5 comments about Mermaids (Magical Beings).

1. I bought this book to help me with my M.F.A. thesis about femme fatale, mermaids and beauty.
   I thought it was a lovely book for what it is, simple with little stories and poems, but it is not really scholarly. There is not much information, but a lot of legends and texts. Obviously the research to make that book was really good. The images are BEAUTIFUL. Don't expect information though, cause there is none.



2. If you love Mermaids you must own a copy of this book! This book is so sweetly put together. The images were carefully chosen; so beautiful and elegant. Ratisseau did an exquisite job. Her Fairies book is just as lovely too. One will also like Lori Eisenkraft-Palazzola's books too if they like this one.



3. I had my eye on this book for quite some time when I ordered it a couple months ago. I was looking for a book with mostly pictures and not too much text on mermaids. This is perfect. I only wish it was longer. This book has page after page of beautiful pictures. There are also poems and quotes from books, journals, etc about merfolk.
   If you're interested in learning more about all the different types of merfolk and other mythical water creatures, I recommend Magickal Mermaids and Water Creatures Invoke the Magick of the Waters, by D.J. Conway.



4. And in this book I found a pretty good assortment. I'm very fond of Laughing Elephant Books, which seems to specialize in illustrations from old children's books. I was pretty pleased with the group of pictures in this book and can only complain that I wanted MORE!



5. Very good historical information of mermaids....but did not give the book to my young child because of the nudity featured in the artwork. The artwork is indeed classical, beautiful, and very sensual.

4 comments about No Experience Required - Colored & Watercolor Pencil (No Experience Required).

1. I've spent a lot of money on books to teach myself painting. I believed many grand promises made by these books and have found myself more disappointed than successful. Not the case with this one. This book was so easy to understand, I was thrilled to find success at my early attempts. Techniques were explained clearly and the demonstrations were also easy to understand. Highly recommended.



2. The way Gary Greene explains how to use colored and water color pencils makes it very easy to follow the steps. He clearly
   shows what results to get in an easy to follow manner. Great for beginners as well as more advantaged users of these mediums.
   I highly recommend this book.
   
   Constance Hingert



3. This book does a very good job of showing how to use colored pencils and watersoluble pencils both indepently and together. I used it to use watersolubles for large areas and the colored pencils for detail and it helped quite a bit.



4. I have always wanted to learn how to use colored pencils. This book covers the basic techniques of both colored and watercolor pencils and how to combine them. The author does not assume anything and explains basic techniques you can try along with step by step directions for several drawings. I found this book an excellent way to get started.

5 comments about Goddesses Knowledge Cards: Paintings by Susan Seddon Boulet.

1. I thought these were a great idea. I found them in a used bookstore for $5.
   
   The good: The goddess cards cover a pretty wide range of pantheons. The descriptive text on the back is well-written and high quality. The artwork is imaginative.
   
   The less-than-good: Overall, it seems the artist has one female face that she uses as a template for her art: full lips, long face, peaceful yet somewhat vacant eyes. In a deck like this, I would have desired perhaps some more differences among the goddesses in order to highlight the natures of the deities depicted, especially the more feral or darker aspects, which this deck seems to shy away from. It has a very warm/fuzzy/positive feel, and seems to avoid or gloss over some of the darker archetypes.
   
   After browsing through the deck again, it almost seems like she might have used the same model for many of the pieces. Despite that complaint, this is still a solid product for which i would have paid full price.



2. Susan Seddon Boulet is an inspired artist, which astonishing work make us dive into the deep realm of the unconscious. The images of Godesses touch the archetipal feminine and resonates those possibilities in each of us. I contemplate them as part of my inner work and in my work as an art therapist in Brazil.



3. Boulet was a very gifted artist, whose work is extremely inspiring on a deeply spiritual level. These cards portray her art splendidly, along with wonderful descriptions of the goddesses on the reverse side. The Goddess Knowledge Cards can be used as a divination tool, for daily inspiration and guidance, or simply for the enjoyment of Art. Boulet included many of the lesser-known goddesses in this deck, such as Rhiannon (my personal favorite, as this is also my granddaughter's name). The cards are beautifully printed on heavy, high-gloss cardstock. The artwork is undeniably remarkable. They cards will be appreciated by many.



4. I really enjoy this deck- it provides a way to meditate on the goddesses and gives an image to incorporate into ritual or meditations as well. The little descriptions on the back give enough information to build on, and definitely are written in such a way that doesn't detract from the beautiful images. Love it!



5. I have loved Boulet's art at first sight. I discovered her work at a point in my life where I was aggressively exploring the feminine face of the Divine. The Goddess Knowledge cards are excellent renditions of artworks that grace the annual Goddesses calendar and datebooks. The cards may be used for decorative and educational purposes. A wonderful use is as a tool for seeking cultivating the intuitive wisdom associated with each of the goddesses within one's self. Like I said, I love them.

5 comments about The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

1. First of all, let me state that I still really admire Dali's undeniably talented and very imaginative work as an artist. At the time of writing this review, I can still honestly say that Salvador Dali is my favorite visual artist qua artist. However, I never realized how truly horrible of a person he is until I have read this book. In this book, you will find Dali gleefully describing, without any hint of remorse, how he would kick his baby sister in the head amongst other passages where Dali is obviously trying to make the reader uncomfortable, such as his extensive description of getting a piece of dried mucus lodged under his fingernail.
   
   Reading this book really has solidified my perception of Salvador Dali as the kind of individual who takes great pleasure in deliberately confusing, fooling or repulsing an audience. Reading this book will not provide you with insight on the motivation behind Dali's works nor will it offer an honest portrayal of his life. Instead, it will just be an extensive lesson in how Dali would entertain an audience through narration. Sometimes his anecdotes can be quite amusing, which suggests that this book is appropriate for truly devoted fans of the great surrealist. However, I personally found it to be too unpleasant to recommend.



2. Genius isn't pretty, if we are to deduce that this revelation of the secret life of Salvador Dali is representative of the inner reality of genius in general. For certain, genuine creation isn't pretty, as anyone who's ever witnessed childbirth might attest: it's accomplished by blood, obscenity, mucous, hysterics, farts, and pain. Out of such undifferentiated chaos does one mold the miracle of his creation. So in *The Secret Life of Salvador Dali* we get the "confession" of a man whose life from earliest childhood is replete with incidents, fantasies, attitudes, and behaviors that can only be considered pathological.
   
   But then how much of this memoir is "real" and how much artistic hyperbole is a question open to debate. For Dali consciously mythologizes his life and makes no secret of the fact that much of his "secret life" may not have actually taken place except in his imagination. "The difference," he writes, "between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant." And shortly afterwards he writes of his life that the "all-powerful sway of reverie and myth began to mingle in such a continuous and imperious way with the life of every moment that later it has often become impossible for me to know where reality begins and the imaginary ends." This is Dali's way of winking at the reader--and yet it's an ambiguous wink at best.
   
   For what must always be remembered is that for Dali, the imagination is every bit as "real" in its impact, just as material and plastic, as any historical or anecdotal fact of existence--if anything, the hyper-intensity of Dali's imagination gives his reveries even greater reality. And so Dali, by his own estimation the only true surrealist, presents the story of the first half of his life in its entirety: that's to say, the dreams, visions, and fantasies are given equal weight as the people, facts, and circumstances of conventional autobiography. For the former interact with the latter to produce the uninterrupted "surreality" of the individual life. A man, for instance, who dreams that his best friend has murdered him in his sleep and taken his wife to bed cannot possibly--whether conscious of the fact or not--have lunch with that same friend the next afternoon without his perceptions being altered, right down to his autonomic biological responses, in a very concrete way.
   
   Perhaps the best way to read *The Secret Life of Salvador Dali* is as a kind of absurdist novel about the life and ideas of an eccentric, legendary painter named Salvador Dali. For, indeed, this book very often reads like fiction, studded as it is with bizarre episodes worthy of Kafka or Poe. And yet there is also a good deal of Dali's very down-to-earth philosophy of art in this book: his championing of technique, craft, and discipline, and of the renaissance spirit of the great masters who he admires. These attitudes might surprise many who think of Dali solely as the revolutionary and iconoclastic wild man of surrealism.
   
   Although he's since become synonymous with surrealism, Dali actually considered himself a traditionalist and what made him a real "revolutionary" and ultimately more surreal than the surrealists was, in his view, the fact that he aligned himself with the most conservative aspects of his artistic craft and his Spanish-European-Catholic roots. In fact, it may come as something of a shock to some to find Dali railing against the dissolution of form, of abstraction, of undisciplined experimentation, of the laziness of modern art. From the opening pages when he bombastically declares with mock seriousness his disgust for the formless mush of spinach and his admiration of the rigorous solidity of shellfish, Dali separates himself from the leveling movements in contemporary art, politics, and society, most of which he consigns to the oblivion of the mulch from which the hierarchic tree of a society of true individuals, of the royalty of spirit, art, and culture will inevitably be reborn. Tradition may be chopped down, trampled, burned to ash...but the roots go deeper than revolution. Tradition never dies. Therefore, Dali sides with tradition.
   
   Written when he was barely 38 years old and thus comprising less than half of what would be his allotted life, *The Secret Life* has the feel of a complete autobiography composed from the sober vantage point of the old age Dali cherished and aspired to even as a young man. The text itself is beautifully written/translated--a prose masterpiece of surrealistic metaphor and absurdist hyperbole. An excellent, thought-provoking, and fascinating book from any number of perspectives, *The Secret Life of Salvador Dali* is every bit as unsettling, paradoxical, elusive, contrary, and, ultimately, beautiful, as the paintings for which Dali is so well-known, so misunderstood, and so famous.



3. I don't write many 5 star reviews, but I really really liked this book. It is truly a peek into a brilliant mind. As an artist, it is impossible for me to read this book and not be inspired. As usual, Dali has his fun with the audience, but that only adds to the greatness of this work.



4. So original and bizarre, the first half of the book should be made into a movie.



5. the book had a little of everything. Salvador Dali can be an interesting writer, and some sections of the book demonstrate this. The early chapters of the book covering his childhood are difficult to trudge through between irrational events and memories and ones that seem plausible. It is not a very good autobiography for recording ones milestones, but I suppose it recorded things that appealed and became ingrained in Dali to become motifs in his art, such as crutches for instance. As the book progressed Dali's philosophy became a little more clear and the book a little more interesting, especially as he and his wife Gala visited America and the world was prepping for World War II. All in all, I would rather have read a straight forward Dali biography than his convoluted auto-biography. You have to be a very tolerant reader to put up episodes that are difficult to visualizse or understand and to keep asking yourself, "Is this true or is Dali dreaming it up?"

5 comments about Visual Grammar (Design Briefs).

1. I stumbled on this book at the local library and found it a very fascinating read. I've been involved in graphic production for years and can push the objects around on the comp, but never really knew the basics and foundation of visual language.
   
   This is a great primer to learn the basic concepts that lead one to want to learn the syntax and the structure of the visual nouns learned.
   
   This is something I will purchase and pore over until I learn the concepts.



2. Wow. Thats just it for this book. Seriously, someone wanted a publication and farted this thing out. I mean, it gives you the vocab of the elements...thats it. Im a college design teacher and this book would be great for a middle-school art/design class.
   
   If you want simplistic...this may be for you.



3. This book certainly takes the simplicity route. It is ruthlessly straightforward in regards to expressing it's information, in a layout that is without a doubt concise and efficient. The nadir? It also unfortunately reads like stereo instructions and the knowledge it tries to impart is thoroughly basic at best. Simple shapes and the like may be the building blocks of structure, but without any really tangible information to be gleaned we are left with an attractive skeleton. Yes there are some bits of wisdom in this book as well as some fetching Adobe Illustrator rendered graphics, but by and large we're just left with more white space than a snowstorm. I really do think people should form their own opinions about reference materials however, maybe you could learn a great deal from this work. Buy it, try it, but I honestly can't envision the need for this volume in light of so many other exemplary works on the subject.



4. Everything was excellent except the quality of the binding on the book. it isn't bad enough for me to want to return it but it is something to mention.



5. The standard for visual literacy was set by Dondis A. Dondis in 1973 with "A Primer of Visual Literacy". However, it was (is) a heavy read. Christian Leborg's "Visual Grammar" gives us a more visual approach to the subject. His thesis is that we cannot understand the visual images that assault our eyes unless we share a common understanding of the symbols involved. Leborg enlightens us with a symplified but nonetheless complex view of symbols that are abstract, concrete, active, and relative. It's an interesting exploration using only basic geometric shapes. This is a "must have" book for those who teach design and a desirable book for students. All you need to know is that it is published by Princeton Architectural Press. Princeton publishes some of the most important books on design. Their positive discrimination is evident in all of their publications.

No comments about Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities, Alternate Edition (Book & CD-ROM).

No comments about The Nancy Book.

5 comments about Wristwatch Annual 2007 (Wristwatch Annual).

1. This is book is great. It lists a lot of world high-end watches from 2007. Although I don't have money to buy them now. At least I can look at it as a gallary book.



2. I bought this just to see all the awesome watches out there. Some of these are in the hundred thousands. Wow. Great pictures and company info. If you enjoy watches in the least you must own this catalog its huge and has hundreds of pictures of watches you will never own, unless you have a few hundred thousand sitting around.



3. Great pictures, a must for any watch enthusiast. Side note. Some of the actual specifications are not accurate.



4. The photography alone of these world class timepieces brings out the male urge to splurge. It's like being a kid in a candy store, you want one of everything! I've read the '05 and '06 editions and this one does not disappoint. Nice feature: a guide to the pronunciation of all those Swiss, German and French names. Even if you don't speak any of those languages you can say the names like a native. Any watch aficionado will spend many delightful hours soaking up all the facts, figures and history presented here.



5. I really like the format, usually get the new one when it's released.

1 comments about The Expressive Arts Activity Book: A Resource for Professionals.

1. THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS ACTIVITY BOOK: A RESOURCE FOR PROFESSIONALS compiles a set of tested activities for use with people in a range of care settings, to help them explore experiences, physical and emotional issues, interpersonal problems and more. It goes far beyond most psychology and educational guides to offer a set of creative ideas and exercises hospital workers, schools and other caregivers can use in the daily course of their interactions - and it also provides variations and assessment pointers. It's an invaluable workbook that health collections will find important.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch

5 comments about Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross.

1. Mythology collects the stellar art work of Alex Ross showcasing the worlds finest images of the major DC characters such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. This book highlights key points of the characters beginnings and evolutions with clear and informative writing. Gorgeously illustrated by Alex Ross coupled with wonderfully laid out design work the reader will find it quite difficult to put down this handsome book.Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross



2. An amazingly illustrated montage of Ross's work. A beautiful book for fans of comic book art and art in general.



3. AMAZING. Totally worth buying. If you like Alex Ross, you will not regret this purchase. The book includes Ross' comments on inspiration, collaborations, thoughts, insights, and much more. Truly inspiring.



4. It's a great work, detailing all the work of Alex Ross in DC Comics. In this book, we get the notions of how he figures out the characters, their concepts and ideologies, etc. Moreover, with this book we can see how the Art is transported from the artist's mind to the paper.
   There's just one book better than this one: it's hardcover version, much more beautiful.



5. Wow. I love Alex Ross, and he has soooo many beautiful pieces that they shouldn't have had any trouble finding classic, beautiful images.
   This calandar is half filler. Some months are nothing more than pictures of toys based on Ross's paintings. That's ridiculous. I could have settled for the design art that the toys were made from, but I didn't buy a calandar of the artist's works to see lame products several times removed from the actual art.
   High hopes led to great disappointment.