The Definition of Geeky Ringer T-Shirt
February 28, 2008
Geeky - Oddball, eccentric, crackpot, crank, nut, screwball. For an Illustration see attached person. Now the dictionary entry really does have your picture next to it! Buy from here…
Buena Vista Social Club
February 28, 2008
In 1996, composer, producer, and guitar legend Ry Cooder entered Egrem Studios in Havana with the forgotten greats of Cuban music, many of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them long since retired. The resulting album, Buena Vista Social Club, became a Grammy-winning international bestseller. When Cooder returned to Havana in 1998 to record a solo album by 72-year-old vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, filmmaker Wim Wenders was on hand to document the occasion. Wenders splits the film between portraits of the performers, who tell their stories directly to the camera as they wander the streets and neighborhoods of Havana, and a celebration of the music heard in performance scenes in the studio, in their first concert in Amsterdam, and in their second and final concert at Carnegie Hall. The songs are too often cut short in this fashion, but Buena Vista Social Club is not a concert film. Wenders weaves the artist biographies with a glimpse of modern Cuba remembering its past, capturing a lost culture in music that is suddenly, unexpectedly revived for audiences in Havana and around the world. Wenders makes his presence practically invisible, as if his directorial flourishes or off-screen narration might deflect attention from the artists, who do a fine job of telling their own stories through interviews and music. It’s a loving portrait of a master class in Cuban music, with a vital cast of aging performers whose energy and passion belie their years. –Sean Axmaker
Customer Review: Cuban Legacy Music !
I have several copies of this wonderful Cuban Music, one for the car, one for the house, etc. I have also purchased the DVD on the making of the CD by Ry Cooder. This is a lasting memory of what was a beautiful era in Cuban Music. You don’t need to understand Spanish to appreciate the glory of the sounds that come out of this band of legends. A must have for any music collection !
Customer Review: great for the classroom!
I show this movie in my High School Spanish class! Kids love it and have often downloaded the music onto their ipods! Buy from here…
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
February 28, 2008
A riveting, original book about the creation of modern American thought.
Customer Review: Some interesting content, but hard to follow
I bought this book looking for a description of the philosophy of the American pragmatists - William James in particular, but John Dewey as well. This book includes both those figures, as well as Oliver Wendell Holmes and others. The book goes into a lot of detail on the era in which they lived (which the author believes is necessary to understand their philosophies - fair enough) as well as considerable detail about their personal lives. Also relevant.
I liked a lot of the information contained in the book, and thought it was worth reading to get that information. What I didn’t like was the organization of the book - the author introduces a new character, then goes off on multiple tangential histories. By the time he gets back to “the point”, I was often lost and had forgotten where he started.
Overall I felt this book was worth reading, but I didn’t get as much out of it as I think I could have if the structure had been a little more straightforward.
Customer Review: Beware of the Abridged Audio Edition
Louis Menand’s “The Metaphysical Club” poses a somewhat interesting quandry: is it a biography of C.S. Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Dewey? Is it a biography of the philosophy of Pragmatism? “The Metaphysical Club” can best be understood as an account of how the cluster of ideas that came to be called pragmatism was forged from the searing experiences of its progenitors’ lives.
Menand, whose prior work includes Pragmatism: A Reader rightfully begins his inquiry into the “birth” of pragmatism with Ralph Waldo Emerson. The driving force behind transcendentalism, Emerson can also be thought of as a progenitor of pragmatism. Menand does well to depict not only the intellectual connections between Emerson, Perice, James, Holmes and Dewey but also the personal connections between them. I do object though to the use of “The Metaphysical Club” as the fulcrum of this connection as it gives this “club” (which existed for about 3 months and of which Emerson and Dewey were not members) undue significance. Menand provides also linkages between the personal lives of the progenitors and the evolutions of their ideas as a way of depicting that ideas are not forged in a vacuum.
The unabridged edition would get 4 stars from me with the major drawback being the undue significance Menand places on “The Metaphysical Club.”
The abridged audio edition on the other hand is a confused disconnected mess. I found myself cringing mightily when the narrator, Henry Leyva, repeatedly mispronounced the name of C.S. Peirce - repeatedly mispronouncing it as “Pierce.” If “The Metaphysical Club” were a mere work of fiction, perhaps this mistake could be shrugged off, but in a purported work of intellectual history, it is inexcusable. The text itself fluctuates between fluidity and disorganized and a reader without a great deal of background in pragmatism would find himself utterly lost in the inelegant transitions the abridged edition makes.
Though I would recommend “The Metaphysical Club,” I cannot, in good conscience recommend the abridged audio edition. Buy from here…
The Book Club in a Box!
February 28, 2008
Developed by educational experts, parents, and kids, The Book Club in a Box reading game makes reading fun! Play using your favorite books or choose one from the included recommended book list. Buy from here…
The Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists and the Indian Rhinoceros (Explorers Club Book)
February 28, 2008
Customer Review: The subtitle is not hype; this book mesmerizes
I was skeptical about the title of this book, but enchanted with the picture on the cover. In my hands, there was absolutely no marketing hype. This book will capture your heart with Hemanta Mishra’s clarity, humanity and commitment.
Mishra has worked in Asia on a number of conservation projects for over 30 years. This book tells the story of efforts to save the greater one-horned Asian rhino from extinction. He calls it “a mystical beast legendary for its power, its sexual energy, its unpredictable temperament, and its prodigious strength.” He describes the political violence in Nepal beginning with the massacre of the king’s family in 2001 by the eldest son and ending with the Maoist insurgency.
Kings play a key role in the conservation efforts. The murder of the recent king led to its now uncertain future. In the Tarpan ceremony a Nepalese king must hunt and kill a male rhino and offer the beast’s blood in a prayer for peace and prosperity.
Mishra’s book puts humanity into the Smithsonian’s summary of the status of these rhinos: “Greater one-horned Asian rhinoceroses once ranged from Pakistan across northern India to Nepal, Bhutan, and the border with Myanmar (Burma), and perhaps ranged even further, into southern China. Today, they are confined to a few small, protected populations totaling about 2,000 animals. Most live in several parks in India and in Nepal’s Royal Chitwan National Park.”
Hemanta Mishra worked in the Nepalese wildlife office in the early 1970s and ran the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation. He was awarded the J. Paul Getty Prize for Natural Protection in 1987 for “for his ground breaking biotic studies on Mt. Everest, his development of Nepal’s park systems, and his work on implementation of “Operation Tiger,” the largest conservation project in Asia.”
I agree completely with “Scientific American”: “Mishra, a Nepalese wildlife biologist trained in the West, is not a professional writer, but his intelligence and wit make this a mesmerizing account that intertwines politics, conservation and tensions between the traditions of East and West.”
You can hear Mishra discuss his book and his conservation efforts on Leonard Lopat Show on the WNYC website. You’ll hear his voice for a long time after you read his book. Buy from here…
The Busy Mom’s Guide to Bible Study (The Motherhood Club)
February 25, 2008
A Bible Study Plan for the Busiest Mom!
The Busy Mom’s Guide to Bible Study is an amazing Bible study tool specifically aimed at moms. What makes it so remarkable is the way author Lisa Whelchel has packed twenty solid Bible study tools into a five-day-a-week, fifteen-minute-a-day, anybody-can-do-it plan.
Not only is this plan doable, it’s satisfying. As a busy mom, you give of yourself all day long - often with no way to refresh and replenish the cravings of your own soul. But this simple three-month, come-along-beside-you guide will take you deep into the Word, nourishing your heart and soul. And in just three months, you will be a changed woman - changed by the power of God’s word in you.
Customer Review: Busy Mom’s guide is ok
I am looking for a simple, quick daily devotional guide and this was no quite what I was looking for. To me, it seemed a bit confusing how to use the guide. No offense to those that love this book, I am sure at a different stage in my life this would work wonders. I have 2 small children and I don’t have the brain activity to get what I needed out of the book.
Customer Review: GREAT GIFT!
I gave this to my sister along with the “busy mom’s guide to Prayer” and she LOVES it! She is activly looking for other young mothers to give this too.
Buy from here…
Ouran High School Host Club, Volume 10
February 25, 2008
Ever since the day he helped her up after a nasty tumble, Black Magic Club member Reiko Kanazuki has been obsessed with Hunny. She is devoting all her knowledge of the dark arts to curse him and steal his soul. Will the sweetest member of the Host Club fall victim to her spells?
Midwives (Oprah’s Book Club)
February 25, 2008
In the pastoral community of Reddington, Vermont, during the harsh winter of 1981, Sibyl Danforth makes a life-or-death decision based on fifteen years of experience as a respected midwife — a decision intended to save a child, a decision that will change her life forever.
Customer Review: Contemptuous and one-sided
Apparently writing about a subject such as birth from the point of view of a fourteen year old girl is too much of a stretch for this male author. It seems like he started from the point of view that home birth is an incredibly stupid idea, tried to play devils advocate, and failed to create an even remotely sympathetic cast of characters.
He portrays women who decide to have home births as uneducated, hippie, misinformed women instead of the truth that many educated and compassionate women choose to have home births. His statistics and information are inaccurate (for example, that only lay midwives perform home births today, which simply isn’t true in many states).
His unimaginative writing style is also lacking. He doesn’t trust his reader to remember an event that happened twenty pages prior, like restating the fact that the trial was difficult for the family, which is obvious. All in all, disappointing and irritating.
Customer Review: hmmmm
Just unbelievable!
I don’t think the main character would do this. The characters are interesting but very conventional in their description. Dunno. Not so hot all round Buy from here…
Madonna - Drowned World Tour 2001
February 25, 2008
Live from The Palace of Auburn Hills, an HBO live concert in support of her album Music. Includes: “Drowned/Substitute for Love,” “Impressive Instant,” “Beautiful Stranger,” “Ray of Light,” “Paradise,” “Frozen,” “What It Feels Like for a Girl (remix),” “Don’t Tell Me,” “Human Nature,” “Secret,” “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina (instrumental),” “La Isla Bonita,” “Holiday,” and much more! 120 minutes.
Customer Review: Madonna’s frenzied Tour
We were very disappointed with this concert video. Very hectic, frenzied, flashing lights that quickly irritated the eyes. So many quick closeups of everything that was going on at the stage but without a sense of continuity. The sound is not great nor the visual presentation. Big disappointment…..
Customer Review: Love the concert, miss the extras
The concert itself is great. The DVD doesn’t have any extras like behind the scenes or not even a menu. It starts and ends with the concert. Buy from here…
The Saddle Club - Adventures at Pine Hollow
February 25, 2008
A smiling trio of 12-year-old horse lovers saddles up for acres of life lessons in The Saddle Club: Adventures at Pine Hollow. Set in a moderately lush riding facility called Pine Stables, the action revolves around three spirited girls: Stevie (the tomboy), Carole (an aspiring veterinarian), and Lisa (the newcomer). Together they cope with the birth of a new foal, boy-crazy friends, a spoiled rich girl whose bullheadedness causes the death of her horse, and the trials of maintaining strong friendships in the wake of budding teenhood. While horses, a solid script, and a talented cast make this 85-minute film appealing to viewers of all ages, a few scenes involving death and loss suggest a slightly older audience (ages 9 to 12). This premiere movie weaves together three episodes from the Australian television series of the same name, inspired, in turn, by Bonnie Bryant’s prolific book series for children. –Liane Thomas
Customer Review: The Best Saddle Club Movie So Far!
I think that this is the best Saddle Club movie so far. My favorite part is when Tina comes, but this is an all around great movie. I’m an Albino Cannible and me and my Albino Cannible buddys loved this movie. If you want a great movie that is about horses, than this is the one. Take it from the Albino Cannibles.
Customer Review: A Great Movie!!!
This is a great movie but there is some parts that are a little dumb.Jake is so stupid!Kristi and Veronica like him.Jake should be cut out of it.No offense to people who love him though.This is a great movie for horse lovers. Buy from here…
This site offers tips and guides how to open a community book club.
