selections accidental revolutionary illuminations

books:

12 reviews
Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Penguin Classics, 2007

Singing a song of Scotland
This book is the greatest of its time and endures as a seminal piece of literature. A song should be sung and this song should be read aloud, not intoned inside the dim recesses of the mind. Chris faces no issue which is not relevant today, from incest and spousal abuse, to the horrors and tragedies of war, to the chave and ecstasies of life. It is appealing to all ages, but must be approached ...

Free Love and Other Stories

2 reviews
Ali Smith

Virago Pr, 2001

Simply Superb Collection !!
I always believe that if you want to know an author's true works - then first discover stories written by the author. And this belief has carried me through the road of discovering some really good authors one of them being Ali Smith. Cutting the hype of "Hotel World", "Free Love and other stories" - i think which was the first book of Ali Smith is a winner all the way. Abstraction is the ...

Entrances and Exits

3 reviews

Simon Pulse, 2008

The best DRAMA yet.
Every book in Paul Ruditis's "Drama!" series is a delight, with enjoyable characters, snarky high-school feuds, and a strong focus on young people putting on a show. They're perfect books for a young theater fan or for anyone looking for a fun, quick read filled with snappy humor. In this new fourth book, Bryan Stark and his friends are caught up in their school's fall one-act festival: their ...

The QurÆan and Sayings of Prophet Muhammad: Selections Annotated & Explained (Skylight Illuminations)

2 reviews

Skylight Paths Publishing, 2007

Clear and succinct guide
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about important and relevant verses from the Qur'an and Prophetic Sayings. The explanations are clear and succinct. Muslims can better understand their primary texts. Non-Muslims can find benefit in a conscise collection of verses from the Qu'ran that are well translated and intelligently explained.

Laws of the Bandit Queens: Words to Live by from 35 of Today's Most Revolutionary Women

16 reviews
Ali Smith

Three Rivers Press, 2002

Ali smith, bandit photographer
I am sitting at a coffee shop and had to reluctantly tear myself away from Ali Smith"s LAws of BAndit Queens. At first I just opened the book and looked at the pictures. I felt a strange sense of reverence in front of the array of fiercely modern and independent women portrayed there. The pictures caught them in action .The photographs seemed to have captured the essence of each and every women ...

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Penguin Classics)

1 review
Katherine Mansfield

Penguin Classics, 2007

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
For anyone who feels that short stories today have lost artistic value, this collection of short stories will make you regain faith. I love these extremely well written and poetic stories by katherine Mansfield, one of the originators of the short story. She masterfully uses wonderful poetic images and she concentrates on the devopment of her characters and uses stream of consciouness to make ...

Smith Bus Law & Reg of Bus

3 reviews
Ali Smith, Richard A. Mann, ...

West Publishing Company, 1997

Good book, but AMZN's price is high
You can get the book at much cheaper price from elsewhere including book stores. Barnes and Nobles.com sells it only for $72.50. Check it out. do not buy from AMZN. They are cheaters.

Trotsky for Beginners

3 reviews
Tariq; Smith Ali

Writers & Readers Publishing, Incorporated, 1980

A good introduction to Trotsky's thought
Lev Davydovich Bronstein A.K.A. Leon Trotsky was certainly a very complicated figure as this book shows. Early on he opposed Lenin's conception of the hierarchal, tightly centralized working class party and was very active in the Petersburg Soviet of 1905. Lenin accepted Trotsky's view of "permenant revolution" after the February 1917 revolution and Trotsky joined forces with him to oppose the ...

The Whole Story and Other Stories

4 reviews
Ali Smith

Anchor, 2004

Thoroughly enchanting
I'm a big fan of Jeanette Winterson, and I'll confess that her endorsement on the cover of the book sold me. But after reading this delightful collection cover to cover in a couple of days, I'll say Smith's work is its own endorsement. Like Winterson, Smith has a magical quality to her storytelling and her I/you gender play (I'm surprised the official book review above claims so smugly that the ...

Hotel World

40 reviews
Ali Smith

Penguin Books Ltd, 2002

A totally unique, difficult and ultimately deeply moving book
This book is really difficult to review. It is not a book that you just pick up and read for fun. The literary structure is all over the place (e.g., there is an entire 35+ page chapter without a single period); it is totally nonlinear, each chapter starting out with a totally new main character; and there are no quotation marks used at all (a la Jose Saramago). And yet, this book hit me to ...

Basic Chemical Thermodynamics 3/E (Oxford Chemistry Series)

1 review
Ali Smith, E. Brian Smith

Oxford University Press, 1990

A great start...
This book is a great way to introduce ones self to the area of thermodynamics as applied to chemistry. The text is very informal, yet covers everything one would expect to see in an undergraduate physical chemistry or thermodynamics corse. The layout of the book is simple starting with simple physical analogs of the systems to be examined and from there developing the more complicated ...

The Accidental

59 reviews
Ali Smith

Penguin, 2006

great book
i loved this novel of a mysterious woman who arrives at the vacation house of a british academic family and with ingenuity and bravery challenges and heals the broken life of each of her dysfunctional hosts. the book is loosely based on the pier paolo pasolini's 1968 film "teorama"; but where pasolini is allegoric, over-stated, almost exploitative in his sexuality, smith seems to have learned ...

Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

5 reviews
Ali Smith

Knopf Canada, 2008

A modern gender bender in the true spirit of Ovid.
"Now I'd become a walking fuse, like in that poem about the flower, and the force, and the green fuse the force drives through it; the force that blasts the roots of trees was blasting the roots of me, I was like a species that hadn't even realised it lived in a near-desert til one day its taproot hit water. Now I had taken a whole new shape. No, I had taken the shape I was always supposed to, ...

Like

7 reviews
Ali Smith

Virago Press Ltd, 1997

more! we want more!
Way to go Ali Smith! More questions than answers, just like life. Lifelike even. Read Like. Even if you think you might not like it. You don't have to. That's why it's really something.

Records Management

1 review
Ali Smith

Thomson South-Western, 1999

For those interested.
Well, needless to say, it's a dry topic, but the book does a good job of trying to lower the dullness by speaking in very plain English and making it a colorful, picture filled text. The primary shortcoming of this book isn't so much the book itself, but the activity kit that corresponds with it. The shortcoming of it being that it does not tell you when things can be disposed of, so by the ...

The Member of the Wedding (Penguin Modern Classics)

74 reviews
Carson McCullers

Penguin Classics, 2001

Eloquent, lovely, and sad
This is my very favorite book and, in my opinion, far superior to "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." I was not an adolescent when I read it--I was 23--but I was astonished by how often McCullers was able to perfectly describe what I had believed to be indescribable experiences. In some ways I think that my attachment to the book grew from my ability to relate to Frankie's anxiety. The pace of ...

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