Cold Mountain
Charles Frazier (Phd, UNC)

352 pages £6.39 (20% savings)

An incredibly well researched but fictionally presented odyssey of a late civil war wounded confederate soldier leaving the hospital and the war behind and walking across the Appalachians to home in Cold Mountain at the far western tip of North Carolina. 

  The language and terminology immerse the reader as if doing time travel...  The descriptions of the world are beyond poetry even... The story is really about a young couple, the girl at home and her travails, and the ravaged veteran of too many bloodfights struggling to avoid capture and to survive in a collapsing Confederacy.  We learn a lot about what went into Ada the female protagonist and how she develops and about her nature-girl friend, Ruby, who teaches Ada how to cope in a primitive environment, but, the male protagonist, Inman, just is what he is without heroics nor pretention; but with gradually emerging depth of character as he encounters real characters more frightening than those with which Ulysses was faced.

  Inman, IMHO, is the ultimate Taoist... knowing much, saying little, doing what needs to be done and not apologising...  

This book won the National Book Award and was deservedly on the NY Times best seller list for 45 weeks running when it was first published.  

I personally rate it as the best book I have read in at last ten years and I read two or three books a week.

  billy

Bagdad Cafe
Starring: Marianne Sagebrecht,
 C.C.H. Pounder,
Jack Palance

Video £14.07 (12% savings)

Bagdad Cafe: a small cafe 'on the way from Vegas to nowhere' as the title song by Bob Tellford gives it, and 'a coffee machine that needs some fixin'... a haunting story of an aging black woman (with children) who owns and operates a small and failed cafe/gas station/motel.

A passing German tourist, a rather heavy but attractive woman, is dumped at the Motel by her 'boyfriend'; without money or hope. The cafe owner takes her in and she waits tables and helps with everything. She teaches herself magic from a putzy kit, waits table and does magic tricks for the customers, and, with her happy, accepting attitude and graciousness begins to draw an increasing crowd of locals and truckers on routine runs.... soon traffic builds and the place is mobbed.

Jack Palance, a failed painter who has taken up residence in a trailer out back falls for the German lady and begins to paint her in gradually increasing stages of undress (falling short of even an R rating).

The cafe owner's ne'erdowell husband who is angry because the cafe owner threw him out, turns the German lady in to Immigration officials and they come and take her away... despair reigns...

Then as hope dwindles at the Bagdad, somehow (off camera), the German lady manages to get papers and returns and all is more than well.

  Sounds maudlin, but it's not. And the music, the casting and photography are more than memorable!

Carmina Burana
Composer: Carl Orff

Conductor:André Previn
Performers:
Sheila Armstrong,
Gerald English,
Orchestra:
St Clement Danes
School Choir,
London Symphony Chorus
Audio CD £7.99

The Best Ever Recording of a curious work...
Reviewer: ophiicus
from Coventry, England, United Kingdom

Okay, first, for the uninitiated, what is Carmina Burana? It is that piece of music which they play if someone (prizefighters love it) needs a particualrly ostentatious entrance. Those in the UK who remember the Old Spice ads of the 70's and 80's featuring a surfer - that's Carmina Burana; specifically the first and last track "O Fortuna", "Fortune, you are like the moon; waxing and waning, bringing one man good forune and the next man ill luck" being an approximate translation. It is one of those pieces everybody has heard if they watch television or films at all (Oh yes, John Boorman's Excalibur uses a version). So, subtle it ain't? Wrong! - it has some of the most beaufiful, subtle, sophisticated, and charming pieces of music in it. Dulchissimo was never a more appropriately named piece of music (Italian lit. most beautiful) and the Soprano handles it well. Thomas Allen does an excellent job: this is one of the performances that gave him his present fame. Andrew Preview, sorry, André Previn (Morcambe and Wise have a lot to answer for) is superb in his musical direction. The Roasting Swan (for the initiated) is almost too well performed and is a touch over-melodic for my taste, but any tenor seems to think it is his job to sing the part well. They miss Orff's point - the swan is on an open fire and should sound as if being roasted. For those wishing to become initiates then this is the recording to get, providing the sleeve notes are as good as they were uopn its original release which I had stolen. They explain the reasons for why it is part German part French and part Latin and provide all the translations (except for the odd word like Afna, for example). There is mystery, intrigue, and the occult associated with this piece of music. Religious fundamentalists and those offended by paganism avoid this. The setting is in part a drunken pagan feast and orgy. Who said classical music was boring - "felix conjunctio" being a particualry amusing euphemism for sex, which the translation sanitises, sadly. This is a bizarre piece of music with roasting swans singing, Abbots warning ironically against drinking in the middle of a feast (sum abbas) followed in quick order by a drinking song (in taverna), then a romance. The overall theme is the Dharma Chakra, or wheel of life. How Orff has crow-barred this Eastern mysticism into a pseudo-Christian setting, is beyond me. It shouldn't work. It is the most ridiculous pompous idea, founded on a myseriously discovered religious manuscript, so the story goes. However, the joy, energy, and exuberance evident throughout the piece (and clearly enjoyed by every memebr of every chorus and the orchestra right down to the triangle player!) carry it off. I have heard versions of this piece played too fast, too slowly or without paying sufficient attention to the meaning of the lyric. This is the definative recording, just check out a few text books on the subject, and has been for something like twenty years. There is very little wrong with this recording and most of it scores 100% in my book. Buy this work if - a) you are looking for a route into classical music, b) have heard the piece, half enjoyed it, but have never heard this recording, c) because it is a piece of recording history; almost a legend or d) because it is very good indeed.

Shakespeare on CD-ROM:
A Midsummer Night's Dream

£17.99 (10% savings)

Amazon.co.uk Review
This CD-ROM is part of an award-winning series of Shakespearean plays; other successes include Romeo And Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet--which has been described by "CD-ROM Now" as "quite simply multimedia at its best". This is quite some praise, but it is deserved, since the series has everything that most top range CD-ROM packages offer in terms of graphics, video footage, sound quality and interactive elements--as well as possessing the most wide-ranging and erudite commentary that this reviewer have seen in the genre.

On top of containing a complete run-through of Shakespeare's classic comedy, there is such a broad range of issues that a review alone can do scant justice to its diversity. Here you can find out about the principal themes of the play--love and marriage, illusion and acting--and the way in which these themes interweave with the text and the events of the play. There is also an interesting section on the play's provenance, and, very usefully, a range of reviews, ranging from Hazlitt to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and including Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as more modern critics.

A carping critic would complain that the analysis of the characterisation is not as deep here as in some of the other packages (Romeo and Juliet in particular)--but this would not do justice to what is unquestionably a great package, one of enormous use and enjoyment to anyone who has an interest in A Midsummer Night's Dream. --Toby Green Manufacturer's Description Turn your computer into a theatre with this award-winning CD-ROM. It contains: A complete performance on audio of the whole play Full text of the respected Alexander edition Notes--extensive, interesting notes at a click of the mouse Video--clips from the classic BBC production Background information to bring the play to life Other titles in this series include Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.