brazzaville confessions photographers foreknowledge

books:

12 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 2003

a well-written, funny/satiric blast on the colonial British
William Boyd, a terrific writer who knows Africa quite well (..he was brought up there), really cuts loose with 'A Good Man in Africa'. He completely deconstructs the psyche of the pompous, self-righteous and arrogant British colonial rulers (diplomats) of Africa during the 1960s. However I think even the most right wing British will not be offended with this book since his leading characters ...

Any Human Heart

37 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 2004

ANATOMY OF A LIFE SPANNING THE 20th CENTURY
Written in diary form, this novel describes the life and times of Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, born in 1906 in Montevideo to an English father and his Uruguayan wife, who later moves with his family to England just before the First World War, and takes the reader from the 1920s to the 1990s. This is an incredible, thoroughly engaging novel which gives the reader entree into the ups and downs, ...

Restless: A Novel

47 reviews
William Boyd

Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Part historical novel, part spy thriller - great story!
This book was phenomenal. I started it at 3 o' clock one afternoon and just read it straight through, skipping dinner until I finished it. Ruth Gilmartin is a graduate student in history at Oxford, 28-year old single mother of a three-year old son. One hot Saturday in the summer of 1976 her world is turned upside down when her mother reveals that her identity as Sally Gilmartin (nee ...

Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

8 reviews

InterVarsity Press, 2001

Excellent Introduction to the Foreknowledge debate
Most of the reviews on this page miss the boat entirely. Rather than actually reviewing or recommending DF the reviewers are merely venting their anger because their particular view is challenged. Pay them no mind. DF is an excellent book. Buy it and read all the views with as much of an open humble mind as you can. It's better than the alternative spoon feeding that is rampant in many ...

The Blue Afternoon

18 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 1997

Love story from a man's angle, with plot aplenty
As a woman, if you're ever so slightly bored of modern women writers, this is for you. William Boyd's achingly beautiful writing weaves an engrossing plot involving, but not limited to, a love story told from the man's point of view. And it's refreshing to read of a man's utter devotion, told ungushingly but with such feeling and realism. In addition to the love, there is the story set mostly in ...

Brazzaville Beach

27 reviews
William Boyd

Harper Perennial, 1995

Only a few DNA strands short of a perfect match
Man vs chimpanzee: Boyd takes the wonderfully named Hope Clearwater's experience as a chimp-sanctuary research scientist in Africa and interleaves it with her crumbling marriage to a failed mathematical genius/lunatic, John. Hope suffers from an unerring scientific passion to tell the truth about her empirical observations, a quality not always shared by her colleagues or bosses, whose ...

The New Confessions

14 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 2000

An Outstanding Fictional Memoir
This fictional memoir displays Boyd's consummate skill and style to full effect, ranging across time an place to create a vivid tale. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is (perhaps arguably) first tell-all memoir, and here Boyd updates it through the reminisces of James Todd. The story unfolds chronologically from his birth in 1899 and upbringing in Edinburgh to the 1970s, when he sits incognito ...

An Ice-Cream War: A Novel

7 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 1999

When Terrible Things Happen to 'Essentially' Good People
While billed as a novel about the First World War, "An Ice Cream War" is really about the oftentimes tragic randomness of life and how we as humans really have very little control over our individual destinies. This book could be subtitled "When Terrible Things Happen to Essentially Good People". It tells the story of two brothers, Felix and Gabriel Cobb; Charis, Gabriel's wife; Walter Smith, an ...

A Handful of Dust (Everyman's Library)

63 reviews
Evelyn Waugh

Everyman's Library, 2002

Another Great
I won't go on and on about my praise for Waugh. He is one of my favorite writers. About the book, I felt SO bad when I read about Tony Last at the end. So cruel. So, so cruel. It gave me the shivers. So, another Waugh novel that is witty, funny, and all the other things his books are. If you can appreciate intelligent writing then I highly recommend this book.

Her Privates We

8 reviews
Frederic Manning

Serpent's Tail, 1999

Elegant, true, vivid, and memorable
Of course, I say this work is elegant, true, vivid and memorable as a work, not the events it depicts. In parts of the world that used to make up the Commonwealth and serviced by Penguin books, the title may be THE MIDDLE PARTS OF FORTUNE. Having had 25 years in the military I can only say I read this book from cover to cover, and relished every word in it. Artistically, as an artifact, it has ...

Emile of Jean Jacques Rousseau

1 review
William Boyd

Teachers College Press, 1962

Just a head's-up
This book is not a critical study of Rousseau's Emile, nor is it even the whole work itself. It's only a digest of the work, containing selections from Emile. Just thought I should point that out to any potential buyers.

Carving Cypress Knees: Creating Whimsical Characters from One of Nature's Most Unique Woods

3 reviews
Carole Jean Boyd, Jack A. Williams

Fox Chapel Publishing, 2005

cypress knees
This is a great book which is a must for learning to carve cypress knees. Great pictures and clear instructions. Thanks J Mallory

Armadillo: A Novel

21 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 2000

MY OUTSTANDING READ FOR THE YEAR 2001
Lorimer Black is a loss adjuster working in the City of London. Unwittingly he becomes a pawn in a darker world and a side of business life, where corruption, greed and snobbery prevail. From the outset this book had a hold on me. It was fascinating immediately, and very funny. I recognised the characters in people I know and laughed outloud so many times that I became a real pain to those within ...

Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers

4 reviews
Robert Flynn Johnson

Thames & Hudson, 2005

"What, in short, makes a photograph good?"
The answer to the question posed by William Boyd, who with Robert Flynn Johnson has gathered and commented on this portfolio of fascinating photographs, lies between the covers of this enthralling book. None of the photographers represented herein are known for their artistry: actually they are not known at all and hence the title. But the images in this book touch nearly every human emotion and ...

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)
Alasdair Gray

Canongate Books Ltd, 2007

"Lanark", a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. Widely recognised as a modern classic, Alasdair Gray's magnum opus was first ...

The Destiny of Nathalie X

4 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 1997

A remarkable collection by a gifted writer
These dense, finely etched stories are my introduction to William Boyd. Such an ordinary name for such a fancy writer! The title story is set in a place I know well near LAX; indeed I can almost see the exact setting of most of the scenes, where a French director, a black auteur, as it were, is composing his film. The setting is purposely banal in the extreme: a cheap pizzeria next to a ...

Nat Tate: An American Artist

3 reviews
William Boyd

Edition Stemmle, 1998

An enigma wrapped in a mystery
Yes, this book is fiction masquerading as fact. However to suggest it's just a cynical literary prank to confuse art groupies is akin to saying that Macbeth is about a boy and his mother. What Boyd does is create a narrative which suggests a poetic truth about life, art and identity. The idea that fiction is more moving when tied to real events and people is not a new one. it may also in fact, be ...

Stars and Bars: A Novel

6 reviews
William Boyd

Vintage, 2001

Hysterical! Buy one for you and a friend.
The first time I read this book I had to keep re-reading passages because it was so hilarious! I had tears in my eyes at one point. I recommend this book to everyone who loves the South and has a great imagination. The main character's portrayal of this odd range of Southern characters is priceless, as well as the New York City group. The plot is so full of twists and turns that you are ...

The Transformation of Great American School Districts: How Big Cities Are Reshaping Public

Harvard Education Press, 2008

In The Transformation of Great American School Districts, William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of public education apolitical governance, local control, professional hierarchy, and the logic of confidence and ...

Grant Comes East

68 reviews
Newt Gingrich, William Forstchen

Macmillan Audio, 2004

Grant Comes East
I have read all three in the series. This book is the second in the series and is an excellent book. It is so well written that with a little imagination you can almost hear the artillery. I would recommend this series to anyone who likes a well written book or series and has even a little interest in the civil war. Although the battles turn out differently in the book than what happened so ...

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