The Quokka Question
Claire McNab
Alyson Books
PO Box 1253, Old Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10113-1251
ISBN: 1555839150, $13.95, 183 pages
Arlene Germain
Reviewer
This third installment in Claire McNab's Kylie Kendall mystery series (The Wombat Strategy and The Kookaburra Gambit) has the would-be sleuth more actively involved in solving an actual case, and more interestingly, has Kylie uncovering more secrets about her business partner and object of her affection, the glacial Arianna Creeling. Working undercover as a graduate student from Australia, Kylie has been hired by Penelope and Oscar Braithewaite, the former a professor of sexuality and the latter an expert on marsupials, namely the quokka. These two very different characters also happen to be brother and sister. What starts out as an inquiry into a possible stalker's harassing Penelope and a case of academic fraud involving Oscar, soon develops into something much more lethal. While Kylie attempts to solve the untimely demise of one of the Braithewaites, she uncovers surprising facets of Arianna's past and very seductive present.
McNab has a brilliant way of understating the obvious, of expressing the wit and vulnerability of Kylie, and of creating an air of ephemeral susceptibility for Arianna that surfaces in this novel much to the delight of this reader. Over the course of her three books, McNab has created such sexual tension that one can only hope the fourth in the series is not far from publication. McNab creates this as much through the careful crafting of the verbal exchanges between these two women as the fervently enigmatic facial expressions she attributes to each. Kylie and Arianna are two professional and intelligent women who, though very much alike in some ways, have emotional quandaries that persist and continue to hinder their ability to totally relate to each other. They are both entertainingly flawed in several ways and this aspect both interests and motivates the reader. To say that one could read this novel in one sitting is not an understatement.
Although many authors try to write in the first person narrative, few succeed nearly as well as McNab. The easy flow of events is never muddled by conflicting viewpoints. Kylie's narrative propels the action and helps to develop the plotting without minimizing it in any way. Utilizing this point of view can very often become forced, even tedious. Many beginning authors assume it must be part of the mystery genre, and thus, they fail at creating a substantial work of fiction. McNab is an experienced author whose work has spanned several decades. Her writing is truly a hallmark of the well-crafted lesbian novel. The spare style, the technique of intertwining American and Australian English, and the cast of believable secondary characters all contribute to a novel that satisfies the reader and remains true to core of the series.
The Quokka Question grabs your attention from the strong opening first page. Each chapter has an ending that purposefully invites continued reading, and this is the mark of a genuinely appealing and captivating novel. Series writing can be hard to sustain simply because the characters need to change over time and the plot development demands ever-increasing creativity. As McNab proved with her Carol Ashton mysteries and her Denise Cleever adventures, when an author has created a round, three-dimensional character that possesses some of the very shortcomings of the readers, success is almost guaranteed. In several years this reader believes the same will be written about the Kylie Kendall series.
Beeing: Life, Motherhood, and 180,000 Honeybees
Rosanne Daryl Thomas
The Globe Pequot Press
PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437
ISBN: 1585747319, $22.95, 228 pp.
Coletta Ollerer
Reviewer
The author meets a man at a party who calls himself Farmer Tom. He explains he will be raising some exotic Eastern European berries that, "when crushed and sweetened with honey, made an unusual and unforgettable drink, a nectar worthy of the gods." (p11) She remarks that someday she might want to keep bees and that then she would supply the honey. Tom says start now. He invites her to keep the bees on his land. Her seven year old daughter hears the exchange and becomes very enthusiastic and Rosanne is on her way.
She starts in March with an order for six living pounds of Italian honeybees. They were to arrive in one month, just time enough to prepare the hives. Page 24 shows a drawing of the design of the hives and what is needed to build them.
She purchases a beesuit, beehat and other necessities and, in April, goes to pick up the bees at the beekeeping supplies store where she meets her most useful asset: the Bee Master. His advice is invaluable in her efforts to succeed.
Three bee hives are settled on Farmer Tom's land facing east near the river and close to some trees. Rosanne becomes obsessed with caring for them. Going about their business, the bees occupy themselves doing what bees do. Rosanne gives the reader a good idea of what is going on and it is fascinating. "Analysis of bee temperament is pretty irresistible once you have known them as anything other than something to fear or producers of that which you buy at the market and spread on your toast." (p87) She finds them enchanting. "I would breathe in and in and in, unable to get enough of their mixed flower perfume." (p89) She prepares sugar water for their nourishment until they start collecting nectar on their own. She watches with interest as the bees deposit their load of pollen inside the door of the hive. In the fall she observes that the color of the gathered pollen changes. "Red-amber, marigold-yellow, black and a bright, silvery green." (p113) Other bees collect and store it.
As the summer progresses the Bee Master informs her that she needs to provide a honey super to sit atop the deep super (hive body). She needs to install a `queen excluder' so the Queen cannot gain access to lay eggs. The honey manufactured in the honey super will be only for her use.
In addition to the joy she experiences working with the bees, she is introduced to the beauty of the outdoors. Her work with the bees forces her into a proximity with nature previously unknown to her. She loves it and is dismayed when she returns to the hives one day and finds the field in which they sit completely shorn. Farmer Tom had been advised to cut everything back. That and other events motivate her to find another home for her hives. Fall turns to Winter and the bees hunker down. She looks forward to the spring and another round with her bees. This story of a lady embarking on the life of a bee keeper is a fascinating one. It reads like a novel and this reviewer wouldn't mind trying it herself. A fun read.
Of Flesh and Stone
Michael McGowan
Iceni Books
610 East Delano Street, Suite 104, Tucson, Arizona 85705
www.icenibooks.com
ISBN: 1587365138, $20.95, 271 pp.
Diana Bennett
Reviewer
Comic Books. Is there anyone out there who doesn't know that these four-color publications filled with their drawings of scantly clad well endowed women and muscle bound spandex clad men with masked identities, flowing capes and tales of titanic adventures have not become a collectable commodity with some issues going for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars? And what if it was discovered that buried along with the body of a child who died decades ago lay a box filled with pristine copies of some of the most desired issues any fan could ever crave? So well preserved that the owner of these issues could write their own price tag - and get it.
In the captivating novel Of Flesh and Stone crafted with exquisite skill by Michael McGowan, this is the quandary faced by young Brian Foy. Where most at his tender age of thirteen are playing video games or downloading files from the Internet, Brian prefers to spend his time at the Flower Ridge Cemetery, enjoying the quiet and solitude. It is there that he one day happens to engage in conversation with a man visiting his long in the ground son. Perhaps sensing kindredness with Brian, or maybe endeavoring to converse with someone who is the same age his son was when he passed, the kindly stranger begins to open up, sharing many things about his son. It's when the elderly gentleman mentions how much his boy loved his comics and so out of love he buried them with him does he really get Brian's attention. He finds that of the titles entombed is Action Comics #1 - any collectors' wet dream come true. And so the adolescent soon hatches a plan to make those books his own.
What follows, how he manages to get his hands on the paper treasures and the results of his actions, both positive and negative, takes you as the reader through a captivating series of events. You see the enjoyment of ill-gotten gains through the debauchery of the body and the spirit, as well as the ramifications and repercussions of the act. Author McGowan shows us the underbelly of humanity and the depths of the soul with a vivid and gripping narrative style filled with some of the most unique characters I think I have ever seen that kept me turning pages long after my eyes screamed out for rest.
Of Flesh and Stone is a story that will stay with you for a long time to come, and I am glad I had the chance to see inside the deprived mind and experience the writing style of an author who not only has a lot to say, but knows how to convey it well. I have no doubt there will be more and greater yet to come.
The Imperial Quest and Modern Memory from Conrad to Greene
J. M. Rawa
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group,
270 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016.
ISBN: 0415975522, $65.00
Steve Glassman, Reviewer
www.steveglassman.com
Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past six years, it is no surprise to hear that Pax Americana is back in a big way. Of course, even after Viet Nam it never entirely went away, but for a while there we were picking our victims of foreign aggression carefully. We made sure that they were little guys we could easily knock over. Preferably they would be previous clients of ours, like Manuel Noriega in Panama, so the world could cluck a little but agree overall that we were merely cleaning up our own mess. Sometimes, such as in Somalia, we blundered. More normally we made darn sure our friends and often, as in the first Gulf War, even our former enemies were lined up squarely behind us before embarking on an adventure. Now with the neocons firmly in control in Washington, what just a few years ago would have been if not unthinkable at least unsayable, has now become the stated policy of our government. Against this backdrop, Julia Rawa's The Imperial Quest and Modern Memory from Conrad to Greene, though a scholarly work from a reputable academic press, has something to say to the public at large.
Dr. Rawa, who teaches at Saint Petersburg [FL] College, examines four novels in her critical study, and all of those titles are most likely familiar to everyone reading this review, and most us have probably either read the works or become acquainted with them through their film renditions. The novels are Conrad's Heart of Darkness, E. M. Forster's Passage to India, Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky and Graham Greene's The Quiet American. On the face of it, most of these books appear to examine the colonial presence of the great powers and come up squarely against imperialism. But Rawa shows that while ostensibly giving the thumbs down to domination of foreign realms, the subtext of these books argue powerfully for the "right kind" of imperialism.
For example, it's common knowledge that Conrad was taking on the corrupt Congo regime of Belgian's King Leopold in Heart of Darkness. He shows the pettiness and the incompetence of the European bureaucracy translated to colonial Africa. Most forcibly, he points out what can happen when Europeans pray at the altar of Mammon. The person held in most esteem (and a certain dread) by his Belgian comrades is called Kurtz. His background diverges significantly from many of his money-grubbing coevals. He's educated and an accomplished artist. However, his most important attribute is the ability to amass wealth for the company, and in the process of doing it, his methods become more and more bizarre. Kurtz's eccentric behavior is tolerated as long as he keeps sending those ivory tusks downstream. The fact that his thatch "palace" is decorated with heads impaled on stakes and that, even worse sin against European priggishness, he has taken a native concubine is immaterial as long as the wealth keeps flowing. Oddly enough, for as powerful as Conrad's indictment of the Belgian reign, it was still almost wimpy compared to the real facts of the situation. Belgian operatives held family members hostage while working others to death to gain the wealth that drove the Europeans into the disease-rife interior. Their methods depopulated huge swaths of the country. Conrad bolts were not unleashed at only the Belgians. He has words for the French, whose warship was seen to be firing cannon into the bush "at the enemy." However, placed alongside these jeremiads at the continental powers, he has only good words for the British. When he notes the red on the map, denoting British territorial claims, he remarks that good work is being done there, and in short quietly praises British imperialism and encourages it.
Rawa shows that a similar dynamic is at work in the other three novels she considers. More importantly, she argues that literature does not simply reflect social values but in a significant way shapes them. For that reason, she claims it is imperative that writers--and readers and literary critics (the people after all who are responsible for a writer's success or oblivion)-take careful note of the messages they are sending. Given the age we live in, this work clearly deserves close attention.
Initiation into the Tarot
Naomi Ozaniec
Simon & Schuster (Australia)
PO Box 33, PYMBLE NSW 2073
ISBN: 1884831221, $AU 24.95, 167 pages
Rose Glavas, Reviewer
www.astrologyrealm.com
The author, Naomi Ozaniec, teaches meditation and is a writer (obviously!), and currently runs a correspondence course in the Western Mysteries. As well as being the author of Initiation of the Tarot, she is the author of The Elements of the Chakras and The Elements of Egyptian Wisdom, plus quite a few other titles. Initiation into the Tarot is not a cook-book style of work where you look up the individual meanings of the cards - this is more of a work-book where you journey through the more complex meaning of the Tarot.
Part I of this title starts off with an introduction that talks about initiation, gives a brief history of the Tarot, explains the structure of the deck, and then suggests how to approach your beginning of understanding the cards. Part I is broken into the following sub-sections:
Names and Titles: this covers an introduction to the various characters of the Tarot, e.g. The Fool, The Sun and The Hermit and an exploration of their meanings through their titles.
Symbols and Images: looks at the art of symbolic language and explores mythological figures, angels, the elements, architecture and more.
Archetypes and Meanings: according to Paul Foster Case 'The Tarot is a symbolic wheel of human life.' This chapter looks at the various archetypal patterns and what they mean - some of the archetypes explored include the feminine, the masculine, the heroic, adversity, death/rebirth - and lots more.
Letters and Numbers: looks at the correlation between the Hebrew alphabet, where each letter is a symbol, and forms part of a complete symbol system. It also looks at the following topics - the sepher yetzirah, the autiot - the mother letters, the seven double letters, the cube of space, secret codes, numbers, and more.
Doorways and Keys: looks at each of the trumps as a doorway and a vehicle of initiation into the Tarot through the use of intellect and intuition combined. Topics covered include awakening the intuition - meditation, doorways, the active imagination, and the inner guide.
Stages and Paths: this chapter looks at the relationship between Qabalah and the Tarot. An explanation of this complex system is given through exploration of the structure of the tree of life.
Initiation and Individuation: looks at the process of individuation where initiation is the beginning of this process. This chapter has subheadings of - know thyself, initiation - a new beginning, the psycho synthesis model, the tarot and individuation, and more.
Mandalas and Divination: looks at mandalas - mirrors to the soul and the tarot mandala.
Part II explores The Serpent of Wisdom - a meditation in twenty-two parts that can be used as a whole or in separate parts. It can also be adapted for person use or for group use.
At the back of this title you will find a glossary, notes, bibliography and index (I used the index for a couple of entries and found several errors in page numbers). Naturally, this can be frustrating when you are looking for particular information in a hurry.
All in all, this book is not for those of you wanting a quick-fix, interpretive handbook where you look up one card to find out what it means. Initiation into the Tarot is for those of you who want to integrate the meaning of the complex system of getting in touch with the universal energy flowing around all of us, and bringing meaning to life experiences to not only yourself, but for others as well. This book is more than learning about the cards in a mundane manner, it is about internalizing the Tarot and its meaning.
How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, Second Edition
Theodore Schick Jr. & Lewis Vaughn
Mayfield Publishing
1280 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
ISBN: 0767400136, $36.88, new from Amazon $18.95, 315 pp.
William Harwood
Reviewer
Quite early in this book I recognized that it is extremely elementary. That would be a flaw in a doctoral dissertation. But in a book designed for unlearned teachables, it is a decidedly positive quality. While its logic is not so self-evident that it would be comprehensible to Alfred E. Neumann or George W. Bush, it conveys in easily understood language that the route to reality is to follow scientifically valid procedures. The assumed sophistication of the target audience increases in later chapters, but not to the point where it becomes incomprehensible to undergraduates in disciplines other than education and theology.
To ascertain whether the high school curriculum is propagating belief in pseudoscience, two researchers surveyed a national sample of 190 high-school biology teachers. They found that 43 percent believed that Noah's ark was a fact of history, 20 percent believed in communication with the dead, 19 percent believed that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, 20 percent believed in black magic, 16 percent believed in Atlantis, 22 percent believed in ghosts, 26 percent believed that some races are more intelligent (as opposed to more educated) than others, and 30 percent wanted to teach creationism as an alternative to evolution. The authors concluded that, "The education bureaucracy has become so intractable that even when you know something is wrong, the chances of fixing it are not great" (p. 7). While there is a degree of satisfaction in having my personal observations about North America's teacher-training system confirmed in spades, the down side is nothing less than terrifying. With teachers who try to teach reality being purged before they can raise the question, "How come nobody else is doing that?" and real science being systematically suppressed by the talking chimpanzee in the White House in recognition that his mythology and reality cannot both be true, can devolution to the Dark Ages still be avoided?
The authors state, and I agree, that ESP is neither logically nor physically impossible (provided there is a "fifth force" to explain it, as there almost certainly is not). But I dispute their contention that foreknowledge of the future is not logically impossible. Since it could only exist if information can travel backward in time, I maintain that it is logically impossible. Schick and Vaughn declare that it violates only the laws of physics, not the laws of logic. Is this a purely semantic disagreement? Perhaps.
The chapter debunking the theory that there is no such thing as objective truth can be compared to using a jackhammer to swat an ant. As for solipsism, surely pointing out that only nine-year-olds and Shirley MacLaine take it seriously would have been sufficient?
That memory, even at the best of times, is a reconstruction based partly on reality and partly on selectivity, external influence and wishful thinking, is not widely known or conceded. S & V's treatment of the subject should be mandatory reading for all who insist that what they recall is necessarily what really happened.
While the only thing in How to Think About Weird Things that I would label objectionable is its use of the offensively Christian terminology, AD/BC, rather than the scientifically neutral CE/BCE, there are many irritants. Capitalizing the word God when it is used generically, and capitalizing Him when it refers to the biblical god, are practices that have no place in a scholarly treatise. Stating in one sentence that David Koresh "believed that he was Jesus Christ," and later in the same paragraph identifying him as "believing that he was God," carries a clear implication that the Christian equation of Jesus (a person from history) with God (a purely mythical entity) is objectively true. Even citing Jesus as "Jesus Christ" rubberstamps the pretence that Jesus' belief that he was a prophesied liberator was something other than self-delusion. The reference to "Saint Thomas Aquinas," when "Thomas Aquinas" would have been fully sufficient, reinforces superstition. Referring to Gautama as "Buddha" endorses the pretence that a masochistic psychopath was "Enlightened." And there are secular errors that are equally misleading.
Using the terms "lie detector" and "polygraph" interchangeably endorses the pretence that they are the same thing. They are not. Polygraphs exist. Lie detectors do not exist and perhaps never will. The reason law courts refuse to admit polygraph evidence is that polygraphs are only slightly more accurate than tossing a coin, heads for truth and tails for lie.
The statements that, "Infatuation, for example, may be mistaken for love" (p. 108); "We may believe, for example, that we are in love when we really aren't" (ibid); and a reference to, "subtle behaviors that indicate true love" (p. 113); ignore the reality that "in love" is nothing more than infatuation canonized into an imaginary state of being that is no more real than a "state of grace."
Among the authors' imperfections in Correct English are the use of "one another" instead of "each other" when only two items are compared; principal clauses joined by a comma instead of a semi-colon or a conjunction; and "everybody has the right to believe what they want," using the plural pronoun "they" in connection with the singular antecedent, "everybody" (p. 102). Such imperfections are to be expected from authors who went to school later than 1945, the year teaching officially became illegal in North America and schools were transformed into babysitting institutions in which a passing grade was the minimum reward for not setting fire to the school. Nonetheless, this is a useful book, containing much information with which even skeptics are likely to be unfamiliar, at least in the details. It can be recommended for everyone except unteachables.
The New Health Insurance Solution: How To Get Cheaper, Better Coverage Without a Traditional Employer Plan
Paul Zane Pilzer
John Wiley & Sons
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030
Wiley.com 800-762-2974
ISBN: 0471747157, $24.95, 316 pages
Peter Hupalo
Reviewer
The New Health Insurance Solution: How To Get Cheaper, Better Coverage Without a Traditional Employer Plan is written for individuals and business owners who want to learn more about the new Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).
New legislation allows individuals to combine a high-deductible health insurance policy with a special tax-advantaged account called a health savings account. Similar to an IRA or 401(k), amounts contributed to an HSA aren't subject to income tax. The money can accumulate tax-deferred over any number of years and isn't forfeited if it isn't used.
If the money is used for qualified medical expenses, withdrawals aren't taxed. This allows you to pay for medical expenses with pretax (and untaxed) dollars. If a withdrawal isn't used for medical expenses, the withdrawal is treated as a withdrawal from a 401(k). In particular, people over age 65 can withdraw the money at any time for any purpose, but would pay income tax on withdrawals not used for qualified medical expenses.
Because of the double tax benefit, Pilzer argues, you should fully fund an HSA before contributing to an IRA or a 401(k). The catch is that you must have a high-deductible health insurance policy to open an HSA.
Pilzer says company health plans often aren't price competitive, because companies sometimes don't care about the cost. I don't fully agree with this. Universities, governments, and larger companies are probably going to be able to negotiate much better plans than individuals. I think this explains some of the high costs of these plans.
So, for those with individual plans with solid coverage who can afford them, I'd look before I'd leap into a new HSA-qualified insurance plan. If you can increase your deductible without any other issues, doing so might work out great. If you already have a high-deductible health insurance plan, it seems adding a health savings account is a no-brainer.
For those lacking health insurance or those who really need to minimize their annual premiums, Pilzer's book is particularly valuable. It seems the ideal person for an HSA is somebody with modest or high earnings who is relatively young and healthy. That allows the person to save a portion of the deductible each year.
You'll need to hunt around on your own to find a desirable institution to hold your HSA, especially if you want one to hold stocks. Pilzer notes there are hundreds of firms offering health savings accounts and soon there should be thousands. Yet, the main discount brokerage firms seem to be no-shows so far. And Pilzer doesn't recommend any institutions in particular.
For those who can afford to save the amounts paid for healthcare each year and pay out-of-pocket for healthcare, Pilzer offers an intelligent strategy: Pay for your care without using dollars in the HSA. Pilzer points out you get the tax benefit of the HSA by contributing to it, the reimbursement can always be made later--even years later--and this allows you to maximize future savings for healthcare. The result could be that you have several hundred thousand dollars saved for your future healthcare when you are older and most need it.
Pilzer says his own "superdeluxe" policy only costs him $400 a month for a family plan covering him (age 51--the highest age in the plan is a major factor in its cost), his wife, and his four children. His deductible is about $5,000. That sounds like an incredible deal. But, without knowing what he considers "SuperDeluxe," it's difficult to compare it to other plans.
In addition to discussing HSA's, Pilzer covers several important topics, including:
* How To Get Affordable Medical Care When You Are Over Age 55
* Health Reimbursement Accounts and Defined Contribution Health Benefits (for business owners)
* How To Save Money On Prescription Drugs
* Options For Those Who Are "Uninsurable" Due To Preexisting Conditions
* Financing Long-Term or Nursing Home Care
The New Health Insurance Solution: How To Get Cheaper, Better Coverage Without a Traditional Employer Plan provides a wealth of information about healthcare in America. We learn:
* Healthcare costs in America are rising at 15% a year.
* Americans spend 17% of the GDP for healthcare.
* Every GM car's cost includes $1,550 for employee health coverage.
* 24% of prescriptions written each year aren't filled because of the cost.
* Uninsured people are often pay twice as much for hospital care as the insured.
Pilzer writes: "While there is nothing wrong with large customers bargaining for better prices, today there is no longer any true 'retail' price in medical care. Providers have artificially inflated their retail prices two to five times just to meet ridiculous contracts forcing them to give 50 to 80 percent discounts to large purchasers. The terrible side effect is that the working poor and other people without health insurance are charged two to five times the price paid by most people for healthcare--and often are driven to bankruptcy when they cannot pay these exorbitant prices."
Pilzer offers some good suggestions for improving the healthcare situation, such as forcing all healthcare providers to disclose their prices. However, unlike Pilzer, I don't believe a "free market" will solve the healthcare problem America faces today. Most other countries have regulated medical costs and have taken other steps to protect their citizens from extortion by medical and drug companies. That's why prices are so much lower in other countries. So, while HSAs are a great development, they're hardly a "solution" to the cost of healthcare in America.
How to Promote, Advertise & Market Your Published Book
Mary Cox-Bilz and Arline Chase
Cambridge Books
2934 Old Route 50, Cambridge, MD 21613
ISBN: 0970615213, $9.95, 71 pp.
Jacque Stonehocker
Reviewer
This little book really packs a punch! Inside you'll find page after page of well defined, easy-to-accomplish tasks that are sure to propel the marketing of your book forward. Written by an accomplished marketing guru and a talented writing instructor and publisher, they quickly get to the nitty-gritty of getting your book sold. This step-by-step guide gives you numerous techniques that you can easily incorporate into your marketing plan to give it the boost that you desire. This may well be the best money you'll ever spend on a marketing book. Its pocket size is just right to carry in your briefcase or have on your desk. Keep it handy; you'll refer to it often.
The Rose Sisters Trilogy
Victoria Rose
Outskirts Press
10940 S. Parker Rd - 515, Denver, CO, USA
www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 1598001663, $15.95, 399 pp.
Kaye Trout
Reviewer
As the author kindly sent me a copy, I decided to review the book for her. I found the story to be uniquely different from the standard run-of-the-mill, formula-type novels, as it does not fit into one particular genre. It is really multi-genre, and if I had to classify it, I'd select science fiction/new wave: science fiction because it's about alien shape-shifting women and new wave because it deals with the softer sciences-psychology, ecology, sociology, overpopulation, religion. However, there are strong facets of romance, mystery and erotica.
I can't say this is a fast-paced read because there are technical, historical, and philosophical elements which, if you want to learn something from the book, you need to slow down to absorb, such as the physics of light, sexual anatomy, historical facts about the Comanche Indians. Her style of writing is smooth. I feel her characters come to life, and there are elements of humor. Her theme throughout is strong and clear.
In telling Mac about her culture, Christina said, "Wars . . . why would we have wars? We are all one community working to care for our planet and our future generations. I'm sorry, but because your people do not understand that they are one community, they are not caring for your living planet very well. Actually, they are slowly killing it out of ignorance, greed, and selfish desires for power and control. Why would intelligent people want to drop bombs and make holes in the living organism that feeds them? Why would they want to pollute the air they breathe and the water they drink? My sisters and I have concluded that the level of human intelligence among the leaders of your countries is not very high. A simple ant colony has more intelligence."
This novel would appeal to adult readers who are looking for something different-an educational, fun, thought-provoking story. The climax is not as dramatic as some might like and there's a significant issue which was not resolved, which leads you to believe that there will be a sequel.
In The Rose Sisters Trilogy, the author has combined the three short novels: Christina, Toni, and Josy. Her latest non-fiction book titled, Ladies, Ten Clues to Finding You: Options for Women in Unhealthy Relationships will be published in April 2006, and the sequel to this trilogy, Trust Me, the Devil Said, published by June 2006.
I Can't Believe I Just Did That
David Allyn, Ph.D.
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin
New York, NY
www.penguin.com
ISBN: 1585423610, $14.95, 256 pp.
This book offers advice for people who suffer from unnecessary embarrassment and shame in personal and professional situations. These are the kind of people who lie in bed at night and say to themselves: "I Can't Believe I Just Did That." Allyn's writing style is very comfortable and easy to understand, and is punctuated with personal anecdotes, case studies, and examples from the media.
The author suggests ways in which we can reduce our self-defeating attempts at image control. These relationship-ending behaviors include withdrawal, deception, and intimidation, which we use as ways of hiding our embarrassment at our own inadequacies.
The book is divided into two main sections: Spirals of Shame and Spirals of Success. A small section at the end offers tips about how to live courageously. "I Can't Believe I Just Did That" should be a great help to people who are unaware of how their own behavior is damaging their relationships. The broad (rather than deep) approach to the material, however, may not be as valuable to those who already have some degree of self-awareness, but want an in-depth analysis of how to curb their feelings of embarrassment.
The Wave
Walter Mosley
Aspect
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.twbookmark.com
ISBN: 0446533637, $22.95, 209 pp.
Mona Lisa Safai
Reviewer
In the literary world, Walter Mosley excels as one of the most diverse writers in contemporary times. His newest novel The Wave arrives as a fantasy into the human potentialities which possess the human spirit. Mosley writes a story about past misgivings, the world's follies, and the possibilities for an enlightened future generated through understanding and rebirth.
In The Wave, Errol Porter, a young African American man, recently separated from his wife, begins to receive crank calls in the middle of the night. After several nights, the caller proclaims he is Errol's deceased father. His voice, identical to his father's, possesses Errol to visit his father's grave. At the cemetery, he wrestles a youthful man to the ground; his face and body appear exactly as a younger version of his father. Their encounter begins a journey into Errol's past and frightening battle to survive among the human race.
Mosley is the author of over twenty novels; genres ranging from nonfiction, fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, and, of course, his Easy Rawlins Detective series books. While several authors remain in one or two genres, Mosley shifts and sways between several illustrating his unique talent as a writer and observer of human nature, politics, and the world. His main characters are instrumental storytellers of societal wellbeing, whether healthy or ill, for his audience. He effectively manages to incorporate realistic views of world events regardless of genre. In The Wave, Mosley intertwines political controversies and science fiction by engaging the reader's attention to current domestic and international events which continuously threaten civil liberties, freedoms, and basic concepts of humanity. In The Wave, Mosley introduces the idea that human beings' idea of fear, in a sense, is manmade. Nothing stands to reason that they may be conquered or overpowered by any other life-form other than their own imagination.
The author writes in a myriad of genres by his own volition and sense of purpose. He wants to positively affect the writing profession. Throughout the years, he continues to lay a foundation of black heroes for a new movement in writing, "Ghetto Fiction," which introduces readers to black authors. In turn, black authors create new worlds which audiences explore and examine all diversities. In the past, black writers found it more difficult to publish their work unless they were exceptional. Now, Mosley is leading a new phenomenon forward allowing more room for black authors to pursue, publish, and share their talent in many writing arenas of choice.
Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads
Greil Marcus
Public Affairs
250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107
ISBN: 1586482548, $25.00, 283 pp.
T. B. Robbins
Reviewer
Within "Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads" lies the biography of a single song. Of course, not just any song, but the "how does it feeeeeel?" song that refuses to disappear since its release as a two-sided 45 lp in 1965. Has any other or, maybe a better question would be, could any other song receive the in-depth, data mined, ultra-nuanced treatment that Greil Marcus gives to Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone"?
That the song remains legendary no one probably doubts. That it stands as one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded may also not meet with much disagreement. But an entire book dedicated to a single song? The idea seems both strange and enticing.
So what happens in this book? And who should read it? First off, this book will probably not appeal to readers who don't see a connection between popular music, popular culture, our lives as consumers/listeners, and how a song can take on a life of its own (which explains the "biography" moniker). Not only that, some readers may look askew at some of Marcus' claims. For example, did "Like A Rolling Stone" contain the seeds for a "strange revolution"? And does the song have, for lack of a better term, an ineffable metaphysical category all of its own (as some of the rhapsodic descriptions in this book suggest)? Those who like to play music, dance to it, and not think much about it will probably close this book quickly. In other words, this is a heady book for those who enjoy digging into the mystique of popular music and theorizing about what makes it tick. Marcus descends to levels of granularity that don't seem possible when discussing popular music. Consequently, some of the text makes for thick reading, and, without a share of Marcus' encyclopedic knowledge, some of his obscure references approach the incomprehensible.
Still, this rather short book bloats with interesting historical facts about Bob Dylan, the origins of the famous song, multifarious perspectives on its meaning, interpretations of its lyrics, the recording sessions, and samplings of its concert history. Some of these contain new information (for example, an examination of songs in which the words "Rolling Stone" have appeared, the history of the actual Highway 61, and the pop culture scene of the early 1960s - which is helpful for those of us who weren't there). Other stories will seem very familiar to longtime Dylan fans (for example, the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where the crowd booed Dylan, how Al Kooper ended up playing the organ on the song, and the infamous "Judas" remark). The book's epilogue contains a near play by play of the song's 1965 recording session. At one point it almost got away from the group and ended up in the reject pile. But was the historic take an "accident" as Marcus claims?
Marcus unfortunately leaves out some curiosities. For example, Dylan included a strange and sloppy version of "Like A Rolling Stone" on the monolithic and bizarre "Self-Portrait". In that version Dylan even forgets the lyrics and instead mumbles gibberish. What was that all about? And what about Dylan's song "Highway 51 Blues" from his first album? What highway was that and can any connection be drawn from that song to the 1965 album? Also, Marcus quotes the line "Highway 61, go right past my baby's door" on page 167. But this line appears in the song "Highway 51 Blues" but as "Highway 51, go right past my baby's door." Did he mix the two up or is there some assumed and implied historical knowledge in that passage?
In the end, it's hard to describe exactly what this book offers. For one, it contains loads of philosophical speculation about the song. And it transfers an overwhelming wealth of knowledge on this single subject to the dedicated reader. So much so, that upon finishing the book, all the vast disparate information mingles dizzingly in the brain (and just try not singing "how does it feeeel" continuously). And it begs one major question: is this song as significant as Marcus claims? The answer to and degree of that question ultimately depends on the person asking it. Admittedly, this book is not for everyone. It's a specialist's book. Those who find themselves wondering how a song transforms from studio to legend or how an artist struggles with a song as it takes on a life of its own will likely love every page. But those who want to dance or groove should close the book and turn on their stereos. Nonetheless, the book may shine a light on the prickly phenomema of popular music and may help reveal its mystical and capricious underneath. After all, there's more to a great song than just notes.
The 100-Mile Walk
Sander A. Flaun & Jonathon A. Flaun
AMACOM
ISBN: 081440863X, $24.95, 252 pages
Roger E. Herman, Reviewer
http://www.hermangroup.com
Walk 50 miles in my moccasins
Leadership is not a one-way experience, with a superior directing a subordinate. To be an effective leader, it is essential to understand---and learn from those you seek to lead. It's at least a two-way experience. When good leaders practice their skills, they discover new perspectives from others around them and, with enlightening growth, gain from the interaction. Native Americans are reputed to have captured this concept by counseling that "you cannot judge another until you have walked a mile in his moccasins."
This insight-filled book tells the story of a father and son exploring leadership---from much different perspectives. Father Sander is 65 and, based on the comparison profile at the start of the book, practically a stereotypical icon of a hard-driving Type A CEO. Son Jonathon is 36 and a fine representative of a much different generation and a student of Zen. The two agree to walk 50 miles on the paths of each other's lives, exploring leadership. This design holds great promise, and the authors met the opportunity part-way. Most of the writing comes from the father - it is obviously his book, with commentary by his son. While there is certainly value in Jonathon's contribution, his counterpoints could have been stronger, adding more balance to the presentation.
The authors explore nine leadership concepts people, purpose, passion, performance, persistence, perspective, paranoia, principles, and practice. Walking on the streets of New York, golf courses, or mountain trails, father and son talk about their different views of leadership and life. Mixed in are lessons and insights from corporate leaders who have much to share - attitudes and understandings that stimulate the reader's thinking from both father and son's perspectives.
How did these leaders come into the picture? Sander Flaun is chair of the Leadership Forum at Fordham University. He brings these leaders to serve as lessons and examples for MBA students. Through his book, Flaun extends their value to his readers.
All together, 100-Mile Walk is a thought-provoking journey for the reader. As I read this book, I was struck by another adage: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." For the millions of Baby Boomers seeking to find themselves and determine what's really important as they move toward their fifties, sixties, and lifestyle choices. You'll find this book to more than just another leadership tome.
The End of Time
David Horowitz
Encounter Books
665 Third Street, #350 San Francisco, California 94107-1951
ISBN: 1594030804, $15.00
James Talboy
Reviewer
This 155 page book was written at a time when the USA was absorbed by images of the Pentagon and WTC September 11, 2001 aftermath. Unfortunately for the author, it was also a time when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The book then is about death. But then the author, a self proclaimed agnostic, contrasts his own understanding with what might be believed about "a culture of death" that which Mohammed Atta represented.
Do the "pictures stop" is naturally a common and unanswerable question no matter how relevant to the living. For an agnostic, of course these are more troubling questions. As such, to answer such poignant questions his book must rely on psychological and historical figures as examples. Looking outside oneself for answers seems typical then at times, for an agnostic, and so does "psyching out" death generally itself seem typical of an intellectual. Mohammed Atta represented then something of a problem for not only religious persons he despised, but especially for agnostics who might not fathom how such ideas are taken seriously. Atta, with all his self proclaimed moral rectitude, with all his arrogance as claiming to be Allah's hand, likely scares agnostics more than the religious among us. Atta, of course was a damnable person in real life, as in the ever after, for those particular reasons alone.
I feel this book is incomplete without much more of what else motivated Horowitz. Of course we learn something of his family, their activism, and how it formulated the author's reaction overall to the why and wherefore of Atta's extremism. What we don't know however is that we are reading a book which might have been written by another "destroyer" who is as controversial as was the first: Emmanual Kant. Moses Mendelssohn, Kant's contemporary, was responsible for giving him that name and it seems appropriate that Horowitz shares it today in much the same circumstance.
Prior to the alleged revolutionary 1789 French "slave revolt," Kant too was battling much the same smug academic forces, including the willful blindness of his former compatriots who refused to believe what was happening around them. They shunned him. In the end though Kant was able, like the present day "destroyer" dares to do, to enable an academic university revolution. So, what we are not treated to, in this passionate little book, are somewhat relevant ties to what lies unfinished in the author's life as he was at risk of dying.
Horowitz is "guilty," at least pardoned as a political apostate, as seeing changes, realizing uncomfortable conflicts, having aided and abetted now changes directions. But, then he was not alone, only one of the more visible cyberspace pioneers who, like many of us are on the far side of life now. Kant as well, was not mislead by idealism's promise in late eighteenth century Germany. It seems that this current state of affairs, of which the latest "destroyer" once supported, is again the result of that same old thought process Kant denounced: general idealism.
After being mislead for sometime, like so many others, and having worked toward vague idealistic ends in spite of the actual record, Horowitz muses over what seems to be his reward for surviving cancer. He began working harder, fleeing the hospital early, boggling squeamish interviewers, and driven much more by a new conscious of his limitations. It is an old story. The next chapter of the author's life will be of interest to anybody who keeps track of what happens to broad classes of creative individuals when death is sensed or on the doorstop. As such, we might now expect the typical writer to become even more prolific, however I think it would be more interesting for general readers, if this book was read along with his other previous writing.
Kant seemed to believe that after "Critique of pure reason," that it was his best effort. In those days life was more difficult of course, and three hundred years later today we have recycled old missile silos for medical experiments and "curing" prostate cancer which makes redemption that more possible. The ethical ramifications of that early work under laid much of the "so called" Enlightenment rationalism, and much too of what underlies the process behind reusing missile silos in such a manner, and as many others as well Kant never lived to see his ideas impact on science. But Kant too wondered loudly, endlessly, and bitterly about his countrymen's blindness regarding a then current political threat to that country.
As such too, this bit of irony is likely not lost in the present day "destroyer" who obviously has been reading history, since at least the days before academia was cheapened or corrupted again by events in late twentieth century USA. However, in this book are pieces of a fall-summer relationship that aside from Atta's maniacal rectitude form a common theme, surrounded by memories of Horowitz's parent's reactions or inaction to communism, and some Kantian musings about certain kinds of sociological "blindness."
Appearances are not the end all. Apostates understand this better than most, as what names Kant was called, and how he too responded in kind actually. So if the "pictures end," then what might be left is an unsightly bad residue on our side, but also might be quite a relief elsewhere as false appearances then no longer matter. On the other hand then, having glimpsed this "oil slick" of which Horowitz was once responsible, now too will he seek redemption and denounce the apparatus? There are mortal penalties for ignoring "the hand of God" too, and as well what politics might wrought if we willfully ignore the threats this nation faces.
It might seem ironic, though not at all funny, the author already had embarked on criticizing the former path, lost so-called friends, had attracted a cyberspace collection of readers over ten years at least, and then was facing an early death while much unfinished work was left as well as a loyal loving wife. His book likely mirrors common thoughts and concerns of many families left behind, and those of us destined -whether we like it or not, to live well beyond appearances end and must be prepared. In a way, it is what someone would show a child about an ancestor who no doubt will be scrutinized for a long time. It is a spiritual book, by a literary political agnostic of great learning and controversy, who barely mentions this fact, and has some very darkly titled chapters that are not quite as graphic as hinted, but probably reflect the peculiar nature of his generation's "gallows" humor.
So for everyone, this single book does show or contrast the outer and inner world, of a self proclaimed agnostic, and explores questions almost everybody, even Pascal, had or will ask themselves about death. Not only does it try to "psych" out death for the author, but similarly explores what a criminal fundamentalist might know or believe about death. It needs time, and will become more detailed, as now though "The End of Time" is akin a small, though specific "post card" given how prolific Horowitz actually is and likely remain. Among the other books this author has written, it might be part of a much wider coherent collection of writings which are found in cyberspace or hardcopy and which, no doubt, like the other "destroyer" will be hard to ignore after the ideas are no longer tied with an originators names.
Sonya Taaffe has emerged on the literary scene in recent years both as a poet (she won the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award in 2003, placing her in the elite company of such poets as Ursula K. LeGuin and Joe Haldeman) and as an author of short fiction, her work appearing regularly in magazines such as Not One of Us and Zahir. Noted for its rich use of words, her early work has now appeared in two volumes; the first, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, representing her poetry and a few of her shortest stories, and the second, Singing Innocence and Experience, giving us primarily her longer fiction. It is the latter I will consider here.
Reviewing Taaffe's work must always begin with a consideration of her use of language. As Tim Pratt's introduction reminds us, words are central to her; she is a scholar and a linguist whose knowledge of Greek, Latin and Akkadian gives her a rich store of mythology to draw upon and interpret (though her work is by no means limited to the myths of these three cultures), as well as an understanding not only of English but of human language itself. In both her poetry and her prose words do more than communicate, do more than simply give us the bare essentials of plot or character the way the language of most modern fiction does. Instead, the words themselves, their cadence, their rhythm, their rich flow of syllables, are all an essential part of the story. One can revel in the beauty of a sentence or a paragraph, should one chose to do so. Consider the following:
"The dream was dissolving like sand, crumbling down in cold shadow over wind-haunted stone and faces that were neither animal nor human but immortal. Sculpture and bright paints on tomb-wall plaster were only the barest sketches of ambiguity, of certainty and terror; but he saw the scales swinging, the feather rising and the other pan dipping with the weight taken from the deepest places in him, the record of his heart." (from Featherweight)
This can make Taaffe's storytelling challenging to a reader raised on and accustomed to the sparse, hurried styles that dominate fiction today, particularly in genres such as Science Fiction and Fantasy, where plot and clever worldbuilding have in recent years become hallmarks. It can take time to find your way into a Sonya Taaffe story, but for those who venture in, that time is well spent, because there is always much more to her fiction than appears at first glance. While her prose is beautiful, Taaffe's real strength lies in her uncanny ability to reveal the human nature behind mankind's own mythology, the reasons old myths have power. Hers is a world of ideas as well as art.
A few examples among the many in this collection serve to illustrate this point. "Shade and Shadow", Taaffe's first published story, brings us the myth of Orpheus and Eurydike, he whose music and voice were so beautiful they nearly cheated death itself, and whose disembodied head still sings in a mournful sort of immortality. Yet "Shade and Shadow" is more than simply a retelling of this old story, for Taaffe places this myth in the world of today, into the life of one Cairo Pritchard, whose loneliness is marked by using her own blood to speak to the dead rather than communicate in the world of the living. Taaffe contrasts the longing for life found in all of us with the recognition that life cannot be spent fruitfully dwelling on death, and does so in a way true to both the ancient Greek myth and to our existence today.
In "Clay Lies Still", we meet a golem, a creature from Jewish mythology, formed from clay with the Hebrew letters "aleph-dalet-mem" ("Adam" or man), and capable of being destroyed by the simple act of wiping away the first letter to give us "dalet-mem" (blood) (another golem tradition uses "aleph-mem-tav" (truth), and "mem-tav" (death)). But it is not so simple here, for if a golem lives, can it be a moral act to destroy it? Here Taaffe's characters must struggle with this question, one asked by all of us today: what is life? Not being human, the golem has no place in our world, no meaning it can find by living among us. In "Clay Lies Still" it was created simply to see if it could be done, the ambitious experiment of an enthusiastic student of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. As we struggle with our own modern questions over abortion and cloning and stem-cells, Taaffe makes us look at these questions in a unique way. As with most great writers, she does not propose a solution, but merely poses the unanswerable conundrum that cannot help but haunt us.
Another question of choice emerges in "Till Human Voices Wake Us", the story of a boy whose sister has fallen in love with a merman. Her love is real, both for her brother and her lover in the sea, but it is clear as we read that a choice must be made, that the sister is growing less human, is caught between worlds, in that transitional space between the past and future. She cannot be both human and mermaid, and her brother knows this. This again is a universal shown through myth; we all change with time, old friends and old ways of being passing behind us as life progresses, and there is pain to this, both for those moving forward and those left behind.
The above are merely examples. Each story in this collection provides a further example of Taaffe's deft hand. She can build worlds, as we see in the haunting story of Aruis, the city eternally sinking in "Time May Be", but her real strength is her ability to find and present meaning, to take fiction and make the fantastic found in myth relevant to life today. This is, of course, what gives myth its strength, what makes the old stories immortal. They can be retold because the germ of truth they contain, and the eternal questions they pose, will always be with us. Mythology becomes real in the hands of Sonya Taaffe because she understands this.
Seniors in Love: A Second Chance for Single, Divorced and Widowed Seniors
Robert Wolley
Hatala Geroproducts
23212 Merl Road, Greentop, MO 63546
ISBN: 1933167424, $19.95, 240 pages
Kathy Yasenka
Reviewer
The sub-title, "A Second Chance for Single, Divorced and Widowed Seniors," describes this beautifully written book. Wolley specifically addresses those in their sixties and beyond who "are…separated from your former partner, or perhaps never having partnered." "…you're asking if, at your age, you can be in love again, if you want to be in love again, and if so, whether you should reach out toward someone, and if you do, how does an elder behave?" The U.S. Census Bureau begins to pinpoint seniors at age 65, so Wolley has hedged a bit with age. Even so, in 2005 there are about 40 million seniors, 65 years or older, and by 2020 when most of the baby-boomer generation reaches age 65, there will be at least 55 million seniors. So what?
While the federal and state governments just finished up a scheduled (December 2005) White House Conference on Aging where the concerns will be healthcare, workforce reductions, declining tax revenues, and tax breaks for the elderly, seniors are loving, marrying and "carrying on" in record numbers, and the majority of partnered seniors are living together without benefit of marriage. Seniors are participating in their own quiet cultural revolution. In the meantime, Wolley says, "…you are in the September of your life. And you are single. Things happen. Affection happens. Love happens." "And therein lies one of the senior generation's mysteries (at least for those not yet seniors): how, and maybe why, do seniors fall in love and practice intimacy?" And deal with children, finances, issues of morality? Wolley helps you ask the questions - and good counselor that he is, he helps you discover YOUR answers to the perplexing and nagging questions most seniors have. The Seniors in Love chapters are based on the author's poem, "The Steps of Love": Love, Discovering, Reaching Out and so on through Lovemaking and Singing.
In a way it's an arbitrary division, yet it's artfully done, dealing with numerous issues, and since Wolley draws on years of experience as a counselor, the quotations and cases mentioned add depth and breadth to his insights. The chapter Reality Check is pertinent and to the point. Lovemaking (he insists it be one word) will disappoint the voyeur-minded, but like all the other chapters, it's to the point without going into descriptive sexual techniques. Helpful? There are few books for seniors or otherwise as down to earth as this one - and as relevant and worth reading - for any age. It's a must read book.
"Silent Lies" is a historical novel that decidedly deserves the occasionally overused term, "sweeping" and the book's fascinating settings have much to do with this. Placed in the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century and set initially in Hungary - a country not often associated with world war novels - the story is a compelling combination of historical research and crackling description. The book first explores the vast difference between Hungary's feudal countryside and its sophisticated capital, then touches on the brief post-WWI communist takeover of the country before plunging into another fascinating but fictionally underused setting: Shanghai. It is there that we experience the wild abandon of the 20's followed by the rumblings of the second world war.
It's well for the book that the settings are so exciting and artfully described because the book is definitely driven by it's plot, not its main character; it would have been difficult to create a character-driven novel with a protagonist like Leo Hoffman. He is a Hungarian national whose flair for languages make him difficult for other characters to categorize and a chameleon-like personality to match: "so subtle were his methods of imitation - a stance, a gesture, a slight inflection of speech - that no one suspected his whole demeanor was one of camouflage." Because he is so practiced in the art of camouflage, however, I initially couldn't find myself concerned about his fate and especially wondered why Malcolm included an early steamy, loveless sex scene between Leo, someone I hardly cared about and Countess Julia, someone I hardly knew, a minor character who seemed to be created just for that one scene.
When Leo meets his true love, however, the stars change, not only for him but also for the reader. Martha Levy, a well-delineated character, falls for Leo, he falls for her and the reader falls for them both. Malcolm expertly sets their new love in the growing turbulence of pre-war Shanghai and from that point on, the book officially becomes a "page-turner" in the very best tradition of historical fiction. Even if Malcolm wasn't a first-time novelist, Silent Lies would be a phenomenal achievement; the sequel will be much anticipated.
TV a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol
Jake Austen
Chicago Review Press
Chicago IL
ISBN: 1556525729, $18.95, 368 pages
According to author Jake Austen, televised rock music is in some ways an impossible combination . . . and one that he absolutely adores. Rock music is essentially "wild, raw, and dangerous" but when Bo Didley first performed it on the Ed Sullivan show in 1955, television and rock music began a long partnership which proved, according to Austen, that "one of the best ways to present [rock's] energy is to impose structure, make it adhere to the laws of entertainment." His delightful book, TV a-Go-Go explores the myriad manifestations of this partnership.
Austen, who produces his own children's television dance show called "Chic-a-Go-Go," has a feel for what worked and what didn't and his intelligent opines are a delight to read. His opinion of the Monkees was not only wonderfully affirming for me - a die-hard Monkees fan, married for 18 years to a 60's garage band rock purist who has always despised the "pre-fab four" - but it also clearly illustrates his general opinion of televised rock: "as far as I'm concerned, any documented band . . . is far more real than a gritty brilliant band that rehearses in a garage but never records or plays a show . . . in my opinion every band that has ever appeared on a record or a TV show or a movie is real."
Besides covering famed televised artists, such as the Monkees, the Beatles, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, Austen's book spills a large amount of ink on lesser known shows such as kiddie rock cartoons. Having spent my 1960's childhood in a home where a juke box - kept well stocked by older rock 'n' rolling siblings - vied for maximum electrical wattage with a constantly running television, I often watched, not only the prime-timed Monkees, but also an animated, Saturday morning show called "The Beatles." I seem to recall that the theme song was "Hard Day's Night" and because Ringo kept insisting that "droppin' a G never hurt anybody," of course a giant G kept falling on his head.
Until reading TV A-Go-Go, however, I didn't realize that the animated mop-tops show was a sign of a seismic cultural shift. "The Beatles," which was the first of many successive cartoons to market rock to kiddies, was, according to Austen, a sign that "the old guard," - the adults who thought "that the Rat Pack in tuxedos was running the show" - were no longer a serious cultural influence." Rock 'n' Roll was here to stay.
Austen's self-described "absurdly broad book" has almost negated his introductory claim that "a comprehensive overview of all rock on TV is impossible." TV A-Go-Go has come profoundly and entertainingly close to attaining that impossibility and is a delightfully informative read for anyone with the slightest interest in televised rock.
Robin: The Loveable Morgan Horse
Ellen F. Feld
Willow Bend Publishing
P.O. Box 304, Goshen, MA 01032
ISBN: 0970900252, $9.95, 204 pages
"Robin: The Loveable Morgan Horse," fourth in a series by horsewoman Ellen Feld, introduces two new characters: Karen Greene and her "loveable" horse, Robin. Karen, a relative newcomer to horses, experiences a physically and emotionally damaging accident (with another horse) in the first chapter which drags her riding confidence down to zero. Heather, a teenaged character from the previous books and an experienced horsewoman, helps Karen develop the assurance necessary to begin riding again.
As the title suggests, though, the real hero of the book is Robin, whose bond with her owner goes far towards healing Karen's emotional scars. Feld obviously knows horses: not only do her descriptions of the animals ring solidly true, but she captures the emotional attachment between horse and human beautifully.
The book could almost be called a treatise on horse care; in fact that's basically what it is. There is a storyline, but it seems, at times, to exist only for the purpose of horsemanship education. Is this a problem? It can be; the fictional quality of a story can suffer when its main function is to promote a non-fictional point. For example, Feld spends four entire pages describing the treatment of something called "horse rot." While this is obviously something horse owners should know about, the storyline comes to a complete halt while this issue is discussed by two of the book's characters. The didactic elements of "Robin" are all worthwhile, but they also occasionally overpower the fictional aspects of the story.
Robin is, however, truly a loveable and well-delineated horse, and the adventures she shares with her owner Karen make for a sweet story and one that will appeal particularly to animal lovers.
Kathryn Atwood
Reviewer
Bethany's Bookshelf
Praying With Our Feet
Lisa D. Weaver, author; Ingrid Hess, illustrator
Herald Press
616 Walnut Avenue, Scottdale, PA 15683-1999
0836193067 $12.99 1-800-759-4447 www.heraldpress.com
Inspired by the actions taken by Mennonite Church congregations in opposition to the Iraq War of 2003, Praying with our Feet is a Christian picturebook about going on a walk for peace, just as Jesus Christ once walked the path of peace. Told through the eyes of a young girl who walks with her mother and the congregation, Praying with our Feet tells of the great march and the adventure, and the importance of speaking up so the government can hear one's voice. Bright, colorful illustrations, an afterword for adults, and simple music for the song "Praying with our Feet", which can be sung or played, round out this heartfelt picturebook about standing up for one's beliefs.
I Chose You
Lindsey Shumway, author; Amy Hintze, illustrator
Cedar Fort
925 North Main Street, Springville, UT 84663
1555178618 $15.99 1-800-388-3727 www.cedarfort.com
I Chose You is an endearing picturebook. Told from the point of view of a parent, the story begins, "One day in heaven a long time ago, Heavenly Father led me by the hand into a big room filled with children. He told me that today was a special day; it was the day I got to pick out my very own child." The story and inviting illustrations show all sorts of boys and girls, each with different likes and dislikes, from math and painting to football, camping, computers and video games. And out of the long line of wonderful possibilities, "I looked at every one of those children. And I chose you." The soft color illustrations reinforce the inviting message of the parent-child bond.
Josie's Gift
Kathleen Long Bostrom, author; Frank Ordaz, illustrator
Broadman & Holman Publishers
127 Ninth Avenue, North, Nashville, TN 37234
0805430202 $16.99 1-800-251-3225 www.broadmanholman.com
Josie's Gift is a children's picturebook about the true meaning of Christmas. Beautifully illustrated with museum- quality artwork by Frank Ordaz, the story is about a young girl whose father died a year ago, and who hopes to receive a beautiful blue sweater as a Christmas gift. She years for it, thinking that having it will fill the void deep inside. Her mother teaches her that "Christmas is not about what we want. It's about what we have." But it's not until a family with a baby comes by in need of shelter that she remembers what the Christmas nativity display really means. By giving her blue sweater to the baby, and giving thanks to God and Jesus, she feels full once more. "For Christmas, she knew, wasn't about what she wanted. It was about what she had, deep down in her soul that only God could give." A profound and heartwarming story meant to be shared with the whole family during the holiday season.
Tommy Books
8033 Sunset Boulevard, #971, Los Angeles, CA 90046
$12.99 each www.tommybooks.net
Author Mark Brown & illustrator Pete Mekis deftly collaborate to produce a series of ten books providing young readers with accessible story-based introductions to basic Christian concepts of morality and ethical behavior. Each 44-page hardcover volume addresses a particular moral concept and is specifically designed to be thoroughly "kid friendly" for young readers. The ten titles published by Tommy Books and comprising this simply outstanding and enthusiastically recommended series include: Faith (0976269007); Love (0976269015); Too Busy (0976269023); Praise (0976269031); Kings (097626904X0; Fear (0976269058); Forgiveness (0976269066); Whom Am I? (0976269074); Grace and Mercy (0976269082); and Thank You (0976269090). Highly recommended, especially for family and Sunday School library collections for children ages 3 through 10.
How To Help A Grieving Friend
Stephanie Grace Whitson
NavPress
PO Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935
1576836770 $11.99 1-800-366-7788 www.navpress.com
How To Help A Grieving Friend: A Candid Guide for Those Who Care is a straightforward, simple guide to help Christian readers to become a source of comfort and strength to their friends, family, and fellow parishoners recovering from terrible loss. Divided into short poems "How To Help" and longer prose sections "How It Feels", How To Help A Grieving Friend succinctly describes tested strategies to be of assistance. A brief, simple how-to guide for readers of all ages and all walks of life. "Invite me to sit with you / Church is one of the hardest places to be. / Sitting alone in that pew is devastating. / All the expressions of care are overwhelming. / Shelter me. / Let me hide out next to you."
Mary: The Imagination of Her Heart
Penelope Duckworth
Cowley Publications
4 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
1561012602 $14.95 1-800-225-1534 www.cowley.org
Mary: The Imagination of Her Heart is a meditation on different perspectives of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Preacher and award-winning play author Penelope Duckworth discusses Mary as prophet, matriarch, theologian, disciple, intercessor, spiritual guide, and paradigm. Written in thoughtful prose accessible to lay readers and theologians alike, Mary: The Imagination of Her Heart is a profound contemplation digging deep into both scripture and faith in search of a better understanding of Mary and her legacy.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Betsy's Bookshelf
Let's Go Shopping
Rikki Benenfeld
Hachai Publishing
762 Park Place, Brooklyn, NY 11216
192962820X $10.95 www.hachai.com
Let's Go Shopping is the latest in the Toddler Experience series of picturebooks intended especially for young Jewish children. Simple sentences narrate the day of a young brother and sister as they go to the butcher shop, the fish store, the supermarket, and the bakery with their mother, performing many mitzvos along the way! The color illustrations will appeal to young readers, and the storybook verses reinforce Jewish traditions: "We smile and say / 'hello' to greet / The man who / sells us kosher meat. // When we buy food for our table, / I check for a kosher label."
The Way to Slumbertown
L. M. Montgomery, author; Rachel Bedard, illustrator
Lobster Press
1620 Sherbrooke Street, West, Montreal, Quebec, H3H 1C9, Canada
1894222989 $14.95 www.lobsterpress.com
Soft and soothing illustrations of children enjoying nighttime fantasies, such as sailing on a boat of moonbeams or flying on a white moth's back, The Way to Slumbertown is a picturebook rendition of L. M. Montgomery's classic poem. A fanciful and beautiful storybook perfect for reading just before bedtime, The Way to Slumbertown is sure to delight and amaze with its sublime balance of lyrical verse and captivating art. Highly recommended.
Emily and Miss Meow
Barb Frye
Beaver's Pond Press
7104 Ohms Lane, Suite 216, Edina, MN 55439
1592981224 $16.95 1-952-829-8818 www.BeaversPondPress.com
Emily and Miss Meow is a gentle picturebook about a young girl who wants a kitten of her own more than anything in the world. She dreams of the perfect black kitten, and learns to make her bed just right to show her mother she is responsible and ready for a kitten of her own. She dreams of getting the kitten as the perfect gift. Yet when she is out with her grandfather, they find that someone has abandoned dead kittens. Out of pity and sadness, they take the dead kittens home to give them a proper burial when Emily sees that one of the kittens is still alive! It is scrawny, scraggly, and weak, and nothing like the perfect kitten Emily has imagined, yet as she helps to take care of it, she realizes that it is her special kitten: Miss Meow. A meaningful story about the importance of compassion and love.
ABC Art Riddles
Carol Murray, author; Freddie Levin, illustrator
Peel Productions, Inc.
PO Box 546, Columbus, NC 28722
0939217589 $13.95 www.peelbooks.com
ABC Art Riddles isn't an ordinary ABC book; each page gives a rhyming riddle, the answer to which is a word with most of its letters left as blank spaces. Kids will enjoy solving the riddles, each of which connects to art. The simple color illustrations also offer clues to the riddle's solution, simulating young minds and vocabularies. For example, the entry for Q is "_ q _ _ _ _: Q in the second letter in my name. / There are five more letters, none are the same. / Four right angles are part of me. / I am a shape you often see. / My sides are equal, always straight. / What's my name? Don't hesitate", and the illustration shows six brightly colored squares. A wonderful exercise in both reading and the imagination. Also highly recommended is ABC Math Riddles (0939217570, $13.95).
Your Song
Mark E. Hoog, author; Robert J. Aukerman, illustrator
Sunflower Publishing
311 Belview Court, Longmont, CO 80501
0977039102 $16.95 www.GrowingField.com
Your Song is a story about the parallel journeys of self-discovery undertaken by a boy and a young eagle. The eagle goes to the cheetah and the fox, looking for hints and tips about what his song is - his talent, his abilities, and his purpose in life. Yet none of the other animals' suggestions seems to fit. At last father eagle teaches his son, "Their beliefs about what you can do are right only if you believe they are. If you believe you cannot do something, then you can't. If you believe in your heart anything is possible, that too will be true." As the young eagle discovers his own talents and learns to fly, the young boy gains a valuable lesson. The bright, cartoon-quality illustrations bring this motivational fable to life. A follow up page of discussion seeds wraps up Your Song, a story about engaging limitless horizons.
Beethoven's Wig
Richard Perlmutter, author; Maria Rosetti, illustrator
Rounder Books, c/o The Rounder Records Corp.
One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140
1579401120 $18.95 www.rounder.com
The first book of the Read Along Symphony series (which is in turn based on the award-winning Sing Along Symphonies music series), Beethoven's Wig is a children's picturebook that combines humor with a love of music. The whimsical story about Beethoven's gigantic and growing white wig is meant to be sung along with the notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Zany illustrations of the catastrophically titanic wig and a bonus CD with "Beethoven's Wig" and two previously unreleased songs, all in both vocal and instrumental versions, round out this picturebook treasury. An excellent introduction to the fun of classical music for young people.
Music for the End of Time
Jen Bryant, author; Beth Peck, illustrator
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
255 Jefferson Avenue, S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49503
0802852297 $17.00 1-800-253-7521 www.eerdmans.com
Music for the End of Time is a children's picturebook based on the true story of French composer Olivier Messiaen, who was captured by the Germans during World War II and sent to a prison camp in Gorlitz (now part of Poland). Despite the bleak living conditions, he received the gift of a small miracle - the opportunity to write music again. With the aid of three fellow musicians also taken prisoner, the song of a beautiful nightingale, and the permission of a German officer, he was able to compose and play the now-famous "Quartet for the End of Time", in a performance appreciated like no other by his fellow prisoners. The emotionally touching pastel illustrations add the perfect quality to this simple story about keeping hope alive in the darkness.
The Baabaasheep Quartet
Leslie Elizabeth Watts
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
121 Harvard Avenue, Suite 2, Allston, MA 02134
1550418904 $16.95 www.fitzhenry.ca
The Baabaasheep Quartet is a picturebook story about four sheep who move to the city to join all the wonderful activities that country life can't offer. As they try to find a place for themselves, they begin to despair of fitting in among the humans - until one day, they discover a torn leaflet on the street. They can barely make out the words, advertising a "baabaasheep quartet contest"! Hoping to meet other sheep, they enter; to their surprise the contest is actually for humans who work in barbershops and sing. But when they have the courage to join the contest, they learn that no one cares that they are sheep; all that matters is that they can sing well! A heartwarming, positive- minded story about the value of skills, deeds, courage and talent over mere conformity.
Ambrose and the Princess
Margo Sorenson, author; Katalin Szegedi, illustrator
The Liturgical Press
St. John's Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321-7500
081463043X $16.95 1-800-858-5450 www.litpress.org
American Library Association award-winning author Margo Sorenson and 2005 Hungarian Illustrator of the Year Katalin Szegedi present Ambrose and the Princess, an enchanting fable about little mouse named Ambrose, who sees that the kind and wonderful princess of the land is unhappy. She is so distressed she might depart, yet the church, the convent, and the poor dearly need her kindness. Determined to make things right, Ambrose sets out on an adventure to help the princess and her all her subjects. The delightful color illustrations add the perfect charming touch to this original story in the style of a classic fairy tale.
Edith Ellen Eddy
Julee Ann Granger, author; Kathryn Mitter, illustrator
Greene Bark Press Inc.
PO Box 1108, Bridgeport, CT 06601-1108
1880851717 $16.95 www.greenbarkpress.com
Edith Ellen Eddy is a children's picturebook about the importance staying true to oneself. The rhyming story tells of a young girl, Edith Ellen Eddy, who is not like other girls - she loves messes and paints and books about monsters, playing outside barefoot in muddy pants and watching tadpoles turn into frogs. To make her mother happy, she tries to be more like other girls, neatly arranging her hair and wearing a dress; but Edith isn't happy forcing herself to be someone she isn't; when her mother sees this she rescinds her selfish wish of "why can't you be like other girls?" and Edith happily returns to being her true self. The exuberant illustrations add the perfect touch to this enthusiastic and warm-hearted storybook.
First Command
Dwight Jon Zimmerman
Vandamere Press
PO Box 17446, Clearwater, FL 33762
0918339626 $22.95 1-800-551-7776 www.vandamere.com
Written for young adults yet suitable for all ages, First Command: Paths To Leadership by military historian Dwight Jon Zimmerman presents the early deeds of great American military leaders such as Washington, Lee, Grant, Pershing, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Patton, other figures of history up through the modern day, and even accounts of a handful of women who earned leadership responsibilities. Written in plain text and illustrated with black-and-white photographs, First Command explores the tremendous responsibilities that human beings had thrust upon them in times of war, and the courage and sharp thinking that distinguished truly remarkable military geniuses. An excellent educational text for school or home libraries.
Betsy L. Hogan
Reviewer
Betty's Bookshelf
The Roof-Rack Chronicles: An Honest Guide to Outdoor Recreation, Excessive Gear Consumption, and Playing with Matches
Ron C. Judd
Sasquatch Books
119 S. Main, Suite 400, Seattle, WA 98104
http://www.sasquatchbooks.com
ISBN: 1570614245, $15.95
According to Parks and Recreation Magazine, Americans spend one third of their time involved in leisure and recreational activities. Many of those Americans, dressed for the outdoors and driving SUVs crammed with tents, fishing poles, coolers, and backpacks, are headed into the wilderness, where they hope to have exciting outdoor adventures.
They're welcome to it. The last time I went camping, I got up in the middle of the night to feed my infant son, fell into the side of the tent we were in (which had been pitched on a slope), and brought most of the tent down around our ears. That son is 27 now and I haven't been camping since, which may give you an idea of how traumatized I was by the whole ordeal.
However, my family keeps bringing up the idea of trying it again, so when I recently ran across Ron Judd's latest book, The Roof-Rack Chronicles: An Honest Guide to Outdoor Recreation, Excessive Gear Consumption, and Playing with Matches, I fell on it with cries of delight. The title alone was enough to thrill me. At last, I though, a guidebook for the rest of us!
Then I noticed that Judd had been writing an outdoor column for the Seattle Times for ages, as well as making frequent contributions to such magazines as Outside. He'd even written several serious outdoor guidebooks about Northwest hiking trails, camping spots, fishing holes, and so on. Could a man like that really understand and speak to those of us whose idea of roughing it is sleeping in a bed that has no innerspring mattress?
Once I began reading, though, I discovered that underneath the Gore-Tex and Polartec of the outdoor journalist lurks the heart of a man who takes the outdoor life with a grain of salt. A man who knows what it's like to have a tent fall on you in the middle of the night. Who understands the difficulties of trying to pack a backpack with the comforts of home while still being able to lift it. Who knows what going without a shower for days on end does to sensitive skin (not to mention a sensitive nose!) And who freely admits, right in the book's introduction, that "...I'm a dufus and here's what I learned on my way to realizing just how big of one."
As I read on, I became convinced that this man's advice - all of it taken from years of camping, hiking, and fishing in the Pacific North West - was bound to come in handy in case I ever so far forgot myself as to attempt to go camping again. Or fishing (when all I've ever caught was my dad's ear, on one long-ago, never-to-be-forgotten family fishing trip) or hiking (which always seems to end with me returning to the starting point with a limp and a full collection of huge, painful blisters.)
After all, how can you not learn from chapters like "A Short Course in Orienteering: Everything You Need to Know to Stay (More or Less) Found in the Wild" and "Natural Disasters: How Something You Can't Even Pronounce Could Very Well Kill You", or Insider's Tips such as "Things You Think You Need in Your Backpack but Really Don't" and "Things You'll Forget to Put in Your Pack but Would Later Kill For"?
However, readers should be careful when choosing which bits of advice to take, as Judd himself says: "...please understand that this book, above and beyond all else, is intended as a work of humor. Anyone who actually takes some, all, or even a small portion of the advice offered here very likely will be dead the next time they take a stroll in a city park.
At the same time, I hope that the words herein, in their own twisted, sarcastic little way, might help light a latent spark in the would-be outdoor adventurer in all of us. Perhaps I can convince those who have tried and failed to live the full-on, fresh-air lifestyle that it's all OK.
It's OK simply to dabble in the outdoor world, coming home to a four-star hotel at the end of a twelve-kilometer cross-country-ski day. It's OK to take as much couch time as you need to overcome the trauma from that slip knot that wouldn't or ski binding that didn't, before buckling up the chinstrap and trying again. It's OK to treat a healthy outdoor lifestyle as a mere yin to your healthy indoor yang."
Tried and failed? Four-star hotels? Couch time? This is without a doubt the outdoor adventure guidebook I've been looking for my whole life. Ron C. Judd, you're my hero!
Kitty and the Midnight Hour
Carrie Vaughn
Warner Books
www.twbookmark.com
ISBN: 0446616419, $6.99
Kitty Norville loves her job as a late night DJ. "To be a DJ was to be God. [She] controlled the air waves. To be a DJ at an alternative public radio station? That was being God with a mission." The hours weren't all that great, but ever since she'd met and hooked up with a glamorous guy who'd initiated her into the paranormal community, they suited her just fine. Werewolves liked late hours.
Yep, Kitty is a werewolf, part of a neighborhood pack at odds with the local vampire family, and when she stops playing music and starts chatting on-the-air with her late night listeners about the problems faced by werewolves and vampires, she becomes a huge hit. Werewolves and vampires (both real and wanna-be's) love her show - finally, someone who understands them!
However, as Kitty's show begins to gain in popularity and audience share, she ticks off both her pack leader and the head of the vampires and also attracts the attention of a mysterious (and romantic) paranormal hunter. Now, the paranormals are all in danger and Kitty faces a tough choice. Should she give up her show, so that her pack will be safe and her leader will be pleased with her? Or should she hold out for what she wants (and maybe give in to her attraction to the hunter?) She'll need to figure out a way to reconcile her pack's needs and her own desires soon. There's a battle coming, and there may not be much standing when the sun comes up.
I don't usually care much for horror stories, but I really enjoyed this one. Hard to believe it's Vaughn's first book! The characters are interesting and well-fleshed-out, the action is non-stop, and the story line grabs your attention and holds it throughout. Best of all, Vaughn has included a number of moral, ethical, and religious questions that will surely spark a few interesting late night discussions among her readers. I look forward to her next book. I hear she's sending Kitty to Washington to lobby for paranormal rights and needs. Kitty vs. the establishment - sounds promising, doesn't it?
Betty Winslow
Reviewer
Bob's Bookshelf
The Physical Education Teacher's Book of Lists
Marian Milliken-Ziemba
Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 0787978876, $29.95, 292 pages
Did you know that paddleball was brought to America by Irish Immigrants in the 1850s, that eleven plays make up a side in speedball, and that three two-minute periods make up a wrestling match? These and other interesting facts can be found in "The Physical Education Teacher's Book of Lists". Although marketed primarily to educators, this is a book that any sports enthusiast will find fascinating.
A unique information resource, over 290 pages offer information on 37 games and activities from baseball, golf, and volleyball to bocce, four square, shuffleboard, and speedball. Each game's rules are listed along with diagrams of the dimensions of the playing area, an explanation of the players' positions, the special equipment needed, and game terminology.
Of particular interest to teachers is the material devoted to goals and objectives of each game, adaptive physical education, and fitness and metric conversion charts. A discussion of the stages of human growth and development, along with an overview of what the aims, objectives, and outcomes of a Physical Education Program should be, will also be helpful for those involved in K-12 education.
Trivia buffs will delight in the historical facts included about each game while the addresses and websites of the major sports organizations will make it easy for anyone to obtain additional information about the game. No matter the situation, whether you wish to set up a four square game for a birthday party, design a home bocce ball court, or settle an argument over how many points must be scored before the serve changes in table tennis, this is the book you'll want to consult.
The Book of Bluffs: How To Bluff And Win At Poker
Matt Lessinger
Warner Books
ISBN: 0446695629, $13.95, 229 pages
Whether you are a novice or experienced player, knowing when to bluff is one of the keys to being successful at the poker table. In this excellent "how-to" guide Matt Lessinger shares the "ins and outs" of how to recognize bluffing situations, smell weakness in an opponent, and recognize the one opponent who can't be taken in by bluffing.
Lessinger, a columnist for "Card Player" magazine, further explains the manner in which to execute different types of bluffs and convincingly represent strong hands. As the intricacies of the "bluff game" unfold, the reader is also treated to a discussion of the famous bluffs made by world-class players like Chris Moneymaker, Gavin Griffin, Bobby Baldwin, and Stu Ungar.
Even if you don't play poker but still enjoy watching it on television, you'll find the insights Lessinger shares fascinating. Some readers might even think of other situations where this esoteric knowledge might be useful.
Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits
Laila Lalami
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
ISBN: 1565124936, $21.95, 195 pages
An intriguing book that falls somewhere between a novel and collection of related short stories, Laila Lalami tells the tale of two men and two women who flee Morocco on a small raft. Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to get to Spain where they hope to find jobs, the four are thrown from the raft when it capsizes close to shore and must make it to the beach as best they can.
After introducing the characters and their harrowing journey, the narrative switches to a flashback which fills the reader in on the characters' lives in Morocco. Then the final chapters look at what happens to these four individuals once they are safely in Spain.
Reminiscent of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder published nearly 80 years ago, Lalami's memorable vignettes of each character not only capture their personalities but also underscore the sorry situation in Morocco that necessitates the dangerous and illegal journey to another country.
Born in Morocco, the author now resides in Portland, Oregon, and is the creator and editor of the literary blog Moorishgirl.
Category 5: The Story of Camille
Ernest Zebrowski & Judith Howard
University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472115251, $27.95, 276 pages
The after effects of Katrina and Rita are still being felt in the areas ravaged by the two storms making 2005 one of the most costly and deadliest hurricane seasons in American history. In "Category 5: The Story of Camille" Ernest Zebrowski and Judith Howard look back nearly 37 years to Camille and the lessons "unlearned from America's most violent hurricane". The authors explain that, to date, Camille has been the only hurricane that has ever met all of the Category 5 criteria at the time of its U.S. landfall.
Ripping apart approximately some of the same areas of Mississippi and Louisiana as Katrina, Camille's 200 mile per hour winds and 28 foot storm surge swept away thousands of homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast. Nearly 200 drowned, 24 oceangoing ships sank or were beached, and six offshore drilling platforms collapsed. As the storm moved inland, it dropped nearly three feet of water in 24 hours in places like Nelson County, Virginia, creating horrendous flooding and an additional loss of lives.
Why go back to relive the heartbreak of the past and a storm that has now been overshadowed by more recent hurricanes? As they share the individual stories of storm victims, the authors not only put a face on the devastation caused by Camille but they also try to assess the success or failure of the rescue and reconstruction efforts. The contention is that looking to the past can point the way to more effective measures for dealing with future natural disasters of this magnitude.
Ultimately, this is a story of lessons learned or, in some cases, not learned. In the aftermath of Katrina and Rita we are forced to acknowledge that some of the mistakes could have been avoided had we paid attention to what Camille taught us. Fortunately, some of the lessons of 1969 were taken to heart and that, in part, accounted for fewer fatalities in 2005 than many experts would have predicted. Although it was bad enough, the number of deaths could have been much higher. Had lessons Camille taught, like the need for a full evacuation, not been heeded, far more people would have died.
In assessing the reconstruction efforts and the lingering affects Camille had on the families who suffered the loss of loved ones and personal property, the authors offer a look at what may be unfolding again in the Gulf region. As local, state, and federal officials launch costly campaigns to rebuild the area, pointing out the problems that lay ahead based on Camille should make it easier to avoid some obvious pitfalls. The creation of FEMA and the Saffir-Simpson Scale for measuring Hurricanes (Category 1-5), both resulted from the devastation Camille's visit caused. Weather experts predict that future hurricane seasons may well replicate 1969 and 2005. It makes sense, then, to learn as much as possible about Camille and Katrina so as to mitigate future problems.
Bob Walch
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
Chechnya: From Past To Future
Richard Sakwa
Anthem Press
c/o Stylus Publishing
22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166-2012
1843311658, $25.00 www.styluspub.com
Also available in a hardcover edition (184331164X, $75.00), Chechnya: From Past To Future by Richard Sakwa (Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent) provides the reader with an historical overview of the struggle for control of Chechnya that has resulted in a series of high-profile atrocities such as hostage seizures at Besian and the Moscow's Dubrovka theatre, as well as Russian retaliations. Chechnya: From Past To Future includes both Western, Russian, and Chechen perspectives on the conflict, surveying such critical issues as the rights and wrongs of Chechen secessionism; the role of Islamic and Western international agencies in defending human rights; the conduct of the war; changing perceptions of the war within the context of international terrorism; democracy in Chechnya; and the uncertainty of democracy in Russia as a whole. Chechnya: From Past To Future is informed and informative reading and especially recommended to the attention of anyone with an interest in Russia, Chechnya, and international terrorism.
The Nauvoo Endowment Companies
Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera
Signature Books
564 West 400 North, Salt Lake City, UT 84116-3411
www.signaturebooks.com
1560851872 $39.95 1-800-356-5687
The Nauvoo Endowment Companies 1845-1846: A Documentary History is a compilation of the original, scribed documentation of all activities and events that took place inside the Nauvoo temple of the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) the two months in which it was in operation, December 1845 - February 1846. Since it is a primary source, The Nauvoo Endowment Companies is of paramount insight to historians, particularly those studying the role of women in Christianity in general and Mormonism in particular, as the Mormon beliefs concerning female subservience and male dominance ("Adam, being full of integrity and not disposed to follow the woman nor listen to her, was permitted to receive... the priesthood") is clearly spelled out. The role of church that purported obedience to the law of the land yet demanded converts to swear vengeance against the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the trials of its often persecuted followers, and the descriptions of ceremonies and events including live dancing offer a glimpse into daily Mormon life over a hundred and fifty years ago. Genealogists will find the documentation of sealings, including polygamous unions, particularly valuable. A superb, in-depth reference, though the fine interpretation of often dry records and methodical documents is almost entirely left up to the reader.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Cellura's Bookshelf
The Fetal Matrix: Evolution, Development and Disease
Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson
Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521542359, $39.99, 257 pp.
The Fetal Matrix is a detailed and comprehensive account of the decisive effects of the embryological and fetal environment upon health, disease and mortality in the middle and later years of the human life cycle. In addition, the authors present an argument throughout the book that integrates gene regulation and fetal experience within an evolutionary perspective through their novel concept of the Predictive Adaptive Response. This clearly written book is the product of many years of fertile collaboration between its distinguished authors. Professor Peter D. Gluckman is University Distinguished Professor and Director, National Research Centre for Growth and Development, University of Auckland, New Zealand and a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences (USA). Professor Mark Hanson is Director, The Centre for Fetal Origins of Adult Disease, Southampton University, United Kingdom and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK). Their specialties are in fetal physiology and prenatal medicine to which they have contributed a number of books and numerous research reports in the scientific literature. The authors wrote this book for a broad readership that includes researchers in developmental and evolutionary biology, prenatal medicine, epidemiology and health policy. It should also prove to be a valuable resource for advanced students in biology and educated lay individuals.
Professors Gluckman and Hanson follow up on the path-breaking epidemiological work of Professor David Barker (Mothers, Babies and Health in Later Life, Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1998), which caused a major stir in medical and public health circles by indicating that disease causes were not exclusively or primarily the result of simplified genetic "traits" or life-style factors. Events unfolding in utero were a key part of the health and disease story.
In Chapter One, Gluckman and Hanson provide a nice primer for a more modern comprehension of gene regulation than was dreamed of in our parent's time. For a more detailed exposition of gene regulation in response to environmental signals the reader might want to read Matt Ridley's Nature via Nurture, and, though more technical, Massimo Pigliucci's Phenotypic Plasticity, John Hopkins University Press, 2001 and Mary Jane West-Eberhard's monumental and prize-winning Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2003 and my book, The Genomic Environment and Niche-Experience, Cedar Springs Press, 2005.
In Chapter Two, the authors present a wealth of information derived from their specialties (embryological and fetal physiology and prenatal medicine), which for the non-specialist will likely be worth the price of the book. (Incidentally, each chapter is written to stand on its own so readers can pick and chose according to their interests).
Chapters Three and Seven contain a detailed exposition of the author's concept of the Predictive Adaptive Response. Here, a solution is suggested to the question: Why would events in the fetal matrix many decades later in life in ways that are critical for health, disease and mortality? They argue that the fetus, based upon messages (hormonal, etc.) received through the maternal blood supply via the placenta, predicts what its environment will be like in later life, and switches on or off gene transcription to shift its developmental path to provide optimal adaptation to a future environment. Correct prediction through timely genetic switching will produce a phenotype that is adaptive but, conversely, an incorrect prediction will lead to increased disease risk later in life. Specific connections between in utero switching and specific diseases that often emerge later in life such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are presented in Chapters Five and Six. In Chapter Eight, the concept of Predictive Adaptive Response is elaborated more fully in the context of evolutionary theory while Chapters Nine and Ten focus on health policy in light of the fundamental importance of the fetal matrix.
The Fetal Matrix is highly readable with many interesting examples provided to illuminate key points of the author's thesis. An excellent index is provided as is a bibliography from the scientific literature of almost 500 citations categorized by specific subject matter. I recommend this book highly as a contribution to the growing literature on developmental plasticity, genomic regulation and human adaptive physiological processes.
Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature And Nurture
Massimo Pigliucci
Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 0801867886, $83.00, 328 pp.
Phenotypic Plasticity examines the way influences outside the organism (the ecological environment) influence the effects of the collection of genes that constitute an organism (genotype) to form it (phenotype). The author, Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of evolutionary biology and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has achieved a widely acclaimed synthesis of research in ecological genetics, developmental biology and evolutionary theory that is "must reading" for specialists in these fields. It will also be a richly rewarding (and challenging) read for non-specialists in the social sciences and medicine as well as the life-long learner interested in the hoary nature-nurture polemic.
The familiar story of Gregor Mendel's magnificent and painstaking genetic studies with peas often leaves out the care the good monk took to isolate pisum sativum from environmental influences. His research procedures mostly eliminated what in the early era of the gene was called the "noise" of these environmental influences on the development of the pea characteristics studied. Mendel's 1866 publication, largely ignored until it caught the attention of a new generation of biologists in 1900, ushered in the classical period of genetics. It led Wilhelm Johannsen, in 1909, to emphasize the distinction Mendel had made between the "factors" and the "characters" they produced by introducing the terms gene, genotype (the complete set of genes or more properly alleles) and phenotype (the appearance or expression of characters in living things). It was this distinction, with an assist from Francis Galton, which largely accounts for the enthusiastic 20th century debate about whether we are what we are as a result of genetic influence (nature) or environmental influence (nurture). The reader who desires a more detailed history of genetics will find it in Sturtevant's A History of Genetics (Cold Spring Harbor, 1965/2001) and Stubbe's History of Genetics (MIT Press, 1972) among many sources.
The plot surrounding nature v. nurture thickened with renewed emphasis on the early 20th century work of Richard Woltereck demonstrating that the genotype could produce a range of characteristics depending on the particular environments in which it developed. That is, the noise made a melody: there was plasticity to the genotype. Pigliucci uses Woltereck's concept of the Reaction Norm as a point of departure to explore plasticity. First, he carefully explicates the concept of phenotypic plasticity, the often misunderstood idea of heritability, and the way plasticity is studied by biologists. (Also recommended in this context is the work of Sarkar, for example, Genetics And Reductionism, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998). In Chapter Three Pigliucci provides a brief but much needed history of phenotypic plasticity. The fact that "Woltereck" or "reaction norm" or "reactionsnorm" (Ger.) is not mentioned in either Sturtevant or Stubbe's histories provides silent but eloquent testimony to the emphasis on the one gene-one character notion so influential among biologists in the early 20th century and so popular today in press releases that usually begin: A gene has been found for...
Chapters Four (The Genetics of Phenotypic Plasticity), Five (The Molecular Biology of Phenotypic Plasticity) and Eight (Behavior and Phenotypic Plasticity) dig into the evidence for plasticity, mechanistic details of plasticity, molecular pathways, behavior as a special form of phenotypic plasticity and, of particular relevance to humans, the ways that hormones can effect adaptation to a specific ecological (outside the organism) environment by carrying information from that environment to the genotypic-specific reactions triggered by that environment. These adaptations and the responsible mechanisms are also discussed in some detail by Cellura in The Genomic Environment And Niche-Experience (Cedar Springs Press, 2005) and by Morange in The Misunderstood Gene (Harvard Univ. Press, 2001). Pigliucci also has chapters on developmental, theoretical and evolutionary biology and the ecology of phenotypic plasticity as well as an epilogue that discusses philosophical and policy issues of the nature-nurture debate.
Phenotypic Plasticity is a sweeping review of the literature that is forging a new paradigm in biology, closing the loop in the misleading dichotomy between nature and nurture. Reading it and re-reading it will provide insight upon insight about biological adaptation.
A. R. Cellura, Ed.D., Reviewer
www.cellura.net
Cheri's Bookshelf
Ricochet in Time
Lori L. Lake
Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC
PMB 210, 8691 9th Avenue, Port Arthur, Texas 77642-8025
ISBN: 1932300171, $18.95, 288 pp.
Award winning, best-selling author, Lori L. Lake, tells a riveting story in her acclaimed novel, Ricochet in Time.
The life of Danielle Corbett (Dani) is changed forever when she and her new girlfriend, Meg, interrupt their motorcycle journey to stop at a bar along the road. The mere sight of these women provokes the locals, who take offense at having two "queers" in their establishment. Dani and Meg leave, but they're followed and viciously attacked. Meg is killed and Dani is left for dead. Thus begins the masterful storytelling Lake is well known for.
Hospitalized at a very vulnerable and lonely time in her life, Dani meets a physical therapist, Grace Beaumont, who is interested in Dani for reasons she doesn't reveal. Grace and her great-aunts - Estelline, and her partner, Ruth - take Dani into their home and hearts. They feed her starving body, as well as her mind and soul. The women become very special to each other.
The heart-warming, committed, and loving relationship between Estelline and Ruth provides a perfect example of two soul mates who remain together through thick and thin; they've weathered many storms and have become stronger because of it. Can Dani and Grace achieve what these two women have?
Lake hits a raw nerve in her depiction of the tragedy and despair brought on by prejudice, homophobia, and gay bashing at its ugliest. With the help of friends, Dani Corbett is shown the path toward putting her life back together. Can she do it? Estelline reminds her: "What goes around comes around…you send love out into the world, and it comes back to you. You send out hatred and hell-fire, and it behaves just like a boomerang. It ricochets right back and hits you in the heart" (p. 198).
Ricochet in Time grabs you from the first page and doesn't let go. The story flows so naturally that you are there, living through the circumstances along with the characters, who come to life on every page. What I love most about Lake's novels is how much I care about the characters and what happens to them. Even with Dani's rough-around-the-edges exterior, you can't help but love her. She comes across as a strong woman who can fend for herself against all odds, but this is her coping mechanism. Through Grace's eyes, you see the good more clearly and you find yourself rooting for more than friendship between Dani and Grace.
Lake writes with such clarity and imagery that her description of the pain Dani suffers from the accident is palpable. The author, insightfully and eloquently, went inside her characters' heads, making the story that much more believable. You know exactly what and how the characters are feeling at any given time.
I highly recommend Lake's debut novel, Ricochet in Time. This talented author of the "Gun" series: Gun Shy, Under the Gun,, and Have Gun We'll Travel," as well as Different Dress and Stepping Out: Short Stories, is "considered one of the best authors of modern lesbian fiction," according to Lavender Magazine, " but her work - part action, part drama, and part romance - gleefully defies categorization." I couldn't agree more.
The Price of Fame
Lynn Ames
Intaglio Publications
PO Box 357474, Gainesville, FL 32635
ISBN: 1933113049, $16.75, 276 pp.
Lynn Ames writes in her acknowledgements, "I have always maintained that the best fiction contains elements of truth; as a reader, it's that believability that keeps you turning the pages." The author, a Golden Crown Literary Society Finalist for The Price of Fame, has exceeded her goals in the first installment of the action-packed romance of news anchor Katherine "Kate" Kyle and Time magazine reporter Jamison "Jay" Parker. The Price of Fame is not only convincing but it is hard to put down.
The highly acclaimed anchorwoman for the New York State Capitol based news station WCAP-TV is the vivacious, self-assured, drop-dead gorgeous Katherine Kyle. Not only is she brilliant, but her strong work ethic, professionalism, honesty, compassion, and commitment to the greater good, including humanity towards fellow humans, has set her way above her peers. She has earned the respect of her coworkers and the love and admiration of her viewers as well. Add the fact that this woman has no idea how attractive she is, how deliciously romantic she can be to the woman who captures her heart, and you have an admirable character you would love to know personally - if not intimately.
New Yorker Jay Parker is an extremely talented aspiring writer, who works for Time Magazine. Avoiding any thoughts about her painful past, the career-oriented author emerges herself in her work, producing outstanding human-interest stories. Sent to Albany to write a piece on the popular governor with possible presidential candidate written all over him, Jay spots the woman who has "dominated her dreams and fueled her imagination" [p. 12] on television. Having met Kate on more than one occasion, Jay is awestruck when she catches the local Albany news flash depicting the bravery of the newscaster…the one person she always thought of as her savoir and the other part of her soul. Fate brings these two strongly attracted women together again resulting in a powerful love affair.
Kate is romantic - she makes Jay do more than just blush. Is there any woman on the planet who wouldn't like to hear her lover say, "That's okay, love, because if Michelangelo had had you to use as a model, he could've retired a wealthy man" [p. 142]? Katherine Kyle and Jamison Parker is a match made in heaven, in every way.
Lynn Ames is proficient at weaving current affairs with flashbacks in this compelling love story where the action never ceases. The author is an award-wining former broadcast journalist who adds insider information, imparting authenticity and depth that captures every nuance of the business. Include politics, intrigue, bombings, homophobia, trust issues, etc., and you have a novel that will leave you breathless and hungering for more. Every scene in the exciting world of Kate and Jay is absorbing and full of energy. Falling in love along with the characters is easy because they would go to any length, even self-sacrifice, for each other. Can the love between them withstand the forces that attempt to drive them apart?
The clever hook near the end of The Price of Fame has this reader happy the sequels, The Cost of Commitment and The Value of Valor, are readily available. Once you pick up a novel by Lynn Ames, you will want to read them all. The Price of Fame is a five-star novel that you will want to read from beginning to end. You won't want to miss a single word.
Honor Reclaimed
Radclyffe
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
430 Herrington Road, Johnsonville, NY 12094
ISBN: 193311018X, $15.95, 279 pp.
Writing a series takes skill and finesse. Radclyffe possesses both in her Honor series, Justice Series, and Provincetown Tales. Honor Reclaimed brings back beloved characters Cam and Blair for another fulfilling glimpse of their love, commitment, and adventures. This time Cam tries desperately to uncover the identity of those responsible for attempting to assassinate the president's daughter, and prevent any further attacks on Blair. Following 9/11, the nation is scrambling to win the war against terrorism and hoping to hold those responsible accountable, while Cam works to keep her lover safe amidst threats to her life.
Not many people can claim that they have slept in the white house and have woken up next to the first daughter. However, Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts, Blair Powell's personal security chief, cannot believe she can. So begins the fifth novel in the Honor series, Honor Reclaimed. Our heroines fight for more than honor in a world gone mad at the hands of terrorists and assassins, "…in a world where annihilation could be delivered to one's doorstep on a bright sunny morning, there seemed to be little point to standing on convention. And for those who lived within the shadow of the tragedy, life had taken on an even greater sense of urgency, where caution and prudence had far less meaning" [p. 86].
On that fateful day, when the attack on the World Trade Center ensued, the lovers were near Blair's heavily guarded apartment in New York City. Simultaneously a shooting targeting Blair despite Cam's vigilant safeguarding, left one agent on Cam's team dead, another one critically injured, and a third agent, a suspected killer. Cam felt responsible and duly worried for Blair's safety. If there was one traitor, then there were bound to be others. Taking more than one bullet meant for Blair, Cam would do it again in order to protect the woman she loves more than life itself. Blair hates that Cam puts her life on the line for her and the thought of ever losing her is a fate worse than death.
Radclyffe, known for exploring many characters concurrently in her novels, does a fine job of developing ancillary characters as well. Cam and Blair are the central characters but Honor Reclaimed would not be complete without Agent Paula Stark, who becomes Blair's new security chief in Cam's place and FBI agent, Renee Savard who is Paula's lover. The dynamics are further complicated with the beginnings of a relationship between the elusive Valerie Lawrence and Blair's best friend, Diane Bleeker. It is interesting to note that the interplay between the main characters has a pivotal role in shaping the plot. Emotions run deep between characters some of whom had a past to those making history. Cam and Valerie have a cross to bear, a hurdle to get over, from past liaisons.
What I liked best about this book was not only the fast-paced action sequences, the hot love scenes, and seeing life through some of my favorite characters' eyes but the depth with which these brave women love each other. I love the commitment of these couples who are even willing to put their life on the line for the ones they love. That is the most romantic part of all and what makes Honor Reclaimed not only a terrific mystery, but an engaging romance. I also find it admirable that they are willing to defend their country with equal fervor. Readers love heroes and Radclyffe gives her readers what they love. It is no wonder that Radclyffe is the winner of numerous accolades and continues to delight her fans.
Cheri Rosenberg
Reviewer
Connie's Bookshelf
The Sorrow of Archaeology
Russell Martin
University of New Mexico Press
1601 Randolph Rd SE, Suite 200S, Albuquerque NM 87106
1-800-249-7737
ISBN: 0826337252, $29.95, 271 pp.
"In the dry early summer of 1992, I am still nominally a physician, but I dig in dirt these days, instead of taking stock of my patients' bodies, attending only to bones stripped of muscle, blood and brain..."
Sarah MacLeish says this because she can't maintain her medical practice. She is a Multiple Scleroses victim, no longer able to use her hands in diagnosis. She is also the main character in Russell Martin's novel, 'The Sorrow of Archaeology,' recently released by the University of New Mexico Press.
The story is set in Southern Colorado, and drawn from several of the author's interests, including archaeology, medicine, and disability, particularly Multiple Scleroses. For him, these topics become metaphors for our constant struggle to sort out our lives.
Knowing she may eventually use a wheel chair, and terrified of the idea, Sarah determines to be normal as long as possible, before she must give into her disease. She becomes a member of an archaeology dig team her husband, Harry, is supervising at an ancient pueblo site in a canyon near Cortez, Colorado. She worries about her relationship with Harry. He jumps from project to project and adventure to adventure, seizing life with both hands, and riding it like a wild horse.
She lives carefully, avoiding surprises, and searching for security. She and Harry share a deep bond. Still, troubling moments have arisen between them, over their differences, and she senses his unhappiness with her. As a physician who has treated patients with illnesses like hers, she knows she will probably face divorce, though Harry denies he will ever leave her.
On the dig, Sarah discovers the remains of a pre-teen-age girl, with a severely deformed leg, which Sarah believes congenital. The girl also has a shattered skull. Immediately, Sarah connects with her, wondering how she lived, how she died, and above all, how she coped with disability.
Harry says that Sarah will probably never know. Bone fragments and grave goods cannot possibly explain the girl's emotional state at death, why she died, or how she lived with her crippled leg. Sarah insists on trying to find out. One of the dig team members, the flamboyant Alice, agrees to send the remains to a friend in a forensics lab. The gesture both comforts and troubles Sarah, who suspects Alice and Harry have begun an affair. Harry must replace the sex that no longer interests Sarah.
Driven by her fear, Sarah struggles harder and harder to understand the child's story, and through it, her own. The mosaic of personal and archaeological past and present interweave tightly in her mind. Finally, an MS attack does put Sarah in a wheelchair, for a short time. As she begins to recover her mobility, a beloved family member faces her own mortal illness, and makes a choice Sarah does not realize she is still capable of making.
The resulting catharsis leads Sarah to discoveries and decisions concerning her life and illness, the people around her, the crippled Pueblo child, and Harry and Alice,. 'The Sorrow of Archaeology' comes to a powerful, and satisfying conclusion.
To give Sarah the full range of emotions she needs as she struggles with her issues, Russell Martin constructed her story in a series of short chapters. The book draws its title from one of these, in which Sarah laments the fact that archaeologists must try to learn about peoples' lives from fragmented evidence. Harry points out that everyone else must do the same from bits and pieces of experiences, during his or her time on earth. Flashbacks written in the past tense, interweave with current details, stated in the present. Martin also lets Sarah narrate the novel in the first person.
Throughout 'The Sorrow of Archaeology,' Russell Martin uses simple and direct language that never becomes simplistic. Sentences such as "The only thing worse than being an acne-plagued freshman in high school is being a freshman whose father is principal of the place," give his pages an excitement that nears F. Scott Fitzgerald's intensity.
Like Fitzgerald's Martin's intensity is gentle, and very ordinary. Readers looking for an action-
