Product Description
This business novel follows the efforts of Phil, the new CEO of a family firm in the north of England, as he plans and implements change, how he monitors progress, what models and concepts are available to help him and how he identifies resistance and deals with it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Philip Moorley a Change Master?
I have used this book for the past three semesters in my MBA class Organizational Theory and Behavior at the University of St. Thomas inMinneapolis. Students like the book because it is written as a novel. Theyidentify with the main character and see the types of dilemmas that changebrings for the leader of an organization. They also appreciate that thebook is international taking place on England. Some of the cultural aspectsof the company's culture become evident and are central to the changestory. Students also like the fact that personal and business issues areillustrated causing us to discuss relocation, stress and family balanceissues. I like the book for these reasons as well. In addition, Iappreciate that Warner presents change as an imporatant business processwith a language, tools, concepts and steps like other important businessprocesses.I recommend this book to faculty who teach organizationalbehavior courses, to students of change and to business leaders caught upin thge dilemmas of change. ... Read more

Product Description
Reprinted to tie in with the sequel, this collection of novellas from Scotland's emerging writers of the 90s contains the first sci-fi story by Irvine Welsh, and a bizarre tread through Scottish surrealism in the form of spaced-out crematorium attendants and vengeful traffic-wardens. ... Read more

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A fast-paced method that covers all aspects of modern and traditional electric blues guitar. CD includes demonstrations, exercises and backing tracks. ... Read more

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A leading voice of a group of Scottish writers influenced by the Beats presents his first novel, a shocking look into the life of a working-class Scottish girl who turns to drugs and rock music to find meaning in her world. Amazon.com Review
Alan Warner's Morvern Callar may be the first novel that deserves its own soundtrack. The music Warner's title character listens to as she drifts aimlessly through her sterile life may be the most worthwhile part of this depressing novel.Following in the footsteps of Trainspotting, another Scottish tale of anomie in the Highlands, Morvern Callar chronicles Morvern's dead-end existence--a joyless round of sex and raves punctuated by the music playing through her portable stereo.

Warner tells this dreary story from Morvern's point of view in a voice that is flat and affectless, as if the girl's soul had died years before though her body continues to function. Morvern Callar is a strange mix of shocking and banal, a mélange with appeal for a very specialized audience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Morvern Callar, funny name good book
Morvern Callar is about a young raver girl from a rural area of Scotland. At the beginning of the book, her boyfriend kills himself on Christmas Eve. This starts a wild journey of partying that takes the protagonist from Scotland to Ibiza. Along the way she finds out more than she wants to know about her best friend and adopted father. I saw the movie before reading the book. The movie follows the same story line to a point but does not delve into the loneliness experienced by the main character.

Holden Caufield Does "E"
In an word, "eh."

*Morvern Callar* left me cold. Author Alan Warner writes the narrative as an extended monologue on his title character's part, which, because he steeps it in Gaelic-laced idiom and stream-of-consciousness phrasing, makes for difficult reading. Warner is clearly reaching for subtlety in doing this, and for the most part he succeeds. But what he wishes subtly to convey is a disappointingly conventional tale of anomie and alienation.

The novel's main defect is that Morvern much too closely resembles her obvious literary forebears -- Holden Caufield, Mersault, Gide's immoralist -- to make much of an impression in her own right. Simply take one of these forebears, outfit him with appropriate contemporary doo-dads (a Walkman, Ecstasy, mirror shades), change his sex, and you have Morvern Callar.

Morvern is certainly a victim of the postmodern condition. A foster child working a dead-end job in an economically depressed Scottish town, she endures an ongoing crisis of meaning that she tries to alleviate by resorting to the "small pleasures" to be had by binge drinking, pill popping and engaging in anonymous sex. This sort of desultory hedonism blights Morvern's moral outlook, as the reader discovers early in the novel.

Morvern does, however, undergo a transformation of a sort as she begins to understand the realities conditioning her disaffection, but the ethos she develops in the novel -- an improbable admixture of Dionysiac ecstasy, feeble piety and muted atavism -- aren't nearly as satisfying to the reader as they are to Morvern. Which is another way of saying that Alan Warner, working in the tradition of Salinger, Camus and Gide, doesn't break any new ground. *Morvern Callar* apparently remains content to observe the protocols of hipster posturing, perhaps because Warner wishes it to retain market appeal as a zeitgeist novel or as an exposé of the shocking lengths young people today go to fill an existential void within them. And, like most works of this sort, it trades on sensationalism made only more sensationalistic for being related in Morvern's deadpan manner. Warner refuses to show the reader a way beyond contemporary afflictions apart from some personal "truth" cobbled together from the cultural flotsam left in modernity's wake.

This way beyond I cannot claim to know; what it would look like I cannot say. But this is why we have art, and why we need great artists. Only they can offer us a glimpse of the path out of any current eudaimonic stalemate. *Morvern Callar* is, then, more conciliatory than visionary, more quietist than revolutionary, and thus cannot, in my opinion, be regarded as great

Engaging in its strangeness
Late one night I came upon the movie _Morvern Callar_ and wondered why it might be called Morvern the Silent. I watched the movie, stunned, but unable and unwilling to change the station even when I could barely understand the dialogue. The characters, aside from Morvern, were so like the ghetto people I've lived with much of my life. At the end of the film, I learned the movie was based on a book, and hurriedly ordered it thinking I would be able to understand the language better if I could read it.

I love the dialect...and Morvern. Many reviewers complain that we aren't privy to what is going on in her head. Truth is, there isn't much going on in there. She is not sophisticated enough to mull over her actions. She isn't educated, isn't well read or travelled. She simply acts accompanied by a soundtrack. She isn't overencumbered with religious guilt. In fact, she doesn't seem to be hampered by guilt of any kind. It is such a wasteful emotion and Morvern has better things to do with the squeezed emotions she does possess.

Morvy's got an eye for detail and an appreciation of nature that, for me, more than makes up for her "raving" behavior. The flatness of the dialogue, her affect, and the repetitive nature of her entire life, right up to the end of the novel when Morvern's life takes a turn, accurately depicts what life is like for anyone living in a small town, or a ghetto, with little hope of having a better life because of the lack of opportunities and the lack of self-preparation for anything better. Him seemed to have possessed abilities, education, financial resources, but he took his life by slitting his own throat and attempting to cut off one of his hands. What did his death tell Morvern about life when one is supposedly ready?

I thought what she did with is body was a tribute to him and her love of nature, but I may change my mind after thinking about this story a while longer. That is one of the great things about this book; it makes you reflect on the mechanical ways we usually respond to life and opens the door to living more innovatively.

I've always wanted to visit Scotland and because of Morvern's description of the countryside, I'll likely go, but I'll stay away from the pubs!

Too strange to put down
I bought Morvern Caller in order to read a book with the flavor of the countryside I was to visit. I was hoping to get a feel for the people of the west coast of Scotland while I was enjoying its scenery.Instead, I found myself reading a book about troubled people, characters I could not imagine meeting in the real world.Morvern Caller is well written and very disturbing.It's difficult to "enjoy" the lives of its characters since they suffer from more than ordinary problems.It's also difficult to put the book down without finishing it.For enjoyment level, I wanted to give this book a one or two; for interest level, I had to rate it higher.And, then, I was compelled to read its sequel! You want to know what happens, all the while wishing you were reading something else!!

Maybe you should just see the movie
The following is a synopsis of one of the scenes in _Morvern Callar_. It doesn't involve major characters and it doesn't reveal a plot point, but it does give something of the book's tone.

It's Hogmanay. The narrator and her social circle have gathered in a local hotel. Midnight passes, then closing time, so the police come to make them leave. One man buys several whiskies and wants to take them with him but the police won't let him, so he pours the whiskies down the throat of his fish, takes the fish outside, and drinks the whiskies out of the fish's mouth.

If that baffled you, you should probably skip the book entirely. In short, it's so Scottish it probably won't travel well. ... Read more

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Footsloggers and soldiers of fortune, priests, poets, killers, and cads - they fight for a future Galarchy, for cash, for a cause, for the thrill of adventure. Culled from the forgotten and unwanted of three galaxies, they are trained to be the most elite, and expendable, of fighting forces. Sometimes peacekeepers, sometimes shock troops, the Legion is sent into the Galarchy's most desperate internal and external conflicts. Legionnaires live rough and they die hard, tough as tungsten and loyal to the dirty end. Alien Legion creator Carl Potts on the series: "The original concept was the 'Foreign Legion in space,' and all the legionnaires were human. The Alien Legion universe is a giant extrapolation of the American democratic melting-pot society, where different races and cultures work together for the common good while dealing with the pluses and problems that the nation's diversity creates." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Must Have for fans
Times change, and high tech computer enhanced comic art abounds. This story however, was just as good as the first time I read it in high school. mY only complaint is the size of the book. I dont know what the publisher is thinking. I would pay what they are asking for a HC full sized novel ,but definately not for this reduced size and quality format. It deserves a better treatment.

Inferior reproduction.
I could live with the fact that the page size has been reduced for this edition (by about 10-15%, I would estimate), but the fact that they "preserved" production mistakes from the original issues is more of a problem. Several pages are printed out of order, rendering that portion of the book confusing if not unreadable. There are also two partially misrendered speech balloons, so that you can not read what's written within them.

If you're looking at this listing, you already know that these are possibly the best science fiction comics ever produced. It's a shame that Dark Horse couldn't clean these pages up and make a definitive volume. ... Read more

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Direct sales edition comic book published by DC Comics under their Wildstorm imprint. The adventures of a teenage Ninja in feudal Japan. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Alan Warner, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1516 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Arthur Brown, Clem Curtis, Eric Allendale, Mike Elliott, Alan Warner, Colin Young, Barry Class, the Ramong Sound, Tony Macaulay, Hue Montgomery, Steve Bingham, John Mcleod. Excerpt:Alan Warner Alan Warner (aka Allan Warner) (born 21 April 1947, Paddington , West London ) is a musician . As a boy he originally wanted to play trumpet but ended up with a toy accordion. He started playing Guitar at the age of 11, his parents bought him a cheap Spanish guitar for Christmas, and he soon realised, listening to the twangy tones of Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, The Ventures, etc, that this was what he wanted to do. Musical career In the early 1960s after leaving school at the age of fourteen, Warner played with several semi-professional groups playing local gigs , before becoming a professional musician two years later. Some of the groups he played in were The Leesiders Sect , The Line-up, Tel Thorne and The Dwellers and The Trekkers. Warner nearly joined a group called The Black Eagles, which featured a bass player called Phil Lynott , who would later go on to find fame as the leader of Thin Lizzy . In 1966 Warner joined The Ramong Sound and through the bands name change and evolution he was one of the founding members of The Foundations who would have hits with "Baby, Now That I've Found You ", "Back On My Feet Again " and "Build Me Up Buttercup " and "In The Bad Bad Old Days". He played rhythm guitar ... Read more

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A selection of 100 classic country guitar licks and 4 solos. Includes playing tips and full length CD. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not for beginners!
I am just beginning to play guitar. This book does not explain on entry level how to play these licks. Also does not explain it on the CD. I feel like I wasted my money!

Excellent Licks Book!
This is a very good book geared towards intermediate and advanced players. Lots of applicable licks and variety. The author emphasizes using the pick/finger method, though you can do a lot of the licks just using a pick. The cd covers all the licks and solos (though the cd has an extra solo not tabbed in the book). I especially liked the rockabilly section towards the end - some great sounding, practical licks I incoporated immediately into my playing. Highly recommended. ... Read more

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The three children of the little pig who built his house out of bricks are threatened by the wolf and his son, who have modern tools at their disposal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

HUFF AND PUFF - GREAT BOOK!
I think that this book is a great childrens book. The authortakes a story we all know to well, The Three Little Pigs and makes it have a new story line. The Three Little Pigs now have children of their own and how they try to out smart the wolf, just like their fathers. What a novel idea.Not to many authors would think of taking a bedtime story and making itinto something more, especially a second generation. I think any childwould like this book because it has a new story line to it. All childrenare use to hearing and reading the same old bedtime stories that this woulddefinietly be something new and different for them to hear or read. Irecommend this book to anyone who has children. ... Read more