The Book Blog – Page 8

Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator

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The High Window: A Philip Marlowe Mystery by Raymond Chandler

`A long-limbed languorous type of showgirl blonde lay at her ease in one of the chairs, with her feet raised on a padded rest and a tall misted glass at her elbow, near a silver ice bucket and a Scotch bottle. She looked at us lazily as we came over the grass. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away’..
The plot of ‘The High Window‘ maybe doesn’t matter. What matters is the writing and how good it is. Chandler’s characters are corrupt for more than one reason, and Marlowe finds out what some of those reasons are. Chandler provides a tense mystery with a strong element of menace and personal danger, all in the author’s trademark concise and witty style. The dialogue between Marlowe and the somewhat abrasive Mrs Murdock, in particular, makes the pages seem alive with bite and tension and it becomes clear she is the first in a line of characters trying to hide something from Marlowe, even while demanding his assistance. He’s less interested in finding out who stole the rare coin and who committed murder to cover it up, than why Mrs Murdock called him in the first place, and then why she is a widow. ‘The High Window‘ is written by Raymond Chandler, and he was one of the best writers ever to use modern American English. Few authors have written sentences as clear and descriptive as his. If ‘imitation is the best form of flattery’ he has been amply flattered..

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Millau Bridge, France

The Millau Bridge is in southern France and crosses the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains. It was designed by the British architect Norman Foster and French structural engineer Michel Virlogeux. At 300m (984 feet), it is the highest road bridge in the world, weighing 36,000 tonnes. The central pillar is higher than the famous French icon, the Eiffel Tower. The Bridge opened in December 2004 and is possibly one of the most breath-taking bridges ever built.

The bridge towers above the Tarn Valley and the aim of Lord Foster was to design a bridge with the ‘delicacy of a butterfly’. Lord Foster designed a bridge that enhances the natural beauty of the valley, with the environment dominating the scene rather than the bridge. The bridge appears to float on the clouds despite the fact that it has seven pillars and a roadway of 1½ miles in length. On first sight, the impression is of boats sailing on a sea of mist. The roadway threads through the seven pillars like thread through the eye of a needle..

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The Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple Treasure

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA – A stream of bare-chested religious devotees step gingerly through metal detectors at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in southern India as armed commandos with AK-47’s guard perhaps one of the world’s greatest treasures to surface in recent times. For months now, following a court order to pry open subterranean vaults sealed for centuries at the heart of sleepy Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of balmy Kerala state, shell-shocked experts have been coming to terms with the vast hidden hoard, estimated at one trillion Indian rupees, or $22 billion. In a nation where 500 million people live in poverty, the find has been a revelation, stoking debate over how to best safeguard and use this newly discovered wealth at a time of financial uncertainty and modernization across India.

Put in a broader context, the wealthy temple in the lush, spice-growing but relatively undeveloped Kerala, where infrastructure is patchy and per capita income lags behind the richer northern Indian states, could salvage the rickety finances of the country, lift millions out of poverty and even help wipe out a quarter of India’s overall fiscal deficit.

The treasure, a long accumulation of religious offerings to the Hindu deity Vishnu, includes a four-foot high gold idol studded with emeralds, gold and silver ornaments and sacks of diamonds.

Local legend has held that vast riches had been interred in the walls and vaults of the temple by the Maharajahs of Travancore and their subjects over many years.

70 year old retired police officer TP Sundara Rajan went to the Supreme Court asking that the state take over control of the temple, saying the current temple trust were incapable of protecting the wealth inside. The court ordered an inspection of the temple vaults..

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India- A Portrait

India: A Portrait (2011) by Patrick French

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India: A Portrait gives a voice to a cross-section of India’s millions, and endeavours to understand the strands of the past through their story. It is a truism that even today, with the many opportunities available, that talented individuals can fail to achieve their potential. This may not be a unique problem for mankind, but for India, somehow what has been achieved, especially since Independence, gives a taste of possibilities yet uncovered.

With the proximity of Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, underlines India’s situation as critical to the tensions and interactions of current global politics. From this perspective alone, apart from the many human, cultural and other reasons, it behoves thoughtful people around the world to make efforts to understand this vast and vital nation.

India possesses a number of physiographic divisions. The northern mountains include the world-famous Himalayas with their snow-capped peaks of towering majesty. Here are found the sources of river systems such as the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. The Great Plains lie south of the Himalayas, fanning out at both ends to include the fertile Ganges delta on the east and the semiarid desert of Rajasthan on the west. The course of the Ganges is one of the earth’s most fertile areas, but it is also the world’s second most densely populated river valley.

Stretching from the Arabian Sea on the west to the Bay of Bengal on the east is the peninsular plateau, known as the Deccan. The western edge is noted for its breath-taking grandeur, awe-inspiring peaks with cascading waterfalls streaming down timeworn channels. A panorama of precipitous valleys filled with a kaleidoscope of colour extends far into the distance. This western ridge feeds three important rivers, the Godavari, the Krishna and the Cauvery..

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Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Dr. Mercola is the founder of the world’s most visited natural health web site,www.Mercola.com. You can learn the hazardous side effects of ‘over the counter’ remedies by getting a FREE copy of his latest special report The Dangers of Over the Counter Remedies by going to his Report Page

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects (1939)by Dr Weston Price

Review by Dr. Stephen Byrnes

In the 1900s, Dr Weston A. Price, a dentist, did extensive research on the link between oral health and physical diseases. He was one of the major nutritional pioneers of all time, and his classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is full of wonderful pictures documenting the perfect teeth of the native tribes he visited who were still eating their traditional diets.

Your Diet May be Even More Important Than Your Toothbrush

In the quest for healthy teeth and gums, nothing may be more important than your diet. Dr Price found that the native people’s teeth were perfectly straight and white, with high dental arches and well-formed facial features. And there was something more astonishing: none of the people Price examined practiced any sort of dental hygiene — not one of his subjects had ever used a toothbrush!

Dr Price noticed some similarities between the native diets that allowed the people to thrive and maintain such healthy smiles. Among them:

The foods were natural, unprocessed, and organic (and contained no sugar except for the occasional bit of honey or maple syrup).
The people ate foods that grew in their native environment. In other words, they ate locally grown, seasonal foods.
Many of the cultures ate unpasteurized dairy products, and all of them ate fermented foods.
The people ate a significant portion of their food raw.
All of the cultures ate animal products, including animal fat and, often, full-fat butter and fatty meats.

If you, too, eat properly and maintain optimal health, you’re highly unlikely to develop cavities or other dental problems. They really only occur when you’re eating the wrong foods. So pay attention to your diet, as this is a key to keeping you safely out of the dentist’s chair — at least for visits that involve more than routine cleaning..

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Medieval Inlaid(Encaustic)Floor Tiles

Medieval Tiles (Shire Album) by Hans Van Lemmen (2004)

Inlaid tiles, or ‘encaustic’ tiles as they are also known, are fired clay tiles with a simple pattern such as an heraldic motif picked out in a clay inlay of a contrasting colour, usually in white on a red ground. The tiles are glazed and were originally fired in a wood burning kiln. They depend entirely upon the raw clays and glazes for their colours, and not pigments, paint or enamels. The tiles developed from about 1220 to about 1550, probably earliest on continental Europe, although the basic technique is likely of earlier Middle-eastern origin. They represent a significant development over earlier mosaic tile designs. They were probably inspired, at least in part, by the Italian marble mosaic floors, and attempts to achieve patterned floors with local materials.

Encaustic or inlaid tiles enjoyed two periods of great popularity. The first lasted until Henry the Eighth’s reformation in the 16th century, and the second came when the tiles caught the attention of craftsmen during the Victorian Gothic Revival era, who after much trial and error mass-produced these tiles, made them available to the general public. During both periods tiles were made across Western Europe though the centre of tile production was in England. Companies in the United States also made encaustic tile during the Gothic Revival architecture style’s period.

The use of the word ‘encaustic’ to describe an inlaid tile of two or more colours is technically incorrect. The word ‘encaustic’ literally means “burning in”. The term originally described a process of painting with a beeswax-based paint that was then fixed with heat. It was also applied to a process of medieval enamelling. The term did not come into use when describing tile until the 19th century. Supposedly, Victorians thought that the two-colour tiles strongly resembled enamel work and so called them encaustic. Despite the error, the term has now been in common use for so long that it is an accepted name for inlaid tile work.

In both medieval times and in the 19th and 20th Century Gothic Revival, these tiles were most often made for and laid in churches. Even tiles that were laid in secular buildings appear to be copies of those found in religious settings. Encaustic tile floors exist all over Europe but are most prevalent in England where the greatest numbers of inlaid tiles were made..

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Will Crystal Palace rise again?

Back when plans were submitted for a building to commemorate the Millennium, which of course materialized as the Millennium Dome, I thought a full sized replica of Crystal Palace would be ideal. This story caught my attention:

“Plans for a replica of the original Crystal Palace are being worked on by architects and developers. The original building was built by Sir Joseph Paxton in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, 160 years ago.

After being moved to a location in Sydenham, now known as Crystal Palace Park, it was destroyed by fire in 1936. The plans for a new building, estimated to cost £220million, incorporate galleries, a snow slope, music auditorium, leisure facilities and a hotel.

They have been drawn up by the New Crystal Palace company, a consortium of local businessmen. It expects to submit the plans to Bromley council “in the next six to eight months”. Company spokesman Patrick Goff said: “We want to put the Crystal Palace back and give the park a heart again. Our plan could be entirely funded through the commercial elements, with no money needed from the public purse.”

However, a rival scheme for the park has been put forward by the Mayor’s London Development Agency. It is proposing the construction of 180 private houses in the park, despite local objections. The new homes would be built on the site of a caravan park. The £67.5million scheme also includes student accommodation, landscaping and various improvements to the park itself as well as a new regional sports centre that includes an indoor swimming pool. Plans were approved after Public Inquiry in December 2010..

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Animal Farm

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945) by George Orwell

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“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”

George Orwell (1903- 1950) was keenly aware of the injustices and poverty in Britain during the 1930’s. He knew that the class system meant many of the upper and middle class viewed the working class in terms not unlike animals. In The Road to Wigan Pier he observed: “The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside, and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her- her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was near enough to catch her eye. She had a round, pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘it isn’t the same for them as it would be for us’, and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her- understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum back-yard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.”

The book ‘Animal Farm’ is subtitled: ‘A fairy story’ and George Orwell uses the fable in extended form to create a world at once unreal yet recognizable as an allegorical warning to contemporaries. Orwell draws a pessimistic picture of a Stalinist dictatorship sustained by an apathetic, ignorant, or a frightened populace with little choice but to support the rebellion. The satirical novel Nineteen Eighty-four , published in 1949, likewise painted a picture of dehumanized society under totalitarian rule..

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Nina Simone 1933- 2003

I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone, but also known as ‘The High Priestess of Soul’ was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. She composed over 500 songs and recorded over 40 albums. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.

Born the sixth child of a preacher’s family in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina’s prodigious musical talent prompted her ambition to become the first black concert pianist, but the realities of poverty and racial prejudice forced her to redirect her ambitions. Her musical path changed direction after she was turned down for full scholarship at a prestigious music institute, the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia. She then began playing in The Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City to fund her continuing musical education, after realising a pupil was earning more than she was by teaching piano, but the bar required her to sing as well. She was approached for a recording by Bethlehem Records, and her rendition of “I Loves You Porgy” became a smash hit in the United States in 1958. Over the length of her career, Simone recorded more than forty albums, mostly between 1958, when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue, and 1974…

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