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Reviewers Recommend
Catch the Moon
Lisa Loeb & Elizabeth Mitchell
Book and Audio CD
Artemis Records
http://artemisrecords.com
ASIN: B0001DMVM6 $18.98
Alyice Edrich
Reviewer
I love the simplicity of both the story and the music CD. Catch the Moon is a gentle reminder of
what true friendship is all about, while the music CD engages young minds and inspires them to
dance, play, and love music. The CD reminds me of sweet, old-fashioned folk songs...when times
were simpler and all our children needed were to hear the sweet, sweet, sounds of our voices to
feel safe. This is a wonderful tool for putting both infants and toddlers down for naps, helping
them unwind after a busy day, or just help parents bond with their children.
Drip Dry
Ilsa Evans
Macmillan
ISBN: 0732911524 A$30.00 365 pp.
Ann Skea, Reviewer
http://ann.skea.com
If you read Spin Cycle and enjoyed it, as I did, then you will be glad to hear of this second
installment in the life of Camilla and her three children CJ (Christine Jain), Sam and Ben. And it's
all about another week of chaos, of family support and of family interference, just like the last one
but this time with added sex and satisfaction.
Camilla accidentally stars in an accidentally pornographic home-video, she meets an Irish (very
Irish!) odd-job-man who favours pink overalls and catchy slogans, her ex-husband returns from
overseas to live in the house next door, and her strange assortment of family and friends pop in
and out of her life as usual. It's a week of bizarre events and it's never boring.
I read Drip Dry quickly, laughed at some of the situations, and hoped for a happy ending but, for
me, the scene has lost some of its freshness and shows worrying signs of becoming a long-running
soap opera. Now soap operas are enormously popular and I wish luck to the authors who manage
to make a living out of them, but they are not my cup of tea. Nevertheless, Camilla's intelligence
and her survival tactics as a twice-divorced mother with three normal, unpredictable kids with the
normal range of parent-frustrating problems make for easy reading. For me it was a light
distraction but I think Camilla is more than able, now, to manage without my taking any further
interest in her life.
So, there you have it! Perhaps this is not so much Chick Lit. for the young career woman as Fem.
Lit. for divorced mums coping well on their own and working for a better life. And if that's your
scene, then in Drip Dry you will probably empathize with Camilla, recognize her daily horrors and
laugh with her at familiar situations. But in the end you could be left with the wry thought that
only in fiction could things work out quite so neatly.
Out of Place Out of Time
Eric D. Knapp
iUniverse
http://www.ericdknapp.com/drstowel/
ISBN: 0595302130 $17.95 272 pp.
Ben Jonjak
Reviewer
"Out of Place Out of Time" is an extremely enjoyable read that I would not hesitate to
recommend. It is not a perfect book; in fact, it breaks several of the most commonly accepted
rules of conventional literature. But I personally enjoy authors who are willing to do whatever
needs to be done to tell their story, and, at the heart of it all, "Out of Place Out of Time" has a
great story to tell.
"Place/Time" is a science-fiction novel that deals with the theme of time travel. Time travel is, of
course, one of the oldest and most well-explored plot devices of the sci-fi genre. In fact, it is so
well explored that it has almost become redundant to write about any longer. Most of the
surprising plot twists that time travel can support have already been used with such frequency as
to become clich‚. However, there are several reasons that time travel will continue to be a sci-fi
mainstay--it has great potential, and it is a fascinating subject. When an author is able to conceive
of a new wrinkle to throw into the time travel concept, the results can be just as effective as the
first time you read about Bradbury's dinosaur hunter who accidentally stepped on a butterfly and
returned to a future completely different from the one he originally came from.
Like Bradbury, Eric D. Knapp skillfully constructs a story that regards the implications of time
travel in a way that you might have never considered. The impetuous for the plot comes when Dr.
Trenton Stowel attempts to test the time machine he has constructed. The test, as Dr. Stowel
conceives it, is not especially ambitious. He has no immediate interest in going either forward or
backward in time, but merely wants to pause for a moment and watch the world continue on
around him. Imagine his surprise when, upon turning on the machine, Dr. Stowel finds himself
flung at terrifying, unrelenting speed into the cold darkness of the universe. Being a scientist, it
takes him little effort to understand that his machine had the unanticipated effect of cutting his
anchor to the tremendous velocities of the universe that are constantly in play but go mainly
unnoticed. Velocities such as: the rotation of the Earth, the revolution of the Earth around the
sun, or even the expansion of the universe. Pausing his position in time leaves Dr. Stowel stranded
in the most unforgiving environment conceivable, only to watch the rest of the universe spin away
from him at a terrifying rate. Things get worse when Stowel realizes that his time machine is not
capable of getting him back home, and is further compounded with the discovery of an alien race
that had been observing him for some time and, for some unknown reason, doesn't appear to be
very pleased with his actions.
Suffice it to say, the plot is compelling, but also of interest is the way in which the story is told.
The book is written as a transcript of an interview with Dr. Stowel, who relates his experiences in
between uncontrollable bouts of simply disappearing into time (as Vonnegut would say, Stowel
has apparently become "unstuck"). The interview structure of the book is a compelling idea and
has positive and negative points. On the one hand, it is quick and easy to get through, and the
novel moves rapidly from one episode to another. But on the other hand, sometimes I felt as if
things were a little too rushed. Knapp demonstrates at various points in the novel that he is
capable of quite poetic description. However, for the most part, the story is told at arm's length.
The reader is never fully enveloped in the work, but instead sort of watches what happens from
the outside. In truth, to do complete justice to the quality of the story, I think this novel needs to
be twice its current length with the added page count coming from more developed description of
Stowel's surroundings, emotions, and adventures.
Still, though the novel doesn't function like a conventional book, it nevertheless grips the reader
with its interesting discussions on the nature of time. Knapp doesn't waste space going over silly
imaginary discussions as to how to build a time machine (there is no sign of a flux capacitor), but
instead focuses on theoretical ideas that are based enough in science to have some sort of
relevance. In addition to this, Dr. Stowel is a fully fleshed out character with personality issues
and emotional scars that I assume would be unpleasantly recognizable to just about anybody.
"Out of Place Out of Time" is a good book that is just a hair's width away from greatness.
Although I would like to see a few more things added, the current version is very accessible and
entertaining. For people who enjoy a rapidly-paced, intelligent sci-fi story that challenges you with
its ideas without choking you on them, there really couldn't be a better choice than "Out of Place
Out of Time."
The Man in My Basement
Walter Mosley
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN 0316570826 $22.95 249 pages
Bill Toth
Reviewer
Toward the beginning of Walter Mosley's The Man in My Basement, the main character, Charles
Blakey, stops for a moment in the woods as a group of deer crosses the road. He reflects upon
people's belief that deer are cowards. He says: "I once saw a group of fifteen or more of them
swimming out to Shelter Island. Their heads just above the water, they looked frightened and
desperate out there. Cowards don't face terror."
They faced terrors. And by book's end, so will Charles Blakey.
Walter Mosley is best known for his mystery novels, especially the Easy Rawlins series. He has
also written science fiction and screenplays and has won many awards, including the
Anisfield-Wold Award, the O'Henry Award and the Black Caucus of the American Library
Association's Literary Award. In addition, he is on the board of directors of the National Book
Awards and The Poetry Society of America.
But this novel is not a gritty detective novel with sociological insights or a moving story of an old
ex-con trying to do right (as in Mosley's Socrates Fortlow series). This book is more akin to the
tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne; it is twenty-first century Gothic merged with realistic writing
techniques.
Charles Blakey, the first person narrator, considers himself an African-American "blue-blood"
who, in his own words, is a "solitary and jobless man who hadn't accomplished one thing in his
entire life." He traces his ancestors back to 1742 when the Blakey side of the family came over,
not as slaves, but as "indentured servants who earned their freedom." The other side of his family,
the Dodds, were free from the beginning. At age 33, he is nearly pennyless, lives alone, sleeps in
his childhood bedroom, and is on the verge of losing his ancestral home and its estate--including
the ancestral graveyard.
But all of this changes when a strange white man, Anniston Bennet, comes to his front door and
asks to rent his basement. Eventually, Blakey gives in to Bennet. And thus begins Blakey's
psychological journey into self-awareness and into an awareness of the evils and powers of the
world.
The first step of the journey is to go to this lowest part of the house, where lies the old and
forgotten, and to bring these tokens of his history (paintings, dolls, diaries, mementoes, etc.) to
light. He is aided by Narciss Gully who discovers three ivory masks, passport masks, carried by
his ancestors for safe passage from Africa to America. She advises him to not sell these. Instead
she tells him to "sleep next to them and feel their presence." They represent his "family's
heart."
The other step in his journey lies in his relationship to Anniston Bennet and to the disturbing
questions asked and questions answered. Bennet is something like Joseph Heller's Milo
Minderbinder in Catch-22. Only Bennet is a lot less funny and infinitely more viscous. He is the
nightmare bones of every conspiracy theory ever dreamed up: a shadowy power and unseen evil
that creates the true reality of the world.
The novel is a grand experiment in genre, but it doesn't quite work. Mosley's admirable realistic
techniques don't always support the bizzare character of Anniston Bennet and his strange
requests. He verges on the allegorical.
This is not to say that the book is not worth reading. It is. It is thought provoking and filled with
fine lyrical passages. The symbolic, Romantic aspects of the novel have the power to keep
suggesting more and more meaning.
The Coil
Gayle Lynds
St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
ISBN: 0312301448 $24.95 U.S./$34.95 Can. 448 pp.
Bonnie Toews
Reviewer
Rating: FIVE STARS
SPIRALLING, FINGER-BITING SUSPENSE
Gayle Lynds strikes a best seller with THE COIL, her newest espionage thriller, and moves out of
the shadow of her collaboration with Robert Ludlum to become her own star in this genre. While
Ludlum proved he was a practical visionary who used his novels to warn the public of political
corruption at the highest government levels and to portray the terrorist "raison d'etre," he was
also a master chess player more intrigued with the moves of the pawns in his plots than their
substance. Through his characters, he expounded personal rhetoric. Lynds, on the other hand,
brings more human dimension to the chess game of "what ifs" in her novels. She delves into
specific psychological and physiological conditions, which interplay with her protagonists' inner
conflicts and novels' plots, to educate her readers about real experiences that happen to real
people. In her first three novels Masquerade, Mosaic and Mesmerized she has dealt with the
effects of Asperger's syndrome, cellular memory and conversion disorder.
In THE COIL, Lynds explores the psychology of violence in the betrayal of the world's 'haves'
versus 'have nots.' Heroine Liz Sanborough is a psychology professor, who is forced out of
retirement to return to spying for the CIA to rescue the two people she loves most. At least she
believes she is working for the CIA when her look-alike cousin, journalist Sarah Walker, and her
CIA-agent husband, Asher Flores, are kidnapped in Paris. Their ransom? A disk of zipped files
Liz's father compiled. They detail targets and clients he worked for as an independent hired
assassin code-named Carnivore. Either before or after Carnivore died in an explosion, someone
pilfered his files and is blackmailing powerful figures to manipulate the globalization of trade and
multi-national mergers. The kidnappers believe Liz has them and want the files to launch their
own agenda of control over the world's economies. As the bodies fall and the suspense build
s, a maze of intrigue spirals into ever evolving deceptions that isolate Liz and force her to realize
that the CIA is not running or protecting her and her cousins. Enter another of Liz's cousins,
Simon Childs, an MI6 agent. He is also pursuing the Carnivore's files because he believes they will
lead to his step-father's murderer. Together they search for the secret group of conspirators
whose influence reaches up to their chiefs in the CIA and MI6. The closer they come to
recovering Carnivore's files, however, the more "The Coil" isolates them until it finally traps them
in its web of ultimate betrayal. Even if Liz and Simon find the files in time to save Sarah and
Asher, "The Coil" cannot let any of them live to identify the members of its diabolical inner
sanctum of world power.
Throughout the chase to find the files, Liz grapples with her longing to trust someone and her
belief that violence begets violence. She refuses to carry a gun, determined to battle her
adversaries with wit and surprise martial art moves, until her lack of firepower almost costs the
lives of her cousins when she flubs a rescue attempt. At this point, the pros and cons to physical
violence pitch Liz headlong into the realm of realistic possibilities. So, while suspense drives the
reader to stick to the story until the very last page, it is impossible to close another Lynds' book
without thinking about the underlying human condition her novel explores. After reading THE
COIL for instance, where will we stand on the issues of violence, as a person and as a nation?
How long can we afford to let the question go unanswered? THE COIL won't let us forget. And
if we're not prepared to decide, Lynds shows us the consequences of our collective apathy in the
real world. She goes beyond Ludlum's aim to entertain and makes us think, and in doing so,
makes a difference in our lives. That's what great writing is all about.
The Incomparable Captain Cadell
John Nicholson
Allen and Unwin
ISBN 1741141087 A$29.95 307 pages.
David Skea
Reviewer
Victorian Britain produced many a person who left their native shore, established outposts in the
then British Empire and then demonstrated the hard work, tenacity and moral standards that made
that age famous. Some of the names that come to mind are David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes,
Florence Nightingale and Stamford Raffles. And at one time, perhaps, there could have been
added the name of Francis Cadell who became well known in South Australia as the person who
established a steam river boat service on the Murray.
Francis William Cadell was born in 1822 and reportedly died in 1879 at the wrong end of a loaded
revolver. He was the third of eleven children of a moderately wealthy Scottish family, many of
whom became army officers two of his brothers becoming generals, one winning a Victoria
Cross. The family had shipping and coal mining interests and epitomised the Victorian ideals of
hard work and a place in society.
At the age of 14, at his own insistence (according to Cadell's father), Cadell joined an 'East
Indiaman', the Minerva, as a midshipman. Then followed three voyages to Macau and Canton and
a promotion to fifth mate. Cadell's next trip was more exiting as the 'Opium Wars' had started and
the Minerva was pressed into service as a troop transport. So at the age of 18, Cadell was off to
his first war and for the next 3 years or so, was a spectator at many of its decisive battles. And, if
his father's reminiscences are to be believed, he was also involved in 'punishing pirates', for which
he was rewarded with an ornamental sword. It was during this time that he probably met some of
the more unsavoury characters that became his associates in his later life.
In 1844 his father bought a small trading sloop, The Royal Sovereign, and young Francis was
installed as its captain. On one trip to South America Cadell saw a major river system, the
Amazon, just waiting to be opened up with river steamers. Returning home he took time to learn
about these new paddle steamers in Robert Napier's shipyard in Glasgow (the book also mentions
Tyneside).
In 1848 Cadell, back in command of The Royal Sovereign, visited Adelaide. This first visit lasted
only 10 days but he cannot have missed the regular arrival of drays laden with copper from the
mines at Kapunda or the wheat being produced good regular cargoes. Also he would have
heard the talk about a large broad river to the east, the Murray, and talk of river boats and paddle
steamers.
His next exploit was to design and build a fast clipper ship, The Queen of Sheba, and in 1852 he
was back in Adelaide as the commander of a fine new clipper ship. He quickly found a niche in the
Adelaide society and had little trouble in obtaining passengers and cargo. He quickly set up a fast
clipper service between Adelaide and Melbourne.
Now Cadell had the ear of the South Australian Governor and monies were made available to
start a steam river boat on the River Murray, and much of this book is devoted to telling this
story. However, socialising in Adelaide and running a river steamer business profitably are two
different things, especially when you are also competing with the settlers and the store keepers
you are supplying. In the end the inevitable happened and in 1858 Cadell was declared
bankrupt.
Cadell next appeared in New Zealand as Commandant of the Waikato Steam Transport Service, a
support flotilla for the New Zealand Government forces in the Maori Wars. However, he was too
late for the major actions, the storming of Mere Mere and Rangiriri. Thereafter he fell out with
the authorities and left.
Back in South Australia in 1867, Cadell led an expedition into North Australia charged with
selecting 'a favourable site for the survey of 300,000 acres of good land within reasonable
distance of a good harbour, easy navigable and conveniently situated as a port of call, with a
healthy site for a Capital, and in close proximity to fresh water and timber'. Being a sailor he
decided to approach the land from the sea rather than trekking across Australia and hence sailed
up the east coast of Australia and through the Torres Strait. His recommendation, a site on the
Liverpool River, however, was rejected and another expedition, dispatched under
Surveyor-General Goyder, selected Darwin as the site for the city.
Whilst sailing round Australia via the Torres Strait and the Gulf of Carpentaria, Cadell must have
come across the pearl luggers then operating on the north of Australia. Most of the divers were
'blackbirds', indigenous people from Papua or the Pacific Islands. Although slavery had been
abolished in British Territories in 1834 its sanitised alter ego 'blackbirding' continued for a further
50 years and Queensland did not outlaw the practice until 1902. 'Blackbirds' were indentured
labourers who had consented to be transported to another place, employed for an agreed period in
return for food, clothing, shelter and wages, and return to their homes at the end of the
agreement. The problem was that in most cases some or all of these conditions were ignored: the
labourers were kidnapped or induced into agreements under false pretences. Many were starved,
beaten and dumped at the end of their service.
So it would seem that in 1867 Cadell saw an opportunity, and having the wherewithal, his ship,
became a supplier in this market. The New Zealand Herald reported on May 20 1870 that "the
clipper schooner Lulu, the property of Captain Cadell, arrived from a cruise among the New
Hebrides she also had on board 27 passengers ". The 27 passengers included 23 indentured
labourers from the Sandwich Islands Cadell later turned up off the north-west coast of
Australia with 50 pearl divers from the Alor and Solar islands north of Timor. At this stage he
was a newcomer to the pearling coast which within a few years he came to dominate.
And so the story goes on until 1879 when, by some accounts, Cadell was shot six times by his
Filipino steward Perman who reportedly said to onlookers "I have shot the Captain because I have
been in his service for 5 years without receiving any wages". A report from a Captain Carpenter
tells that Perman was arrested by the Dutch authorities in Ambon, brought to trial, found guilty
and hanged on a gallows outside the courthouse. However Cadell's brother demanded that the
British take action and in October 1879 Perman, still alive, was extradited to Singapore, brought
to trial there and acquitted.
The dust jacket of this book says 'The bizarre true story of the man who built a paddle steamer
fleet on the River Murray and of his spectacular fall from grace'. Well, he did build a paddle
steamer fleet and opened up the River Murray but so did another. His competitor, William
Randall, was first on the river with a steam boat, didn't have any government monies to help build
his fleet, and also outlasted Cadell.
And was he 'incomparable'? Not really. Many aspiring heroes start out along the same path and
fall by the wayside. I'm minded of that line from the Beggars Opera after Captain Macheath was
arrested by Peachum. 'Your case, Mr Macheath, is not particular neither was Cadell's, but it
makes a good story.
Split Second
David Baldacci
Warner Books
1271 Avenue of the Americas, NY, NY 10020
ISBN#: 0446530891 $16.00 322 pp.
Marty Duncan
Reviewer
"We're the first people to really look at all the angles," said Joan Dillinger, a former Secret Service
agent eight years after a Presidential candidate was gunned down during her watch. We find out
later that Dillinger was in the elevator and distracted Agent Sean King, who allowed his candidate
to be killed and then himself killed the shooter, an angry radical from a small college. Dillinger and
King's careers came to halt eight years in the past.
Fast Forward to Agent Michelle Maxwell and her candidate. She allows the stubborn man to talk
to a grieving widow behind closed doors, and her candidate is kidnapped. During this
'page-turner' we see how the agents failed to protect their candidates and we see the impact of
those failures. We see King and Maxwell and Dillinger as their lives are changed once again.
Split Second is listed as a Thriller. It is! ('Nuff said!) It reminded me of my own action-adventure
story, Gold then Iron. You can read two chapters at www.omagadh.com
The Darkest Child
Delores Phillips
Soho Press, Inc.
ISBN: 1569473455 $26.00 387 pp.
Emanuel Carpenter
Reviewer
Rozelle Quinn, the matriarch and villainess in the novel "The Darkest Child," may soon become
the most detested character in the history of fiction. She is a physically abusive mother who not
only spanks her children with a leather belt but also burns their flesh with smoldering pokers
straight from the fireplace, pours steaming hot coffee in their faces, and punches them in the face
sending teeth flying and causing eyes to swell like a world class pugilist. She encourages the
children to steal for the good of the family. She even forces her teenage daughters into a life of
domestic servitude and prostitution (a life she knows all too well) for the extra money it brings
into the household, which she always claims for herself. Psychologically, she's even worse,
ranking her children by skin tone, claiming the lighter skinned ones are more valuable than the
darker ones. When some of them make plans to leave her house for good, she either makes them
feel guilty enough to stay or finds a way to sabotage their plans.
The story is told from the perspective of Tangy Mae, Rozelle's darkest and most intelligent child.
The setting is the fictitious, rural town Pakersfield, Georgia. Tangy Mae, who is 13 when the
book commences in 1958, dreams of someday being the first in her family to finish high-school in
order to make something of her life. But there are many obstacles, including Jim Crow laws,
racism, poverty, and most of all her sadistic mother who wants her to quit school to get a job for
the purpose of helping take care of the family, which includes nine other siblings, all of them by
different men.
Though Tangy Mae is the storyteller, the lives of her brothers and sisters are given just as much
attention as she. This includes Tarabelle, Tangy's strong and brave older sister who hates her
mother for forcing her to service men in The Farmhouse, Harvey, her older brother who wants to
marry an undertaker's daughter, Martha Jean, her deaf younger sister who falls for an older man
for whom Tangy also has a crush, and Sam her brother whose dreams of equal opportunity leave
him framed for a crime he didn't commit. When Mushy, Tangy's older sister, returns to Georgia
after a four-year, self-imposed exile to Cleveland, she fills her brothers' and sisters' heads with
ideas on following in her footsteps-far away from their abusive mother. Meanwhile, Rozelle will
stop at nothing to keep her children home with her.
"The Darkest Child" is a beautifully written work of art that is hard to put down. Its descriptive
writing is reminiscent of classic works from Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, and Ernest Hemingway.
Consider the following passage as an example: [And the sound of silence was frightening. Rain
pounded the tin roof like a thousand demons marching for their master, and the roof yielded.
Liquid curses splashed down upon our heads and into the waiting vessels. In the gray shadows of
a rainy dusk, the clock on the table ticked rhythmically, but the hands never moved. They were
stuck.] Simply beautiful.
This novel will undoubtedly cause you to cringe with its graphic depiction of violence. The
characters will make you cry and laugh. They will also leave you longing for the escape they
desire. But most of all, this book will make you fall in love with the writing of Delores Phillips, a
Cleveland resident who works as a nurse and holds a degree in English from Cleveland State
University. Not only is it the one of best debut novels available, but it is easily one of the best
novels ever written. "The Darkest Child" is a masterpiece.
The Rise of the Phoenix
Dawn Rivers Baker
Brighid's Fire Books
a division of Wahmpreneur Publishing
P.O. Box 41, Sidney, NY 13838
ISBN # 0971327815 $10.95
Garrie Keyman
Reviewer
Fine can describe a number of things. There are fine wines, fine chocolates and fine china, all
treasures characterized by elegance and refinement. Fine constitutes a work of superior quality
and skill: something free from impurities. An article of fine craftsmanship, then, is one exhibiting a
careful and delicate artistry: an end product rendered with both subtlety and precision.
Before I read Rise of the Phoenix by Dawn Rivers Baker, fine would not have been a term I
readily assigned to literature. Oh, yes, indeed to Shakespeare, to Kahlil Gibran, but never before
to a modern work of fantasy.
To my mind, rising to the level of fine requires a work of literature to be a luxury: a work so
delicious that I want to savor it alone in the quiet evening hours after the children have gone to
bed. I crave the time, the space, the privacy to leisurely float through it as though swimming in a
sea of liquid pearls ... naked. A fine work is one I could never settle for reading once. What's
more, it is one that begs to be read aloud at times, just for the sheer pleasure of tasting the
well-turned phrase as it lolls across the palate.
In this, and more, Rise of the Phoenix delivers.
But the satisfaction of Phoenix runs far deeper than its poetic constructs. It is an engaging tale of
memorable characters struggling against the ultimate dark force of their world, an evil powerful
enough to blind the mind and impel good people to heinous acts and indifference. In that, the dark
force of Baker's universe is frighteningly real.
Meet Lady Dia of Shae, a young noble of intelligence, independence, culture and subtle rebel
leanings, who embarks on her first journey to Ormaerand, seat of the Imperial Palace, in an
attempt to re-establish her mind link with her twin brother, Daerus. It would seem, since Daerus's
own departure for the Imperial Palace, the link that Dia had enjoyed with him since birth has been
inexplicably dimmed, shadowed over by something she cannot comprehend. He has called to her,
and only by seeking him out and discerning his situation can she hope to set aright whatever it is
that has come between her and her beloved twin.
It is a dangerous and vulnerable time in which Dia travels, a time between ages in a world where
ages are marked by the rise and fall of the Phoenix. He is the keeper of time and central to a
religion that has fallen from favor with most of the other Houses, save that of Shae. Until the
Phoenix rises once again, time is practically at a stand still. Days have become years. A year of
frigid darkness has ended as Dia makes her way through a new dawn toward Ormaerand. It is a
dawn that will slowly yield to months of relentless sun that will bake the earth dry.
At the Palace, Dia encounters pivotal characters in the persons of Caelon of Aerandos and his
parents, whose warm relationships and interplay are delightfully penned by Baker. But almost as
soon as she arrives, Dia is besieged by the same darkness threatening to sweep her brother from
reach. She discovers that only one grace tethers her to the ability to remain self-possessed: the
touch of Caelon's hand.
Without understanding, Dia nevertheless clings to this realization and quickly forges a courtly
arrangement with Caelon (replete with playful underpinnings) wherein he is to take her hand in
greeting whenever they should meet. His comprehension no clearer than hers, he happily obliges.
She does not immediately confide in him that, for some reason, his touch is imbued with the
power to clear her mind of the evil fog that threatens to overtake her daily, and the more
insistently so the longer she remains in the Palace.
The Rise of the Phoenix is the tale of this couple's coming to understand the roles they are playing
in a larger arena: the stage upon which good and evil do ultimate battle. It is at once an adventure,
a romance, and a work of high fantasy peopled with richly drawn characters and neatly packaged
in the flourish of Dawn Rivers Baker's riveting voice.
The Rise of the Phoenix is a rare find, a work too good to place upon a shelf. Now that I have
relished it, it remains by my desk where I sneak a tidbit whenever I hunger for something beyond
the meat-and-potato realm of most reading. After all, Hershey's chocolate bars are unstintingly
shared with the masses, but a Godiva Chocolate is a jealously guarded treat. So go ahead. Indulge
yourself. Read The Rise of the Phoenix and taste the difference.
New Moon Astrology
Jan Spiller
Bantam Books
ISBN: 0553380869 $16.95 336 Pages
Rose Glavas
Reviewer
Jan Spiller has done a great job on making astrological knowledge accessible to the everyday
person in her new book 'New Moon Astrology - Using New Moon Power Days to Change and
Revitalize Your Life'.
She has a long history of involvement in the astrological field, including contributions as a
monthly columnist for Dell Horoscope, the astrology magazine with the largest circulation in the
world! Ms Spiller teaches astrology and appears regularly as a radio and television guest. Her
previous books Spiritual Astrology (with Karen McCoy) and Astrology for the Soul have been
translated into 10 languages to date.
As the title suggests, the information found in this inspirational and down-to-earth book shows
the everyday person how to make the most of each of the 12 New Moon placements.
Each of the twelve zodiac placements are subdivided into relevant sections. For example Taurus is
subdivided in the following way. Taurus rules:
? accumulation;
? the physical senses;
? enjoyment of life on earth;
? building;
? reliability;
? self-worth;
? inflexibility; and also
? coughs, throat, chin, neck, thyroid gland voice and vocal chords (in
matters of restoring health).
Each of these subdivisions then goes into more detail and gives examples of how to word your
wishes.
There is also a chapter devoted to using the New Moon to let go of unwanted unconscious habits.
As well as this there is another technique based on your personal 11th House that I found
interesting and potentially beneficial to anyone who wanted to try it.
Everything you need, apart from your personalised birth chart, is found within New Moon
Astrology. If you don't have your own chart the book even includes an Internet address where
you will be able to draw it up for free! This is the only item you will need to utilise the methods
she suggests to make the most of the New Moon symbolism on a personal note.
To get the most out of New Moon Astrology you will need a basic understanding of astrological
principles. For example, being familiar with concepts such as houses and cusps would be good, as
well as being able to convert time zones comfortably would be handy too.
Personally I find the theories found within this book make astrological sense and I intend on
trying some of Spiller's suggestions to see what happens!
Sophie and the Rising Sun
Augusta Trobaugh
Dutton
ISBN 0525946276 $13.00
Jean Carroll
Reviewer
Augusta Trobaugh writes a beautiful love story about an unlikely couple, Sophie, a spinster, and
Mr. Oto, who is Miss Anne's gardener. Miss Anne tells much of the story, or as much as she
knows about it, and the story unfolds as gently and quietly as the times in the southern town of
Salty Creek, Georgia in 1941.
Class, family history and color are much a part of the small town, and when Mr. Oto, too ill to
travel farther, is taken from a bus at Salty Creek, Miss Anne hires him as her gardener. He is
accepted, as much as a foreigner could be accepted, as "Miss Anne's Chinese gardener."
The tale develops slowly and deliberately, as careful and uncertain as Mr. Oto himself. Answers to
questions that arise about the history of Sophie and about Mr. Oto are gradually answered as the
story unfolds.
Mr. Oto speaks to Sophie, then berates himself for acting improperly, but he is taken with the
women he finds so lovely. One day he sees, or envisions, the Great Crane of Japan in Miss Anne's
garden and equates its fable to himself and Sophie. The Great Crane-Wife is the story of a poor
woodcutter who rescues a crane and nurses it back to health. The crane then becomes a beautiful
bride to the woodcutter.
Both Mr. Oto and Sophie like to paint and do so at the riverbank. As Mr. Oto watches Sophie, he
begins to paint the Great Crane and Sophie as one.
" he gazed at her for so long that her form began to lose all logical and rational meaning to him,
and so it didn't really come as a complete surprise to him when he began envisioning white wings
behind her, wings that echoed the angle of her white arms."
Sophie's attraction to Mr. Oto is less swift. She is puzzled by the feelings she finds overcoming
her, thinking that her life's path is set and that there is no other future for her than that of a lonely
spinster. But the feelings can't be denied.
It is December of 1941. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Japanese-Americans everywhere are
considered the enemy.
What will Miss Anne do? Will she protect her gardener when the town learns he is Japanese and
not Chinese? Will she send him away? Will she try to hide him?
What will Sophie do? Will she help him or run from him?
What will happen when the town gossip and trouble-maker learns Mr. Otto is Japanese?
Will class, color and family history draw the players together or will it drive them apart as it has in
the past?
The answers to these questions are in this delightful novel.
Bones in the Badlands
Jane Kerr Colhoff
PublishAmerica
http://www.publishamerica.com
ISBN: 1413703895 $21.95 268 pages
Joyce P. Hale
Reviewer
In this intriguing tale of long-ago murders, Jane Colhoff early introduces us to the characters, the
murders, and brings us up to the present day. This is a story of cold-blooded murder, heartbreak
and mis-justice. Although a mystery story, it is also an education in relations and treatment of
Indians by the white man as a government and supposed caretaker. The descriptions of the
country - North Dakota Badlands - are haunting and beautiful, along with colorful verbal pictures
of sunrises and landscapes. The writer is prolific in telling us of customs, beliefs and the language
of the Native Americans. The story starts with an Indian boy of eight years witnessing the murder
of a man, unbeknownst to the killer who has already killed one person and goes on to kill a third.
The book is about the ramifications of these killings on many people, and the grandson who
spends his life trying to clear his grandfather's name; and eventually how his wife and the young
witness, now aged, with the help of an honest FBI agent, bring about justice for all concerned.
"Swinging gently, Hattie sat quietly, drinking in the warmth of the sun, and the beauty of the
landscape that stretched before her....... It pleased her senses immensely but more importantly, it
soothed the wrinkles in her soul." I highly recommend this tale of intrigue, treachery, and triumph.
If you enjoy mystery with danger and a tinge of friendship and love mixed in, you'll love it,
too.
Jay Walker: The Case Of The Missing Action Figure
Grant R.Philips, author
Dustin Evans, illustrator
Quiet Storm Publishing
http://www.quietstormpublishing.com
ISBN 0974960845 $10.95
Liana Metal
Reviewer
JAY WALKER is a Middle Grade mystery that will attract the readers' attention from the very
beginning. There are twenty chapters through which the mystery unfolds and entertains both
young and old readers.
Jay Walker is a nine-year-old student who is keen on solving mysteries. His close friend Benny
has got a real problem and Jay is willing to help him get over it. There is a thief in their school
who also blackmails Benny. The teacher and their parents can't really help them. Jay insists on
spotting the real guilty student himself, despite his father's suggestion to help him. But what is
going to happen to him? How can he find out the suspects? Will Jay be able to solve the mystery?
Will Benny be happy again? How many persons are involved in the mystery?
This book is a real page turner. It is absolutely absorbing, funny, entertaining and has got a lot of
suspense as well. It caters for young readers but also for older ones, and adults who are young at
heart. A nice, entertaining story that will make you smile!
Grant R.Philips, the author of this book, lives in New York with his wife and three children . E
mail the author at grantrphilips@yahoo.com
Related Titles
By the same author:
King Gauthier and the Little Dragon Slayer, Port Town Publishing
Jay Walker The Case of the Impractical Prankster
Sounds of Silence, Star Bright Books
Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other
Indestructible Writers of the Western World.
David Denby
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 0684809753 $30.00 493 pps.
Michael Riggs
Reviewer
During the years 1961-1962, David Denby was a Columbia student in the two "Great Books"
courses at Columbia, and he returned in adult life to take these courses again. A successful film
critic, a father- why would anyone be drawn to such a life, particularly at a place as contentious as
was early 1990's Columbia? The answer is here, and this book will remind those of us who have
been tempted but who have succummed to more urgent pursuits why we have done so, and why
we should become serious about reading, either for the first time or as a matter of the greatest
possible urgency.
This book is, as Henry Lewis Gates remarks, a rarity in academia because there are not many
people there who are as gifted as Denby at wrtiting about reading. In my experience, writers who
write about reading are rare anywhere. There are some critics who are, but those who have a
separate talent, not just for appraisal, but for giving life to a work, and indeed, creating something
"classic" from the classic are not many. Henry Miller is one, as is Martin Amis, as is the best of
Edward Said- a professor who passes almost without mention in Denby's book.
Said represented, whether he liked it or not, one end of what Denby considers to be a more or less
irrelevant spectrum of opinion about the texts of the two courses. Denby does not concenrn
himself with the culture wars of Columbia at the time except inasmuch as they have effect on his
own journey through Rousseau, Plato, Machiavelli, and De Beavoir. Instead, he manages to cast
the curriculum as a struggle for meaning in a way that focuses on the teachers and the students as
they work through the Canon. This book is long, and Denby is imagistically gifted enough to
convey how irascible Kant can seem to the modern reader. Books set next to each other
chronologically might as well be onions, and Denby has a sure grip on the real material of his
experience, which is not simply a succession of readings with authority, but is instead a particular
teacher, framing these books so that they inform each other and the class.
Denby captures and explores the texts as life changing events, and as events of community,
fortunate and unfortunate, at times speaking more to blindness and silence, giving us what was
lost through history through silence. Our age is one of quick comprehension and definitive
statements, a dangerous confectionery without much meaning. Reading this book is likely to make
you pause, to be less hasty to drop the difficult for the easy, or to read for your own beliefs. I had
never thought, for example, of Jesus Christ as an exemplar of Oewit. Thanks to Denby, I
will.
For anyone contemplating returning to school, this book is better than any commercial guide, and
for any teacher who wonders whether the texts that once invoked so much passion can do so with
value now, this book is an answer. And the answer is that without the teacher, there are no great
books.
Dark Riders
Howard Hopkins
Atlantic Bridge Pubishers
http://www.atlanticbridge.net/publishing/darkriders.htm
.pdf .lit html PalmOS
1031761205 $5.00 255 pp.
Pogo
Reviewer
"The sun dipped into the horizon in a blood-colored blaze, bringing death and Dark Riders.
Scarlet fire stained the rippling ocean of buffalo grass and mesquite which spring had recently
transforrmed from miles of topaz plains to emerald graze. Scarlet faded to darkening hues of
violet and shady blue. With a glimmer all light vanished and shadows danced, concealing creatues
that slithered through blades with whispers of sound."
The words ripple seductively across the page as Howard Hopkins invites the reader into a
different world where shadows grow long anmong men.
Wordcraft is the ace of the game. Once begun, the book is difficult to put aside as the he narration
leads the reader into twists and turns along the trail leading across the Texas Panhandle when
lawless riders roamed like pirates to besiege and plunder isolated towns huddled in the twilight
zone of time. Drawing form Comanche lore and human supersition, Hopkins interweaves
historical elements to make a strong story with dynamic characters with readily indentifiable
voices that bring the reader into the center of the action.
Evil enters the panhadle with Milus Clint leading a pack of blood-thirsty outlaws, looking to
wreak revenge on Clem Durrin, owner of the 7HL ranch. Milus attacks at night with his reliable
accomplice Emmet to put the bite into the life of his honorable adversary. Well-trained, his pack
of outlaws follow orders with the exception of an upstart Billy who has an independent mind.
Fate hangs heavy with Dark Cloud and Speaks No More as they sense they cannot satiate the
hunger of the Great Cannibal Owl sweeping over the land in the night for further prey. Survivors
of the great wars with MacKenzie at Palo Duro, Apache and Comanche alike fell to the vicious
white man's spirit, called Manifest Destiny, that left braves dancing with the ghosts among the
forgotten shadows. They silently watch as evil overshadows their lives, destroying their wives and
hopes of the future. Little Waiting Woman is found mutilated in her tipi on arrival to their
campsite in the Comanche reservation. The coyotes blood curdling howls echo through the long
nights as death stalks the sweep of sagebrush and mesquite. In life, the innocent are persecuted;
the good die and the wicked rise again to ride.
Milus Clint, a man with a flint heart and iron hand to wreak vengeance for justice executed in
New Mexico territory. Presumed dead, he rides again the leader of the outlaws who attack the
unwary at night. Drifting over the country like an avenging cloud their pounding hooves drum the
knell of death wherever they go. In Bald Creek, there's no sheriff to stop them when they plunder
the town. Sheriff Tolby believes in turning the other cheek and keeping to himself whenever
dangers comes. He's busy keeping his accounts balanced in fencing cattle.
Jacob Shinn, the shady neighbor, keeps himself out of sight, but busy in his business. He lies low
and keeps a modest profile while the action circles about him.
The lines are drawn up for battle between the forces of evil and the defenders of 7HL ranch. With
cattle disappearing like shadows on grass, it looks mighty suspicious that someone is doing some
rustling. Without evidence, a confrontation is inevitable as more cattle disappear. The segundo,
Windy claims that beeves have been rebranded by a clever hand. Clem dies in unnatural
circumstances, and the burden of responsibility falls on his adopted son, Chris, who is confronted
with the trauma of his past and the horror within his ranch.
Written with dynamic dialogue that makes for past-paced reading, Hopkins pulls the reader into a
western thriller that bears the elements of horror. Combining realistic dialogue and well-crafted
desciption, the story comes to life as the scenes changes to reveal the internal voices of the
characters. We witness the carnage and the brutal terror that rides with fury into the town of Bald
Creek. We witness the church afire and the sacrificing love of women, daring their immortal souls
for their men.
Dark Riders is a book to take under the covers when you can't sleep and the shadows of the night
lengthen until the break of day. If you listen carefully, you can hear the wail of the blood-thirsty
coyotes just outside your window. The Great Cannibal Owl waits.
The Time of Our Singing: A Novel
Richard Powers
Picador USA
ISBN: 0312422180 $16.00 640 pages
Shauna Singh Baldwin
Reviewer
I'm a committed Powers reader ever since Plowing the Dark, his novel about an artist creating
computer simulations for virtual reality and a prisoner building an imaginary world, yet Powers'
magnificent new novel, The Time of Our Singing somehow slipped by me in hardcover. I didn't
miss it in paperback, though, and for that I'll be ever grateful to the gods of serendipity who guide
my reading -- this novel is a peak experience.
A German physicist meets a black singer at the Marian Anderson concert in Washington DC in
1941, they fall in love, marry and have three children. Their mixed race family's saga is told mostly
by their second son looking back from 2000, recounting with understated pathos how he was
always pulled between his older brother and sister. Histories of racism and Western music come
entwined in this sweeping complex novel of 600+ pages. Every sentence is so beautifully crafted, I
was not surprised to learn Powers was a programmer in the days when disk space and processor
time came at a premium. The Time of Our Singing is nominated for the National Book Critics
Award to be announced March 4, 2004; may Richard Powers win this award and then some.
A Sacrifice For Friendship, second edition
DS Bauden.
Limitless Dare2Dream Publishing
100 Pin Oak Court, Lexington, South Carolina, 29073
ISBN: 0974412171 $18.00
Ann Wesley
Reviewer
This rewritten edition of DS Bauden's first novel is a fun, imaginative story of time travel and
love. The second edition, with a new publisher, takes a good story and makes it better with
reworked editing and a new scene that clears up loose ends.
The story centers on Frankie Camarelli, the owner of a movie memorabilia shop who is haunted
by a women's voice calling to her for help. In a dream, Frankie is transported 20 years into the
past and meets Annie Parker, the owner of the voice and a victim of domestic abuse. Frankie is
confused by the vividness of the dream and tortured by feelings that tell her the experience is more
than a dream. Frankie's best friend Crystal, a psychic who believes in the supernatural, convinces
Frankie she may have been transported back in time. Slowly Frankie comes to believe she is
correct. When she awakens from another dream with Annie and has physical evidence of having
been transported to the past, she is convinced she is part of a strange phenomenon and also
realizes that Annie is her soul mate. Frankie, with the help of Crystal and Crystal's grandmother,
must find a way to be with the love of her life.
The theme of this book focuses more on the love story and the notion of doing anything to be
with one's soul mate, rather than overwhelming the reader with too much whiz-bang supernatural
fantasy. For that reason, it has a broad appeal to a mass audience.
A Sacrifice For Friendship includes all the elements of a true 'page-turner." There is plenty of
drama, angst, humor and an ending that is anything but predictable. I dare to say few, if any,
readers will be able to figure out the twist Bauden spins to conclude the story something that
makes the book worth staying up late to take in without interruption.
At one point in the story, Frankie says, "There are many forms of love, and I think I had
discovered quite a few of them." Anyone reading Bauden's work will be able to make the same
statement as the writer explores the love between parent and child; a rare unconditional love
between friends; that deep, soul-satisfying love between mates; and physical love. Bauden's
trademark in writing has become the realistic emotion she shows and that is clearly evident in this
second edition of A Sacrifice For Friendship. The fact that she can deviate from a standard
romance to a science-fiction story shows her range as a writer and offers promise of more
excitement to come from this talented writer.
Alisa's Bookshelf
Dead to the World
Charlaine Harris
http://www.charlaineharris.com
Ace Hardcover
http://www.penguin.com
ISBN: 0441011675 $19.95 304 pp.
Sookie Stackhouse, the buxom barmaid from Bon Temps is back again. Dead to the World begins
one week after the ending of Club Dead. To recap, Sookie is being pursed by four men: Bill, the
local vampire who is sort of an ex- but not really; Eric the Viking vampire, who is also the
Vampire Sheriff of Area 5; Alcide, a werewolf with a vicious ex- who is definitely still in the
picture; and lastly, Sam, the loyal collie, owner of Merlotte's and Sookie's boss. The vampires
need Sookie for her telepathic abilities. Alcide and Sam just want to get close, but each has
different impediments. Sookie herself is still hurt over Bill's betrayal with his maker, the vampire
Lorena.
In the past year Sookie has been thrown into some very dicey situations. Dead to the World opens
a whole new set of difficulties. Sookie is besieged from all directions and must fight for survival.
Her heart and the rest of her body are once again thrust in dangers path. At the close of Dead to
the World, Sookie gains a great deal of insight into all the men in her life. Once again Charlaine
Harris has created both a witty and entertaining adventure to snare her readers with.
Charlaine Harris is the author of three previous Sookie Stackhouse novels; Dead Until Dark,
Living Dead in Dallas, and Club Dead. She is also the author of two popular mystery novel series,
the Aurora Tegarden series and the Lily Bard "Shakespeare series. Club Dead will be released in
May, 2004.
Those of My Blood
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/ jl@simegen.com
BenBella Books
http://www.benbellabooks.com/ feedback@benbellabooks.com
ISBN: 1932100091 $14.95 333 pp.
Vampires on the moon? This premise provides a unique backdrop for Jacqueline Lichtenberg's
Those of My Blood.
Dr. Titus Shiddehara is a human/vampire hybrid alien from the planet Luren. Titus, an astronomer
has been sent to Project Station on the moon the stop his nemesis and vamphyric father, Dr.
Abbot Nandoha from contacting the home world of Luren.
Titus is a resident a Luren who does not drink blood from the human source. Instead, he drinks
a cloned, dried blood mixed with heated water. Abbot, on the other hand, is a Tourist. He feels
justified in not only drinking blood from humans, but also in their domination. To Abbot, humans
are just like cattle or orl. If Abbot succeeds in sending his message to Luren, humanity will be
doomed.
Abbot and Titus, as vampires have incredible telepathic powers. They are able to bend others to
their will and create believable illusions. Using these skills, Abbot does everything he can to try
contact Luren. Titus is forced to struggle to thwart Abbot and stay alive. This power struggle, set
against a conflicted Earth, creates a refreshing and fascinating world with unexpected twists and
turns. Those of My Blood will keep you guessing until the end.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg is the author of the Sime Gen series and many other sci-fi novels.
Lichtenberg's Dreamspy is also set on the same world as Those of My Blood. Currently Meisha
Merlin Publishing and BenBella Books are reprinting many of Lichtenberg's books. More
information can be found on the author's website http://www.simegen.com/
Queen of the Amazons
Judith Tarr
http://www.sff.net/people/judith-tarr/library.html
TOR
http://www.tor.com/ inquiries@tor.com
ISBN: 0765303957 $24.95 320 pp.
Queen of the Amazons is an incredible mythological journey that captures you and doesn't let go
for 320 pages. The Amazons of legend are reborn here as a tribe of women in the time of
Alexander the Great. These women live a nomadic, female dominated society. Queen Hippolyta,
the current ruler has just given birth to a child.
The story is told through the eyes of Selene, an Amazonian warrior and seer. Selene is bound to
the current Queen's daughter called Etta. Etta is a soulless child. She does not have a spark of life
in her. Her actions are instinctive and animal like. One morning, Etta slips away from the
encampment on a journey. Selene, Queen Hippolyta, and a group of Amazons follow Etta on
what they believe is a Goddess guided journey. Etta is drawn by an unseen force and eventually
leads to Alexander the Great, the King of Asia. Selene, Queen Hippolyta, and Etta are forever
changed by their exposure to Alexander and his male dominated world.
This epic story has all the lyrical elements of a classic. Love, karma, fate, and political upheaval all
come together in a climactic ending sure to be a surprise to the reader. The story transcends the
male/female clash and instead focuses on the idea that our souls are genderless.
Judith Tarr is the author of numerous historical fantasies. Lord of the Two Lands is her first book
chronicling Alexander.
Dime Store Magic
Kelley Armstrong
http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/ kelley@kelleyarmstrong.com
Bantam
http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/
ISBN: 0553587064 $6.99 448 pp.
Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong is the third book in the Women of the Otherworld series.
At the conclusion of Stolen, Elena, Paige, and the rest of the supernatural interracial council
rescued Savannah and destroyed the facility that was kidnapping supernaturals. Savannah had
been kidnapped with her mother, Eve. Eve was murdered shortly after the kidnapping, leaving
Savannah alone and at the mercy of Isaac, an evil sorcerer and Leah, a half-demon Volo.
Dime Store Magic begins a year after Stolen. Paige, a coven witch, has custody of Savannah, a
13-year-old angry witch. the third book in the Women of the Otherworld series. The story begins
a year after Sto Paige has her hands full trying to guide and protect Savannah, who is
experiencing teen-angst with an unhealthy dose of rage.
Leah, the half-demon Volo has decided to join forces with a Cabal, a high ranking sorcerer who is
also CEO of a large corporation. This particular Cabal, Nast is very powerful and also Savannah's
father. The fight for custody is more then a legal matter. Nast wants Savannah for her power
and will do anything to acquire her.
Paige finds herself fighting not only Nast, but also everyone else in her life to protect Savannah.
Paige's once uncomplicated life becomes a living hell that seems to have no end in sight. To make
matters worse, Savannah at 13 is very immature and full of rage. She is angry about everything
and is prone to using her powers in a reckless manner. Consequences are something Savannah
does not understand.
Dime Store Magic is a wonderful, fun book to read. The Paige introduced in Stolen gains a great
deal more depth and is a great heroine. She deals with these betrayals and attacks with a strong
moral outrage and strength of character. She is not about to back down and shows her true feisty
nature. What makes this book work is Paige's voice. It is unique and interesting. Kelley
Armstrong did a wonderful job creating the Women of the Otherworld.
Kelley Armstrong is the author of Bitten and Stolen, the first two books in the Women of the
Otherworld series. Dime Store Magic will be available in the US April 27, 2004. Industrial Magic,
the fourth in the series will be released on November 2, 2004. Be sure to visit Kelley Armstrong's
website, http://www.kelleyarmstrong.com/ for more information on the series.
Alisa McCune
Reviewer
Betty's Bookshelf
A Name of Her Own
Jane Kirkpatrick
Waterbrook Press
2375 Telstar Drive, Suite 160, Colorado Springs, CO 80920
ISBN# 1578564999 $12.99 400 pp.
Author Jane Kirkpatrick, a Wisconsin native, left suburban life with her husband, Jerry, to make a
home in remote eastern Oregon, seven miles from the mailbox and eleven miles from paved roads.
Her historical tales about the West, told through the eyes of the women of the time, show clearly
the efforts she has made to get to know everything she can about that era (including 17 years
spent working with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs) and her words breath life into a
period that I've always considered to be as dry as prairie dust until now. It's easy to see that I'm
not the only one, either; her books have been honored with awards such as the Wrangler Award
(National Cowboy Hall of Fame) and the Outstanding Western Novel (Western Heritage Center)
and have been nominated several times for awards from the Romantic Times and Affair de Coeur
magazines.
In A Name of Her Own, Kirkpatrick's tenth book (which Kirkpatrick terms "a true story
imagined"), the reader enters the life of an Iowa Indian woman, Marie Dorian, who is married to a
man of French-Canadian and Indian descent and who longs to be accepted (along with her son) in
the white man's world. Dorian left behind no writings of her own, but her life was chronicled in
the writings of others (Washington Irving and members of the Wilson Price Hunt Expedition,
among others) and in Kirkpatrick's own words, "... wrote her name inside her work, her actions as
a loving mother." Kirkpatrick's story about her comes from these writings and the author's own
vivid imagination.
Pushing her way into the traditionally all-male world of fur trapping and trading in order to remain
with her man and give her son a father, Dorian becomes part of the Wilson Price Hunt Expedition,
the first grand fur expedition after Lewis and Clark in 1811. Along the way, she meets and
becomes friends with Sacagawea, who understands her struggles in a way no one else can. As
Dorian tries to survive and to protect her children, she learns to overcome her fears and losses and
the identity thrust upon her by society in order to gain a new life. Madeleine L'Engle once said,
"We are named by the choices we make." Dorian's choices take her from the name her husband so
carelessly bestows upon her - "femme" (she who comes after) - to a name of her own, one that
she choose herself - Marie. Mother.
Out of the Ruins
Sally S. Wright
Multnomah Publishers
P.O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759
ISBN #1590520319 $10.99 334 pp.
Too often, academic mysteries cram in so much inside information, they come across as more of a
faculty handbook than entertainment. Then there's the unbelievability of an amateur getting
involved in a murder investigation for no really good reason and then - without warning - busting
out some oddball (and all too convenient) skill. I mean, how many untrained people can fend off a
knife-wielding attacker without losing some blood? Or escape from imprisonment using only
chewing gum and a toothpick left from lunch? (OK, besides McGyver?)
Sally S. Wright's Ben Reese, a middle-aged, widowed university archivist, probably can, but
Wright tells you how from the beginning - he's more than what he seems. As a behind-the-lines
Army reconnaissance scout during World War II, he learned skills that enabled him to sneak into
German outposts, kill everyone inside, photograph all the documents left lying around, and creep
away with the information without being caught or stopped. And he was good at his job. Very
good.
Then an attack by two Tiger tanks left him with fifteen thirty-caliber bullets buried in him, an
index finger that no longer bent correctly, and physical and mental scars that he reveals only to
those close to him. He has a new life now, one of peace and quiet, contemplative thought, and
nothing more exciting than finding a rare book manuscript or going horseback riding, but he also
knows that, like it or not, his wartime skills have become second nature to him, ready to emerge
at need. So, when a tight spot comes along and he escapes using a stiff wire and a
diamond-dust-encrusted string worked free from his belt (as he did in Wright's third Reese book,
Pursuit and Persuasion), it makes sense, even before the explanation comes:
"...He'd been carrying them [in his belt] since 1943. Even though
he couldn't have explained why, except that it came from scouting
with the Nighttime Special, and watching the ones who went out
with him die. The odds got better with the string and the wire, in an
imperfect world like his. And he hadn't seen any reason to make
himself stop since."
In fact, although Reese may look like a mild-mannered, somewhat dull middle-aged man, he's
actually very dangerous, and anyone who goes after him (or one of the people he loves) is in for a
shock.
In Out of the Ruins, the death of Charlotte Hill MacKinnon, who owns most of Cumberland
Island and Whitfield Inn, puts the island in danger from developers and the government, who both
have plans for it. Reese's Aunt Amelia, the inn manager, and Hannah Willliams Hill, Charlotte's
heir, both want to save the island, but Amelia is old and Hannah is bedridden with multiple
sclerosis. They'll need help for the fight, but that's not a problem. Southern families know who to
call when the chips are down and Reese is not too surprised when his mother calls in the cavalry -
him. He may not be a lawyer or a real estate expert, but he's shrewd and skeptical and he loves
Hannah and he's already in the area on business. And he's family. What could be better?
Then, Hannah dies, too, and Reese is plunged headfirst into a morass of relationships and grudges
that date back to the island's beginning. Can he get things straightened out for Hannah's heir
before more people die? Or will he be one of the next to die?
I read Out of the Ruins straight through in one day, enjoying not only the story but also the
flashbacks of Reese's war days and his later life with his wife and son, the details of his growing
relationship with a dead comrade-in-arm's widow, and the Christian worldview he lives by, that
makes him who he is. Along the way, I also learned about euthanasia, imminent domain, and life
in a small Southern community (which I got a kick out of, being from the South myself.) In
addition, in the final chapter, "Historical Notes", I was able to read real facts about Cumberland
Island, its history, and its owners. Tip: Don't open this book unless you have a lot of time on your
hands. You may not want to do anything else until you finish it!
The Complete Idiot's Guide To Publishing Magazine Articles
Sheree Bykofsky, Jennifer Basye Sander, and Lynne Rominger.
Alpha Books/Macmillan USA, Inc.
201 W. 103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46290
0028638352 $16.95 313 pp.
I'm a bibliophile. My husband is, too, and like most of that breed, our bookshelves groan with
books of every description: how-tos, why-tos, novels of every genre, reference books... you name
it, we probably have at least one example of it. I'm also a freelance writer and have been for nearly
a quarter-century, and if you look at my office bookshelves, I seem to have spent most of that
time buying books about writing, from the basics of the job to such specialized topics as writing
for women's magazines and doing the perfect interview. I have books everywhere!
As a result, I've become very choosy about the books I keep. I ask myself, do I want or need this
one badly enough to get rid of one I already own? (OK, I don't always get rid of a book to make
room for a new one... but I try, honest!) At any rate, since I hate both getting rid of books I
already own as well as trying to find room for yet another book about writing, a book has to be
something special nowadays to make me keep it.
When I was asked to review The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles, I didn't
expect to add it to my collection. After all, it was not only written for rank beginners, it was
written in the short-attention-span, Sesame Street generation style for which the "Complete Idiot"
guidebooks are famous. Since I'm past the beginner stage and prefer a book to be linear, instead
of chock-full of distracting sidebars, boxed-in asides, bulleted lists, and subheadings, I figured I'd
just review it and then get rid of it.
To my surprise, I discovered that the value of the contents easily outweighed my annoyance with
the writing style. This book is a keeper! Yes, it is geared to rank beginners, so it does have a lot in
it that is old hat to an established writer, but the authors (who include a literary agent, a book
packager and author of more than 20 books, and an educator and magazine article writer) make
even old hat seem fresh and inspiring.
For new writers, this book is a treasure trove. "Part 1: Welcome to Writerland" discusses the pros
and cons of becoming a writer, what editors are looking for in new writers, and what the job of
freelancer entails. "Part 2: Learning the Basics" is an excellent overview of such topics as learning
the markets, breaking in, and interviewing and brainstorming techniques (one of the bits I'll be
re-reading), and "Part 3: Who's Gonna Buy Your Stuff?" explains the needs and differences of
newspapers, glossies, and trade magazines. Later chapters about on-line writing, writing effective
articles, and how to run the business arm of a freelance writing career have something to offer
even experienced writers.
Even the back-of-the-book stuff is good: a glossary (What does FNASR mean? Learn here...), a
list of recommended books (including several I haven't read, but intend to now), sample contracts
and writer's guidelines, and a list of web sites for writers (less helpful than it was when the book
came out in 2000... the Inkspot site, for example, is no longer active... but still interesting).
There's also a very complete index. All in all, this is one book you'll probably want to add to your
collection, no matter how long you've been writing!
The Protector
Dee Henderson
Multnomah Publishers Inc.
P.O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759
ISBN# 1576738469 $11.95 322 pp.
Dee Henderson's first book, Danger in the Shadows, won a RITA when it came out. Her second
book, The Guardian, gave U.S. Marshall Marcus O'Malley his own book and along with it, a
series about his family - the O'Malleys. There are seven O'Malleys, as close as any family can be,
but they didn't start out as O'Malleys. Each of them was orphaned or abandoned as a child. When
they grew up, they formed their own family, complete with the same last name - the O'Malleys.
They all have and wrestle with strong beliefs about life and they all have interesting jobs. Kate is a
hostage negotiator (The Negotiator), Rachel is a forensic pathologist (The Truth Seeker), and by
the time Henderson finishes the series, each O'Malley will have had his or her own story told. The
Protector is Jack's story.
Firefighter Lt. Jack O'Malley is fearless in the face of fire - until the serial arsonist who is targeting
him and Company 81 goes after the firefighter he's given his heart to. Cassie's been caught in a fire
once before and Jack will do whatever it takes to make sure it never happens again. When the
arsonist catches him instead and the fire engines are too far away for a rescue, can Cassie put
aside her fears long enough to save the man she loves?
Cassie and Jack are both believable characters whose conflicts and relationship arise naturally
from who they are and whose religious differences are played out and resolved without
preachiness, a rarity in inspirational fiction. Henderson's O'Malley books keep getting better and
better and this one, filled with authentic details of life in a firehouse and Jack's journey to faith, is
the best yet. It's an edge-of-your-seat, stay-up-too-late, can't-put-it-down romantic suspense story
and once you start it, you won't want it to end!
Betty Winslow
Reviewer
Debra's Bookshelf
Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous
Don Foster
Henry Holt & Company
ISBN: 0805063579 $26.00 318 pages
Don Foster is the guy who figured out who wrote Primary Colors, the anonymously published
novel that satirized Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and for a time had all of Washington
wondering who done it. Foster fingered Joe Klein as the culprit using a method he had first
applied in his doctoral dissertation to "A Funeral Elegy," a 17th-century poem that was written by
a certain "W.S." after the death by homicide of William Peter of Exeter. Foster determined that
the W.S. in question was in fact William Shakespeare.
Foster's method of attributional detection involves examining the internal evidence of "questioned
documents"--the vocabulary, orthography, spelling, and punctuation used by the author--and
comparing his findings to the known writings of some finite number of likely suspects. Writers
leave their marks on manuscripts unconsciously, Foster explains, as surely as gloveless burglars
leave their fingerprints, their identities betrayed in their phrasing and word choice, in the body of
authors whose styles they unwittingly emulate, in their commas and ampersands.
Foster's Shakespearian bombshell landed him on the front page of the New York Times early in
1996. His celebrity resulted in this mild-mannered English professor being called upon to apply his
attributional techniques to a great many other cases, some of them headline-making, in which the
authorship of an important document was in question. In his fascinating book Author Unknown
Foster discusses six of the cases in which he has been involved, from his investigation of the
Unabomber's literary produce after Ted Kaczynski's arrest, to a study of the Talking Points
document Monica Lewinsky once handed Linda Tripp, to a debate about who really wrote "The
Night Before Christmas." You think the man responsible for jollying up Saint Nick and
transforming Christmas into a wretched holiday for the rapacious was Clement Clarke Moore,
that birchen-rod-loving Biblical scholar who hated dance and song and noise and all things fun but
wasn't above taking credit where it wasn't due? Think again.
The Songs of the Kings
Barry Unsworth
Nan A. Talese
ISBN: 0385501145 $26.00 352 pages
Barry Unsworth shines light on an early event from the annals of the Trojan War--that dark period
when the allied Greek fleet was massed at Aulis on the eastern coast of Greece, ready to set out
across the Aegean to Troy, but was prevented from sailing by adverse winds. As Unsworth tells
it, the assembled Greeks are growing increasingly contentious with the delay, and some remedy is
required. The man with a plan, naturally enough, is wily Odysseus--star of Homer's Odyssey--here
presented as a Machiavellian manipulator of words and men. Charmingly enough, he is wont to
affect being lost for a word, and he compliments whoever supplies him with one with a very
British sounding "Brilliant!"
Also on hand are those sons of Atreus, Agamemnon--the commander-in-chief of the operation,
from whom a sacrifice is allegedly demanded by Zeus if the ships are ever to get underway--and
Menelaus, wronged husband of Helen. You will remember that Helen was spirited away from her
home by the Trojan prince Paris, the offense which was the direct cause of the Trojan War (her
face launching a thousand ships and all that). Unsworth's Menelaus is a comical buffoon who can't
wrap his mind around the possibility that Helen may have run off willingly: "Must I remind you
that my Helen is currently in a Trojan dungeon, being violated on an hourly basis? And I've told
you before, she wasn't seduced, she was kidnapped." The two Ajaxes are similarly comical, Ajax
of Salamis a big dolt of a fellow who is trying to organize a series of games, and Ajax the Locrian
a foul-mouthed, wiry guy who is equipped for some reason--unrealistically, I should think--with a
more-or-less permanent erection.
As the story goes, Agamemnon sends for his daughter Iphigeneia to come to the fleet at Aulis--I
shan't tell you why. Thus we have, in the second part of the book, a glimpse of the princess's life
at Mycenae. There one evening she tells her slave Sisipyla the story of her family's proud history
of incestuous cannibalism: how her great-grandfather Pelops was mashed into a tantalizing stew
by his father Tantalus and served to the gods (he got better), and how her grandfather Atreus in
turn butchered his brother's three sons and served them up to their father. Sisipyla, hearing the
story and thinking to comfort Iphigeneia, who seems strangely affected by the telling of her
family's exploits, says, "It's always the children who suffer, isn't it?" A great line.
Unsworth's prose, as you've probably already noticed, is less stilted than one often finds in
historical novels, for which I applaud it, though it is admittedly an odd experience to hear his
loin-girded characters speak of "collateral damage," or to hear Agamemnon's scribe say of the
hero Palamades, "[H]is father was one of that band of heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo
in the quest for the Golden Fleece. That's the sort of thing that is bound to look impressive on a
person's CV."
Readers who are already familiar with the story of Iphigeneia at Aulis will know more or less how
Unsworth's story goes. Or will they? Because there is that alternate ending in which the goddess
Artemis steps in and saves the day at the last moment....
24 Hours
Greg Iles
Signet
ISBN: 0451203593 $7.99 448 pages
Joe Hickey is one smart sadist. Like your more successful gamblers, he knows that walking away
from the table when you're ahead is usually the best policy. For five years he has supported
himself and his collaborators with his patiently-won earnings, the produce from his
kidnappings--only one perfectly planned abduction per year--of the young children of well-to-do
doctors. His crimes are so well thought out that Hickey knows his victims will neither attack him
nor call the police, either during the kidnapping or after their children's safe return. He is confident
enough in his planning that he uses his real name--rubbing his victims' noses in their
impotence--and is unconcerned if they happen to have access to firearms. The distraught parents
of Hickey's targeted children bend to his will--a rather unpleasant business given his
demands--because they have to.
Hickey's sixth kidnapping, of five-year-old juvenile diabetic Abby Jennings, is the subject of Greg
Iles' taut, perfectly plotted, utterly gripping 24 Hours. The Jenningses may be having the worst
day of their lives in the book, but you'll have a great one as you neglect your responsibilities, lock
yourself in your bedroom, and read Iles' novel from cover to cover.
Desert Places
Blake Crouch
St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN: 0312286449 $23.95 272 pages
Relaxing on the deck of his secluded, wood-bounded home after a long day at the keyboard,
successful author Andrew Thomas goes through his mail--a phone bill and a stampless envelope
which he suspects may be fan mail, delivered by hand. It isn't. The envelope contains a typewritten
letter, only one paragraph long: "There is a body buried on your property," he reads, "covered in
your blood." Thomas is directed to dig up the mouldering corpse and retrieve something from the
dead woman's pocket. If he doesn't, whoever wrote the letter will feed information to the police
that incriminates Thomas. A bad end to a productive day, but things get much worse for our hero
from here.
Desert Places starts with a bang and doesn't let up for the next hundred-odd pages, at which point
there is a section break and the reader can start breathing again, check his or her pulse, and assess
the likelihood that the closet door is ajar because a psychopath is hiding behind it with a serated
knife. (Probably not, but you never know.) The book is gruesome in parts. If you don't like the
occasional brain-splattered windshield in your reading, as well as cruelty toward men, women,
children, and animals, you may not want to pick this one up. But if you *do* open the book--if
only to get that scary-looking guy on the cover to stop staring at you--you won't be able to put it
down.
The Adversary
Emmanuel CarrŠre
Metropolitan Books
New York, NY
ISBN: 0312420609 $13.00 191 pages
Emmanuel CarrŠre's true crime story The Adversary begins with one of the most arresting first
lines I have ever read: "On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993, while Jean-Claude Romand
was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting at the school
attended by Gabriel, our eldest son." What follows is the nearly unbelievable story of Romand,
who deceived his family and his closest friends for eighteen years, convincing them that he was a
prominent doctor employed in Geneva by the World Health Organization. In fact, Romand had
never finished medical school, and he spent his days reading newspapers in cafes or taking walks
in the woods. He supported himself and his family on money he swindled from friends and
relatives, trusting souls who, incredibly, rarely asked about the status of the considerable sums
Romand had allegedly invested for them.
Romand's story might be just bizarrely amusing--a French variation of the life of deceit adopted by
Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Catch Me If You Can, albeit with a less clever
protagonist--were it not for what happened next. When Romand's deceit was likely to be
uncovered--he had drained dry the well of his acquaintances' bank accounts--he murdered his wife
and his parents, his five-year-old son and his daughter, and he tried, but only half-heartedly, to kill
himself.
As the first sentence of CarrŠre's book suggests, the author periodically interjects his own
experiences and responses into his narrative. He is clearly concerned with separating himself from
the small "club" of Jean-Claude's devotees, Christian prison visitors who have come to admire the
murderer in his new role as repentant sinner, the anguished prisoner who has found God and,
condemned to life, assumes his suffering as some sort of expiation for his crimes. CarrŠre is
rightly appalled--at least to an extent--by these do-gooders, and he does manage to succeed, I
think, in distancing himself from them. The author is decidedly not an apologist for Romand.
CarrŠre's account of Romand's life and crimes, meanwhile, despite its horrific subject matter, is
riveting.
lost boy lost girl
Peter Straub
Random House
ISBN: 1400060923 $24.95 281 pages
Fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill and his friend Jimbo Monaghan are, ostensibly, the kind of kids
who are going nowhere--baggy-clothed and skateboard-appendaged, they slouch around their
run-down neighborhood and say "yo" more often than their fathers would probably like. But
beneath the attitude, the boys are surprisingly thoughtful and nobly loyal to one another, and
Mark, at least, is intelligent, capable of using "dyad" in a sentence: "'Look, there's another cop!'
Mark said. 'They come in, like, dyads.'" His intellect is a plus, since Mark has a lot to figure out in
Peter Straub's tense and exceedingly creepy--don't read it if you're alone in the house creepy--lost
boy lost girl.
After his mother's suicide (an instance of overkill, as it were, as the method she adopted was
thrice effective), Mark's attempts to understand what happened to her land him in the thick of a
family mystery and on the trail of a serial killer or two. His obsession leads Mark in particular to
investigate an abandoned property directly behind his own house, a building every bit as creepy as
Norman Bates's Victorian manse. The creepy goings-on in the house will have you almost
screaming at Mark to get the hell out of there.
Part murder mystery, part ghost story, the book is actually diminished by its spectral nonsense,
which renders the story less genuinely scary. The book's ending in particular is too unbelievable to
be satisfying. Straub's novel nonetheless is well worth the read. Just remember to have a buddy
with you when you crack it open.
A Clue for the Puzzle Lady
Parnell Hall
Bantam Books
ISBN: 0553581406 $6.50 323 pages
Sherry Carter and her photogenic aunt Cora--a.k.a. the Puzzle Lady, the eponymous mistress of a
syndicated newspaper column for puzzle lovers--are new to Bakerhaven, Connecticut, but they've
moved in just in time. The small town's police force is not accustomed to murder investigations,
and when a young woman turns up dead in the cemetery with what appears to be a crossword
clue in her pocket, the police chief naturally turns to the town's resident cruciverbalist for expert
opinion. He gets more than he bargains for, as the bibulous Cora is eager to investigate the case
herself.
Parnell Hall's A Clue for the Puzzle Lady, the first in a series of Puzzle Lady mysteries, is well
worth the read. The cozy novel offers a decent mystery that should keep readers guessing
(assuming they don't make the mistake of completing the crossword puzzle that accompanies the
text prior to reading the book!), as well as a number of likeable secondary characters and, most
importantly, an unusual and comic relationship between the book's protagonists, the "Puzzle
Lady" and her often exasperated and always linguistically adept niece.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
Doubleday
ISBN: 0385512104 $22.95 226 pages
Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone, the narrator of Mark Haddon's Holmesian-titled
*Curious Incident*, comes upon his neighbor's dog late one night lying dead in its yard, run
through with a pitchfork. After hugging the dog for precisely four minutes, and after being
accused of the animal's murder by its distraught, pajama'd owner, Christopher determines to
investigate the mystery of the canicide. What makes this task particularly challenging, however,
and what sets this book apart, is that Christopher is autistic. Though he is able to communicate
and he is unusually intelligent, Christopher's disorder renders simple activities--talking to
strangers, traveling by public transportation--often prohibitively difficult. (Christopher cannot
interpret facial expressions well, he cannot abide being touched, and his moods are governed by
the colors of the cars he sees en route to school each morning. But he excels at math and science
and can, for example, rattle off a list of prime numbers up to 7,057.)
In addition to undertaking to solve the dog's murder, Christopher writes down the story of his
investigation in the form of a novel--*The Curious Incident* itself--a book whose sparse but
highly readable prose ends up being about far more than a single dog's death. In passages
alternating between real-life events and Christopher's scientific and mathematical musings, the
curious incident of the pitchfork-pierced dog is explained, further deceptions are revealed, and the
reader is introduced to an extraordinary mind.
Debra Hamel
Reviewer
Diana's Bookshelf
Skin
Hertzan Chimera and Star Jewel Smith
Bizarre Books
BizarrEbooks.com
12 pages E-Book $1.00
*This collection is not suited for anyone underage or anyone who is offended easily.*
Ah poetry, when we think of this forum, love and warmth or bitterness and hate, come to mind.
Occasionally you may happen across some fluffy erotic drivel. I've never been a big fan of poetry
and that is no secret. All of the flowery unreal implications most often just make me want to hurl.
I am going to recommend a poetry collection. I know what you are thinking. Has Diana lost her
mind? No not at all. What readers will find are seven poems filled with a delightfully twisted
perspective on erotica. This collection is gratefully stripped of all the awful things that make
poetry unbearable. Much to my delight it is filled with things that warm this girls heart, flesh, sex,
demons, but most important a look at the nature of sexuality that will leave readers shuddering
with either delight or cold realization.
That said, Skin by Hertzan Chimera and Star Jewel Smith, is poetry that will most definitely move
you.
The Year Ahead 2004
Susan Miller
Barnes & Noble Books
122 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10011
ISBN# 0760745307 $9.95 411 pages
Astrology has always been a fascination of mine. Of course there are hundreds of factors that
make it next to impossible to decipher for yourself what exactly astrology can tell you. The most
commonly used astrology information is the daily horoscopes which are available almost
anywhere. In fact with the Internet making things so readably accessible there are many sites to
offer this information. Problem: they are vague and don't offer much foresight. Solution: The Year
Ahead 2004 by Susan Miller.
What you will find here is a chance to plan ahead for the entire year and often beyond. Susan
Miller tells her readers the planetary cycles for each sign, which in lay terms translates to what
planet is where, when, how long it will be there and exactly what it means. Readers will also be
learn of eclipses and what affects they will have in their life. She also tells the reader when the best
days are for various aspects of life and encounters, allowing them to take full advantage of what
the stars have to offer. I was amazed by how accurate she was regarding the tone of the past year
and the events thus far this year.
Susan Miller has taken the often-confusing art of astrology and laid it out for her readers in an
enlightening and engaging manner. The information is so complete it is like receiving a personal
consultation. Her style is so warm and friendly that after reading about my year, I continued to
read the information for every sign.
This is a book that I will be referring to throughout the entire year. I suggest everyone pick up a
copy so they too can make the most of The Year Ahead 2004 by Susan Miller the creator of
astrologyzone.com~ It's already March, don't wait too long; pick up your copy today.
The Celtic Dragon Tarot
D. J. Conway, author
Lisa Hunt, illustrator
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 1567181821 $34.95 78 Cards 240 pgs
Dragons are powerful creatures, often depicted as both beautiful and dangerous. They have made
their way into many pages or tales throughout history. Sometimes they are presented as fact and
often they are presented as mythological folk tales. Mystics and mages of various degrees have
come to know them as astral beings. They are beings that can provide great wisdom and help with
many magical workings. Using The Celtic Dragon Tarot written by D. J. Conway, readers can
work with these spectacular creatures to help provide accurate readings for themselves and
others.
The guide that accompanies these cards introduces readers to the magic that dragons possess. It
will show them how to use the cards for both divination purposes as well as magical applications.
There are explanations of the general meaning of each card as well as a small passage about the
image you will find on the card. After you have familiarized yourself with your new deck, the
author goes on to explain a few reading layouts, and gives details on card placement indications.
The reader will also find a chapter on candle spells that have been designed to be performed with
these gorgeous cards. There is also a section with various meditations, which range from
relaxation, to meeting and working with your own special dragon. At the end of the guide are two
appendixes, one with information regarding candles and their colors, and the other regarding
stones, which makes this the only guide you will need to read to use these cards to their
fullest.
The cards themselves are absolutely stunning. The soft tones in the artwork by Lisa Hunt help to
set the mood for the relaxing and mystical experience they can provide. On the cards you will see
depictions of various dragons all shapes and sizes, colors, and temperaments, shown either with
other dragons, alone, or working with magicians. They are absolutely breathtaking and paint a
perfect setting for future meditative study.
If you find the Dragon holds a special fascination for you, or if you are just looking for a new and
beautiful deck to work with, The Celtic Dragon Tarot will be a gorgeous addition to any
collection. I recommend you pick up your own deck and allow your readings to soar with the
dragons.
The Fairy Ring Oracle
Anna Franklin, author
Paul Mason, illustrator
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738702749 $29.95 60 Cards 264 pgs
I have always loved all things Fairy. These are perhaps the most fascinating beings in either reality
or fiction. They have appeared as delicate, winged, beautiful ladies or children, feminine and
graceful males, and even dark and evil entities throughout fiction and folklore. They are the
keepers of nature. Whenever you see something grow, something alive and green or lush with
color there are fairies hard at work. The blessings we see from these beings are enumerable.
Aside from their natural blessings, in the not too distant past, wise men and magicians of varying
sorts have claimed to consult with these beings. If treated properly and given the respect due,
fairies can be a very powerful aid in magic dealings, as well as providing their friends with extra
blessings, such as a hint of fragrance in the breeze to say hello.
Anna Franklin and Paul Mason have come together to provide a lovely tool of divination, The
Fairy Ring Oracle, which in itself is a blessing.
The guidebook contains fascinating information regarding the history or folklore of these
fascinating beings. It also contains card interpretations for each card; as well as reversed
meanings were applicable. There are also special spreads designed to work with these beautiful
cards. Anna Franklin has put together not only a fascinating read, but also the only book you will
need to get started using your wonderful new tool.
The cards are divided into four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, with an additional
eight cards representing the Celtic holidays. There are also extra cards that have layouts printed
on them with card placement meanings for ease of use. The cards themselves are stunning in
design and the artwork is spectacular. The meaning and creatures come to life, providing readers
with a divination experience comparable to nothing they have used before.
I have many wonderful divination tools in my sacred box and I am pleased to add The Fairy Ring,
which will make it easier to have contact, like the magicians of old, with these life enriching
beings. If, like me, you want to honor and strengthen the bond you have with fairies, or perhaps
you want to create new bonds, these cards are perfect for meditation, as the artwork draws you
into their world.
If you want to add a new tool to your collection, I highly recommend The Fairy Ring. If you want
to start practicing divination, I highly recommend The Fairy Ring. No matter your level of
understanding, it is time to strengthen or create the bond with natures most fascinating, magical
beings and to do so I highly recommend The Fairy Ring.
Candlemas
Amber K & Azrael Arynn K
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738700797 $14.95 244 pgs
After a long, cold winter filled with poor weather and shorter days than nights many people are
ready to see the springs arrival. It was no different for our ancestors in fact, it would be safe to
venture that they were even more excited by the prospect of winter coming to a close. Candlemas
also known as Imbolg, and various other names, is a time for the darkness to give way to the
light, a celebration of great hope and purification, which takes place in early February about the
1st or 2nd. To find out more about this celebration of hope, one only has to look as far as
Candlemas written by Amber K & Azrael Arynn K.
February, as readers will discover, was filled with many celebrations, which all seemed to center
around the fact that the days did seem to be growing longer and winter was indeed coming to a
close. Brigit is the goddess and saint that is most associated with this time and therefore there is
extensive information regarding her, which is as interesting as it is informative.
Readers will also find a plethora of customs, symbols, celebrations, rituals and spells that they too
can incorporate in their Imbolg celebrations, as well as divinations, which are designed to work
best with this time of year. As it has always been a celebration that has a lot to do with cleansing,
there is information on various rituals and ceremonial cleansings, as well as personal cleansing
methods. As one would expect, a close look is taken at candles, including how to make them, and
use them and their symbolism in magical dealings.
With most celebrations there are certain culinary dishes that are traditional and Candlemas is no
different. In this guide, the reader will be given delicious recipes for both modern dishes as well
more traditional ones.
As winter draws to a close for you and your love ones, why not celebrate the turning of the wheel
of life and with some help from Candlemas written by Amber K & Azrael Arynn K, your
celebration can honor the earth and her many phases as did the cultures of old.
Ostara
Edain McCoy
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738700827 $14.95 198 pgs
Ostara or the Spring Equinox is a magical time when the day and night both last twelve hours. All
things seem to be in perfect balance. It is a time of life and fertility with many customs that are
still practiced today. Most readers will be surprised that they are already taking part in many of
the customs of Ostara. Ostara by Edain McCoy will help readers better understand this important
time and where many of the things associated with this time originated.
This wonderful book is filled with bits of history, traditions, crafts, recipes, divinations,
meditations, as well as magic and rites designed for this special time. Readers will learn of the
roots of the Easter Bunny, the act of coloring eggs, and the natural items that can be used to dye
the eggs and what the colors symbolize. Seeing as how this is the season of fertility, the author
tastefully presents her readers with information regarding sex and this time of year, including a
section on working sex magic. There is also information on various other animals, in addition to
the Easter Bunny that are related to spring. The information is fascinating and is also accompanied
by spells and other magic. You will also find a great deal of fascinating information on the gods,
goddesses and deities worshiped during this time.
The book is set up and written in a manner that makes it fun to read, and really helps bring out the
spirit of this celebration. This year, make your springtime festivities come to life with the richness,
tradition, and the beauty of the Earth as she springs to life. Using Ostara by Edian McCoy, as a
guide, readers can know the meaning behind some familiar customs and some that may be new to
them, to help celebrate the Spring Equinox/Ostara.
Beltane
Raven Grimassi
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 1567182836 $14.95 165 pgs
Springtime brings with it the promise of warm days to come as winter comes to a close, life and
fertility as we see nature blossom seeming instantly, and it has always been a great time of
celebrations. Many of these celebrations are pagan based. There is no better time to celebrate our
earth than when she is so full of gifts. And there is no better book to help you learn the history
and various traditions you can practice to honor the earth than Beltane by Raven Grimassi.
What is Beltane and why is it important? Beltane means bright fire, the name is attributed to the
bonfires that were a part of the ancient rites. It is also known as May Day. It is the celebration of
the rebirth of the earth. In the past, this great time of re-growth and fertility was honored with
great festivals. The maypole, which was danced around in these celebrations, was to make sure
that everyone was in touch with the renewing forces of nature. The Green Man as well as many
nature deities and beings are honored. It is also associated with fairies, which should come as no
surprise since they are hard at work nurturing the new growth. As with most pagan celebrations
there can be a variation on the day it is celebrated. Thought the traditional celebration was at the
end of April, it is now also celebrated on May 1st or May Eve.
This book will give readers insight into the ancient customs surrounding this special time, as well
as the folklore and mythology. Background on the spirits associated with and celebrated. I am
very partial to anything fearie and thus really enjoyed the sections on fearie lore as well as the
sections on flowers lore. There is also a plethora of spells that will have the best results this time
of year, rituals for both the solitary practitioner and for groups, and recipes to help you connect
with nature and the customs. And arts and crafts, which has possibly the neatest hair design I have
seen.
Everyday our earth provides us with uncountable gifts and blessings. Celebrating Beltane is one
fun and deeply meaningful way we can honor the wonder that is Mother Earth. Beltane by Raven
Grimassi is a complete guide to help you decide how you wish to do so.
Magical Celebrations of the Summer Solstice: Midsummer
Anna Franklin
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738700525 $14.95 225 pgs
Midsummer/summer solstice is my personal favorite celebration of the year. This is the day when
the fearie realm is the most opened to us. All of my readers know how special the little people are
to me. I can't begin to put into words the daily blessings we all receive from both our earth and
the fairies. There are numerous ways to honor them and our earth, celebrating this special day is
just one and in Magical Celebrations of the Summer Solstice: Midsummer by Anna Franklin,
readers will be shown why this day is so special.
In addition to being a time when the plane of the fairies is closest to ours it is also a day when
diving is highly successful, especially in regard to the future of ones love life. There is much
confusion regarding the day to actually celebrate, it ranges from June 19-25. As with any spiritual
celebration, individuals must decide for themselves what is the most comfortable, hence the
appropriate day to celebrate. Readers are given the fascinating customs and history of this special
day so that they can be armed with knowledge when deciding how they wish to honor this day of
natural celebration.
In this book you will find information on, but not limited to, history, myths and lore, customs,
magic, divination and rituals that work best when preformed during this special time, herbs
gathered and used for various reasons, and delicious recipes for culinary treats traditionally served
this time of year, which will all make your honoring of this sacred day as close to the old ways as
you desire.
Our earth gives us all the gift of life and sustains us daily with her many blessings, in addition she
provides us much beauty and inspiration. I would think a day filled with festivities and sunny good
times and a night of magical dealings with the fearie world would not only allow a good time to
be had, but would also be a great way to say thank you.
Most people love festivities, what better to celebrate than by the enjoying summer and its magical
warmth, honoring the fearie world and their gifts and blessings and doing so with the knowledge
and respect gained from reading Magical Celebrations of the Summer Solstice: Midsummer by
Anna Franklin.
Lammas Celebrating the First Fruits of the First Harvest
Anna Franklin and Paul Mason
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738700940 $17.95 276 pgs
One of my fond memories of childhood is wresting around with my brother. Pretending to be a
warrior even though he was some outer space starship type trooper I always played a warrior of
some sort. Though it is not all that the celebration is about, the warrior is honored and revered
during Lammas/Lughnasa. When deciding what you wish to do in honor of this mostly
overlooked sabbat, Lammas Celebrating the First Fruits of the First Harvest by Anna Franklin and
Paul Mason is an invaluable tool.
Lammas is a harvest festival that can be celebrated on different days depending on preference;
new style August 1st or old style August 12th. This celebration marks the autumn harvest, it is
typically a celebration filled with games and battles in honor of warriors. Although the history
long overlooked, in this book you will find ways this time of year were honored in various places,
mythology and folklore and will then be able to decide how you wish celebrate.
In addition to the festivities, it is also a wonderful time to work protection magic and the authors
will show you what types magic to work for the best results, including a section specifically
dealing with warrior magic. There is a great section describing the traditional games, recipes and
rituals. Oh, and songs, there are great songs throughout the book that will help get you in the
mood and put a smile on your face. All of theses topic will deal specifically with this special day to
help you make the most of the first harvest and bless your life in new ways.
After all of the hard work of the year, why not let go and celebrate with a day of games, food, and
many rich customs, Lammas? Lammas Celebrating the First Fruits of the First Harvest by Anna
Franklin and Paul Mason can show you how.
Halloween
Silver RavenWolf
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 1567187196 $12.95 209 pgs
No matter religious background Halloween, October 31st, is the one pagan holiday that most
everyone is at least aware of, if not celebrating. It is well known that the roots of most common
holidays have been taken from old pagan custom and altered slightly. So just what is Halloween
and what are you celebrating for? Silver RavenWolf has gone to great pains to collect the vast
history of this, what has become a fun holiday, filled with costumes and candy, in her book simply
titled Halloween.
The background is not as clear as one would imagine. In fact, it seems the celebration sprung
from several places, and has been altered a tremendous amount from its original form. This book
is packed with historical goodies. However, unlike so many of its kind, it is something that my
eleven year old would actually sit down and read. As with the other works by RavenWolf that I
have read, she presents facts in a way like nothing I have read before, turning them into fun bits of
interesting information that reads almost like fiction, it is so engaging. In Halloween she does this
by exchanging her role as a narrator to that of a flight attendant, taking her readers from one place
and time to the next in her search for the truth behind the practices.
This book is so much more than just a history lesson. Once readers have taken in the history and
customs they are then told of the many superstitions that surround the day. I was, and I have no
doubt, others will be surprised by the background of several of the more well known, yet
apparently misunderstood superstitions.
Next, she teaches her readers just what can be done on this one of the most magical nights of the
year, which is also the pagan new year. There are bits on various forms of divination and many
options for working magic and how they can be used more specifically on this occasion. There are
hoards of recipes that are fun as well as delicious, to help make the celebration have meaning as
well as some unique food experiences. In the closing section RavenWolf reminds us that this is a
day to honor our loved ones recently past and shows her readers various ways they can do so.
This is the most readably complete look at my favorite Holiday that I have read to date. All the
questions I had have been answered and I have even been blessed with many new ways to
celebrate this day with meaning, understanding and fun. Make more of Halloween this year than
just throwing on a costume and handing out candy~ Let Silver RavenWolf show you how in
Halloween.
Yule
Dorothy Morrison
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 1567184960 $14.95 198 pgs
With the month of December, comes what is known as Yule time. It is a feel good time of year in
which no matter your beliefs, generally holds within it a special celebration. There are many things
we associate with this time of year. The smell of various traditional treats backing or freshly cut
pine trees. Families' join together for these celebrations and the general feeling is good. Yule or
the winter solstice is celebrated on the first day of winter, which is also the shortest day of the
year. But where did it originate? To answer that question one need look no further than Yule by
Dorothy Morrison.
In Yule, readers will discover the origin of some of our most beloved traditions and things
traditionally associated with the season, and I am certain some of them will be surprises. They will
also learn of the rich celebrations that happen in various other parts of the world. It is rather
fascinating to see the many similarities as well as differences. There is a plethora of information
regarding magic and superstitions for this time as well as trivia.
In preparation for the celebration, the reader will find various customary decorations, with a
section devoted to the Yule tree. There are also sections on gifts, recipes, party games, and loads
of delicious recipes. The daily event calendar helps readers to determine the days of various
celebrations. In the appendixes, you will find information on the various gods and goddesses
associated with Yule, greeting cards in other countries, and related websites.
No matter where you live, nor what your religious preference may be, there is no doubt that the
information in this guide will be of interest, and allow you to not only add more to your
understanding of this joyous time, but also add new practices and add more value to the ones you
already have. Grab a copy of Yule by Dorothy Morrison and add even more joy to the Yule
season this year.
Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads
Teresa Michelsen
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738702633 $12.95 156 pgs
Reading tarot is an art and as with most arts, it is also very personal. Perhaps you may have been
to more than one reader and noticed that the same cards can have different meanings, even if only
slightly. One thing that is probably the same is the way the cards are laid out. Most readers use
one of two spreads: for a short reading the three card, past present, future spread and for
something more in depth the Celtic cross spread. From a readers point of view there may be times
when you just don't seem to get results from the common spreads. Now what? Now you have
Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads by Teresa Michelsen.
In this guide the author will show readers why for certain questions the traditional spreads are not
always best. She will give options of spreads she has used, as well as telling why and how they
were designed and work. The reader will learn how the question can affect the spread, how to
clarify card meanings in relation to their landing spot in a spread, and even how many cards to
use. The most exciting thing, in my opinion, is how to modify the currently used spreads and
create your very own.
It is often said in almost every manual that the cards will be very personal to the reader. Not only
should you have your own deck, one that speaks to you, but you should also meditate and find
out what the cards mean to use specifically as an individual. Which lends to the question, then
why should we use the same spread as everyone else? Answer, don't. It is perhaps a great way for
beginners to learn and even a great staple spread that you may want to use most often. However,
when you feel it hasn't answered the question, it is time to alter it and make a spread more suited
for the reading at hand.
Get personal with your cards, get personal with specifically designed readings, get Designing
Your Own Tarot Spreads, and get better results.
Hoodoo Mysteries
Ray Malbrough
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738703508 $12.95 193 pgs
At first I thought that this was a typo, hoodoo, or even another way to say voodoo. It is not.
Though Ray Malbrough in his book Hoodoo Mysteries does say that hoodoo is like a cousin of
the traditional Haitian vodum. Hoodoo is a magical system practiced in Louisiana. The history of
how it came to be is totally fascinating, about halfway through the introduction I was completely
enthralled with what is true American folk magic, and began to wonder how I had overlooked this
for so long, thinking it nothing more than another name for voodoo.
In Hoodoo Mysteries readers are taken on a journey into the fascinating world of this system of
magical practice. The author explains the differences between this and the religion of voodoo as
well as the similarities. The differences between deities and saints are looked at. This was
especially interesting as in hoodoo the catholic saints are held sacred; the author gives attention to
this in relation to the Loa.
Hoodoo divination using shells and playing cards, either individually as well as in cooperation
with one another, is also covered. I don't have a strong background knowledge of voodoo so I
found it especially helpful that as each new subject, rituals, spells, invoking the dead and the
topics I have already mentioned, was examined the author made clear the similarities and
differences. At the close of the book readers will find appendixes with information regarding,
religions in America, planetary hours, and how to read playing cards.
There are so many misconceptions held regarding voodoo as well as hoodoo yet after reading
Hoodoo Mysteries they are all made clear. The author presents the information in a way that
makes it fascinating and easy to understand. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a
clearer understanding of Hoodoo magic and its history, as well as those who may be considering
the magical system for their own person growth.
Mapping Your Birthchart
Stephanie Jean Clement, Ph.D.
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 0738702021 $19.95 CD-ROM and 228 page guidebook
There are numerous books on how to figure out the layout of your birthchart. I can begin to tell
you the amount of times I attempted to draw my own wheel and the results were often not as
good as that of the art my child brought home from elementary school. Even so, once I had this
cave drawing what was I to do with the information? But another book to help determine what it
all means? Perhaps, it is definitely an option. However, there is a better option. Mapping Your
Birthchart by Stephanie Jean Clement, Ph.D.
The first thing that attracted me to this book was the accompanying CD-ROM. This program
takes the personal information you enter and creates two reports; one the hard to draw by
yourself, unless you are an artist wheel and two, a write up of your planetary locations and their
meanings. The CD alone makes this an invaluable tool for amateur and professional astrologers
alike. It removes all of the math and other details that make figuring a birthchart a daunting
task.
The guidebook goes hand in hand to further your understanding of what these reports mean. It
breaks down the houses and what they mean, the signs, planets and how these all work together in
your specific chart to help you understand more about you, and what the future may hold. It also
has fascinating charts of famous people that are used as examples in showing you how to read the
nuances in the chart. The guide gives you all the information you need to strengthen all areas of
your life and meet the potential the stars have aligned for you.
Go on and get your copy of Mapping Your Birthchart by Stephanie Jean Clement, today, look at
your birthchart, enjoy the quest of finding meaning in the stars, and when you realize just how fun
and easy astrology can be, you will delight in making and interpreting the charts of friends and
family members.
The Soul as Healer
L. Joseph Nichols
Llewellyn
P.O. Box 64383, Dept K168-6, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
www.llewellyn.com
ISBN# 1567184871 $12.95 209 pgs
Whenever we want to say that something is done with greatness we often say it came from the
soul. It is the most powerful force within and without us, and thus our most powerful healing
tool. As we come to know and love ourselves we can begin to work from our soul, not only to
heal but also to achieve overall happiness in our lives. This is just one of the profound lessons
shared in The Soul as Healer by L. Joseph Nichols.
Our natural state is that of perfect health. Unless your soul has determined that a particular
ailment is necessary for your life path, perfect health can be achieved. Through love, of others and
ourselves, readers will be shown how to work on all four levels, physical, emotional, mental and
spiritual, along the path to health and love.
A few things covered in this wonderful guide are: energy healing, in all of its many forms, as
everything holds energy, the basic principles of self-healing as well as healing others, and chironic
healing, which through its use of the patterns of the aura will allow the body to heal itself
naturally. All of these methods are taught with the underlying message that healing is a work of
love. By studying this guide and these principles readers will be able to take their healing work to
the next level, one that will include the soul.
Once readers have taken in this guide they will realize that the most effective healing tool is
something they have had access to for their entire existence. By presenting the material in such an
easy to follow manner Nichols has provided and invaluable guidebook to anyone who wishes to
practice the art of healing, be it personal or working with others.
I invite you to pick up a copy of The Soul As Healer and get to know yourself on a deeper level,
allowing your soul energy to help you in all of your life matters.
Diana Bennett
Reviewer
Gorden's Bookshelf
The Cosmic Kalevala: Book One the Saga of Lost Earths
Emil Petaja
Renaissance E Books
P.O. Box 1432, Northampton, MA 01060
www.renebooks.com
ISBN: 1588732479 $4.00 electronic download 116 pages
Petaja follows a long tradition of mixing mythology and science fiction. Most authors use a
sprinkling of mythological names and events but a number of stories use major plots from the
original sagas. Petaja uses a balanced mix of three genres in 'Lost Earths', science fiction,
paranormal, and mythology.
The world has gone through World War III, an even more devastating war than the previous
ones. The survivors put themselves into the hands of the world's psychologists, or Psych-Head as
they are known in the book, which plan the lives of everyone. Each individual is tracked and
controlled to limit aggression and violence. The control works for all but a small handful of
malcontents such as Carl Lempi.
A rare earth metal is found in Northern Finland. Its properties are so useful that it is used in
manufacturing across the world. A series of suicides, which are tracked to the metal, spread
across the globe. To stop what is happening, the world needs someone who understands the
Finnish myths, has ESP abilities, and a mind that is different from the norm. A malcontent. A Carl
Lempi. A person who looks like and could even become the mythical hero Lemminkainen.
The 'Kalevala' has been used by English speaking authors from Longfellow to Tolkien. Petaja
adds his own twist to the story by making the myth a tale of real events. 'Lost Earths' is a fun ride
for those who have read the 'Kalevala.' For readers unfamiliar with the myth, the Finnish names
can be a problem. The story would be helped by the inclusion of a glossary. It doesn't have the
smooth read of Hamilton's science fiction treatment of Norse myths but the science holds up much
better today. 'The Saga of Lost Earths' is recommended reading for every science fiction
aficionado and for any who have heard the old Finnish myths. Problems that might occur with the
Finnish names are made up for with the satisfying tale.
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed
Jim Al-Khalili
Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810
ISBN: 0297843052 $24.95 269 pages
Every scientific field has its share of perplexing and counter intuitive events but quantum
physicists revel in the multitude of perplexing ideas that make up their discipline. They make the
perplexity a badge of honor to be bandied about to others. Instead of putting people off,
Al-Khalili uses the perplexity to make quantum understandable to the average person.
Quantum physics is a set of mathematical ideas and methods that explain the seemingly
unexplainable actions of the very small. The mathematics are beautiful in how they explain the
unexplainable. The problems occur when you look beyond the math and realize what is happening
in the real world.
Al-Khalili starts with the hundred year old two slit problem. The two slit problem occurs when a
single thing of either energy or matter goes through two very small slits at the same time.
Problems, such as a single particle being in two separate locations at once, required a long Noble
listing of scientists to develop the mathematics that became quantum. It seems daunting realizing
that you are trying to understand the works of Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and Einstein but
Al-Khalili's love of the perplexing and contradictory reality of the quantum world fills the pages of
the book. He covers all of the major events raised by quantum and looks into the near future of
the physics.
'Quantum: A Guide to the Perplexed' is one of the harder scientific lay-books to read but
Al-Khalili's enthusiasm and ability to hint at the reality behind the unexplainable make it worth the
time and trouble. 'Quantum' is highly recommend for anyone with a desire to understand science.
The only weakness is the same weakness of those who have to study any specific scientific
discipline long enough to explain it to the man-on-the-street. Al-Khalili understands the quantum
world but when he tries to relate the information to other scientific disciplines there are misses.
This is forgivable. After wading through the perplexing world of quantum, not understanding the
full implications of an equally perplexing science is to be expected.
S.A. Gorden
Reviewer
Harold's Bookshelf
Comfort for Troubled Christians
J. C. Brumfield
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802414265 $2.99 60 pp.
"Comfort for Troubled Christians" is a small book of just sixty pages, but what it lacks in size it
makes up for in substance. Still a popular resource after over forty years in publication, it
represents a timeless work for those needing consolation. When we have trials and everything
seems to be going wrong it is a place to turn to be reminded that God cares, God comforts, God
is in control, and God works with a purpose. If you are going through a time of grief or other
difficulty you may find this book very helpful as you are reminded that God sends his Great
Comforter to help us through such times. "Comfort for Troubled Christians" is a recommended
read for anyone going through rough times and especially so for those who are so depressed they
may not have the sufficient motivation to read a larger book.
Jesus In Pictures for Little Eyes
Kenneth N. Taylor
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802430597 $9.99 126 pp.
"Jesus in Pictures for Little Eyes" is a great book for introducing your child to the stories of Jesus.
It is a small book with large print, just right for little hands. Each page has a short summary of one
of the Bible stories about Jesus (about 75 words or less) along with a Bible reference and a short
question for thought. On the opposing page is an illustration of a scene from the story. Whether
you are introducing your child to the stories of Jesus or using it to help them learn to read, "Jesus
in Pictures for Little Eyes" is a recommended purchase for those with young children.
Left Behind: The Bible Studies: The Antichrist
Neil Wilson, Len Woods
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802464645 $5.99 96 pp.
"Left Behind: The Bible Studies" is a series of companion Bible study workbooks designed to be
used with the appropriate book of the "Left Behind" series. This particular one is designed to be
used with "The Antichrist". It contains sections on topics like how to get the most from your
study, how to lead a group study, how to study Bible prophecy, and an overview of end times
including appropriate Bible verses. These all come before the main portion of the book where the
reader is presented various questions designed to help them understand the various facets of the
lesson.
Each lesson is laid out pretty much the same way. The first questions make the reader examine
their current understanding of the end time. After that there is a quoted section from the Left
Behind book appropriate to the lesson, then appropriate Bible verses and finally, even more
questions to help the reader understand the lesson on a deeper level. These Bible studies take a
definite millennialism point of view with a pre-millennial rapture. If you liked the "Left Behind"
book this takes it to the next level by supplying the Biblical basis and is a highly recommended
read.
Left Behind: The Bible Studies: The Rapture
Neil Wilson, Len Woods
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802464653 $5.99 94 pp.
"Left Behind: The Bible Studies" is a series of companion Bible study workbooks designed to be
used with the appropriate book of the "Left Behind" series. This particular one is designed to be
used with "The Rapture". It contains sections on topics like how to get the most from your study,
how to lead a group study, how to study Bible prophecy, and an overview of end times including
appropriate Bible verses. These all come before the main section of the book where the reader is
presented various questions designed to help them understand the various facets of the lesson.
Each lesson is laid out pretty much the same way. The first questions make the reader examine
their current understanding of the end time. After that there is a quoted section from the "Left
Behind" book appropriate to the lesson, then appropriate Bible verses and finally, even more
questions to help the reader understand the lesson on a deeper level. These Bible studies take a
definite millennialism point of view with a pre-millennial rapture. If you liked the "Left Behind"
book this takes it to the next level by supplying the Biblical basis and is a highly recommended
read.
Lexicon for Lovers of Language: A Dictionary for Word Connoisseurs
Henry I. Christ
Noble House
8019 Belair Road, Suite 10, Baltimore, MD 21236
ISBN: 1561678279 $21.95 243 pp.
Written for the average reader who wants to expand their vocabulary or just broaden their
linguistic horizons, "Lexicon for Lovers of Language" is an entertaining read for anyone. It
contains some very common words that everyone should be familiar with such as allusion, carpe
diem, or doublespeak. But it also contains many less common words such as assonance, deus ex
machina, or metonymy. Would you be totally in the dark if someone described a speech as a
Jeremiad? You wouldn't be if you had read this book. Each of the over 110 entries starts with a
quote that illustrates the word or defines it. This is followed by other information that might
include etymology of the word, common uses, examples, or other interesting facts about it.
"Lexicon for Lovers of Language" is a witty and well-done book. Whether used as a reference, to
expand your vocabulary, or just browsing for fun, "Lexicon for Lovers of Language" is a
recommended read.
Numerology for Beginners: Easy Guide to Love, Money, Destiny
Gerie Bauer
Llewellyn Worldwide
PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
ISBN: 1567180574 $9.95 237 plus index
Exactly what it promises to be, "Numerology for Beginners" is an introduction to the study of
numerology. Written in a basic, easy to understand manner, a complete novice can start examining
the implications of numbers in their life right away. The single digit method of numerology is
discussed and interpretations provided for each number and aspect. Each of your most influential
numbers is examined as to how it affects character traits, energy levels, opportunities, and
relationships. Gerie Bauer also discusses the vowel and consonant interpretation of names and
how these can be used to understand your personality or the personality of others. For those
interested in a basic introduction into numerology "Numerology for Beginners" is a recommended
read.
The Trouble With Jesus
Joseph M. Stowell
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802410936 $11.99 159 plus notes
In "The Trouble With Jesus" author Joseph Stowell examines how having a Jesus-centric belief
system has become an unpopular position since the events of 9-11. Before the several years prior
to 9-11 people were losing interest in religion at an increasing rate. However, the calamity of that
day brought many back seeking answers and seeking God.
But something is very different with Christianity since the Twin Towers attacks. With the Islamic
extremists claiming responsibility many have balked at the idea of Jesus as the one and only way
to heaven. Instead everywhere we turn everyone is singing the same refrain that we all worship
the same God but in different ways. Joseph Stowell uses several Bible verses to point out that this
is not consistent with traditional Christianity and flies in direct contradiction with what the Bible
has to say about Jesus.
"The Trouble with Jesus" is a book that conservative Christians will enjoy and find motivating.
Among liberals some will find it encouraging and others will find it a fine example of the trouble
with Jesus.
Stikky Night Skies
Laurence Holt
Laurence Holt Books
303 Park Avenue South, #1030, New York, NY 10010
ISBN: 1568582536 $12.00 234 pp.
A simple but effective approach, "Stikky Night Skies" teaches the reader how to recognize six
constellations, 4 major stars, a planet, and how to always determine north in the night sky.
Besides showing the constellation pattern and describing how to recognize it the book contains
multiple pages of actually night skies to practice on. After completing the book it is fairly simple
to locate each of the constellations mentioned.
I did have one problem with the book. The gluing method used to attach the cover on my copy
was of such poor quality that the cover came off with just one reading. Of course it can just be
glued back on with good quality hot glue, but you would expect it to be of better quality from the
beginning.
Other than this one caveat, if you want to know how to recognize a handful of constellations that
you can use as a base to learn other ones, you can't go wrong with "Stikky Night Skies".
Never Be Boring Again
Doug Stevenson
Cornelia Press
PO Box 9222, Colorado Springs, CO 80932
ISBN: 0971344094 $19.95 311 plus index
Doug Stevenson's book "Never Be Boring Again" makes a pretty bold claim. One thing that I
learned in my childhood is if you are going to make a bold claim you had better be able to back it
up because someone will call you on it. Then again you can get away with making a claim like
that when you can back it up and Doug Stevenson does exactly that. If you've done much public
speaking at all you know that it is easy to tell if you have an audience eating out of your hand or if
you are losing them. The problem is finding a way to consistently keep your audience
interested.
This is the same problem that has been around forever in the theater industry. How do you get
your audience involved in the story? Well, actually that is the answer. People get involved in
stories. Lists of numbers are useless unless they can be converted to an illustration that points out
their effect. Using his "Story Theater Method" as the base on which to build, Stevenson takes the
reader on a trip into the world of preparing powerful, effective presentations that lead people to
action. Stories involve the audience and once it is involved the audience will pay attention. When
the audience pays attention they remember the phrases you use and your "phrase that pays" has
the effect you desire.
I had the opportunity over the last few weeks to try a presentation to various groups. So, I tried
to redo part of it using the techniques in the book. The bottom line was that a great deal more of
the people remembered much more of the presentation in the group where the techniques were
used. They also asked more and better questions because they had been listening throughout the
presentation.
"Never Be Boring Again" deserves the highest recommendation that I can give and should be
required reading for anyone who is not a hermit because we are always speaking to an audience,
even if it is just one person.
The New Encyclopedia of the Occult
John Michael Greet
Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164
ISBN: 1567183360 $29.95 531 plus bibliography
One of the most extensive publications on the occult, "The New Encyclopedia of the Occult" does
an excellent job of explaining various words, philosophies, historical events, individuals, and
practices of the occult traditions without pushing a personal agenda. This is what a reference
work should be - a neutral exposition of the facts. Everything imaginable is covered in this
exhaustive tome. For most entries there is also at least one reference at the end to point the reader
to additional material on that entry. To give you an idea of the breadth of the information, some
of the areas covered include magic, alchemy, astrology, tarot cards, palmistry, geomancy, the
Golden Dawn, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and religions like Wicca, Thelema, Thosophy, and
paganism. "The New Enclyclopedia of the Occult" is a highly recommended read for anyone
interested in a scholarly reference work on the occult.
Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld's Breakthrough Health
Isadore Rosenfeld, M.D.
Rodale Press
33 East Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18098-0099
ISBN: 1579549004 $14.95 270 plus index
One of America's most trusted doctors; Isadore Rosenfeld is back with up-to-date information
from the world of medicine. For each medical problem discussed he examines traditional thought,
current research, and even alternative medical research. The material covers what works, what
doesn't, side effects, and new directions in treatment. Some of the specific problems covered
include Alzheimer's, Arthritis, Asthma, Breast Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Cold and Flu, Colon
Cancer, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Menopause, Prostrate Enlargement, Sinusitis, and Stroke. "Dr.
Isadore Rosenfeld's Breakthrough Health" is a highly recommended book for anyone who wants
to take the lead in being responsible for his or her own health.
Crafty Concoctions
Sue Hannah
Meadowbrook Press
5451 Smetana Drive, Minnetonka, MN 55343
ISBN: 0881664626 $TBA 140 pp.
A fun collection of various craft formulas, "Crafty Concoctions" is a delight to read through and
play with the resulting concoctions. The various formulas are divided up into groups that include
crayons, paints, play doughs, clays, chalks, glues and pastes, inks and dyes, paper, body art,
cosmetics, special effects, and edible concoctions. The question that comes to mind immediately is
why make these things when you can buy paint and play dough off the shelf? Well, besides the fun
of making it yourself there are a lot of things that you don't find on store shelves. For example,
one of the really popular ones with children is bathroom finger paint that can be used to paint on
the bathtub wall and easily cleaned off with soap and water. Other popular ones include beadwork
clay, awesome rubber, and lip-gloss. "Crafty Concoctions" is a recommended purchase for anyone
with children and an interest in sharing craft activities with them.
The Complete Knitting Set
The Readers Digest Association, Inc.
Readers Digest Road
Pleasantville, NY 10570
ISBN: 0762104643 $TBA
More than just a book on knitting this is a complete kit to learn knitting. It includes a book on
techniques, a book of 19 projects, some yarn, two 4mm knitting needles, stitch holder, yarn
bobbin, cable needle, and 12 stitch library cards for quick reference. The techniques book includes
information on equipment and materials as well as the expected techniques of casting on, knit and
purl stitches, twisting, binding off, how to hold the working piece, and several different stitch
patterns. It also gets into more complex items such as paired shapings, the double decrease, using
four or more needles at the same time, knitting in the round, cable stitches, bobbles, bead knitting,
and fastenings. The projects book includes a knitted bag, a colorful toddler's cardigan, man's
Guernsey-style sweater, lacy scarf, woman's chunky sweater, baby's jacket, girl's jacket, and even
hats, scarves, and socks. For someone wanting to learn how to knit or just getting started "The
Complete Knitting Set" is highly recommended.
The Complete Book of Numbers: The Power of Number Symbols to Shape Reality
Steven Scott Pither
Llewellyn Worldwide
PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
ISBN: 0738702188 $19.95 302 plus bibliography and index
Mathematics is often referred to as the only true science. The main reason is because it is the only
one that is entirely conceptual in nature. No matter what you do you cannot touch a two. You
cannot create an experiment to watch two plus three create a five. Mathematics is all concepts and
symbols. On the other hand anything in the physical world can be described using mathematical
models. Author Steven Pither takes this one step further by postulating that not only things of the
physical world but also things of the spiritual world can be described using the symbology of
numbers.
"The Complete Book of Numbers" first examines relationships between numbers and
mathematical principles. With an in-depth discussion of the Pythagorean mathematics, triangular
and square numbers, the concept of correlation and even sub-atomic particles this book provides a
solid foundation for those who would examine the relationship between number symbols and
reality. It is not until the fourth chapter that the book really starts into what most would consider
standard numerology. But, even then it delves way beyond the single number numerology most
often described in basic numerology books. "The Complete Book of Numbers" provides a much
more substantial view of numerology than most other books on the market today and so is a
recommended read for anyone interested in the subject.
Auras: See Them in Only 60 Seconds
Mark Smith
Llewellyn Worldwide
PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
ISBN: 1567186432 $12.95 121 plus appendices and index
"Auras: See Them in Only 60 Seconds" provides an interesting way of seeing auras quickly. In
summary the author's suggested technique is to look at the person in the same way that you would
a stereogram. By focusing not on the person but on a point about eighteen inches past them you
will see a faint aura surrounding the person. This does work but the technique brings on some
questions. The reason a stereogram works is because it causes a mild cross-eyed effect. Since this
same technique is used here I thought that I would see if it created an aura around other things
besides people. Sure enough, I was able to see an "aura" around books, boxes, bricks, and just
about anything else that I looked at this way. So, my first impression was that this is not a credible
way to see an aura but just the normal result of crossing your eyes. On the other hand, I tried it
several times and did find that I started to see tinges of various colors around people that were
not there around inanimate objects. All inanimate objects continued to just have the gray "aura".
The effects of crossing your eyes should not cause colors to appear that are not there in the
object. So, maybe there is something to this after all.
The book is well written and easy to understand. The instructions are explained well enough that
it is easy to follow the suggested process. The author details clearly what to expect and how to
interpret various results. He also covers chakras, common auras for various occupations, how the
various colors should be interpreted, etc. All in all this is an interesting book on auras and
deserves a recommended read status for those who are interested in the subject.
The Arts and Crafts Busy Book
Trish Kuffner
Meadowbrook Press
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0881664340 $28.25 368 plus appendices and index
Full of simple arts and crafts for toddlers and preschool children "The Arts and Crafts Busy
Book" is a great resource. In total there are 365 basic crafts grouped into 12 chapters. Some of
the areas covered include coloring, painting, printmaking, modeling, sculpting, nature arts and
crafts, educational arts and crafts, and holiday arts and crafts. Each craft is laid out in cookbook
style listing all the materials required first and then the instructions for completing the craft. Easy,
fun activities for preschool children, "The Arts and Crafts Busy Book" is highly recommended for
anyone who deals with young children.
MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Corinthians
John MacArthur, Jr.
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802408656 $24.99 528 pp.
A detailed expository style commentary, the "MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2
Corinthians" is one of the best modern commentaries available. Some of the features that put it
into this category include an excellent overview of the prevailing cultural and political situation as
well as historical factors affecting the text, as well as a detailed examination of how the text
applies to the reader today. I particularly liked the fact that John MacArthur does an excellent job
of providing material that is instructive and interesting for the serious Bible student while still
written in a way that the average person can still understand. This is a very difficult tightrope to
walk effectively and MacArthur does it brilliantly. The main portion of the commentary examines
the book of Second Corinthians pretty much verse by verse. When appropriate he may take a
more overall viewpoint as he delves into a theological truth that applies and at other times he may
delve even deeper into an examination of a single pivotal word. This ability to get to the detail
without losing the overall picture makes it a remarkable book.
Second Corinthians is one of the more interesting books and yet one of the least studied ones in
the New Testament. It stands strong as a testament to our current world situation. Corinth was an
area of great political power, a growing economy, and great commercial power. It stood strong as
a beacon to others to come there and try to get their share of the bountiful riches of Corinth.
However, with all of this came loose morals, false teachers, and others that would undermine the
society. Does all of this sound familiar? It should. A study of the problems of Corinth and Paul's
response to them is a study of America today. The "MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2
Corinthians" is a study of dealing with a problematic church and is a highly recommended read.
Developing Microsoft Office Solutions
Ken Bluttman
Pearson Education, Inc.
Addison Wesley Imprint
75 Arlington Street, Suite 300, Boston, MA 02116
ISBN: 0201738058 $49.99 566 plus index
Whether you are using Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, or even Office 97 if you are
developing solutions the connect to or enhance the products you will find a lot of valuable
information in "Developing Microsoft Office Solutions". One of the more popular buzzwords
these days, XML support is well covered and includes an entire chapter dedicated just to XML
and Office. Each component of Office (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Outlook) receives
its own chapter each one of which follows the same format. First is a section on Objects,
Properties, and Methods, then a section on Events, and finally a summary. Those who are used to
working with Objects, Properties, and Methods (Visual Basic or Visual Basic for Applications)
will appreciate the clear writing style and detailed explanations.
There is also a chapter on InfoPath and how to use it to design forms with structured data input,
which can then be easily distributed. The last part of the book contains several case studies
including Mail Merge Magic, Dynamic Data Delivery, and Charting XML Data. This is not for the
complete novice but anyone with a basic understanding of Visual Basic or Visual Basic for
Applications should be able to create powerful solutions for their Office products.
"Developing Microsoft Office Solutions" is a highly recommended book for anyone with a basic
understanding of Visual Basic who wants to know the nuts and bolts of creating applications or
interfaces with Microsoft Office.
A Hope and a Future
Jack Graham
Moody Publishers
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 0802464920 $12.99 122 pp.
Sometimes everyone needs to be reminded about the correct perspective on life. That is what this
book does best - remind us that God gives us perspective, protection, purpose, and power. The
book is divided into four sections based on those four items. Within each section there are several
chapters. The chapters are well done and contain short stories to help illustrate the points being
made. In addition, whenever there is a related Bible verse it is shared with the reader. One of the
things that make this book unique is that it is not particularly focused on getting an emotional
response from the reader but is more like a reminder of God's promises and the things that
separate Christians from others. This positioning as more of a logical than emotional appeal may
make it better suited than most as an appropriate read and source of encouragement for men. "A
Hope and a Future" is a recommended read.
A Brief History of Disease, Science & Medicine
Michael T. Kennedy MD FACS
Asklepiad Press
27525 Puerta Real, Suite 100, #481, Mission Viejo, CA 92691
ISBN: 0974946648 $29.95 456 plus aftermatter
Personally I always enjoy a historical book that actually discusses history and not some surgically
altered history that only reports the things that went right. That is what you get with "A Brief
History of Disease, Science & Medicine". Not only do you read about the great advances in
medicine but also about the mistakes that were made along the way. Although the book was
written with the first year medical student in mind it is easy enough to read and understand by
those with only a passing knowledge of basic first aid. Perhaps one sentence from the Forward
best describes the writing style - "...it has been written to be read, rather than studied."
Dr. Kennedy states that this book was not widely accepted by the academic presses and so was
published independently. It is fairly obvious that one of the reasons this might be the case is his
candid examination of the history of medicine. In an age when most practitioners of the medical
profession seem to feel that they have perfect knowledge, Dr. Kennedy's book shows that they
have often been wrong with tragic results. Take for instance the case of Ignaz Semmelweiss who
worked in a hospital where there was a twenty-nine percent mortality rate for women giving birth.
Through experimentation and deduction he came to believe that washing your hands between
patients and after autopsies would cause this rate to drop. He ordered that hand washing would
be done between patients and the rate of death dropped drastically. However, since he had not
reason why it worked it was resisted, he eventually resigned (other historians have noted that he
was forced to resign) and the doctors returned to their old habits and the old mortality rate. After
all it made no sense to them that something they could not see could make any difference. Many
people will immediately see the similarities between things like this and modern attitude of
medical science as related to alternative therapies - if we don't yet understand how it works then it
must not work. Most medical history texts are severely sanitized to keep such historical errors
out. So, it is really no surprise that this book, which portrays history as it was, from many primary
sources, is not the most popular one among the medical establishment.
Personally, I enjoyed the book but I am one of those who enjoys history from a viewpoint of
accuracy - warts and all. Still you should be prepared to have some of your history that you
learned in high school discredited. I remember learning that Louis Pasteur invented innoculations
to prevent disease in the later 1800's, but the fact is that Charles Maitland and others were doing
it in the 1700's. "A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine" is a recommended read for
anyone interested in the history and progression of medicine.
Change is Like a Slinky
Hans Finzel
Northfield Publishing
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 1881273687 $12.99 327 pp.
"Change Is Like a Slinky" examines the six stages of change as promoted by author Hans Finzel.
These six stages are 1) accept the need for change, 2) aim squarely at the future, 3) anticipate
your adversaries and allies, 4) advance the plan with courage and tenacity, 5) adjust course as you
listen and learn, and 6) align your team as you stay the course of change. The things that make
this book unique among the plethora of books on change are the fun and insightful comparisons
between change and a slinky. These comparisons make it easier to remember the important
principles so you can apply them in real life. Some of the observations include the fact that
someone has to launch a slinky on its way, once started the course is unpredictable, it routinely
gets stuck halfway down the stairs and has to be relaunched, and it rarely lands where you predict.
While the book contains a lot of useful information for those seeking to accept and deal with
change, it is not without a shortcoming. The author uses a lot of side comments that often get into
the way of the flow of the book. A short example will illustrate the problem. From the very
beginning of the book:
"Go ahead, Pick up a Slinky. No, not the newfangled plastic models. I'm talking about the good
ol' metal kind, circa 1964. If you don't have one handy, then go ahead - you have my permission -
put down the book (you just started chapter 1, so it won't be hard to find your place) and buy
one. And No, I'm not getting kickbacks from the makers of Slinky. Nor am I an employee, or
even a shareholder. (Although, now that I think of it ... maybe I'll take a break of my own, and
call my stockbroker.)"
This should have stopped at least by "1964". The book is littered with this stuff that just gets in
the way of the otherwise excellent treatment of change. However, if you continue reading through
all these choppy breaks in the flow of the book you will find it well worth your time, as it is
basically an excellent book with a lot of value to those who persevere.
Finding Your Million Dollar Mate
Randy Pope
Northfield Publishing
820 N LaSalle Blvd, Chicago, IL 60610-3284
ISBN: 1881273768 $10.99 121 pp.
Many people seem to take some wrong turns when looking for a lifelong, committed mate. As a
result the divorce rate is well over fifty percent within the first ten years of a marriage. Although
there are many reasons for this situation, one of them is basing a relationship on transient
attractions. In his book "Finding Your Million Dollar Mate" author Randy Pope proposes a
Biblically based system for dating.
One of the high points of the book is his clear explanation and sound reasoning for why you
should wait for the right person before engaging in sexual activity. In a world that supports sexual
activity at earlier and earlier ages teenagers often don't want to accept "because it's wrong" as a
reason for waiting. Randy Pope provides a positive answer for why you should wait. This book
should be considered required reading for teenagers. "Finding Your Million Dollar Mate" is a
highly recommended read.
Sacred Places Around the World: 108 Destinations, Second Edition
Brad Olsen
CCC Publishing
1560 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
ISBN: 1888729104 $17.95 262 plus various after matter
If you want a tour guide style book on sacred places around the world you can't go wrong with
"Sacred Places Around the World". Brad Olsen covers sacred places in Africa, the Middle East,
Far East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Pacific Islands, South America, Central America, North
America, and Europe. For each place he discusses history, local traditions, and how to get there.
From cave paintings to medicine wheels to cathedrals the destinations run the full gamut of sacred
places around the world. He even includes a listing of some tour outfitters who trek to the sacred
places mentioned in the book. The ultimate tour book to sacred places, "Sacred Places Around
the World" is a recommended read.
Do It Yourself Hebrew and Greek
Edward W. Goodrick
Zondervan Publishing
5300 Patterson SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530
ISBN: 0310417414 $9.95 272 pp.
If you are considering purchasing this book then you should really take the subtitle seriously - "A
Guide to Biblical Language Tools". This is not a book about learning Hebrew and Greek so that
you can read either of them in a Hebrew or Greek Bible. This is a book about understanding the
Hebrew and Greek language so that you can better use and understand biblical language tools.
For each language it goes over the alphabet, parts and types of speech, pronunciation, and similar
items. Then, using your understanding of the word forms and the like, you can turn to a
concordance, biblical Greek dictionary, lexicon or similar reference and understand the
importance of how a particular ending on a verb changes it and changes the meaning of a whole
sentence. If you are intimidated by the daunting task of learning another language like Greek or
Hebrew then this is the book that will free you to at least learn about the language and its
structure so you can use other tools more effectively for Bible study. "Do It Yourself Hebrew and
Greek" is a recommended book for any Bible students who just can't quite bring themselves to
learn another language.
Great Bible Trivia Workout
Brad Densmore
Zondervan Publishing
5300 Patterson SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49530
ISBN: 0310251958 $9.99 370 pp.
With multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, and other question styles "Great Bible Trivia
Workout" provides hours of educational fun. Don't be deceived into thinking this is one of those
easy trivia books. While there are some fairly easy questions there are also some pretty tough
ones. And of course some of the questions can be tricky as they turn on a single word so you have
to read carefully to get them right. For example, a true or false question reads, "On the ark, along
with a wide array of animals and birds, were Noah and his wife, their four sons and their wives."
Reading through the question quickly might tempt you to give a positive answer but the single
word "four" makes it a false statement. For each trivia question the author provides the answer
and the Bible reference to look it up. If you think you know your Bible well you will be in for a
lot of fun as you find out how much you may not know. "Great Bible Trivia Workout" is a
recommended read and a lot of fun for individuals or groups.
My Pal Victor
Diane Gonzales Bertrand
Raven Tree Press, LLC
200 S. Washington St., Suite 306, Green Bay, WI 54301
ISBN: 0972019294 $16.95 32 pp.
"My Pal Victor" is a great children's book that also teaches some beginning Latin American
Spanish vocablulary and accepting others for who they are. Each page of the book has the text
printed in both English and Spanish so it is easy to associate the English and Spanish words. The
illustrations are colorful and will easily hold the interest of a young reader. The story line shows
the strong friendship between Victor and Dominic.
I had a couple of other people take a look at the book and found that most people miss part of the
surprise at the end of the book. Victor has a disability which would cause most people to end the
book with a comment that they like Victor just the way he is, but the author turns this philosophy
on its head when Dominic says that the most important thing about Victor is that he accepts
Dominic just the way he is. What a wonderful conclusion and a great way to teach perspective.
"My Pal Victor" is a recommended read.
Polar Slumber
Dennis Rockhill
Raven Tree Press, LLC
200 S. Washington St., Suite 306, Green Bay, WI 54301
ISBN: 0972497315 $16.95 33 pp.
A very unique book, "Polar Slumber" has no words in the main part of the book. Instead it tells a
story simply by following the illustrations. What story does it tell? That is where it gets
interesting. I had several people look at it and tell me what they thought was happening and all,
young and old alike, had some very different and insightful differences. This is a book for
stretching the imagination of children and adults and was a lot of fun. Beautifully illustrated, the
"story" seems to draw you in. "Polar Slumber" is a highly recommended book for anyone who
wants something to "read" that is sure to spark conversations, opinions, and imaginations.
Isabel and the Hungry Coyote
Keith Polette
Raven Tree Press, LLC
200 S. Washington St., Suite 306, Green Bay, WI 54301
ISBN: 0972497307 $16.95 32 pp.
"Isabel and the Hungry Coyote" is basically a retelling of the classic Little Red Riding Hood but
set in a southwestern desert or Mexican desert scene. The unique thing about the book is the
gradual mixing of Latin American Spanish words into the story. Through a simple reading of the
story a child can learn a handful of Spanish words by their context within the story. Once a
Spanish word is introduced it is continued throughout the remainder of the book. "Isabel and the
Hungry Coyote" is a wonderful read and a recommended book for introducing children to the
Latin American Spanish language.
Counting Coconuts
Wendi Silvano
Raven Tree Press, LLC
200 S. Washington St., Suite 306, Green Bay, WI 54301
ISBN: 097201926X $16.95 32 pp.
"Counting Coconuts" is a fun trip for younger readers to learn counting by units. Monkey wants
to count his coconuts before eating them and wants a fast way to do it. So, he starts counting
each of them. Then, one by one, other animals point out that it would be faster to count by twos,
threes, fours, fives, or tens. Of course as he puts them in piles of two or three or more each time
he spends more time. Before you know it he has spent all day trying to count the coconuts in
faster ways.
The illustrations are bright, colorful, and appropriate to the text. With the whimsical expressions
on the animals they should hold the attention of young readers. The storyline could be a good
spring board for teaching that searching for the easiest or fastest way to do something can
sometimes consume a lot more time than just doing it. "Counting Coconuts" is a recommended
read for young children of about five to eight years old.
Harold McFarland
Reviewer
Harwood's Bookshelf
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Oxford U P
198 Madison Avenue, NY 10016
ISBN 0195141830, $30.00 310 pp.
Can a Flat Earther write a useful book on the subject of geography? Before reading Lost
Christianities, my answer would have been an unequivocal No. But when a card-carrying
godworshipper, whose brainwashing makes it impossible for him to recognize the basic Jesus
myth as a retelling of the much older Osiris and Adonis myths with only the gods' names changed,
can write a useful book on the disparate forms of Christianity that existed in pre-Constantine
times, then anything is possible.
Ehrman writes (p. 251), "If would Christianity have become the 'official' religion of the
empire? And if not, wouldn't those who eventually confessed Christianity wouldn't they, or
rather we, have remained pagan?" Is this an indication that Ehrman is a Christian? Or is his
apparent endorsement of the Big Lie that there are two billion Christians on earth (p. 249), a
hundred percent exaggeration, and his refusal anywhere in his book to acknowledge that
Christianity is Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy, simply politically correctness? Is he in fact motivated
by fear that opening such a gate would be an invitation to similar falsification of his own religion?
Either way, this book is an excellent treatment of the issues it does consider, while displaying
abysmal purblindness on issues the author seems incapable of considering, issues of which he
could not be unintentionally ignorant.
For example, Ehrman does not merely ignore the questions of whether Jesus was a real person
from history and, if so, who he believed himself to be, whether he was a preacher, a healer, a
revolutionary, a sage, or a crackpot, whether any of the sects claiming him as its figurehead had
existed during his lifetime, and how he came to be posthumously transformed into the god of a
pagan religion that, as a Jew, he would certainly have repudiated; he treats them as non-issues.
Does he really regard such questions as extraneous to his purpose? Does he take the position that
he has adequately covered them in his anti-Jesus-Seminar polemic, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of
the New Millennium? Or was he afraid (in both books) that honest answers might offend
unteachables, much the way Darwin originally feared to spell out the position of humans in his
evolutionary theory? Darwin recognized his omission and ultimately rectified it. Perhaps Ehrman
will eventually do likewise.
Ehrman states in his introduction, and later spells out the proof, "As historians have come to
realize, during these first three Christian centuries, the practices and beliefs found among people
who called themselves Christian were so varied that the differences between Roman Catholics,
Primitive Baptists, and Seventh Day Adventists pale by comparison" (p. 1). "In the second and
third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one god. But there were others
who insisted that there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365" (p.
2). As for Christian attitudes toward Jewish Scripture, he writes, "For Ebionite Christians, they
were the sacred Scriptures par excellence, the heart and soul of the Christian canon; for Marcion,
they were the Scriptures of the Jewish God, not the God of Jesus, and they were not to be
accepted as in any way canonical" (p. 129).
Ehrman's description of the theology of the Marcionites is best described as ambiguous. On the
one hand he writes, "The God of the Old Testament was not evil, but he was rigorously just
completely justified in exacting his punishments and sentencing all people to death" (p. 105). On
the other hand he contrasts the God who ordered Joshua to murder every man, woman, child and
animal in Jericho, with the "God of Jesus" who told his followers to love their enemies, and asks,
"Is this the same God?" (p. 106). Since the Marcionites did not believe that the Jewish god's
passing a death sentence on all future generations for the alleged offense of their primeval
ancestors was just, just whose opinion is Ehrman citing in the quoted passage? Is he agreeing that
the Jewish god is inflexible but just, or is he agreeing that the Jewish god was the author of much
evil? He does not answer that question.
Ehrman describes as "proto-orthodox" the basic theology that has been accepted as Christian
orthodoxy since the Athanasian minority succeeded in having Jesus officially deified at the rigged
Council of Nicea, much the way the Roman Senate voted to deify Julius Caesar, a man who, like
Jesus, never in his life claimed to be a god. But that is not a point Ehrman makes, since, while he
identifies many schools of Jesus religion, he does not mention that belief in a purely human Jesus
outnumbered belief in the deified Jesus by two to one among pre-Nicene Christians. And when he
describes the two-god Gnostic belief that the god of Jesus outranked the god of the Jews, he
refuses to state that this was assuredly not a teaching of Jesus the Jew. Is he afraid of offending
believers in three semi-autonomous gods, by acknowledging that any theology with more than one
god was not a belief of Jesus the Jew? When he uses the words "pope" and "antipope" in
connection with an early third-century dispute, (p. 153), 150 years before Siricius's claim to
supremacy over the four other regional popes made him the first true pope, is he parroting
Catholic orthodoxy out of ignorance or diplomacy? And when he repeats without dispute the
gospels' lie that the Pharisees were Jesus' enemies (p. 159), does he really believe that, or is he
unwilling to offend his readers' sensibilities?
Ehrman distinguishes between anonymous Christian books later capriciously attributed to persons
who were not their authors (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John), homonymous books attributed to an
authority figure of the same name as the unknown author (James), and forgeries by authors who
claimed to be persons they were not. He rejects the term "pseudonymous" as a euphemism for
"forgery." "Either 2 Thessalonians was written by Paul and someone else was producing forgeries
in Paul's name, or 2 Thessalonians itself is a forgery that condemns the production of forgeries in
Paul's name. Either way, someone was forging books in Paul's name" (p. 10).
Ehrman raises serious questions about his objectivity when he dates Mark to "65 or 70 CE," and
John as early as 95 CE (pp. 19-20). A case can be made for the early dating of John, even though
Martin Larson, in The Essene-Christian Faith (not found in Ehrman's bibliography), showed that it
was written at the time of the Bar Kokhba war of 135 CE, to differentiate Christians from the
rebellious Jews. But dating Mark earlier than the razing of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, even
though it put into Jesus' mouth a prophecy of that event too accurate to be anything but ex post
facto, is just plain dumb.
On the Gospel of Peter, that failed to secure a place in the Christian canon, Ehrman writes (p. 27),
"What we can know is that the Gospel was being read not just in Syria but also in Egypt, possibly
at an early stage . And it is more widely attested than some of our canonical books, including
the Gospel of Mark." In other words, until the proto-orthodox suppressed it as incompatible with
their theology, Peter was more widely accepted as Christian Scripture than Mark. And it would
certainly be welcome among present-day believers in a god who gets his orgasm substitute
torturing taboo-breakers in the sadist's dream called Hell: "Blasphemers are hanged by their
tongues, forever, over unquenchable fire; women who braided their hair to make themselves
attractive to lustful men are hanged by their hair; the men who committed fornication with these
women are hanged by their genitals" (p. 26).
Of the synoptic gospels, Ehrman writes), "These three can be put in parallel columns and
compared carefully with one another" (p. 57). Apparently he is unfamiliar with The
Judaeo-Christian Bible Fully Translated, volume 7, which does exactly that. And he accepts the
theory that Mark's sources "had been transmitted orally, by word of mouth" (p. 59). But Randal
Helms, in Who Wrote the Gospels? (also not in Ehrman's bibliography), makes a compelling case
that Mark indeed used written sources.
Ehrman is commendably evenhanded in his treatment of The Secret Gospel of Mark, allegedly
discovered by Morton Smith in 1958. After writing, "In this fragment from Clement, Smith
discovered that Jesus was a magician who engaged in sex with the men that he baptized," he
states, "Most scholars found his explication unconvincing at best" (p. 81). And he considers
Smith's homosexuality a legitimate point to raise, since it pertains to Smith's motivation and
credibility. But the big issue is not Smith's interpretation of the Secret Gospel, but its validity.
Ehrman lists the possibilities, and presents the arguments for each:
(1) The Secret Gospel was the original Mark, and the canonical Mark was produced by deleting
the homoerotic elements.
(2) Canonical Mark was the original, and was later interpolated with the Secret Gospel
passages.
(3) The Secret Gospel was a forgery composed by pseudo-Clement.
(4) The Secret Gospel was a forgery composed by the copyist of the eighteenth century who
claimed to be reproducing an older document.
(5) The Secret Gospel was a forgery concocted by Smith himself.
While not unequivocally endorsing (5), Ehrman wrote, "Few others in the twentieth century had
the skill to pull it off . Few others would have enjoyed so immensely the sheer pleasure of
having pulled the wool over the eyes of so many 'experts,' demonstrating once and for all one's
own superiority. Maybe Smith did it" (p. 89). While I am not so convinced as to withdraw the
Secret Gospel passages from Mark in my Fully Translated Bible, I find myself also seeing theory
(5) as the most probable.
Ehrman acknowledges that, "Proto-orthodox authors clearly agree that the Ebionites were and
understood themselves to be Jewish followers of Jesus" (p.100). So why does he persist in using
the oxymoron, "Jewish Christians"? Ebionites and Nazirites were not Christians, and accepting
Jesus as their prophesied Messiah did not make them Christians. Only followers of the teachings
of Paul were Christians, and by that definition neither Jesus nor his apprentices were or ever
became Christians. Ehrman even acknowledges, "Almost as obviously, they did not accept any of
the writings of Paul" (101). But present-day Christians like to pretend that the Jewish followers of
Jesus were the first Christians, and Ehrman's political correctness appears to have dictated his use
of the oxymoron.
I have little patience with nontheists who, despite having the academic qualifications to know
better, refuse to acknowledge publicly that the nonexistence of the gods of religion is as fully
proven as the nonexistence of humanoid aliens. And I have no more patience with a theist who
can go just so far in recognizing the falsifiability of religion, but lacks the moral courage to follow
the evidence to its logical conclusion, in case it forces him to face a reality he knows he cannot
rationalize away.
Lost Christianities is diminished by the author's adherence to policies some will attribute to
intestinal inadequacy and some to political correctness but it is not diminished to the point
where the issues he does analyze are compromised. History is the propaganda of the winning side,
and Ehrman's analysis makes clear that the triumph of proto-orthodoxy had nothing to do with
any intrinsic superiority. The Christian canon was chosen by the winners, and intentionally
excluded all gospels, biographies and letters that presented a non-orthodox theology, philosophy
or perspective. Christians believe in a three-headed god simply because monotheism was outvoted
by the Menshevik coup at Nicea, and the Athanasians then embarked on a concerted program of
book burning that allowed only hostile accounts of the Ebionites, Nazirites/Nazarenes, Docetists,
Gnostics, Theodotians, Carpocratians, Montanists, Marcionites, and Arians to survive. Ehrman
thinks that the bishops who were prevented from voting at Nicea "agreed with the major
theological positions hammered out by their proto-orthodox forebears" (p. 250), In fact had
Constantine not manipulated the Council by calling a vote when only supporters of the form of
Christianity in which Jesus was a mirror image of the god Mithra whom he had previously
worshipped had reached Nicea, the "New Testament" would be very different. Instead of
Matthew, Luke-Acts and Romans, it might now contain the Gospels of the Ebionites and
Nazirites, in both of which Jesus is a mortal whom Yahweh adopted to be his son at the time of
his immersion; the Acts of Peter, in which Simon Magus is a thinly disguised parody of the
archheretic Paul of Tarsus (p. 183); and the Letter of Peter to James, which argues that one
cannot be a follower of Jesus without adhering to every stipulation of Jewish Law. If that had
happened, Christian anti-Semitism might never have been spawned, and the pretence of Christians
to be monotheists might not be so totally ridiculous.
Canada's Ayatollahs
Requiem For a Lightweight: Stockwell Day and Image Politics
Trevor W. Harrison
Black Rose Books
University of Toronto Press
5201 Dufferin St, Toronto, ON, M3H 5T8, Canada
1551642069 $19.99 216 pp.
Think Big: My Adventures in Life and Democracy, by Preston Manning, McClelland & Stewart,
481 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5G 2E9, Canada, 2002, 452 pp, cloth, $37.99.
reviewed by William Harwood.
"Who is Stockwell Day?" asks Trevor Harrison (p. 1) "Is he a living testament to the Peter
Principle that every person rises to his or her level of incompetence?" That opening so succinctly
sums up a would-be Ayatollah's rise and fall that it almost made it unnecessary to read the rest of
the book almost. If I had not continued reading, I would not have learned that Mark Steyn
wrote in the National Post, "There are those who say Stockwell Day's just a crudely homophobic,
Bible-thumping fundamentalist neanderthal. That's certainly why I supported him." (p. 65)
Stockwell Day is a religious fundamentalist. While there is no consensus on the point at which
biblical literalism in defiance of the findings of a dozen sciences can legitimately be termed
insanity, there is widespread agreement that someone who has brainwashed himself that the
universe is six thousand years old and that dinosaurs coexisted with humans until they were
drowned in a world-covering flood is not sparking on all neurons. As one commentator quipped,
(p. 84), "Day believes the Flintstones is a documentary."
In justifying his employment as an uncertificated teacher, lacking even an undergraduate degree,
in a fundamentalist school with an illegal curriculum "insensitive to blacks, Jews and natives," (pp.
4-5) Day stated, "God's law is clear. Standards of education are not set by government, but by
God."
In Day's first campaign for the Alberta legislature, he declared that his life was "based on the
supremacy of God and strong biblical principles." (p. 8) In the 1986 election, not being quite
dumb enough to pretend that he was a teacher, he called himself an educational consultant. By
stacking the nominating convention with supporters from his "Bentley Christian" cult and
declaring that "the whole thing was birthed in prayer," he succeeded in stealing the nomination.
"Declaring his campaign a 'moral crusade,' Day at first railed against homosexuality, pornography,
the legal system's treatment of criminals, and the federal government." (pp. 8-9)
In 1990 he raised the spurious issue of condoms' unreliability in order to rail against the
installation of dispensers in high school washrooms (p. 15), even though not even Day could be so
stupid as to believe that adolescents will not copulate, with or without lifesaving,
pregnancy-preventing condoms, in violation of fundamentalist taboos. He advocated banning
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men from school libraries. "Day supported a
proposal to drop abortions from services insured by Medicare . Day also advocated work camps
for young offenders and supported capital punishment, even for teenagers . He also argued for
the banning of sex education in schools . Day also spoke out encouraging the government to
invoke the 'notwithstanding clause' of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms to overturn a
Supreme Court of Canada ruling that homosexuals must be protected under Alberta's
human-rights law." (p. 15-16)
In other words, anywhere except in the redneck navel of the universe, where his hatred of the
human race made him a hero, Day would have been an embarrassment even to other bigots. What
Harrison apparently failed to discover is that, when Day was Social Services Minister and
presumably the architect of such an atrocity, the Alberta government put a contract on the old, the
sick and the unemployed by reducing welfare payments to a level where recipients could either
pay rent or buy food, but not both.
Harrison quotes one of Day's attempts to deny that he intended to make his fundamentalist
religion the law of the land: (p. 56) "I am pro-life. But I would not seek to impose my views on
the Canadian people. I would want issues such as these to be determined freely and
democratically by the people, either through a referendum initiated by Canadians or a free vote of
their representatives in the House of Commons." In other words, he would not turn Canada into a
theocratic slave state unless he won majority control in Parliament by becoming Prime Minister.
And he would not deny equal rights to minorities unless an intolerant majority permitted him to
do so. Did Harrison not notice that Day's pretence that he would not make himself Ayatollah of
Canada, while simultaneously using doubletalk to assure his fellow theocrats that he intended to
do exactly that, is unmitigated LYING? Or did Harrison consider such an implication so
self-evident that he did not need to add a personal comment, particularly since the chapter on the
libel settlement that cost Alberta taxpayers almost $800,000 clearly identifies Day as a liar of the
first magnitude?
Day became leader of the misnamed Canadian Alliance (allied with whom?), not because the
Party's manipulators failed to recognize him as a no-talent hack, but because, with the whole
country knowing and rejecting everything Preston Manning stood for, Day was unknown outside
of Alberta, and there was at least a chance that he could win a federal election and turn Canada
into a theocracy before the voters realized that he was a greater threat to the freedom of every
Canadian than Manning, who at least was not a liar, had ever been.
Day lost his job when, like Clark, Turner and Campbell in the national parties, his election as
Party Leader drew attention to his intellectual ineptitude that, as a subordinate, he had been able
to conceal. He was replaced by another redneck (big surprise) who is on record as wanting to
build a "fire wall" around Alberta to keep out such un-Albertan ideas as tolerance, human rights,
equality of all Canadians, and plain humanity. If the new Head Bigot succeeds in taking his hate
cult where Manning and Day could not, Day's defeat might actually turn out to be a bad
thing.
Stockwell Day appears to have a dangerous future behind him. But the same thing was said of
Ruholla Khomeini after his expulsion from Iran, and the unspeakable Nixon after his failure to win
the California governorship. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Stockwell Day will be a jihad
waiting to happen for a long time to come.
That Preston Manning agrees in principle with the foregoing evaluation should surprise no one.
Manning created his hate cult for the avowed purpose of depriving women of sovereignty over
their own bodies, denying homosexuals and others who did not grant blind, unquestioning
obedience to the taboos of his imaginary playmate of basic human rights, and turning Canada into
the slave state Alberta had been under theofascist Fhrers Aberhart and Manning senior. Not only
did Day deprive Manning junior of the personal glory of achieving that ignoble purpose; he also
so destroyed the new Taliban party that its chances of ever enslaving believers and nonbelievers
alike is now vanishingly small.
But while Manning from the beginning of his political career made no secret of his plan to turn
Canada into a theocracy in which anything deemed sinful by his fundamentalist religion would be
criminalized, he did not direct his campaign toward fringe and reactionary religious organizations,
as his successor, knowing that that was where his hate cult drew its support, made a point of
doing. In Think Big, Manning writes (p. 315), that Stockwell Day "focused on two main groups:
Progressive Conservatives who could be persuaded to join the Canadian Alliance and help pick its
new leader; and a particular segment of the Christian community, namely, evangelical Protestants,
conservative Catholics, and the pro-life organizations . Many of my religious convictions were
similar to Stockwell's but I had always resisted campaigning directly for the 'Christian' vote." It
was not that Manning did not want the 'Christian vote.' Rather, he recognized that making himself
the religious candidate would "do more harm than good." (p. 316) And he was right. It was
precisely because Canadians of moderate religious beliefs recognized Manning as a potential
theocrat, and Day as nothing less than a would-be Ayatollah, that Canada remains free of a New
Inquisition.
The first fourteen chapters of Manning's political autobiography say nothing on which any
comment is necessary. He gives a detailed and presumably accurate description of the events in
and relevant to his life that should be a useful reference to anyone interested in the rise and fall of
extremism in Canada. His observations concerning current Alliance leader Stephen Harper are
neither flattering nor derogatory. Presumably he still hopes that Harper can institute the
enslavement of Canada to Manning's imaginary playmate in the sky that he and Day failed to
achieve. He clearly has no ability to recognize that objective as neither achievable nor desirable.
As Manning acknowledges (p. 148), one out of three Canadians told an Ipsos-Reid poll that their
religious faith is not "very important" in their day-to-day lives and if a third of the population
were willing to go on record with such a politically incorrect position, the true figure must be
considerably higher.
In commenting on the 2000 election in which the Liberal Party increased its majority, Manning's
evaluation is (p. 363), "The Canadian people had been prepared to reject Chr‚tien and vote for a
principled alternative; they just did not perceive that alternative in Stockwell Day and the
Canadian Alliance."
Since Manning is not a liar, his admission that he saw a theocratic pseudo-political religion as a
"principled alternative" shows just how dangerous his elevation to power would have been. When
granting pre-human tadpoles with zero brainwave activity consistent with human thought a "right
to life," while withholding the same status from lifeforms with at least minimal self-awareness,
such as chickens, can be labeled a "principled alternative" to full human evolution, otherwise
known as liberalism, one has to ask whether persons of such a mindset are really more evolved
than the neanderthals. And just as religious fanatics everywhere are trying to swamp the socially
responsible by outbreeding them, so, in a dangerously overpopulated world, Manning's depraved
indifference to the human race's inability to feed itself is exemplified by his having five
children.
After spelling out the disaster brought on his party by Stockwell Day's ineptitude, Manning asks
(pp. 397-398), "Is there anything that can be learned from the root causes and events of this
downward spiral that might assist in the recovery of the Alliance especially by those of us in
politics who also profess a Christian commitment?" My answer to that is: For Canada's sake, I
sure hope not.
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
Ann Coulter
Crown Publishing Group
1745 Broadway, NY 10019
ISBN 1400049520, $14.95 327 pp.
If a Scientologist had written this book, I would have no hesitation in denouncing the author as a
blatant, conscious, self-serving, criminal liar. Even the Scientologist hierarchs are not so insane as
to believe the Big Lies they peddle for no purpose but personal benefit. But incurable Republicans
clearly do believe their Big Lies, and acquitting Coulter of lying on the ground that she is insane
may be an oversimplification. Perhaps she is a liar and insane? Or is she just plain stupid?
Consider the following: "They will destroy anyone who stands in their way. All that matters to
them is power. They believe their moral superiority allows them to do things that would appall
ordinary people." What makes that accurate description of the Republican Party a Big Lie is that
Coulter is describing "Professional Democrats." It is called "projection," attributing to opponents
what one sees in the mirror.
A further example of projecting what is in the mirror can be detected in her denunciation of the
Democratic decision to state publicly that, "Mr Bush's agenda is neither compassionate nor
conservative; it's radical and it's dangerous, and the Democrats should say so." To Coulter, such
truth telling is "the same old plan. Call Republicans names." That is in the same book that states,
"The liberal catechism includes a hatred of Christians." Newsflash, Ms Coulter. Most American
liberals are Christians. And in responding to Walter Cronkite's recognition that hate peddler Jerry
Falwell was "worshipping the same God as the people who bombed the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon," she could come up with no better response than to call him, "this Martha's
Vineyard millionaire," as if when she does it, it is not "the same old thing. Call [them]
names."
"Progress cannot be made on serious issues because one side is making arguments and the other
side is throwing eggs both figuratively and literally. Prevarication and denigration are the
hallmarks of liberal argument. Logic is not their m‚tier. Blind religious faith is." Again, change
"liberal" to "Right Wing Republican," and the Big Lie would be true.
ABC Television's report, "Abortion Clinics in U.S. Targeted by Religious Terrorists," aroused
Coulter's ire. In Coulter's theofascist philosophy, only Muslim fanatics who murder Christians,
Jews and dissenting Muslims for refusing to grant unquestioning obedience to the fanatics' taboos
are terrorists. Christian fanatics who murder doctors and nurses for refusing to grant
unquestioning obedience to the fanatics' taboos are not terrorists. The difference? When "they" do
it, it is terrorism. When "we" do it, it is not terrorism. That is a clear acknowledgement that she
has no ability to tell right from wrong. In much of the world, that is the legal definition of
insanity.
Coulter defends Tom Delay, accurately described as the "Torquemada of Texas," and denounces
the New York Times for comparing him to other fanatics who injected religion into politics. She
quotes the line, "History teaches that when religion is injected into politics disaster follows,"
but rationalizes away such reality by claiming, "even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like
liberals do." Is she serious? If so, she is a lower lifeform even by Right Wing Republican
standards.
Coulter defends Newt Gingrich's Contract on America, and denounces Bill Clinton for
recognizing it as "a murderous hit man's assignment." And despite the refusal of a single
Democrat to vote for Clinton's impeachment, Coulter thinks he was the one being paranoid when
he identified the impeachment hoax as a "right wing conspiracy out to get him." That is precisely
what it was. She describes ethnic profiling at airports as "nonexistent." She defends Charlton
Heston's determination to give every American the means to kill people. She thinks the criminals
responsible for Clarence Thomas's appointment to a Supreme Court that in 2000 committed the
ultimate treason should not be held to account, apparently on the ground that a statute of
limitations has expired, and that makes Thomas's continued occupancy of a president-appointing
office irrelevant. And she describes as "an infatuation" liberal defence of the right to choose,
environmental protection, and racial equality.
Coulter has an unbiased hatred of anyone more intelligent, sane, educated or morally evolved than
herself, a group that includes all Democrats and Independents and most Republicans. She
describes one of the great humanitarians of the twentieth century, Hugh Hefner, as a "smut
peddler," viewing Hefner's role in freeing women from mind-slavery as incompatible with her own
belief that women should not even have sovereignty over their own bodies. She denies that global
warming is a real threat, for the simple reason that environment protection threatens the income of
her heroes at Enron and other contributors to Republican coffers.
But the ultimate evidence that she has no ability to recognize that the butt she is kissing is by any
definition an arsehole is her Big Lie that, "Liberal sneers about President Bush's intelligence
suddenly abated because of the indisputable fact that Bush was a magnificent leader." Bush a
magnificent leader? Bush has replaced Ronald Reagan as the stupidest president America has ever
had. He has replaced Richard Nixon as the most evil president America has ever had. He is the
most unlearned president America has ever had. He is the least rational president America has
ever had. He is the most totalitarian president America has ever had. He is the most bigoted
president America has ever had. He is the most vainglorious president America has ever had,
raising the question: What does he have to be vain about? He is the greatest threat to world
stability since Adolf Hitler. And for his overthrow of the Constitution and abolition of the concept
of a democratically elected president, he may become the first president ever to end his life
strapped to a gurney with a needle in his arm.
Before reading this book, I placed Bush, his Ashcroft-Rumsfeld-Ridge Gestapo, Falwell,
Buchanan, Robertson, the entire Christian Right, and most Republicans, somewhere on the
evolutionary scale between Attila the Hun and Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. I was too
charitable. If Coulter is typical of the species, they fall somewhere between an AIDS virus and a
tapeworm. And if she is not typical of what the current Republican Party stands for, why have the
true heirs of Republican ideals not stood up and declared, "These mad dogs do not speak for
us"?
The most logical interpretation of this book is that Ann Coulter does not exist. She is a parody of
a Right Wing Republican, created by liberals in order to put doctrines into her mouth so insane
and evil that they will discredit the entire theofascist pseudo-political party for whom she pretends
to speak much the way Christians invented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to discredit the
Jews they pretended were its authors. I hope for her sake that Coulter does not exist. For if she
does exist, she faces a real risk of being committed to an asylum for the dangerously insane for the
term of her natural life by liberal doctors, of course.
William Harwood
Reviewer
Hodgins' Bookshelf
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
new Intro. & endnotes by Dr. Jacqueline Belanger
Wordsworth Editions Ltd
ISBN: 1853260061; price unstated - may be $5 or less, 196 pp. text, 42 pp. endnotes.
The actual text of Joyce's work is about a century old, but it has been revived by Wordsworth
Classics like many another expired-copyright volume (e.g., 18 by Dickens, 12 by Hardy, 31 by
Shakespeare) written by authors listed alphabetically from Austin and Bennett to Wren and
Young.
Even so, the library is not yet complete. The only other work by Joyce, for instance, is
"Dubliners", possibly because his newer copyrights still subsist; for he died only in 1941. Also,
Wordsworth translations are comparatively few, e.g., with just two Dostoevsky novels, and
nothing at all from Me'rime'e, Pushkin, Goethe, and other fine candidates.
The Wordsworth series is nonetheless a very considerable resource for, especially, students and
others on limited budgets, making available probably over 300 older but still important works of
literature. Such a Wordsworth Classic I've also reviewed was George Eliot's "Middlemarch".
The extensive new notes, introductions, etc. in such books are copyright, the protection so
afforded to remain in force for many decades to come. In the present work there are 526 endnotes
and 28 prefatory pages, beginning on p. v; most of the latter comprise an Introduction which we
are rather oddly entreated to study only AFTER reading the narrative or main text, to avoid
spoiling secrets, surprises, and such.
Such advice implies that the Intro. is optional reading, and for enthusiasts; my interest in this work
is not sufficient, though, to entice me into that part of the volume. Instead, let me note that very
many (but not all) of the endnotes are indispensable - although the act of turning to a back page,
finding the correct note by number, reading it, then finding one's way back to the place of
interruption, all repeated 526 times, makes for a slow, painstaking, frequently distracted read.
Quite numerous endnotes are devoted to translating/explaining Latin quotations, phrases, sayings,
etc. Today, with English as the global lingua franca, and with students' heads crammed full of
sciences and technologies, Latin is far less common, and our need for translations is
correspondingly greater.
There are these three chief reasons why Joyce used so much Latin:
First is the strong Roman Catholic presence in the book, noting that Mass (the celebration of the
Eucharist) was then said in Latin, and also that schoolteacher-priests were versed in that
tongue.
Second is that, a century ago, a gentleman's education included the classics, including Latin, as a
matter of course.
Third reason: At least some Latin students loved coining expressions in dog-Latin, one of several
contributing facts calling for numerous (229) explanatory notes to this book's last Chapter 5 -
slightly over 62 pages. On average, there are about 3.7 endnotes per page, here!
Two dog-Latin sayings of my youth may exemplify the whole genre: (1) to us students, "jam
volvere," meant "already" [more properly, in English, "all ready"] + "to roll" - or in other words,
"Let's go!" (2) "Semper ubi sub ubi": "Always where [wear] under-where."
Thus when one of Joyce's characters threatens, "I'll kill you super spottum," he means "on the
spot". Such linguistic larking necessitates a great many endnotes in "Portrait", until Stephen's
clique tires of the joke.
Joyce's readers of a century ago were probably assumed both to understand Latin and to know
many facts about Ireland, such as who Parnell was. Is the endnote form essential, though?
It's perfectly possible for an author (but Belanger is NOT the book's author, and can take no such
liberty in adding her notes) to explain obscure points in a discursive fashion as he or she goes
along, thus obviating separate notes entirely. The further option remained open to Belanger,
however, of using footnotes, page by page. This technique could have eliminated a great deal of
page-turning and number-seeking, and would certainly have been my choice. Oh, well ...
Obviously, not all Belanger's notes are about Latin or dog-Latin. They often address historical,
geographical, mythical and other cultural, political, literary, and/or simply (then) newsworthy
allusions, of which the highly erudite Joyce was a virtual fountain.
He is reputed to have written some of the best novels ever, particularly "Ulysses" and "Finnegans
[no apostrophe] Wake", but the present work, whose long title I've shortened to "Portrait", is
probably not as well regarded as those, for reasons noted hereunder. Indeed, I find "Portrait"
seriously flawed, despite its "Encyclopaedia Britannica" rating of "superb".
I can however agree that, in this work, Joyce shows his potential for greatness, and his ear for a
finely turned phrase. Thus on p. 195, written in diary style just before Stephen departs Ireland, we
find -
"APRIL 16. Away! Away!
"The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, the promise of close embraces and the
black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out
to say: We are alone - come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. And the air is
thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings
of their exultant and terrible youth."
Now, is that not a rich and evocative imagery?
"Portrait", reputation does however resound in part with the reflected glory of Joyce's later works
- an instance, I feel, of author celebrity outshining a present work's content.
Much of this tale is set in the late 19th century, and all of it represents Joyce's pre-World War I
period; for the narrative ends, "Dublin, 1904 / Trieste, 1914". The psychological and moral
impacts of that catastrophic war were soon to shake the foundations of the world's beliefs, and to
lead to quite different postwar styles. It thus is the style adopted by Joyce between world wars
that may have produced the bulk of his stellar recognition.
The more autobiographical the novel, the more the author indulges himself by passing off
non-fiction as its opposite, and the fewer pains (s)he must take to invent material out of thin air.
When writing a novel, it seems impossible to divorce oneself and one's life experiences totally
from the process - but the greater the amount of factual material one uses, the less credit for
imagination is truly one's due. In a purely and frankly autobiographical work, what remains with
which to shine? Largely just the effort, and the writing style. "Portrait" does not reach that
extreme, but it does fall somewhere between the more usual, imaginative novel and a
straightforward, admitted autobiography.
"Portrait" is written in a distinctive style which, amongst other things, does not use Quotation
marks (" ") to open and close quotations of the various characters' words. Rather, it opens each
quoted remark or question with a dash and a space: "- ", and it doesn't explicitly close such
passages at all, or even clearly reopen them after interruptions.
To exemplify the lack of today's conventional quotation marks - a fine invention, but possibly
nonexistent when "Portrait" was written - the following is a complete paragraph from page 16:
- Butter you up! said Brother Michael. You'll get your walking papers in the morning when the
doctor comes.
I would with some hesitation classify Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 of this book as "Literature", but
Chapter 3 strikes me as of much lower quality; most of it is simply a religious tirade.
The story as a whole opens when the protagonist (and, it seems, Joyce's stand-in) Stephen
Dedalus is about two years old and is known as "baby tuckoo" [sic - without capitals]. The first
action is that a moocow comes down the road to meet him. Shortly thereafter we learn how he
feels about wetting his bed. However, we pass on rather swiftly ...
The tale is entirely Irish in location, but Stephen's outlook is more cosmopolitan (evidently
reflecting Joyce's, who would live most of his life abroad). He meets, but has little sympathy with,
Irish nationalists, for he has a profound love for the English tongue. Except for a brief trip to
Cork, which lies about 240 km or 150 mi. away on the south coast, and perhaps also excepting
very occasional visits to closer spots, essentially all the book's action occurs in Dublin
neighbourhoods. The reader may therefore wish for a map of the Dublin area, but let us be
content here to know that the city, Ireland's capital, is a seaport situated where the River Liffey
empties into Dublin Bay on the Irish Sea, and is divided by that river into South Dublin, where
protagonist Stephen Dedalus begins his life; and North Dublin, where his family later moves.
In both Dublin areas, Stephen will be schooled by Jesuits - members of the Society of Jesus
religious order.
Especially the early parts of this work are written in something like a verbal fog appropriate to our
very earliest memories, and with few details beyond those already mentioned. The fog only slowly
clears as Stephen is sent to his first school, where one of his experiences is being pushed by a
schoolmate into the school's apparently open, unfenced cesspool, or "square ditch". It makes him
ill although not vengeful.
The work is not without other Dickensian threats and, sometimes, enactments of violence by
Stephen's Jesuit instructors or friends, some of the former taking to heart the biblical injunction to
spare not the rod.
My purpose is not to summarize the tale here, but only to provide some impression of it. Chapter
3 I obviously dislike, even hate, but by the story's final Chapter 5 I find Joyce's storytelling
brilliant.
At all events Stephen's schoolyears continue to pass rapidly in Joyce's telling, and by page 77, at
the end of Chapter 2 - Joyce's chapters seem quite long, the book having only five of them - after
experiencing something like a first love but losing track of the girl, Stephen has used the first of
the many prostitutes in his youth.
Physiologically, he surely cannot be less than a teenager for that to happen, but it's a part of
Joyce's literary style early in "Portrait" to write imprecisely. As part of Joyce's foggy literary style
we seldom learn Stephen's actual age, even at the turning point of his loss of virginity - a major
rite of passage if there ever was one. If we want to know the facts, we're generally obliged to play
the detective a bit.
Joyce was born in 1882 and, if this work is truly autobiographical as the volume's back cover and
other sources assure us, then the turning point noted above should have occurred in the second
half of the 1890s or later. Not that those were "modern times", though. Many factors of the lives
that we know, other than sex, were lacking in the James Joyce/Stephen Dedalus experience. As
one instance, no motorcars (autos) are mentioned; when Joyce writes "car", he means a
horse-drawn carriage of some sort, quite likely a two-wheeled Irish jaunting-car. Obviously,
computers, television, etc. were unknown; likewise the League of Nations had yet to be dreamed
up, not to mention the United Nations ... and Ireland was not yet independent of Britain. Those
were "olden days", then. Thus the reader may encounter technologies, customs, attitudes, etc.,
that seem antiquated today. I point this out because, unwarned, I'd at first given a modern
interpretation to "car", and so became confused about the story's real timeframe. Nor did the
already mentioned, dreamlike fogginess of Joyce's writing help me orient myself, early in the
book.
Why do I so dislike Chapter 3? It follows Stephen into a pit of despondency in which he feels his
fornication has hopelessly separated him from God, from Mary (he's a Roman Catholic), and from
all else that is good. The chapter becomes largely a Jesuit priest's homily or sermon in two parts,
morning and afternoon, in the reading of which a non-Catholic may be surprised by some of that
Church's violently threatening tenets.
Lucifer, or "Light-bringer" (sometimes used to denote the planet Venus rising in the east ahead of
the Sun), is a name representing an inordinately proud Babylonian king who fell from his throne
when the Isrealites were freed from bondage. The king was apostrophized, in Hebrew, as "shining
one" in Isaiah Ch. xiv, "Lucifer" being the equivalent in Greek or Latin. For Catholics, though,
"Lucifer" became identified with the devil, Satan, before his fall from Heaven as mentioned in
Luke x. 18.
This apparent misinterpretation, substituting a fall from Heaven for a fall from a kingly but earthly
throne; and a shining ex-angel for a king in shining garments, may to some degree be common to
all Christian sects, but on page 90 of "Portrait" the extended homily says in part as follows, and in
so doing enters the realm of wild speculation, in my view:
- Adam and Eve ... were created by God [on the 6th day of Creation] in order that the seats in
heaven [sic: lower-case "h"; Joyce is sparing of capital letters] left vacant by the fall of Lucifer and
his rebellious angels might be filled again. Lucifer ... fell and there fell with him a third part of the
host of heaven: he fell and was hurled with his rebellious angels into hell [thought to be for the sin
of pride] ...
That story seems much embroidered, probably to instil a great fear to keep the lads in line. We are
treated to a fire-and-brimstone speech, made far worse by addition of a hundred other horrific
details although, in logic, these at times seem incompatible. For instance, the preacher says
sinners' bodies are so heaped together that no-one can breathe; yet the stench entering their
nostrils (how can it do so, in that situation?) is unutterably horrid.
Presumably, as the priest envisaged Hell as a physical place, God must have created it
unannounced during the first five days of Creation - unless Genesis should begin, "In the
beginning God created the heaven, THE HELL, and the earth." As Genesis does not say these
things, either the Bible is mistaken or the priest (and possibly his Church) is.
Those who accept the Church's doctrine of Hell would seem to believe that a "Dungeonmaster
God" created it before the arrival of its first inhabitants, Lucifer/Satan and his large, devilish crew.
They must moreover believe that Hell was set up for both the physical and moral punishment by
torture of possible future sinners. Does a "God the Master Torturer" accord with your beliefs?
Well, not with mine - and I can't see merit in being expected to read speculative theories I can't
believe.
Without going on in this vein, even if you disagree 100% with me you likely will see how
inappropriate a long theological exposition is within the heart of a supposed novel. Whatever
one's religious persuasion, a homily running from page 83 to 103 inclusive is a long lecture
indeed, filling more that 10% of the story. Even for the totally credulous, it can do little for the
literary quality of "Portrait".
Unfortunately for young Stephen, although his character flaws give the reader something chew
on, he seems an overly suggestible lad. It is this fact, aided by his physically healthy lustfulness,
that gave the ladies of the night their first purchase upon him. Now the sermon's intimidation also
works heavily upon young Dedalus, if possibly for his soul's ultimate good (except that he ends by
rejecting the Church entirely.) It seems possible he could, however, have been frightened to death
by the horrifying images conjured up, all unshriven as he then was.
At last he goes to Confession in the comparative anonymity of an obscure (at least to us) city
chapel, and emerges utterly relieved.
During his exchange with the non-Jesuit confessor, the latter asks questions of a clarity that even
Joyce's style cannot obscure. How long since Stephen's last confession? Eight months. How old is
he? Sixteen. Thus chances are 8 months to 4, or 2:1, that he gave up his virginity at age 15 -
interesting to me as writer of a novel whose protagonist does the same, although in more strongly
mitigating circumstances by far.
In Chapter 4, when yet another Jesuit priest proposes that Stephen join the Order, the youth sees
some initial attraction in the idea, but soon finds it is not for him. Perhaps the time of Joyce's - no,
Stephen's - wallowing in religious fear and other issues is essentially over, then?
The more alluring hope of university, instead, has opened to him. Further, a romantic feeling
toward the end of Ch. 4 bodes well for both his recovering purity and his future creativity.
Yet we still hope to see, with apologies to Joyce, "the Young Man as an Artist". He will not
become a priest, but what WILL he do with his life? Only by the book's title do we know at this
stage that he will become an artist of some sort.
Near the foot of page 152, someone else implies that Stephen is now a minor poet. Further,
occasional and merely tangential hints in subsequent pages tend to confirm others' views that he is
or will be some sort of writer, although Stephen himself may talk more about philosophy.
On the romantic side, how the fellow does let opportunities with presumably "nice" girls slip
through his fingers! Joyce describes him as shy, although Stephen clearly was not too shy to have
sported with many women of another sort; I think he's just a klutz, mentally unable to make the
first move. (The women he's bedded had furnished all the opening gambits, e.g. by saying, on p.
78, "- Good night, husband! Coming in to have a short time?") Anyhow, to the story's end he
remains single.
When he decides to give up Catholicism, in which he no longer believes, he does not embrace
Protestantism, which he finds yet worse.
Well, that pretty much tells you what sort of book "Portrait" is. I feel it shows Joyce's fine talent,
but is seriously flawed in its middle chapter. Had I read this review before seeing this book on
sale, I should probably not have chosen it, even at its very reasonable price. Then I might have
missed the fact, though, that the work grows more and more in merit as that awful middle chapter
recedes into the past.
As noted earlier, there are many kinds of people in this world. Clearly, some are enamored of this
work of Joyce's. Perhaps you will be?
The Canadian Coast Guard 1962-2002: Auxilio Semper
Charles D. Maginley
Vanwell Publishing Limited
1 Northrup Crescent, P.O., Box 2131, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2R 7S2
ISBN 1551250756, $36.95 270 pp.
This book's historical coverage is considerably greater than its title years suggest, for it begins by
noting events, services, people, et al from times before Canada's Confederation in 1867. What
began in 1962 was in fact the use of the "Canadian Coast Guard" name, and various
organizational and role changes the new name implied.
What, then, is a coast guard? It seems to be anything that a set, or a series of sets, of politicians
and other interested parties may decide to make it, to judge by the available evidence. Certainly
no standard meaning has yet emerged internationally.
The book under review here does not survey worldwide practices in that regard. One may only
guess that nearly as many sorts of coast guard organizations exist as there are developed countries
that possess significant seaboards.
Britain's, or more exactly Her Majesty's coast guard (sic - with lower case initials in my
encyclopaedia), has comparatively limited functions related to detecting shipwrecks and saving life
upon the coasts. It relies largely on fixed, land-based coastal lookout huts, rather than on
shipborne observation.
Other functions are assigned to other organizations. The provision and maintenance of
lighthouses, navigation buoys, and other seamarks are charged to the Corporation of Trinity
House, founded by King Henry VIII. The actual operation of lifeboats is in the hands of the Royal
National Lifeboat Institution. The interdiction of smuggling at sea, if required, is performed by the
customs and revenue service ... and so forth.
The United States Coast Guard or USCG - one can scarcely say "the U.S. equivalent of the
above", given the strong contrasts to British practice - is one of the five (army, navy, airforce,
marines, coast guard) main branches of the U.S. armed services, it having originally been
established with armed vessels to interdict coastal smuggling. During the World Wars, though,
vessels and crew of the USCG served far, far off the American coasts - in European coastal
waters, in fact.
The Canadian Coast Guard, CCG, marches to the beat of yet a different drummer, based in part
upon the needs and abilities of this vast but thinly populated northern country, and also as affected
by a history of numerous, not always consistent decisions and changes of direction by succeeding
federal governments prior to the CCG's formation in 1962.
Among the facts which the CCG's role must take into account are that Canada has not only the
second-largest land area, but also the longest oceanic shoreline of any country in the world,
together with some major inland waterways; and that most of her watery resources are beset by
wintertime or even (in the Arctic) by semi-permanent ice.
Among the giants, Canada's population of something over 31 million is comparatively small -
about 1/9 that of the neighboring U.S.A., and also much smaller than that of Russia - although
perhaps a hundred other lands, generally of far less area, may have smaller populations yet. For
her size, then, Canada has more limited human and taxation resources than her big neighbour to
the south, or than that lying beyond the North Pole.
Those resources must be invested somewhat differently. While both the U.S. and Russia have
icebreakers too, the per-capita burden of icebreaking is obviously heaviest in Canada. Also
involving the CCG, annually taking in and setting out buoys to avoid their destruction or being
carried away by ice is an important but costly task; for, overall except on her West Coast, Canada
"enjoys" a difficult, high-cost climate, her many accomplishments in various fields
notwithstanding.
For better or for worse, the CCG was defined from the outset as a civilian force - but I wonder in
just whose interests? One might think, for example, that during the Cold War it would have been
better for Canada to have had certain weaponry aboard a patrolling CCG vessel, had the latter
encountered, say, a hostile or merely unknown submarine trespassing in Canadian waters. An
unarmed coast guard would in such a confrontation have been likely of greater advantage to the
foreign power than to Canada.
How matters stand today I simply don't fully know - not even after reading this book, whose
Index fails to list arms/armaments/armour, artillery, depth charges, firearms, guns (etc.), ordnance,
or any other such term of military preparedness as might have caught my eye. However, the Index
must bear part of the blame, for it seems to be solely a list of proper names such as "Irons, Phil",
and "National Harbours Board".
Anyhow, this book simply doesn't dwell on any militarization, so to speak, of the CCG. Why?
When I worked in the CCG for 15 months in the 1980s, its vessels went unarmed except in two
special situations: in the Arctic, where one rifle and one shotgun were carried in a locked cabinet
as protection exclusively against huge, powerful, dangerous polar bears; and when "Mounties"
(Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers) were taken aboard CCG ships for police reasons, and
were allowed to bring their arms aboard - but I think again under tight control.
Owing to continuing efforts at rationalizing the government's assorted involvements in marine
matters, from time to time units (with their personnel and assets such as boats and ships) used to
be reassigned from one department or agency to another. Sometimes, responsibilities were even
transferred between the public and private sectors.
The greatest and, I think, most recent such rationalization was the transfer of the entire CCG (but
not of ship inspection or port management) from Transport Canada to the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO - which also had a fleet of its own and, presumably, policies to go
with it. As it had long been a DFO responsibility to meet the sometimes forceful tactics of
occasional, more or less freebooting fishing vessels, DFO ships apparently had to be ready to meet
firepower with firepower. This requirement may now apply, mutatis mutandis, to all vessels of the
combined fleet that ever see fisheries service.
We find, at last, the following revealing statement at page 195 concerning Canada's attempts at
curbing the international overfishing of the Grand Banks: "On 9 March 1995 authorization was
given to arrest a Spanish trawler ... The command ship, "Leonard J. Cowley", fired machine gun
bursts across her bow and she was boarded ..."
CCG vessels may nowadays carry machineguns, then - although these exist with greater or lesser
potency, and might in any case do little harm to a surfaced submarine (leaving a submerged one
quite alone, of course.)
As there was no blueprint for the final form of a national coast guard, when the various moves of
the past century and more are compacted into a single book the process may look frenetic if not
downright insane. That's an illusion, though, for there has been a trend away from "each unit for
itself" and toward nearly perfect coordination, over the decades.
By the way, on page 61 there's a tiny editing flaw of a type that creates confusion out of all
proportion to the size of a missing comma. Regarding two new CCG icebreakers a sentence says,
"These were the 'Pierre Radisson', to replace the 'N.B. McLean' and the 'Franklin', soon to be
renamed the 'Sir John Franklin', added to the Newfoundland Region fleet."
Did you understand that the 'Radisson' would replace BOTH the 'McLean' AND the 'Franklin'?
Not so! Try it again with ',' after 'McLean'. Moral: "too much" attention to proofreading is
impossible.
At least to a nautically inclined Canadian reader, and quite possibly to similarly oriented people of
other lands, Maginley's well told, well illustrated book is interesting, even entertaining, and
informative. It makes surprisingly light reading; it can often be laid down and picked up again
later without difficulty, largely because the work narrates a series of anecdotes or short histories,
e.g. of given shipwrecks, as well as compact, subdivided statements of fact.
However, a reader should obviously have some real interest, professional or otherwise, in the sea
if he/she is to profit from such an account as this. Total landlubbers and most children will likely
choose to give the work a bye.
Pete Hodgins
Reviewer
Hupalo's Bookshelf
The Business Start-Up Kit: Everything You Need To Know About Starting And Growing Your
Own Business
Steven D. Strauss
Dearborn Financial Publishing
30 South Wacker Drive, Suite 2500, Chicago, IL 60606-7481
800-621-9621
ISBN 0793160278 $19.95 274 pp.
The Business Start-Up Kit: Everything You Need To Know About Starting And Growing Your
Own Business by attorney and small business columnist Steven Strauss is a solid introduction to
starting a new business.
Strauss covers these topics very well:
* Buying A Franchise Or Other Business
* Planning Your Business
* Laws, Taxes, and Insurance (A Brief Overview)
* Bootstrap Financing
Strauss tells us that one million new home-based business start-up every year and that as many as
15-40 million home-based businesses exist in the United States. Quoting an SBA survey, we learn
that almost 25 percent of all home-based businesses have a yearly gross income between
$100,000 and $500,000.
Strauss says home-based businesses have a big advantage low overhead. And, some home-based
businesses grow into much larger endeavors. We learn that Disney, amazon.com, and Microsoft
are among some businesses that originated as home-based businesses.
Strauss writes: "Maybe your dream is to be a multimillionaire. That's fine. But so too is a dream
to create a business that makes enough money to allow you to stay home, play with the kids
and shoot a round of golf on Friday afternoons. That's fine too. That you are the boss and can do
what you want is one of the best things about starting your own home-based business. Doing
what you want that's the whole idea."
The Business Start-Up Kit emphasizes that industry research, planning, and letting the numbers
do the talking are crucial to success.
Strauss writes: "For example, assume that your business is looking to add a new product line.
How do you know if it will work? Such an important decision should not be based on guesswork
or hunches. Instead, you have to let the numbers do the talking. Knowing how to crunch the
numbers figuring out what it will cost you to launch the new line, how much you can expect to
make, and how quickly you can reasonably expect to make it will make the decision easy for
you. Can you afford a new product line? Will your cash flow allow you to afford it? What kind of
return on this investment of capital and time can you expect? Let the numbers do the
talking."
Throughout the book, Strauss encourages the reader by interjecting interesting tidbits about
successful entrepreneurs. And, Strauss tells those who fear failure to let fear motivate them and
not to give up easily.
We learn that Microsoft had only $16,000 in revenue and three employees in 1975. In 1976,
Microsoft had $22,000 in revenue and six employees. It lost money both years. Strauss says that
many entrepreneurs might have been tempted to give up after two dismal years.
To help entrepreneurs stretch their initial investment, Strauss suggests: "You must invest your
time, money, and energy in only your best, most profitable ideas."
Strauss says entrepreneurs should enter a field they feel passionate about and an area where they
see a need or an opportunity.
For example, Strauss writes: " when Chris Haney and Scott Abbot got together to play a board
game one night, they choose Scrabble. As they pulled out Chris's Scrabble game, the two
friends discovered that some of the tiles were missing. As they went out to buy another Scrabble
game, Chris thought: This was the sixth game of Scrabble he'd bought in his life. The two friends
decided then and there to start a business and invent a board game. the two friends sold more
than 20 million copies of Trivial Pursuit within three years."
Strauss also discusses legal mistakes to avoid when starting your business. Strauss says many
entrepreneurs will need to learn some basic law about:
* Contracts
* Avoiding negligence
* Protecting your ideas and products with copyrights, trademarks, and patents
* Basic employer-employee law
* Laws regulating your industry
In addition to providing encouragement and help with developing a business strategy, Strauss also
provides a list of books, websites, and other resources for more information at the end of each
section.
I highly recommend The Business Start-Up Kit: Everything You Need To Know About Starting
And Growing Your Own Business to new entrepreneurs.
The Girl's Guide To Starting Your Own Business: Candid Advice, Frank Talk, And True Stories
For The Successful Entrepreneur
Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
ISBN 0060521570 $21.95 257 Pages
Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio wrote The Girl's Guide To Starting Your Own Business for
female entrepreneurs looking for advice and encouragement.
Several years ago, when working as publicists for a New York publishing company, Friedman and
Yorio realized that they were essentially running a little PR company supervising employees and
managing budgets within their larger organization. But, they didn't receive the financial rewards.
So, they decided to start their own PR business.
Friedman and Yorio write: " we visited bookstores and conduced on-line searches to find
information that would help us navigate the terrifying waters of self-employment. What we found
were books that ranged from the vaguely helpful to the downright unreadable. We found books
on marketing and books on funding, books on partnerships and books on parachutes. We found a
lot of books about how to sound like a man and think like a man. But who wants to do that?
What we never found was the book that said, 'You can do it, girl. All you need is ____, ____, and
____!" This book will fill in the blanks. And there are a lot of blanks."
Friedman and Yorio do a good job filling in the blanks. They discuss the good things and the bad
things about running your own company. Selecting an attorney and an accountant is covered.
Hiring, firing, and managing employees are also discussed as is office technology. And, some
down-home advice is given for home-based business entrepreneurs, such as don't lie down on the
couch or you'll fall asleep. And, "The to-do list is your friend."
A short list of questions helps readers decide if they'd be good entrepreneurs. (Hint: the authors
suggest: "If you are not a hard worker don't even think about starting your own business." Even
part-time entrepreneurs work hard. They just don't work as many hours.)
Friedman and Yorio also tell us that we'll need to learn about taxes. They write:
"Even if you hire an accountant and bookkeeper, you are ultimately responsible for knowing these
laws. And for some people (us included) this is torture. Not knowing has gotten us in trouble, like
the $1,000 bill we had to pay the state government for not knowing about the timing for paying
payroll taxes. Rats!"
If you enjoy doing payroll taxes W-2s, W-4s, 940s, 941s, and more they say knock yourself
out. But, for the rest of us, if we have two employees or more, Friedman and Yorio suggest using
a payroll service company to do payroll. (If you operate as a sole proprietor or a one-person LLC,
and you have no other employees, you don't need to worry about payroll taxes.)
Friedman and Yorio tell women entrepreneurs to find experienced business mentors. The authors
write: "A great place to start is the Office of Women's Business Ownership, at
www.sba.gov/womeninbusiness/wnet.html (part of the Small Business Association). They manage
the Women's Network For Entrepreneurial Training (WNET), which matches successful women
business owners with new entrepreneurs. Or try a local chapter of a women's business
organization, such as the National Association of Women Business Owners They frequently
offer workshops, lunches, and lectures, where you can interact with many potential mentors."
The book contains short question and answer blurbs ("Girl Talk") with successful women
entrepreneurs who run a variety of companies, ranging from literary agencies and executive search
firms to restaurants and freelance writing businesses.
Friedman and Yorio ask the manager at Springboard Center for Women and Enterprise (" the
largest venture capital forum that specifically focuses on women ") to provide " the skinny on
the big bucks."
The manager notes: "One of the keys to getting VC [Venture Capital] money is access and
connections. Historically, VC money has gone to men. It's really all about connections and
who you know. Men tend to have many more connections, through business school or industry,
and can get their foot in the door easier."
Overall, female entrepreneurs or soon-to-be entrepreneurs will find easy-reading help and quality
advice in The Girl's Guide To Starting Your Own Business. You Go Girl!
Peter Hupalo
Reviewer
Karla's Bookshelf
The Blue Dress
Alison Townsend
Marie Alexander Poetry Series
White Pine Press
P.O. Box 236, Buffalo, NY 14201
ISBN 1893996611 $14.95 141 pages
The dilemma with this book is that every time I start to read it, I find myself putting it down to
write my own memories surfacing, requiring the light of paper to see. C.K. Williams says of
memory in his poem "Lessons" from The Singing, "How even know in truth how much / of mind
should be memory, no less / what portion of self should be others / rather than self?" Are our own
truths, our own selves defined by our memories?
Certainly it's memory that informs these poems. Townsend fills her pages with the taste of
Blackjack gum and Tootsie Rolls and the sweetsharp, powdery scent of Cashmere Bouquet. I
remember Cashmere Bouquet. It was the only soap my own grandmother used. Like Townsend's,
my grandmother grew roses. Townsend speaks of "bad home-Toni perms," like the kind my
mother inflicted on me on Saturday nights. The Teencharm bra is the same type I wore when my
own breasts started their budding. I've even climbed Mt. Baldy. The value of another's memory is
that it often resurrects our own.
About half the poems in this volume are prose poems, but these are not just words plunked into
paragraph shapes without thought. These are artfully crafted prose gold, nuggets fine and bright.
They are constructed with thought, with consideration to line to tension, to stanza, to sound, and
to excruciating detail. Her traditionally stanza-ed poems, as well, are rife with the same careful
details. She misses little when she describes Barbie with "torpedo breasts, eyes that are bruised
blue, and tall-drink-of-water legs." Games like Ring-O-Levio are drawn with you-can-play-too
directions games which remind me of my own Starlight Moonlight and Kick the Can childhood.
In the poem, "The Habit of Its Fit," she recalls shadows and ghosts, of loss of another kind, so
that even after she has taken off her wedding ring "that ghost-ring / spiraling around my finger
like bands / of dusk and light, the habit of its fit / reminding me how stubbornly wedded I am"
(34).
The poem "Daily" mirrors James Wright's "The Blessing" with its quiet enormity:
Each afternoon as I drive home from work,
.
the spotted Percheron
stands in her triangular pasture,
poised at the edge of the woods.
I do not think she is unhappy,
here in her own field, curried by weather.
.
But her coat stands up in tufts that catch
at the light and make a psalm of her body.
And her mane is like raw silk tangled with burdock.
Nothing but the wind has touched her since morning. (25)
And isn't this what poetry is about--words and meaning to touch us? Townsend's narrator is a
woman both young and not so young, a woman who finds herself standing in her own triangular
corner of the world, not unhappy, but not quite happy, her own silk-life tangled with the burdock
prickly and hard and the sweet psalm of her fingers creating and recreating it over and over.
My high school English teacher used to say that we wouldn't be able to live our lives if we knew
what sorrows and tragedies lay ahead. Townsend seems to agree when she says in "From One
Life to the Next:"
And I thought of how we couldn't live if we knew what lay before us,
our sorrows and losses raked up into piles like leaves we burn or haul to
the roadside or leave exactly where they are. Or these seasons that keep
teaching us what persists. (42)
Townsend's poems persist, carry a similar lesson from a narrator who has much to remember,
much to compost and ferment in her garden of daily rebirth, the daily re-invention of who she
is.
In spite of so much loss, these poems are small blessings, sated with little tributes to life. "On
Leaving Dorland Mountain," Townsend's narrator celebrates the return of a doe and her fawn and
the moon, lines in which Townsend illuminates everything again, in Wright-esque fashion:
They're so close I can see
their flanks moving, each breath
rippling like water beneath their ribs.
I can see their ears, translucent
as furred shells, flicking at sounds
I do not notice, and feel their gaze,
lambent as the moon itself,
turned deeply upon me
until the window melts
and there is nothing between us
but breathing measured
by the night's slow pulse. (38)
Even in these little elegies, there is redemption, an acceptance that life has moved forward. Some
poems are written with a grown woman's perception. For example, Townsend writes about
stealing her stepmother's clothes from the poem by the same title: "It was to be like you / that I
tried all your clothes on . It was to get close to you, / that I sneaked a suede jacket / out for the
evening . And I wanted to be you, / in your Villager twin sets / and crpe de Chine sheaths,"
(83-84). The poem's grown self realizes that this theft wasn't fashion or disobedience or a passive
aggression, but a need to know she was loved by the woman her father married so soon after
her own mother's death that a child had no time to grieve.
There is value in memory. We are defined sometimes by what we choose to remember. C. K.
Williams writes in "Self-portrait with Rembrandt Self-portrait": "whatever it is beyond / dying and
fear of dying, / whatever it is beyond solace / eludes me, / yet no longer eludes me." These poems
create a self-portrait, sketched in the turmoil and tranquility of a life that does not escape this
writer or us.
Joy Unspeakable
Laura Stamps
Kittyfeather Press
P.O. Box 212534, Columbia, SC 29221-2534
$15.00 69 pages
Alphabets of Wisdom
Many poets write poems filled with angst and anger, with trouble and tension, with
desire poems filled with wishes and wanting and warning. Not so, these. These poems are filled
with joy. Plain and simple. Stamps finds joy in her every day world, the world outside her
window, in the playfulness of her cats, in the blooming of her garden, in the birth of each new
day.
Although many have written poems of praise, admiration, and celebration, what makes these
poems notable from the rest is Stamps' use of language, a diction that is both luscious and
surprising. For example in the poem "Treasure" she says:
Thunder curls its long,
loud fingers around the limbs
of evergreens, trembling
the ground, pleating the sky
with eyelash-shivers
of lightning sizzling in
from the west
the grass opens its green
apron, gleefully catching
this damp treasure, not caring
how loudly it arrives,
but that it comes, and often. (31)
In another she says, the "fierceness of winter / withdraws its frigid breath, / slowly folding its ice
robe / like a monk" (12). In the poem "Smile," Stamps says, it is "The last week of January, / and
rain drums the house / with a thousand gray sticks" (13).
The poem "Lizards and Lightfall" describe her dismay with poetry magazine guidelines that say,
"there are too many / poems written these days / about sunrises and sunsets," but what about
lizards, she wonders, "are there too many / poems laced with lizards?" (13). She tells the reader
that lizards lounge like "little green licorice / sticks on the leaves / of my gerbera daisies the
ones with the marshmallow / bellies their pink eyes flashing / as if dreaming / of raspberry
pudding" (14). Stamps find her bliss in these simple treasures.
Stamp's poems often pay homage to the antics of her cats. She describes them in language that is
rich and fresh like "the sleeping sighs / of the kitten / wound in a knot at the end / of her bed,"
while outside, "the fading rumble-thread / of a plane stitch[es] the clouds" (15). In the poem
"Happiness by Design," she describes the latest feline shenanigans finding, "the television / section
shredded in strips / of noodles like newsprint / spaghetti piled high / on the green plate / of the
carpet" (23). In the poem "Silver Leaves of Prayer," her kitten sleeps in her arms like an
"answered prayer, / wrapped in a black / purse of fur" (11). In another, she corners her cat so a
bunny can escape, "this feral / tom with a taste for blood," not before lecturing the cat "for twenty
minutes on the proper / behavior for a good kitty" (16).
Because Stamps often enjambs her lines skillfully, there is a surprise at every turn. We find that
her neighbor thinks the "mailman is / a terrorist" (17) because he fills her mailbox with more
packages than it can handle. We see "cats / galloping" and "songs / purling" and "amazing /
equations." There are "starlings [that] screech / with glee like wild / monkeys" and Miro, / a man
who painted / like a poet. Like joy, there is an abundance of splendid language here. Her lines are
generous with their surprises and each one brings some new delight to astonish even the most
jaded reader.
These poems are filled with simple, daily miracles. If you're looking for the dark side of Stamps'
soul, you won't find it here. She practices a zen dependency to her ecstasy, "transparency; / the art
of allowing / every jot and tittle" "flow through [her], permitting nothing to stick" (22). In the
poem, "These Days," she says, "My ministry is simple / to seek the love and peace / lining the
hidden pocket / of the present moment" (65). And she does; yes, she does.
Karla Huston
Reviewer
Linda's Bookshelf
P is for Perfect
Craig Nathanson
Book Coach Press
1605-1275 Richmond Road, Ottawa, Ontario K2B 8E3 Canada
www.BookCoachPress.com
ISBN 0968034756, $19.95, 110 pp.
If you count the minutes from the time you arrive at work until your workday ends when you can
return home, then you may be ready for a bold transition from your current employment to "your
perfect vocation." If so, then you may find P is for Perfect by Craig Nathanson a godsend.
As a young man, Nathanson observed the two people in his life who were dearest to him -- his
grandfather and his mother -- tethered to jobs they found unsatisfying. Even as a teen, he tried to
counsel his mother to search for employment she might enjoy, but she could not bring herself to
follow her heart and look for her vocational passion, which he defines as "spending time each day
doing things which give you meaning and fulfillment" (p. 45).
As a direct result from Nathanson's early experiences, once he found his feelings about his
high-paying corporate employment too close to the sentiments he had observed in those whom he
loved, about jobs that paid far less, he left his workplace and told his wife he "could never go
back to a place that provided [him] with so little meaning and fulfillment." She told him to "get
some rest" hoping that he would feel differently in the morning. She telephoned her mother and
said that Nathanson was "losing [his] mind" (p. 40). On the contrary, he was saving his mind, for
he found himself "dying inside," and he had to find his joy. So, he freed himself from the shackles
that had bound him, even though it was not an ideal time to leave, for many problems hovered
around him; and leaving at this particular time created further duress. Still, he bravely sought his
"perfect vocational day," and tenaciously made it work with little help from those who should
have been his loyal supporters.
If you feel a kinship with Nathanson regarding your own employment, then P is for Perfect is a
must read for you, for he guides you methodically step by step toward "Your [own] Perfect
Vocational Day," and ends with "The Vocational Passion Assessment," which he defines as "A
tool for reflection and action" (p. 95).
Nathanson's editor can correct inconsistencies in punctuating before and after quotation marks,
periods missing at the ends of some sentences, grammatical confusions about the proper use of
the pronouns, "I" and "me" and "who" and "whom" in future revisions; therefore, these
inadvertent errors should not distract the grammarian too much. Instead, focus on the content of
the book and be empowered to find "your perfect vocational day."
Elderwoman
Marian Van Eyk McCain
Findhorn Press
305a The Park, Findhorn, Forres IV36 3TE, Scotland, UK
findhornpress.com
ISBN 1899171290, $15.95, 288 pp.
In Elderwoman, author Marian Van Eyk McCain beautifully describes the stages of womanhood
as the maiden, the mother, and the elderwoman, and she enumerates the 20 principles of the
elderwoman's life such as simplicity, creativity, authenticity, and responsibility, among others. She
suggests that the "highly significant" phase of menopause "will be much more swiftly, successfully
and thoroughly completed if [given] some time, space, and attention" (p. 28), likens the transition
to the metamorphosis of a cocoon and says that women must give themselves time and attention
to develop strong "wings" and fly.
McCain says, ". . . in the mainstream of our culture people are giving up the full enjoyment of
their lives to make as much money as they can, not realizing what poor bargains they may actually
be getting" (p. 226). She says, they have "gotten themselves trapped by their own needs, wants,
and desires into working for the 'system' even when their hearts are not in tune with the end
results that system creates" (p. 138).
At a personal level, McCain challenges women, ". . . do we stop thinking, turn on TV and become
little old ladies, waiting to die? Or do we roll up our sleeves and become elderwomen? At the
macro level, the challenge is: does our human society accept pollution, worsening inequality and
injustice, global warming, the death of the species, the gradual dimming out of life on Earth and
just keep watching videos and spending money till everything is gone? Or do we look for a new
way forward, instead?"
In addition to sharing her own private regimen for what she refers to as the "afternoon of life," in
the event that it might be helpful to others, McCain's goal is to empower women to become
elderwomen, which she defines as experienced women of wisdom, who think for themselves,
cherish and honor their minds and bodies, trust their souls, accept changing and aging graciously,
act in kairos time (absorbing all their senses in their worthwhile activities), review their lives,
enjoy their harvest, look forward to see how they might contribute still with solutions, and tell the
world what it needs to hear. She says that in the United States alone, there soon will be 50 million
potential elderwomen, who could be a mighty force (p. 200). Other countries enjoy similar
resources of wise women, which she, doubtless, also hopes to empower to become
elderwomen.
She believes that elderwomen can make a difference in society today, for she says, ". . .We pose
no apparent threat to anyone, and that same cloak of invisibility provides our immunity. So we
can flit unnoticed through the structures of our society, taking up our sniper positions. We can
speak out, stand up for what we believe in, in whatever way we choose, and if we get reproachful
looks we simply laugh the delighted cackle of the crone" (p. 160).
Elderwoman is a must read for women everywhere who will advocate the importance of living in
harmony "with other creatures in the web of life" and to spread the "sense of shared responsibility
for the health of our planet" (p. 167)-a noble goal, indeed.
Linda Davis Kyle, Reviewer
www.blueberrypress.com
Lori's Bookshelf
The Weekend Girl & Other Stories
Marie Shephard Williams
Folio Bookworks
3241 Columbus Avenue So., M, MN, 55407-2030
www.folio-bookworks.com
ISBN: 0974498602 $15.95 240 pgs
It's been since 1996 that Marie Sheppard Williams published her debut collection, THE
WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF THE HANDICAPPED, and those were seven long years. At last,
her new book of short stories has arrived, and it was well worth the wait. The five
semi-autobiographical stories nearly novellas that comprise the book take on all sorts of
topics: the inability of families to truly understand one another, Alzheimers, the death of a cousin
and all its repercussions even decades later, the fickleness of friendship, as well as the meanness,
heroism, and the generosity of ordinary, everyday people.
Joan, the first-person narrator of all five stories, sees the world with an unusual clarity and
precision, and she shares her viewpoint honestly, even when she thinks less of herself. She writes
about the relationship she has with Sara, an elderly Alzheimer's patient for whom she is a paid
companion, and says "The time I spend with Sara is boring. I nearly expire of boredom..." Later,
when Sara calls Joan sweet, Joan writes, "Can you imagine? I am about as sweet as strychnine. If
Sara could see the inside of me sometimes, she would flinch in terror" (p. 170). Then Joan goes
on to explain all the reasons why she is not "sweet," and it's very funny. She puts into words all
the frustrations anyone would feel working with an Alzheimer's patient, and the reader can't help
but think, "There but for the grace of God go I and if that ever happens to me, I hope my
caretaker is someone like Joan."
Williams' treatment and descriptions of the elderly, the odd, the young, and the inexplicable
border on comedic much of the time, but then she turns everything on its head and manages to
confront the mysteries of life and death with compassion and wisdom. How is it that with such
deceptively simple language and chatty delivery, we suddenly find ourselves wrapped up in all
sorts of questions about the mystery of the past, the present, and the future? I'm not sure how she
does it, but she manages to move between the nutty and the sublime with surprising ease. These
lines gave me the shivers: "How do we live from day to day? Why we live by God's courtesy, in
the shadow, or in the light, of our own deaths" (p. 168), and upon reading this, we believe Joan
knows it as an incontrovertible fact.
I have never read any other author who writes with exactly this sort of style and grace. Author
Bill Holm calls Williams a descendant of Sherwood Anderson, but I tend to disagree. She
possesses wholly and completely her own special and unique Voice, and it will not be denied.
Read these stories to be entertained, to laugh, and to puzzle over people's bizarre quirks, but
above all, for the shivers of recognition about the depth, the danger, and the meaning of life.
Twist of Fate
Jessica Casavant
Yellow Rose Books
www.regalcrest.biz
PMB 210, 8691 9th Avenue, Port Arthur, TX 77642-8025
ISBN: 1932300074 $12.95 168 pgs
Lauren Taylor, a former investigative journalist, is the wife of a U.S. Senator who is exploring a
run for the U.S. Presidency. Because of the political aspects of her life, Lauren has not been
involved as a news reporter for quite some time. Instead, she's lived day to day without passion.
When an old colleague confronts her with allegations that she had an affair with a female doctor
named Madison Williams, Lauren is trapped by the facts of her past. She lies, but she knows the
reporter only needs two sources of verification before he will have a field day. Though Lauren
isn't in love with her husband, she does care about him, and in no way does she want anything
from her past to come back to haunt him or her especially since giving up Madison was one of
the most painful things Lauren had ever done.
And so begins Lauren's attempt to cover her tracks, but very soon she discovers that her
long-submerged feelings for Madison are not so well buried after all. "Life had a strange way of
creating events to wake people up form their self-induced comas" (p. 33), and Lauren ends up
with a real wakeup call that has the power to ruin lives. Will her house of cards come tumbling
down and destroy her husband and her organized life? And if it all gets out, what about Madison's
life, her feelings, her livelihood?
TWIST OF FATE, the first in a series of romances, is a fine debut novel by a talented Canadian
writer and is highly recommended.
Words You THOUGHT You Knew: 1001 Commonly Misused & Misunderstood Words &
Phrases
Jenna Glatzer
Adams Media Corporation
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA. 02322
www.adamsmedia.com
ISBN: 1580629415 $8.95 310 pgs
Jenna Glatzer's new title is one of those reference books that you never realized how much you
needed until you start reading it. It's chock-full of fascinating words and information, much of
which is spiced up by Glatzer's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. After pithy but
easy-to-comprehend descriptions of words and phrases, she includes information about usage and
spelling, along with a brief example sentence. The book is an invaluable addition to any person's
library and is especially useful for writers and those who love words.
For all those who 'pour' over documents, fall 'prostrate' in the face of a threat, insist that Tom
Dooley was 'hung,' or can't decide if you 'empathize' or 'sympathize,' this book is for you!
The Dead Survivors: A Mars Bahr Mystery
K. J. Erickson
St. Martin's Minotaur
175 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY, 10010
www.minotaurbooks.com
ISBN: 0312983247 $6.99 336 pgs
In this follow-up to 2001's THIRD PERSON SINGULAR, K.J. Erickson continues to develop
her characters: Marshall "Mars" Bahr, a detective assigned to a special unit by the mayor; Nettie,
Mars' capable assistant; psychologist friend, Karen Pogue; various members of the police
department including the mayor and a young patrolman; and Mars' son, Chris, one of the most
delightfully precocious ten year olds I've ever seen in a mystery.
This police procedural starts out slowly with the apparent suicide of a Minneapolis businessman.
At first the cops don't even suspect that the death is a homicide, and the story builds steam
gradually as Mars and Nettie come to understand that the cryptic numbers inked on the dead
man's arm match those of other seemingly unrelated victims, all of whom had ancestors connected
to the Battle at Gettysburg. It becomes a race against the clock for a team of computer techs to
match data to try to prevent further murders.
I enjoyed this second installment in a very promising series. Erickson has a dynamite cast of
characters to work with, and I can't wait to read book three, THE LAST WITNESS, and the
forthcoming ALONE AT NIGHT.
Lori L. Lake
Reviewer
Magdalena's Bookshelf
The Timeless Art of Italian Cuisine: Centuries of Scrumptious Dining
Anna Maria Volpi
Palatino
www.annamariavolpi.com
ISBN 0972922903, $24.95 160 pages
There are those to whom a cookbook is a utilitarian item - a tool to follow for the creation of a
meal. And then there are those, like me, who enjoy the sensual experience of reading cookbooks
as much if not more than using them as kitchen guides. Just as food is more than simply the
nutrients it provides, a well written cookbook can provide an experience of pleasure, both
aesthetic and intellectual, while stimulating the tastebuds in an anticipation of gustation which can
exceed the actual eating pleasure. If you're the sort of person who is disappointed by Martha's
lack of prose, or who can pore over a cookbook for several hours without feeling the need to run
to the kitchen, you will enjoy Anna Maria Volpi's The Timeless Art of Italian Cuisine. This is no
ordinary cookbook, although it has as many recipes and will certainly accompany you into the
kitchen while you cook. Volpi's book is also a history, sociology, and geography book, which
covers the major regions of Italy, the relationship between historical movements and food, the
decline of the Roman empire, the impact of migrants, great families, the Renaissance, conquerors,
and food trends. It makes for very interesting reading, and even while you are cooking or
entertaining, it is so much richer an experience for understanding the traditions out of which a
food has grown.
The book is printed on simple light brown paper with black and white etchings and hand drawings
which gives it a rustic and comfortable feel. The chapters are divided primarily into regions, with
specific reference to Rome, Northern Italy, Tuscany, Southern Italy, and Sicily. Each of these
chapters covers both general history of the area, as well as impacts, eating trends, and modern
culture, along with many recipes which are relevant to that region, from rustic bread or chickpea
soup from rome (both exquisite by the way) to the Risottos and baked salt cod of Northern Italy,
the pizzas of Southern Italy, or the stunning eggplant dishes or stuffed rice balls of Sicily. There
are also individual chapters devoted specifically to fresh, and dry pasta. For a book which is full of
good reading, there are also a surprising number of excellent recipes, many of which are classics
and others which are family favourites of the author, or recipes recovered from historical
cookbooks. Even the most common dishes such as macaroni and cheese, or basic pizza contain
secrets gained by this very experienced cook to ensure that you cook your pasta perfectly al
dente, or understand the reasons why a wood fired pizza tastes so different from a home cooked
one. This is a book which will inspire the home chef, both intellectually and gastronomically.
Many of the recipes are rustic, simple to make and easy enough for everyday family cooking - and
that is certainly what Italian food is all about. Other recipes are for the kind of mouth opening
complex banquet type of foods that will have you in the kitchen for hours and your guests
swooning at the end - such as the Cassata or the lavish Timpano Di Maccheroni.
This is definitely a cookbook which will be used, repeatedly, for both its delectable and fascinating
prose, and for the extensive range of repeatable and easy to follow recipes and techniques. This is
many books in one but a beautiful addition to any cook's larder. Anyone who loves Italian food,
and that must be a wide proportion of the world's population, will enjoy this book - a wonderful
gift to the world from a woman who obviously has a deep passion for Italy, and its food.
Death of a River Guide
Richard Flanagan
Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330364758, A$24.00
"Those shadows, those greasy, slippery shadows, they dance before me now like some cabaret of
lost souls of slaughtered animals performing a burlesque in Hell, and amidst the moist snouts of
possums and wallabies I can see one more soul depart its human body." Richard Flanagan's first
novel, recently re-issued in Australia by Macmillan, is more than just a precursor of his
phenomenal Commonwealth Prize winning Gould's Book of Fish. The story sits somewhere
amongst those greasy, slippery shadows which constitute the extended world that we all inhabit.
As the story opens, Aljaz Cosini, the narrator and protagonist of Death of a River Guide, lies
drowning in Tasmania's Franklin river, "looking up through aerated water at the slit in the rocks."
Cosini has been granted visions, in which he sees life in flashes - both recollection, and a link to
the collective consciousness of his people - that reveal its meaning. Flanagan's prose is deft and
magical, moving with little effort between Cosini's immediate circumstances - the physical and
emotional pain that attends his drowning, the moments leading up to the point of his entrapment,
and the progression of his life, and the lives of his parents, his grandparents, his
great-grandparents. Always reaching for the largest context, the deepest meaning, Flanagan takes
us away from rationality without ever calling upon mysticism, magical realism, or any kind of
cinematic tricks:
And the rational mind can only reason against that knowledge: that the spirit of the sleeping and
the dying in the rainforest roam everywhere, see everything; that we know a great deal more
about ourselves than we normally care to admit, except at the great moments of truth in our life,
in love and hate, at birth and death. Beyond these moments our life seems as if it is one great
voyage away from teh truths we all encompass, our past and our future, what we were and what
we will return to being.(9)
As with Gould's Book of Fish, Death of a River Guide is deceptively easy to read. The characters
are believable and richly developed, and the forward thrust of the story makes the book difficult to
put down. We know the outcome in advance, but anticipate and wait for the denouement as
breathlessly as if this were a murder mystery. How did Cosini come to be trapped in the Franklin?
Cowardly, lonely, in poor health, hungry, escaping from the things he's lost and those he loves,
Cosini wonders "who is this drowning? (308) The discovery of Cosini is the discovery of
ourselves - an ambitious odyssey through time and place - Aboriginal Australia, Italy, England,
China, Yugoslavia - from the early 19th century to present day.
The Franklin itself is beautifully characterised, with its changing forests: Wet and pungent comes
the smell of the damp black earth to my nostrils; of the forest dying, to be reborn as fecund rot
and fungi, small and waxy, large and luminous; to be reborn as moss and myrtle seedlings,
minuscule and myriad; as Huon pine springs, forcing their way through the crumbling damp
decay, forked and knowing as a water diviner's stick; as the celery top saplings, looking as if a
market gardener had planted them there; as the small hardwater ferns and old
scrubbing-brush-topped pandanni.
And there are moments throughout the book which are so intensely moving, the reader feels like
he or she has slipped under Cosini's skin and is witnessing his or her own history and loss - the
violation of Black Pearl, the loss of baby Jemma with its image of puffy ankle and yellow bootie,
Couta Ho's spirit and immense sadness, Aunt Ellie's visions and memories, the convict Ned
Quade, Cosini's cigar smoking midwife Maria Magdalena Svevo, Cosini's father Harry's witness of
his father Boy's death, and the love stories, Harry and Sonja, Ellie and Reg, Cosini and Couta - all
beautiful and horrible, interwoven with the history - the large migrations and small mining towns -
out of which they grow. There are moments of comedy too, such as Cosini's visions of Australian
animals telling each other stories. This is a novel full of many lives and many stories, all
converging on the point of Cosini's death.
"In an age where everything can mean anything, perhaps it is only possible to exist as a cipher, as
a thin, fragile outline of a hope etched across an infinity of madness." (309) Flanagan provides his
answer - in the poetry of permanence, his work has the kind of humanistic transcendence which
will reward the reader with both beauty and meaning through many re-readings. Relatively small
in output as his oeuvre is, Richard Flanagan is one of the greatest of modern writers. His work is
consistently astonishing, original, moving, rooted deeply in the Tasmanian soil out of which it
derives, but universal in its power to move and change the reader.
Magdalena Ball, Reviewer
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html
Marya's Bookshelf
Tiny
Paul Rogers and Korky Paul
Kane Miller
P.O. Box 8515, La Jolla, CA 92038-8515
1929132263, $7.95
Tiny was a flea who lived on a dog called Cleopatra. The dog lived at a house, and the house was
on a road. In turn the road was in a town which was on an island. This island was in an ocean on a
planet called Earth...and so on.
Just by chance poor little Tiny has the misfortune to be scratched off his comfortable mobile
home. That is the kind of thing that happens to creatures that are "so small" he thinks to himself.
Tiny ends up in the grass and for the first time he looks up into the night sky and sees the stars.
From where he is the stars look...well, they looked tiny. Even tinier than he is. This makes him
feel a lot better about himself, less put out about his own situation. After all, here are some things
that are even smaller than he is and maybe, just maybe, "Perhaps it doesn't matter that I'm so small
after all." Of course the funny thing is that a star is much bigger than a flea but Tiny doesn't know
that and in the big scheme of things it doesn't matter that he thinks he is bigger than the stars.
What is important is that he feels better about himself.
This is a wonderful book for all those little people who are feeling tired of being little and
helpless. In fact it is perfect for all of us when we are feeling small, helpless and out of control.
We can all be as big as stars if we want to, even if we are as small as fleas. This book also serves
as a reminder that we are not alone. Even if we are 'tiny', so are millions of other people, so we
have something in common with them. With funny illustrations full of wonderful things to look at,
this is a charming picture book to share with a child or to share with a friend.
How Ben Franklin Stole Lightning
Rosalyn Schanzer
HarperCollins
0688169937, $16.99, www.harpercollins.com
Ben Franklin was one of those rare people who tried doing a little of everything and managed to
be good at almost everything that he tried doing. He had an insatiable curiosity about people, their
problems, and the natural world. What was perhaps more remarkable still was that he was
determined to try to personally solve as many of those problems as he could.
For example he saw that people had a need for books and mail delivery so he created the first
lending library and he was the first to deliver mail directly to people's homes. He quickly saw that
fire was a huge problem in towns and set up the very first fire department. It seemed that it was
always the need of others that lay at the root of what he did, that drove him onward.
Beginning Ben Franklin did many great and noteworthy things in his long lifetime; creating
institutions; serving on committees; helping to write the United States Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence; helping the United States win its war for Independence; convincing
Great Britain to sign a peace treaty. And yet, Ben probably loved to invent things most of all and
this was where his genius shone. Even as a boy he invented gadgets. Wanting to be able to move
faster when swimming he invented swimming paddles but they were too heavy and cumbersome,
so he ended up harnessing the power of the wind by holding onto a kite and letting the wind pull
him along in the water. Ben went on to invent bifocals, the Franklin stove, the glass armonica, and
many other devices. He also studied the weather, ocean currents, human health, and then he got
interested in electricity. Out of this interest came one his most important inventions. Ben decided
to pull lightening out of the sky using no more than a kite, silk ribbon and a key. His experiment
worked. Using his new found knowledge Ben was able to come up with a very valuable invention
which most certainly has saved many lives and a great deal of valuable property; Ben invented the
lightening rod.
Perhaps the best description of Ben are the words that appeared on a medal that was given to Ben
Franklin by the French Government for his services to the world: "He snatched lightening from
heaven and the scepter from tyrants."
Rosalyn Schanzer has written a wonderful book which shows us not only the incredible genius
that lay beneath the Benjamin Franklin's humble looking exterior, but she also shows us how
modest and self effacing Ben was. The lighthearted text and cheerful illustrations reflect Ben's
own often humorous personality. At the back of the book there is an "Author's Note" which
provides further information about Ben Franklin describing more of his incredible achievements.
The author also explains why she chose to write about his scientific accomplishments rather than
his political and diplomatic ones. It is quite clear that the author has great respect and admiration,
as well as a deep fondness, for the balding little man who thought so much of the needs of others
and who, with a twinkle in his eye, gave so much of himself to his country and his people.
Snowed in with Grandmother Silk
Carol Fenner
Illustrated by Amanda Harvey
Dial
0803728573, $14.99, www.randomhouse.com
Rudford, or Ruddy, as he is called by almost everyone, is most unhappy. His parents have decided
that they are going to go on a cruise and he has to go and spend ten days, including Halloween,
with his Grandmother Silk. It's not that he doesn't like his Grandmother Silk exactly, it's just that
she isn't much like him. She only watches "Masterpiece Theatre" on TV, she wears high heels all
the time, she always calls him Rudford, she hates loud noises, and she always ever so proper and
correct about everything. She's not much fun really and that's a fact.
Ruddy manages to arrange things quite nicely when he gets to Grandmother Silk's house. He gets
a wonderful gorilla costume for Halloween and he learns how to lay a fire. There is homework to
do of course and he is all in all finding enough things to do to keep himself busy and out of
Grandmother Silk's way. He reckons he will be able to get through the ten days without too much
difficulty. Then disaster strikes; a snowstorm hits which brings down a big tree, brings down
power lines and phone lines, and cuts off Grandmother's house from the rest of the world. Now
Ruddy and Grandmother find themselves without power, without water, without a phone, unsure
of how to spend their time, and worse still, stuck with each other for company. When will help
arrive?
At first the pair of them are quite helpless and hopeless. Neither are very good at surviving
without all the creature comforts that they are used to but then they learn to adapt. They bring
water to the house from the lake, build fires in the fireplaces that actually give off heat, cook
decent food to eat, and find things to do. In addition Grandmother Silk and Ruddy start to get to
know one another for the first time. Ruddy discovers that there is a feeling person behind the hard
face and under the precise "designer hair."
In this charming little story we get to share in the relationship between two very different kinds of
people, people who really think that they cannot possibly have a close friendship. Ruddy discovers
that what you see is not necessarily what you have and so does Grandmother Silk. Grandmother
Silk also learns from her grandson that she is too quick to judge people simply because they don't
live up to her standards of what is "correct." No one is too old to learn something new and it is
the way in which the two main characters learn so much from, and about, each other that makes
this book so special.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography
William Anderson
HarperCollins
0060201134, $18.99, www.harperchildrens.com
It is hard to imagine the world of books that we had when we were children without the thinking
about the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Through her we learned about a time in American
history when great change took place, when people were on the move. In 1862 the Homestead
Act encouraged thousands of people to move west, to settle on a 160 acre piece of land that the
government would give to them if they lived on it for five years. Certainly this drew Laura's father
out of the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin and out onto the open prairie. But there was more to it than
that.
From the time when she was very young, Laura, her sisters, her mother "Ma", and her father "Pa"
seemed to be almost always moving from place to place, seeking the right spot to put down roots.
Pa Ingalls had an 'itch' to be moving which was hard on his wife who wanted a home, security,
and the comforts of a 'civilized' life. Ma wanted her girls to have a school to go to. She also
wanted a church to visit on Sundays, and neighbors to call on. To make matters worse, bad luck
dogged the family. Every time they seemed to find the right spot and had created a pleasant home
for themselves, something dreadful would happen. In Kansas the government forced them to
move off Indian lands; in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, grasshoppers ate their crops.
After the disappointment of Walnut Grove the family then spent a year in Burr Oak, Iowa
working in a hotel among other things. Always Pa and Laura felt the west pulling on their feet and
hearts. For these two town life had no attraction. They wanted the open spaces and the big prairie
sky. So, back the family went to Walnut Grove where the grasshoppers were now gone. All went
well for a while and then tragedy struck the family again. After getting sick, Mary, the eldest
Ingalls daughter, became blind. Now the family had a new challenge and Laura had a new job; she
had to be her sister's eyes.
Pa's itch to go west had been working on him for a while and when he was offered a job as a
bookkeeper for the railroad company store he was eager to accept. Pa saw this as a great
opportunity to get one of the free homestead claims that were being offered by the government in
the Dakota Territory. Ma was not keen to make yet another move, especially now that Mary was
blind. She agreed but with the promise from Pa that this would be the last time the family would
have to start all over again in a new place.
It was in this way that the Ingalls family came to be the first permanent settlers near what came to
be called the township of De Smet. Pa found a claim nearby that he liked the look of and Ma
finally had a home again. Pa kept his word and the family was not moved ever again.
This was not the case for Laura. Laura grew up and flourished in De Smet. She met and married a
young farmer called Almanzo Wilder and it seemed as if their future would be a happy one.
Almanzo, or "Manly" as everyone came to call him, built a little house for Laura and then a baby,
Rose, was born. Then a series of tragedy's occurred. First a hail storm destroyed their crop of
wheat. Then a fire destroyed part of their hay crop and the barn. After this Laura and Manly got
diphtheria. Manly was especially sick and even after he was well again he walked with a
pronounced limp for the rest of his life. Drought hit the Dakota's very hard in 1889 and the
Wilders lost their crops as a result. They also lost something more precious. Their second child, a
baby boy, died after living only a short while. It was soon after this that the Wilder home caught
fire and burned to the ground. Very little was saved.
Not surprisingly Laura and Manly decided, after trying to live in a few other places for short
periods of time, that they needed to have a proper and fresh start somewhere new. Once again
setting up a covered wagon, the Wilders loaded up all they owned and left behind Laura's family
to begin a new life in Missouri, in the Ozarks. It was in this place, much later in life, and only after
their farm had well and truly taken off, that Laura began to write her famous books.
A recognized authority on Laura Ingalls Wilder, William Anderson has written a wonderful book
about an extraordinary woman. He shows us how unique and determined a person Laura Ingalls
Wilder was. We learn what the 'real' Laura did and how much hardship she had to suffer before
she finally got to a place where she was financially secure. We also discover that Laura had a
strong dose of that very same itch that drove Pa west, that made him seek open skies and lands
where there were very few other people. We also discover how often Laura put up with situations
that made her very unhappy so that she could take care of those she loved. Laura took on jobs
that she disliked to earn money that was desperately needed; she sacrificed a great deal for her
family again and again.
What is truly wonderful for us is that Laura was encouraged by her daughter Rose to write.
William Anderson particularly emphasizes Rose's role in her mother's journey toward becoming a
book author. Rose guided and supported her mother as Laura wrote book after book in what
would become the series of "Little House" books. We all owe Rose a great deal it would seem,
for without her it is possible that we might not have these wonderful stories in our lives.
In his colorful and descriptive prose William Anderson shows us Laura Ingalls Wilder as she was
and as we close his book we can be grateful that he chose to tell he story with such compassion,
humor, and devotion.
Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder
William Anderson
Illustrated by Dan Andreasen
HarperCollins
0060272430, $15.95, www.harperchildrens.com
It was the late 1800's and a time of great change and promise. America was still full of open and
wild places and many families were on the move. One of these families was the Ingalls family.
There was Ma, Pa, Mary, and Laura and they left their little log cabin home in the woods of
Wisconsin to go to the prairie in Kansas. After only a year they had to leave their little house and
move on.
So it was to be the way of things over the next few years. Moving on, again and again. There was
the little dugout home along Plum Creek near the little town of Walnut Grove in Minnesota. Then
there was the house that Pa built of sawn lumber. Then the grasshoppers came and life became
very hard. The Ingalls had to leave Walnut Grove and go to work in a hotel in Burr Oak Iowa. No
one in the family really cared for town life in Iowa and it was a relief to return to Walnut Grove
once more. After that Pa got a job working for the railroad and went west taking the covered
wagon. Laura, Ma and the rest of the family had to follow him by train. Near where they stopped
and got out grew the township of De Smet and the final hometown of the Ingalls family. Laura
grew up there but her adventures were far from over.
In this beautifully illustrated picture book, William Anderson tells the story of Laura Ingalls
Wilder in a simple yet complete narrative. Readers are able to follow her life story from her
earliest years in the Wisconsin woods to her very last ones in her beloved Ozarks in Missouri.
Perfect for reading aloud and illustrated with soft, very detailed and warm paintings, this is a
wonderful book for newcomers to the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Prairie Girl: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder
William Anderson
Illustrated by Renee Graef
HarperCollins
0060289732, $12.99, www.harperchildrens.com
"Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm." These were the words in a song that Laura's Pa
sang to her when she was a very little girl and living in the little log cabin in the big woods of
Wisconsin. Pa very much wanted to have a farm out west, on the prairies where there was an
open sky and where he wouldn't have to cut down tree after tree to clear the land. He got his wish
in Kansas and the family was very happy in their little house on the prairie. Unfortunately they
could not stay there and the Ingalls family began a series of moves which would only end some
years later, and many hardships later, in De Smet in the Dakota Territory.
For a young reader this book is fascinating because we discover that Laura Ingalls Wilder's family
did a lot more adventuring than we read about in her famous books. The Ingalls traveled even
more then we thought, trying to find the right place to settle and to build a new life. To and fro
the Ingalls family went in their little covered wagon. Always though, Pa was restless and eager to
try farming out west, always west. Laura too had this love of the open spaces and the huge dome
skies of the prairie. She never cared for town life. For Ma Ingalls though, this constant moving
was a trial. She wanted a home, a house that was safe and warm with a door and glass windows.
She wanted her daughters to go to school and church. It was for Ma's sake that the family finally
settled down in De Smet in the Dakota Territory.
As we read this wonderful biography for younger readers, we learn that there was a baby brother
whose tiny grave had to be left behind on the prairie. We discover that the hardship did not end
for Laura in De Smet but continued into her adult life when she married Almanzo Wilder and
became a farmer's wife. The two young people lost their home to fire, their baby son died,
drought dried up their farm, and grasshoppers ate their crops. As a result, Laura, Almanzo and
their little daughter Rose went to the Ozarks in Missouri to start afresh.
William Anderson has written an excellent biography for younger readers which tells the true
story of one of America's greatest children's book writers. A well known authority on the life of
Laura Ingalls Wilder, William Anderson brings this wonderful woman to life and shows us how
Laura had great spirit and courage from the time she was a little girl, and how she never gave up
fighting for her dreams and hopes.
When Willard Met Babe Ruth
Donald Hall
Illustrated by Barry Moser
Harcourt
0152024778, $6.00, www.harcourtbooks.com
Its 1917 and Willard Babson and his father Sheridan are getting the farm ready for the winter. The
twelve-year-old boy and his father have to do the farm work on their own and it is hard work with
long hours. As they work Willard and his father can share their love of baseball. In the summer, in
the middle of the harvesting season, Willard's father had pitched at the annual baseball game
during the Fourth of July celebration.
One day, as Willard and Sheridan are bringing the "dumb sheep" to the sheep barn, a car comes
roaring down the road, screeches to a stop and slides into a ditch. It is with astonishment that
Willard realizes that the driver of the car is none other than the phenomenal young baseball player
of the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth. Sheridan sets about getting Babe's car back on the road and
Willard finds himself defending the baseball player's wife from their bad-tempered gander, Felix.
As a thank you and in the generous way that was typical of him, Babe Ruth gives Willard his
baseball glove before he drives off.
When we next see Willard and his father it is 1918 and America is now sending soldiers to fight in
World War I. The papers are full of talk about the war but Willard is more interested in baseball
and most of all he loves his glove, the Babe's glove. He takes it everywhere with him, including to
his bed.
Then something wonderful happens. Sheridan has to go to Boston for a Liberty Bond Rally and it
just so happens that the Red Sox are playing a doubleheader with the St. Louise Browns on the
same day. Willard's parents decide that he and his father should go to the game before the Rally
and it turns into the kind of afternoon that a baseball loving boy dreams of.
The author of this fascinating book has skillfully weaved together several different stories. We
follow the career of one of baseball's greatest players and certainly the hero of countless children.
We also get an interesting feel for what the times were like, what it would have been like to live in
America during the Babe Ruth years; there were many political and economic upheavals taking
place at this time. Tying all these stories together is the story of Willard, or Will as he came to be
called, as he grows up and becomes a man and a father. Several times in his life he gets to meet
his hero, Babe Ruth, and always the Babe remembers the episode with the gander, or the "big
duck" as the baseball player calls him.
Donald Hall's meticulous use of detail shows us what the period described in his book was like.
We know what movies people went to, what cars they drove, even what kind of radios they
bought. We get a wonderful feeling of coming full circle when Will's daughter Ruthie (named after
Babe Ruth) becomes a big baseball fan and starts being able to recite "Casey at the Bat" just as
her father used to do when he was a boy.
Beautifully crafted, this is a moving and sincere tribute to Babe Ruth and to the game of baseball
as it used to be. Throughout the book Barry Moser's wonderful full color illustrations show us
Willard's and Babe Ruth's world.
Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth
Robert Burleigh
Illustrated by Mike Wimmer
Harcourt
9152045996, $6.00, www.harcourtbooks.com
There was a time when the man who came to be called "The Babe" was just a boy who loved
baseball, but that same boy had something that other boys did not have; he had what would be
called the "pretty" swing. It was this swing that would rocket George Herman Ruth from
obscurity and into the limelight to become the hero called "Babe Ruth" and one of the greatest
batters of all time.
With rocking, rhythmical text the author tells us the story of how Babe Ruth played baseball. We
get a real sense of movement, of how the Babe put all of himself into his swing so that even his
"pop-ups rise higher than anyone else's." We see and feel how Babe Ruth became one with the
ball and the bat, how he loved the fans and they loved him, how he sensed everything that was
going on around him in the ball park as he played.
The author uses a lot of Babe Ruth's own words throughout the book which brings us close to the
mind and heart of the great ball player. By using quotes the author shows us too what the Babe's
thought processes were when it came to the game that he loved so much and played so well.
What is truly different and unique about this book is that on every text page there is picture of
what looks like the back of a baseball card. On the card the reader will find all sorts of information
about Babe Ruth and his life in the baseball world. Among other things we can read about how he
got his name, what his personal records were, and how he had his own baseball philosophy. This
makes this book suitable for readers of many ages. For younger readers the main text on its own
will suffice. For older readers looking for more information there is the text on the cards to read.
Mike Wimmer's oil paintings bring us up close to the action on the field so that we can see the
faces of the players, the fans, and all aspects of play, some of which are quite surprising. We feel
as if we are in the game, a part of it body and soul, just as the Babe was.
All in all this is a book that will delight baseball fans of all ages. It truly takes one into the game
and brings one of the greatest heroes of the game to life in glowing color.
I Houdini: The autobiography of a self-educated hamster
Lynne Reid Banks
Dell Yearling
0440419247, $4.99, www.randomhouse.com
The adventures of an escapologist hamster who thinks the world is his to explore.
There is no doubt that Houdini is a most unusual creature, for this is a hamster with an advanced
vocabulary, and a terribly immodest opinion of his own superior brain power. There is no doubt in
Houdini's mind that hamsters are a higher form of life than humans. However, he is generally
speaking a kind hearted creature and he tolerates the bumbling ways of humans well enough.
What is hard for him to tolerate is their tendency to want to lock him up in a cage. If there is
anything Houdini does not like, it is to be locked up. It is in fact his amazing ability to escape his
cage that got him his name. Houdini is an escapologist of the very highest order. Houdini also
tends to reap chaos in his wake which makes him most unpopular with the father of the boys who
own him. Father becomes enraged when Houdini first chews electrical wire, carpeting and a door,
and finally causes a flood in the kitchen. It is all too much. Even Houdini has to admit that Father
has just cause to be a bit upset. Thus it is that Houdini is packed off to stay with a friend for a
while, just until Father has time to cool off. Ben has a hamster called Oggi, a female who
humiliates Houdini dreadfully. Houdini is soon on the loose and he makes the most amazing
discovery; Houdini finds himself in the great Outside. Never in his wildest dreams did Houdini
imagine that the great Outside would be so wonderful. What he comes to learn is that Outside is
also terrible dangerous and unpredictable. Why, Houdini could very easily become someone's
lunch or dinner out there.
In this funny, yet thoughtful, book, Lynne Reid Banks takes us into the mind, and heart, of a very
brilliant, delightful character. At the same time Houdini has his flaws, just like the rest of us. What
is endearing about him is that he is willing to admit that he does. He is willing too to admit that he
makes mistakes. Using rich and complex language the author never talks down to her readers but
expects them to know what she means and understand what her wonderful, often grandiose
hamster, is saying. We cannot help but grow fond of this ambitious rodent who discovers that
there is a power far greater even than his own will to escape from every cage he is put into.
Laura's Album
A Remembrance Scrapbook of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Compiled by William Anderson
HarperCollins
0060278420, $21.95, www.harperchildrens.com
We are all very lucky that one of our greatest writers believed in keeping things. She kept photos,
clippings from newspapers, postcards, calling cards, birthday cards, letters, and all sorts of other
documents. We are also lucky that other people valued these documents enough to keep them and
now some of them have been collected and brought together to produce this book. Arranged in
such a way that one feels as if one is looking at a scrapbook, this collection of keepsakes and its
accompanying text gives the reader a wonderful picture of the life and times of Laura Ingalls
Wilder, writer, farmer, pioneer, traveler, wife, and mother.
The book begins by setting the scene, telling us about Laura's maternal and paternal families. It is
obvious from the stories of these families, where "Pa" Ingalls, "Ma" Ingalls, and Laura herself got
their pioneering spirit and their courage. These were families who moved frequently and bore
hardship stoically. You can see determination etched on the faces in the photographs.
We then move on to Laura's family. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to move so
many times, starting over again and again. In reality the Ingalls' moved even more often than
Laura describes in her famous books; in reality it was even harder for her father to find a place
where he could make a go of it. As we read about these hardships we see photographs of old
friends from Laura's books including Pa's fiddle, and the china box that Laura got for Christmas
when they lived "On the Banks of Plum Creek."
It is interesting to compare Laura's real life story with the one she wrote about in her books.
There is no doubt that things were probably harder in real life than they were in her marvelous
books. The Ingalls family was braver, more courageous than they ever saw themselves as
being.
More interesting still is to read on from where Laura's books ended, to find out what happened to
Laura, Almanzo her husband, and Rose their daughter. Life in the Dakota's became too much for
the little family. Disaster after disaster hit them until it was decided that they needed to find a new
life somewhere else. In the end the three of them traveled in a covered wagon to Missouri, to the
Ozarks and "The Land of the Big Red Apple." It was here, after much hard work, struggle, and
determination, that the Wilders got their farm. It was also here that Laura discovered her skill at
being a writer.
Superbly presented and highly readable, this is a wonderful tribute to one of America's foremost
authors. William Anderson, who has spent many years researching and writing about Laura Ingalls
Wilder, gives us an exceptional picture of Laura, her family, and the world that she lived in.
Packed with photographs of all sorts of memorabilia of Laura's life that are fully annotated, this is
the perfect book for anyone who has an interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder and her life.
Charles A. Lindbergh: A Human Hero
James Cross Giblin
Clarion Books
0395633893, $20.00, www.clarionbooks.com
For many Charles Lindbergh's name conjures up the image of a young man's beaming and grinning
face, a face that is fresh and open and that radiates the joy of a job well done, the flush of success.
After all, he was a young man who had done what many had said was impossible. It was not just
that very first flight across the Atlantic in "The Spirit of St. Louis" that was so remarkable. It was
also the fact that Lindbergh had made the flight alone and in a single engine plane. He had no one
to keep him awake, no one to help him navigate. If his one engine failed he was done for and
furthermore he had made the decision not to carry a parachute. What would be the point of a
parachute if he had to bail out over the freezing Atlantic?
Then there is that other Lindbergh, the man who made several visits to Germany as the guest of
the Nazi government, the man who accepted a German medal for his contributions to aviation.
This Lindbergh admired Nazi Germany and her government, her aviation industry, and the planes
that the industry had developed and was producing at an alarming number. What many people
forget is that Lindbergh took the time and made the effort to inform both the government of
Britain and his own government in the United States of what he saw in Germany. The British
chose to ignore his warnings and did not follow his recommendations. The U. S military, on the
other hand, did listen and took heed of what he had to say. As a result, they were better prepared
for war when they had to face it.
What many people wonder is why Lindbergh became so radically anti-war, pro-German, and
isolationist in his views. The author of this book does a superb job of explaining this side of this
Great American Hero. It is important to look at Lindbergh's story to find the answers.
First of all Lindbergh hated the American press and the way in which they twisted stories to suit
their purposes. He also resented the way in which they pursued him for stories about his personal
life. He was willing to talk about his flying and the part of his life that he considered to be
news-worthy. However his felt that his private life was his own and the ruthless persecution of
himself, his mother, and later his wife and her family infuriated him.
Then, when his is little son was kidnapped and murdered, the press really went to town. In the end
Lindbergh and his family had to leave the United States altogether. Lindbergh simply felt that he
could not live in his homeland any longer. Somehow he began to equate the freedom of the press
with the persecution and suffering that his family had endured. In Germany his family was able to
move about without having to hide and run from the media. For him, the democratic governments
came to represent societies that were no longer working, that were corrupted. He really had no
trouble accepting what Germany was doing in Europe. Somehow he managed in his mind to
ignore the terrible things that the Nazis were doing as they set about implementing their plan for
"The thousand year Reich."
It is hard to understand how Lindbergh was able to do this. Somehow the terrible experiences he
suffered when his son was abducted and the aftermath seemed to affect how he saw Germany and
her activities.
Thus it was that Lindbergh became the spokesman for the American First organization. America
First felt that the United States had no business getting involved in yet another European war.
Lindbergh made many speeches which included one in which he made some racist comments
about the Jews which caused a great deal of trouble. It was only when Pearl Harbor was attacked
on December 7th 1941 that America First ceased its activities and Lindbergh tried to find a role
for himself in a country that was now at war.
James Cross Giblin shows us how much Lindbergh was affected by the hero-worship that was
forced on him. For a shy and quite simple sort of person, it was a lot for him to have to take. The
constant invasion of his privacy was more than he could tolerate and it seemed to do something to
his ability to see things as they were and not as he wanted to see them. Lindbergh had a strong
streak of naivete which prevented him from realizing that things were not always as they
appeared. With obvious fondness and sympathy James Cross Giblin shows his readers Lindbergh's
strengths and his weaknesses. We cannot help feeling glad to have "met" this brave man who
really did try to do his best and who worked very hard all his life.
The Various
Steve Augarde
David Fickling Books
www.davidflicklingbooks.co.uk
0385750293, $16.95,www.randomhouse.com/kids or
Midge's mother is sending her to stay with her brother, Uncle Brian, for the summer. A highly
successful and very busy concert violinist, Midge's mother is off on tour with her orchestra and
simply won't take Midge with her no matter how much her daughter pleas with her. Thus it is that
Midge is packed off to Uncle Brian's ramshackle farm in the country. Midge is prepared to be
bored out of her mind, at least until her cousins George and Katie arrive, but the most
extraordinary adventure of her life soon has her too busy to feel homesick.
While exploring around the farm one day Midge comes upon an injured creature. It is the most
amazing animal being a tiny winged horse which is able to communicate with her in some magical
way. The horse doesn't speak exactly and yet Midge 'hears' his voice in her head. The horse, who
says his name is Peg, lives in an impenetrable wood with a small people that he calls "the
Various." The Various are in fact what we call 'fairies' and yet they are quite different from the
fairy tale little people that we read about in books. These people are "about knee-height" and only
a few of them have wings. Some of them dwell underground and most are scruffy and suspicious.
They are also a determined and often fierce people who are fighting for their survival.
Midge soon learns that the Various are facing a very difficult future. It was because of this that
Peg left the safety of the wood in the first place. The wise and remarkable little horse had gone in
search of a new home or new source of food for the Various. Their own wood is providing them
with less and less food and it will not be able to support them for much longer. Midge soon has
the unenviable job of telling Peg, and the Various, that her uncle Brian is planning to sell off the
wood to developers.
What Midge does not know at first is that the Various and her family are closely tied, the one to
the other. A long time ago another "Gorji," or human, girl from the farm had a relationship with
the Various. How this relationship came about is a mystery but it affected both the girl and the
Various she came to befriend.
The question now is: what can be done to protect and save these little people? Some of them are
very dangerous, whereas others are happy to accept Midge's help.
In this first book of three about the Various the author creates a peculiar and exciting world for
his characters. We never quite know what to expect next. The Various are unpredictable and
elusive and Midge is on uncharted territory. Both Midge and the Various that she meets find
themselves learning new things about one another every day. Gripping, magical, and beautifully
crafted, "The Various" is a book which offers up a new way of looking at the world around
us.
Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei
Peter Sis
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
0374371911, $17.00, www.fsgbooks.com
There was a time when people thought that the sun and planets revolved around the earth, a time
when they thought that they were the center of the universe. Then a man came along who
wondered if perhaps it was the earth that moved around the sun. This was Copernicus, a great
thinker. However Copernicus did not air his theory. The world had to wait until a new "star"
came along to show the great thinkers of his time that the earth was not, in fact, at the center of
the universe.
This "star" was none other than Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa on February 15th, 1564. Galileo was
the kind of young man who wanted to understand and improve on things. With a brilliant mind at
his disposal there was little that Galileo was unable to do; he invented all sorts of useful tools such
as the compound microscope and the first practical thermometer. He also determined that two
falling objects would reach the ground at the same time irrespective of how big or small they
were. This came to be called The Law of Falling Objects.
After building his own telescope, Galileo focused his energies on studying the night skies. It was
then that he came to the conclusion that the Ptolemaic system was in fact incorrect and that the
"contrary hypothesis" was true. He also studied the moon and the planets and he published his
observations in a book called "The Starry Messenger." His book and his genius soon made Galileo
famous all over the world.
Galileo's fame and influence unfortunately attracted the attention of the church which was much
disturbed by his theories as they called the words of the bible into question. It was then that
Galileo faced great hardship, a verdict of guilty by the Inquisition.
With simple text which gets to the heart of this remarkable story, Peter Sis has created an
excellent picture 'biography' of one the world's greatest thinkers. His illustrations are detailed and
quite unique, showing us the world that Galileo lived in and offering much information at the
same time. This is a beautiful and thoughtful tribute to a great man.
A Day That Changed America: The Alamo
Shelly Tanaka
Paintings by David Craig
Hyperion
0786819235, $16.99, www.hyperionchildrensbooks.com
"Remember the Alamo" was a cry which stirred the hearts of many and yet we often fail to
understand what caused the famous confrontation between the "Texians" and the army of the
Mexican general Santa Anna. All too often the Mexicans are demonized whereas the
approximately two hundred Texian rebels who took refuge in the Alamo compound are portrayed
as great heroes. The true story is much more complicated and there is no doubt that the Mexicans
had a legitimate cause for being as angry as they were.
It all began because Texian, (American settlers in Texas and their descendents) wanted to declare
Texas a free and independent state which would no longer be governed by the Mexican
government in Mexico City. The United States was eager to aid the Texians and armed
volunteers flowed across the border eager to help their friends in what everyone knew was going
to be a difficult fight against the Mexican government. To the Mexicans the Americans who had
settled and flourished in Texas were no more than "pirates and lawless foreigners who had fired
on Mexican troops on Mexican soil."
The Texian rebels were at a big disadvantage in this conflict, fighting as they were against a
proper army and those in the town of San Antonio were soon forced to retreat into the fort of the
Alamo. Here they remained, unbeaten and under siege for twelve days. On March 6 general Santa
Anna made his move and what followed was an extraordinary battle. Famous warriors, David
Bowie and David Crockett fought on the side of the rebels.
In addition to telling the story of what occurred in the famous battle, the author also includes a
chapter about how the event was remembered once the dust and smoke had cleared, and what the
Alamo looked like over the years. Beautifully illustrated with vibrantly painted pictures, maps,
diagrams and photos this is a book which honors all of those who were involved in that
extraordinary battle, Americans, Texians, and Mexicans.
Hallelujah Handel
Douglas Cowling
Illustrated by Jason Walker
Scholastic
0439058503, $16.95, www.scholastic.com
Thomas, Harry, and Jack are hungry and non-too clean little boys who live on the streets of
London. It is a time when there was still an enormous inequality between the rich and the poor
and this is especially obvious when we hear how the king is entertained as he boats up and down
the river; following the king's barge is a boat full of musicians under the direction of a famous
composer. The musicians play wonderful music for the usually glum king, putting a smile on his
face. Waiting at the dock, the three boys hope to be able to earn a little money by carrying the
musician's instruments for them. It is in this way that Handel, the composer, meets the little boy
who "can't speak" called Thomas.
Almost at once, we are hooked, wanting to know why the little street boy will not, or cannot,
speak. His life is so dreadful and his master "the Keeper" so cruel that we cannot help hoping that
somehow Thomas, and the other children like him, will find a better way to live.
Soon after this meeting Thomas runs away. His two friends desperately want to find him and
appeal to Handel for help. If they don't find their friend the Keeper will give them "a beating they
will never forget."
With great skill and sensitivity the author tells us a story both moving and thought-provoking. He
shows us the enormous differences between the lives of the rich in their ornate gardens and
expensive homes, versus the lives of the poor who struggle to survive in the slums. Throughout
the book floats the beauty of Handel's music. It is a part of the lives of so many and unlike so
many other things in life, the music is something both the rich and the poor can enjoy. Not only
that but Handel is determined that Jack, Harry, Thomas the "lost, lonely angel," and the many
other children like them shall be saved from the misery of poverty and cruelty.
In the back of the book the author tells us the real story of how Handel helped the poor and
orphaned children of London, and how the Messiah was performed in concerts to raise money for
these children.
The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin
Peter Sis
Picture Book Non-fiction biography
Ages 7 and up
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
0374456283, $18.00, www.fsgbooks.com
From the very beginning Charles Darwin was a non-conformist. His father had very clear ideas of
what he wanted his son to do with his life. There was the local boarding school to attend and then
Edinburgh University. Charles was to be a doctor, or so his father thought. And yet, Charles
refused to play along with his father's wishes. He ran away from boarding school regularly and left
Edinburgh after just two years having no inclination or the stomach to become a doctor. So, the
much annoyed father then decided that a career in the church was to be his wayward son's future.
To this end Dr. Darwin send Charles to Cambridge University. Once again Charles did not
comply. Instead he attended lectures in zoology, geology, botany and other topics that interested
him. Nevertheless Charles manages to do well in his exams and thus pleased his long-suffering
parent.
Despite his apparent success in Cambridge, Charles still had no interest in becoming a clergyman.
Instead he saw himself becoming a naturalist studying the natural world. It was with delight that
Charles accepted the position of naturalist on an expedition to the seas around, and some of the
countries of, South America. Thus it was that he began an extraordinary five year adventure
traveling on the ship H.M.S. Beagle.
What follows is a fascinating description in words and pictures of the trip itself and the events that
took place in Charles' life after he got back to England.
In wonderfully detailed illustrations the author presents Charles's adventures, showing the reader
pages from journals, maps, and illustrations of some of the creatures, places, people Charles saw.
We also get to read Charles's own words in quotes from letters, his diary, and other documents
and therefore we discover all sorts of things about Charles Darwin, the man.
As well as presenting the life and work of Charles Darwin, the author puts his own slant on the
story providing humor and a sensitive understanding of Darwin's inner person. The magic of this
book is that we learn about Charles Darwin's life not just by reading the main text on each page
but also by looking at the heavily annotated illustrations. The illustrations are quite extraordinary,
full of detail and information and gentle humor. The text is also presented in many novel ways
which only adds to the uniqueness of this remarkable book.
Turn! Turn! Turn!: Words from Ecclesiastes Circa 250 B.C.
Translated into English in 1607
Arranged and Adapted with Music in 1961 by Pete Seeger
Illustrated by Wendy Halperin
Simon and Schuster
0689852355, $17.95, www.SimonSaysKids.com
In this extraordinary book we get to read, hear, and see the words from the book of Ecclesiastes
as they are presented in the King James version of the bible. These words were taken by musician
Pete Seeger, in 1961, and turned into a song called "Turn, Turn Turn"a version of which was
recorded by the Byrds in 1965 and which is still popular to this day. It is the words from this song
that we find on the pages of this lovely book.
In the beginning of the book we are given the original words as they appear in the bible. The
words of the song are then taken and presented to the reader, a phrase at a time. The illustrator,
Wendy Halperin, has skillfully taken the phrases and turned them into unforgettable pictures. She
takes us on a journey around the world, and she shows us the good and evil, happy and sad, sides
of life. Each double page spread, rich with color and detail, shows the reader a phrase from the
song, opposites being shown as one half of a complete circle. We see "a time to be born" opposite
"a time to die;" "a time to plant" lies next to "a time to reap;" and "a time to laugh" is shown as
the opposite of "a time to weep."
Throughout the book the illustrations contained in their earth-like circles are full of detail and
encourage the reader to spend time on each page, browsing. On the "time to build up" page we
see all sorts of things that man and creature alike has built; there are the pyramids in Egypt,
children making a snowman, beavers building a lodge, the Great Wall of China, a wasps nest, and
so much more besides. On the opposite page, the other half of the circle contains pictures of
things from "a time to break down." We see the beaver cutting down a tree; the extinct Dodo
bird; the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
On the final wonderful page and to accompany the words "A time to love, a time to hate; a time
for peace, I swear it's not too late" Wendy Halperin opens up the circle and presents a full page of
illustration showing children at play and music being created.
Included with the book is a CD of Pete Seeger singing his adaptation of the Ecclesiastes words in
his song "Turn, Turn, Turn" and the Byrds' popular 1965 version of this song. At the back of the
book the reader will find a letter from Pete Seeger which explains how he came to write his song
and how the reader might use the book. There is also a copy of the sheet music for the musically
inclined to use to play and sing "Turn, Turn, Turn" for themselves.
A Sea So Far
Jean Thesman
Viking
345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
0670892785, $15.99, www.penguinputnam.com
Kate Keely and Jolie Logan are as different as can be. Kate has to make her own way in the
world, an orphan who has only an old, frail, and poor aunt as family. Jolie on the other hand
comes from a wealthy family and has always had a life of comfort and luxury. What Jolie does not
have is good health. A terrible bout with scarlet fever has left her with a weak heart and body. It is
unlikely that two such girls would ever meet under ordinary circumstances but on April 18th 1906
their worlds were rocked to the core and they were set on a course that would end up with them
becoming good and close friends.
Early in the morning on April 18th 1906 San Francisco was shaken by a dreadful earthquake.
Homes collapsed and dreadful fires spread out of control until much of the great city was
destroyed. In this disaster Jolie's mother is killed and Kate and her aunt loose practically
everything they have except what they can carry. Because of these awful events Jolie needs
someone to help care for and entertain her, and Kate badly needs a job to help support herself and
her aunt. With the help of a friend Kate becomes Jolie's "companion," always there to help the
frail young woman who often gasps for breath and who is unlikely to ever be able to live a normal
life.
When Jolie and Kate travel to Ireland together to stay with Jolie's aunt, Kate is delighted to be in
her mother's homeland and thrives in the green country where fields "unfold clear to the sea".
Jolie also seems to be better and is able to get about a little. The girls become very close, their
friendship growing all the time.
The experiences of the two girls change them both significantly, with Kate discovering a great
deal about herself and Jolie learning to cope with the loss of her mother. By telling the stories of
the two girls separately, in alternate chapters, the author brilliantly leads the reader to a point of
convergence, where Kate and Jolie are both forced to look at themselves and their futures
honestly and with courage. A wonderfully descriptive novel, "A Sea So Far" shows us how
tragedy can affect people, and how two people can learn from, and through, each other about the
world and their place in it.
Ashes of Roses
Marya Jane Auch
Dell-Laurel Leaf
www.randomhouse.com/kids
044023851X $5.99
Rose Nolan, her parents, her sister Maureen, and her little brother Joseph are on a ship bound for
New York City. They left their home and their life in Ireland hoping that America would give
them new opportunities and a better life than the one they had at home. It is the turn of the
century and thousands of immigrants are entering America through the harbor in New York. All
the steerage passengers have to go through the immigration building on Ellis Island. Afraid and
bemused, Rose's family is 'processed' like so many others before and after. Unfortunately it is
discovered that little Joseph has trachoma, a disease of the eyes. Anyone who has such an illness
is turned away at Ellis Island and must return to their country of origin.
Thus it is that Rose's family is broken up. Rose, Maureen, and their mother go and stay with
Rose's uncle Patrick in New York City. Though Patrick is glad to see them and to help them, his
wife and her daughters are not. Eventually a dreadful argument breaks out over a job that Rose
has taken on, and Mrs. Nolan decides to return to Ireland. Her daughters however, want to
remain in America to try their luck for a better life. Rose is determined to get a job and soon
enough she has one at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. She comes to form close friendships with
some of the other girls who work in the factory, and is just beginning to learn how to be a
"modern working girl" when a disaster changes her whole world. For many of us just hearing the
name of the factory is enough. We know the story and it fills us with horror. The author of this
book takes that story and makes it more than just a fact in a history book; she brings it to life
putting faces and personalities where there were perhaps just statistics. We get to meet the girls
who worked in the factory, girls who loved to dress very fashionably and wear fancy hats. We
also get to meet those who tried to change the working conditions of the working class. We learn
about the strikes that took place before that dreadful fire occurred. So many workers fought very
hard to change things for the better for factory and sweat-shop workers. Unfortunately it took a
tragedy to open the eyes of those who could make the changes happen. One hundred and forty-six
people died in that fire but at least we can see that it was not in entirely in vain.
The author's meticulous attention to detail and her wonderful descriptive prose takes us deep into
the life of Rose, her family, and her friends. We experience the terror she feels when she rides on
an elevator for the first time, and the sheer wonder that she feels as she watches her first "moving
picture." We cannot help but rejoice when she succeeds in her work and more importantly when
she emerges at the end of the book, a strong and determined young woman, eager to do her part
to make change happen. An author's note at the back of the book provides a fascinating look at
how the author gathered her material and what she learned about her subject.
The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew up to Become Dr. Suess
Kathleen Krull
Paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher
Random House
0375822984, $16.95, www.randomhouse.com/kids
Little Ted Geisel who lived at 74 Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, was a busy little
boy who loved books and animals. He loved to hear stories about how the animals in the local zoo
were doing and treasured the times when his mother would read him books at bedtime. He had
wonderful adventures in the park and riding around on his bike with his friends.
Then war broke out in Europe and his German immigrant family began to have problems. Just
because his grandparents had come from Germany, and because the family still spoke German,
sang German songs, and ate German food, Ted was picked on and bullied. The experience was
one he would never forget and it would influence him a great deal in his adult life.
One of the things that made him happy was drawing. He was often drawing animals and made-up
creatures and even won a prize for his art. There was one problem though, and that was what Ted
drew did not conform to the "rules" of how things should be done. His art was different, and
different was not acceptable to many people. Still, Ted kept on drawing and always had the
tendency to bend the rules to suit him. It was because of this that Ted came to understand that he
couldn't live the dreams that other people had for him. Instead he had to find out how he could
make his way in the world doing what he loved to do; that is writing poetry and drawing odd
pictures.
Thus it was that Ted took the plunge and began to make a name for himself as a cartoonist. A fan
letter from a little boy started him thinking about creating drawings and poems for young people.
Beautifully illustrated and written with enthusiasm and a clear fondness for the wonderful "Dr.
Suess" this is a delightful book. The reader will come to understand what made Ted Geisel
become the author/illustrator called Dr. Suess.
At the back of the book the reader will find a complete biography of Ted Geisel and also a list of
all the books her created.
Marya Jansen-Gruber
Reviewer
Nancy's Bookshelf
Dark Harvest
Paul Melniczek and William P. Simmons
Undaunted Press
www.undauntedpress.com
$7.00 76 pages
Dark Harvest is a brilliant dark fiction collection written by two promising and talented authors.
While they both know how to pull you in and keep your attention, they write with two very
different styles and voices. My only complaint was that I wasn't ready to be done reading!
My favorite time is Halloween and I look forward to all the darkness and creativity that goes with
it. It's a time for watching scary movies and reading stories that give you the chills and remind you
why a nightlight can be your friend.
Among the eight enticing stories are some rare gems that will raise the hairs on the back of your
neck, as they did to me. "Softly the Night Whispers" stands out with vivid descriptions of the
characters and eerie atmosphere. The actions and emotions of the boy were written so real that I
believed I knew him. I must admit, this story gave me the creeps and kept me up at night. Just
because I'm not superstitious doesn't mean those things aren't out there!
Another favorite was "Foul Moon", a story that reminds us how a harmless prank can go too far,
and come back to haunt us to the very end. Filled with flawless dialogue and suspense, this will
continue to disturb me for weeks to come. "The Mystery of Bags" is a quick and powerful punch
of creepy visuals with a surprise ending. It kind of makes me want to be more observant in my
surrounding when I'm out on Halloween night. Not knowing who or what is lurking behind
someone's costume makes stories like "A Smile in the Dark" and "A Face to Meet the Faces that
you Meet" even more frighteningly real.
Rounding out the rest of Dark Harvest is "The Boy Who Gathered", "Eyes", and "Darker
Species" which help complete an amazing book of haunting stories. Even the cover is disturbing
and worthy of a nightmare or two.
All of the stories in this collection are worth a read. Paul Melniczek and William P. Simmons
know how to surprise, scare, and give you a treat with elegance, style, and a lasting impression.
When you are looking for something that will get you in the mood for Halloween and all the fun
that goes with it, then read Dark Harvest and lock your doors. Just make sure to ignore the
sounds from outside or it will be a long night.
Book Marketing for the Financially-challenged Author
A.P. Fuchs
Coscom Entertainment
$14.95 (includes 7 other eBooks as well) 114 Pages
Looking for that extra push to get moving in the right direction with self-promotion? Are you
stuck finding ways to attract more fans and attention for your novel or story collection? With
Book Marketing for the Financially-challenged Author by A.P. Fuchs you will get your name out
there painlessly and inexpensively.
As a writer myself, I find the greatest challenge is promoting my works. It doesn't help that I am
shy and unsocial or that I'm inexperienced and confused with the whole name-fame process. By
accessing the web I have found my voice but am unsure of the direction I need to take to become
heard. What I found from this insightful eBook was a wealth of knowledge and firsthand
experience by an author who has "been there done that".
What I appreciated most about this step-by step-guide was the down-to-earth attitude and smooth
transition between each informative topic. The author's dialogue is friendly, never condescending,
and highly motivational. After just a few tips you will feel ready to take the next step to getting
yourself known without denting your wallet or feeling lost.
From basic instructions on self-promotion, press releases, and blogs, to a number of useful
websites and links available, this is a must-have eBook for any writer on a budget. There are also
plenty of detailed examples and options to help you decide which tactic will work best for you.
Not only does this book help show you how to market yourself as a writer, but it will work in
many other outlets as well. Whether you are an artist, poet, designer, illustrator, publisher or
editor, this is a valuable tool to help you reach your goals. The author inspires you to reach out to
the enormous potential fan base out there on the great techno highway, while making the uneasy
task of self-promotion seem possible.
Forget about instructional videos and exhaustive complex books preaching to you a hundred and
one ways to make it big. This compact, easy-to-follow eBook will teach you all you need to know
by someone using these proven steps in his every day life. Kudos to A.P. Fuchs for giving writers
and readers just what they want. Check out http://bookmarketing.zaam.com to read more about
this must-own treasure.
Invasion of the Togakura: Book One of the Adventure Chronicles
Jeffrey A. Davis
Publish America
www.publishamerica.com
ISBN: 1592865615 $19.95 181 pages
Jeffrey Davis has concocted a brilliant fantasy-adventure story sure to please everyone from
young to old. What could be a complex read with all its history and terminology, is instead
smooth flowing with rich dialogue and contagious action. There is a lot of talent here and a genius
of a story.
Jamie Raliegh is our teenage protagonist, who was chosen at eight-years-old to learn to be a ninja;
taught by Tanemura, the leader of the Funakoshi ninja clan. Because Jamie is "chosen" rather than
naturally born into the clan, ancient enemies, the Togakura, seek him out with the intent to kill.
For over five-hundred years these clans have been at war with one another and it's up to Jamie
and his handful of special friends to find a way to bring it to an end once and for all.
Yoshi, his closest friend is Tanemura's only blood relative, trained to take the lead should
Tanemura meet his death. Her anger at the Togakura is furthered by the fact that they savagely
slaughtered her parents many years before. Together she and Jamie must fight to protect the clan
and salvage her families' good name. Placing faith in their hearts and hands, they battle ninja style
and fight for that of which is right.
Throughout the story we learn more about each of Jamie's friends and the roles they play in both
life and as a ninja. We are introduced to their softer side as well as the united sense that they are
never alone as long as they have God watching over them.
The action sequences were both vivid and well executed. I found myself enjoying this book and
ended up finishing it in one sitting, unable to put it down. Knowing very little about the weaponry
terms and names used by the ninja, I was impressed how detailed the author explained everything,
without it seeming like a lesson or being talked down to. Even if the subject of ninja isn't one of
your favorites, which isn't one of mine, you will be surprised how quickly you are drawn in. The
battle scenes were nothing short of flawless and suspenseful and I appreciated the realism that was
given to these characters.
This exciting adventure is about the freedom of faith, friendship, and believing in one's self and
abilities. I anticipate reading the next book in the adventure chronicles series and hearing more
about a terrific young author, Jeffrey Davis.
Nancy Jackson
Reviewer
Neal's Bookshelf
Neuromancer
William Gibson
Ace Books, under Penguin Putnam
The Berkley Publishing Group
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.
ISBN: 0441007465 $13.95 276 pages
I heard William Gibson was coming to Seattle, so I decided that I'd better read Neuromancer
again. The reason, mainly was that I didn't have much of a memory of reading it the first time save
some computer stuff at the time I didn't understand. I was about 13, as I recall, and it was an
afternoon in the library, of which there were many.
I remember that a lot of the ideas were silly, unknown, foreign. He referred to ROM, RAM, and I
had no knowledge of computers at that point, so I basically pictured ROB, the Robotic Operating
Buddy I think it was called, from the old Nintendo. It muddled up the book.
Now, looking at the book 20 years after its first publication, I find it rather innovative and beyond
its time.
There's Case, the hero, and Molly, the crazy bodyguard/hitwoman he associates with, and
Armitage, a blackmailing ex-soldier with an insanity. There's the Finn, once a man, then a division
of a Wintermute construct, and there's Linda Lee, Case's lost love.
It's a good story. It's very well written, and the language is very tight. So tight, it took a while to
get into. So tight, I can't imagine how I understood it at sixteen at all. I probably skimmed a lot.
But once you get into the world, once you can sit and just go, this book is a classic. I can see why
it won awards.
There are two kinds of books that win awards. Books that make some kind of social statement
popular to the elite literary world at the time, and books that are just really well written and
original. This is one of the latter, thankfully. I hear there are sequels, and I will be getting right on
them.
The story is fast, and yet slow at the same time. It's hard to describe. You're always wondering
why, and everything only makes sense towards the end, which is okay, provided it all makes sense
in the end. See Fight Club.
You can also see, reading this, what an influence this book has had on pop culture. There's a
Matrix, a Zion, a construct, a fascination with jacking in, and kung-fu cyber punk. My bet is the
Matrix brothers read this book a couple of times. The term cyberspace also originated here, so I
read, and the internet is a big part of this book. Considering it was written around 1982, that too
speaks to Gibson's forward thinking.
At the reading, he noted that he didn't have any real reason for a fascination with the
technological, and this doesn't surprise me. An untrained eye might think of his book as being
overly technical, but he really doesn't bore the reader with the technical, perhaps out of a lack of
interest, but my guess is that the man doesn't know technical in an overly professional way, but he
DOES know writing professionally. His work is exceptional. In my process of writing
professionally, I have my rules, I have my creative skills, but Gibson's simple FLOW makes me
envious. It doesn't surprise me. He takes his time, he does it right. I saw him on an interview
talking about his style, and he is methodical, committed, admirable.
I am pleased with his work.
Case is a kind of reluctant hero. He's on the drugs, he's obsessed with getting cyberspace, which
he's lost, and most importantly, he needs to reconcile a drive for power with the need for a nice
quiet home and a smoke. He's well written.
Molly is a driven, sexual professional killer to balance Case's apathy and lack of drive. She is oft
injured and a bit of a damsel in distress to the end, but through the book she seems the only
character with a real grasp on things.
Armitage, the secret benefactor to the return of case's cyberspace privileges, plays the Dr. Claw
insatiable villain ally, eventually going nuts quite spectacularly.
And Riviera...well, he's one hell of a creation in and of himself. A kind of PCP that's forced on
you. Very interesting.
All of these elements, combined with Wintermute, an AI construct, and hidden orders from
Cryogenically frozen families make for an interesting novel of the near future, and a top-notch
piece of writing to look at.
I highly recommend this book. 9 of 10.
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill
Ron Suskind, with help from Paul O'Neill.
Simon and Schuster.
Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0553803328 $26.00 348 pages
I was watching 60 Minutes a few months ago, and my regular news programs, when I heard about
a book involving Paul O'Neill's dismissal from the Department of the Treasury, or his forced
resignation, if you want to be passive aggressive.
I'm a real news hawk when it comes to the Bush Administration. I'm not a Republican or a
Democrat, particularly, but I got embroiled in the whole election controversy, the response to
September 11th, and the war in Iraq. Paul O'Neill was a small part of that story, to me.
The reason I picked up this book is that America, at least from my perspective, seems increasingly
partisan. Everything I read, be it a left or a right pundit, has a slant. This book seemed unique in
spirit to me, because it was from a man who was a part of the Bush administration, and a man
who supports a lot of Republican leanings while being a Democratic ally on other occasions. I
figured a pseudo Republican criticizing his own administration would be a good read, much the
same as if it were reversed in the Democratic place.
And hey, I learned basically anything that I would have learned from a Democratic pundit book,
except minus the teeth.
I wrote a review of the Al Franken book, which I enjoyed, a few months ago, and I realized that
the book had some rhetoric, to be sure, but also had some truths. But with a trained eye, one
that's watched both sides of the news like I have (meaning not just Fox for right wing and CNN
for left wing, over blown stereotypes, but rather scanning the news constantly from all sources,
including the depths of the internet), you can look beyond the sarcasm and glean the truths, while
enjoying the humor.
This book reminded me of the Jesse Venture bio, I Ain't Got Time to Bleed (Yeah, I read it.). It
was very self-congratulatory to Paul O'Neill, in efforts to make the reader sympathize with its
dismissal. The problem here is that it was very short, it involved much policy as opposed to
human aspects of the players involved, and it tried too hard. I haven't read Suskind's Pulitzer
pieces, but frankly, this seemed like a ghost written book for a celebrity. Does it raise some
important points of political awareness about the Bush drive for war? To be sure. Does it point
out that they pushed through the tax cuts for the rich? Well, yes. To this, I respond:
Duh, moron. I mean, who couldn't see that?
But what it DOES show is that this wasn't just an assumption, but is now verifiable with
witnesses, and that is an important point, along with the drive to war, which is now coming under
increased scrutiny.
I read non-fiction dramatic novels from time to time. I like Cameron Crowe, and I liked Truman
Capote when I fell all over In Cold Blood. But one thing they don't do well is get you in the heads
of the people, because they can't. I find an auto-biography far more compelling than a biography
for just this reason, and it shows in this book.
It was good reading for the bathroom, and the book is a buzz book, but really, when it was over, I
wanted my money back. The writing is not poor, the ideas are not particularly dismissible, but
really, it's stuff any well rounded news watcher already knows in their heart, and it also fails to put
any kind of conclusion to it, other than Paul O'Neill was a great guy and shouldn't have been fired,
but firings such as this happen in Washington all the time.
But it DOES expose the critical lack of cohesion in the Bush White House, and it DOES go
behind the scenes of a number of political motivations I've been interested in for a while.
It also details the situation in Africa, and a problem that I've been rather passionate about for
years...the fact that a large part of the world doesn't even have water, never mind democracy. If
we applied money to providing potable water to everyone in the world, perhaps they might not
starve and fight and get angry with we who sip the high fructose corn syrup then throw away the
bottle to rot for 1000 years.
There isn't much to say about the style of the book. It goes from A to B. The writing is not
especially tight, but then Non-fiction doesn't have to be. It's supposed to be flat, like a newspaper.
That's why I prefer fiction, myself.
I give the book much credit for being by Republicans about Republicans, to a degree (Suskind
worked with the Wall Street Journal, which you could call non-partisan towards Republicans, but
I'd laugh at you), and manages to be critical, which takes a lot of gumption. I like that. I respect
that. Not enough to give false credit to a book, however.
I'd go about 6 of 10. Nothing amazing, but if you have an afternoon and are bored, you might like
it. Not worth 26 bucks, even 30% off. Get it used.
The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain
Charles Bukowski
John Martin, posthumous editor
HarperCollins under the Ecco imprint
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
ISBN: 0060577010 $27.50 297 pages
Whenever John Martin gets busy, I get angry.
Charles Bukowski, before he died, left about eight hundred billion poems to be published after his
death. I like the idea. In fact, I plan to steal it, except I'm going to advance on the idea. Before I
die, I'll prepare a bunch of books, have them printed up (a few thousand copies anyway), and then
after I die, when I finally become popular as a poet, I will have my publisher auction of
posthumously signed copies of books by Neal Bailey. It'll be a heck of a racket.
The point being, I get angry with John Martin because he edits and releases a Bukwoski every
year or two, and I have to immediately shell out 27.50, no matter how lost I am financially, and
this book forced me into just that...
As it is, you might have known from reading an earlier review that I am a Charles Bukowski fan.
This is, as they say, a cheap review, in that there is very little chance I will take pot shots at
someone I like, but unlike other reviewers, I want to be up front and honest about it. That said, I
will recommend that my bias was not founded in darkness. The man truly is one of the better
poets the United States has produced, if not the best, and the sad thing is he's rather hidden. You
won't find him in any anythologies taught at major institutions, and his work is looked on with
disdain by the upnosed middle class bougeiose literary elite.
But what makes Bukowski for me is he writes poems about being human. And there are things
about being human a lot of people don't enjoy, like the fact that sometimes men drink and hit
women. Sometimes you have to do disgusting things when you live in flophouses and are driven
to drink. That sometimes when you grow up with a hard life, you're more inclined to be a
self-deprecating woman chaser. Or, the subject of this book, when you, after such a hard life,
come into some money, perhaps you sit back a bit and enjoy it, climb up in a tree and ruminate, as
Billy Chips might have put it.
I've read about all of Bukowski's poetry that's available for print. For me, his best works are Play
the Piano Drunk and Love is a Dog from Hell. On the scale of his other poetry books, I would
place this one in the mid to high level of quality. Not for the subject matter. Lord knows if you
read for the subject matter, other books are more exciting, but Bukowksi here shows a level of
maturity not present in other works, and a stark, rather positive while apathetic confrontation of
death, an issue many are afraid to cover.
His poems, described as throw away by some, are ideal for me. In large part, I hate poetry,
despite having written 1300 poems myself. Basically, I see the poetry world as one large
allegorical, metaphorical wasteland of who you know rather than a kind of patois celebration of
the malleability of the human language through worded experience. Bukowski, in some part, at
least seems to agree with me. It's very corporeal for him, very straight. This book is even simpler
than his previous works. He dispenses with almost all conventional form, but shows that the form
underlies the poem without careful planning, without a degree's sensibility. Heck, he shows you
can take almost anything, and if you take your time and plan well, or at least ruminate well, you
can make it epic. And the man does.
I cannot possibly expound upon each of the works, so I will simply offer, as the copyright page
indicated, a small quotation, the poem that I thought best exemplified the quality of the work. So
much so, in fact, that they put it on the jacket, not without reason:
throwing away the alarm clock
my father always said, "early to bed and
early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy
and wise."
it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house
and we were up at dawn to the smell of
coffee, frying bacon and scrambled
eggs.
my father followed this general routine
for a lifetime and died young, broke
and, I think, not too
wise
taking note, I rejected his advice and
became, for me, late to bed and late
to rise
now, I'm not saying I've conquered
the world, but I've avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful people
one of whom
was
myself-someone my father
never
knew
I will not lie and say the material covered in this book is something that Charles Bukowski has
never covered, but given how well he covers his life, I highly recommend this book. 9 of 10.
Neal Bailey
Reviewer
Rick's Bookshelf
Blankets: An Illustrated Novel by Craig Thompson
Georgia Marietta
Top Shelf Productions
www.topshelfcomix.com
ISBN # 1981830430 $29.95 592 pgs
Now then, I know some of you see the word illustrated above and think, Great, another comic
book review. You feel graphic novels are nothing more than a fancy name for comic books, and
they are not 'real' novels because they have pictures. However, to continue to feel this way will
deny you a chance to read what is truly one of the best novels I have read in a very long time.
Blankets by Craig Thompson is a story of teen angst-one of being in a family, yet in many ways
still being alone. It is a search for yourself as you grow into adulthood with all the pain and
anguish you experience along the way. A search for God, desperate in the desire for fellowship
with Him, and yet wondering how you fit into the grand scheme-or do you fit at all? It is filled
with the contrasting of the beauty of life and the spark of creativity amidst the bleak backdrop of a
harsh winter and the ridicule of your peers. However, it is also about the ecstasy of first love, and
with it, the simultaneous emotions of joy and confusion which I am sure we all felt-I know I
did.
The insightful narration that fills this book is of itself overpowering, but when matched with the
beautiful black and white illustrations serve to add a depth to not only the storyline but also
insight into the soul of Mr. Thompson to such a degree that I don't think either would have
worked as well separately. Before long, you forget you are reading a book, but are instead
watching a life unfold before your eyes with a richness of situations and characters seldom seen in
any novel-illustrated or not. This book made me think, it made me remember my own days of
adolescence, but most importantly, it made me feel for what was happening to the characters. Five
hundred and ninety-two pages and I was not ready for it to end.
Lest you think this is just some hyperbole, illustrious authors such as Neil Gaiman and Jules
Feiffer have sung the praises of this work. Institutions such as Time Magazine, Booklist,
Publisher's Weekly and The Library Journal have all singled out the outstanding reading
experience found in Blankets, with The Library Journal calling it one of the Best Books of 2003.
Not graphic novels, not illustrated stories-BOOKS. From my understanding, that is the first time
it has ever happened.
If you have never read a graphic novel, this is the one to start with. If you know someone who
thinks that these are just comic books for kids-hand them Blankets, and once they read it, I can
guarantee they will never look at illustrated stories the same way again. I'm not saying they will
go out and buy the latest issue of X-Men, and that's OK-totally different type of read, and why
they make chocolate and vanilla.
Read Blankets by Craig Thompson and let it wrap itself around you with the warmth of a master
of the craft at the peak of his talent. Don't let this one get past you.
Neal Adams Monsters
Neal Adams
Vanguard Productions
390 Campus Drive Somerset, NJ 08873
www.creativemix.com/vanguard
Trade Paperback Edition ISBN # 1887591559 $12.95 68 pgs.
Hardcover Edition ISBN # 1887591567 $24.95 72 pgs.
Deluxe Slipcase Hardcover Signed Edition ISBN # 1887591575 $39.95 88 pgs.
Adams is back and Vanguard has him -- and talk about your perfect fit. For those of you who
might not appreciate the true meaning of that sentence, allow me to explain.
Neal Adams is one of the premier illustrators of our time, and that is no hype. From his work on
the syndicated Ben Casey newspaper comic strip, through his icon redefining run on Batman
which returned him to his Dark Knight status after the campiness of the 1960s television series.
His award winning run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow to the 1970s that brought social relevancy
to the pages of comics with such an impact that the effects are not only still talked about, but are
also still felt in the industry to this day. His art defined realism in the medium for a generation of
readers through not only his penciling and inking, but also for his skillful and groundbreaking use
of colors and dynamic page layout. After working for years with the major publishers, Adams
started his own company, Continuity Studios, and still leads the way in stretching the field to new
heights.
It was through Continuity Studios and an anthology released in Europe entitled Echo of Future
Past that a series of stories featuring the classic monsters we have all grown up with first
appeared. The Frankenstein Monster, Count Dracula, and the Werewolf, interpreted through
Adams masterful vision set a new standard in comic art. Yet, sadly, these have never been
collected in an English language volume until now, forcing collectors to scour back issue bins and
pay extravagant prices to see these masterworks.
Enter Vanguard Productions. Vanguard has become recognized as one of the leaders of not only
the preservation of comic history, but of also the revitalization of classic work to new and broader
audiences. I have the honor of having several of their publications in my collection, and the quality
they contain on each page stands on a par with the art books released by the major houses.
Working in conjunction Vanguard and Neal Adams have designed a collection that is, to put it
simply, breathtaking.
First, Neal Adams Monsters is oversized, 8.5 X 11 inches and printed in what has become known
as prestige format, allowing the richness and beauty of the art to shine through in ways never
before seen. Next, not only has the art been remastered, but also enhanced with digital coloring
and effects not available upon its first publication in magazine format. I own a few of the original
issues in my collection, and in a side by side comparison, the new pages are so far superior to
what was available before that I could but sit in awe as my eyes darted between the two. If that
was not enough, there is also a special section of rare paintings, sketches and drawings of
different monsters, which Adams had done through different stages of his career. In the deluxe
slipcase edition, which I was lucky enough to review, not only is it signed by Neal himself, but
also includes a 16-page bonus art portfolio of rare and unpublished work -- a true treat for any fan
well worth the extra investment.
If you love monsters, and who doesn't, then Neal Adams Monsters is the book for you. If you are
a fan of graphic storytelling told by one of the best ever, then get Neal Adams Monsters. If you
want to see what the marriage of artist and the highest level of quality production can produce,
look no further than Neal Adams Monsters.
Vanguard Productions is certainly on a roll, and I for one cannot wait to see what they have
coming up next.
Truth, Justice, and the American Way:
The Life and Times of Noel Neill - The Original Lois Lane
An Authorized Biography by Larry Thomas Ward
Nicholas Lawrence Books
932 Clover Avenue Canon City, CO 81212
ISBN # 0972946608 $24.95 158 pgs
I've been thinking. What is it that the celebrities today are lacking? Sure, they have looks, gobs of
cash, fancy cars and luxurious homes-some can even act. However, is that enough to sustain a
career, to still be someone that fans will care about in the years, if not decades to come? That's
when it hit me, what the missing ingredient is that so many lack-class. And when it comes to that
magic word, no one personifies it better to this day than Noel Neill, and nothing shows it better
than in this beautiful biography by Larry Thomas Ward entitled Truth Justice and the American
Way: The life and Times of Noel Neill-the Original Lois Lane.
As the title says, Ms. Neill is best known for her role in the 1950's television series The
Adventures of Superman, where she played Lois to George Reeves' Clark Kent/Superman.
Patterned at the time after the Lois of the comics, she was the spunky reporter always looking for
the scoop, especially when it came to beating Clark to the story, and usually with the help of
Jimmy Olsen, played by Jack Larson. With ingenious plots, memorable scenes, and special effects
that still hold up today, The Adventures of Superman has never been off the air, the fan base
growing with each new generation. However, if you think that is all she has done, if that was her
career defining moment, boy, are you in for a surprise. Let me just list a few of her
achievements:
How about a time as a big band vocalist? Not enough? Then what about being one of the first
surfers in California? Notice I didn't say women surfers, I said surfers period. Is there more? You
bet. I can follow that with her appearances in over 80 movies, and maybe you might have heard of
a few of them-The Road to Utopia with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope or maybe An American in
Paris with Gene Kelly. How about The Greatest Show on Earth, or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?
And of course the Superman movies. The serials with Kirk Alyn in the 1940's; the movie which
begat the series with George Reeves in the 1950's, and as Lois Lane's mother riding in a train as a
young Clark Kent ran along side in the 1978 blockbuster staring Christopher Reeve. Three
different Supermen, two different eras, one Noel Neill.
You want more? OK then, in the 1970's a young popular TV star needed someone to coordinate
all of the fan mail he was receiving. Ms. Neill began the position as fan coordinator for Tom
Selleck-you know, the star of Magnum P.I.
And today, as most would settle into retirement, instead Ms. Neill has become quite the world
traveler, having visited Tibet, the Pyramids, and even the Great Wall of China among other places.
However, it is doing personal appearances on talk shows and on the convention circuit where you
are most likely to find her. Smiling as only she can, still looking every bit the Lois Lane that we
have grown up with. I'm sure she must get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly and
having to smile for the umpteenth photo that day, her hand getting tired from all the signing and
shaking with fans wanting to spend just a moment with her. But you would never know it to look
at her, and that, my friend, is class.
I have never had the honor of meeting her, although I did get to see her once at a convention from
a distance. I wanted to go up to her, but the line was just too long and they had stopped anymore
from joining. So, if you don't mind me taking a bit of line space for a personal note, what I would
like to say is something that I am sure she has heard many times from many much more eloquent.
Thank you Ms. Neill for the countless hours of fun, excitement, and adventure. Thank you for all
the smiles you have brought me as I have grown. Moreover, thank you for this book that allows
all of us a chance to get to know you much more than just Miss Lane.
This is a beautiful work about a beautiful woman, of which all involved should be very proud.
They have also filled this book to the brim with 158 stunning black and white photos, many rare
and previously unpublished from her own personal collection. The quality of the reproduction and
the sheer abundance is magnificent.
I started out saying that celebrities of today have something missing. Maybe they should all read
this book and use it as a primer on how to have a career that lasts. I said it before and I'll say one
last time-she has had a life filled with being an actor, singer, spokeswoman, and many things
more, but above all, Noel Neill has class.
Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel
Scott Beatty
DK Publishing Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 USA
www.DK.com
ISBN # 0789488531 $19.95 128 pgs
Superman-rocketed from the doomed planet Krypton to Earth where he gained powers and
abilities far beyond those of mortal men. The first, and arguably the best of all super-heroes,
Superman has a rich and colorful history, a rogues gallery that few heroes can boast anything even
remotely equal to, and a supporting cast which I would dare to say are as well known as the main
character himself. So much about Kal-El of Krypton has become such an integral part of pop
culture that VH1 and People Magazine, in their recent ranking of the top 200 pop icons of all time
ranked him second only to Oprah; higher than Michael Jackson, Mickey Mouse, and even Elvis,
he is that fully entrenched in our collective psyche.
Although he has appeared in movies, novels, and countless TV shows from the 1950's Adventures
of Superman to the current Smallville, it is in the medium of comics in which he is best known.
His popularity is still firmly imbedded, appearing in three monthly solo titles, another where he
teams up with Batman, and still another where he teams with the other great heroes of DC
Comics in the Justice League; not to mention ongoing series, specials, mini-series and maxi-series,
and one shots, with no sign of slowing down.
It is from this robust tapestry of comic lore that author Scott Beatty, with the full cooperation of
DC Comics has designed Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel. Whither you are a
long time fan of the Last Son of Krypton, or a recent admirer to his four-color adventures, this
book is a wonder to behold. Following the current continuity in the comics, this volume is filled to
the brim with full color art from the pages of the comics, illustrated by some of the best the
industry has to offer.
Everyone you can think of from Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Supergirl, Superboy, and
Lana Lang through to Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro, and even Mr. Mxyzptlk (which by the way
is pronounced Mix-yez-pittle-ick), are all featured with histories, famous scenes, and facts about
the characters and how they interact with Superman. Even Doomsday, the monster that killed the
Man of Steel is here. There are schematics of the Daily Planet Building, The Fortress of Solitude,
and the town of Smallville. Even the newer friends such as Steel and newer adversaries like
Mogul and Imperiex from the recent Worlds at War storyline are included; and for longtime fans,
there is a timeline at the back which covers all the milestones in his adventures since his first
appearance in 1939.
This is just one of many volumes covering many different characters which DK Publishing has put
out, and if this one is indicative of the quality of the others, then these are a comic fan's dream
come true. Some might quibble that some obscure character or event is omitted, let them. I have
to tell you, as a major Superman fan and collector since I could read (and that is a long time ago,
believe me) you could not ask for a better Guide to the Man of Steel than one called the Ultimate
Guide-the title fits it well.
If you or someone you know is a follower of the adventures of the man who wears the big red 'S",
get Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel by Scott Bailey. Until then, remember to
always, "Look! Up in the Sky "
Rick Mohr
Reviewer
Sherry's Bookshelf
Stilled
Kirsten Schmidt
Iceni Books
610 East Delano Street, Suite 104, Tucson, Arizona 85705
www.icenibooks.com
ISBN 1587362732 $11.95 80 pages
Stilled is a study in the frailties of uncensored human nature. The book is a collection of three
sophisticated brilliantly written stories, each a teasing exploration into self-esteem, illusions,
dreams and the law of opposites.
In the first story, Stilled, the main character, Rose, is a ballerina with the moves of a first rate
talent. But all is not what it seems to be as Rose looks for a solution to her personal emptiness.
When Rose states "I'm absolutely sickened at my being forced to confront what defines me"
allows the reader a marvelous view into what makes the character tick. The second story, Mary, is
a view of two friends and the fickle imagination of gossipy pleasures. "Sarah looked at Mathilde
as though she were seeing her through a crystal glass that refracted her friend in a sort of fantastic
display" beckons us to wonder if we ever really know anyone. In the third story, Unnoticed
Wonder, the author writes "the world is a sword that destroys in its search for an elusive
happiness, one that never yields to pursuit" challenges the reader's thinking.
Stilled is sharply written, psychologically spiked and collectively captivating. A splendid debut
book by Ms. Schmidt.
Celebrate Simply
Nancy Twigg
Counting the Cost Publications
8715 Brucewood Lane, Knoxville, TN 37923
books@countingthecost.com
www.celebratesimply.com
ISBN 0972839607 $12.95 208 pages
When preparing for holidays and special events, anxiety usually turns up on the crest of every
wave. Holidays become stress filled grab bags distinctive with the scent of dispair only to be met
with screaming sobs of relief and let down when it's all over. Ms. Twigg in her book, Celebrate
Simply, brings into sharp focus the effect of the whirlwind tangled reality of what our holidays
have become.
Celebrate Simply uniquely spells out techniques and planning for exchanging those stressed filled
days into a more calm, financially controllable and meaningful remembrance. Ms. Twigg spurs
you to seriously consider beyond the one special day, which she then leads you down a path of
endless possibilities.
Many traditions, handed down from generation to generation, are saddled with high expectations.
Ms. Twigg energetically explains how making some adjustments will reduce the stress in juggling
the rigors of the event. The author points out methods to lift the constraints of the past and forge
it into an elegant extension for new traditions.
The book covers all aspects of gift giving, simplifying holidays, ideas for celebrating birthdays and
anniversaries, plus she offers numerous resources. Ms. Twigg even tackles weddings with precise
easy to follow advice. She offers ways to deal with the endless asking for donations at holiday
times, how to keep your eye on your goals, and introduces you to the "million dollar gift" idea.
Ms. Twigg does a remarkable job of weaving in the emotional, physical, spiritual and economical
impact of special events and holidays. She shares her imaginative "time and talent gifts". One
special gift is to make an "I love you because ." jar. A very simplistic gift with a heart filled
message to be cherished and remembered.
Celebrate Simply offers a mental meeting point where disorder becomes order accompanied by
calm and comfort. This is a jubilant and spiritual glimpse into what our holidays can be if we use
the well thought out and planned strategies offered by Ms. Twigg in Celebrate Simply. She is truly
a holiday survivalist architect. Ms. Twigg doesn't leave any stone unturned when looking for ways
to ease stress and cut expenses. Well done.
Sherry Russell
Reviewer
Taylor's Bookshelf
The Essence Of Christianity
Bruno Forte
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
255 Jefferson Avenue, S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49503
0802826571 $22.00 1-800-253-7521
The Essence Of Christianity by Bruno Forte (Professor of Systemic Theology at the Pontifical
Theological Faculty of Naples, Italy), is a thoughtful theological analysis on the universal positive
message of Christianity and its direct relevance to men and women in the modern era. Decrying
postmodern philosophies that seek to strip away traditional values and beliefs, The Essence Of
Christianity is a profound and discerning call to the enduring testimony and value of faith.
Accessible for both an academic as well as a non-specialist general readership, The Essence Of
Christianity is strongly recommended reading.
The Gospel Of Thomas Annotated & Explained
Stevan Davies, translations and annotations
Skylight Paths Publishing
Sunset Farms Offices, Route 4, PO Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091
1893361454 $16.95 1-800-962-4544 www.skylightpaths.com
In 1945, twelve ancient texts were found in a sealed jar at the base of an Egyptian cliff. One of
these, The Gospel of Thomas, is presented an expert translation accompanied with extensive
interpretation in this impressive edition of The Gospel Of Thomas Annotated & Explained by
Stevan Davies (a learned professor who has intensively studied the Gospel of Thomas for over
twenty years). This is a seminal work that challenges a great many religious preconceptions within
Christian literature and Biblical Studies. The Gospel Of Thomas offers a unique and sometimes
contradictory perspective on the Kingdom of God (claiming that it is here and now rather than a
future promise or threat), and sheds new light on the perception of Jesus Christ. The Gospel Of
Thomas Annotated & Explained is very highly recommended reading for anyone seeking to better
understand the these long-hidden aphoristic words attributed as the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Paul In The Greco-Roman World: A Handbook
J. Paul Sampley, editor
Trinity Press International
PO Box 1321, Harrisburg, PA 17105
1563382660 $62.00 www.morehousegroup.com
Compiled and edited by J. Paul Samley (Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian
Origins, Boston University), Paul In The Greco-Roman World: A Handbook is an impressively
erudite, scholarly, 704-page anthology of in-depth studies by learned academicians examining the
apostle Paul within the context of the Greco-Roman world in which he lived. Examining social
conventions of Paul's world, as well as literary and rhetorical topics, insight on how Paul's cultural
background affected his famous letters, relevant social practices and cultural mores, and so much
more, Paul In The Greco-Roman World is a well-rounded compilation which is very highly
recommended for Christian Religious History studies reading lists and reference collections.
New Testament History
Ben Witherington III
Baker Book House
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
0801027691 $24.99 bakerbooks.com
New Testament History: A Narrative Account by Ben Witherington III (Professor of New
Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary) begins with the life of Jesus, and follows the evolving
and expanding movement of Christianity through the centuries afterward. Extensive research not
only with regard to Biblical sources, but also such fields as Jewish and Roman history, lace the
text of this methodically and insightfully presented discourse. New Testament History is a very
highly recommended contribution to New Testament and Christian History Studies for students,
academics, and non-specialist general readers alike.
Biblical Evolution
Daniel Williamson
American Book Publishing
PO Box 65624, Salt Lake City, UT 84165
1589820894 $16.95 www.american-book.com
In Biblical Evolution: Evolution By God, author Daniel Williamson brings together two seemingly
disparate theories of how the world and humankind began. Examining the words of Genesis, and
asking the reader to question standard interpretations, Biblical Evolution reveals how scientific
evidence can be reconciled with the Bible. Biblical Evolution is recommended to a Christian
readership as being an harmonious and thought-provoking religious treatise.
Voices From Ancient Bethlehem
The Scribe
Jodere Group, Inc.
PO Box 910147, San Diego, CA 92191-0147
1588720942 $20.00 1-800-569-1002 www.jodere.com www.ADialoguewithJesus.com
Voices From Ancient Bethlehem: A Dialogue With Jesus And The Twelve Apostles is a deeply
spiritual rendition of views, attitudes, and sayings of Jesus and the Twelve Apostles (including
Mary Magdalene), reconstructing their perspectives on serious modern day issues inferred directly
from what is known and understood about them from the Biblical record. Written in
straightforward terms, presenting Jesus' teachings in plain text concerning current topics, Voices
From Ancient Bethlehem is a thoughtful and thought-provoking interpretation which will interest
and intrigue students of the New Testament and those interested in contemporary social issues
within a Christian frame of reference.
The Unveiling Of The Trinity
Tom Bosse
Tuvott Publishing
PO Box 18276, Earlanger, KY 41018
097239740X $12.95 www.tuvott.com
Engagingly written by Tom Bosse (a Christian lay minster, nursing home ministry director, and a
student of the bible for over 25 years), The Unveiling Of The Trinity: A Biblical Account Of The
Mystery Revealed is an analytical survey of the Trinity from the creation of man down to the
Savior's time on earth and His ascension. Written in easy-to-understand format and intended for
non-specialist general readers of all denominational backgrounds, The Unveiling Of The Trinity is
an excellent religious study guide that explores profound spiritual questions such as "Is Mary the
mother of God?"; "Is Jesus the only way to heaven?"; "What are the soul and spirit of man?"; and
so much more.
Can We Trust The New Testament?
G. A. Wells
Open Court Publishing Company
332 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 1100, Chicago, IL 60604
0812695674 $24.95 www.opencourtbooks.com
Knowledgeably written by G. A. Wells (Emeritus Professor of German, University of London),
Can We Trust The New Testament? Thoughts On The Reliability Of Early Christian Testimony is
a meticulous exploration of whether the testimony that traces back to the origin of Christianity is
truly reliable. Examining the sharply antagonistic sects that divided early Christianity from its very
beginnings, and using the power of logic to evenhandedly evaluate the New Testament, Can We
Trust The New Testament? is a skeptical, scholarly, and recommended for Biblical Studies
collections and reading lists for it's practicality and for the intellectual necessity of pointing out
what few other references to Biblical times do with respect to the reliability of these basic
formative texts that have shaped the Christian movement from the first century A.D. down to the
present day.
The Prayer Of Revenge
Doug Schmidt
Cook Communications Ministries
4050 Lee Vance View, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918
0781439426 $10.99 www.amazon.com
The Prayer Of Revenge: Forgiveness In The Face Of Injustice by Doug Schmidt grapples with the
difficult question of how anyone can truly forgive criminal offenders who exhibit no remorse for
the hurt and harm they have done. Deftly examining the need to balance the demands of justice
with the nonviolent teachings of Jesus Christ, as well as the conundrum of a benevolent God's role
in a world wracked by the depravity of Man, The Prayer Of Revenge is a motivational and
thought-provoking exploration of how Christian forgiveness and the demands of God's justice can
exist in harmony.
Youth Ministry And Parents
Leif Kehrwald
Saint Mary's Press
702 Terrace Heights, Winona, MN 55987-1318
0884897893 $14.95 www.smp.org
Ably written by Leif Kehrwald (a youth and family minister of more than twenty years'
experience), Youth Ministry And Parents: Secrets For A Successful Partnership is a highly
practical guidebook dealing with perplexing questions such as "How can I connect with the
parents of teens?"; "How do I get more parents involved in our youth ministry program?"; "How
do I assist parents in their role as the primary faith influence in the lives of teens?", and more.
Straight talk about passing down God's word and working with families in order to better
communicate one's message to the children distinguishes this memorable and enthusiastically
recommended title for Christian parents and youth leaders.
One Day He Beckoned
Antoinette Bosco
Ave Maria Press
PO Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556
0877939993 $12.95 1-800-282-1865 www.avemariapress.com
One Day He Beckoned is the moving testimonial of one woman's personal experience with Jesus'
holy and healing influence. Presenting a legacy that blends real-life considerations with practical
understanding of how the world works and an enduring spiritual connection, One Day He
Beckoned is Christian inspiration at its highest. Antoinette Bosco is to be commended for her
candor and her willingness to lay open the tragedies of her personal life for the benefit of the
larger Christian community.
Aching Heart-Burning Soul
Virginia A. Ward
1st Books Library
2595 West Vernal Pike, Bloomington, IN 47404-2782
www.1stbooks.com www.virginiaward.com
1410712796 $17.50 1-888-280-7715
Aching Heart-Burning Soul: Surviving Catholicism is the straightforward and intimate memoir of
Virginia A. Ward. Readers are provided with an autobiographically based exploration of the
Catholic church in America today, from the strong memories of growing up amidst dogma, to
repercussions of how human views on infallibility affect the Church itself to this very day. An
amazingly thoughtful, detailed, and intriguing discussion, Aching Heart-Burning Soul is highly
recommended reading -- especially for anyone concerned with the contemporary social issues and
public scandals involving the Catholic church.
Turmoil & Truth
Philip Trower
Ignatius Press
PO Box 1339, Fort Collins, CO 80522
0898709806 $14.95 1-800-651-1531
Turmoil & Truth: The Historical Roots Of The Modern Crisis In The Catholic Church is a
meticulous analysis by Philip Trower of the diverse woes besetting Catholic Church today and the
roots of this modern church turmoil. Delving for answers into the previous centuries, and
introducing the reader to critical historical events which caused ripples far outside their era,
Turmoil & Truth is a scholarly and thoroughly researched presentation seeking to understand the
origin of corrosive divisiveness found within the Roman Catholic Church today in America,
Europe, and Australia.
Easy Homeschooling Companion
Lorraine Curry
God's Gardener
PO Box 95, Boelus, NE 68820
www.godsgardener.com
0970996519 $18.95 info@easyhomeschooling.net
Drawing upon her more than ten years' experience as a dedicated Christian homeschooler, Easy
Homeschooling Companion: Exhortation, Encouragement & More Easy Ideas by Lorraine Curry
is a straightforward compendium of tips, tricks, and techniques which will knowledgeably guide
anyone homeschooling parent seeking to fully educating their children. Especially intended for
those who seek to pass Christian values and a sound education on to their children, but also
offering no-nonsense advice for dealing with difficult issues which are universal to homeschoolers
everywhere regardless of their denominational affiliation or religious background, Easy
Homeschooling Companion is a superbly organized and easy-to-apply resource which would
enhance any homeschooling reference collection or "how-to" reading list.
Overcoming Addictive Behavior
Neil T. Anderson and Mike Quarles
Regal Books
2300 Knoll Drive, Ventura, CA 93003-7383
0830732969 $9.99 www.regalbooks.com
The collaboration of Neil T. Anderson (Founder of the Freedom in Christ Ministries) and Mike
Quarles (a Director of the Freedom in Christ Recovery Ministry), and the latest edition to the
outstanding Regal Books "The Victory Over The Darkness Series", Overcoming Addictive
Behavior is a very strongly recommended Christian self-help guide to breaking away from the
enslavement of addiction through turning to God and finding freedom and salvation in Christ. A
forward-looking and passionately spiritual recovery guide, Overcoming Addictive Behavior deftly
traces the root of suffering to the Original Sin and offers guidance on separating oneself from sin
in order to achieve victory and a state of grace.
John Taylor
Reviewer
Terry's Bookshelf
Cat Fear No Evil: A Joe Grey Mystery
Shirley Rousseau Murphy
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0066209498 $24.95 336 pages
Recommendation: ****
This Series Probably is Best Read in Order of Publication
Serial books like CAT FEAR NOT EVIL should come with a warning: Read this series in order
of publication. Or, if the reader can't/won't take the time to read the prior 8 Joe Grey Mysteries,
then each book should contain a brief introduction for the uninitiated. I felt out of the loop and a
bit confused for about the first 100 pages. Reading the books in order of publication probably
would have inured me to the characters, both human and animal and it probably would have
paved the way for me to absorb the author's quick shifts between people-talk and cat-speak.
I also had difficulty keeping track of the "conversations". When were the humans/animals talking
to themselves and when were they engaging their human/animal counterparts?
However, after becoming accustomed to the quirkiness of the human/feline exchanges, I settled
into the quaint fictional town of Molena Point (just north of San Francisco) and found myself
pulled into the mystery of who was stealing some of the village's most priceless
antiques/collectibles. The issues of a drop-dead waiter - - literally - - and a character's roots felt
almost like red herrings, until Murphy pulled the storylines together towards the end.
If you like mysteries and if you believe animals can intuit human feelings and intentions, then this
series is for you. I'll be reading the other books to play "catch up" and eagerly await the next Joe
Grey adventure.
Enjoy!
The Last Goodbye
Reed Arvin
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060555513 $23.95 352 pages
Recommendation: * * * *
Slow Start Supersonic Finish
As a budding author, Reed Arvin must be on Cloud Nine. The Vice President of Marketing for
Arvin's publishing house, HarperCollins, says: "Reed Arvin knocks me out with just his second
book." Pretty heady statement from your boss!
It's rare for a new author to have such a grip on all phases of the human condition. Arvin deals
with a lot of issues in THE LAST GOODBYE. He does such a good job at painting the
underbelly of the legal system that I was surprised to find he's a musician-turned-author, not an
attorney. His grasp of medical technology and corporate ethics shows either (1) meticulous
research; (2) the innate ability to look at all sides of an ethical situation; or (3) a combination of
numbers 1 and 2.
In THE LAST GOODBYE, Arvin's main character, Jack Hammond, is a hotshot Atlanta attorney
with a slight flaw in his character. He's a sucker for a damsel in distress. The need to rescue
Violetta Ramirez, the girlfriend of a tough criminal overrides his common sense and good
judgment. The case goes south. The girl winds up brutally murdered and Jack is out on the streets
before he really knows what hit him.
Fast-forward 2 years. Jack's life and career are in the toilet. He's defending penny ante crooks and
eking out a living only because the clerk who hands out the criminal assignments is sweet on
Jack's babe of a secretary, Blu. Hammond's still haunted by the memory of the murdered Violetta.
He lives in a drabby apartment and drives a beat up Buick. He doesn't sleep well.
Jack is thrust back into life and the fast lane when Doug Townsend, an old friend and recovering
addict is found dead from an overdose. From the start, Jack smells a rat. Doug was recovering
and reclaiming his life, not relapsing back into the world of drugs. Doug died from a needle
overdose. Doug was mortified of needles. Mortified.
The more Jack digs through Doug's things and his personal computer the more certain he
becomes that (1) Doug didn't die by his own hand (2) he was obsessed with opera singer Michele
Sonnier and (3) he was involved in some pretty serious corporate espionage. His search for the
truth leads Jack into the highbrow world of opera, the Atlanta projects, and world of
pharmaceutical research and development and the at-all-cost side of corporate espionage.
I thought this book started a bit slow, but after Jack decides to find Doug's killer(s), the story revs
up to a supersonic finale that kept me turning pages until all the plot lines were resolved.
If you like thrillers, this book is for you. It's not pretty and it doesn't have cookie cutter
characters, but it is an insightful look at the complexities of our legal system, ethical issues
surrounding pharmaceutical research and the process of who decides what patients receive
experimental treatment for the ever-growing number of drug-resistant human maladies.
Hollywood will love this book. Can't wait to see how they cast it.
Enjoy!
The Designer Revolution
Valerie Kirschenbaum
Cherry Tree Press
ISBN: 0974575003 $24.95 410 pages
Recommendation: ****
Great Theories - Good Ideas - Who Will Take Up Her Cause?
My husband teaches in a small rural school in north east Texas, where English is almost a foreign
language. Getting his students to read is tough enough, but to comprehend what they've read is
nigh to impossible.
Ms. Kirschenbaum has perhaps found the key which will unlock the door for my husband's
students -- and indeed -- students everywhere.
The downside to Ms. Kirschenbaum's theories is that most textbook publishers won't (1) validate
her ideas with prototypes; (2) spend the time and money to test/tweak with prototypes that are
mocked up; AND (3) most teachers do not have the skills nor access to color printers and fancy
computers necessary to generate "interesting" reading materials for their classrooms.
Even if they do possess crackerjack computer skills, most teachers are overwhelmed with the
day-to-day realities of teaching and do not have the creative energy to devote a lot of after school
time sitting in front of a computer monitor churning out beautiful text.
Hopefully, publishing houses will examine their options and will consider Ms. Kirchenbaum's
suggestions.
This is a beautifully crafted book by a woman who is passionate about her vocation and the need
to reach her students, by all means possible.
Enjoy!
Terry H. Mathews
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
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Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
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