5 comments about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Vintage International) (Vintage International).

1. I work with brain injured people daily and they never cease to amaze me. The book and the movie are testimony to the strength of the human spirit.



2. This book was an eye-opening and amazing view into the internal life of a man under tragic circumstances. It is a very human look - sometimes funny and sarcastic and at times tragically sad - into Bauby's mind and spirit which never gives in.



3. 
   
   Bauby gives us a truly remarkable and inspirational story of his life trapped inside a body that no longer serves him.
   
   But his mind remains as sharp as ever.
   
   He transcends his immobility with grace and a remarkable gift of a rich, lucid imagination.
   He is free in his mind to enjoy all of life and it's lush sensory gifts and memories...to take flight as if a butterfly.
   
   A heartbreaking true story.



4. This is a wonderful book. Very quick read. Makes you truly appreciate your own life. Highly recommended.



5. Absolutely amazing. And a quick read, too, so you really have no excuse to miss it. SHUT UP. NO EXCUSE. Jeez, you can even borrow it from me, okay?

5 comments about The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.

1. I have read to chapter 5 so far. I will continue to read because it is a good story and I want to know what happens. I have an intense interest in both music and in the workings of the human mind.



2. I found the book to be inspiring from a number of points of view. Anyone concerned about the plight of the homeless or working in mental health or human services could find the book well worth reading. The reader who is musically inclined or a lover of music will find it equally meaningful. What is has to say about those who contributed to the cause is inspiring, from any vantage point. A real boost if one's faith in humanity is tested in our times.



3. The Soloist by Steve Lopez was such an excellent read. I related to the music side because I am a pianist and the mental illness side. I've never had Schizophrenia, but when feeling down I know how revitalizing music is. This was a warm, touching story that pulls you in and makes you care about Mr. Nathaniel Ayers. I could feel and understand his love for the music. I would like to know how he's doing and what became of him. I have never felt that way after reading a story. The story just touches the humanity in me and I think in everyone who reads it.



4. Steve Lopez writes an eloquent, very personal story of a homeless, mentally ill man with a brilliant, talented past. It is totally by chance that Lopez meets Nathaniel Ayers along Skid Row in downtown LA. Captivated by the music Nathaniel plays on a beat-up violin that is missing two essential strings, Lopez steps over the threshold into a world very unlike his own.
   As a reporter, Lopez's style is rich, tactile and complete. We follow Nathaniel's trail of breadcrumbs from humble beginnings in Cleveland to Julliard to the tunnel in LA where he sleeps.
   Lopez's visually evocative language creates a spell that shows us how the mentally ill are marginalized and along with him, we ride the magic carpet of great hopes for recovery and change and then plummet into the depths of Nathaniel's delusional brain chemical mania.
   All the while, Lopez allows us to experience his personal emotional struggle of managing a reporter's tettering job, a wife, a two year old daughter and his commitment to helping Nathaniel, once a musical prodigy, now brought down by schizophrenia.
   Poignant and touching, this book is a true story of people so real, you will wake from the page with music in your ears and in your heart.



5. Great story line. Towards the end, I began to read slower, then pick the book down for a few days, because I did not the story to end. I think this fall around October, November the movies based off this book is scheduled to come out, Starring Jamie Fox. Might not be a bad idae to pick this box up and read it before the movie comes.

5 comments about Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth.

1. Not only did I reaceive the book on the promised delivery date, but I found it to be in perfect condition. It was purchaed for my grandson who is really enjoying it.



2. Every time I read a book about the plight of blacks in the South in the early part of the 20th century as Jim Crow society solidified I have to shutter in disgust. I have just finished reading communist Harry Haywood's autobiography Black Bolshevik. I have read Malcolm X's words on the fate of his forebears in the post-bellum South and now I have read Richard Wright's autobiographical sketch Black Boy. I will make no defense of the unequal treatment of blacks in the North. There is none. However, Wright's descriptions of the physical and psychological damage, as presented by his own experiences of Jim Crow, done to blacks by Southern whites are positively feudal. There was no room for illusions about the goodness of humankind in that world. To believe so was to face personal humiliation, or worst-the lynching tree.
   
   Wright, after great personal struggle within himself, is able to reflect on his experiences and to articulate the effect that Jim Crow had on him as a black, as a man, as a human being. It was not pretty. One can only image the fate of those less articulate than brother Wright as they try to comprehend a world not of their making but which they early on must learn to navigate. The description of this grinding struggle is heart of the first part of the book.
   
   Wright goes back to the mist of time in his early youth to dissect the hunger, psychological as well as physical, than never was far from his door; the effects on him of a sick and helpless mother; of an absent ne'er-do-well father; and, an overbearing and religiously-driven grandmother on his early development. And those are just the problems in the house. Once Wright steps outside those comparably comfortable confines he faces the outside world of Mississippi reality that he must put on a mask in order to survive in a world that will literarily cut him down if he does not learn the code. Although Wright gives many examples of how this system robbed blacks of their personality the most graphic descriptions, by far, are those that deal with the need to have to put on the mask when whites are around. And the consequences if one did not.
   
   And what of the great escape to the North (via Memphis) to Chicago-the Promised Land that forms the basis for the second part of the book? We have seen that urban story portrayed in other locales as well, for example, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Claude Brown's Man-Child in The Promised Land. That is where my statement about the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of blacks in the North comes into play. In effect, Wright articulates the contours of a psychological feudalism in the North where the special oppressions of blacks as a race are met with indifference by whites. What makes Wright's case special is that through self-education and willpower he breaks out of the endless and destructive turning in on oneself to articulate his experiences and those of other blacks like him displaced from the rural life of the South to the uncertainties of urban life.
   
   On the face of it seems incongruous that Wright would find a solution to his angst in the American Communist Party during the heyday of the `third period' in the early 1930's. I have mentioned elsewhere, most recently in my review of Harry Haywood's Black Bolshevik (part of which also deals with this period in the American party), that on reading memoirs and autobiographies of the older generations of radicals and revolutionaries I am looking for the spark that broke them from the norms of bourgeois society. I have found that there is a great range of reasons from racial and class hatreds to intellectual curiosity. I find that in the end that Wright's relationship to communism, not without some bumps and bruises along the way, came from intellectual curiosity as much as any sense of racial or class injustice.
   
   In Chicago, in many ways the embryonic black proletarian core of the country in this period, Wright continued his struggle for physical daily survival and for intellectual understanding. His fortuitous linking up with the local John Reed Club helped, at least initially, stabilize his intellectual life. His description of the inner workings of the Communist Party and its role in its own front group creations, like the Reed Club, jibes with other accounts that I have read. The tremendous pressures to conform to party life and the party line are chilling for what, in the final analysis, was a voluntary political organization and not a cult. Moreover, one of the characters portrayed in this section bears a striking resemblance to the above-mentioned very real Harry Haywood. Wright's take on Haywood is very, very different from how old Harry portrayed himself in his autobiography. Surprise.
   
   One of the charges brought against Wright by fellow black party members was that he was an intellectual. Self-taught, yes, but an intellectual nevertheless. One would think that recruiting such a fairly rare person, black or white, would have had the comrades spinning cartwheels. No so in Wright's case. Tremendous pressure was placed on him to conform to party dictates. Or else. This seems counter-intuitive. The relationship between communism and intellectuals and artists has always been a somewhat rocky one. But know this-then and today we need as many intellectuals as we can get our hands on to write, think and lead the struggles of humankind. Ignorance never did anyone any good. Enough said on that. If you want to get a real feel for what that old expression Mississippi God Damn from Nina Simone's song really meant read this well written and thoughtful book.



3. I ordered this book because it was on my nephews book-report list. It's a good book. But it is full of bad language. I think it's an adult book--with a very compelling story. But completely not for kids. I know kids hear bad language all the time. But to have it presented to them by a 'trusted' adult--gives it a kind of condoning that it doesn't need.



4. The best autobiography EVER, in fact I am not even sure it should be called autobiography because it is much more than that for many reasons. Autobiographies are often flat and either self pitying or glorifying, but this one is completely at another level. I was so impressed by the brilliant mind that shines through all obsacles, and his writing is just so natural, logical and insightful, not just about his personal life experiences, but about human suffering, senseless oppression, and unyiedling human spirit. Wow!



5. Often when you see books written about the life of black people in any point and time before the 1960's its main message is "My life was hard because white people are terrible," and that gets very redundant. However this was quite refreshing, as he did not harp on racism on every page. This is a very well written and intresting account of this man's unique life experiences and all the strange, crazy people he encountered within his family and outside them as well. People who have a few or several nuts on their family tree will be able to relate to Black Boy.

5 comments about It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.

1. A frank and honest portrait of one mans struggle. This is not a 'wow, aren't I great' book, but one that shows the awful journey people have to take and what gets them to "over come the odds".
   
   The achievement of the subject of this entertaining read is his amazing recovery from cancer which was followed shortly afterwards by spectacular sporting success. The book is undoubtedly compelling, and was simply, clearly and strikingly written.
   
   Even if you're not into cycling you will love this book.



2. Both my wife and I are currently cancer patients. The book gave us the courage to believe that we can beat cancer. Lance's book is a must read for anyone who has cancer or if you have anyone in your family going through cancer treatements. It is a great mix of athletics and the will to survive and what it takes to accomplish both. Get it and read it!



3. Whether or not you are a fan of Lance Armstrong, this book is incredibly helpful. Helpful for getting a grip on the implication of testicular cancer diagnosis and treatment. Also helpful for tackling the mental battle that comes with this disease. It is full of hope, and an important read for those diagnosed with Testicular cancer,and their significant others.



4. I had a meeting with VP in the company and as I got in his office you can sense he was a Lance fans. I'm not! Maybe for his way to act that he so well describe in his book! As an ex-athlete my self I could not hide my opinion about Lance. It was a nice and healthy conversation. Few weeks later I had another meeting with the same VP and as I walk in to his office he gave me this book as a present, knowing I'm an avid reader.
   
   I read it during the long flight back home! Great inspiring book! Never did read a sportsman biography but this one is worth each single word.
   
   You learn something new every day! I guess I learn something more about a great individual and athlete!
   
   PS - I have a colleague that is fighting a similar battle and I gave the book to him because sometime other peoples words are better then your.



5. I picked this book with trepidity. Having read scores of biographies from succesful sportspersons, I did not expect this one to be any different. They struggle, they compete, they succeed. I started reading this purely based my wife's strongly recommended this.
   
   And it just did move me completely!
   
   
   Once I started reading, there was no looking back. This is gripping cover-covcer. I guess the cycle races are such. We get so involved in the sport. Whern Lance talks about Cancer, it is not in absurd medical terms or over-simplification. He did carry me long - thtough his journry. I could vicariusly experience being with him in the ward in Idianopolis or at the Finish line of Tour De France.
   
   A narrative style that takes the audience at a leisurely pace, keeping the reder hooked and attached to the strory.
   
   Truly inspirational. A day after I finished the book, today, I am shaving my head for a cause - cancer patients!

5 comments about Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found.

1. This is writer Marie Brenner's intimate memoir about her brother and their incredibly complex and fraught relationship. I find myself overwhelmed with admiration for Ms Brenner, not only for accomplishing the sheer task of getting this book down, laden as it is with generations of family history and scientific and psychological research, but also for the intense struggle she documents as she attempted to forge some kind of common ground, an essential connection, with her very strange sibling.
   As the title suggests, Ms Brenner and her brother, Carl, are not at all alike. Chalk and cheese, in fact.
   She's an investigative journalist, highly intelligent, happy and successful. He is similarly smart and successful, but also anal and controlling, a cold fish who sends his sister a tray of fruit from his orchards every year with a note that says: 'I picked them myself. Don't give them away.'
   A right-wing lawyer from Texas who has in his mid-life moved into growing apples in a big way in Washington State, he has always kept his younger, more lefty, liberal-intellectual sister at more than arm's length. It seems he has no love for her, and his attitude towards her and her smart, New York life is obnoxious and condescending. And really weird. 'You always have to show off and tell us what you know, Carl said.'
   Anyone of us in the same boat, faced with such a dour character and such direct put-downs, would be forgiven for turning our back on him. Yet she doesn't cast him off as a bad egg or a black sheep, but instead, when she discovers he has cancer, she puts her life on hold and moves across the country to go into bat for him, hoping to find a way to save his life, and also to spend their last few months together and fix what ails them both.
   It must be said that she probably does this as much for herself: in many ways her opinion of herself seems coloured a little by this blighted relationship:
   
   'Why can't I just be easy with my brother, the way I am with my friends? That we are not close seems a badge of shame, a personal failure, a mark of my inabilities, bossy nature, and tendency to exaggerate. Carl thinks of me as the human flaw.
   'I'm going to give you a quiz.
   'This is how Carl starts many of our conversations.
   'I wish I were kidding.'
   
   
   Since she is a journalist as well as an author, she digs deep to get to the bottom of what ails them.
   
   'A research study on siblings breaks down the percentages: 52 percent of all brothers and sisters have a close relationship, 12 percent have no relationship, and 21 percent are something called "borderline." I am a borderline, defined by and against my brother, locked into some ancient and immutable feud. There is a moat around our conversations. Why? Why did we spend years locked in struggle with each other? I had to believe there was a chance that some of the answers could be found in the past, in letters and facts and research, in new interpretations of patterns held up to the light. I was operating with a strtict sense of Freudian principles, that the past could yield insights and applicable truths, if only one understood the sexual rivalries, the aggression, the scant affection. I could spin out a sound bite that might make you think I knew what I was talking about, had read the experts on nurture and nature, birth order, peer influence, mirror neurons, attachment theory, DNA.'
   
   
   The story of these two is a good enough by itself, but what makes this such an extraordinary work is all the other ... stuff .. that she packs into it: information about siblings in modern psychology, about her complicated family, about apples and the entire US apple industry, and about medical science.
   It's also touching, a deeply moving book. I loved it.



2. I did not like this book. It was hard to find out where she was going with her story. I would not recommend it to any of my friends.
   Mary Pichette



3. This is a really uninteresting chronicle written by an elitist intellectual who makes no effort to connect with her audience. She seems to find her own navel more intereting.
   
   
   Very sorry for her loss- but is this really something which needs to be in print?



4. While her journalism has always been great, this memoir is a small masterpiece, must reading for anyone who has a sibling, or doesn't. Thanks to Marie Brenner, Carl Brenner will not die. He becomes an unforgettable character. So does she. Sensitive, witty, poignant, absolutely elegant. I cannot recommend the book too highly.



5. Marie Brenner tells us right away in her author's note that she is untrustworthy, with her comment that "conversations, events and dialogue have been reconstructed." Reconstructed events? Come on. Not only that, but she doesn't seem to care about accuracy even to the geography of the area of Central Washington she's describing, such as calling the Wenatchee River the Columbia. Maybe this could be excused if she told a good story (and it was marketed as fiction) but she tries to cover her lack of a true story by fragmenting the chronology, dating some chapters, leaving others without dates, and jumbling the whole mess. There is a lack of insight or attempt to draw the reader closer to either of the characters. By the end, you can see why her brother was so annoyed with her.

No comments about Life with My Sister Madonna.

5 comments about A People's History of American Empire.

1. It takes a while to get through the book, because you can't take too much at one sitting. Make sure you've got your meds. We killed the Indians, but you know that, and dominated the Chinese of the canneries and the railroads, and enslaved the blacks, and shot the people who joined unions, locked up the Japanese ... hey but that's only in this country. You should see what we've been doing on in the rest of the world.



2. I was honestly disappointed when I saw it was a "comic book".
   But after reading the first few pages I realized it was just as good as the full original people's history of the u.s.
   I think it is very accessible for high school students and for someone who suspects they have an interest but not willing to put forth the time and effort to read the original non-graphic form.
   I recommend it as "light" heavy reading.
   Neil Gahn



3. This was a great read. Seeing history through comic images was unusual and fun. The history is obviously biased, but I learned a lot that I had not known.



4. unlike the displeased idelogues who gave this book a one star rating I will actually review the book.
   
   the book provides many important facts about american history that largely go unnoticed in public schools.
   
   the book moves beyond history as a national monument that is heavily sanitized and politicized to reflect the values of private and state power, and clearly points to the mounting skeletons in our closet.
   
   enough information is provided in comic book form that if a reader wants to read further in more scholarly directions they will know what to look for and verify the validity of the information Zinn provides.



5. Zinn's greatest work. Fascinating, Frightening, Reality. This cartoon book is completely historically accurate. Zinn's work is impeccable; he has received rave reviews from the NY Times for his People's History of the United States.
   
   A must read. I will be giving this book to many friends.

5 comments about Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.

1. I bought the CD version, which is read by Steve Martin himself. I listened to it while commuting to work. It was so funny, interesting, and touching! My only sadness came when it ended, because I was so absorbed in it.



2. In this book, Steve Martin writes about his former career as a stand-up comedian. He struggled for many years before he finally made it big and quit at the height of his popularity. He details all the highs and lows of his on stage career in a very entertaining style. If you are a Steve Martin fan, you will definitely enjoy this book.



3. A 2008 Summer Reading List Mini Review.
   
   Comedy, Steve Martin, once surmised, is not pretty. I just finished listening to his memoir Born Standing up: A Comic's Life and I must beg to differ.
   
   May I please differ? Please oh please could I differ? I haven't differed in such a long time. May I please have your permission to differ? (That's me, begging)
   
   Well no one said anything, so I am going to differ.
   
   Steve Martin made comedy pretty. As the premiere stand up comic of the late 70's early eighties, he made being funny an art form. It does not surprise me that he is an avid art collector. Martin does an excellent job of describing his life and the part he played in the comic landscape of the sixties and beyond.
   
   Listening to his book was a revelation. Martin does an excellent job of describing his life and the part he played in the comic landscape of the sixties and beyond. If you have not yet read his book yet, I would highly recommend listening to it. Instead of reading as he describes his routines, I actually was able to hear him perform some of them. And if you don't like listening to books? Well, in the words of Steve Martin: excuse me!



4. this book was a delight, a fascinating look at the way Martin developed his craft. For anyone who loves comedy or anyone who does public speaking it is a great primer.
   
   Martin is a gifted writer and observer of life, and this book reflects both of those gifts



5. Steve Martin has written a surprisingly sad look back at his life that glosses over most of the major things he is known for while focusing on his dysfuncational family, his inabilities with women and his bad relationship with his father. The book is not very funny, a bit depressing and not as revealing as you would hope an autobiography would be.
   
   The book is very short--at 200 double-spaced pages it takes only a couple hours to read--and the first half of the book is devoted to his life to age 22. He then quickly goes through his early TV years without really telling any stories about the famous people he worked with, then doesn't get to his movie career until 20 pages before the end. He doesn't mention his marriage--but doesn't once alude to his divorce. And doesn't mention anything about family except his distant parents and sister.
   
   It sounds like he just look through some old scrapbooks and started writing his minimal recollections of what happened 40 to 50 years ago. There aren't a lot of details and little insight into how he developed his comedy. Jerry Seinfeld writes on the back cover that it's "One of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written," but that is so far from the truth that it's doubtful that Seinfeld even read the book.
   
   There are a few interesting tidbits--like his continued crush on his first girlfriend, who turns out to be Christian prayer book author Stormie Omartian. And some of the photos in the book are great inclusions. Plus Martin opens up about his serious anxiety disorder, which leads him to come across as aloof when he is being interviewed on talk shows.
   
   But this is not a book about his entire career--it's a book about his recollections of being a stand-up comedian decades ago, so there is almost nothing in it from the past 30 years. If you are looking for inside stories about Saturday Night Live or Sonny & Cher or his movie successes you won't find them here--just a rather sad story of a man who never really got his dad's approval, who concludes that true comedy is really very serious.

5 comments about Here If You Need Me: A True Story.

1. 
   
   
   
   by Kate Braestrup
   
   
   This book was not quite what I expected. Knowing that Kate Braestrup was a minister, I still expected the book to be about Kate and her life as a single mother with an extraordinary career as minister to the Game Wardens in Maine. And so it was, more or less.
   
   The book is chock full of bible references and quotations. Too full in my opinion. While the book is written in a charming and easy going way, and Kate and her family and friends are portrayed in what you know is a real and even amusing way, the Bible references become intrusive.
   
   I wanted more of Kate! I kept hoping that th next chapter would have more about her experiences in the Maine woods and as a single mom. Clearly she is an amazing and down to earth woman. Obviously her job leads her into difficult and fascinating situation. She uses a self deprecating approach to describing herself in situations that is often endearing.
   
   All too often, what I found was more of the Bible. What I missed in purchasing this book was what became all to obvious in the end, the title is a double entendre. What I took as She would be there if needed by the wardens, and her family was true, but I believe that it also means that God is there for all of us.
   
   Finally, the ending came to quickly. I felt that I was swooped from the middle of her story, to her current life all too quickly. It felt almost as if she woke one morning feeling as if she had done enough writing and and basically wrote that they all live happily ever after.
   
   I am not anti-religion at all, I am just a reader who is somewhat disappointed in a book that I had looked forward to reading.



2. This was a really great read! Although not outwardly religious, I find it exciting to read about those who live their lives trying to follow God's plan. For Ms. Braestrup, that involves working as the chaplain for a group of Wildlife Search and Rescue Operatives.
   
   This book isn't just about religion -- it's about the author's desire to both follow her heart and honor her deceased husband's dream, and about helping others in the only way she knew how.
   
   Very encouraging and uplifting, this is basically just an all-around good read.



3. Author Kate Braestrup is pastor with the Maine Department of Natural Resources. She is there to minister to friends, family, etc. when a loved one has been involved in some type of misadventure - drowning, accident in the woods, missing child, etc. Her journey is interesting and compelling. Her husband - a policeman -- was killed in a random car accident. Suddenly widowed with four children, she decides to carry forward her husband's dream of attending seminary. She does so in the Universalist Unitarian faith.
   
   Bastrop offers vignettes of how she attempts to give comfort and aid to those in difficult situations. At the same time, she tries to cope with her sense of loss, juggling the demands of single parenthood with her own unusual ministry. Tragedies in the great outdoors confront us often with questions of, "How could a merciful God allow this?"
   
   Braestrup offers no pat answers and struggles with the question as well. Part of the answer she sees in the redemptive communities that coalesce to express support to those who have suffered due to accident and calamity.



4. I found this book to be a lovely affirmation of moving through a devastating loss to contentment and new life. If our lives and our luck depend on an optimistic and grateful attitude, Kate Braestrup guides us to simple and rewarding acceptance of day-to-day ups and downs. All things come to those who wait--what a novel idea in our society that craves instant gratification!



5. This was a wonderful book. I think it represents well some of the basic tenets of the Unitarian Church.

5 comments about Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp.

1. This book was funny and sad and oh so true to life. I'm no fat camp champ (you need to read the book to find out what that means) but so much of this book is a reflection of what I remember my teen years to be like. Great book and I can't wait to read her other book.



2. Very entertaining and revealing. As a weight loss counselor, I see young girls who are being teased about their weight and now I can identify more closely with what they are going thru. Easy read and humorous take on a serious subject.



3. I wanted to love this book as much as the other reviewers. I just couldn't. This book could have been half the length if it was just about being an overweight pre-teen at fat camp. The rest of the book is about an oversexed pre-teen. I had no idea young girls were that into porn and that type of porn. The description of the magazines while she is at the "doc's" office was more than I needed to know. I had a hard time believing that the magazine guy would sell tons of porn to an 8th grader...that was shocking as well. I'm just having a really hard time finishing this book and I'm only half way through. It would have been a really good story without the sexual stuff. Be forewarned....this book gets sexually graphic.



4. As a psychotherapist I read Moose expecting it to be helpful in understanding some of my clients who were heavy during adolescence and still carry the stigma, fighting inappropriate eating daily. It was so much more. The story is intersting and at times funny. It captures the feelings of being an adolescent who is awkward and a little different; someone who is not in the popular group. Klein does a great job of decribing her parents reaction to her weight issue and their subtle messages as well as direct and great advice. It is well-written, descriptive and openly describes the emotions of most adolescents.



5. The book arrived in good condition. It's a very good story; I'm glad that
   I ordered it.