No comments about Dear Harp of My Country: The Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore (Spirit of Ireland in Lyric and Song, Vol 1).

3 comments about Daniel O'Donnell: My Story.

1. Book was in very good condition and was very enjoyable to read. I looked everywhere for this book but could only find it on Amazon. Thank You!



2. Received book on time. I enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Daniel.



3. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have been a fan of Daniel O'Donnell for a long time and it was enjoyable reading his life story. This book is worth reading if you are a fan of Daniel O'Donnell.

3 comments about Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1548-1560: A Political Career.

1. Ritchie's skillful narration of this difficult and controversial period has provided by far one of the best books as yet available on the politics of sixteenth century Scotland, but is also a must-see for anybody interested in the dynastic politics of France and England.

   16th century Europe is one of the most fascinating periods in history, populated by some of the such colourful and well-known figures as Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and Bloody Mary. It is also a century, as the names listed above suggest, that features a large number of women in positions of power. Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, was another of these powerful political women.

   The side-effect of the colourful nature of the lives of some of these women is that sixteenth-century history books often read like little more than romantic fiction. They play up the history of personalities (often based on poor research and quasi-psychological guesswork), but ignore the serious side of the women who ruled some of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe.

   Pamela E. Ritchie does not make this mistake. Her book is a serious study of a serious woman, and is based on meticulous and extensive research. But the book is no turgid academic tome, and Ritchie manages the difficult trick of providing a thoroughly readable and engaging study of the career and ambitions of a fascinating woman. Mary of Guise has traditionally been written off in Scotland as the main agent of an unpopular French/Catholic domination of Scotland that took place in the 1550s, which was overturned by the popular revolution of John Knox's Reformation in 1560. Ritchie shows this was not the case. Instead Guise, for most of the 1550s, enjoyed considerable support from Scots, and her plans for a dynastic union of the French and Scottish crowns by the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin Francois was supported by Catholic and Protestant Scots alike. Guise, above all, was a skilled politician who carefully balanced the difficult circumstances of the dynastic conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe to best pursue the interests of her own family (les Guises) and her daughter, the monarch of Scotland. That her regime collapsed in 1560 as a result of a rebellion brought about as much by the role of a new protestant regime in England as any deep-seated popular hatred of the French influence in Scotland, should not obscure the successes of her time in power.




2. Ritchie's skillful narration of this difficult and controversial period has provided by far one of the best books as yet available on the politics of sixteenth century Scotland, but is also a must-see for anybody interested in the dynastic politics of France and England.

   16th century Europe is one of the most fascinating periods in history, populated by some of the such colourful and well-known figures as Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and Bloody Mary. It is also a century, as the names listed above suggest, that features a large number of women in positions of power. Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, was another of these powerful political women.

   The side-effect of the colourful nature of the lives of some of these women is that sixteenth-century history books often read like little more than romantic fiction. They play up the history of personalities (often based on poor research and quasi-psychological guesswork), but ignore the serious side of the women who ruled some of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe.

   Pamela E. Ritchie does not make this mistake. Her book is a serious study of a serious woman, and is based on meticulous and extensive research. But the book is no turgid academic tome, and Ritchie manages the difficult trick of providing a thoroughly readable and engaging study of the career and ambitions of a fascinating woman. Mary of Guise has traditionally been written off in Scotland as the main agent of an unpopular French/Catholic domination of Scotland that took place in the 1550s, which was overturned by the popular revolution of John Knox's Reformation in 1560. Ritchie shows this was not the case. Instead Guise, for most of the 1550s, enjoyed considerable support from Scots, and her plans for a dynastic union of the French and Scottish crowns by the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin Francois was supported by Catholic and Protestant Scots alike. Guise, above all, was a skilled politician who carefully balanced the difficult circumstances of the dynastic conflicts of sixteenth-century Europe to best pursue the interests of her own family (les Guises) and her daughter, the monarch of Scotland. That her regime collapsed in 1560 as a result of a rebellion brought about as much by the role of a new protestant regime in England as any deep-seated popular hatred of the French influence in Scotland, should not obscure the successes of her time in power.




3. The key to the contents of this book is in its subtitle - "1548-1560 A Political Study".

   The author has done a lot of original research into Scottish politics during the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots and in reality this is what you'll find in this book and it takes up 99% of the first half of the book.

   We get to see Mary de Guise in a more biographical form in the second half of the book. However, if you buy this book expecting to read a biography of Mary de Guise you will probably be disappointed. While Mary's political actions are dealt with in great detail, in the end you feel you really don't know that much about her. Instead you know more about how King Henri of France felt about Scotland, or the importance of various treaties than you do about Mary herself.

   This is a first rate book for those who want to know the ins and outs of the various political schemes in Scotland from 1548-1560 but less successfully gives us a real feel for the personality of Mary of Guise. On the plus side the author has included a number of quotes from original documents in both their original French and with English translations for those of us not fluent in the French language and all the sources are well footnoted.

No comments about Charles, Earl Grey: Aristocratic Reformer.

2 comments about Discovering Saint Patrick.

1. The perfect place to start if you want to learn about St. Patrick or early Irish Christianity. O'Loughlin is the best scholar in the world on this subject, but his books are easy to read.



2. Written by a theology lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter, Discovering Saint Patrick is a religious and biographical study of Saint Patrick, that strives to understand as much as possible about his life, his impact on history, how he influenced the development of Irish Catholicism, and much more. Thoroughly researched, drawing heavily on original sources as well as directly from scripture, Discovering Saint Patrick approaches the life and times of the famous saint with a scholarly eye for detail and as much corroboration and verification as reasonably possible. A welcome contribution to church libraries and biographical collections of holy figures, and a "must-read" for anyone who is curious to understand what St. Patrick's Day is really all about.

2 comments about The Nelson Companion.

1. Colin White works hard so we don't have to. He has saved us having to dig through countless book to find information on persons, events and places that feature prominently, or even incidentally, in Lord Nelson's colourful life. This book will be an invaluable aid to everyone interested in Nelson, the Royal Navy, and the Napoleonic Wars.

   Also highly recommended:

   Joel Hayward's "For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War"

   Evan Thomas's "John Paul Jones : Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy"




2. While visiting Nelson's flagship VICTORY in Portsmouth recently, I asked the guide to recommend a book about Nelson, as I realsied I knew very little about the great man. He told me to buy this excellent book by Colin White - and I'm really glad I did.

   Its packed with fascinating facts (did you know, for exapmple that Hitler actually planned to move Nelson's column to Berlin if he defeated Britain?)and some really wonderful illustrations.

   Its a really good read and I find I keep going back to it to check on various facts. What's more,its got me reading more books about Nelson!

   (PS: Did you know, by the way, that Colin White has written ANOTHER book about Nelson? Its called '1797: Nelson's Year of Destiny' and its all about his exploits at the Battle of Cape St Vincent. I looked for it earlier on the Amazon list but it wasn't there.

5 comments about Samuel Beckett.

1. I have just finished wading through this weighty tome. It is shameful that this author who evidently knew Beckett intimately but did not learn any from him. He makes it clear to us, how Beckett was able to develop a concise reductive approach to his work in which he reduces sentences to a mere phrase.This book need editing dramatically. Cronin waffles for pages and pages about the most tangential issues barely relavent to Beckett's life.On occassion, conjecting as what Beckett may be thinking or not. This goes on for two thirds of his book and then he cuts short the most active period of Beckett's life. A moment that Cronin has the most resources availble to him with documents and personnel. Beckett was a master of language this author should read him.



2. If you seek to understand how a product of the Irish Protestant middle class a century ago managed at an early age to overthrown any certainty brought about by such an upbringing, Cronin offers surmises to this and hundreds of other puzzles in the reticent Foxrock native's life. For a man who so esteemed silence, the impossibility of words to match our inner experiences and their outer raiments, Cronin's herculean cleaning out of the Augean stables, the poring through every scrap penned by Beckett, results in an extraordinarily thorough but never exhausting account ranging six hundred closely printed pages.
   
   As an adopted Dubliner, and as a working writer for fifty years, Cronin adds here to his earlier successes that pondered literary failure, or at least mediocrity, in what passed for bohemian life in the Irish capital of the postwar decade, 1945-55, Dead as Doornails, and in his life of Flann O'Brien/Myles na gCopaleen/Brian O Nolan, No Laughing Matter. Both of these have been reissued recently, and I recommend them to readers curious about how talent can drown its sorrows in too much whisky and its potential in too much talk with too little discipline. While this pair illustrates many anecdotes riotously rendered, the cumulative effect of the two accounts makes for sobering cautionary tales, and how the ghost of Joyce lingered long over last century.
   
   How Beckett managed to extricate himself from the early dominance of Joyce when the two met and depended upon each other however fleetingly in Paris makes for engrossing storytelling. What I noted most of all was how Cronin, through scouring Beckett's records, depicts an author amazingly crippled by maladies mostly psychosomatic, by imagined fears, by phobias befitting indeed his future characters. It takes until 1950 or so for this author, now in his mid-forties, to begin to enter into the period, after `the long siege in the room,' where he could come out of his shell and wrestle with his demons. Having fought, at first for the French Resistance (if his rather circumspect accomplishments fell less than dazzlingly in the Hollywood sense, his danger was no less real and the fate of his comrades no less fatal) and then against his interior desolation, he only then could become, well into middle age, the leader of the avant-garde we know him as, the creator of Godot and Endgame, Krapp and Malone, Molloy and Worm, Winnie and Gogo.
   
   In this brief overview of Cronin's tome, no quotes. But, for anyone needing an excellent précis of what Beckett achieved, chapters 23 and 24 in my estimation serve as a thoughtful and by no means uncritical survey of how Beckett set up scaffolds, erected his plots, and then demolished as much of the structure as the work could stand and still survive.
   
   Of course, his later rather dead-end prose such as How It Is and his tinier plays, or dramaticules, produced as the 1960s and 70s found him caught within the expectations of comedians, scholars, analysts, and audiences, the productions shrank as he seemingly had less to say. As Beckett, at the start of his career, noted of Joyce, the elder Irishman strove to cram the whole of existence into the written word, while his successor sought to eliminate as much of the words and still capture the whole of the same human condition. Two contrasting approaches, intersected by the love of language, the compulsion to manufacture it, and the doubt in any higher purpose than that of the artist driven to create and depict and narrate.
   
   Cronin's energy never flags. I happily measured how well he paces his own story. Godot appears only about 2/3 of the way through, and Cronin never stints on the earlier, more embarrassing malingering of the younger Beckett that presaged his rise to fame and irritated his naturally reclusive nature. His generousity, often remarked upon by those who knew and/or studied him, left many in his debt. Winning the Nobel Prize in 1969, he escaped on an extended holiday and gave away the prize money to a list of deserving up-and-coming writers. One bought a sports car with her windfall.
   
   Cronin, as one who knew and at least once offended Beckett, offers a counterpart to Damned by Fame, which appeared (as biographers often find) immediately prior to his own volume in 1996. James Knowlson, the keeper of the Beckett archive at the University of Reading (where a year's concentration and cash can earn you a MA in Beckett Studies), brought out the authorised biography, with more of the typical trajectory beloved by screenwriters, with Beckett's earlier, more derivatively jaunty, Joycean, or jejune scribblings preparing the way for a blossoming into challenging, disturbing, and, yes, humourous sketches of frailty, despair, and hope.
   
   For Cronin, Beckett's less a secular saint than a hypochondriacal mum's boy who, after coddling and a preparation for respectability, lived the life of the Irish exile (who kept decamping to London and even Dublin often enough) and finally had to grow up, support himself, and push his resources to plumb the darkness within. Out of this, he made stunningly evocative prose, for my tastes some of the best in the 20th century in English, full of cadences that, in the restricted French that he chose so as to limit himself to a harsher diet than that afforded the luxuriant Hiberno-English consumer, ghosted Irishisms, summoned English at its best, and shone through French.



3. A careful, highly readable and sometimes very amusing account of the life of the Irish novelist, playwright, theatre director and sports enthusiast. This gives a nuanced and sensitive account of the Irish background from which Beckett at first painfully extracted himself to a new life in France, but which he was always attached to sentimentally and creatively, never being too busy to meet with a young writer from Ireland, or to drink with old Irish friends and wax nostalgic about the Liffey. This book, while generally very admiring (Cronin has no time for the last novel), is actually more discerning and knowledgeable about Beckett's affairs emotional, literary and dramatic, especially in the later years of his career when Cronin was one of the first to write about him at length in the TLS and elsewhere, as well as to meet him and ask questions such as, "Krapp seems to think he had the possibility of happiness...?" To which Beckett calmly replied, "That doesn't mean he did though, does it?"

   You get a fair sense of the man and his times, and a more modulated sense of his slow climb to success, even after "Waiting for Godot" made his name. Never has fame seemed less romantic. Cronin is that best of acquaintance-biographers - no fool, but not an assassin either. Fun as well as thorough. I can't think what will come to light to make a better biography possible.




4. For a pretty fat bio, I found this a surprisingly easy and swift read. Cronin, who certainly knows the lay of the land, the type of people, and even some of the actual folks Beckett knew, seems a fair and judicious biographer. I found the book most useful in charting Beckett's development as an artist from the callow "knowingness" of his early novels and poems to the wry despair of his mature work. One is impressed both by Beckett's inconsistent touchiness about the handling of his work by adapters, and by his quiet generosity with near strangers as well as friends. Cronin includes plenty of delightful trivia, from quotes ("I am not a philosopher; one can only speak of what is in front of one and that is simply a mess") to the fact that Beckett always accented the first syllable of Godot.



5. This is a valiant attempt to understand the man and the artist. The slow and unconventional evolution of Beckett's art is well described. This biography is, I feel, honest [in as much as any biography can be such] and does not mythologize. Sad that in Beckett's last days he appeared to be consumed with remorse.

5 comments about Siberia Bound: Chasing the American Dream on Russia's Wild Frontier.

1. This book is amazing. The author's writing style is really unique and the way he describes the details and emotions of his time in Russia will not be forgotten by any reader. It captures a time and place in a way few writers can match. Anyone who is young at heart with an adventurous spirit will enjoy this book. Anyone interested in Russia will enjoy this book. There is not much else to say without spoiling the fun. I wish the author would have some more adventures and write a few more books. He has a serious talent for this type of writing and needs to keep it up.



2. I suppose you could call this a business book, and I did find it in the business section of the bookstore. But it is really a memoir, a travel narrative of sorts, and a love story.
   
   Blakely goes to Siberia with a brand new university degree in economics. He became interested in the economics, especially capitalism, as the Soviet Union was collapsing. But it might have been just a passing interest if he had not fallen in love with a Russian woman on a university-sponsored trip. So when capitalism came to Siberia, he was ready. He had learned Russian and he wanted to be a pioneer of the New Russian Capitalism.
   
   Blakely comes across as an optimistic and friendly Minnesotan who is game for anything. He loves the extremes of Siberia: the weather, the hard-drinking, the physical challenges. He and his Russian business partner, Sasha, don't really care what business they get into, as long as they make money. Capitalism for capitalism's sake. Blakely feels like a trail-blazer, bringing nourishing capitalism to the hungry socialists.
   
   Blakely's writing style is easy and light, with lots of conversations and no flowery descriptions. He tells us about the food, the social life, the crime, the beauty of Siberia. It's fascinating.
   
   Particularly revealing is the description of western missionaries in Siberia, who flood the country along with the capitalists. They impose, cajole, pressure, and trick their way into the Siberians' homes and their souls. Blakely has no patience for them at first, then finds that they are so pervasive that he has to deal with them on occasion. They are as zealous in bringing Christ to the Russians as the capitalists are in bringing free enterprise.
   
   Blakely has mixed feelings about the changes capitalism brought to Siberia. He says he knows how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt, as he sees Siberia becoming more like America, with traffic jams and billboards. I think he gives himself a bit too much credit though. Capitalism would have come to Siberia and changed it, with or without Blakely.
   
   Siberia Bound is a readable, enjoyable memoir that, along with The Other Side of Russia by Sharon Hudgins, about pre-capitalist Siberia, and So Many Enemies, So Little Time by Elinor Burkett, about post-9/11 Central Asia and beyond, will begin to give you a real picture of how Americans affect and are affected by people on the opposite side of the planet.



3. If you haven't read Siberia Bound - you should. This book restored my faith that America can produce authors on a level with Scott Guggenheim and Arash Padahn. This book exudes a heightened sense of awareness of what it means to be American in a foreign land - a concept oft forgotten in today's gingoistic USA - and above all, what it means to be part of the larger community. Humanity.
   
   Kudos to Blakely. This work is epic.



4. I stumbled across this book while looking for books on the Aral Sea and thought it sounded interesting. I found the writing, descriptions of life, and the adventures very interesting. I would be very interested in a follow-up book since at the end of the book we learn he is living in San Francisco. I can envision a Siberia - San Francisco comparison and perhaps his wife's thoughts on life in San Francisco area. Thanks and it was well worth my time to read.



5. How refreshing to be treated to a story of a modern adventurist. One of the rare living spirits in todays world who has the guts and passion to take a stab at striking out on his own. Lucky for us, he is also one of the rare individuals with a knack to be able to put it to pen. The author masterly balances his passion with a calm insight to produce subtle observations and quirky annedcotes that draw you in. Each of his varied stories is well told. A fun and engaging read that will leave you pondering.

5 comments about Let Me Die in Ireland, the True Story of Patrick.

1. There is a lot in this book that I never knew about St. Patrick. Here in America the person is never considered, mostly just the country of Ireland around St. Patrick's Day. It was an easy read, which I finished in just a few days. It definately helped strengthen my realationship with God to see one person's conviction so strong.



2. Despite my opinion that David Bercot is one of the best writers around, interesting and captivating, this book is not. I couldn't get through it, though I eventually will. A good friend did get through it, and he told me that it gets interesting around the last quarter of the book. I'm interested in Patrick, but the story format just isn't captivating. Even my friend, who finished it, said he debated putting it down several times, but he really wanted to get to the end.
   
   The history's accurate, I'm sure, because Bercot's careful to use original sources and interpret them reasonably, but as a story, it's just dull. Again, that's amazing, because Bercot is an gifted and captivating writer. My thought is that he should have approached it as a history rather than writing it as a story, because his history books can't be put down.
   
   I'm only giving it 3 stars, because I know the history can be trusted.



3. A sixteen year old boy - Patric - from a prosperous family belonging to the autonomous Celtic church is taken captive, along with some of his family's servants. Patric is portrayed as whiny and snobbish, which provides more depth and drama as he learns to survive in a strange, savage land where he is kept as a slave. The only thing that turned me off was the way people spoke in modern English. Bercot didn't need to make them use "thees" and "thous" - but he fubbed up in using "Don't kid yourself". Through the help of an elderly slave, Cedd, who is also a British captive, Patric finds faith, and purpose, and meaning in life. After God has decided his time of trial in Ireland is over, He helps Patric escape. This suspensful journey is the a real heart-throbber. Then comes the tear-jerker, as Patric, who is now a grown man, is finally reunited with his parents. When it looks as though his life was about normal, Patric has a dream where God tells him to return to Ireland. Oh no! Patric doesn't really want to go back, but knows he must, and faces ridicule and rejection as those around him respond with either condecension, or with jeers. A wise man advises him to wait until the church leaders send him, rather than going on his own, and years pass without them doing more than elevating him to the office of a deacon. Finally, after another church sends a missionary to Ireland, people realize that Patric's bright idea was more than an idea: It was a calling. Journey with Patric as he shares the light of the Gospel with those he has come to love, and receives the answer to his prayer, "Let me die in Ireland."



4. We do have Patrick's autobiography, and little else. This book adds to this some commentary and extra which show a particular point of view. It is an interesting point of view but not entirely doucmented.



5. I just grabbed this book for something to read on the bus and didn't have high expectations for it. Although I'm starting to get into the writings of early Christians, I didn't thnk Patrick would be that important. Was I wrong! His story is very interesting, but more important I was extremely inspired by his message and convictions. A couple of examples in particular are how he prayed like "the persistant widow" to get out of Ireland where he was taken to to be sold as a slave, and how when he did escape, God called him back to spread the good news. The seriousness of his commitment inspired me deeply. He did not hesitate to excommunicate anyone who wasn't living according to the Word and he preached that the decision to become a Christian is not something to be taken lightly. "...there is no turning back. It would be far better to never become a Christian than to become one and revert to your former ways." Also, just how he totally devoted himself to Christ, was willing to put up with hardship and make any sacrifice, had utmost integrity and forgave his betrayors. You can sense the struggles reading this book, but he persevered.
   The book is a quick read, and while the author admits using artistic license to recreate the dialogue, his main sources of information for the book are Patrick's "Testimony" and his letter of excommunication sent to the British king.
   I highly recommend this very inspiring book.

No comments about Elizabeth I: A Life.