Yen Moriuchi. The front cover of the book is a reproduction of Judith Taylor's mysterious `Conversation and Laments: Promenade' and the back cover is a luminous reproduction of the immensely gifted painter Jacquelyn McBain - `St. Joan of Arc Burned as a Witch and Herbalist'. These two works set the tone for this very rich book on the importance of women in art. While there are artists of great importance, other women artists who are not included, the representation here is an investment in ideology and history, and the book itself is an artwork!

Grady Harp, May 2013

TITLE: THE FEMALE GAZE: Women Artists Making Their World
AUTHOR: ROBERT COZZOLINO ET AL
PUBLISHER: HUDSON HILSS PRESS
ISBN: 9781555953898

SOUND IDEAS

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Wed, 01 May 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Why poetry is different than prose and other revelations

Review by Grady Harp

For those who love reading poetry and for those who write poetry this genuinely exhilarating book simply belongs in your libraries and in your minds. B. Eugene McCarthy and Fran Quinn have created an entry hall into the special chamber where poetry lives in this warmly illustrative book that invites us to approach poems in a more advanced method of appreciation.

The primary point made here is that poetry must be heard, must be read aloud or memorized and recited to truly attain the reasons for placing the words on the page in the manner that defines a `poem'. Both authors are embedded in a passion for poetry - writing poetry themselves and teaching classes on the art - and that sort of ambiance is palpable throughout the book. To familiarize the reader with what is in this book, in the introduction they state the following: `Reading a poem on a page is a different process from listening to it, and speaking that poem is yet another kind of process....Our intent with this book is to show ways that we can move a poem off the page, which is where we usually address a poem, and `listen' to it, `speak' it...A poem is made up of lines. It is thus different, and looks different, on the page, from prose, which is made up of sentences and paragraphs, Our first principle about poems is to respect the integrity of the line....One consequence of learning to hear lines is that we hear words in a fresh way; we hear their `sounds' and how their sounds contribute and change in conjunction with other sounds...etc'.

It is this caliber of respect, no - passion, for poetry that fills every page of this book. For brevity's sake, suffice it to say that the book is divided into chapters on Line, Sound, Rhythm, Meter, Imagery, Metaphor and Simile, Rhyme, Form, Allegory/Symbol/Allusion, and Memory. Each `lesson' is accompanied by examples from both well-known and less well known poets and we are asked to orally participate in the lessons - not a `task' because the information is so infectiously inviting that without requesting it the reader will read aloud much of this book.

I cannot imagine writing poems now without this book, so informative and warmly full of insights it is. Recommended for teachers at all levels (from early grade school through college and into graduate guidance), for anyone who basks in the glory of hearing a Shakespeare play, for those who are searching for confidence in writing nascent poems, for the experienced poet, and of course for those who love to read poetry. Thee are so many doors and windows here, courtesy of McCarthy and Quinn that for those who read this book the world of poetry will truly blossom. This is an exceptional book from Hobblebush Books.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: SOUND IDEAS : HEARING AND SPEAKING POETRY
AUTHORS: B. EUGENE McCARTHY and FRAN QUINN
PUBLISHER: HOBBLEBUSH BOOKS
ISBN: 9780984592197

VIVA LAUGHTER!

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:39:00 +0000

Just what the doctor ordered!

Review by Grady Harp

Shakespeare may have coined `If music be the food of love, play on' in Twelfth Night, but Woody Allen offered `I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose' - one quote eloquent and rhapsodic, the other, well the other one applies to this exceptionally funny book by Patrick Shannon. Humor is a strange subject. We are barraged by stand up comedians who go for the fast giggle or guffaw; we are entertained by slowly unwinding novels that keep humor as the thread of connection. But then along comes Patrick Shannon with a book full of stories, short and long, that go where humor is supposed to take us - laughing at our own embarrassing foibles as they relate to other peoples stories and the result is laughter from the gut.

This review read his previous book and reported the following: `Patrick Shannon in his LETTERS FROM WHEATFIELD walks that fine line between gentle humor and parody. And in this instance he comes out on the top of the heap.... It is this honest tenderness, the non-judgmental flow with which Shannon pulls off this delightful glance into the heart of this country. Smacks a bit of Mark Twain - humorous, tongue in cheek honest, and entertaining.' All that holds true in referencing this current volume VIVA LAUGHTER!, but this time instead of his examining the heartland of America he ventures out a bit and the stories are even more successful.

He opens this collection with a treasure - `A Tissue of Lies' in which we get a glimpse of how the intelligence agencies work when they assign a dyslexic Davood Talasazan on a Code Decipherment mission. Then a bit later we are treated to a re-thought biblical account of the Old Testament in the `Secrets of the Dead Fish Scrolls' and, hold nothing sacred, he later offers `William Shakespeare The Early Years' with a toss at three blind mice and Rambo and Juliet. Then of course US politics takes the brunt in `The Radical Right's Worst Nightmare' with Wolf Blitzer and Karl Rove and the Kopfschrinker Clinic as the key elements.

The stories vary in length - depending on how stable and exercised you abdominal muscles engaged in laughing can tolerate. But there are a couple of quickies at books end - `My Bucket List' (a brilliant salute to the aging mind) and `Life Trip' which shouldn't be shared as to theme: save that for private glee. This is a volume of stories to read and read again and share. `Laughter is the best medicine' - I'm sure Somebody said that...

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: VIVA LAUGHTER!
AUTHOR: PATRICK SHANNON
PUBLISHER: OUTSKIRTS PRESS
ISBN: 9781478711025

THESE THINGS HAPPEN

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:56:00 +0000

Now and then along comes a candidate for the Great American Novel

Review by Grady Harp

A very odd thing happens when reading Richard Kramer's utterly brilliant novel THESE THINGS HAPPEN: after reading each page there is a reluctance to turn to the next one, as though doing so just might let all the little wonders of the story, the characters, the words, the ideas, the wholly original manner of intermingling the spoken word tattooed into fragments of thought processes or descriptions of place evaporate. But of course they don't and by the end of the first chapter the reader realizes that every page is just as unique and satisfying, allowing these little technical bits of magic to flutter around the atmosphere as we grow into the story itself.

And what a way to make that story! Kramer's tale is a poignant one: Wesley is a bright young sophomore in high school who is living with his father Kenny and Kenny's life partner (it takes a full book to finally come to a name for their relationship) George in an apartment above the little New York City theater district restaurant that George owns (with Kenny). Wesley's parents are divorced and his mother Lola has remarried an ophthalmologist Ben and Wesley has been living with Lola and Ben until it was decided that Wesley and Kenny needed to nurture their father son relationship. George, a wondrous character this George, comes from a theater background and lives in that world psychologically much of the time. He is close to Wesley and bonds more with the boy than Kenny does.

The turning point of the story comes when Wesley's best friend Theo wins an election in school and abruptly announces to the audience that he is gay. Wesley is a bit surprised but accepting and the two boys wonder is being gay a choice and when and how do you `discover' you're gay? The boys decide that the question should be posed to Wesley's father and his lover since they are very comfortably gay - or are they? Kenny is a major legal figure in the Gay Rights movement and George is not secretive about his theatrical/domestic/culinary existence. But when the question is posed, neither Kenny nor George knows how to respond. And then tragedy happen: Wesley and Theo are victims of a gay bashing, a factor that draws Lola and Ben into the arena with Kenny and George and from there the remainder of the story dissects the lives and thoughts of these characters who discover aspects of their philosophies and feelings about each other in a manner that can only be termed transcendent.

Each chapter is named for one of the characters - Wesley, George, Kenny, Lola, Ben, Theo and an insert from two sidebar characters Jerry and Lenny - and each of these chapters allows that named character to reveal his side of the story. In addition to writing one of the most touching and revealing novels about contemporary people and how we relate and communicate, Kramer inserts passages that are so perfectly sculpted they deserve sharing: George and Kenny - `We don't know each other; we never have. Knowing is the father of cherishing. It is where it begins, and ends, too. To allow that is the gift. And it has not, in this time, been given.' George says to Wesley "But all you need to do is `be, alive. Don't worry about `being' it." and `Time can afford to be lazy because it has nothing but time.' and from Kenny `But you press on; you can't turn away, you face the world not as you find it but as it finds you, because it will. Definitely use that, I think; it's the sort of statement by someone who will one day be assassinated.' and from Lola, `But I always know what I think, I have to; it matters to me. It's what civilized people do.'

But writing this note about Richard Kramer's gift of a book immediately feels ludicrous. Can anyone do justice in commenting on such a phenomenal achievement? Perhaps. But the only real joy will come in reading this book yourself, not once, but several times. If this novel is not selected for the major literary prizes of the year, this reader will be surprised. Think Jamie O'Neill's `At Swim, Two Boys', think Colm Tóibín's `Mothers and Sons' or `The Master.' No, just read Richard Kramer.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: THESE THINGS HAPPEN
AUTHOR: RICHARD KRAMER
PUBLISHER; UNBRIDLED BOOKS
ISBN: 9781609530891

“Just Who are the Djinn?”

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:22:00 +0000

The Djinn Connection

A review by Joey Madia

Exactly two years ago I reviewed The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies, a book co-authored by Guiley. This new companion book, subtitled “The Hidden Links between Djinn, Shadow People, ETs, Nephilim, Archons, Reptilians, and other Entities,” picks up where The Vengeful Djinn left off—with the possibility that the Djinn (often known by their Westernized name, genies) are more active than many researchers have believed, and, indeed, may often be mistaken for the types of entities listed in the subtitle.

Djinn, which appear throughout the Quran, are composed of “smokeless fire” and reside in a parallel dimension to ours. It is said that they are highly intelligent, ancient (they helped to build Solomon’s temple), and eager to take the Earth back from the human race, which has usurped it. I refer readers interested in the complex social classes and habits and behaviors of these mysterious entities to The Vengeful Djinn. This review will concern itself solely with the possibilities of overlap and mistaken identity explored by Guiley in The Djinn Connection (although the opening chapter of this new volume gives enough information to set a clear picture for the more casual reader).

Chapter 2 deals with the connection between Djinn and “Shadow People.” Having first-hand experience with many different types of entities, I have to say that “Shadow People”—in their cloaks and hats and with such secretive intentions—are the most frightening I have ever encountered. On a November night two years ago, while visiting a well-known paranormal site, my wife and I and our fellow investigators experienced in different ways the presence of a Shadow Person. This chapter contains a number of other first-hand accounts of people’s own stories of visits from these frightening, enigmatic entities.

Chapter 4, “The Fairy Connection,” is a must-read for anyone interested in the paranormal. Fairies are pervasive in cultures around the world, whether they be Native American, Middle Eastern, or the more well-known types that appear in the legends of the British Isles and throughout Celtic lore. Guiley looks at the similarities between not only Djinn and fairies but it is also in this chapter that she begins to consider ETs, UFOs, and abductions.

The study of UFO abductees and their scary tales of kidnapping, operations, experimentation, and decades of repeated harassment (often starting in childhood) are thoroughly explored in chapter 5 in relation to the Djinn. This is an area of rich debate. Are these hallucinations, brought on by our cultural inundation and fascination with science fiction and the legends of Area 51, alien grays, Dulce Base, and the like? Are they safety mechanisms to protect victims of childhood sexual abuse from facing a horrible secret? Where do books like Whitley Streiber’s Communion fit in? Is Streiber, a well-known horror novelist, cashing in on a cottage industry with what has turned into a series of books, or is his tale of aliens and abductions real?

Perhaps the abductions and experiments themselves are real, but the perpetrators are not extraterrestrial but ultraterrestrial or interdimensional, ideas put forth in the past by such paranormal luminaries as John Keel. Chapter 5 makes many excellent points leading to the possibility that it might indeed be Djinn. Drawing on the writings of Streiber, as well as David M. Jacobs and John E. Mack, Guiley takes us deep down into the rabbit hole, and when we emerge, Djinn cannot be ruled out as a possible explanation for what so many have experienced.

Chapters 7 and 8 are highlights of the book. Guiley is one of the foremost experts on Angelology in her field (I am currently reading her Encyclopedia of Angels) and her knowledge of Nephilim, Watchers, Angels, Archons, and the like is immense. Considering the considerable presence in the Quran of the Djinn, and the tales of Solomon, it is not a stretch to see the links between the angels of Light and those of Darkness. It certainly seems that the Djinn are also in myriad ways the model for the Christian idea of Satan. Those interested in Zecharia Sitchin’s theses regarding the Anunnaki (repopularized in recent years by History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series) will find a compelling case in chapter 8 for their connection with the Djinn.

Chapter 9, “Black Death and Black Magic,” considers everything from demonic elements of the Bubonic Plague (e.g., accompanying aerial phenomena, poison mists, and mysterious figures with hooded robes and magical staffs) to the Vril, and men such as Mesmer, Reich, and Crowley. The most unsettling pages of The Djinn Connection deal with political sorcery. Whether we consider the Nazi fascination with black magic, the whispered rumors that Eisenhower made a pact with the Reptilians in exchange for advanced technology after World War II, the unsettling images of corrupt politicians who have sold their souls to the “devil” in popular books and films (such as the Left Behind or Omen series), or the first-hand accounts by a Moroccan source of Guiley’s named Mahmoud, the idea that those in power are getting help from ultraterrestrial or interdimensional beings is more than enough to given one pause. Chapter 10, “Reptilians and Reptoids” just begins to break the surface of what might be going on and the aptly named chapter 11, “The Battle for Humanity,” furthers even more the case that there is certainly something larger and more “real” going on in the hidden places around us than most people are willing to seriously consider.

As always, Guiley delivers a balance of first-hand field experience, extensive interview material, impressive scholarship, invaluable cautions, and a writing style that is fluid and engaging.

Whether or not the Djinn are as pervasive in the countless encounters related by tens of thousands of people all over the world as Guiley’s work asks us to believe is impossible to gauge, but one thing is certain—something is going on, and the Djinn are almost certainly playing a large part.

Joey Madia, April 2013

TITLE: The Djinn Connection: The Hidden Links Between Djinn, Shadow People, ETs, Nephilim, Archons, Reptilians and Other Entities
AUTHOR: Rosemary Ellen Guiley
PUBLISHER: Visionary Living: New Milford, CT, 2013

ISBN: 9780985724337

A Human Portrait of the World's Most Perfect Woman

noreply@blogger.com (Literary Aficionado) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Review by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

Book review of The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. 2012. Scriber. New York. Theatrical debut of Toibin’s adaptation of the book opens on Broadway this Spring. Previews begin at the Walter Kerr Theater on March 26, opening April 22. Featuring Irish actress Fiona Shaw as the Virgin Mary.

Whether you are a Christian, a student of archetypal psychology, or a person who is simply curious about un-masking the myth of perfection, Colm Toibin’s compelling novella is for you. I doubt it is fare for fundamentalists, who would be horrified that this Mary doesn’t believe her son’s claims of divinity, but this seems a tragic irony. The very people who want to be closest to the Virgin Mary, would reject Toibin’s beautiful characterization as “heresy”.

Their loss. Surely, if these folks could hold their breaths, and delve into Toibin’s prose, they would feel their hearts open to the struggles of this older woman looking back on a hard life, alienated from her community, following the years when she lost her son on the cross.

Toibin enters the mind of a mother, and, like any human mom, she has known her son from birth, was skeptical of his self-made ministry, seeing clearly how influenced he was by those who needed him to be the God he is not.

If this has the flavor of the 1960’s Paul Newman film, Cool Hand Luke, the parallel is accurate. In that gritty tale, the inmates of a Southern chain gang came to idolize Luke, a rebel and a loner, projecting into him a hero status they could not aspire to on their own. In much the same way, Toibin’s Mary sees the apostles maneuvering the young Christ, inflating his ego, spreading tales of his miracles.

And yet, Toibin weaves a complex tale. As the stories of the miracles are told in flashback, Mary has no clear explanation for some of them. In the wedding scene she sees a vat of water which become wine – but was this slight of hand? She sees the “resurrected” Lazarus, but was he truly buried in the first place? She does what most mothers would do: love her son, tell him home truths, feel despair when he doesn’t listen to her, and struggle to survive his tragic choices she cannot prevent.

The Testament of Mary awakens a new version of the archetype mother goddess, and, for Christians, invites empathy for a woman who did not allow herself to be the victim. Toibin’s Mary sees the world and human nature with a discerning mind. She can have doubts, feel remorse, be cranky about getting old, question authority, and long for the babe she once held in her arms. There is great freedom in realizing you don’t have to be perfect, that your job is to be real and whole and flawed and alive on this earth, as she was.

Elizabeth Clark-Stern is a psychotherapist, playwright, and novelist in Seattle, Washington. You can learn more about her by visiting www.soulstories.net or her blog http://elizabethclarkstern.com/wordpress/

TITLE: THE TESTAMENT OF MARY

AUTHOR: COLM TOIBIN

PUBLISHER: SCRIBNER

ISBN: 9781451688382

THE REBORN BIBLE 2.0: The 2nd Coming Gospel of the American Rapture

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:45:00 +0000

Parody, Spoof, Farce, Satire, Political Pastiche - This is all of them

Review by Grady Harp

Doubtless there will be a huffing puffing offended group who will see the well-done cover of this book, or take note of the illustrations inside, or (heaven forbid) read a few segments and go one a tirade. But for those who having lived through the last few decades of our governmental transgressions and faux pas this irreverent book restaging the creation of the world with a different cast of characters (or actors posing as characters, or is that the same thing?) will light the fires of humor and let them shine brightly.

As Shakespeare knew well, recreating a story that reflects current condition placed in long ago times makes for a meaningful entertainment. THE REBORN BIBLE 2.0 is subtitled" "The 2nd Coming Gospel of the American Rapture and it peppers the stories of the Bible with a new cast; President Bush Sr. is Adam, Barbara Bush is Eve, President George W is Cain, Al Gore is Noah, Joe Liebermann is Moses, President Reagan is King Saul, President Jimmy Carter is Job, President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky are David & Bathsheba, and President Obama is Jesus. You get the picture.

David Comfort starts his Introduction as follows; `Before the Rapture, not everyone was happy. God had felt better himself. Early on, He had drowned everybody. Except Noah. Noah, a 600-year-old alcoholic, was good. But his kids, who reproduced the earth, were not good.' From there Comfort re-writes the bible as the New Old Testament with the Books of George, of W., of Al, of Sarah (Palin of course), of Ronnie, of Jimmy, and of Bill. And then comes the New New Testament with the Book of Obama and the Book of Joe. And it seems as though we may be headed for more.

Through the course of this hilarious (and at times all too true parody) we go through the various messes the government has been up to, and Comfort manages to include such an apparently disparate cast as Nancy Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Oliver North, Hillary, Michelle, JFK, Mitt Romney, Judge John Roberts, John Boehner, Jesse Jackson, Donald Trump, Steven Spielberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Geffen, Mahmoud Ahadinejad, Mike Bloomberg, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Obama, Rick Santorum - it is endless. The degree of astute observations Comfort makes in relating his tale gives us food for thought. It is always better to make a comedy out of a tragedy and David Comfort has done that hilariously well. Guaranteed to offend some, delight others.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: THE REBORN BIBLE 2.0
AUTHOR: DAVID COMFORT
PUBLISHER: DAVID COMFORT
ISBN: 9781483917245

MacTiernan's Bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:57:00 +0000

Ordinary people in rather extraordinary stories

Review by Grady Harp

The combination of psychiatrist and medical director for a community mental health center may seem like strange credentials for a man who is so very gifted in the art of writing short stories, but then think of some of the other physicians who have found voice in words, beginning with William Carlos Williams and on down the line. Many of the stories Michael Hopping shares in this delicious volume hint at the fact that he has worked in mental health: he reveals aspects of characters and the view of others surrounding the character of a story much the way a practitioner of tending the bruised mind would view the three dimensional aspects of someone sitting on the page in front of our eyes.

Hopping likes the less industrialized part of this country and his proximity to the surrounding zones of North Carolina come through strongly. He introduces us to common folks, people who go about their lives interacting with nature and with each other in a manner that seems foreign to big city folk. The language is splendid, even though Hopping wants us to see the simplicity (and at times the underlying complexity) of living outside the things of busyness.

Two excerpts from a brief story called `Grass' share this ability to be present in the outlying districts of a world to cluttered to care: 'I could sharpen the blade. It must be dull as Masterpiece Theater. OMG. OMG is Jake-speak for wow. Last summer he stayed with us to earn money for college. He and his dad weren't getting along. Jake agrees with me about Masterpiece Theater. He hid out in his bedroom with this laptop. Said he was doing homework. Never mind that he wasn't in school at the time. Transparent BS doesn't bother today's kids any more than it does politicians.' And later in this same story the voice is transferred to the wife who gives a different view of the husband: `Surprise. Of all the hurtful voices in the heart's choir, surprise gets my vote for most cruel. Whether it opens the show or slips up on me later, surprise adds its own torment to bad news. It strips away an innocence I didn't know I had. Nothing to do but weep and kiss it goodbye.'

Or later, in the story `The Painter of Kitsch', we read the following: ` Stability eluded him. Decades of manual labor, when he could get it, at last broke his strength. Only in the discard bin that the fortunate call retirement did he discover painting and, in art, consolation.' Simply, words placed like this throughout this little book of stories are enough to make you want to carry this book around with you to read again and again how simple and how touching life can be when someone like Michael Hopping shines a light on it. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: MacTiernan's Bottle
AUTHOR: MICHAEL HOPPING
PUBLISHER: PISGAH PRESS
ISBN: 9780615558387

REED'S HOMOPHONES: A COMPREHENSIVE BOOK OF SOUND-ALIKE WORDS

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:08:00 +0000

When Spell Check fails...Write the writ, I pray you

Review by Grady Harp

A.D. Reed is a godsend! For writers, both professional and casual, here at last is a book of homophones (aka homonyms) gathered with a flair for entertainment as well as education. Obviously Reed writes profusely - how else could he possibly have uncovered so many homophones? Every writer, no matter the level of sophistication, has on the desk a dictionary, a thesaurus, and encyclopedia and now a computer with Internet access, but until now there has not been a book devoted to a listing of homophones.

From the cover allow me to quote the following for definition's sake: `A standard reference book for writers and editors containing hundreds of sound-alike words (homophones) and the most common pairs of misused, mispronounced, misspelled, and otherwise mistaken words in the English language. This volume will quickly become an essential companion for journalists, copy-editors, proofreaders, students of English as a second language or as their native tongue.' And there you have it - contents and definition wise. But that doesn't begin to expand the mind the way Reed proceeds through this now indispensible book.

The manner in which he lists the words that sound the same but often have quite different meanings is clear and well paced. But in addition to informing us of homophones, he also discusses easily misused, confused or mistyped words as well as mispronounced words. Also included is an informative and entertaining discussion of neologisms (words that aren't quite words - yet), synonyms and `schizophrenic antonyms' and he tops the book off with some insights into his own pet peeves.

It takes a fine writer to share both the literary knowledge as well as the humor behind such bloopers in language. Yes, we are all inundated with new social media lingo (OMG, lol, `Totally' etc) and doubtless those words will fall into the standard dictionary soon. But it is the sense of humor with which Reed approaches his topic that makes this book a valuable companion. Each of has a collection of words we misuse or mis-type consistently (mine is `form' instead of `from' among dozens of others) and it is a welcome discovery to find that someone cares about missteps.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: REED'S HOMOPHONES: A COMPREHENSIVE BOOK OF SOUND-ALIKE WORDS
AUTHOR: A. D. REED
PUBLISHER: PISGAH PRESS
ISBN: 9780985387518

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:16:00 +0000

Something strange happened on the way through this book....

Some books can be read, considered, rethought and reviewed. Other books seep into the psyche and writing about that phenomenon seems almost too challenging to put into words - because something happened more than words that can be recomposed in the form of sharing with others. That is what happens with this book. And it is a mystery worth exploring.

Sondra Sneed lets us get to know the depth of despair into which she plunged, literally into the basement of her home, when she lost her job and the love of her life left her. Alone, she began to write and strangely the writing began to resemble the story from the book of Daniel about King Belshazzar's feast when the words `mene, mene, tekel, parsin' appeared. But instead of those words needing translation and interpretation by Daniel, the words Sondra read in her journal were `Unemployed? It is my assertion you are employed by me.' And this was the beginning of her conversation with God. Seven years later she records all of this for us.

What follows is a slow unraveling of the words that she had in conversation with God (God is the name she uses even though some readers may prefer the term Infinite Being - or `God Being' defined as follows: `This is an actual state of matter and energy light that has no end. This no end is the greatest level of magnitude achievable and is all of the greatest of any form of being in the cosmological world.'

It is not possible to summarize the content of this book: this is a book that must be read and read slowly and repeated if the concepts are to become part of our thinking. Some readers may put it down as folderol, but others, no matter their previous spiritual affiliation or religious or scientific beliefs, will find an understanding of their presence in this life - a presence that was predetermined to happened to carry out a life task. Sneed uses words and definitions that challenge at first and take a serious amount of time to understand and accept, but the time invested is a worthy commitment.

As Sneed transcribes a part of her conversation with God, God answers in the following words: `The person who is reading this book right now is someone you could never have predicted, but I have. I have made the point to put this in the hands of every living soul who is under my care in order that they may know I am here, listening to their manners of Love and working every way possible to meet their needs. This book is more important to them than even to you. You have already worked through every element of faith possible and don't even need this book to make you stronger. The fact that you are writing it is proof of how strong your faith has become over the past seven years. What you must see is that this book is for the one who holds it in their hands and says, "My God can hear me!"

If all this sounds too absurd for thought, then this is not a book for you. But if you are a person open to an expanded way of considering life and your place in the cosmos and the path that your life could take if you are in contact with the Being, then there are hours of thought-provoking information for you to absorb here.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE DEAD
AUTHOR: SONDRA SNEED
PUBLISHER: RAINBOW RIDGE
ISBN: 9781937907112

STREET WALTZING WITH FALLING CLOUDS

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:40:00 +0000

The wholly unique Faćo: Busking through the world with F.J. Nanic

Review by Grady Harp

Words said once, if not heard, bear repeating. After reading another of his books, this reviewer wrote, `Born in Sarajevo, lived and worked in France, America, New Zealand, and Australia. Following his teenage desire to busk his way around Europe, he winds up in Munich, Stuttgart, Aarhus, Amsterdam, Liege, Zurich, Lausanne... When the war in his country broke out, he was studying in Paris. In Laval, he worked with the ex-prisoners of the concentration camps in Omarska and Manjaca liberated by the Red Cross. After their integration, he joined his family in America. He continued on to Australia, as far as the east is from the west...' How could we not be interested in what FJ Nanic has to say when he has had exposure to so many stations on the globe and the wild madness that peripatetic writers encounter.'

And yet even after reading other works by this troubadour there is no getting to know him as well as reading and living in the streets of Amsterdam and other travels that STREET WALTZING WITH FALLING CLOUDS offers. This is a strange book, initially about Faćo and his time as a busker in Amsterdam, living in the streets, making enough money for food and other essentials by singing on trains, in front of museums or libraries or cathedrals or any place that allowed enough space to sing and have one of his passing friends pass the hat to collect coins. He encounters the aspects that make Amsterdam so different than the rest of the world, a microcosm of hideaways and drugs and peoples who have run away form other countries bringing with them little but foreign tongues. This story, once we are caught up in the thing written in words both poetic and philosophic, entwined in music and bad luck with women, surviving the elements of seasonal changes in a country maladapted to same - this story becomes a memoir, possibly. But then we must ask, could anything so rich in descriptive prose and so completely without self pity when a little self pity would be more than appropriate - could this have happened? Or was it dreamed like the dreams he shares with frightened artists who turn his imagined stories into paintings, claiming self inspiration or dislodged in homeless nights on the streets, living with other souls who seem to have stopped longing for something more? And who really are Tom, Katherine, Kaya, Magdalene, Lubjo and Anieke?

Quite honestly, I don't know. But what is real is the depth of talent FJ Faćo Nanic owns. Aside from the fascination of learning about his time not only in Amsterdam but his travels abroad and the way that this displaced man from Yugoslavia somehow makes sense of the world. He is indeed a singer and musician (as well as a songwriter, brilliant photographer, medical interpreter, language instructor for Berlitz, etc) and continues to make records and publish portfolios of images of peoples of the world, places he has settled for even a moment to absorb life as it is lived in the places he chooses to visit.

About his music, it has been written, `All the moss that he gathered, rolling like a stone around the world, reflects upon his melodies that also have roots in love songs centuries old. Faćo's original music is known for his combination of powerful, resonant vocals, masterful guitar work, lyrics that haunt you and melodies that draw on his depth of international experience and resources. It's the blues, but you can feel the seasoning from widespread and spicy influences His work is catchy to listen to the first time through and it stays interesting with repetition. While Faćo's work is nuanced with the European background, his foundation is in the roots of rock and roll and blues--you sit up and take notice, you just can't help yourself: it's that kind of sound.'

And yet this can write about the atmosphere that surrounds him throughout this novel, and some bears quoting: `The key was the window to the soul. Some eyes still spoke the universal language of Adam and Eve. Unaware, some had it hidden in their genes. They caused fatal attractions around the world throwing it off its balance. The aware ones were either good or bad, or both. It sounds like a cliché. Nowadays it's all mixed up. The hieroglyphic language is lost in translation. Beautiful is misunderstood and turned into plastic entertaining amusement at the rich cocktail parties. Driven by cosmetic beliefs and arguments that completely ignore what's written in the stars, the renaissance beauty tricks the renaissance men into thinking they fathered a new age.' Or a parcel when he quotes others - `Hunter S. Thompson said "sex without love is as hollow and
ridiculous as love without sex." The same went for life.'

Faćo can `identify the dominant note in a ﬂushing toilet.' And perhaps therein lies the secret: though he communicates with great power and love, he leaves us wondering where the rest is. This reviewer for one will search.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: STREET WALTZING WITH FALLING CLOUDS
AUTHOR: F.J NANIC
PUBLISHER: SELF PUBLISHED

ASIN: B00C58K53C

The Corruptions of the Gothic

noreply@blogger.com (Joey Madia) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:56:00 +0000

The Luminous Memories of Alexander Vile

Review by Joey Madia

This debut novel from Masters student Tash Jones is a compelling mirror-glance journey into the effects of the Gothic novel on Victorian sensibilities. While both referencing outright and adapting subtle elements of Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, Stoker’s Dracula, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, and Austen’s Northanger Abbey, The Luminous Memories of Alexander Vile concerns itself with pulling back the layers of appearance and looking at the arts and their relationship to the dark side of Victorian-era values (the novel’s events take place in 1892–93).

Uses the standard Gothic conventions of diaries, letters, and narration, Vile is a mystery that is slowly pieced together, reading at times like the surrealism of Poe, with generous doses of the flowery, image-laden and complexly sytaxed prose of the time in which it takes place.

It is a story of people who are ruled by their passions and the domino effect of disruption and downfall which they produce on those around them.

The story is told to us by the maid who seems to be a surrogate for the wife of the title character. One senses an unrequited love—that old dramatic chestnut of the wealthy man of the house looking beyond her because she is the maid, although one feels that she might have saved him from himself, and saved some others in the bargain. She is sympathetic to the man whose story she feels compelled to tell, and she tells the stories of the others only by necessity. Two thirds of the way through the novel she interprets the flowery prose of Alexander into a coherent story, pushing forward the plot and allowing the author to deal in the surreal without losing the reader.

Alexander Vile is a pianist who loves poetry and painting. He strives to be The Artist, relying on the arts to create meaning in his drab and difficult world. When one thinks about the fascinating artists of the Victorian era, there is plenty of material on which to draw, and Jones’s exploration of the condition of the artist is deep and engaging.

During the story there are sections of well-written poetry to give us clues to backstory and subtleties of plot, functioning like songs in a musical.

I want to tread carefully, and not give too much away, for the charm and strength of the story is its mystery. But essential to the plot is Vile’s dead wife. She was a painter and he tells us both that they were deeply love but also that she loved her art more than him. Their relationship deteriorates, as does she, following a miscarriage. We don’t get the sense that Vile wanted a child, but agreed only to please his wife. He fears that should the child not be perfect, he would be blamed. Parents and parenting have their rightful Victorian importance in the book, and when their efforts after the miscarriage bear no fruit and Alexander finally tells her how he feels, he says her “mind was dead.” The wife dies, the exact cause a mystery.

He is wealthy, living a life of mostly solitude, his desire to create music outweighing his talent, a la Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. He is searching for meaning and unable to find it. He spends a great deal of time reading in his expansive library. He reminds me of the decadent and bored young men in novels like Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, the Comte Lautreamont’s Maldoror, and Huysman’s A Rebours. His voice is also reminiscent of Poe’s more lucid narrators.

Following his wife’s death, he seeks to grant her wish by adopting a child from the local orphanage. After determining a boy would be best, he cannot bring himself to make a choice, so he leaves it to the orphanage to choose a suitable child and when the child arrives it is a young lady named Joanna.

Joanna sparks something in Vile (she is [perhaps intentionally so] named the same as the Judge’s ward in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd). She quotes Jane Austen to him and tells him of her love of other writers, such as Wilde and the Brontes. He in turn teaches her to play piano.

Joanna too has an emptiness, which she divulges through poems as an intense loss about her biological parents and their untimely death.

All might be well if it were not for a rival for her affections, the well-to-do and aptly named Vincent Valentine, who as one might guess in stories such as these, asks for her hand in marriage.

The novel works its way through several corollary themes, including: Corruption, Nature vs. Nurture. Art vs. Intellect (or Dionysus vs. Apollo), and Science vs. Faith. Vincent’s brother Christian represents the latter.

The Luminous Memories of Alexander Vile is quite the complex mystery, feeding back into endings that could be chosen from almost all of the books referenced within.

If you like a good Gothic novel, you’ll thoroughly enjoy The Luminous Memories of Alexander Vile. As an added incentive, the author donating £1 of each book sale, split equally between ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital’ and ‘Greenpeace.’

Joey Madia, April 2013

TITLE: The Luminous Memories of Alexander Vile

AUTHOR: Natasha Jones
PUBLISHER: Natasha Jones
ASIN: B00C0J10VW

DEAR BEAST LOVELINESS: POEMS OF THE BODY

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:05:00 +0000

The Body Perfect

Review by Grady Harp

Tim Myers can quietly astonish us with this collection of profoundly felt poems. Those of us who have read him before as a writer of children's books (excellent!) or recalling the strategies and fallibilities of fatherhood should have had the insight that here was a tender man who knew from living how to appreciate the body and those who inhabit one. But few of us expected poetry of this nature, this mixture of polished verse, rhyming at moments, free verse at others, as he looks as those aspects of being corporal - both lovely and sad - and eminently memorable.

Best to let the poems breathe here rather than attempting to describe them:

AMANDA

Amanda is slowly losing
nerve function and muscular
control.

She'll be eight next March,
and still alive, perhaps,
two summers from now.

Dying out of one world,
oh rose slowly blooming
Into some other?

A HARD SONG

Does his heart rise like the geese
into late-autumn skies, honking wildly,
trembling for the cold high paths
the warm south?

Does he move though his life like the geese,
who tuck black feet against downy bellies?
beneath great yearning wing-strokes,
arrange themselves in ragged v's as
hoarse with joy they leave
the frosted marchlands?

No.

These days he rises and goes silently
to the table, to a meal eaten
alone and without taste,
soon to return to the sickbed
of his beloved.

BEFORE THE TET OFFENSIVE

Night after night, leaving the NCO Club,
hearing the damp tent-flap close behind us,
we thought of dark vines beyond our periphery,
scarred jungle oozing toward our wires.
We split the jungle for a red road
our trucks passed over;
dreamed on our cots that the tress themselves
wanted revenge for that,
dreamed guns and strange faces,
arboreal wrath.

One night back home before my tour,
I left the house to find a light rain falling,
stood on the porch as happy as I could be,
and thought, without even knowing it,
that I'd never die.

A GIRL

A young Down-syndrome girl is running
past the courthouse beds.
She's round as a pumpkin, her steps clumsy,
sweater rides up exposing rolls of fat,
her smile a cat's smile, empty and almost indiscriminate -
and all because something grew wrong a dozen springs ago,
with everything else growing right.
She stops to watch a passing cat,
Mouth slackening as the cat-image
Moves sluggishly across her brain.
Behind her, tulips stand seraphic,
tongues of flame chanting
their mute animal Gloria.

ANOREXIA

My sister died when none of us were looking.
She'd grown thin as a rake-handle, leaf-thin,
cold as November wind, an autumn world
withdrawn into its narrowing self.
We were many and loud with desires,
a big happy family, the envy of others,
played basketball in our parents' driveway,
drank beer and talked long into the night,
ate like farm animals. But she'd learned
to hate food, to fear it,
slowly became a desperate impoverished dictatorship
sealing its own borders. She moved to Chicago,
left teaching to become a stewardess,
loved us quietly from the distance
her new appetite for suffering forced her to,
from jet aisles where she served food to strangers,
looking appropriately slender in her uniform.
We loved the sun, met for family dinners,
began producing grandchildren,
went camping out under bright fertile stars--
forgive us, we didn't want to know
how the planets were spinning out of their orbits,
drifting, fragmenting, colliding
there in her head.

Every reader will find specific treasures, depending on where you have been, or are, or plan to be. Tim Myers seems somehow to have been there before and softens the pillow for our thoughts. This is fine poetry.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: DEAR BEAST LOVELINESS: POEMS OF THE BODY
AUTHOR: TIM MYERS
PUBLISHER: BLAZE VOX
ISBN: 9781609641238

THE CHINA STUDY

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:24:00 +0000

Health, Disease, Aging, Nutrition

Review by Grady Harp

The fact that this book, first published in 2006, is still ranking as probably the definite book on the interplay of nutrition and prevention or cure of disease speaks volumes. This reader first read the book when it was published and at that time recommended it to medical students, physicians, nutritionists, colleagues as the most comprehensible and sensible study of the tie in between the appalling health status of this country and the burgeoning of fad oriented ‘experts’ from both the lay field and medical field. Reading this book again (with a few addenda at its end) only serves to impress again how advanced the Campbell ideas were and remain.

Not only does T Colin Campbell, a research oriented biochemist with his son Thomas M Campbell, take us back through the research and fact finding of a study done in China where plant based diets (as opposed to US animal based diets) produced less diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease, but he brings us forward and to our current status of ill health in this country, explaining how nutrition influences health and that by nationally altering our concepts of nutrition we can not only decrease the incidence of obesity, stroke, diabetes, heart attacks and yes, cancer, but we can actually reverse these body trends significantly by changing to diets of plant based foods.

Much has been written by leading authorities in medicine, public health, and the many branches of health related science that hold this solid study up as the definitive and most comprehensive book about the nutrition/health cycle, and yet another review of the book seems extraneous. But this is a book everyone should read – especially now as we are carefully re-examining the costs of health care and the disturbing increase in the incidence of obesity, diabetes, cardiac disease and cancers of every kind despite our growing inventions in medicine such as MRI and chemotherapy and gene manipulation. Campbell writes in a manner that everyone can understand and if we care about our health, then we all should own this bible.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: THE CHINA STUDY
AUTHOR: T COLIN CAMPBELL
PUBLISHER: BENBELLA BOOKS
ISBN: 9781932100662

Poetry More Urgent Than Breaking News

noreply@blogger.com (Sun Singer) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:55:00 +0000

The Book of Now: Poetry for the Rising Tide

Edited by Leah Shelleda

Review by Malcolm R. Campbell

If he would lift his face
i could see his eyes, see
if he's singing now
a soul-dissolving song.

from "Song Maker," by Anita Endrezze

In one of my novels, I refer to a magical, fictional book, "The Book of Now," that contains words that change with the rising and falling tides so that they are always focused and appropriate for any reader at any time. That said, I couldn't resist this collection of poems edited by Leah Shelleda with a similar title.

The words of the seven lyrical women poets in The Book of Now: Poetry for the Rising Tide appear to be the same words each time I read the soul-dissolving poems in this book. But they aren't. They change with the reader's moods and rise and fall on the Earth's voice right now because, as a long-ago guru once said, "the point of power is in the present."

The poems, from Endrezze's "Song of Our Times," to Crystal Good's "Boom Boom," to Naomi Ruth Lowinsky's "Sisters of My Time" are more urgent than the breaking news and they speak with relevant power for this moment, and the next moment, and the moments after that.

In the introduction, Shelleda writes that in considering what poetry is saying now, she had to "listen to the voices, and listen for those who understand the present, and know the future will not be the same." Each poet included in this book writes with that understanding, an understanding that is amplified by Shelleda's introductions to their work, resulting in a 110-page collection of great depth and of breath-taking immediacy.

In her introduction to Dunya Mikhail's poems, Shelleda notes that here "a woman is writing of war in her own imagery, in her own voice." Mikhail, who left Iraq and now resides in the United States, writes in "I was in a hurry,"

Today I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Frances Hatfield, a psychologist and Jung Institute candidate, writes in "Just Like a Woman,"

Wouldn't you guess Linda might
steal out between rounds of radiation & chemo
her body on fire, her bones ice
to plant a cornfield
in her back yard

& isn't it just like Julie to remark
"I'm dying--
but it's not as bad as you think."

Kensington, California poet Jane Downs, in "Spring," speaks of the "restlessness of lilacs," Shelleda in "Extinct Birds," hears the lyrebird mimicking songs and finds her newest rendition is a chain saw, and in the volume's last poem, Lowinsky says that it's time for sisters to gather their knowledge "for the root cellars of memory, the mason jars of prayer--emergency rations--for the daughters of the daughters of our daughters."

These poets have heard the rising tide and prepared for us a survival guide containing the basic essentials of the Earth and the changing seasons for that time, as Lowinsky writes of today's wise women, "long after that Old Black Magic has spirited us away." While there is great variety in this collection, there is a unity of focus: the beauty and value of all life.

Well-steeped in Earth's wisdom, these poems are hymns in praise of Gaia. They celebrate beauty and diversity worth preserving and, for those times when this moment or the next moment calls for it, they also sing of warnings and laments. There is magic here and it's all true.

TITLE: The Book of Now: Poems for the Rising Tide
EDITOR: Leah Shelleda
PUBLICATION DATE: November 1, 2012
PUBLISHER: il piccolo editions
ISBN-13: 978-1926715902

RECOVER TO LIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Grady Harp) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:42:00 +0000

Habits, Dependencies, Addiction: Recovery

Review by Grady Harp

Early on in the probing and almost self-effacing introduction to this book Christopher Kennedy Lawford offers such thoughts as the following: `Although this book begins with the experience of dealing with dependency, it becomes a self-help guide for a wide range of human behaviors, from eating and sex to managing money and smoking cigarettes. It builds on the foundation of the 12-Step fellowships to guide you to solutions to the many distortions in human behavior caused by the hijacking of your brain's reward system.' While that pretty much condenses what the reader may gain from the first reading of this book, there is so very much more here that the information will touch just about everyone who picks up this both scholarly and warmly user friendly book.

Lawford is a recovering drug and alcohol addict and has been substance free for twenty five years. To his credit he has turned his life experiences into a channel for assisting those who are at various stages of dependency: he has been through it all and has climbed out of the hole and now is a world-class speaker and motivator. One reason his book makes such an impact is that It contains input from about one hundred experts on addiction - medical, psychological, scientific, social worker, theorist and writers - and instead of simply piling up the fine contributions of these experts, he instead uses their input to add credence to his beliefs he has gained because of his journey.

He lists the seven toxic compulsions (one is reminded of the Seven Deadly Sins!) - alcohol abuse, drug abuse, eating disorders, gambling dependence, hoarding, sex and pornography, and nicotine dependence. If that sounds like he is stretching the limits of the concept of addiction, then read on, because the manner in which these each become dependencies and progress towards life threatening problems is similar. There are many books written about drug and alcohol addiction, but how many about the remainder of the seven toxic compulsions? Very few if any.

Lawford postulates (and proves) that addiction is a brain illness that alters neurotransmitters to change behavior and thinking. And if the brain can be trained to follow addictive pathways, then it can be trained by everyone who has an addiction to erase or alter those pathways and cure addiction. `There are proven tools such as mindfulness and meditation that can vanquish the cravings and enable those who want to change their lives to make different choices in the moment.' `For all of the Seven Toxic Compulsions, it's going to be more or less the same prescription. You need the same support systems. You are going to need to develop techniques like mindfulness, meditation, journaling, cognitive behavioral therapy, exercise and nutrition, and body work to deal with the symptoms.' And from there Lawford proceeds to outline all of his thoughts and reasons for his approaches and the result is a book that will inform even the most resistant reader. This is a valuable book written with a sense of dedication that in itself is magnetic. Highly Recommended for everyone.

Grady Harp, April 2013

TITLE: RECOVER TO LIVE: KICK ANY HABIT, MANAGE ANY ADDICTION
AUTHOR: CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY LAWFORD
PUBLISHER: BENBELLA BOOKS
ISBN: 9781936661961