velmo

• Rated 5 stars

“Tom Hollander does an AMAZING job performing the audiobook version.”

velmo wrote this review Tuesday, November 9, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“George Washington had written, "A people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove." The war was a longer, far more arduous and more painful struggle than later generations would understand or sufficiently appreciate. The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was a year of all too few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear. Often circumstance -- storms, contrary winds, the oddities or strengths of individual character -- had made the difference.”

velmo wrote this review Tuesday, September 28, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 2 stars

“"It has begun." "He is here." The fate of all humanity blah blah blah yawn. I was disappointed in this first book of the trilogy. A Nazi concentration camp survivor, a medical genius, and a rat exterminator battle a vampire-zombie virus unleashed on post 911 Manhattan by a sickly but immeasurably influential American man seeking eternal health, and a rogue Master vampire who inhabits the body of a 17th century Romanian prince that suffered from gigantism. Del Toro and Hogan's vampires don't have genetalia. They also poop their pants. Bummer for the immortals. There is devotional attention to detail and the more original aspects of the story that were overtaken by cliche could have benefited from the trilogy being condensed into one book.”

velmo wrote this review Tuesday, August 17, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“I've read two Andrea Camilleri penned mystery novels and was disturbed to find that a different older man in each book repeatedly rapes the wife of his son. Does Camilleri have a perverse criminal fetish that he 'safely' explores through fiction? WTF?”

velmo wrote this review Monday, August 16, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“"Men are more the sons of their time than of their fathers, wrote the historian Marc Bloch. We are infinitely closer to our contemporaries than to our ancestors. We are living in an age of both harmonization and dissonance. Never have men had so many things in common – knowledge, points of reference, images, words, instruments and tools of all kinds. But this only increases their desire to assert their differences. Life is a creator of differences. Every individual without exception possesses a composite identity. He need only ask himself a few questions to uncover forgotten divergences and unsuspected ramifications, and to see that he is complex, unique and irreplaceable. I scarcely need exaggerate at all to say that I have some affiliations in common with every other human being. Yet no one else in the world has all or even most of the same allegiances as I do." --Amin Maalouf”

velmo wrote this review Monday, February 9, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“"Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again." --excerpt from the poem 'Mayakovsky'

"I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store..." --excerpt from the poem 'Meditations in an Emergency'”

velmo wrote this review Saturday, January 17, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“"…whites relate to…material as spokesmen, not advocates. …they believe that the truth or other merits of an idea are intrinsic to the idea itself. How deeply a person cares about or believes in the idea is considered irrelevant to its fundamental value. This view – the separation of truth and belief – is heavily influenced by what whites understand of the scientific method, where the goal is to achieve a stance of neutral objectivity with regard to the truth that is 'out there': a truth that is not to be possessed or created but, rather, discovered. Whites believe that caring about one's own ideas, like the infatuation of scientists with their own hypotheses, will make them less receptive to opposing ideas and consequently prevent them from discovering the real truth. Thus they are taught to present ideas as though the ideas had an objective life, existing independent of any person expressing them. This accounts for the impersonal mode of expression that whites use, which…establishes the detached character of proceedings in which white cultural norms dominate. Because blacks admit that they deal from a point of view, they are disinclined to believe whites who claim not to have a point of view, or who present their views in a matter that suggests that they do not themselves believe what they are saying. This is why they often accuse whites of being insincere." --Thomas Kochman”

velmo wrote this review Monday, December 29, 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“Writing for the Web is not the same as writing for print. The key difference is when people use the Web they are relentlessly task-focused. Web content needs to drive useful action, and if it doesn't, it's not delivering value. Your website is not a murder mystery, so tell them who did it in the heading and the very first paragraph. Nobody is going to wait until the last paragraph to discover the essence of what you are trying to communicate. Lead with the need. The rule on the Web is, have only content that helps your readers to complete their key tasks. Get to the point. Then stop.”

velmo wrote this review Saturday, December 27, 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“"We may be undermined by our survival instincts, honed over eons to help us deny, defy, or ignore catastrophic portents lest they paralyze us with fright." --Alan Weisman”

velmo wrote this review Monday, January 5, 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“"When I was little, I played a certain staring game that seemed to have invented itself. I would hold myself as still as I could and make my eyes like a toy's eyes that don't move - and I would wait. I would wait for the other things in the room to forget about me and begin to move. I believed there was another world that would show itself to me in the smallest ways. The gray kitten in the picture by my bed would accidentally blink his eyes. The girl in the picture would breathe. I believed there was another world - but I only noticed it when it became harder to get to. No one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. At some point the cat stopped blinking, and I stopped thinking it could." --Lynda Barry”

velmo wrote this review Thursday, December 18, 2008. ( reply | permalink )