No comments about The Reign of Tiberius Out of the First Six Annals of Tacitus (Large Print Edition): The Reign of Tiberius Out of the First Six Annals of Tacitus (Large Print Edition).

1 comments about Where There's Life (Isis Reminiscence Series).

1. Fascinating insight into growing up poor in turn of the century Birmingham, England. I think this may originally have been 2 books, The first part is told from a child's point of view, the latter part as an adult. The detailed descriptions and interesting characters draw you into the story and provide a real sense of being there. Excellent fodder for family historians.

No comments about The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume XII (Large Print Edition).

5 comments about Education of a Wandering Man.

1. The "Education of a Wandering Man" is not a jaunty title for an autobiography or a collection of true life adventures even though some hype written by the publisher suggests that it might serve those purposes. L'Amour genuinely offers this work as a memoir about his education Reviews on this site that suggest this book is an excellent account of L'Amour's adventures exaggerate its merits. Those that criticize it for failing in that goal are correct but miss the point that this was not L'Amour's purpose. Rather than being for an audience of adventure or biography readers, this memoir would be of interest to people doing academic literary criticism of L'Amour or collecting the kind of material that would appear in the footnotes for a L'Amour biography.
   
   It is easy to understand why L'Amour wrote this memoir. He had little formal education and in his early years this kept him from getting various desirable jobs. Although literate and well read, he also found himself initially lacking the skills to be a creative writer. Thus the education that he gave himself had considerable effect upon his life. The two components of L'Amour's education were extensive travel and reading. For most of his youth L'Amour traveled not as a tourist but as a common laborer, seaman, or soldier. He could not plan his reading or afford to buy many books. He read from whatever books he found in libraries or such places as cabins at isolated mines.
   
   In the memoir, a biographer will find the three types of subject matter needed to analyze L'Amour's intellectual development. First, there are some colorful anecdotes and a larger number of prosaic factual statements about where he traveled and worked. Second there are lists of books that L'Amour read at various times in his life. Third there are statements of his opinions on various matters. But the analysis of all this will be a hard job because L'Amour rarely singles out any particular event as something that caused him to form an opinion. He lists books that he read but does not give details of what he thought about them. For example, he writes "I read Crime and Punishment while in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I had heard much of Dostoevsky but was surprised by this book - surprised and very impressed. Several times I turned back to reread sections of the book. At the time I was working in a sawmill, off-bearing on the green chain". He then goes on to explain what "off-bearing on the green chain" meant in sawmills of that day. But he does not elaborate on why he was impressed by Dostoevsky. In fact, the above example is atypical because in most instances L'Amour simply states that he read a certain book and not whether he had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of it. A more typical passage is "My reading in the library continued with Why We behave Like Human Beings by George A. Dorsey, Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Will to Power by Nietzsche, a volume of essays by Schopenhauer, and another by William James".
   
   L'Amour has kept the secrets of his private life to himself. For example, he says that he left home at age fifteen half way through the tenth grade, but he gives no details about this decision, which probably involved some serious thought. It is often said that war has a profound effect on soldiers and that it defines the most vividly remembered time of their lives. However, L'Amour gives us only a few pages about his preparation to go to war and of his experiences in Europe we get only a single paragraph:
   
   "As it turned out, my time overseas was spent in the European Theater of Operations. I did what I was given to do and they gave me four Bronze Stars for doing it reasonably well. I spent time in England before D-Day, traveled in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and Germany and made some good friends in France who are my friends still."
   
   His anecdotes, book lists and opinions are mixed together in a narrative that is approximately chronological. A person trying to read this book a series of adventures will be disturbed by what appear to be constant interruptions that give book titles or state opinions about topics in writing or education. A person trying to read this a history of L'Amour's intellectual development will be disturbed by the lack of detailed revelations about what L'Amour thought about the books that he read or his inner reflections about the events that befell him.
   
   The memoir itself hints at reasons for its limitations. L'Amour states that when he studied people's lives that he always wished to have a list of all the books that they had read. So presumably L'Amour felt he had done his duty by providing the reader with such lists for his own life. As to which of L'Amour's opinions came from which specific incidents or books, it is likely no single book or person swayed him immediately. He writes of listening to various people tell about the same event and gradually sorting out the truth from this. In his reading he would have encountered many different opinions and circumstances dictated that he could not select books from one particular school of philosophy or one style of literature. In the memoir, L'Amour expresses definite judgments on a wide variety of subjects. These editorial digressions reveal him to be moderate and judicious. For example, it would to tempting to conclude from L'Amour's life that a writer should not worry about "book learning" and instead should see experiences in the world of "hard knocks". L'Amour does not put forth this grand generality. To summarize his opinions from various passages in the book, he says that his education was right for him but would not suit other people. In his youth, he did not seek travel in order to gather material for writing but rather out of economic necessity. He says it is unnecessary for writers to travel widely and that material for stories is easy to find. In his opinion, the problem is the presentation of the material. He advises that a would-be writer learn his craft by starting to write down words with whatever skill he currently possesses.
   
   As memoir about education, I rate this a three stars out of five. It's main defect is that it reveals little about the internal thought processes of the author and those processes are significant part of education, especially self-education. L'Amour was an extraordinary person and if you want some advice about writing or some titles of good books about the history of the West, you should consult this book. But it will speak to you as would a talkative acquaintance, not as a trusted friend.



2. I enjoyed this book for many reasons, first because I love books and ideas perhaps as much as L'Amour. What he read and respected in others' writing intrigued me and ultimately heightened my regard for his writing. In fact, having never read one of his books (believing they wouldn't engage me), I now intend to read "The Walking Drum" and "Sackett's Land."
   
   I also found his commentary on wandering insightful. It's evident he educated himself in multiple ways: traveling and reading and listening to others, all the while processing this experience -- learing people, settings, and history. Though he left school before completing tenth grade, he demonstrates scholarship worthy of a doctorate in many areas, and he demonstrates what people of true education know: that the most important education is self-directed, self-motivated lifelong learning.
   
   Others have noted that this memoir seems superficial and redundant. While it may be, nonetheless, this reader found that its strengths overshadow its flaws. It's always worth our time to understand the mind of a man of letters, a man who devoted his life to writing over a hundered books that he hoped would entertain and enlighten us about frontier life, anywhere, anytime. Given his millions of loyal fans, I'd say he succeeded.
   
   In fact, I can attest to his having succeeded with this memoir, in particular. I learned of it from a student in one of my writing classes, who wrote about how much he admired the book. Accordingly, I wanted to read it, and I'm glad I did, for his book provides a brief and worthy glimpse of the man behind an unrivaled legacy of frontier writing.



3. I was expecting a western upbringing of feeding the chickens in the morning and milking the cows at the end of the day. what I got was not just his bio was one that could fit my father or so many of his generation it was a very moving bio of an American writer.



4. EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN is not a western, and this may disappoint
   some Louis L'Amour fans. He meanders philosophically around memories of his travels,enumerating each book he read while he was out and about. He says, "Life is for delving, discovering, learning," so he writes a lot about the value of books and education:
   
   "I think the greatest gift anyone can give to another is the desire to know, to understand. Life is not for simply watching spectator sports, or for taking part in them; it is not for simply living from one working day to the next. Life is for delving, discovering, learning. Today, one can sit in the comfort of his own home and explore any part of the world or even outer space through books. They are all around us, offering such riches as can scarcely be believed. Also, I might add, having done both, it is better to sit in comfort with a cold drink at hand and read the tale than to actually walk out of the Mohave Desert as I did."
   
   (He's referring to starting to drive a Model T out of the desert when he hits a rock, and breaks an axel, forcing him to walk for several miles--without water. A great chapter(eight) for anyone who's experienced anything similar to this.)
   
   He also writes about adventure: "What people speak of as adventure is something nobody in his right mind would seek out, and it becomes romantic only when one is safely at home."
   
   I wouldn't have liked this book when I was young. I would have considered L'Amour cocky, and he may well have been, but I'm now able to overlook that to get to some of his interesting ideas. Well written book? Not especially. You have to work a bit. It was published posthumously, so that may have affected the final product.
   
   Note: I'm considering EDUCATION OF A WANDERING MAN might be an interesting
   companion to INTO THE WILD, as both L'Amour and WILD's McCandless were wanderers fed by books.



5. This book made the greatest singular impact on my desire to branch out and read - not to read what I was told or what a boy (18 at the time - but I was a boy) or a man might be expected to read but to accept that my desires might go in many directions. I can still recall the start of the book - It was May 14th my class in Jamestown North Dakota was graduating and I was in Singapore - That is a line that makes a boys eyes flash with the excitement of adventure.
   This is a true treasure of a book and its vast in its breath of knowledge and thought. It was instrumental in forming the man from the boy in my case.

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2 comments about A Passion for Life: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (G K Hall Large Print Book Series).

1. I really enjoyed this book by Donald Spoto. He went extremely in-depth regarding the life of Elizabeth Taylor. He tells about her childhood to her many marriages and movies. If you would like to get a good look into the life of Elizabeth Taylor, this biography is a excellent choice.



2. Being very good at what he does, Donald Spoto, manages to provide readers with an accurate, in depth, and yet entertaining look at the life of Elizabeth Taylor, both on and off screen. Naturally, he starts with the early childhood, because at the age of nine Taylor was already bona fide child-actor. Then, as a heroine, i.e. Talyor, grows up, the discussion focuses mainly on men in her life, her first love (Monty Cliff) and her first marriage...and then, another marriage... and then another marriage, and another... It is hard to keep track at times! However, Spoto also shows Taylor's ability to stay true to her friends, inspite of many-many traumas and ugly gossips that have always surrounded her public persona. The only downside of this book is that narration stops somehere in a "Taylor/Jackson" period. Since Spoto already opened up a candid discussion of Taylor's health and other life problems, I think readers would like to know more about the on-going life battles, that their favorite female star presently has to fight. Also, it would be nice, if he mentioned Taylor's contribution to the fight with AIDS more extensively. In other words, Spoto should be planning on another revised edition of this otherwise lovely book.

5 comments about No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women and Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica.

1. 
   Norwegian Liv Arneson and American Ann Bancroft had a dream -- a strange dream. Each was called to the frozen continent of Antarctica. Liv (they use their given names throughout the book) had already made her mark as the first woman to ski solo to the South Pole, and Ann had skiied to the South Pole with three other women in a continent-crossing attempt that failed due to lack of funds. These two found each other and began to organize a ski trip from edge to edge, across the ice-covered continent.
   
   Do you wonder why? Liv writes that everyone does, and her answer is that "an expedition is a work of art expressed on a canvas of snow, air, and time." She was inspired by Roald Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole, but both women were fascinated by Shackleton's Endurance expediton and the courage with which he gave up his mission to save his crew. Win or lose, they felt, the joy was in the journey.
   
   Both Liv and Ann were former schoolteachers, and a big part of their dream was enlightening and inspiring school children around the world. Their first challenge was to build a support team and secure the huge corporate sponsorship needed to cover the expenses of their expedition. As they got to know each other and trained for the grueling trip, their company, yourexpedition, went on the sponsorship quest; the first part of the book covers the trials and triumphs of this two-year preparation phase. Major sponsorship was won from Volvo, Pfizer, Motorola, Apple Computers, and Continuum Control. During this phase a curriculum was developed and translated into many languages, and plans were made for communicating with school children during the trip. The logistics and expense of this journey were huge.
   
   Liv and Ann took the ice in the Norwegian territory of Queen Maud Land, flying there from Capetown in November 2000. They had roughly 100 days before the Southern winter would close their "window" of traveling weather. With more than 2,000 miles to cover, their plan was to ski-sail across the continent to the Ross Ice Shelf; they were dependent on the wind, the weather, their equipment, and the state of the ice surface. They used satellite phones to communicate with their team and with some of the three million school children who followed their journey using the "Dare to Dream" curriculum.
   
   No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women And Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica details the hardships that arose during the grueling trip. Injuries and equipment failure inevitably occurred in the intense cold and high altitude, but their greatest hardship was the erratic nature of the wind. Dragging heavy sleds and skiing behind sails in gusty wind is dangerous and difficult, but many days they had no wind and had to pull with crampons on their skis -- always in danger of falling into one of the many crevasses that thread through the ice.
   
   Did Ann and Liv's mission succeed? Did they make it across the frozen beauty of Antarctica before winter closed their bolt-hole? It would be a spoiler to reveal the answer to these questions, but every reader will be touched by the magic generated among the children who shared their journey with them. This is a thoughtful and inspiring story of a mission that most of us would never dream of; but we all want to make a difference in the world and I thoroughly enjoyed Ann and Liv's story of their chosen journey. I've taken one star off because I thought the book might have been organized differently, with the expedition infrastructure spread throughout rather than concentrated in the first section. However the drama of the continent crossing more than made up for that organizational issue. Highly recommended.
   
   Linda Bulger, 2008



2. I agree with other reviewers that this is only an average read. But the story of this Antarctic adventure is still remarkable and anyone interested in women's outdoor adventures will find this book enjoyable.



3. My bookclub chose this book this month and we were very excited by the subject matter. What a disappointment! I've never read such a poorly, blandly and simply written book about such an expansive, exciting and complicated subject! I felt like I was reading a book written for 4th graders, being talked down to to make it simple. I found no difference between the 2 voices of Ann and Liv and would have prefered a much more detailed account of their expedition. I have no doubt that their trip was fascinating in so many ways, unfortunately, they weren't able to translate that into their book. Maybe as educators of children they forgot that adults like a good story on a more sophisticated level.
   Too bad.



4. Now I know what women can do, and it's great. These women seem just like me and yet they did this extraordinary thing. They're probably mad, but good on them.



5. These intrepid modern-day explorers dare to go where only penguins march on the ice-encrused terrain. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, and highest altitude continent, with spectacular views but dangerous to traverse. These two women from opposite ends of the earth, Minnesota in USA and Norway, used to the extreme cold climates, tell their individual stories in this one book with the held of a professional writer, Cheryl Dahle, to piece the diaries together as a journey of their dreams.
   
   The photo sections show them as they looked in their youth and on the various sections of their explorations. They give details of how they trained for this difficult adventure, and of the problems they endured getting the monetary sponsorships. Apple would not donate cash, but did provide $150,000 in computer equipment, phones, and technical support. One photo shows Liv making her regularly scheduled call to CNN out in the middle of nowhere with snow and ice everywhere.
   
   From November 13 to February 18, the summer season when the sun shines twenty-four hours each day, they treked from the northernmost point about Queen Maud land to McMurdo, an American research base. It was quite a four-month feat, but they did it not just for the record but to show youth everywhere what can be accomplished. They were physically in their prime and had trained for years for this extraordinary walkand and skiing ordeal. Liv Arnesen and Ann Brancroft are to be commended; Ann was the first woman in history to cross the ice to both the North and South poles. Liv was the first woman to ski 745 miles to the South Pole solo during a fifty-day expedition. Together, they achieve the dreams both have held onto since young girls playing in the snow in their native homelands.

No comments about Impressions and Comments (Large Print Edition): Impressions and Comments (Large Print Edition).