David Jones (3) (1956–)
Autor de North American Wildlife
Para otros autores llamados David Jones, ver la página de desambiguación.
Sobre El Autor
David Jones did not publish his first book of poetry until his forties. Although he was born in Kent, his Welsh father instilled in him a love for the culture of Wales that pervades his work. At first Jones intended to be an artist, and he left grammar school for Camberwell School of Art. With the mostrar más outbreak of war, he enlisted in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Robert Graves served as an officer in the same regiment) and served in Flanders and France. After the war, he completed his education and began a successful artistic career, during which he became perhaps best known as an engraver and watercolorist. Immersed in legend, myth, and romance, he held that humans are fundamentally religious. His own religious beliefs led him to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1921. Although W. B. Yeats saluted his first book, Jones stood apart from the literary mainstream of his day, despite obvious debts to the methods of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. His first volume, In Parenthesis (1937), combines both poetry and prose in chronicling the wartime career of its major figure, John Ball. His even more ambitious second book, The Anathemata: Fragments of an Attempted Writing (1952), uses the structure of the Tridentine Mass to chronicle the history of Britain from early geological times through preindustrial London. Some of its techniques of presentation and counterparting of myths and factual materials resemble Pound's Cantos. W. H. Auden judged it the best modern long poem in English. The later works The Tribune's Visitation and The Sleeping Lord (1974) deal with the Roman Empire in the time of Jesus. Readers will appreciate Jones's inclusion of his own notes to his difficult, allusive verse. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Obras de David Jones
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Nombre legal
- Jones, David Richard
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1956
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- Canada
- Lugares de residencia
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- Educación
- University of British Columbia
- Biografía breve
- David Jones studied biology at the University of British Columbia and has written for Photo Life and The Knowledge Network. He lives in Vancouver.
Miembros
Reseñas
Whales (Wildlife Series) por David Jones
599.5
This book is a science-fiction because of how Bart comes into interaction with two castaways from space who turn out to be interstellar thieves. I could use this book in my classroom when reading a science-fiction novel to a class of fourth of fifth graders. Another way I could use this book is to discuss the meaning of what science-fiction is and ask the class what kind of books they would read that they think would fall under this category. There is no media in this book as it is a novel.
I picked up this book solely for the title (Monks in Space? Awesome! It needs a theme song). It is amusing to think of a monastery in space. But the amusement can only go so far. I found some of the physics to be doubtful (the monks throw liquid clay in zero gravity with no explanation as to how they can breathe with the air full of floating clay-gloop, not to mention the damage to a space ship’s electrical and ventilation systems), some of the details of the ship to be implausible (why would they have a drinking GLASS on a spaceship? Lit candles in an oxygen rich environment with the threat of zero gravity?), and why go through all the effort of making an authentic-appearing medieval monastery (on a SPACE SHIP) when real monks would be more concerned with practicality and thrift? A funny premise, but a STUPID book.… (más)
1 
quilted_kat | 2 reseñas más. | Mar 17, 2010 |
quilted_kat | 2 reseñas más. | Mar 17, 2010 | ‘Copernicans on the starboard bow,’ was never a line from Star Trek but it actually wouldn’t be out of place in David Jones’s near-disaster adventure about a spaceship abbey!
Set your optical organs to graphics mode and glory in the cover image of a blazing flying saucer that sports stained glass windows, then flip to text mode to input chapter one’s ‘Sweat’. Aboard Prominence, a spaceship abbey filled with holy treasures is a 14-year old novice-monk. But Bart (short for Bartholomew and – one assumes – no relation of the more terrestrial Homer) is more interested in training as a space pilot. When the intergalactic monks cruise to the aid of an unidentified spacecraft, it is Bart who realises the danger. It is also Bart who spikes the guns of the ensuing pirate attack (magnificent setpiece zero-gravity fight) and it is Bart who saves this floating microcosm in the nick of time.
This is a fast-paced, clever action adventure from the extremely talented writer of ‘Baboon’. Boys especially (a novel about space-monks is pre-programmed to be gender-skewed) will find themselves drawn into a fascinating sci-fi world . What will keep them hooked is that the author clearly knows his science (his day job was to design interactive shows for NASA, after all) so that the reader learns on the way pretty much about how a rocket functions. Something to do with fuel being mixed with an oxidant under extremely high pressure and then ignited. And Bart uses real science when he stumbles on a brilliant rescue solution to the monks’ imminent immolation. The nifty clue to the solution is buried expertly in the first few pages of the book.
What lifts ‘Meltdown’ above the ruck of sci-fi novels is the way his characters occupy - and find their actions governed by - a moral as well as a physical world. The female pirate seriously disturbs Bart’s radar and it is this ‘piratess’ who is at least in part responsible for Bart’s life-changing decision in the novel’s final pages. When the community is faced with having to choose who shall live and die, the reader really understands how humans are subject to more gravities than the one discovered by Newton.
This is a novel which deserves an audience beyond sci-fi buffs. Film fans will recognise HAL’s (‘2001: A Space Odyssey’) sibling computer in ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Mortal Engines’ addicts will find a new lease of life on board the Prominence. David Jones is a children’s novelist who has the gift of exploring alien worlds (under a monkey’s pelt in ‘Baboon’ and inside a space-kid in ‘Meltdown’) and this reader for one cannot wait for the next time his imagination goes EVA (extra-vehicular activity, for goodness’ sake!).… (más)
Set your optical organs to graphics mode and glory in the cover image of a blazing flying saucer that sports stained glass windows, then flip to text mode to input chapter one’s ‘Sweat’. Aboard Prominence, a spaceship abbey filled with holy treasures is a 14-year old novice-monk. But Bart (short for Bartholomew and – one assumes – no relation of the more terrestrial Homer) is more interested in training as a space pilot. When the intergalactic monks cruise to the aid of an unidentified spacecraft, it is Bart who realises the danger. It is also Bart who spikes the guns of the ensuing pirate attack (magnificent setpiece zero-gravity fight) and it is Bart who saves this floating microcosm in the nick of time.
This is a fast-paced, clever action adventure from the extremely talented writer of ‘Baboon’. Boys especially (a novel about space-monks is pre-programmed to be gender-skewed) will find themselves drawn into a fascinating sci-fi world . What will keep them hooked is that the author clearly knows his science (his day job was to design interactive shows for NASA, after all) so that the reader learns on the way pretty much about how a rocket functions. Something to do with fuel being mixed with an oxidant under extremely high pressure and then ignited. And Bart uses real science when he stumbles on a brilliant rescue solution to the monks’ imminent immolation. The nifty clue to the solution is buried expertly in the first few pages of the book.
What lifts ‘Meltdown’ above the ruck of sci-fi novels is the way his characters occupy - and find their actions governed by - a moral as well as a physical world. The female pirate seriously disturbs Bart’s radar and it is this ‘piratess’ who is at least in part responsible for Bart’s life-changing decision in the novel’s final pages. When the community is faced with having to choose who shall live and die, the reader really understands how humans are subject to more gravities than the one discovered by Newton.
This is a novel which deserves an audience beyond sci-fi buffs. Film fans will recognise HAL’s (‘2001: A Space Odyssey’) sibling computer in ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Mortal Engines’ addicts will find a new lease of life on board the Prominence. David Jones is a children’s novelist who has the gift of exploring alien worlds (under a monkey’s pelt in ‘Baboon’ and inside a space-kid in ‘Meltdown’) and this reader for one cannot wait for the next time his imagination goes EVA (extra-vehicular activity, for goodness’ sake!).… (más)
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- Obras
- 9
- Miembros
- 183
- Popularidad
- #118,259
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 6
- ISBNs
- 292
- Idiomas
- 5