Book Description
These ruminations, assembled in the form of a journal and here published in paperback for the first time, were written at Alan Watts' retreat in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, California. Many current themes are discussed, including meditation, nature, established religion, race relations, karma and reincarnation, astrology and tantric yoga, and the nature of ecstasy, but the underlying motif is the art of feeling out and following the watercourse way of nature, known in Chinese as the Tao. Watts suggests a way of contemplative meditation in which we temporarily stop naming and classifying all that we experience, and simply feel it as it is.
Customer Reviews:
Writing about the Unknowable.......2004-10-20
It's a little hard to write about something that can't be written about, but Watts gives it his best shot, and he seems to pull it off.
He writes, for example, "Yet the intention of the guru himself is simply to exhaust the energy of the illusion by bringing his disciples again and again to experiences of the absurdity of trying to transform mind with mind."
Watts, as his readers know, started as an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest, and then studied at a Zen monastery in Kyoto, Japan. His metamorphosis is evident in these writings (he died in 1973, right after this book was published).
Watts has little sympathy for the established Christian churches and instead finds sustenance in Zen, Taoism, and Hinduism.
Personally, I found sustenance in his writings here. He doesn't give a whole lot of what we might call "practical" advice, except to meditate, but that's the point of his teachings: "So long, then, as we are concerned with powers, we are still aiming at increased control of nature and aggravating our frustrations." The "Western" efforts to control nature, Watts feels, are self-defeating.
"You, as ego, cannot change what you are feeling, and you cannot, effectively, try not to change it."
You may get the dichotomous drift of what he is saying in these few quotations. When you read the book, you'll get much more. Like other books with a spiritual theme, but moreso, this book will fulfill and feed your spirit. Diximus.
rebel with a cause.......2002-10-21
Timeless wisdom wrapped in beautiful language that soothes the soul. Alan Watts was a brilliant storyteller who managed to stir things up a bit before leaving on an optimistic note.
This work is edgier than his others and will satisfy the more rebellious new agers.
just marvelous.......1998-12-27
This is perhaps the best of the half dozen or so Watts books I've read. Watts is a brilliant philosopher of the "Big Picture", and it is all wonderfully laid out here: Cosmic consciousness, Tantric Buddhism, the Hippies, Tao... he nails them all in splendid fashion. Highly recommendable.
A concise summary of Watts' enlightening lectures........1998-08-24
Unlike "The Book", one of my favorite books of Watts, "Cloud-Hidden..." is a collection of short essays that can be digested in a brief sitting. Some of these essays are direct transcriptions of his lectures. Yet, I find myself returning to this book quite often for a quick "Watts fix".
Book Description
When Anatoli Boukreev died on the slopes of Annapurna on December 25, 1997, the climbing world lost one of the greatest mountaineers of our time. His account of the 1996 Everest disaster, The Climb, was a New York Times bestseller, and in many eyes the most accurate portrayal of the infamous expedition. Above the Clouds contains riveting narratives of climbs on Mt. McKinley, K2, Makalu, Manaslu, and Everest-including Boukreev's diary of the 1996 expedition, written shortly after his return. There are also fascinating technical details about the skill of mountain climbing, as well as personal and moving reflections on what life means to someone who risks it every day.What emerges is a self-portrait by a man few people really know - an athletic prodigy who found joy and spiritual reward in the thin air where the body struggles to survive.Mingling hair-raising adventure with moving reflection, Above the Clouds is a unique and breathtaking look at the world from its most remote peaks. AUTHORBIO: Anatoli Boukreev was (with G. Weston DeWalt) co-author of The Climb and a world-renowned high-altitude mountaineer. Twenty-one times he reached the summit of the world's highest mountains. For his heroic actions on Mount Everest in May 1996, he was awarded the American Alpine Club's highest honor, the David A. Sowles Memorial Award. Linda Wylie was Anatoli Boukreev's companion and is now executor of his estate.
Customer Reviews:
Above the Clouds Goes Above and Beyond Expectations.......2005-12-07
This book is excellent reading for "armchair enthusiasts", serious mountaineers, or anyone in between. Before reading this book I did not even know who Anatoli was. Now, I see him as one of the true great mountaineers. I really related to his feelings for the mountains, and I share many of his philosophies regarding climbing. Reaching the summit is not success; to be successful, you must make it safely down. Even if Mallory and Irvine reached the summit of Everest, they didn't achieve success by living to tell about it.
As a mountaineer and author myself, I was very pleased how easy I could relate to Anatoli's feelings and philosophies about the sport of mountaineering. On page 123 he states that he treated the mountains "like cathedrals where worship gives you strength and strips off the scale of ordinary life." He also told a different version of the accounts of the disastrous climbing month in May 1996 on Mt. Everest, which catapulted high altitude mountaineering to the front pages of newspapers around the world. I still view Reinhold Messner as the best mountaineer of all time, but had Anatoli lived longer he would have surely closed the gap.
A great read........2005-04-28
Although having a personal interest Wylie does accomplish the fact that Anotoli Boukreev was greatly denigrated by Jon Krakauer in his Into Thin Air while only mentioning the fact once.....Rowell's being associated with the book convinced me of Boukreev's authenticity....he was truly a mountaineer...I think Krakauer recognized this fact but because of his bias and his paycheck together with his group's failure on Everest he felt compelled to place the blame. He apparently failed to accomplish this as evidenced by the awards and accolades Boukreev received by other mountaineers.....but Boukreev was his victim and all Krakauer was looking for was an American audience, and as I said, a paycheck.......This book is not an attempt to portray Boukreev as he wasn't but accomplished to show Boukreev as he really was, truly an outstanding individual....truly and individual....his returning to the mountain to find Scott Fisher and Yasuko Namba only indicates the person he was......
The truth - from a real mountaineer........2004-06-03
A joy to read - this man had the spirit of a true mountaineer. His co-author did a wonderful job.
An amazing account of an amazing person!.......2004-02-05
This book is based on the journal of Anatoli Boukreev and his diary of mountaineering. The book does a great job of describing his life before large expeditions and his struggle to make it to the top. The book does also focuses on his life and relationships as well as his personal accounts of his adventures. The journal rarely goes into his deep feelings which gives a better understanding of how he was as person. However, when it does go deep, it speak deeply and touches the essense of mountaineering.
Excellent Insight.......2003-01-09
Anatoli Boukreev was one of the most remarkable mountaineers in history. This book gives the reader great insight into Boukreev's thoughts, as well as the Soviet culture. Having read many other books, the similarities between Soviet athletes, chess masters and intellectuals is stunning. Anatoli Boukreev hints at the pressure placed upon him and others prior to the fall of his government. "Above the Clouds" has excellent narratives about climbing, but it is much more than that. His writings about the Everest tragedy are striking.
Product Description
A guidebook to 127 trails for hiking, horseback riding, and mountain biking in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area just north of Sun Valley, Idaho. The book includes trails in the Sawtooth, Boulder, Smoky, and White Cloud Mountains. 24 hikes are new in this edition. 60 maps, 58 photos.
Customer Reviews:
Great guidebook to some of Idaho's best locations!.......2006-07-31
Margaret Fuller is an exceptional writer that combines how to get to some of the best locations in Idaho with a little history of the area. I own all of her guidebooks and would recommend them to anyone. One of my favorite pieces of information that she includes is how long a hike will take which makes it nice since I can plan better. Being a native Idahoan growing up in Salmon I was surprise at how much information and different hikes Margaret has put into her books. And if you have never been into the White Clouds buy this book and plan a trip. The area is spectacular and the vistas are unforgettable. They are some of my favorite mountains.
Great information, moderately conveyed.......2006-02-23
Although this is one of only two guides on the Sawtooths (the other one is very tough to get), and the Author has provided great trail descriptions, the organization of the book drives me crazy. The hike header information, that provides elevation, distance, and estimated time, seems to switch back and forth between describing that individual hike to describing an overarching hike that has been broken up into segments. I'd prefer the segments (to allow me to assemble my own loops). I think either way could be effective, however the mixture leaves the reader as a loss. Despite that issue, this is still the best source of information on the SNRA.
Sawtooth Heaven.......2005-09-30
I wanted a detailed guide to the trails in these areas, and recently spent two weeks in Idaho on a number of the trails discussed in this book.
The trail descriptions and directions to trail heads were uniformly good.
My only recommendation for a later edition is to qualify the hikes, so the hiker with limited time can focus on the really exceptional trails.
What trail do I recommend for an aggressive day hike? Saddleback Lakes, out of Redfish Lake trailhead.
Idaho is awesome.
Robert Varney
Encinitas, California
Book Description
Offering a rare and mystical glimpse into nature's splendor, this book is sure to delight anyone who is lured by the majesty and spirit of the wild horse.
Customer Reviews:
Fabulous Book.......2006-07-26
The book is wonderful. Beautifully written and photographed. However, people should know that Cloud's herd of wild horses is in great danger of being rounded up and permanently removed from the Pryor Mountains in Montana which has been cleared of all other herds of Mustangs. The Bureau of Land Management has caved in to cattle and sheep ranchers who want all wild horses removed from the range, including Public Lands and areas such as the Pryor Mountains where cattle are not grazed.
Cloud Wild Stallion of the Rockies.......2005-02-20
The heck with being a book for teen girls ----- it is a book for all horse lovers and non horse lovers alike! Beautiful photos and a GREAT TRUE Story! It is WONDERFUL!
Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies.......2005-01-06
Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies is an interesting book, with vivid photographs of mustangs. I received it as a gift back when I was still obsessed with horses, and could not get enough of it. Even now that I only slightly like horses anymore, I find this book very enjoyable.
Interspersed with moving photography, this is Ginger Kathrens' story of a wild stallion called Cloud. She followed his herd before he was born, and followed him all over afterwards. A simple but well-written documentary that, I can only imagine, rivals the show produced on Nature's television series, this is a must for any young horse-lover, or even an older one.
I highly recommend this book. The pictures are full-color and the story is superb; you will be getting your money's worth with this book. Long live Cloud!
BEST EVER!!!.......2004-08-30
Cloud, Wild Stallion of the Rockies is the BEST horse book that I have ever read! It is a true story about wild horses in Montana. It is interesting and very exciting! I also enjoy watching the DVD. I highly recommend this book to any one who likes horses! Definitely a 5 star book!
Cloud.......2002-04-01
I read and enjoyed the book it seems to portray the behavior of the wild stallion and his herd very well. Good readablity factor.
Book Description
In California of 1906, where it is a crime for them to even touch, Hope Newfield and Liang Po-yu fall desperately in love. Defying every taboo, this independent American woman and the aristocratic young man from Hankow, China, decide to marry. But over the following years, as they move from San Francisco to China and start to raise a family, their love is tested by prejudice, by revolution, by conflicting loyalties, and their own drastically different traditions.
Customer Reviews:
A Story to be captured by.......2007-07-13
When I read this story, I couldn't stop. It captured not only my attention but my heart as well. I was so touched by the enduring love story between Hope and Paul. It is also filled with history and compelling stories, which make the weave only tighter. This was one story that will grab you and hold you.
Cloud Mountain.......2006-06-26
This book is well written and very ambitious in its scope. It is fascinating to get a "people's eye" view of the rise of Sun Yat Sen. Additionally it empathically covers the social response to mixed marriages by two very different cultures. This is a women orienated book about a very tumultous time and ties the events together skillfully in the Western U.S. and the emerging China of 100 years ago.
Washington State Book Reader ~ LOVED IT!!.......2004-05-19
In the last few years I have read many books that deal with China's history and this book was by far one of my favorites. It is a beautiful book that I felt compelled to share with others and purchased more than one copy so I could lend it out and make sure to have a copy for my collection. This book will not dissapoint, especially if you are as intrigued with China and it's history as I am! When I got to the last 20 pages or so I turned them very slowly in hopes of making it last longer! :) I urge you to buy this book and one for your friends! It is a very moving picture of what a person can live through and still see the beauty in life around them!
Wonderful Imagery & a respose to another review.......2004-01-24
Aimme E. Liu has written a wonderful fictional accounting of a true story. I have been a friend of the Luis family for over forty five years. Aimee's cousin John was my boyhood friend. And we still keep up. The family story has always fasinaated me. (John is Herb Luis' son, Teddy in the book.)Although Aimee says it is about 70% true, I know through conversations with John's mother that basically ALL of the major persons, dates, places, and events are true. The 30% is mostly side sories and details for dramatic effect.
I also want to point out that in a prior review of "Cloud Mountain" by "Elizabeth" she states that the only place in 1908 where the name Jennifer existed was Cornwall. Well, the fact is Hope's real name WAS Jenny Trescott. In fact, I found that Aimee used family names for fictional charactors in several instances. But never the real name for the real person.
Although I have to say that I read this book because I had already heard the story and had a personal interest in it. But even if I hadn't I still would not have been able to put it down. Aimee Liu's use of words to describe are incredibly original (I don't know how she came up with some of them) and they really do "paint" a picture in your mind as you read.
She is a real literary artist.
This is not only a love story. In fact, I would just as much descibe it as a story of courage, of two people who dared to cross the bariers that a bigoted society had placed between them. It is also the story of a man committed to saving his counrty by bringing it democracy even if it could have cost him his life. It is a story of a woman who stood by him, travelled halfway around the world to an unstable society trying to grow up into democracy, but turned out to be a house of cards.
Read this book and take a trip back to a past and place few Americans are aware of. Enjoy the exciting people and places, but also learn a history of a different place, time, and people.
Interesting And Disappointing.......2002-09-13
When I received this book I was really eager to read it. The whole storyline appealed to me and I was convinced, based on the first few chapters, that I would enjoy it. I'm not sure when I changed my mind. Maybe it was after reading countless details about historical and political China when I just wanted to know more about the main characters. Sometimes I felt as if the author couldn't decide if she wanted to write a history book or a love story. While her descriptions of the surrounding enviroments within the book were very colorful and evocative, the presentation of historical events taking place was a bit on the boring side. I found myself fighting the urge to just skip over those parts. Also, the ending (which I won't give away) sort of left me feeling cheated. I suppose I could've overlooked all of those things except for one thing. The fact is, the main character just isn't very interesting or likeable. To me, that's a deal-breaker.
Book Description
This book includes more than 75 hikes in this spectacular country, from the western canyons and badlands to the soaring heights of the Cloud Peak Massif.
Download Description
This book includes more than 75 hikes in this spectacular country, from the western canyons and badlands to the soaring heights of the Cloud Peak Massif. Detailed hike descriptions, helpful maps, and elevation profiles make this the only guide you'll need to enjoy hiking in the Cloud Peak Wilderness.
Customer Reviews:
hiking wyoming's cloud pead wilderness.......2007-10-01
This a very helpful and informative book on anyone who should want to hike in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. It gives trails, elevation, distances from trail head to each connection on the trail for the end of the journey. I highly recommend this book to hikers.
A focused book for a unique range.......2003-07-09
I lived in the Buffalo, WY area for ten years and bought this book to help plan a "homecoming" backpacking trip from afar. Erik Molvar's book covers all the classic trails in the Cloud Peak Wilderness area. In addition, the last half of the book covers hikes in the Big Horn Mountains outside the interior wilderness area. Apparently one reviewer who is not from the area missed this fact. This book is an excellent introduction to the Big Horn Mountains and will guide you through the marvelous scenery of one the the West's least visited but truly unique mountain ranges.
A Useful Tool.......2000-08-27
I live in Wyoming within 40 miles of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, and have been hiking in it off and on for the past 20 years. On the hikes I've taken since purchasing the book, I found Mr. Molvar's guide useful. The trail descriptions and ratings are accurate for the hikes I've compared to the text, and the author has a clear easy to read style.
I recommend this book. It will not take the place of a detailed map or tell all that one may discover on a particular hike, but it is a useful tool.
A Useful Tool.......2000-08-27
I live in Wyoming within 40 miles of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, and have been hiking in it off and on for the past 20 years. On the hikes I've taken since purchasing the book, I found Mr. Molvar's guide useful. The trail descriptions and ratings are accurate for the hikes I've compared to the text, and the author has a clear easy to read style.
I recommend this book. It will not take the place of a detailed map or tell all that one may discover on a particular hike, but it is a useful tool.
Book Description
In a medieval abbey near Paris, in a room piled high with old Chinese texts, lies a manuscript gathering dust. Though ordinary in appearance, it first captures the eye of the narrator of Franccedil;ois Cheng's novel. Then, once he begins to read, it captures his imagination and his heart. The book dates from the mid-seventeenth century, during the twilight of the Ming Dynasty. Barbarian armies are massing along the Empire's Northern borders, and a vast and sophisticated civilization-during whose heyday China had begun to emerge from its long isolation and undergone an explosion in the arts equal in its way to Europe's Renaissance-teeters on the brink of monumental and perhaps catastrophic change. Yet rather than filled with lore of military heroism, or with tales of palace intrigue, or with nostalgic memories of better days, the book tells a simple and very powerful love story.It opens to a spring day, when a middle-aged doctor named Dao-sheng leaves the mountaintop Taoist monastery where he has been living and sets out for the Region of the South, to the city he had once visited thirty years earlier and where his life had been irrevocably changed. He had then been a strapping but poor young musician traveling with theater troupe. One evening, during a performance, he caught the eye of well-born young woman named Lan-ying. Their contact lasted but a minute, but to them it felt like an eternity. For this act of audacity he was banished to hard labor by the girl's jealous fianceacute;e, the dissipated scion of a powerful family, who had witnessed their exchange and grasped its significance. Across the decades of a life spent either on the run or hiding out in monasteries, where he mastered medicine and divination, Dao-sheng never forgot Lan-ying. One exchange of glances had sealed something forever, something whose enduring power would decide their fates.Written with radiant simplicity and wisdom, simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-warming, Green Mountain, White Cloud is a suspenseful tale of passion and revenge set against the backdrop of a great empire's last days. Franccedil;ois Cheng gives us star-crossed lovers whose rekindled passion makes the pages of this novel glow. More than a love story, it takes us on a quest as much spiritual as physical, exploring the very essence of love's ageless and transformative power.
Customer Reviews:
Human Love -- A Mystery within the Mysteries.......2004-05-11
Green Mountain, White Cloud by Francois Cheng adds a stunning novel to Cheng's growing body of truly great work. He has now been translated into English addressing Chinese poetics, the written/painting arts of China, the relationship between calligraphy and poetry, friendship, totalitarianism, and now love -- love beyond understanding.
One constant in his work are the conflicts between tradition and modernism and the working out of healing through art and love.
The binding of tradition and the chaos of modernism interact like Yin and Yang.
Green Mountain, White Cloud is a brief novel, of about 200 pages, set in the late days of Ming China just before its collapse and a time where the Chinese were aliens in thier own land.
The title of this book comes from the core concepts of Chinese art -- mountains and waters (clouds are a special mysterious form of water). Mountains standing for the Yang energy -- men and their constant strength and clouds for the Ying power of the water and feminine. Water in all its forms has the power of the river and the ocean to flow and change. Mountains give birth the the water and water gives birth the mountains.
Possibly the greatest philosophical statment of the Eastern worldview is Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra playing out the the entirety of multidimensional existence in short talk/essay on Buddhist teaching. The import and context of Cheng's novel can be viewed, at a distance, through Dogen's lens. It is a reflection on the teaching process that Cheng follows: to read this Chinese novel written in French and translated into English we must study an obscure text from the Japanese Middle Ages.
The story can be read, like the other Cheng novel in English, The River Below -- at several levels. In this book we have:
good and evil, loss and gain, masculine and feminine, gradual and transcending enlighment, the Oxhearing stages of the path to enlighenment, Zen koans, human love, Buddhist pure intent, traditional Chinese healing, and Christian love.
An interesting part of the novel is the Eastern world crossing paths with the Christian mission. Buddhist concerns for other beings, taoist concepts of dialetics, and Confucian concerns with human character are displayed against the mysterious faith of a couple of Christians and their concern with the Father in Heaven and love for the Son of God.
At bottom this is a book about pure love and its great power.
Healing through Love.......2004-05-11
Green Mountain, White Cloud by Francois Cheng adds a stunning novel to Cheng's growing body of truly great work. He has now been translated into English covering Chinese poetics, the written/painting arts of China, the relationship between calligraphy and poetry, friendship, totalitarianism, and now love -- love beyond understanding.
One constant in his work are the conflicts between tradition and modernism and the working out of healing through art and love.
The binding of tradition and the chaos of modernism interact like Yin and Yang.
Green Mountain, White Cloud is a brief novel set in the late days of Ming China just before its collapse and the disaster of colonial control of China lasting until the 1900s.
The title of this book comes from the core concepts of Chinese art -- mountains and waters (clouds are a special mysterious form of water). Mountains standing for the Yang energy -- men and their constant strength and clouds for the Ying power of the water and feminine. Water in all its forms has the power of the river and the ocean to flow and change. Mountains give birth the the water and water gives birth the mountains.
Possibly the greatest philosophical statment of the Eastern worldview is Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra playing out the the entirety of multidimensional existence in short talk/essay on Buddhist teaching. The import and context of Cheng's novel can be viewed, at a distance, through Dogen's lens. It is a reflection on the teaching process that Cheng follows: to read this Chinese novel written in French and translated into English we must study an obscure text from the Japanese Middle Ages.
The story can be read, like the other Cheng novel in English, The River Below -- at several levels. In this book we have:
good and evil, loss and gain, masculine and feminine, gradual and transcending enlighment, the Oxhearing stages of the path to enlighenment, Zen koans, human love, Buddhist pure intent, traditional Chinese healing, and Christian love.
An interesting part of the novel is the Buddhist/Taoist/Confucian world crossing paths with the Christian mission. Buddhist concerns for other beings, taoist concepts of dialetics, and Confucian concerns with human character are displayed against the mysterious faith of a couple of Christians and their concern with the Father in Heaven and love for the Son of God.
At bottom this is a book about pure love and its great power.
Average customer rating:
- Into the mystery....
- incommunicable emotions
- In the service of lovely but contrived prose
- Well written but overwrought.
- There cannot be many better first novels than this one.
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The Service of Clouds
Delia Falconer
Manufacturer: Picador USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Historical
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
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The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers
ASIN: 031220969X |
Amazon.com
A mystically inclined photographer who tries to find the face of God captured in clouds; a tubercular horticulturist who experiences others' dreams; a pharmacist's assistant who sells tonics to cure homesickness and unrequited love--these are the inhabitants of Katoomba, a town high in Australia's Blue Mountains where the air is "too thin to support any certainties." Opening in 1907 and spanning nearly two decades, The Service of Clouds follows the coming-of-age of young Eureka Jones, whose town springs into life once she sees it through the eyes of photographer Harry Kitchings. But plot is never this narrative's focus. "My mother, being possessed of a practical temperament, did not use metaphors lightly: she expected them to do a full day's work," writes Falconer, and the same could be said of her novel itself. Metaphors here are meant to be taken quite literally; clouds take on double and triple symbolic duty, but they also literally "soak into the pores" of her characters' skin, "improving its texture and the quality of our blood." In fact, Falconer's metaphors do the full day's work of both characterization and plot, and at times, that load is too much to bear. The prose is magical, but it is also sometimes frustratingly abstract. No matter: Katoomba itself is vivid, and the novel's language dazzling--even when it leaves the reader standing on less than solid ground.
Book Description
It is 1907 in the Blue Mountains of Australia. As the novelties of science begin to encroach on this beguiling landscape, Eureka Jones, a quiet young pharmacist's assistant, slowly begins to fall in love with Harry Kitchings, a distant stranger who has arrived to photograph clouds. The story of their courtship and its aftermath spans over seven years: a graceful, compelling meditation on the nature of love and the power of memory.
Customer Reviews:
Into the mystery...........2006-02-16
A staggering, wildly romantic, wildly poetic novel written by a woman with a profound gift. Achingly beautiful, achingly sad, slow, dreamy, with sentances which are sometimes wrought like grandiose set-pieces which seem to have lived a long time for a chance to escape the authour and other times strike with a quicksilver precision that leaves you breathless.
Falconer is a remarkable, gifted, sensitive and unique writer. "The Service of Clouds" is probably the best book I have read in the last 10 years. And it's only by accident I came to read it - I was looking for a book to make up a "Buy 3, pay for 2" offer and I picked it up at random. I think a kind spirit guided my hand that day!
incommunicable emotions.......2005-09-07
To all of those intoxicated by the machine, frenzied by the rhythms of urban life and driven by the spur of modernity, Falconer proposes a cure of overwhelming literary beauty. The imaginative poetic style of this outstanding first novel evokes the opulence of Garcia Marquez while weaving a rare tapestry of human tenderness, fragility and flaw. Falconer's eloquent tale of obsession, beauty and madness is a tribute to the beauty of metaphor and entices the reader to savour to the author's own passion for images. Her novel approaches a certain reign of the imagination and the age-old literary quest to portray essentially incommunicable emotions. The Service Of Clouds evokes magnificently the mystical beauty of the Blue Mountains and charts the obsessivve tenacity of a women who grasps for love and is ultimately smothered by it. A magnificent novel of haunting and persistent beauty.
In the service of lovely but contrived prose.......2005-09-04
I agree with the two other reviews from 'A reader' on the Amazon website. Although Delia uses lovely, poetic prose in this novel, it is very contrived. It appears as though she wrote it, but then 'workshopped' it too many times. I went to see Delia at the Melbourne Writer's Festival and she revealed how she researches books thoroughly and attends 'writer's workshops'. To be honest, I think she needs to cut out the writer's retreats, and try to focus on writing genuine stuff. As one of the other reviewer's on Amazon noted, a good book draws the reader in, and Delia unfortunately does not do this, she instead presents the book as a sort of prize/exhibit, to which we as the reader must pay homage. She undoubtedly has some nice turns of phrase, but I think a writer has to be careful when mixing poetry and prose, because in this instance, the prose gets far too much in the way of the story, its like wading through mud. Also, she uses too many complex words without any real sense of why that word is chosen, for instance, I think I found about 5 places where she used the word 'febrile' in the book. This is her favourite word (she used it 3-4 times in her short talk at the festival) and her over-use of it makes her language look far too contrived ("I want to put a really impressive word here, I think I'll use febrile again!")
I think the idea behind this book was an interesting one, but Delia needs to work on her language - I realise not all writers should write like Dickens or Steinbeck (my two favourites!) or even fantastic contemporary writers like Ron McLarty, whose prose is an excellent example of simplicity/sparseness, with which he conveys an amazing level of depth and meaning (I love him!); and I appreciate her efforts, but she needs to think less about how impressive her style is, and go with her instincts a bit more (ie; be more 'natural').
Well written but overwrought........2003-05-06
This would have been better as a novella or a short story. Evocatively written, Falconer nevertheless overwhelms the reader with fanciful yet strangely cold prose. The writing is all too clearly the product of intense labour, earnestly wrought, then wrought again and again and again. Clarity and simplicity are abandoned in the pursuit of hyperbole and in the end, the book is as insubstantial as fairy floss. Falconer could do better than this. Good writing should make the heart sing with pleasure at the apt word, the well chosen single phrase. This attenuated whimsy substitutes an infatuation with words for real meaning.
There cannot be many better first novels than this one........2003-04-10
Delia Falconer has written a brilliant first novel here in The Service of Clouds. I do not think this book has received the attention it deserves. There is no great storyline but the writing and the prose are heavenly.
Living in Australia I well know the Blue Mountains, which are to the west of Sydney, and they are a place of inspiring beauty. This is reflected in Delia's writing which is wonderfully descriptive.
Delia's observations of life, human nature and love are illuminating and magically alluring. This is a novel which may appeal to men as much as, if not more than, women. When I first read the blurbs I thought this might not be the book for me. I took the chance and it was. I reread The Service of Clouds recently and was even more impressed.
If you like Donna Tartt's writing you will love this novel. Delia is right up there in her ability to make you feel you are living with the characters in their hearts and lives. Such is the power of the time stopping qualities of her exquisitely distilled prose.
Average customer rating:
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Trails of the Sawtooth and White Cloud Mountains
Margaret Fuller
Manufacturer: Trail Guide Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 091314049X |
Book Description
Third edition of hiking guidebook to the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. 103 hikes, 1998.
Books:
- College Student Death: Guidance for a Caring Campus
- Coming Out
- Cravings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novella) (Queen Betsy Novella) (The World of the Lupi Novella) (Moon Series Novella)
- Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
- Desierto: Memories of the Future
- Devil May Cry (A Dark-Hunter Novel, Book 11)
- Digital Lighting & Rendering
- Distant Shores: A Tenth-Anniversary Celebration (Star Trek: Voyager)
- Dragons of Spring Dawning (Dragonlance Chronicles, Book 3)
- Ethan Frome (Signet Classics)
Books Index
Books Home
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