The Magic of AMAZON BOOKS
(When in Amazon, remember to use your back-button - at the far left of the tool bar above - to return to this page for others of the following: -)
ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN EXCELLENCE. THESE BOOKS IN THEIR VARIOUS WAYS ALL REPRESENT EXCELLENCE
SCANDALOUS REVELATIONS! A.N.Author
Though this book is unavailable on Amazon at present, we commence with its mention, because this one little book alone will take your English from absolute basic level to high-intermediate, with your ability to recognise immediately virtually all the massive Latin component which forms seventy percent of the English vocabulary, plus the little domestic Saxon component, plus the simplicity of the few verb forms, plus much of the grammar. - In just one little book? - That is correct. This is why this book is indispensable. (Remember you have links to it in the Perfect English page - but, just in case: http://www.amazin-books.net). Without the necessity of a dictionary you simply enjoy and absorb its interesting information about agriculture, cosmology, pre-history and the real world, the bicycle, the tortilla, the colour of a polar bear's skin etc. - no, it is not white - all in perfect English, and recognise the language automatically to be your own - Easy, and fun! - This is real education - You will then be able to read and enjoy virtually any publication of normal English, such as the rest of these - from AmazOn! -
Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
This is the book to whet your appetite for English.
Take Jerome's Three Men in a Boat now!
I would recommend all who are interested in the English language to rejoice in this happy and irreverent little book to give you the flavour of the English mentality, and show you what it can do with the language. It is a tonic, a breath of fresh air. You can pick it up and read a paragraph and put it down again as you wish, without worrying about losing the thread of the story. See an adolescent laughing over a book, it will probably be this. I hope this author is in Heaven. He deserves to be, having inspired a world of innocent happiness and, in many, a love of English literature.
England, Their England A.G.McDonnell
This is a lovely book, all-too-rarely available. Secure Mr McDonnell's England, Their England now, while you can!
This is in the same category, written by a Scot, from the point of view of a foreigner still marvelling over the magical eccentricity of those peculiar English. I am delighted to see it again, as it had disappeared for a few decades. It was written - beautifully - in ´33, and retains the happy innocence of those times when England was still England. The country has been changed somewhat since, and not for the better - Have you noticed?
Read anything by
Rudyard Kipling; for example -
Plain Tales from the Hills
Kipling wrote short stories - That is to say, he created brief episodes of apparent reality, in which you experience the sights, sounds and action which he communicates so vividly - and which you will never otherwise experience - both of England and many far-flung places around the globe where you will never go. You cannot have better or more responsible second-hand experience more clearly as vicarious first-hand experience than this. Magic? - Yes. This was a magician of a writer. Start with his 'Plain Tales from the Hills' - Incredibly, he created these marvellous stories in India when he was only twenty. Did you see the film, The Man Who Would Be King? Read the story - it is only thirty pages; it is much more real than the film. Plus: The Best Short Stories
Rudyard Kipling
See the excellence of the young Kipling's
Plain Tales from the Hills
Take Kipling's The Best Short Stories now! - They really are the best!
Collected Stories Rudyard Kipling
Read Kipling's Collected Stories The peripherals are unimportant.
Read anything by P.G.Wodehouse
Carry on, Jeeves P.G.Wodehouse
Appreciate the effortless elegance of genius: Carry on, Jeeves
There are serious scholars who esteem Wodehouse higher than Shakespeare, and while I would not necessarily agree, I can see what they mean. Wodehouse was an educated angel, writing of a felicitous world that is gone - of unworldly but decent aristocrats who could hardly breathe without the assistance of their more practical domestic staff - Jeeves, prince of butlers, was his most splendid and enduring creation.
Blandings Castle P.G.Wodehouse
See how we used to write, but few do now. Blandings Castle, and Elsewhere
The Loved One Evelyn Waugh
See the stuff of literary magic: Waugh's The Loved One is typical.
This author was a real eccentric - he was, in reality, one of the cricketers in McDonnell's cricket match in 'England, Their England' - I think he was the captain, but I am not quite sure. He also happened to be a great writer. Remember, 'Brideshead Revisited' was one of his, as was 'The Loved One' - both superb. The latter, set in America, is a book small in size, large in stature.
The Complete Stories Evelyn Waugh
Or at this price, why not take them all. The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh - What a bargain!
The Third Man Graham Greene
Always the quiet understatement of mastery: The Third Man, and The Fallen Idol
Did you see the superb film 'The Third Man'? That was one of Graham Greene's, and gives you an idea of the dimension of the man and his writing - These were adults, from adult days, before Bond and all that other pretentious superficial rubbish was commissioned to reduce all our mentalities. Here are 'The Third Man' and 'The Fallen Idol'.
The Man-eaters of Tsavo John Henry Patterson
See the stuff you, too, are made of: Collar Col.Patterson's The Man-Eaters of Tsavo now!
I know I had read this book as an infant, because I used to dream about it when I was four, and could not understand how I knew all the African animals and many of the tribes when I was five. So, surely you can read it now. It is a factual account of the author trying to supervise the construction of a railway in Kenya, with his operations and work-force in turn supervised by two extraordinarily astute lions with a cultivated taste for human meat. The recent 'film of the book' was gratuitously insulting and patronising trash in comparison with the reality. Nobody - nobody - 'teaches' the Masai or Nandi 'to be brave' - particularly any such inserted fictional nonentity-magazine-fodder as appeared in the film - What stupid effrontery! - Perhaps somebody should have informed them that cheek has limits, beyond which it becomes just plain ridiculous.
Flight to Arras Antoine St. Exupery
An Airman's Odyssey Antoine St. Exupery
Yes, you read 'The Little Prince'. Now read St. Ex's more adult works. - They, too, are superb and should be part of everyone's education. - You do not meet two St. Exuperys in any one lifetime, so just make sure you meet this one at least once in this. You will be a better person for the encounter -
On no account miss Flight to Arras
or Airman's Odyssey
West with the Night Beryl Markham
A superb book by a super woman West with the Night
One of the great books. - Really? - Yes, really. An inspiring once-in-a-lifetime fabulous fragment of real-life autobiography. Further recommendation is superfluous - Read it and see what you have been missing.
Our Place in the Universe Fred Hoyle
As much as we will ever know about everything - is here: Our Place in the Cosmos.
One of the great observers of our times, not one of your fancy shiny TV personalities: this is a real cosmologist, scientist and writer. A north-countryman with the typical level-headedness of the type - Both feet firmly on the ground, and his imagination out yonder, probing the realities of everything that is. You cannot do better than this if you want a plain understanding of what's what.
William Faulkner
One of the literary giants. Try Go down, Moses
But wait for the paperback version.The great American author. Admire and respect 'The Bear' in 'Go Down, Moses' - So he wrote in American, but in the American language rather than the jargon of sound which is being imposed on us via all the media and via our 'formal education', as the rest of our race is trained to more neanderthal ways on its route off the planet and - like the rest of the bears and all those other use- and valueless superseded - into extinction -
STRONG MEAT! Ephraim J. Leitner
Here is a curious example of what literature and
English can throw up, varying from downright brick-in-the-face rudeness to gilded elegance as the author makes his hilariously disrespectful points in exposing 'the secret mysteries' of world finance and its strategic use against the rest of us - as if he had it and its manipulators on a slide under a microscope. Read him if you want to put our modern world back into its true perspective or - better - back on its tracks. You will surely never see it revealed anywhere else more thoroughly and with the same clarity and abrasive contempt for those who visit this present-day malaise on the planet - In fact, you will probably never see it done elsewhere. - All in all, quite an eye-opener -
Take down this recipe for Utopia now, and - Devour STRONG MEAT! - It is
devastatingly revealing!
And now, for something completely different -
O CONTO do COELLO PEDRO or, for those who have forgotten their Gallego, The TALE of PETER RABBIT Beatrix Potter
This is education par excellence for little
children - No computer games showing how to kick people's heads off or
devastate planets - This is the world which has always been here, and
was considered real and normal until the 'international businessmen'
captured our world to give us and our children a foretaste of purgatory, and so many others a passport to hell. Here little children read or hear of everyday things of our natural world - in their own language: in this case, duly authorised and authenticated Gallego - and see them illustrated naturally by a superb artist with an eye for reality at its most real and enchanting rather than most perverted and cruel. The book is shown here because it belongs in such august company, being literature of superlative quality for infants, loved by them in all thirty two languages in which it is published worldwide. All children should have the benefit of this superior form of education via this literature. The books have been offered to the Xunta, without response of any kind, so we offer them here directly to such responsible school staff who might happen to care more for the welfare of the infant minds in their charge - Surely someone should, and no one else seems to - It is suggested that each school, kindergarten and Gallego society around the world has one or two of these elegant but robust copies. The cost to each school for such invaluable experience for all their pupils will be all of 3.50 Euros per copy, plus IVA and postage. The children will benefit, and surely - some people seem to have forgotten - isn't that still the purpose of education? - Or is that a little naïve?
You will find appropriate links in the Perfect English page, but, again
just in case:
www.amazin-books.net
The curious can discover more about the revered author Beatrix Potter
in the website devoted to her protagonist:
www.peterrabbit.com
VIDEOS - Good videos - Well-worth-seeing, really inexpensive videos Kind Hearts and Coronets - 1949
with Denis Price A lovely little classic of post-war English cinema before the 'kitchen sink' school took over - to be closely followed by the toilet period, the lavatory-mind era and 'the bog'-mentality. We spoke English in those days, and you could understand what actors said. This film is now revered as much for its quality as for the memory of a world we have lost - or rather have had surreptitiously wrested from us since then in the interest of commercial loot and supremacy. I am given to understand that if you study the film carefully you might catch a glimpse of Alec Guinness somewhere - Then again, you might not.
Passport to Pimlico - 1949 This film appeared in '48 or '9, before the war's bomb-damage had been cleared away - Which process, with rationing of almost everything, went on into the mid-fifties. The war and the subsequent exploitation of the event cost us everything, including England, but you can still hear and see traces of England in these films of those times. It is well worth a visit. The Third Man - 1949
with Joseph Cotton and Orson Wells This is one of the handful of very good films, made to a story by Graham Greene. The images are beautiful, the personalities - though the principal American character is as irresponsible at times as you might expect after a war - are adults, frank and direct as we all were then. The rather slick 'cuckoo clock' comment was inserted by Orson Wells, and it is a little too 'pat' - or neat - for the circumstances, but don't let it detract from an excellent piece of cinema.
The Lavender Hill Mob - 1951
Alec Guinness et al. The money-motive is here beginning to raise its ugly head in otherwise austere times, but a spot of fun. I remember the audience all cheered the villains' escape. Previously the contemporary code of ethics would have forbidden that, but we were a little anarchic and rebellious after so much privation, so even this 'scandal' was enjoyable. God, when you think what scandal is acceptable - even expected - as normal behaviour now - The 'permissive-era' subsequently imposed on us by the media moguls and their masters saw to that in a single decade. Now degrading filth and perverted violence are pre-requisites of almost all 'movies'. See these films from the days of innocence, and, whether you were alive then or not, you may sense a touch of nostalgia for those better times. The Titfield Thunderbolt - 1952 There's nothing in particular about this film, except that it was a happy image of a country recovering its spirits after a difficult time. This was before the film world became - with TV - tools of the social manipulators, with their 'messages' and subtle corruption.
The Lady Killers - 1955 Things were beginning to change, but cinema could still be fun. Sellars was one of the Goons - a half-insane comedy group busily breaking new ground - but here you could see that he could act, too. A nice film of run-down post-war city life, a little seedy for those from gentler days - as you will see. Doctor Zhivago - 1965 One of the great films. Take this for one of the cinematic experiences of your life. Lean was perhaps the Shakespeare of film, and combined with the music of Maurice Jarre he here produces a ravishing experience of love and humanity somehow nobly surviving the chaos of the Russian Revolution and - for want of a better term - the Stalinist Period. What has been visited on poor Russia more recently is perhaps even worse. At least then they knew they had food and medicine and education. Now, by design, they mostly have destitution, and this is privation in the Russian climate. When you watch this great film, you might reflect on that. So, thank you for your visit. You must come again some time. Come any time. You are always welcome - Remember that this page is especially - but not exclusively - for students of
English. Some of these and other books - for students of life - can
also be seen in the principal Amazon page back in Amazin-books.net
- But it is the same language.
And just wait and see what else we will have for
you, from down here in the tackle-room! nd Wodehouse there is super, they'll just love him - And even
- wow - hey, yeah! - Mind that - oops!
Take this modest English classic:
Kind Hearts and Coronets!
Take a Passport to Pimlico to hear how well-spoken London English WAS!
You can't miss one of the great films. Take
The Third Man now!
A decent film about how gentlemen can decently rob - The Lavender Hill Mob. Things are rather different now
A happy small-town film in beautiful England The Titfield Thunderbolt
See a different side of Guinness and Sellars in The Lady Killers
See David Lean's masterpiece Doctor Zhivago
And, of course, the original Albert Finney version of TOM JONES, if you can find it - circa 1960. It is a cinematic delight.
