Not a book on opera, definitely! But a book on life, sex, questions,religion, booze and the depressing landscapes of Scotland. Definitely much different than Morvern Callar, but it stays with you just the same. The best scene has to be the one with the Yankee tourists in the toilets -not sth to show back home! All the girls are hilarious and real towards what they feel and experience - a nice change from all the misery of youngsters gone astray... An excellent handling of language and a poisonous sense of humour. An excellent read thegether (as the author himself might say....)

Wow. The girls in The Sopranos are both wild and endearing. The author handles their exploits in a masterful way -- the reader understands what they are doing is plausible, even though you wouldn't think these girls are just any Scottish girls you might meet. They are all well-rounded and satisfying characters -- and whether they're screaming obscenities in a McDonald's bathroom or prowling for men or discussing sexual topics -- you will be rooting for their success. You will nearly forget the real event which brings them to the big city, and believe they are there for no other reason than to fulfill their own desires.

This book is screaming to be made into a movie. While it doesn't read like a screenplay, the characters and events are so vivid it seems cruel to not show this story visually.

The writing takes a bit of getting used to (unless you can automatically adjust to Scottish slang and [Scottish]-phonetically spelled words), you'll find yourself reading this with a Scottish narrating voice in no time. Once you become accustomed to the language, this is quite a quick and highly enjoyable read.

This was one of the best books I have ever read. If you are not used to the dialogues and accents used, then you might want to think of someone speaking the words as you read them--it helped me a bit. It may seem confusing or fragmented the first time you read it, but it's well worth reading again, and makes more sense the second time round besides. It really is a remarkable work of fiction--like you are reading the girls' diaries or looking over their shoulders. And, I definitely agree with the reviewers who said it would make a greatr movie, but only if it is filmed verbatim as written. Hurray for Warner! For this is truly one of the best works of our era.

It's easy to sit back and watch the re-runs of Warner Brothers cartoons and just let them wash over us, but that would ignore all of the work that went into them. We would not get an appreciation of the sheer number of cartoons produced. Luckily Beck and Friedwald were obsessed enough to pull them all together in one volume. Going on a year by year basis, from Bosko cartoons of 1930 to the last gasps of 1969 (and the reawakening in the 80's) the authors provide a landmark reference showing the premiere date, the credits given in the openings, and a thorough synopsis of the action. But of course any reference like this would be an oddity if it was just a listing. But we are provided with two ways to find information - a title index showing the entry (all purpose for grabbing when watching that cartoon), and an index based upon appearances of 15 of the most popular characters. Want to find out when did Marvin the Martian appear? It's here. (1948 - Haredeveil Hare). Wonder how many cartoons starred Daffy Duck - count 'em up. (a whole lot) Just sitting back and reading synopses shows the breadth of jokes and settings that the artists were able to take advantage of. You can also see the repetition that occured when the writers fell into a rut. Just a great book to have on the shelf to pull down when you want and a great guilty pleasure!

If you are at all interested in the Looney Tune & Merrie Melodie series from Warner Bros. you should buy this book. I'm serious, do it now! Stop reading this review and go the shopping basket I can wait...

There, don't you feel better knowing this book is about to become yours? This is the "bible" of Warner Cartoons. Each one has been watched and thought about in what must have been a gruelling marathon of cartoon watching (I am SOOO jealous), resulting in a good review (and list of credits) for each and every cartoon made by the studio including some of the offshoots like Pvt Snafu and the cartoons released in the 1980s. If you are a collector of any sort this is really the ESSENTIAL book for you.

For any student of Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (or any fan for that matter) this book is a "must have." Many people call it the "Bible" of LT/MM cartoons.

The book is divided into specific segments = a brief introduction/history of the cartoons = the cartoons listed by year of theatrical release = a section of miscelaneous releases by the Warner Bros. studio = last, a cross reference section that indexes the shorts alphabetically by title, and by featured "character"

In the "meat" of the book, each short has a good synopsis of the story, a list of characters, and artistical support information (director, animators, background design/artist, musical supervision, etc.)

I'm on my second copy of this fine book. Go and buy this thing before it goes out of print!

By the time you get through the first 50 pages, you will absolutely despise Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard, a turn-of-the-century witchdoctor, who preyed on the confused, weak-spirited and disillusioned. Indeed, Dr. Hazzard was a woman who would stop at nothing to feed her greedy, narcissistic longings for wealth and public stature. Veteran true crime author Gregg Olsen's knack for detail allows the reader to see clearly just how devious, evil and stubborn this so-called doctor was. One of Dr. Hazzard's cures for blindness, for example, included starving a young boy for three weeks.
But more important than the drama, author Gregg Olsen brings us into the soul of the story and helps us to understand why the victims -- a pair of wealthy British sisters -- sought out Dr. Hazzard's unorthodox treatment in the first place. We feel shame and sorrow for these women, yes; but we also put ourselves in their place. What would I have done in a similar situation? Even for the most experienced writer, this is no easy
task.
STARVATION HEIGHTS is a (medical) thriller ride of a lifetime. Olsen uses the skills of America's finest novelists to tell this disturbing true tale of deception, spiritual theft and, finally, murder by the most appalling means: starvation. By the time you turn the last page, you will be wondering if Olsen has pulled a fast one and made the entire story up. But of course he hasn't. Every last word is painstakingly extracted from his diligent research and obvious skills as a master reporter. Put down Robin Cook at once and read this "real life" medical thriller instead! Gregg Olsen, one of the most original true crime writers working today, paints a fascinating portrait of one human being, under the most deplorable circumstances imaginable, dominating another. A great read by a great writer!

I found the book to be very atmospheric, especially in its descriptions of the Olalla area and the "sanitarium". The scenes of the crime are easy to envision and provoke a real chill. Not only is the book well written, it is very accurate. I'm a Pacific Northwest native, familiar with most of the settings, and in addition am familiar with some of the characters (personally acquainted with some descendants). Olsen does a credible job in presenting the story of the "fasting specialist" murderess and makes the characters come alive. It was nice to read a true-crime book that did not rely on sensationalism to present such a macabre subject. Highly recommended!

Starvation Heights is one of those stories that draws the reader in, and then does not let go! It tells of two wealthy sisters who are intrigued by a fasting cure in the country. The sisters become so interested they decide they must try it. The reader is led along with the sisters as they experience the cure. When the sisters are taken to the country near Port Orchard, Washington Gregg Olsen does a fantastic job of describing the surrounding area and making the reader feel a part of it. I found this book to be one that could not be put down until it was finished.

Riis takes a look at the under world of New York much in that same way that De Tocqueville did of New England in "Democracy in America." The difference is that Riis is an American, just a rich one. He finds himself stunned and appalled that we as a people could allow our compatriots to live in such squalor. At the same time he drags out all of the tired stereotypes of the day about the different ethnic groups then living in the city (mostly: Jewish, Irish and Italian).

Riis' upper-class lifestyle and upbringing are apparent throughout the book, and some of the passages would offend many of our sensibilities today, but the general point of the book is what's important here. The upper-class lives in comfortable ignorance while a significant number of Americans have to wonder where their next meal is coming from and what they'd do should they, god forbid, fall ill.

A good book if you're looking for a more modern perspective on this problem is Barbra Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed."

I had to read this and write an esay on this book for mu history 1302 class. At first, I found myself gettign depressed by the horrible consitions that the people in these dwelings endured. After continuing with the book,I began to find myself fascinated. It is like actually being in the time period that Riis speaks of. The book is very well written and breaks a lot of boundaries. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. It makes you very aware of the problems that were, and the problems that are.

I used this book along with another Riis book for a U.S. History project at school. Both this book and Low Life were an incredible help. The pictures are incredible. Riis was the first to show this side of life in NYC during the first part of the century. His books are by far the best pictoral records of the time. I highly recomend this book for anyone interested in the early part of the century or anyone who needs information for school projects.

Jailbird is a truly unique and enjoyable novel. It is the story of Walter F. Starbuck, a man whose life was intertwined through Harvard, the Great Depression, communism, World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, and Watergate. For a man to be so well connected to history, greatness or infamy would likely be concluded. Walter Starbuck attained neither. Vonnegut introduces the reader to Walter's pathetic life through a highly unusual structure. The story is told in first person from Walter's point of view, but it jumps from one part of his life to another in such a way that it nearly resembles stream of consciousness. Fortunately, it is easily read and his style is easily adapted to. Irony and humor are two constants throughout the novel. Sometimes Vonnegut uses them to make a cynical comment on the state of our society. Usually they add to the entertainment value of the novel and gain the readers interest. "The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet," is a good representation of Vonnegut's humor. From a man with a "French-fried hand," to a harp showroom atop the Chrysler building, Jailbird is also permeated with surreal images which contribute to the dreamlike tone of the novel. I found Jailbird very intriguing and quite compelling. It is a good book for anyone who is interested in history, politics, or who enjoys cynical comedy. While the novel does center around several key political points in our nations history, Vonnegut avoids delving too deeply into personal politics and thus refrains from alienating certain readers. In Jailbird, Vonnegut uses cynical humor with a razor sharp edge to discuss social and philosophical issues. He provides a unique perspective into the most important political events of the past century, while also examining the role of the common individual in society. Jailbird is an unusual novel and definitely worth a read.

This was the first vonnegut book I've read and it threw me quite a curveball. If you're not use to reading a vonnegut book it takes a different mindset. I was confused in the realm of reality. His inclusion of fictional characters in real life events was an interesting twist. I'm currently reading player piano and find it to be a much slower page turner then jailbird. My favorite so far is slaughterhouse five, but jailbird is definitely worth a read.

Definitely the best of Vonnegut's novels that I've read, Jailbird is the story of Walter F. Starbuck, the smallest co-conspirator in the Watergate scandal. Having made his loyalties the best as he could, Walter finds himself in prison for withholding evidence against Nixon, even though he really had no true connection to him or respect from his fellow conspriators. After prison, Walter falls once again, committing a crime that mirrors his Watergate involvement in quite a few ways, and he goes to jail for the second time.

Vonnegut's ingenious humor is present always in the book, and his prose is bedazzlingly perfect for the subject. Even though the novel may seem sentimental at times, that seems to be Vonnegut's purpose: his character is a sentimental man and bureaucrat. Readers should note that Vonnegut also uses some symbolism to perfect effect, making the book subtler than most Vonnegut novels. All these elements are Vonnegut at his best; he recreates, hilariously and perfectly, the political world of modern times.

Throughout the story, Jailbird provides a pitiful hero, knocked down over and over again by his own fault in the bureaucratic world he has chosen for his home. It seems not so much the facelessness of the bureacratic system that destroys Walter(a theme visited over and over again in too many books, movies, etc.) as his own attempts to try and become part of that system and his emotional view of this world as a place where people are always considerate; his own desire to be a successful, protected, and respected man is the thing that makes him loyal and willing for all the wrong reasons and to the wrong people. In the end, Walter F. Starbuck is a victim of himself, a "jailbird."

Another in the wave of new Scottish fiction that has followed in the wake of Irvine Welsh's success. Like "Trainspotting," this is a slang-laden, drug-assisted look at a modern Scottish youth--although in the country (Oban) and not the city, and the drug is ecstasy, not heroin. The Morvern of the title is a 20ish supermarket employee whose steady boyfriend has just committed suicide. Instead of reporting the death she covers it all up with great composure so she can use his bank account and pretend that he has left her. At first we get the some rather ordinary exposition of her and her friend partying and whatnot. Then a trip to a youth resort in Spain with all the attendant debauchery--sex, drugs, and raves--is given. It's very clear that her life is bleak, and she's out to grab what little pleasure she can. (A great non-fiction book which gives insight into how people like Morvern come into being is Nick Danziger's "Danziger's Britain.") It's a bit hard to identify with a character so totally alien to me, especially as the reader is not allowed into her head, and it's a bit hard to tell exactly what its all supposed to accomplish. I suppose the reader is supposed to key into the themes of alienation, confusion, running away, and soforth, but the deadpan prose somehow dulls one to the larger picture. Which is not to say it's bad writing, because it's actually quite good, but somehow the tone creates an emotional distance between the reader and Morvern. It might be one of those books that women are more likely to connect with. If so, the story continued is "These Demented Lands," which is even less compelling. Best to pick up Warner's "The Sopranos" instead.

Morvern has a crappy wee job in the supermarket which she hates, she's skint but her blokes got a bit more dosh and so when he kills himself having jist completed a novel Morvern firsts hides his body in the loft and raids his bank account and then publishes his book under her name and lives the high life off the proceeds partying on the Spanish costas. Alan Warner has with this novel produced an update on Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting; the heroin culture in Scotland's inner cities is no more the drug culture has spread to even the most rural towns of Scotland but it has changed from the destructive heroin to the free love of ecstacy. We also see the ravages of society post-thatcherism; where Trainspotting's Rent et al knew they were a subversive element in society Morvern ill- educated and with weakened family links seeks only hedonism and doesn't view herself as the destructive element in society she is. Warner has a new novel published soon and I look forward to more from him and the rest of the rebel inc.crew.

Three years ago, I wrote the following report on this book for a major film company...

When her novelist boyfriend commits suicide, a Scottish girl uses his inheritance to escape her menial existence and find fulfilment in the Spanish rave scene. At heart a coming-of-age story, this novel holds our attention by presenting us with a gruesome opening and a spunky heroine who confounds expectations by seizing her opportunity with both hands.

Like a lot of good literary fiction, the novel is character rather than plot-driven. Morvern, the heroine, is a brilliant creation, and her voice carries the novel forward. Plot takes a back seat, and the novel fizzles out towards the end, amid pages of Morvern's observations of Spanish holiday resorts. As far as film potential goes, this is a critical stumbling block. Films need to ask questions, then answer them. This novel leaves the reader pondering many unanswered questions. For example, why did Morvern's mysterious boyfriend commit suicide? Does his novel, appropriated by Morvern, contain clues about him? What was their relationship like? Finding the answers could provide a number of intriguing movie scenarios. Perhaps the boyfriend was murdered, and Morvern finds the answers in Spain. Perhaps Morvern is the killer, and the boyfriend's novel explains everything. I can see this working as a cross between Sunset Boulevard and The Last Seduction, set among Scottish ravers. But this is all my own feverish speculation.

The novel has great characters, and Morvern's quirky eye for detail is a hoot. Possibly because the author is a man writing with a woman's voice, there are a few overlong descriptions of cuticles and nail varnish. There are too many lists of different rave records, put in I suspect as a self-conscious sop to a "hip" readership. Overall however, it is an engrossing read. I particularly liked the descriptions of Scottish binge drinking, and the ghastly Club Med group activities. On a deeper level, there some great symbolic strands which run through the book.

To conclude, this is an excellent work of literary fiction, and works well on its own terms. I unreservedly recommend it as a good read. But there is no obvious film premise lurking within its pages, and though it is fun using the novel's setup as a springboard for possible movies, I don't think that justifies buying up the rights.

I would doubtlessly recommend Ivanhoe to read. History may be often dull but Sir Walter Scott makes history extremely exciting by romanticizing his novel. It directly deals with hatred between the Normans and the Saxons, the discrimination of the Jews, chivalry, and politics--but it is a unforgettable tale of heroism, honor, and love. I felt that the characters were so fascinating and fun to read about. I was enjoying and cheering on the good characters like Ivanhoe, King Richard, and Robin Hood to beat the hated and evil villains. I liked the idea of love added in the story, like how Rowena and Rebecca were both in love with Ivanhoe. I even felt a little sorry for Brian de Bois-Guilbert who would do anything for Rebecca's love but is constantly rejected. I thought how it was appealing how the author questions Ivanhoe and Rebecca's feelings for each other. Suspenseful and action sequences also added entertainment to the story. This book may be a little too detailed for some readers, but I didn't mind. I felt that the details were brilliantly used to decorate the story in an outstanding fashion. The old English wording made me feel like I was actually in the medieval England. I have to admit that it took a great deal of persistence for me to finish this book and it was a challenge for me to read. However, I found Ivanhoe to be a wonderful pleasure. It is no wonder that Ivanhoe is such a well-loved tale!

I enjoyed this adventure yarn on many levels.

I was glad to learn about the Knights of Templer and that they were crusaders. I always wondered how Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon knew that and it is because of this classic.

I was surprised that it talked so much about Robin of Lockesley. The story of Ivanhoe seemed to be the same only told by Ivanhoe's friends and not Robin's.

I thought that the DeBracyn and the Knight of Templer Brian de Bois Guilbert were pretty evil guys which made the story interesting. They were weasels when they had their backs to the wall but did preform with honor when required like when Richard gets DeBracy.

I guess I did not understand the prejudice of the time because they treated the Jews like dirt and they were so sterotypical. I really thought that the Jewish girl Rebecca was going to end up with Ivanhoe instead of that Saxon Lady Roweana. I guess you have to appreciate the times that they lived in.

It was a different look the Richard/Prince John history.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this book, by Sir Walter Scott, was the progenitor of what was to become a venerable tradition in English letters (and in other European literatures as well): the historical romance. There have been many after IVANHOE, and frequently with a finer eye to the period in which the tale is set (for IVANHOE contains quite a number of anachronisms -- even Scott acknowledged it), but few have done it quite as well as Scott. He uses an archaic English to give voice to his characters, but one which is readily absorbed because of the speed & quality of the tale. So, though these people certainly wouldn't really have spoken as he has them speaking, they yet sound as though they should have. Peopled by many 'stock' characters and situations, this tale was fresh in its time & still reads well today -- a testament to Scott's skills as a teller of tales and a sketcher of marvelously wrought characters. In this tale of the 'disinherited knight' returning home to find the world he left turned upside down, young Ivanhoe, after a stint with King Richard in the Holy Land, must fight the enemies of his king and kinsmen anew. Yet the hero is oddly sidelined for much of the tale as events swirl around him and the brilliantly evoked villain, Sir Brian de Bois Gilbert, in the pay of Prince John, struggles to win treasure and the beautiful Rebeccah, who yet has eyes only for Ivanhoe, a knight she can never hope to win herself. There's lots of action and coincidences galore here and Robin Hood makes more than a cameo appearance, as does the noble Richard. In sum, this one's great fun, a great tale, and the progenitor of a whole genre. All those which came after owe their form to it. Worth the price and the read.

Warner Wolf is an endearing character and a fabulous sportscaster. Never one to pull a punch, Mr. Wolf makes it his lifelong ambition to correct all idiotic rules and misnomers in modern sports. The problem is that he does it much better as a television personality than as a writer. I have no problem with opinionated people, but in a novel at least some effort should be made to offer the arguments of both sides before tendering the author's opinion. Also, there are so many chapters that are no more than a few paragraphs long. I found that to be somewhat tedious. It is more enjoyable to read a book where the author spins the story around many similar events and ties them together rather than penning numerous disjointed anecdotes. Nothing more is revealed here than many of Mr. Wolf's fans do not already know so they will be disappointed. The argument about the admission of Pete Rose into baseball's Hall of Fame hardly ranks up there with the exclusion of Galileo from the Catholic Church. Gimme a break!

One of the truly great personalities in sports broadcasting, Warner offers his unique perspective on everything from baseball to golf, and most points in between. Wolf is so brutally honest about his career and the people he has met that you have to admire his step-up-to-the-plate, fresh takes on a variety of subjects.

This is a real page-turner, written in a light vein and laugh-out-loud funny! There are also a few surprises in store for the many fans of the Don Imus radio show, whose impression of Warner may be only from the few minutes he is allowed for his sports reports there. Warner doesn't mince words, but a lot of what he has to say is pretty deep, once you get past the laughs.

I really enjoyed this book. It's for fun and it's a quick read, but the author also makes the reader think. "CHANGE THE RULES!" An entertaining book doesn't HAVE to be only for laughs...this one will also make you say, "Hm-m-m-m-m!" I would recommend it to anyone. Even my wife(who yells, "Isn't there anything ELSE on?", whenever I turn on a TV sporting event)loved it. It has enough substance outside of the sports environment to make a book that's even interesting to sports HATERS!

You won't regret the few bucks you'll spend for "Let's Go To The Videotape!"

I picked this up ... at a discount bookstore and could not have been more delighted. After first being introduced to Wolf on the ...morning radio program, I can't get enough! Unlike some celebrity authors, this book was actually written by Warner Wolf. It reads just as though he were speaking to you during one of his rants during a broadcast. Warner has a very unique take on the sports world and he "gets it". If you "get it", you will enjoy this book. If you don't, you probably stumbled upon this book by accident...

It's difficult to critique a book that you learn something from, particularly when what you learn is fundamental to who you are and what you do. "The Problem With Normal" was one of those books, and I'm grateful for its influence, but at the same time I am ambivalent about the way it was written and the approach it takes to contemporary developments in queer sexual culture.

Warner argues against the concept of "marriage" for gays and lesbians, and writes passionately in favor of a public, queer sexual culture. Along the way, he makes some very strong and very correct observations about the "politics of sexual shame". It is in this last subject that I found the book to be most valuable. He describes very clearly the way sexual shame is used in politics at all levels, and writes beautifully about the inversion of this politics - the celebration of debasement and abjection - in camp culture. Even though I've been surrounded with this politics all my life, I never really saw it for what it is. This understanding alone was worth the price of the book.

As someone who has also spoken against public sex in the past, I find myself reversing my opinion on the subject. Thanks to Warner's writing, I see the value in things I had until now taken for granted. It's too long an argument to reproduce here, but having once seen public sex as little more than a public nuisance - and a puzzling one at that, given that its practitioners risked arrest and beating for their efforts - I now understand it as a cornerstone of a much larger tradition, one that all queers benefit from even if we don't participate in it ourselves. As I write this, I see it as a very counterintuitive statement, and it's a hard one to justify in our current antisexual climate. But I also see it as very true; it just took a long time to get to that truth.

That said, I have two big complaints about the book. One is simply bad editing. It's got a lot of typos, and even a short string of nonsense characters, as if the author fell asleep for a moment with his fingers resting on the keyboard. Whatever happened to his spell checker? This is extremely distracting.

His language is also a problem. He combines a repetitive, simplistic style with some very tortured sentence constructions and ten-dollar words that not even the most well-read person could know. (What does "flagitiously" mean?) I chalk this up to the pretentiousness and bad writing habits of academia.

But my more substantial complaint is that Warner seems stuck in a (possibly romanticized) political past, and doesn't consider the resiliency of queers in the face of political change. Yes, America, and New York City in particular, is enjoying a new wave of Puritanism that is snuffing out many traditional sources of gay culture. But at the same time, new ones are springing up to replace them. Take the Internet; Warner mentions this only in passing, and then only to dismiss it. Yet there is a whole new Internet queer culture, one which is more powerful and more vibrant than the porn-store and pickle-park culture ever was. Rather than trying to hang on to old expressions of queerness, I believe it is better to embrace new ones. Even the Internet has suffered attack, but it is easier to defend, and has weathered these attacks far better than the New York sex scene.

On the whole, I recommend this book, if only as an antidote to the nauseating hetero-centric culture of mass media. If someone as kinky and queer as myself can gain new understanding for reading it, it must have something going for it.

With the sophistication of a leading political theorist and public philosopher, with clarity and wit, Michael Warner explains why those who care about public policy and morality should take as their point of departure the dignity of those at the bottom of the scale of respectability: "queers, sluts, prostitutes, trannies, club crawlers, and other lowlifes". It begins with a brilliant analysis of the ethical tradition queer culture has built up over the last fifty years, one that has been dismissed by mainstream moralists. He shows that civilization's role isn't just to preserve "natural" sexuality, but to create new types of sexuality through innovations like the pill, condoms, dildos, video, Viagra, hormones, vibrators, and others we can't predict. Little can be shown to be transhistorical about sex, he says, except men raping women. The goal of policy makers should be sexual autonomy for everyone, not just protection under the law for married couples, "good gays", and children. On the gay marriage debate, Warner separates the legal benefits of marriage from its mythology and shows how those benefits can be distributed among unmarried couples and single people, both gay and straight, without the discriminatory effects of marriage under the law. He goes on to show why public sexual culture, from pornography to bathhouses, is something to value, something whose accessibility is worth fighting for. Finally he shows how sexual shame grips U.S. heath policy, reducing it to little more than an abstinence program, where safer sex education lags far behind other developed countries. This is a life-changing book, I can't recommend it strongly enough if you care at all about progressive sexual politics.

In this wonderful manifesto, Warner argues that the recent emphasis on marriage and normalcy within the gay and lesbian movement (or, as Harvard University Press typesetters put it at one point, "the hay and lesbian movement") undermines the hard-fought struggles and betrays the valuable lessons of an earlier generation of queer activism, and strips queerness of its central insights about human sexuality. This is not just a timely intervention within gay politics, however. It is also a smart analysis of the regulation and disposition of urban space, a sophisticated reflection on the meanings of privacy and publicity in our culture, a disturbingly persuasive indictment of the institution of civil marriage, and the most resonant non-fiction on the subject of sex I have read in a long time. Most of all, this is a deeply ethical book that will speak to a range of readers, whether or not they are "hay," or have any abiding interest in the politics of that identity.

Ben Bova has been around a long time, has written a lot of novels, and when he writes a novel it is bound to be a decent read. That is what this book is: a decent read for those of us who enjoy "hard" science fiction.
Candidly, this book is not in the same league as Bova's "Mars" or even "Moonrise" or "Moonwar." Although the story takes place almost entirely aboard a space station orbiting Jupiter, one would never know it. They might as well have been at an Antarctic research station--few of the special issues that surely would exist in such an envirnonment ever come out. The book takes a crack at being imaginative by featuring some odd aliens: a genetically modified (more intelligent) gorilla, and whale-like intelligent Jovians. It doesn't work. The ape reminded me of my three year old son except with gorilla strength, and the Jovians act just like human beings. Not at all compelling, convincing, or interesting. Well, that's my opinion, anyway.

Nor did I find the politics of the novel to be particularly interesting. In effect, the novel is set in a world where a caricature of the present American so-called "religious right" is in full control in both the future USA and other countries. Just as you'd expect, these folks (the "New Morality") are narrow-minded characters who you would not want to have a beer with. They are against science and progress because, well, they are narrow-minded characters. OK, so we know that Bova doesn't like the "religious right." We find that out in the first ten or so pages, which essentially constitute a recital as to how awful the "New Morality" is. The "New Morality" then basically drops out of the novel into the distant background, basically as a bunch of puritans who don't want the folks on the space station to explore Jupiter and find out that it contains life and maybe intelligent Jovians. They don't want people to know that there are intelligent aliens because, well, the New Morality is comprised of narrow minded characters. Ho hum.

Basically, like all of Bova's books that I have ever read (most of them) Bova paints a depressing view of the future--one in which individual liberty is very limited, and anything resembling a Jeffersonian view of freedom is a thing of the past. In virtually all of Bova's books he postulates a future in which the authorities can pretty do whatever they like to whomever they like, and generally this is pretty ugly. That is certainly the case in this book--you'll find this recurrent theme throughout. Just like in Bova's "Mars" "Moonrise" "Moonwar" and I imagine the others.

Bova's prose is good. As usual, his character development is serviceable, but none of the characters are compelling, and all are quite forgettable. Nevertheless, this is a readable book; good for an afternoon at the beach or whatnot.

This is the first Ben Bova book that I've read, so I cannot compare it to his earlier works like some other reviewers. That said, I found this book to be very interesting. I liked it a lot and I thought it was a very enjoyable read.

"Jupiter" does not have the hard core science that I typically like in science fiction novels (like Red Mars) but Bova creates an interesting enviornment for a planet we don't know a whole bunch about. With the enviornment he creates he does apply the science (such as fluid dynamics and the chemistry behind the atmosphere) very well, even though it may not be the actual case in reality.

As for the morality and religious implications in the book, they are few and far between. I forgot a few times the original reason why Grant went to Jupiter in the first place, but it wraps up nicely without being overly offensive to either side of the belief system.

All in all, I highly recommend "Jupiter." It is a quick read, it is interesting, and thought provoking.

This is my third Bova book, and they just keep getting better. Jupiter is an unforgettable novel. It combines brilliant characterization with a fast-paced, tension-filled plot filled with action and suspense. Grant Archer is a young scientist assigned to a station in orbit around Jupiter. A quiet, reserved man, he is torn between his natural curiosity and his desire for a simple, quiet life with his new bride. Along the way he discovers a new depth of spiritual faith while at the same time doing battle with dangerous religious zealots. Jupiter grapples with age-old question while at the same time never failing to entertain. Read this book!