Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent ensemble novel
This is an entertaining but deep book about a group of thirty-something English ex-patriates living and working in Italy. A very affecting book about relationships, identity, sense of place and growing up. As always, Parks does a wonderful job with voices and characterization, in economicalspace. Wish there were more writers like him. ... Read more

Product Description
After living in Italy for ten years and having married into an Italian family, novelist Tim Parks describes his experiences of the country and its people. How does an Italian become Italian? Focusing on his own children, Parks builds a picture of contemporary family life. ... Read more

Product Description
Molteni, the narrator, aspires to be a man of letters, but has taken a job as a screenwriter in order to support his beautiful wife, Emilia. Frustrated by his work, he becomes convinced that Emilia no longer loves him - that in fact she despises him - and as he relentlessly interrogates her about the true nature of her feelings, he makes his deepest fear (or secret desire) come true. Contempt is a picture, frightening in its familiarity, of how, in an irremediable instant, love can turn to hate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Ulysses Unbound
Impotence, alienation and disillusionment abound in this intense, psychological study of the dissolution of a marriage. I also suggest viewing Godard's film, Contempt - Criterion Collection, which is based on this novel, yet categorically simplifies its philosophical tenets.

Great writing, but I wish I could have liked the characters.
Written in 1954, this novel by the esteemed Italian writer, Alberto Moravia, is a small gem and a showcase of fine writing.Written in the first person, the narrator describes the slow falling apart of his marriage.Stark, with a complex mood, the reader gets to hear his inner monologue.He is definitely neurotic and I found some of the complaining annoying, but he sure does set the tone.This man is obsessed with his wife and analyzes every excruciating detail of their lives.I was often exasperated at this and would have put the book down but it was a selection of my literary reading group, so I forced myself to continue.

The narrator sees himself as an artistic writer who takes a job writing screenplays because he wants to satisfy his wife and create a home for her. This is after the first two years of their marriage when they truly loved each other.When they move into their new home, everything changes.The narrator can't understand why.

We meet his boss, a typical movie type, who winds everyone around his fingers and wants to do a screenplay of The Odyssey.And then there is the director who he must work with, a German who is into psychology and wants the story to play out in a Freudian psychological way. The theme of marital discord runs throughout the book.

The ending was surreal.I thought it was a copout.And yet, it worked.My feelings about this book are complex.I have no doubt that the author is a fine writer.But I wish I could have liked the characters.I felt like screaming "get a life" to all of them, especially the narrator.

This is a worthwhile read if you can stand it.But I'm glad it's over.

love gone oh so sour
dead-on, deadpan, unflinching, painful, and pathetic portrayal of love gone oh so sour. the genius is the narrative voice, and how moravia makes you feel both sympathy and contempt for him. kept me emotionally and intellectually engaged throughout.

Faustian Bargain and the Unreliable Narrator
After a second reading of Contempt, I feel compelled to call the short, tautly written novel a masterpiece. Told from the perspective of a neurotic egotist, the narrator accounts how he "sacrificed" his literary writing career to debase himself in the tawdry task of writing screenplays so that he can afford to lavish his wife with a bigger more opulent living quarters. The narrator convinces himself that not only does his wife not appreciate his "sacrifice," but that sheno longer loves him. It's horrifying to read this narcissist's account of his marital disintegration because you begin to realize that he is projecting his own lack of love toward his wife (a pefectly fine, loving woman) and you realize that he is so emotionally arrested that he is incapable of loving anyone. Further, a close reading reveals that the narrator never sacrificed his writing career for his wife's opulent tastes, but rather is debasng his writing talents for his own greedy materialistic acquistion.

Many see Moravia's novel as the quintessential example of "modernism," the movement that emphasizes the human limitation for self-understanding and the understanding of others. Also, the novel explores Freudian themes of projection, paranoia, and the powers of the unconscious.

The novel is fast-paced save for a few chapters where the writer and director indulge in long-winded discussions about the mythical exposition of their film but overall the novel is a real page-turner full of suspense and psychological realism.

If you enjoy this suspensful novel told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, I recommend Asylum by Patrick McGrath, Despair by Vladimir Nabokov, and The Horned Man by James Lasdun.

Moravia At His Creative Peak
Finally, someone had the common decency to reprint Moravia in translation. And they also picked the best titles. Il Disprezzo (The Contempt) is the best, most honest, unflinching look at the disintegration of a relationship that I have ever read. Last released in the States in the 1950's under the title A Ghost at Noon, this is the same excellent translation by Angus Davidson, who translated almost all of the authors works up until his death in 1990. If you've ever experienced the conclusion of a long-term relationship and for some masochistic reason want to remember what it was like, this is the book for you. I guess that's not a ringing endorsement. But trust me, Moravia's penchant for psychological details is so devastatingly on-point, you'll find yourself nodding nauseatingly at the pathetic delusions and convoluted rationalizations taking place between the couple. It should be noted that this isn't the book's only focus. Quite uncharacteristically, Moravia tackles popular culture and the highbrow-lowbrow dichotomy in a darkly humorous fashion. I haven't seen Godard's film adaptation but I understand that it is an incredible achievement in itself. ... Read more

Product Description
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Amusement Park Oddities & Trivia is an uncanny journey through the weird, wacky, and absolutely true world of amusement parks, rides and attractions!Tired of the traditional ho-hum trivia book? Rejoice, here's one that's unique, enjoyable, accurate AND edgy! With a bit of history, a bit of trivia and a lot of totally unbelievable facts, this is a first of its kind book for the amusement industry. With more than 350 Believe It or Nots! inside its pages, and 50-plus original illustrations by Ripley's official cartoonist John Graziano, nearly half of the book is dedicated to the bizarre, colorful and entertaining universe of amusement parks, rides and attractions. The other half features chapters on the Walt Disney parks, roller coasters, Ferris wheels, carousels, entertainers and park food! Nearly 100 different amusement and theme parks, waterparks, attractions, zoos and aquariums are represented in these colorful pages, not to mention the 14 pages packed with astounding roller coaster Believe It or Nots! A comprehensive index permits readers to quickly discover the oddities of their favorite park. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not what I was hoping for
I didnt like this book.It is in list format (which I expected) ...it has facts on tons of different amusement parks from all over the world, but it only names them...only in the back of the book does it let you know where the certain park is, which means unless you wanna flip constently to the index, you have no idea what you are reading about. (It almost makes it feel like half the stuff is made up and not truth, Like "The Great White Roller Coaster in Adventure Amusement Park is the first to go 100mph"...really?? I dont understand why they couldnt have just put at least what state the parks are in, it seems if they can do it in the index why not in the body of the book??).That is the main reason I am giving this ony 2 stars.It also only has black and white hand drawn pics, no pics of any of the parks.This book is totaly not what I was expecting.I scanned through it for a little bit, but was very bored and ended up putting it up on my shelf to never be looked at again.

Great premise, poorly exicuted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

WOW!Truly Spectacular!
The photography in this book is spectacular.Looking over the last season at old Comiskey through this book brought back some memories.This is particularly the case for the game against the A's which I was at.The pictures bring back great memories.The variety of photographs from all parts of the part gives you an insider's view as well.I too would love to see one more game at this ball park.

Flashback
This book is truly a flashback to the days when attending a baseball game on the South Side was less about fringe entertainment and all about baseball. It really brought back some great memories. I miss Andy the Clown!

COLLECTORS ITEM
THIS BOOK IS WELL WORTH PURCHASING. IF YOU LOVED OLD COMISKEY THEN YOU WILL LOVE THIS NOSTALGIC TALE OF A GREAT PARK. EXCELLENT MEMEROBILIA MATERIAL. BUY IT YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED. OUTSTANDING FOR WHITE SOX FANS.

this book rules
this book rules buy it if you loved old comiskey! great pictures

Great Book!Good Memories of the old Comiskey Park!
I found this pictorial to be a great gift for my husband and friends.We loved this park.Lots of good memories revisited.Everyone should have this book. ... Read more

Product Description
"An enjoyable, well-crafted little book."—The Complete ReviewTranslated from the Italian, this winner of the Prix Medicis Etrangerfor 1987 is an enigmatic novel set in modern India. Roux, the narrator,is in pursuit of a mysterious friend named Xavier. His search, whichdevelops into a quest, takes him from town to town across thesubcontinent. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Gem
A narrator's novella with precise images, active imagination, and a subtly suggested plot should enthrall any reader. Tabucchi is probably Italy's best living writer. This tale, made up of dreamy yet clear episodes, in a seach of ambiguous meaning brings out all the narrator's ambivalencies. An understanding of India emerges and most important portraits of men and one woman.

"To light and shadow"
This Medicis Prize('89) winning book is an exploration of thefrontiers of identity within very ancient India. It may all be a dream as the "Author's Note" which precedes this 100 page text describes the narrative as an "insomnia" and a "search for a shadow". You can make of that what you like but those evocative sentences only partially set the tone for Tabucchi's book is a playful series of encounters that his unnamed narrator-protaganist has with fellow travelers and interesting Indian characters along the way to finding a missing friend.The several encounters read like enquiries, but pleasant ones, and ones with philosophical as well as humorous overtones(in one encounter identity is compared to a suitcase). Some of the sequences are so strange you think it all must be a dream as when a female thief breaks into the narrators hotel room only to be invited to stay the night. Other meetings are full of a very engaging and speculation rich kind of conversation as in the meeting with the Hugo and Pessoa quoting eastern intellectual. If it is all a dream it is a very literate one. The last meeting takes place in the old Portugese port of Goa and there the narrator meets a lovely charming stranger to share a dinner with as he waits for a chance to spy a glimpse of his old searched for friend. But as they eat the narrator relates his "story' in a way that makes one suspect there was no one and nothing to search for after all(modern fiction indeed it is). But you are left after putting this book down with a feeling of having had several intriguing conversations and having met a lovely woman. Not at all a bad feeling. An insomnia well spent.

This book hooked me on Tabucchi
The first time I read this book was when I also read for the first timeCarrere's The Mustache - a fortunate accident as they both pose a questionof identity.Tabucchi sets his tale in India in the form of an unnamed mantrying to find a man, perhaps his brother, who has been missing for about ayear.His search takes him to a brothel in Bombay, to a Bombay hospital,to the Theosophical Society in Madras, to the library of a religious orderin Goa ...Along the way he encounters a dying Jain, a deformedsaddhu/fortune teller, a former Philadelphia mailman, a photographer ofhuman misery ...An interesting story, well written, with an unexpectedending.A movella well worth your time.

a magic trip
The traveller is someoene who is looking for a friend who got lost in India, but we realize very soon that he's actually looking for himself. A trip full of incredible encounters with people who are the soul of India,and places described in such a way that we could almost smell, hear and seewhat the author felt while he was there. ... Read more

Product Description
Amusement parks are everywhere, in most of the 50 United States as well as many Canadian provinces. This book includes them all. However, this is more than just a list of the best rides around. Tim O'Brien presents the inside scoop on special events and in-park entertainment. The helpful information he lists includes admission prices, operating season, hours, and directions to the parks. Also inside, readers will find his advice for making each amusement park trip a fantastic one. These tips have been garnered by Tim over his many years as self-described "amusement park connoisseur."This new edition will include updated listings for all new parks, new photographs and trivia items, and sidebars with information on Tim's favorite parks, as well as the latest details about new rides at each park.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Must-Have for Amusement Park Fanatics
This is, truly, the bible of amusement park guides.I am always amazed at its thorough coverage of parks, both large and small, in the United States and Canada - is there an international edition in the works???If so, put me on the list of buyers.

It's difficult to think of a park that isn't listed here - from the mainstream parks such as Disneyworld and Universal, to the tiny, neighborhood parks such as Weona and Nelly Bly, they're all here, and beautifully documented.Signature rides are listed for each park - from the big, modern coasters, to the rarer flats.As a huge fan of Flying Scooters and Lusse Auto Skooters (you fellow park nuts will know what I'm talking about, here), I love that such rides are included.Park histories are here, as well, for all of us preservationists.

Directions, websites, and further information are included for the parks, also, which greatly helps if one wishes to visit a park.Also, common-sense tips for park visitors are here, as well as little-known secrets that assist with getting around a park to the greatest efficiency.

I was fortunate enough to find this book while visiting Knoebels Grove (the best park in America, as far as I'm concerned), and couldn't put it down during the entire ride home.It's addictive, informative, and, well, a must-have.What with the summer practically here, run, don't walk, and get your copy NOW.

The Bible of park guidebooks---absolutely outstanding!!
This book is just awesome...it reviews over 350 theme parks, amusement parks, and waterparks all over the U.S. and Canada, providing everything you'd want to know about every park...the great roller coasters and other thrill rides, costs, operation schedule, directions, special tips, insider facts and trivia, historical milestones, etc.Also gives phone numbers and website addresses for each park. The author is a life-long park expert and senior editor of a major park industry publication...he really seems to know his stuff, and he injects some fun and personality into the book.It's a great guide to use to plan your park trips and to carry with you for quick reference.It's also fun to to sit down and read through it because it gives so much interesting trivia on the parks. Just a fantastic, authoratative, fun, easy-to-use resource on parks.

A must for every enthusist!!!
This is a great book!! It is well worth your money. If you are planning a vaction, then buy this book. It has theme parks from Disney to Universal Orlando, to Cedar Point, all of the Paramount Parks and many, many more!! The ultimate guide to rollercoasters is this book!!

Review that could have helped.
I had gone to the conference with much knowledge about the subject. I was told about the book from there. Could I have obtained it, I would have been the top in the list of performers.

A Great Guide To Amusement Parks!
This book is a must for all amusement park fans.It gives all the information you would need to have a fun and exciting day at any park in the U.S. or Canada.Mr. O'Brien has done a masterful job of helping youplan your visit by giving the operating times as well as the best rides andshows.There is also a listing of all the roller coasters in the park. His vivid description of the park gives you the feeling of being there.Iwould recommend this guide book to anyone planing a trip to an amusementpark in the future. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the premier tourist attractions of the eastern United States, the Blue Ridge Parkway stretchesfrom Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in western North Carolina. This volume relates the author's one-of-a-kind backpacking trip along the 469-mile road, along with his observations and recollections regarding the Parkway, the most visited unit of the National Park Service. Beginning with his experience as a summer college intern, the book also covers the twelve years he spent working as a ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Anecdotal history and accounts from some of the Parkway's earliest rangers complete this tale of one of our country's national treasures. The appendix contains a chronological, mile-by-mile re-creation of Pegram's 2003 trek, including the names of all the Parkway landmarks mentioned in the book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I don't know when I have enjoyed a book more!
As skillfully as early landscape architects planned the Blue Ridge Parkway to "lie lightly upon the land," author Tim Pegram has crafted a delightful journey in words to pay tribute to his years as a National Park Service park ranger and his endeavor to be the first person to through-hike the linear park's 469 miles.I don't know when I have enjoyed a book more!From the time I opened the box from Amazon and first held "The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot: A Park Ranger's Memoir" in my hand, it has been a constant companion.I have chosen to read, and reread, it at a leisurely pace, much like Pegram's 41-day walk, or a relaxed drive along the Parkway.That way, I can stop at all the overlooks, savor each person, place, view, milepost, story, and insight, and look forward to what lies around the next bend, on the next page.Written in a personable, engaging style, this book is sure to become a treasured favorite of everyone who loves the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Great read for Blue Ridge Parkway lovers
Tim Pegram captivates the reader with memories of his career as a parkway ranger, and his story of hiking the entire Blue Ridge Parkway.This is an extremely unique book that covers a subject on which few books exist.A must read for Blue Ridge Parkway lovers, hikers, fellow Park Rangers, and BRP history buffs. ... Read more

Product Description
"One hot night last spring, after waiting fruitlessly for a call from my then lover, with whom I had quarreled the same afternoon, and finding one of my black moods upon me, I flung out of my lonely room on the ninth floor (unlucky number) in a hotel in lower Fifth Avenue and rushed into the streets of the Village, feeling bad." So begins Letty Fox’s own story, a comic extravaganza in which she tells about the crazy circus of her early life; about her moping mother, absent father, and two impossible sisters; about work and play, sex and men, and the seemingly unending search for a lasting relationship. This vast Flemish canvas of a novel, full of strikingly realistic likenesses and unforgettable grotesques, is a major work by one of the outstanding novelists of the twentieth century. "Christina Stead is really marvelous." -- Saul Bellow ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

La Pointilliste of Literature
Seurat, Pissaro, and Van Gogh painted pictures made up of points of color---seen too closely, they look just like a bunch of dots, without much meaning.Step back and you see a sophisticated landscape or portrait.These were the pointillistes of French Impressionist art.As I read this penetrating character study constructed of 517 pages of trivia, banal conversations, epigrams, and thoughts, I thought over and over that this novel resembled more than a little a pointilliste painting.Any one page seems trivial and even directionless.As you continue, you realize that a powerful portrait is being built.There is no plot except the life of Letty Fox, a strong young woman whose licentious, impecunious, immature/mature ways stem from her own dysfunctional family background of similar qualities.It is a coming of age tale that takes place from the mid-1920s to 1945 in New York, New Jersey, and (occasionally) England and France in a welter of bizarre characters.Letty Fox is the kind of person who, in real life, never writes her autobiography, or if she does, writes in a most self-aggrandizing manner.She longs for romance but gets mostly men interested in one-night stands, for marriage to a wealthy man, but most of them skip town, for interesting work but she tires of a job quickly, for a normal family (but does such an animal exist ?I think Stead would say no.)Letty Fox is in love with life, but unlike some of her leftwing friends, she is more realistic.She samples whatever she can, but chooses very little.Contradictions abound.Freedom vs marriage.Sex vs. love.Friends vs. living alone.Idealism vs. cynicism.Above all, Letty is a feminist, though she never refers to herself in such terms..She refuses to kowtow to current prejudices, yet revels in modern New York life as much as she can.You can pick out hundreds of quotations like the following to express her feelings:

"I sometimes wondered at the infinite distance between the state of not being married---and whatever the gradation of not being married, it made no difference---and the state of being married.How did people bridge the gap ?It seemed to happen to others---most others: never to me; and I thought it very peculiar.I couldn't figure it out; perhaps I was too young, anyway; but it savored to me of magic, and I felt very miserable that in this modern world something so primary, this first of all things to a woman, smacked so strongly of the tribal priest, the smoky cult, the tom-tom, the blood sacrifice, the hidden mystery.It didn't seem fair.We should have abolished all that with enlightenment."p.413-14

"I was born to live with all the ardor of my blood and to mate and breed, and laugh at my grandchildren.These monastic notions were not for me."(rejects sacrificial fantasies, rejects ideals of doing good) p.419

"What is the use of a man if one can't be forthright with him ?I would never hedge and plot with a man, thought I."p.489

While Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children" focusses on a man and family relations, LF:HL is firmly about one woman and the slow transformation of her connection to family, friends, the world of work, and the world of sex and romance.It's not an easy read, because at times you feel you are not getting anywhere.Perhaps it could have been cut down, but then again, maybe the repetitiveness is an integral part of the whole picture.You have to keep your mind on that picture, not the myriad of dots.If you do, you'll find a most interesting novel, like Letty Fox herself, not at all average.

A master modern storyteller (in search of a good editor...)
Many rate Christina Stead among the finest modern writers of the century, and there's almost no denying her skill with shaping a beautiful sentence. Unfortunately, Stead has trouble sometimes shaping a good novel--she tends to go and on--, and this deficiency is largely at work in what many consider her second-best work (after THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN), LETTY FOX: HER LUCK.

Letty is a young woman in Manhattan living during wartime largely by her wits, and the beginning twenty pages--detailing her move into a new apartment in the Village--is so marvelous that your readerly expectations become raised to a very high degree. Stead dashes them, however, once you move to her life's narrative, which mostly details a series of women in her extended family depending on men for both money and affection, and doing nearly everything they can think of doing to acquire these things. Some of her ideas are brilliant, and the sentences read gorgeously--but you keep wishing for someone to step in and cut all the repetitions. Readers may find their patience tried by the 600-some pages of very little action, and yet Letty herself remains a very memorable achievement, an addition to a gallery of heroines of such questionable scruples as Defoe's Moll Flanders or Cary's Sarah Monday. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
For the first time in paperback--a volume of thirty-seven diabolically inventive stories, fables, and "impossible interviews" from one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, displaying the full breadth of his vision and wit.Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Postmodern, Italian analogs to Aesop's fables.
At their best, Calvino's stories center around a twist that captures the essence of our times, or society or our humanity.The stories are not pure entertainment but rather ways of communicating something that defies simple statement in language.

Once read, I find I remember a moment or a sense of how our world is, yet can't quite put it in words.I suppose that's why Calvino had to express them as stories.I remember a couple such moments now, years after reading Numbers in the Dark and the other short stories in the book.

Great book, mediocre kindle iPad edition
This is a wonderful collection of little gems.
Unfortunately the Kindle to iPad edition is filled with "typos"--- I suppose representing failure of the OCR used to create the file?

Not a great intro to Calvino
Although this collection of short stories had some really nice moments, I was ultimately unimpressed.I had heard great things about Italo Calvino, how he's an Italian version of Borges, and I can certainly see the similarities to the great Argentine author, but Calvino does not benefit from the comparison.

The collection is organized chronologically, as far as I can tell, and it begins with promise.There are a few pedestrian extended jokes and adolescent musings on love, but there are some fascinating fantasy/fables (in one story, a military regiment takes over a library to read every book and determine which ones should be censored, but their involuntary education changes their lives, and in another, a military parade takes a wrong turn and sheds pieces of itself as it winds through a town) and allegories that are impressive when I know the context (I didn't comprehend Becalmed in the Antilles at all until I read the note at the end that reminded me that it was written in, essentially, a Cold War period).No story is "leave you gasping for breath" good, but they're the kind of thing you might read in a high school or college literary magazine from an exceptionally talented student.

As he aged, though, Calvino didn't really live up to the promise of his early stories, as far as I can tell in this collection.His later work is twisted around intellectually complicated but unengaging musings on the romantic journey of water on its way to a shower head or the path a long-distance call takes or a series of "interviews" that made me feel like I was trapped in college in an intro-level philosophy class again.There is a retelling of the Eurydice myth that hints at spectacular imagery but creates such a distance with its inhuman tone that I couldn't even finish it.

I may just not get Calvino.Maybe I need to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), his best-known work (in the States), and re-evaluate.But if the rest of his work is fairly characterized by this collection, then I don't understand his appeal.

Far out.
If you see polka dots as round stripes (as I do) then this collection will appeal to you. This guy has a really off beat take on the world.

Crafted but more political than I care for
When I read "If On a Winter's Night a Traveler" I was completely pulled in and engrossed by the creative, crafted nature of the story and of Calvino's abilities. So, years later, I picked up this book of short stories. Since "Winters Night" is really a collection of related short stories, I expected ,uch the same. UNfortunately, I didn't like it as much. This book represents a real cross-section of his work. I found that most of his political allegories were a little too heavy for me. What I found most interesting were the stories that focused on relationships. Mother to son, lover to lover, friend to friend. This is where I was most interested. Since I seem to prefer Calvino in certain types of fiction, this may not have been the best collection for me. If you are a fan of Calvino & are looking for a good overview, this book may be better for you. ... Read more