I just read this book and it was one of the best books I've ever read. The preface to my edition compared it to Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus (my favorite Mann)- which i found to be very true. I love Hesse but this is the only one of his books that was on the level of Mann for me. "Goldmund and Narcissus" and especially "Stepanwolf" also are excellent. Magister Ludi has a lot in common with the character Goldmund. This book has the intellectual incisive prose that I like so much in Mann - the mind and motivation are clearly written out, not just suggested.
The book follows the life of a great scholar from grade school to death. What distinguishes him is he has a great heart/sense of morality along with his genius. You follow his evolution as a person throughout the story. The story is set somewhere around 2500 AD but theres no indication that technology has advanced since the 1940's - or that life socially is much different...the emphasis is on the political situation as it relates to Knecht's scholarly order. Since there the order is celebate like the 19C Oxford scholars there are no female characters of consequence - so you see a lot of male relationships in all different shades. Hesse lets you know as much about the game as he can and still do it justice...the game is supposed to be one of the supreme human achievements so he couldnt invent it fully fleshed out for the purposes of a novel. Magister Ludi is Joseph Knecht's title: he is Master of the Game. He's on the highest board which includes a Music Master and Master of Meditation. The climax of the book is a discussion Knecht has to have with the Master of Meditation/President of the Board of Educators to justify a momentous life changing decision he makes. I reread very few classics (I plan on rereading the major Mann and Doestoyevsky books) but this is one I would reread: it's beautiful. If you loved "Doctor Faustus" or "Goldmund and Narcissus" you most likely love this one.

I just read this book and it was one of the best books I've ever read. The preface to my edition compared it to Thomas Mann's "Dr Faustus"(my favorite Mann)- which i found to be very true. I love Hesse but this is the only one of his books that was on the level of Mann for me. "Goldmund and Narcissus" and especially "Stepanwolf" also are excellent. Magister Ludi has a lot in common with the character Goldmund. This book has the intellectual incisive prose that I like so much in Mann - the mind and motivation are clearly written out, not just suggested.
The book follows the life of a great scholar from grade school to death. What distinguishes him is he has a great heart/sense of morality along with his genius. You follow his evolution as a person throughout the story. The story is set somewhere around 2500 AD but there's no indication that technology has advanced since the 1940's - or that life socially is much different...the emphasis is on the political situation as it relates to Knecht's scholarly order. Since the order is celebate like the 19C Oxford scholars there are no female characters of consequence - so you see a lot of male relationships in all different shades. Hesse lets you know as much about the game as he can and still do it justice...the game is supposed to be one of the supreme human achievements so he couldn't invent it fully fleshed out for the purposes of a novel. Magister Ludi is Joseph Knecht's title: he is Master of the Game. He's on the highest board which includes a Music Master and Master of Meditation. The climax of the book is a discussion Knecht has to have with the Master of Meditation/President of the Board of Educators to justify a momentous life changing decision he makes. I reread very few classics (I plan on rereading the major Mann and Doestoyevsky books) but this is one I would reread: it's beautiful. If you loved "Doctor Faustus" or "Goldmund and Narcissus you most likely love this one.

This is the best book I have ever read. It is fantastically engaging and has a surprise ending. Hesse never really explains the Game to a point that the reader must construct his own version of what the Game is like. The Game uses beads that represent high information density symbols, somewhat like advanced mathmatics, to show connections between fields of study or disiplines that have interconnections that are not immediately obvious. The Game imbodies the ultimate "life of the Mind" and to study the Game is a truly life long adventure. Ludi becomes the Magister, or top player, of the Game and greatly admired.

Being a fan of "Kansas", I was very interested in purchasing this book and I was not disappointed. This book will challenge your Christian thinking in a way that it has probably never been challenged before. I think what I like the most about it,is the honesty and unique way the Gospel of Luke is presented. It's certainly not what you hear today from the majority of radio preachers. I can't wait for the next volume. Great Book!

I enjoyed this book big time. Dave's point of view and his ability to put things in a manner that I understand are so valuable. Having followed his career for years as a musician with Kansas it's good to see him continue on to use the talents that the Lord has blessed him with. Check this book out.

There have been very few times in my life when I just couldn't put a book down and this has been one of them. I followed the author's life while he was a bass guitar player for the progressive rock group KANSAS and revelled at his profession of faith in Christ in the early '80s. After reading his book just a few short weeks ago I can still hear and see Dave on the outside but on the inside is clearly a heart and mind that the Lord has sculpted into a formidable warrior in his army of believers. His interpretation of the first few chapters of Luke is witty, humorous and clearly from his heart. He writes as though he were there himself.

CHILD'S SOUL: Hesse is largely an autobiographical author. Even when events in his novels or stories take place in a distant past or in a fantastically created future, he wrote about what he had lived through. His renowned novel "Demian" is very much autobiographical. The story "Child's Soul" may be the only thing ever written by Hesse, which is more autobiographical than "Demian". The narrating person in "Child's Soul" does not have a mental equilibrium. He can not draw a line between good and evil, between love and destruction; his mental state is characterized by fear. Nonetheless, he only sees the "chaos", takes its existence into consideration. His future fate is unknown, but there we see a sparkle of hope that he will gain a foot-hold and achieve the state of mental equilibrium. PS: the term "chaos" was used by Hesse himself in one of his articles. [Rating: 5/5]

KLEIN AND WAGNER: An uxoricide and a filicide escapes from Germany to Italy to find a peace for his tormented soul. He finds there death, however. Unlike the narrating person in the story described above, here we know for sure that Klein self-destructs. This story, especially, is laden with philosophical passages. Here (and in the story described bellow, as well) we see how Hesse uses associations; "klein" is the German adjective that stands for "small" and Wagner is not only the name of another uxoricide and a filicide, but also that of a famous composer, whose music is tied in Klein's imagination with eroticism of his youth. [Rating: 5/5]

KLINGSOR'S LAST SUMMER: a story of a dying painter, who, as we know from the preface, is only forty-two years old. In this case, the name Klingsor comes from one epic poem that dates back to the seventh century. In that poem Klingsor was a magician, which suggest a kinship between the art and the magic. This particular story is somewhat ambiguously written, even Klingsor's death remains ambiguous. One can not say with a certainty whether Klingsor committed a suicide, even though the whole mood of this story is imbued with ideas of life's frailty and death's imminence. This ambiguous narration (which Hesse employed in many of his works) does capture the atmosphere in which Klingsor spent his last days (and perhaps most of his life), but it bears a mark of abstractness. [Rating: 4/5]

fascinating, luscious stories filled with spiritual and debaucherous intrigues of the most unexpected sorts.

Hesse waves tales infused with rich mythological imagery and interesting turns around every corner.

Three stories that run the gamut from romanticism to melancholy.

Always a mystery and forever a joy.

Not one review of this book! Incredible, you don't know what you're missing if you have not read this author. This is not one of the most recognized works of the Nobel prize author (my personal favorite), but it has everything of what made their other novels so remarkable: the beautiful and deep description of his characters' thoughts and emotions.

This edition contains three stories: "Child's soul", "Klein and Wagner" and "Klinsor's last summer" The first one succeeds in showing how intense a child's feelings can be, the happiness and sadness that can be reached while being so young, how a small mistake can trigger the biggest of fears... Klein and Wagner, for me the best one of this book. And "Klingsor's last summer" the story of an artist who is dying, while reading this you become Klingsor...I wonder how could Hesse succeed to such degree in portraying thoughts and feelings, no other existentialist author I've read so far reached this complexity.

Hesse was an inveterate story writer and this collection is an excellent introduction to his work. Most of these tales are only a few pages long and even the longest can be completed in one sitting. They also span his entire career and give the reader a great overview of the author's style.

I recommend especially the title story, "Pictor's Metamorphoses": here a youth named Pictor wanders into a garden and finds a magic carbuncle which transforms him into a tree. But he realizes that his life his incomplete, and remains unhappy until a girl wanders into the same garden...

this book has followed me throughout my life, and has never been topped by another. He was, and is, the author closest to my heart.

This is a really good book. From the dreams he has as a young boy to the times after the war. A good book to read in between books. Most of the stories are short but there are some long ones too.

I 'wandered' upon the first edition of this book at a yard sale, and once having begun it, was thrilled with every word and every turn of phrase. Hesse, in this lesser-known work, writes with beautiful symplicity and grace. Each short prose piece is accompanied by charming sketches, and each ends with one of Hesse's poems. Here Hesse reveals his deepest fears, hopes, and insights; which once read, will bring any wandering soul closer to enlightenment. Highly recommended!

The most wonderful, beautiful book, it has been my absolute favourite for the past 30 years, always makes me feel like I'm home again, in the company of all feelings and emotions that make me feel warm and connected to the earth.

I thought this book essentially epitomized Hesse's search for meaning, but the narrative was simply told in a series of sharp images, ones in which he himself found inspiration. In contrast to his many, more famous novels, I believe Hesse writes in absolute honesty, no longer confined to the restrictions of a classic novel, and the images and sensations he reproduces are stunning.

If you are a lover of fine clothing and dressmaking this is the book for you. Roberta Carr's dedication to teaching techniques that elevate sewing from mundane to extraordinary is evident on every page. The extremely readable instructions and georgeous examples make this book a must have for home sewers who want to take their clothing construction to a higher level.

This book is so good that I am going to purchase it. I checked it out of our local, public library and someone else must have loved it enough to cut pages out of it. Roberta Carr writes about what every sewer wants to know. She tells what a perfect fit entails. She describes perfectly how to make a "single-thread" dart, how to work with the forbidden BIAS, the dos and don'ts of buttonholes, etc. I learned volumes from this book.

I have this book and I love it. You are given a glimpse of the New York art scene in the 1960's and get a feeling of what it must have been like during that exciting period. In fact, it's a little scary to imagine being around during that time, kind of overwhelming. Conceptual art, pop art, Andy Warhol, the whole psychedelic hippie scene. But oddly still a man's world, for all the miniskirts and 'free love' hype. Her contemporaries were pretty much all men, and the women tended to be more like sidekicks and dilettantes. (Not to take anything away from male artists, that's just the way it was at the time.) The end of Eva's marriage, to another artist, seems almost a given once she really started to come into her own right. It must have been kind of lonely, men were probably threatened by the idea of a female artist, or maybe it was just that she didn't have time to find the right person in her short life. Also, at the time there was much less awareness of toxicity in art materials both traditional and non-traditional. I have to admit I'm fascinated by the romance of this heroic figure producing art despite the cost to her personal life and health. I don't see her as a martyr but as a brave pioneer who left us with beautiful art. Many of Eva Hess's sculptures were made using ephemeral materials but this book has pictures of them when they were new. Even if the actual sculptures don't survive, the image of them will somehow continue to survive, maybe with the help of virutal reality technology? Anyway, thank you Lucy Lippard for this informative book packed with pictures and info about Eva!

Featured are reproductions even of artworks which no longer exist, and Lippard's commentary is always to the point. I don't dwell on the fact that Eva Hesse died young -- in fact, I'm not interested in the cult of personality which in my view only obscures the works themselves. But in at least three directions Hesse has given me plenty to think about and purely enjoy, and this book documents everything... maybe it slights the drawings a bit, but there's another book out there with nothing but drawings, drawings galore. The implications of what Hesse accomplished remain "mindblowing." Anyone who has only heard about her or seen one or two works needs to see what they've missed.

This is a beautifully written story of a young girl and her mother waiting for rain. It's magical and lyrical and a must read! The illustrations match the text brilliantly and are stunning in their own right. Karen Hesse is not only a wonderful writer of novels for middle-grade readers, she shines as a picture book author as well. Bravo!!

This lyrical ode to the coming rain, accompanied by the soothing wash of lush watercolors, make Hesse's Come on, Rain! sure to please young children. In prose that reads like poetry, young Tessie bemoans the heat of summer while waiting with confidence that rain will soon come. Along with her multicultural friends and all their mammas, Tessie dances in gratitude for the refreshing wetness the rain bestows. While the lyrical prose is of such beautiful quality it could stand on its own, the soft watercolor illustrations portray the emotions of the characters in such lovely detail; the two, the prose and illustrations, combine to create a delightful work of art. Even with the vertical lines of rain which one would expect to stop the motion of the story, Muth manages to create a sense of flowing from left to right, page to page, in keeping with the cadence of the text by using achromatic colors for the backgrounds of most pages. Recommended for children ages 4-8. Public librarians may want to share this title in a storytime about rain, along with Bill Martin's Listen to the Rain.

I found the book "Come On, Rain!" at our local library and immediately picked it up. The first thing you will notice about this beautiful book are the gorgeous ilustrations! The pictures in this book are lovely and the prose is so happy and full of the anticipation everyone feels on a hot summer day while waiting for a cooling rain. You and you children will love this book!

This is an amazing masterpiece. I read it in Chinese when I was in China and at that time I was feeling lost in pursuit of the meaning of life. The story changed my life and I am so influenced by Goldmund. Since I came to a school in Oklahoma, I've been looking for it for a long time. 'cause I don't know its English name and the name of author at that time. Recently, after reading the novel -- "Siddhartha", I suddenly realized that they must be written by the same author. Thanks Amazon.com for giving me a chance to find the book, see so many readers of "Narcissus and Goldmund" and share their comments. The story is fovever on my mind.

As with most Hesse novels, the storyline in Narcissus and Goldmund too, is an elegantly linear one, with few characters and no tangle of events. Much like tea leaves; it appears light on a perfunctory reading but reveals its deep underlying philosophy only when one attempts to read beyond the written words.

This is a tale of two medieval monks at the Mariabronn cloister - Brother Narcissus and his pupil Goldmund - both of whom are on a quest to seek peace and salvation. Though there is a convergence of their ultimate goal, the two strive to achieve it by setting out on two apparently diametrically opposite paths in life.

Blessed with a superbly analytical mind guided by intelligence, reason and logic alone, Narcissus is an ascetic of the highest order. He has shunned the world of senses to devote himself completely to the service of God. By contrast, Goldmund's being is dominated entirely by 'feelings', unshackled by the bonds of intellect. He gives up the austere discipline and abstemious cloister life in pursuit of worldly pleasures as also its pains - the realm of the 'Maya'. (Concept of Hinduism wherein Maya refers is the cosmic illusion that creates ignorance and veils the vision of the one Reality.) He becomes a wondering wayfarer, traveling through sun, snow and rain; swamp and peat; hunger and fatigue. This is symbolic of his journey through life itself. Celebrating life in all its facets, he plumbs the depths of lust, wades through snow fields, surviving on frozen, wilted berries, escaping from the jaws of death. He experiences a surfeit of life's every aspect until he feels they no longer bring him happiness.

A beautiful wooden statue of Madonna in the 'bishop's city' is a turning point in his life. Its beauty touches him so deeply that it ignites his hitherto dormant creative spark and sets it on fire. Awakened, Goldmund decides to try his hand at sculpting. The experience turns out to be so sublime that he sacrifices his 'freedom' at the altar of creative bliss. He settles down to a sedentary life for a few months, giving his heart, soul and fiber to making wonderfully beautiful wooden figures.

While Narcissus represents the masculine mind, Goldmund is the embodiment of all that is feminine- imagination, creation, passion and attachment. The two epitomize the eternal battle between the mind versus the senses, thinker versus the artist. Hesse addresses the perennial question - Which of the two is superior? Which of the two roads is the shorter route to salvation?

The book ends on a very touching note. ...

Like most people, I read Hesse's better known novels like Damien and Steppenwolf first. I found a copy of this at a used book store, bought it, and let it sit on the bookself for a while before actually reading it. Was I surprised - this is one of Hesse's greatest novels.

Hesse takes two young men - one devoted to the hermetic religious life and another more into the decadent artistic life - and follows them through adulthood. There are some amazing scenes here - scenes of great artistic creation, a journey through a plague ravaged world, the reunion of the two friends - that rank among the best things Hesse ever wrote.

True the characters are more "types" than real three dimensional characters. It is obvious that Hesse wants to examine the spiritual/cerebral approach to existence versus the more artistic/physical approach to life, and to find them both wanting. This is less a slice of life novel than a modern parable. Taken on those terms, this novel is Hesse at the height of his powers and deserves to be better known and read than it currently is.

I read the book called A Time Of Angels by Karen Hesse. This is a historical fiction book.
This book is about this girl named Hannah that gets separated from her parents and has to move to her Aunts house in West Boston. After she got there she started working in a store to help her Aunt with food & clothes.
Weeks later she got the flu and got real sick. The flu had killed ten thousand people so far. After she gets her energy back. Tanta Rose and her went to try to get her family together. After month of hard work she got her family together.
I didn't like this book because it was boring. It barley had any action. If you are boring and like boring things you should you should read this book.

I truly enjoyed this book by Karen Hesse. As a future teacher I will add this to my list of historical fiction in teaching social studies and language arts. I had no idea so many people died of the flu in 1918 - nearl two and one half times the number that died during WWI! Karen Hesse does an excellent job of placing ourselves into the life of a young Jewish girl named Hannah. She and her two sisters must live with her two aunts in a crowded Boston apartment because their father is fighting in the war, and their mother is trapped in Russia. She must eventually leave Boston alone because the flu is ravishing the city and her loved ones. She gets lost and is also stricken with the deadly flu. She is nursed back to health by a German farmer and a beautiful friendship develops. She eventually returns to Boston with the help of an angel to find the fate of her family. This is a must read book!

I got this book at a school event where we could choose one book (for free) to take home. I chose this one because I thought it sounded interesting, and although that was over a year ago I still read it. The author has a beautiful way of writing the story so that you can imagine what you would feel like in Hannah's shoes.