Up Close and Dangerous: A Novel

Book Description

A mysterious plane crash . . . a dangerous trek through the Idaho wilderness . . . a smoldering attraction . . . and a deadly game of cat and mouse. In her latest tour de force of romantic suspense, New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard blends these elements into a gripping story that will keep readers breathless–and leave them begging for more. For in Linda Howard’s world, trust can be a weapon, a kiss can be a threat, and intimacy can be deadly.

Bailey Wingate’s scheming adult stepchildren are surprised when their father’s will leaves Bailey in control of their fortune, and war ensues. A year later, while flying from Seattle to Denver in a small plane, Bailey nearly dies herself when the engine sputters–and then fails.

Cam Justice, her sexy Texan pilot, manages to crash-land the aircraft. Stranded in the wilderness, and struggling to douse her feelings for the ruggedly handsome man by her side, Bailey begins to wonder whether this was a mere accident. Who tampered with their plane? Who’s trying to reunite Bailey and her husband in the afterlife? Cut off from the world, and with little hope of rescue, Bailey must trust her life–and heart–to Cam, as they battle the harsh elements to find a way out of the unforgiving wilds and back to civilization . . . where a killer may be waiting to finish the job.

Sexy, suspenseful, and lightning fast, Up Close and Dangerous showcases a beloved author at her dazzling best.

Customer Reviews:

Actually, it's better than she's been lately.......2007-10-09

I have been SEVERELY disappointed in Linda Howard's books lately, but I actually enjoyed this book....for the most part. The ending came rather quickly and was a total surprise....and it was disappointing that some characters didn't get what was coming to them....the story just ended abruptly.

Will Seth grow up and get his own novel with his own strong woman???

not one of my favorites.......2007-09-27

this was not one of my favorite Linda Howard books and I have read them all.
The Plot was unbelievable and the characters were weak...
Hoping for a better story next time around..

Survivor story in eastern WA.......2007-09-27

I liked this book. And as some others have said, it's also a course in survival. Who would think that pine needles in hot water tastes ok as a tea? Or perhaps being able to eat the pine nuts for protein? It was a great story, exciting, probably based on tried and true survival methods and a love story as well. It was entertaining, kept me reading and very interested in what would possibly happen next. And I was surprised by the ending. So to me, it's a good book. Not the best or greatest---but good. I'd suggest it to anyone needing a book to read at the beach or on a plane.

Surprisingly good book.......2007-09-25

I made a huge mistake before I read this book. I read the many reviews on it, and many of them panned Up Close and Dangerous. Pish tosh! The reviewers need to get a review clue. Howard gives her readers a tightly plotted book. She lays a trail of crumbs for readers so that they can understand both Cameron and Bailey. Howard's point is that we can't judge people without knowing them. So Cam and Bailey come to know each other under adversity caused by a plane crash. She is more than a rich man's darling. He is more than some macho jock who despises her. Being thrown together as a result of the crash helps Bailey and Cameron to build an enduring relationship in which each has a full gauge of what the other is capable of under pressure.

Another aspect of the novel is how Howard tosses dust in her reader's eyes but casting suspicion on and then clearing Bailey's stepchildren. Though they both hate her, her stepson, because of the accident, learns to channel his hate to achieve a positive objective. In this way, he realizes his father's ambition for him. Though he learns about Bailey and understands why she is his stepmother and is in control of things, he openly acknowledges that he prefers to have the status quo remain in place in order to continue his growth and development as a responsible human being.

Howard's novel even has a surprising twist at the end. Perhaps it's not so surprising. Anyway, the novel's plot is a good one, and it works.

The reader should not expect the usual heat that can burn up characters in a Howard novel. Instead, one sees an eventual growth in relationship that comes to be based on trust rather than sheer heat. Besides, it's somewhat difficult to flame out when a guy's injured for good part of things.

I liked this novel very much, and recommend it to other readers. I read it as a library borrow, and will purchase it when the paperback comes out. Good for you, Linda. Good read, worth the money.

Stock Howard.......2007-09-23

I've been a Linda Howard reader for some time but I've seen a steady decrease in quality with a corresponding increase in price. Howard seems to sleepwalk through the novel. Three fourths of it consisting of a survival guide on what to do if you're in a plane crash in the mountains. I'm sorry but this isn't what I'm looking for in romantic suspense, especially when it doesn't advance the plot (what little there is). The main characters are barely sketched in and the ending gotcha (in the last 3 pages no less) seem an afterthought. I really don't think any of her recent novels should be hardcover with the accompanying hardcover price tag. I don't begrudge Howard making a profit on her work but really, at least make the work worth it. If you want to read an author with real character development and great plots pick up the Dirk & Steele novels by Majorie M. Liu.

How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine (All models, 1961 and up)

Average customer rating:

VW review
How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine
Repair manual
Excellent Book
Muy buen libro, simple, bién explicado, con buenas fotografías

How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine (All models, 1961 and up)
Tom Wilson
Manufacturer: HP Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Trucks & Vans | Automotive | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0895862255

Customer Reviews:

VW review.......2007-06-27

This book is fantastic. Its very detailed and gives you the information you need to do this job proficiently.

How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine.......2007-05-23

The How to Rebuild Your Volkswagen air-Cooled Engine was over my head.

Repair manual.......2007-03-09

I have not used this manual yet, but it appears to have the information I need to maintain my 1971 VW Super beetle convertable show car.

Excellent Book.......2007-01-09

Truly an invaluable book. I am rebuilding my 1600cc dual port engine with this, and John Muir's "How to Keep You're Volkswagen Alive". This book's numerous pictures, advice, and technical information combined with Muir's common sense and experience is a great combo!

Muy buen libro, simple, bién explicado, con buenas fotografías.......2006-09-23

Muy buen libro, refleja claridad de ideas y sus recomendaciones son de gran utilidad. A pesar de estar en idioma inglès, se entiende perfectamente. Las fotografías son las adecuadas para este tipo de libro y ayudan mucho. El autor hace recomendaciones de productos y herramientas necesarias para llevar a cabo los procedimientos descriptos. Me parece de lo mejor para llegar a reconstruir el motor del escarabajo. Bien redactado, aborda el tema sin caer en detalles superfluos. Lo recomiendo.

Average customer rating:

Sequel Success
Not quite as strong as Howl's Moving Castle but a worthy sequel!
A perfectly delightful "sequel" to Howl's
Half sequel, half spin-off
Lovely book! Great fun!

Castle in the Air
Diana Wynne Jones
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Humorous | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Teens | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0064473457
Release Date: 2001-08-07

Book Description

Abdullah was a young and not very prosperous carpet dealer. His father, who had been disappointed in him, had left him only enough money to open a modest booth in the Bazaar. When he was not selling carpets, Abdullah spent his time daydreaming. In his dreams he was not the son of his father, but the long-lost son of a prince. There was also a princess who had been betrothed to him at birth. He was content with his life and his daydreams until, one day, a stranger sold him a magic carpet.

In this stunning sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones has again created a large-scale, fast-paced fantasy in which people and things are never quite what they seem. There are good and bad djinns, a genie in a bottle, wizards, witches, cats and dogs (but are they cats and dogs?), and a mysterious floating castle filled with kidnapped princesses, as well as two puzzling prophecies. The story speeds along with tantalizing twists and turns until the prophecies are fulfilled, true identities are revealed, and all is resolved in a totally satisfying, breathtaking, surprise-filled ending.

Customer Reviews:

Sequel Success.......2007-09-29

The sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, takes you to another part of the world. South of Ingary is the country known as Zanzib where a humble carpet merchant name Abdullah daydreams of amazing gardens and a beautiful princess. When the purchase of a flying carpet makes his dreams come true, Abdullah finds himself far above the safety of Earth in a castle in the sky, to steal back his beloved from a frightening djinn!
Miss Jones also brings back a few characters from her previous story to help the new characters in their journey. Highly recommended!

Not quite as strong as Howl's Moving Castle but a worthy sequel!.......2007-08-07

Shortly in to reading The Castle in the Air you will see that it has taken a few pages from One Thousand and One Nights, also know as One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Who is this guy? Aladdin? No, but interestingly similar!

We are introduced to a cast of new characters in a country quite distant from the home of Howl and Sophie. However, the new cast is charming and easy to like and the familiarity of the story is quite enjoyable, especially when Jones throws in a few twists and the tale we thought we could predict spins out of control.

And what of Howl and Sophie? I'm sure potential readers are dieing to know. Yes, they're still here and show up in some unexpected places. Wizard Suliman and Lette show up and work some interesting magic as well!

The ending feels a little rushed, not unlike Howl's Moving Castle. The details are also more loose in this book and it lacks some of the complicated pieces that made Howl's Moving Castle so wonderful. But the story was wonderful and whimsical and a very enjoyable read. If you enjoyed the first book you will also fall for the sequel.

A perfectly delightful "sequel" to Howl's.......2007-03-21

Don't you just love it when you start reading a book and can't put it down? The pages fly by as you get sucked into it. Happens to me whenever I pick up one of Jones' books. I've never read any fantasy that is so deliciously clever and truly imaginative, really full of surprises and twists and turns in every chapter. This book is the "sequel" to the beloved Howl's Moving Castle, but with all the characters' identities hidden. More than that, it plays as a nice opposite to the themes of the first. While HMC dealt with Sophie gaining an attitude and strength of will, the male hero here (Abdullah) is mostly successful because he doesn't have an attitude; instead he is overly polite and complimentary. Abdullah is a carpet salesman who spends his days imagining a more exciting life of riches and a beautiful princess (get the title?). One day, his dreams start to become true with the purchase of a magic flying carpet and meeting the princess of his dreams, who is then stolen from him. Abdullah has to chase down the djinn who--by order of his evil, but not very smart brother--has stolen her and all the princesses of the world. Abdullah is "joined" by an irritable genie who curses all his wishes, a cat-obsessed wily old soldier, and a magical black cat and her kitten. Just a great, wonderfully told, absolutely clever and unpredictable fairy tale. Grade: A+

Half sequel, half spin-off.......2007-02-09

Castle in the Air is the story of Abdullah, a well off carpet dealer who loves to dream about better times, who ends up getting a flying carpet. The flying carpet gives him the girl of his dreams, which gets him into trouble, which he escapes from. But by escaping one danger he jumps into another greater one. And so on.
The book is a sequel in that Howl and the rest of the characters from Howl's Moving Castle do show up. In fact they are in the background, sometimes right in front of us, part of the cause and effect of much of the story. But the focus is kept on Abdullah, Flower-in-the-Night and main characters of this story.
One of the major points of Howl's Moving Castle was the great interaction between the characters which seemed to me to be missing in this book. Maybe because everybody is always on the move or what little interaction there was seemed weak.

Lovely book! Great fun!.......2007-01-06

This book is the sequal to "Howl's Moving Castle," which has fast become one of my favorite books. "Castle in the Air" is different from the original book in several ways, but it is every bit as good. The main character and the setting are completely different: rather than the European-like Ingary you find yourself in a land that resembles old Arabia. Be assured that you will meet Howl and Sophie again, but much later in the book. It is filled with little phrase-gems (my term for singular and whimsical ways of expressing ideas) such as Lettie's "interesting condition." All in all, it is like a combination of "Arabian Nights," "The Scarlet Pimpernel," (one of my favorite books ever) and "The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha" (another of my favorite books). Enjoy!

Here's What We'll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the U.S. Air Force Academy

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Fascinating and Inspiring Story
Great read and inspiring story. Go Reichen!
Entertaining... educational... insightful... and slightly graphic reading fun
Where is the Honor Code in all of this?
friends don't let friends read horrible memoirs

Here's What We'll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the U.S. Air Force Academy
Reichen Lehmkuhl
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0786717823

Book Description

Reichen Lehmkuhl was playing the role of his life while in the Air Force. Not wanting to face a court martial for being gay, he had to live in a world where he had to watch everything he did and said for fear of being outed; and in another world where he was free to be himself. “One of the hardest things for me to reconcile was the fact that I was completely open with my family and friends but faced the very real possibility of being court martialed and going to jail if I was open with my 'work' colleagues.” As Reichen explains, “The don’t ask don’t tell policy is so contradictory to what the Air Force and all the armed forces stand for ... but they force you to lie in order to serve your country.” It was the contradictions which led Reichen to leave the Air Force once he completed his commitment.

Happenstance brought Reichen to meet a friend at a Los Angeles restaurant where he was approached by the casting director for “The Amazing Race.” Reichen believes his military training was extremely helpful in his winning the show’s million dollar prize.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating and Inspiring Story.......2007-09-16

This story is very fascinating and inspiring story. I am sure I will read this book many more times.

Great read and inspiring story. Go Reichen!.......2007-09-03

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is coming out, who has a friend who is coming out, or thinks that Don't Ask, Don't Tell isn't hurting anyone. This is a very inspiring story about a guy who starts off like you and me and who ends up just trying to protect his friends. Read about the hypocrisy of the USAF and the military in general. I'm sure they won't admit it, but this is just one more story that confirms that Don't Ask Don't Tell is not a working program. I was impressed with the story and the quality of character described within.

Entertaining... educational... insightful... and slightly graphic reading fun.......2007-08-17

Oddly enough, before I read this book, I thought that Reichen Lehmkuhl was full of himself and drawing way to much attention away from the causes. But, as I read I discovered that he acts the way he does now because he ahs earned that right. He is outspoken, he is domineering... but most importantly, he is to some degree and to some people (like myself) heroic.
The book starts off with a childhood troubled by what other people think. He felt he was ugly and was made fun of for it. He lived in a trailer and was also teased about that. This is so relatable by pretty much anyone because who hasn't been teased or insulted?
Upon acceptance to the Air Force academy, things take on a darker turn as he battles trying to keep up with everyone else and sudden flourishes of same-sex attraction. The fact that he partook in and possibly founded the Underground gay group is a noble thing indeed... but sadly something that should not have existed at all. The story spans from childhood to his graduation from tha academy, and there are some devastating moments laced in between.
Yet, the moment that really got to me was the climax when things started to unravel and it got dangerous. I could feel the anxiety as I read about it... knowing all to well what that anxiety felt like.
This is not a great book by any stretch but it is a good one and it takes on homophobia in a homophobic military, exposing just how ugly this "religion" fueled hatred is. I found it personally refreshing that I share many of the views he does and am glad that I took the time to read this book.
It isn't for everyone though. Be advised that there is a sexual assault segment that is fairly graphic and some of the same sex scenario's are fleshed out to rather deep detail... not quite soft core porn but just a tad bit dirty. I wasn't uncomfortable with any of the book, but I'm pretty sure that there amy be some readers who will be.
So, all in all... a good book. It was entertaining and educational... and offered insight into a man that I am happy is so vocal about fighting for our rights.

Where is the Honor Code in all of this?.......2007-08-05

Being a gay man, I enjoyed reading this book, about the struggles of gay students in the Air Force Academy. Also, I come from the same geographical area of MA where Mr. Lehmkuhl grew up, and I am familar with some of the communities he refers to. However - I had problems with the book as it went along - if a cadet does not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate others who do so, how did the author justify some of the stands he and his friends were prepared to take to explain their behavior to school authorities? Isn't lying by any other name still lying?

friends don't let friends read horrible memoirs.......2007-08-03

This book was atrocious. Whoever edited it should be fired. I keep seeing positive reviews for it, and I can only assume that the majority of people who choose to read this book have never been fortunate enough to read actual good memoirs and novels. Reichen is full of himself to an inexcusable degree. He goes out of his way to tell anecdotes that make him seem awesome and cool and popular, rather than focusing on anything that might actually be interesting to a person who isn't president of his fan club. This book should have been called "Growing Up, Growing Up, Being Completely Awesome, Enjoy This Repulsive Gratuitous Sex Scene...oh yeah, I came out eventually, too." There were many problems with the content, such as the way he would discuss events in non-chronological order, seemingly in the order that they occurred to him. The main problem with this book, however, is that Reichen is a terrible, terrible writer. This book should have been interesting! A really thoughtful and intelligent book about being gay in the Air Force would have been such a treat to read. Instead, we get a boring, tedious pile of pages that have moments of groan-inducing softcore porn and, more worrisome, touches of homophobic derision for gay men who don't meet Reichen's arbitrary standards for manliness.

When I say this book is awful, I mean it. Do not buy it. If you absolutely need to know what happens, get it from the library, but this man does not deserve any money from you after sleeping his way through this sorry excuse for a book. The only good thing I can say about it is that it has moments of unintentional hilarity, for whatever that's worth.

Average customer rating:

the bad times are coming, and the stream-lined men are coming too.
Well Worth Reading, With Reservations
In Search of Lost Time
Prescient musings as the world comes apart
Orwell's ordinary man

Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book)
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0156196255

Amazon.com

Insurance salesman George "Fatty" Bowling lives with his humorless wife and their two irritating children in a dull house in a tract development in the historyless London suburb of West Bletchley. The year is 1938; doomsayers are declaring that England will be at war again by 1941.

When George bets on an unlikely horse and wins, he finds himself with a little extra cash on his hands. What should he spend it on? "The alternatives, it seemed to me, were either a week-end with a woman or dribbling it quietly away on odds and ends such as cigars and double whiskeys." But a chance encounter with a poster in Charing Cross sets him off on a tremendous journey into his own memories--memories, especially, of a boyhood spent in Lower Binfield, the country village where he grew up. His recollections are pungent and detailed. Touch by touch, he paints for us a whole world that is already nearly lost: a world not yet ruled by the fear of war and not yet blighted by war's aftermath:

1913! My God! 1913! The stillness, the green water, the rushing of the weir! It'll never come again. I don't mean that 1913 will never come again. I mean the feeling inside you, the feeling of not being in a hurry and not being frightened, the feeling you've either had and don't need to be told about, or haven't had and won't ever have the chance to learn.

Alas, George finds that even Lower Binfield has been darkened by the bomber's shadow.

Readers of 1984 will recognize Orwell's desperate insistence on the importance of the individual, of memory, of history, and of language; and they will find in Fatty Bowling one of Orwell's most engaging creations--a warm, witty, thinking, remembering Everyman in a world that is fast learning not to think and not to remember, and thus swiftly losing its mind. --Daniel Hintzsche

Book Description

George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. The pool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF.

Download Description

The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth. I remember the morning well. At about a quarter to eight I'd nipped out of bed and got into the bathroom just in time to shut the kids out. It was a beastly January morning, with a dirty yellowish-grey sky. Down below, out of the little square of bathroom window, I could see the ten yards by five of grass, with a privet hedge round it and a bare patch in the middle, that we call the back garden. There's the same back garden, some privets, and same grass, behind every house in Ellesmere Road. Only difference- where there are no kids there's no bare patch in the middle. I was trying to shave with a bluntish razor-blade while the water ran into the bath. My face looked back at me out of the mirror, and underneath, in a tumbler of water on the little shelf over the washbasin, the teeth that belonged in the face. It was the temporary set that Warner, my dentist, had given me to wear while the new ones were being made. I haven't such a bad face, really. It's one of those bricky-red faces that go with butter-coloured hair and pale-blue eyes. I've never gone grey or bald, thank God, and when I've got my teeth in I probably don't look my age, which is forty-five.

Customer Reviews:

the bad times are coming, and the stream-lined men are coming too........2005-12-29

perfection is this: thinking about writing an amazon book review and simultaneously coming across a line that sums up a book nearly perfectly (see title).

orwell is magical when it comes to sliding down the slippery slope with passion, terror and vigor. this book is quite different. it is slow and melodic...the tone is cozy and nostalgic with random bits of sardonic bitterness...and hardly is there a theme, but perhaps this: "everything will always be the same and everything is constantly changing."

george bowling is a middle-aged suburban wash up who hates life, lightly reminisces about his time during world war i and the beauty and purity of his long forgotten childhood. the story takes place at the onset of wwii and george decides to revisit the place where he grew up in order to "come up for air" and remember what the good life used to be.

throughout the book, he teeters between optimism and dark despair...hatred and whimsical glory...esteem and self loathing...etc. the book is entertaining with fantastic imagery and offers a single harrowing scene which might bring anyone who has not experienced the terror of war to tears. read this and you are guaranteed to laugh, smile, and get bored...but all worth it.

bravo, orwell. yet again.

Well Worth Reading, With Reservations.......2005-10-31

As seasoned readers know, your response to any work is a combination of its intrinsic merit and timing. Maybe this just wasn't the right time to read this novel. Maybe I'll come back at some future time to revisit this assessment.

It simply did not register with me as did Orwell's other, non-political fiction, including the charming Keep The Aspidistra Flying. Part of it, I believe, arises from the fact that the novel is written in the first-person, which can be limiting in that it restricts us to the narrator's vocabulary and deprives us of Orwell's magnificent facility with langauge.

Now, as to the novel's merits. George "Fatty" Bowles, who, having won 17 pounds on a horse race, decides to use his winnings to escape and reflect upon his life for a week -- or, as he puts it, "to come up for air" -- is an engaging everyman, a person in whom all we old, ossified married types see ourself, and he captures perfectly the horrible nexus between memory and desire that a man's fifth decade often is. As he visits the town of his birth to witness how time has effaced its charm, we are with him all the way. His reflection on the approaching war is both moving and memorable. Because the first world war did not happen on our shores, it's hard for us to imagine its impact on the English imagination as that nation anticipated a reprise of that horrific, generation-destroying event. Orwell captures this dreadful anticipation very convincingly.

Finally, there's this: among all the people who have ever struggled for the poor and the middle-class, Orwell seems to have struggled more earnestly, yet to have been exempt from the tendency to idealize the people he was trying to help. Bowles is no one's ideal; he's just pretty much everyone's reality. He is convincingly middle-classed.

It is, as all this indicates, a fine novel. It simply doesn't represent the author at the height of his ability.

In Search of Lost Time.......2005-10-16

George Bowling's life is pretty mundane even by his own admission: he has "settled down" into his middle age with his wife and two children, his mortgage and his steady yet uninteresting job. Frustrated, George looks back to the days of his childhood in a small town in rural England and asks where did it all go wrong? He tries to recapture those times, but can anyone really go home again?

This is a beautifully written, funny and at times poignant story. Orwell depicts (with great skill) the dangers of middle-age drift, and of trying to escape from it by revisiting a past which only exists inside your head. He takes a swipe at various irritating types (many of them still around) such as the "respectable" middle classes who believe they are living in the countryside and are protecting it when they are in fact doing neither.

It is interesting in that the feeling of decay, of falling standards seems to afflict each generation in turn. Although Bowling is careful not to idolise his past, pointing to the many faults of the society he grew up in, the novel does reveal that there is nothing new in nostalgia.

G Rodgers

Prescient musings as the world comes apart.......2004-10-22

It's a mark of great skill when an author - like George Orwell, as you may have guessed - can fit so much meaning into a story about so very little. Such is the case with Coming Up For Air. On the surface, there's not much here. In fact more than half of the book is taken up by a portly middle-aged insurance worker's reminiscences about his childhood. And it wasn't any sort of exciting childhood either, full of glory or high hopes or wretched poverty or any of the things that make life colorful for better or worse. It was a British, turn of the Century, solid lower middle class provincial childhood in a town somewhere. The narrator does this essentially on the eve of the Second World War as he goes through perhaps some sort of mid-life crisis, though that term is never used. Basically, the story can be summed up as a man trying to figure out what his life means and where it's going.

In that sense, Coming Up For Air probably has the least actual plot of any Orwell novel. But in his endless musings the reader becomes this man (George Bowling is his name, but since it's a first person narrative, it's hard to attach a name tag to the man even as we experience the world through his eyes). Orwell is, as far as the mechanics of writing goes, well into maturity here.

But beyond this sense of realism in musings and reminiscences, Orwell hits on a few themes. The more dominant one is, I suppose, the idea that you can never go home again. After extensively guiding us through his childhood, our hero decides the thing for him to do is to visit his childhood hometown, the place he hasn't been in twenty-five or so years. Naturally, everything has changed. Absolutely everything. Not for the better, or necessarily for the worse, but changed nonetheless. There is, written on top of this, a vague plot about how he's trying to keep the trip from his shrewish wife, lest she think he's cheating on her, but that is strictly secondary. Since so much of the tale is bound up in our narrator's emotional state and thoughts, there's little point in relating them here. Suffice it to say that he goes home with a clearer idea of who he is.

The other point, dwelt upon at some length, is his (and really Orwell's) thoughts on the coming war. The book was written and published just before World War Two, in 1938. If an author had written something like this in 1948, I would be tempted to knock off points for suggesting that someone could have correctly judged the scale of the coming conflict in such a way. But perhaps I would be wrong, because here is evidence that people really were expecting something big to come. This is not to say that Orwell correctly foresaw particular chronologies. He did, in fact, seem to think that Britain and the western world would have to become barbaric to defeat barbarism (hints of 1984). In this he turned out to be wrong. But as a reader born long after the conflict ended, I was amazed that something written beforehand could capture what I think of as the mood of hindsight, but in foresight. I suppose this is why Orwell is so respected as a writer and thinker.

Orwell's ordinary man.......2003-07-12

Coming up for Air is a refreshing look at life through the eyes of an ordinary, overweight middle-aged man. I wanted to comment on how the book made me think about how we should cherish those little things in life that we take for granted, it is an old message but this book made me realize it again. The plot is plain, no suspense or excitement whatsover, what the book does however is take you back to your own childhood and helps you think about those things that were important to you then.

There are many other issues that the book touches on, the escapism of some, the inevitability of change, the prison that is marriage etc...

Customer Reviews:

Woman with Wings.......2000-06-12

As a female-student pilot myself, at 43 and a University student, I have been researching women from across the globe who were yearning to be pilots in the 1930s to the 1950s. I found this book to be informative and inspiring. With so many obstacles against her one of which would never be considered these days, nationality, Bessie only tried harder and determination won through! Reminds me of two Australian books I have recently read namely, 'Pioneer Aviator The Remarkable life of Lores Bonney' by Terry Gwynn-Jones and My God! It's A Woman autobiography by Nancy Bird.

Coming Up for Air: How to Build A Balanced Life in A Workaholic World

Average customer rating:

Pretty good but a little out of touch
Enormously practical and helpful
Coming Up for Air
Enormously practical and helpful
Disappointing. Platitudes.

Coming Up for Air: How to Build A Balanced Life in A Workaholic World
Beth Sawi
Manufacturer: Hyperion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business Life | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Stress Management | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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Accessories:

ASIN: 0786865490

Book Description

Leave work at five and don't feel guilty! Beth Sawi, tells you how to make more time for your personal life while still enhancing the quality of your work life.The balance issue can affect anyone. Despite the hard work and dedication her job demands, Sawi has found ways to get out of the home/office time bind and be an active parent to her two children and shares them in this book.

Customer Reviews:

Pretty good but a little out of touch.......2006-02-19

Beth Sawi is an investment company executive who rose the corporate ladder while trying to raise a family. The book chronicles her efforts to balance work and family. It has plenty of good ideas and suggestions pulled in from others.

My main beef is that it's mainly about affluent people so it's a bit out of touch

Enormously practical and helpful.......2002-04-17

This book succinctly and gracefully guides the reader toward real-world solutions to very difficult real world problems. It's unusual to find a book which is both a pleasure to read and is very grounded in practical solutions for finding a way to increased contentment.

I think the book succeeds so well because it focuses on core challenges in attaining happiness and balance (i.e. given that one can't do everything, what are your real priorities?) and that it provides guidance for attaining realistic, small-step changes that can have an enormous impact on quality of life.

It's wonderful to find such graceful writing, not from a professional "self help book writer", but from a woman who has walked the walk...a person who has succeeded in corporate America while raising children and pursuing other interests. There's nothing theoretical here...it's all grounded in the reality of what's possible in our frenzied lives.

Coming Up for Air.......2002-04-17

Beth Sawi's book was an exceptionally useful tool as my husband and I evaluated our all-too-busy lives as we were flying back from a vacation. The book helped us set priorities, and talk together about what each of us needs to create a more balanced life. The book is readable and the case studies were particularly helpful. My highest praises for this book!

Enormously practical and helpful.......2002-04-16

This wonderful book succinctly and gracefully guides the reader toward real-world solutions to very difficult real world problems. It's unusual to find a book which is both a pleasure to read and is very grounded in practical solutions for finding a way to increased contentment.

Disappointing. Platitudes........2001-12-17

In her first chapter, which is really an introduction, Sawi explains that her "book is divided into four parts, each designed to show you how to change your work patterns and find more balance in your life." Part One, she explains, helps you understand yourself better. Part 2 tells how to make changes to create a balanced life. Part Three "describes particular situations that are common but may not apply to everyone." The fourth part "talks about activities that will help you increase the balance in your life this year and in the years to come."

That's what this book does. It talks. At a very basic level. Opening a book written by a woman who is executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Charles Schwab, I expected more. What I found was a combination of low-level training material that would come from a beginning seminar leader and group therapy.

Each chapter starts with a parable. Anyone with a couple of years of experience as a trainer or speaker-or active participant in seminars or conventions-would have heard them several times. Nothing new, unless you just haven't had the exposure to this sort of presentation. The book is filled with quotes-I counted over 100-that appear on page after page. It seemed like the author's research consisted of heavy use of "Bartlett's Quotations." For people who like quotes to stick on the refrigerator door or on a bulletin board next to their desk, this book is a treasure.

To present the various issues she deals with, the author uses unattributed quotes from people who suffer from imbalance in their lives. Each is printed in italics to differentiate their contributions from the author's writing. Sometimes that's very helpful, or else it would be difficult to tell the difference. Reading through these pages, with all these "people" sharing their tales, I felt like I was in a group therapy session.

If you'd like to experience a therapeutic sort of conversation that explores a lot of the issues around achieving life balance, and you like quotes and fables, read this book. If you're looking for a more concrete treatment of this topic with clear steps to take, keep looking. (...)

Average customer rating:

Good book, but NOT every word Orwell wrote

George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four: Complete & Unabridged
George Orwell
Manufacturer: Octopus/Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
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ASIN: 0905712048

Book Description

Animal Farm; Burmese Days; A Clergyman's Daughter; Coming up for Air; Keep the Aspidistra Flying; Nineteen Eighty-Four

Customer Reviews:

Good book, but NOT every word Orwell wrote.......2004-07-07

It only contains what the description says it contains: "Animal Farm", "Burmese Days", "A Clergyman's Daughter", "Coming up for Air", "Keep the Aspidistra Flying", and "1984". These particular writings are complete and unabridged, but these are not the complete writings of Orwell.

Of course they're good, but the title is very misleading. Don't be fooled into thinking it's everything he wrote.

Average customer rating:

Don't Judge Kirn by this book

Should the author read these things...

wonderful satire

Ok Book, But Would Have Liked More Airline Jargon

Down the well-worn path once more...

Up in the Air
Walter Kirn
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0385722370
Release Date: 2002-09-24

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

The hero of Walter Kirn's novel Up in the Air inhabits an entirely new state: Airworld, where the hometown paper is USA Today, the indigenous cuisine wilts under heat lamps, and the citizenry speaks a Byzantine dialect of upgrades, expense accounts, and market share. Airworld even has its own nontaxable, inflation-free currency in the shape of bonus miles, which Ryan Bingham calls "private property in its purest form." Officially, Bingham is a management consultant, specializing in the lugubrious field of career transition counseling (i.e., he fires people for a living). But what Kirn's airborne protagonist is really doing is pursuing his own private passion, his great white whale: accumulating one million miles in his frequent-flyer account. As Up in the Air opens, Bingham has set out on a final, epic traveling jag. He intends to visit eight cities in six days, thereby achieving his own vision of Nirvana somewhere over Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Mocking the euphemisms of business speak is as easy as shooting fish in a designer barrel. But Kirn also takes on the corporate world's weirdly mystical and paranoid side, its rhetoric of personal empowerment and its messianic devotion to gurus. "Business is folk wisdom, cave-born, dark, Masonic, and the best consultants are outright shamans who sprinkle on the science like so much fairy dust," declares Bingham. (This doesn't stop him from working on his own book about "the transformational journey of one mind wholly at peace with its core competencies.") Meanwhile, his junket becomes progressively more surreal, complete with an evil nemesis as well as a mysteriously powerful firm called MythTech that's working behind the scenes. And what's worse, someone seems to have stolen his identity, assuming control of his credit cards and his all-important miles.

Is this model consumer being tracked as he makes his purchasing decisions, like an elk tagged by wildlife biologists? Or is he merely losing his mind? The ending answers these questions perhaps a little too neatly, but Kirn's disturbing satire packs a mighty wallop nonetheless. The writing is as sharp as a tack, punctuated by character sketches as brilliant as they are quick. Bingham and his ilk are modern nomads, dispossessed of physicality but not quite of their bodies. His simulated environment is not mimicking an actual place but replacing it--and that, to the author, is the scariest part of Airworld: "This is the place to see America, not down there, where the show is almost over." --Mary Park

Book Description

Ryan Bingham’s job as a Career Transition Counselor–he fires people–has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls “Airworld,” finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss’s desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate.

With perception, wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the psychic costs of our rootless existence, and confirms Walter Kirn as one of the most savvy chroniclers of American life.

Download Description

Ryan Bingham has a simple goal: to accumulate one million miles in his frequent flyer account. This story follows his life in the transient realm he calls "Airworld" as he wings his way to his goal.

Customer Reviews:

Don't Judge Kirn by this book.......2006-04-27

Critically acclaimed Up in the Air made me happy to read, not because it is Kirn's best work but because it is his worst. It gave me hope for myself by proving that even the best writers sometimes don't quite make it work, and each of us needs practice to get to what does.
Highly stylized and certainly with it's merits of humor and pastiche, Up in the Air is a tale of losing your soul, or maybe your mind, in the jet-setting world of business travel. As always, the ideas, the plot, the Kirn-esque twists and turns are all there, but what's missing is a character you can love. Ryan Bingham never convinces me he's a loveable, or completely real person. Part of Kirn's challenge, to be sure, lies in Bingham's addled brain, but another challenge is his own choice to lead the reader into a state of confusion, probably in the hopes that we'll feel as lost as Bingham and thus sympathize with him. Instead of sympathy, though, I was left feeling only lost and frustrated, accompanied only by a strange and thoughtless businessman who I never liked enough to feel empathy for.
I say all this as a dedicated fan of the author - I've read all his books and encourage everyone else to do the same. Thumbsucker, She Needed Me, and all the rest - they rock. This one, well, maybe it'll grow on me. I'm not throwing it out just yet.

Should the author read these things..........2006-03-16

Please know that Up in the Air is my favorite book of all time.

wonderful satire.......2005-12-10

The neutral and even negative reviews on Amazon of this masterly novel are beyond comprehension. As someone who dwelt in cubicle Hades for a quarter of a century, and who now, at retirement, am still assessing the mental damage done to me, it is a pleasure to read the mother of all satires concerning team building, goals and objectives, win-win situations, addressing the problem and not the person, core competencies, consumer satisfaction and all the rest of the mind-rotting bilge that one had to pretend to take seriously in order to pick up one's pay. Kirn is laugh aloud funny on these travesties and more, including air travel, hotels, restaurants, Vegas, and even family values. The protagonist, Ryan, buys into huge amounts of new age business drivel, but a woman he once fired helps him ascend into the light. He is redeemed, in the end, only because his heart was never in the nonsense he does for a living, and because he is truly a nice guy, as the woman recognizes. He's also a gentleman, as is Kirn, who paints only men negatively in his book. Women, when they act out, are only trying to keep up or get even. Highly recommended.

Ok Book, But Would Have Liked More Airline Jargon.......2004-06-03

Being a frequent flyer, and one who really gets in to the miles and points game, I eagerly bought this book and read it.

I liked it overall, and appreciated the insights in to the travel lifestyle. However, some parts would go on too long that were not interesting.

Also I would have hoped that the character would have given out more airline jargon, and educated the general public on the special favors that a million mile flyer might get from ticket agents, etc. The book should have examined both the printed frequent flyer rules, and compared that to what actually happens at airports as agent and passenger have one on one interactions.

However, I still would recommend the book, and cannot think of anything better that is written in a book. For travel advice and for information about the frequent travel lifestyle, would also suggest you see the web site:
http://www.flyertalk.com

Down the well-worn path once more..........2003-11-14

This book, its humor & insights, such as they are, is very old-hat, to borrow a term Kirn is himself fond of using when skewering better writers than he in his frequent barbed reviews. In particular, the opening scene of Up In The Air in the plane suffers hugely when compared to the similar (far more expertly done) scene in Fight Club yet both carry nearly identical messages.

I guess when you're an established "scathing review" writer, it's pretty well guaranteed that your work will see print & get complimentary write-ups from the rest of the establishment.

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