This Ireland is a place where both society and solitude can be easily had, where the remains of the ancient past can be...
A good-natured, noodling walk down the length of Ireland, full of agreeable digressions and historical marginalia, from former Little, Brown editor-in-chief Ginna.
This is a satisfying Baedecker of a book, unhurried and curious, not preoccupied with politics in a land rife with them, though not averse to shoving its oar into the debates that brew in the pubs. Ginna would like to know if the recent technological investments, Euro infusions, and the go-go economy have changed this land he knows and loves so well: the green, bosomy hills; the thatched cottages, peat, and Travelers; the theater and universities; the rural and agricultural. So he takes a walk, from wild Donegal’s Malin Head to Cork. Ginna is good company, happy to stop at the pique of any fancy, with a ready humor (on a gout diagnosis: “I had been living like a mendicant friar. Could this be?”), and only the occasional affectation: “Mike Mullins, for so he was, ushered me in to a large room.” He is also a whiz at local history and will, it is guaranteed, make even those readers without a religious bone in their bodies fascinated by the crumbling monasteries, abbeys, and churches he visits. He is everywhere and all at once, describing ring forts, racehorses, Irish literature, Bronze Age tombs, casting a fly on the Blackwater, perusing the work of the ancient scholar-monks at Clonmacnoise (“neither prudish nor humorless. Thanks to them the lusty sagas of the pre-Christian Irish were preserved”). He does report on the economic development of the country, but he’s more at home in the pubs and ruins and at the Foyle Film Festival.
This Ireland is a place where both society and solitude can be easily had, where the remains of the ancient past can be communed with, and where the present—from the Troubles to the high-tech—is abating and abiding in proper order.Pub Date: July 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50430-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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