Books

Miss Undine's Living Room (Voices of the South)

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Southern Comfort

Miss Undine's Living Room (Voices of the South)
James Wilcox
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807126993

Customer Reviews:

Southern Comfort.......2002-02-23

Imagine yourself at a particles accelerator at CERN.

First, assemble the ingredients. Mrs. Olive Mackie, her husband Duane and her teenage son Felix. Uncle L. D., age 91, who depends on various females of this story to keep him going. Dr Martin Bates, student of dentistry, so helpful and charming... Assorted women of the neighborhood, who all went to school together. And, of course, Miss Undine, the retired schoolteacher of them all.

Now, mix them all together and accelerate. Gossip and rumors start spinning, congealing into delicious back biting. Wait for it to stop spinning, to see whose life and reputation is still in one piece.

A delightful book, full of humor and sharply etched pictures of life in a small southern town.

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A Fantastic, Frightful, Fanciful Ride Of A Horror Novel
Mediocre at best

The Undine
Michael O'Rourke
Manufacturer: Harpercollins (Mm)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0061007188

Customer Reviews:

A Fantastic, Frightful, Fanciful Ride Of A Horror Novel.......2007-01-03

"The Undine" has got to be one of horror literature's best-kept secrets. A vivid and captivating tale full of jarringly cool concepts and ideas and one of the better casts you're going to find in a novel; I'm mystified as to why this seems to be so unknown.

"The Undine" centers around faeries and similar creatures of folkore. However, these creatures aren't the innocent little darters-around-flowers or scampering mischief-makers that are probably more familiar to most readers. These creatures of legend can be very dangerous, and some are pretty vicious. A corporation has come into possession of four female faeries who've been changed into human form and plans to tap their magical abilities to generate power and profit. It might sound like a kind of corny idea, but it's pulled off here. The very nature of the idea is the corporation's best defence against discovery, and as the novel gets going it taps into this whole mythology of a dark fairie world, indepth enough to give the book credibility, and to make it almost as much of an entry in the fantasy field as in horror. In the very early going of the novel, the four fairies - vastly powerful magical beings of a royal lineage - escapt from their physical, mental and sexual enslavement and set out on a path of bloody reprisal against both their oppressors and the human race in general.

An unlikely trio of protagonists - a reporter, an actress who's fascinated by fairy lore and all things New Age, and a likably nerdy police photographer - become the main characters on the trail of the truth as to what happened at the site of a major disaster (related to the supernatural creatures, unbeknownst to the human characters at first) and wind up deeply immersed in a deadly situation. The book scores considerable points on how likable and interesting its players are, and it's got a wide range of them.

The writing is deceptively excellent - it doesn't bowl you over with style but instead it very unobtrusively and very deeply transports one right into the thick of the story. (If you're ever leafing through this book somewhere, don't be tricked by the brief 'excerpt' right inside the cover - it's a condensed version of a passage that's written better where it actually takes place in the novel) With the simple but skillful use of the right adjectives in the right place, brief but potent descriptions of sound and atmosphere, you almost forget you're reading words as the story springs to life cinematically, putting the reader right in the moment, whether it's battling one's way up a narrow mountain pass in the middle of a blizzard, the pre-dawn hours in a sparsely peopled diner where notes are being prepared, otherwordly battle on the streets of a city, or the cacophonous crashing of ocean waves at the foot of mystical cliffs. It also does a very good job at slipping one into the mindframes of various characters very quickly and fully.

Imaginative, horrifying, sometimes romantic and sexy, detailed, action-packed, occasionally humorous (and when it is it's not just amusing but one of those rare novels that reaches laugh out-loud hilarity), full of surpsises and turns, and always captivating, "The Undine" deserves a far larger audience than it seems to have found to date. Extremely recommended.

Mediocre at best.......2005-05-17

This is another book that I got because I really love faeries and other fantasy creatures. It was definitely not what I expected. The plot focused a lot on the humans rather than the Undines, and as a result, I really wasn't sure whose side I should be on. Part of me wanted to root for the Undines, as they were being ripped from their homes and rather unfairly persecuted, but mostly I was given the human's point of view, and I could see how they wouldn't want the Undines around. The Undines were really giving back as good as they got.

There was also an over-abundance of characters and conspiracies. It made it difficult to follow at times, and I never really got attached to any one character or group of characters. I felt as though I didn't really know any of them, which made it difficult to tell.

One thing that surprised me was the lack of eroticism. There was some, but not as much as I expected given the back, and a lot of it was very vague. Given that I wasn't really impressed with anything else, however, that might have been for the best.

Sonata, Opus 167: Undine for No Flute & Piano Great Performer's Edition (Great Performer's Edition)

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Sonata, Opus 167: Undine for No Flute & Piano Great Performer's Edition (Great Performer's Edition)
C. Reinecke , and Carl Reinecke
Manufacturer: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Songbooks | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0793515629

Average customer rating:

40% Relevent Story. 60% ...Not
A very good bood
Unimpressive
BRILLIANT!!!

Undine
Penni Russon
Manufacturer: HarperTeen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060793899
Release Date: 2006-01-31

Book Description

Undine gets along well with her unconventional mother, she adores her baby brother, and she has a devoted kindred spirit in her best friend and next-door neighbor, Trout. It's inconvenient that Trout has a sloppy crush on her, but Undine tries to overlook this. Undine is basically satisfied . . . until strange things begin happening to her.

It starts with an odd feeling, a shadow in the mirror, a whisper only Undine can hear: It's time to come home. And it builds. One hot day, when Undine imagines knitting together a few scattered clouds, she creates a massive thunderstorm.

Who is Undine? Where does her power come from? What is she meant to do? Undine needs answers to these questions, so she sets off in search of a father she'd always believed was dead and a self she's only beginning to discover. But Undine's magic is powerful, wild, and dangerous -- and her feelings as she uncovers the truth are even fiercer. Will Undine find herself or lose herself . . . and everyone she loves?

Customer Reviews:

40% Relevent Story. 60% ...Not.......2007-05-21

Undine is a marvelous and compelling read--that is, if you are into reading long, draggy books with unnecessary details, loosely tied ideas and a much more loosely connected plot. It has an interesting concept idea however it is implemented very poorly. The story is about a teenage girl, Undine, who lives with her mother and two year old half-brother and is best friends with her next door neighbor, Trout, who has an immense crush on her that Undine is well aware of. Undine also hears voices telling her to "go home" constantly and has a father who's supposed to have died before she was born telepathically communicating with her. All the while, odd objects from her dreams somehow materialize in the real world, right at Undine's doorstep, quite literally. Undine starts off being, understandably, shocked and disturbed at the course her life is taking. The novel is supposed to go on and tell the story of Undine coming to terms with her `magic,' the fact she has a father, and her relationship with Trout, all the while dealing with the life-altering events of growing up. It is supposed to be a novel describing one girl's journey of self discovery and self acceptance.

Stress is placed on the words "supposed to be" because the reality is that this distinction is barely, if at all, made in the novel. The novel ends up becoming more of a sappy melodrama focusing on Undine's relationships with boys more than anything. Trout, Richard (Trout's older brother), and Grant (Richard's friend), Undine has apparently seduced or bewitched all three boys with her magic and her long legs. A great proportion of the novel is dedicated to the sixteen year old girl's silly love life, or lack thereof, rather than on building the plot. Of course it can be argued that `love' and hormones are a significant part of growing up and that Undine's self-discovery is directly related to her relationship with one of the three young men mentioned. However, the topic is overplayed in the novel and distracts from the main meaning of the novel. It transforms the novel itself into a shallow piece of writing. The same concept could have been explained to the reader much more effectively it was given slightly less attention. In addition, if the author's message was to shed light on the process of growing up through this, she failed miserably. Growing up has a lot more to it than just raging hormones.

It is highly unlikely that a person will be able to "grow up" or "find herself" in just one week, as Undine apparently does. The novel spans over the course of approximately seven days. The purpose of this time range is unclear. Perhaps the author intended to show the unpredictability of life through this somehow, or it might have just been a whim. The latter appears to be truer.

This short time period is juxtaposed with a voluminous amount of absolutely nothing in the book. One would presume that a short time span would mean that the book is either very fast paced or if it isn't, then a lot of plot is fed into each day mentioned. Ideally, this would be the case. However, in Undine, it isn't. The book has chapters' worth of no plot or storyline whatsoever, instead replaced with silly rantings of children and their hormones and Undine's deteriorated relationship with her mother. Admittedly these are important aspects of life, but they don't take the story forward enough to dedicate a massive amount of the book to them.

Another decision the author made about her novel that doesn't entirely make sense either is her choice to write it in a third person limited point of view, alternating between the perspectives of Undine and Trout. The story is about Undine and her journey for self discovery and she clearly is the protagonist. Trout is just a side character whose emotions and feelings don't really matter when taking the rest of the story into consideration. Parts of the story told in his point of view merely and unnecessarily show the raging hormones of male teenagers, demonstrating how such hormones transcend all boundaries posed by gender. This has nothing at all to do with the main storyline. Perhaps the author intended to contrast Trout and Undine's changes in characterizations--Trout's personality remains constant for the most part whereas Undine's changes greatly, shifting from nice, happy, and cheerful to annoying, scared and full of angst to finally content. Still, so much stress on him was unnecessary, especially with his online conversations with "MAX." The only result of telling the story through Trout's point of view is to force the readers to sympathize with him, especially when Undine chooses his own older brother over him to start a romantic relationship with, all the while fully knowing about his feelings for her. That's a lie. There's another result: a waste of time and space.

The structure of the book shows an amount of lack of creativity on the part of the writer. She divided it into two parts, labeled Part 1 and Part 2, respectively. Part 1 is about Undine realizing that she isn't even as normal as she believed she was and that she needs to find answers about herself and her heritage from her father who she does not know at all rather than confront her mother, who has raised her for her entire life, for the answers. The second part comprises of her going to get those answers and then actually finding them. Such clear and simple distinctions take away from the sense of reality that remained in the novel, regardless of its being about magic. Life is not so simple to be easily divided into two segments like that. All `segments' merge and blend into each other in real life. Such division of the book is thus also unnecessary.

The novel deals with too many thematic ideas. It struggles with the ethical debate of human dignity versus scientific curiosity, with mother-daughter relationships, the changing relationships of friends, self-discovery, father-daughter relationships, coming of age, the horrors of power and greed, and many more. It appears that the author is trying to tackle too many themes into one book and is thus unable to effectively develop even one of them. This also prevents her from tying up all the loose ends in the storyline. Many mysteries that captured the reader in the beginning remain unanswered. Why, for example, are Tuesdays always bad days? How did objects from Undine's dreams materialize? If Undine had this `magic' feeling from the beginning, why did she never talk to her mother about it before? And, I even dare ask, what happens to the relationship between Trout and Undine?

Too many loose ends, too draggy a story, and too much emphasis on unnecessary characterization transform Undine from a potentially interesting read to a boring book that one just wants to put an end to as fast as possible. It is a disappointment and not recommended if you are looking for a degree of depth of plot or a well-developed storyline in your reading.

A very good bood.......2007-02-28

I really liked this book, and although it wasn't alway clear what was going on, the author describes her characters very well and gives them depth and meaning

Unimpressive.......2006-10-10

To be honest, I wasn't very impressed by this book. It was kind of an interesting idea, but horribly cliche. Another girl who finds out she has magic powers. I'll admit that the ending wasn't that obvious but I never really fell in love with the characters. Undine is definately a Mary Sue. She has virtually no faults, she's beautiful, and all the guys want her. And I'm totally confused about who she's in love with. Is she just promiscuious, or can the author not decide who she falls for? And sometimes it feels like the author is just filling in space.

I did finish it easily in one night, so I suppose it wasn't a waste of TOO much time, but there are much better books out there.

BRILLIANT!!! .......2006-02-04

I'm not a big book reader, I just dont seem to find the time. But I just couldn't put Undine down! I was entrapped in the mystery and the magic. A book that I'm sure most people will enjoy. I highly recommend it.
I'm lucky enough to be in Australia where the second novel has been released. I promise you, once you read Undine you will want to read the second book!
Do yourself a favour... and buy it!

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The Quintessential Fairy Tale

Undine (European Classics)
Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouque
Manufacturer: Hippocrene Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 094662657X

Book Description

"Most artistic of all the continental weird tales is the German classic Undine (1814), by Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Baron de la Motte Fouqué. In this story of a water-spirit who married a mortal and gained a human soul there is a delicate fineness of craftsmanship which makes it notable in any department of literature, and an easy naturalness which places it close to the genuine folk-myth." -- H.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror In Literature" (Jacketless library hardcover.)

Customer Reviews:

The Quintessential Fairy Tale.......2003-10-07

Undine indeed is the epitome of a fairy tale. It is the story of Undine, a water nymph, who receives a soul when she marries a mortal. It is a beautiful story exposing the darkness and beauty of human nature. It is one of my favourite books of all time, and I've read it many times over the years. It is one that I will always keep on my bookshelf and will share with my children and grandchildren for years to come. I highly recommend Undine for any person of any age.

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Undine

Undine
Olive Schreiner
Manufacturer: Harper & Brothers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0384542794

Customer Reviews:

Undine.......2003-12-03

This is a a disturbing and meaningful book about a young British girl growing up in South Africa in the the mid to late 1800's. The themes are complex and thoughtful: gender roles, theology and societal critiques. It's the perfect book for intelligent girls who don't quite fit in and the women who were them.

Fabulation Or, the Re-education of Undine

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A dark story of a woman who falls and works her way out of poverty

Fabulation Or, the Re-education of Undine
Lynn Nottage
Manufacturer: Dramatist's Play Service
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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The Pillowman: A Play

ASIN: 0822220377

Book Description

Full cast recording of a theatrical play read by Daniel Breaker, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Jon Matthews, Gary Perez, Melle Powers, Myra Lucretia Taylor, John Wesley, and Charlayne Woodard. Knocked-up and seriously broke, a successful publicist is plunged into a topsy-turvy world of welfare mothers and drug addicts, and forced to confront the family she left behind. Fabulation is a darkly comic rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of falling down and reaching up to find the goodness within.

Customer Reviews:

A dark story of a woman who falls and works her way out of poverty.......2005-11-03

Undine, an Ivy League black publicist, is left pregnant and broke when her husband embezzles her money and vanishes. Returning to the Brooklyn projects she left, she enters a world of drug addicts and welfare - and her family roots - in this dark story of a woman who falls and works her way out of poverty. The full-cast audio production of Fabulation Or The Re-Education Of Undine lends a fine, full drama to the involving story.

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SINTRAM AND HIS COMPANIONS AND UNDINE
DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE
Manufacturer: GARDNER DARTON
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S6FCOK

Undine or The Water-Spirit Also Sintram and His Companions

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Undine or The Water-Spirit Also Sintram and His Companions
Friedrich De la Motte Fouque
Manufacturer: Wills P Hazard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H9CCAU

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UNDINE
Phyllis Brett Yougn
Manufacturer: Fawcett Crest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IOVC0A

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