Douglas

We might not instantly think of Wilkie Collins as a Gothic writer--Poe and Dickinson perhaps coming more quickly to mind--but this is a novel rich in Gothic mystery, romance and tension. Without revealing too much of the story, I will say that Collins does a masterful job of weaving a steadily moving tale while always holding back enough to keep the reader wanting more. The characters are sometimes nearly Gothic caricatures in their physical presentation, but most, and all of the main personages rise above the stereotype in behavior and attitude, Collins always giving rich and complicated, believable characters. While Gothic in a different manner as the writing of Poe, it will live in your mind and memory in much the same way. The brush strokes of description are careful and masterfully placed, building an entire world for the reader to enter and live in so that we are quiet observers of the people and occurrences that spring forth from the words.

This text lays a good beginning foundation for basic knowledge in psychology. I would not recommend it for anyone but the earliest beginner in the quest for learning in the realm of psychology, but it hits the mark it aims at.

in neo-Darwinean thought that does not add anything too much at all to the more intellectual, and certainly more engaging works of Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker and Wright. While this is not a bad book at all and certainly has its good moments, I would decidedly recommend a book by the authors above over this, as it is very basic in its information and approach.

I almost never say anything about narrators, because, if the book is engaging, I usually don't register the voice of the reader too much, but the narrator of this book has the mildly annoying sound of Tom Brokaw after a Valium.

which brings forth the very real words, feelings and attitudes of one of the art world's most fascinating and often misunderstood men. To be read in conjunction with Dear Theo and an in-depth biography of the great painter.

I was a bit suspicious of a biography of Van Gogh's life that would only cover seven and a half hours of normally read text, wondering if anything truly in depth could be accomplished in such a relatively short book--and I was right to wonder. The folksy, often poetic language is interesting and gives a peculiar and often pleasing flavor to the text, but much is glossed over--and while Meier-Graefe gets all the big milestones right (his relationship with Theo, the ear, the shooting, and all the junior high school student already knows), he just gets some things wrong. Anyone who could speak of Vincent's late adolescence as "sailing along" or "happy at home with his parents" must never have encountered any facts about the uptight critical father who thought his son a mad fool, the harping mother whose constant refrain rang "why can't you be more like Theo?!" or the crazily intense antics of a young man who just about drove everyone around him nuts with his endless fiery neediness and often with careless thoughtlessness. I expected more here and would recommend a more in-depth biography of the great artist.

as I thought I would be, having read Grandin's early work. A good deal of this is just common sense, and at times so obvious that she seems to be writing for children. After having developed a taste for much more involved neurological writing (Sacks, Pinker, Ramachandran), Grandin's sweeping references to brain areas leave me filling in the blanks for her ("amygdala," it's called "the amygdala"). I was just left wanting more from this work.

That being said, as someone who is around horses every day, working with my own horse every morning at a boarding farm and seeing other people with their horses, I have to say that it seems to me that a good many people don't have the first notion about four-legged beings, their needs, emotions or welfare. The greater part of them whip their horses into a frenzy ("lunging") so as to exhaust the horse enough to get on (that is, if they can ever catch the poor beast), put him through a once a week, once a fortnight, or even once a month routine of sudden stress, only to put him back, with no reward or word of praise until they abruptly get the desire to ride again, never bothering to build a relationship. (I call these the "lawnmower people," those who treat their horses like machines of pleasure, to be used as they wish and then put it back in the "garage" until the machine is needed again.) Then there are the perhaps even worse "show people," more concerned with blue ribbons than horses--the horses, or rather, their physical torments tell the tale immediately: coats in the deadly heat of summer ("so they don't get dirty") and the braided tails disabled from their normal use in swatting flies... In short, even though what Grandin writes here is "mostly common sense," I see unlimited stupidity everywhere in the horse world, and I can barely keep from laughing out loud when someone asks, "why does your horse come right to you? how can you lead your horse around at liberty (without a rope)? how can you ride your horse bridleless like that? why doesn't your horse spook?..." and so on. They want the magic button to push: there is no magic button...their is only daily work and care and recognition of a four-legged's emotions and feelings, rewarding and praising and treating the horse...well, like you would treat a person...that you actually loved.

Alas, even as simple as Grandin keeps it here, I doubt the lawnmower people would get it.

book about forms of life that exist outside the terms of what has come to be the "standard model" of heat, pressure and PH circumstances of survival. Toomey's work here is informative but presented in a way that is easily accessible to the layman, often entertaining, always engaging stuff to make us see deeper into life and its incredible durability.

of how a miracle of modern medicine made an age in which something like scarlet fever, bronchitis or a deep cut could prove fatal into a curious and quaint bit of past, a fuzzy far-away time that most children today could barely conceive of--and, from a medical point of view, thank God they cannot.

to Aitken's biography of John Newton. Much of the material in Newton's little autobiography is used in Aitken's expansive book, but it is interesting to read the "eight letters" telling Newton's story all in a piece. Newton's life runs the gamut from vile slave boat captain to deeply religious follower of Christianity and author of "Amazing Grace," probably the best known of Christian hymns. His humility and honesty concerning his youthful misdeeds is refreshing and allows the reader to see the true power of religion for deep change in someone who approaches it with the true desire to be a better man.

as Tozer rhapsodizes about the qualities of the divine. Some of the material here has appeared in other volumes--either that, or Tozer had a tendency to use a lot of the same examples and metaphors repeatedly--but most of it is worth hearing again. The one flaw in Tozer is that sometimes he can fall into circular logic, especially when he appeals to the intellect to understand the limits of the intellect in comprehending the attributes of God.

as Tozer rhapsodizes about the qualities of the divine. Some of the material here has appeared in other volumes--either that, or Tozer had a tendency to use a lot of the same examples and metaphors repeatedly--but most of it is worth hearing again. The one flaw in Tozer is that sometimes he can fall into circular logic, especially when he appeals to the intellect to understand the limits of the intellect in comprehending the attributes of God.