John Lithgow Books

There are few books, paper or audio, that I find inspirational to the point I share it with everyone in my "neighborhood". This audio book was very moving for me, so much so that I have purchased it as a gift for many and will share it as a gift for others during this Holiday season. Mr. Rogers was one of the regular shows I grew up with as a child, but more importantly, his thoughts about life should be with all of us as adults, in the global neighborhood. My ten year old daughter listens to the CD to help her go to sleep at night, and my 13 year old son sneaks a listen between rock and jazz. While they did not have the opportunity to experience Mr. Rogers as I did as a child, they have been touched by him at a very important part of their lives. Once you listen to this CD, you may not want to put on a red sweater and white sneakers, but you will want to share it with your neighborhood. This is a very touching CD enjoyable by all. -- Suzann Brucato

Mister Rogers was a regular part of my life as a child. I remember sitting in front of the TV everyday. Singing his "It's such a good feeling..." song along with him. His gentle nature and optimistic look on life rubbed off on me.

Today, as I travel the country presenting workshops and seminars on the power of being positively passionate and defeating the ill effects of negativity, I think Mr. Rogers' words echo within.

This book captures the essence of Mr. Rogers' work. Read it and reflect on his simple truths and powerful philosophies. I've already purchased several copies of this book as gifts to others.

Mr. Rogers lives in every person who searches for the good in things and strives to make the world a better place!

If you're a parent, I'm sure you've had at least 10 horrific car trips consisting of crying, name-calling, "I'm bored, Mom," incessant whining, and non-stop "are we there yet?" This book is the solution to your problems. Give it to the kids at the first hint of a whine, and they'll be entertained for hours: your trip is nearly guaranteed to be trouble-free. The book comes with fun bits and pieces that go along with the games and projects Lithgow suggests, so you don't have to worry about art supplies or anything like that--it's completely self-contained. With fun facts and brain-bogglers alongside songs and storytelling, your kids won't want to put this book down--instead of "are we there yet?" you'll be hearing "do we HAVE to get out of the car?"

Having watched the comedic talents of John Lithgow in 3rd Rock from the Sun, I was intrigued to find out about this Palooza series of his.

I read "Choose a Palooza for Summer! Part 1-June" and loved it.

Parents encourage your kids to do some of these things while on school break. You will also have fun with them as you remember doing similar things when you were a child.

I especially liked the Super Dude idea, by becoming the super dude of your choice. Dish Man who tackles the dishes with rubber gloves and his germ fighting detergent, or Book Boy who is full of knowledge of Harry Potter for example was another good one.

There were so many fun things to do and all of these were just for the month of June, with bits of June trivia that if the kids aren't careful will teach them some important facts.

Show Me the Way, Oh, Lord!Leavin' Sandlick and Speakin' AppalachianPoems, Prayers and Promises of an Appalachian WomanIn This Valley I Grew: Life on Blacklog and Happy Hollowby Mary Ellen Goble Preece

My 7 year old (and of course mee too) loves all three of these. He'll actually sit still for hours and listen to them, and race to the CD player waiting for me to change discs. It was dissapointong to see these broadcasts get progressivly smaller with each movie. From 7 in the first, to 5 in the second, and the Return only three CD's long. The last is almost nothing but the movie, with very little additional material. It's still good, but after lstening to A New Hope, The Return of The Jedi feels very short. I would highly reccommend these. They're great for those cold or raining Saturday acfternoons.

Do you want your kids to have fun? Of course. Do you want them to learn and grow and explore their worlds imaginatively? Certainly. But can they do both at the same time? If you don't think so, think again: this book is full of ideas that will both entertain your kids and encourage them to think creatively. Lithgow lays out crazy party plans that will definitely be a first in the neighborhood. If you're tired of the same old slumber party and birthday cake, this book is the answer.

Read aloud by comedian John Lithgow (perhaps best known for his performance in "Third Rock from the Sun"), Oh, the Places You'll Go! is an audiobook production of a brief yet wise and tongue-in-cheek humorous graduation speech, as created by the one and only classic children's author Dr. Seuss (1904-1991). In his characteristic metered rhyme, Seuss speaks of the Great Balancing Act and encourages those listening to develop their untapped potential. "And will you succeed? / Yes! You will, indeed! / (98 and 3/4 percent... guaranteed.)" Rounding out the audio CD is an unabridged production of "The Lorax", Dr. Seuss' classic warning against the ecological danger posed by mindless progress, as narrated by Ted Dansen. Packaged with a convenient gift card holder, Oh, the Places You'll Go! is a time-tested classic especially recommended as a graduation gift for young (and old!) people who have just completed any major educational achievement of note. 1 CD, approx. 30 minutes.

My 7 year old (and of course mee too) loves all three of these. He'll actually sit still for hours and listen to them, and race to the CD player waiting for me to change discs. It was dissapointong to see these broadcasts get progressivly smaller with each movie. From 7 in the first, to 5 in the second, and the Return only three CD's long. The last is almost nothing but the movie, with very little additional material. It's still good, but after lstening to A New Hope, The Return of The Jedi feels very short. I would highly reccommend these. They're great for those cold or raining Saturday acfternoons.

This is a long-awaited and much-needed insight into the way history and culture have informed and influenced management styles in Aisa and the West. Lynette Lithgow's book is a timely reminder that the results of today are often to be found in the mistakes of the past. Worth reading...

On the plus side, The Bonfire of the Vanities compares well with Balzac's stuff. I mean, the methods are similar. The story follows several very different characters living in New York, and each scene is detailed, particularized, analyzed, painted with a very fine brush. Many layers of New York's society are represented. There are no moral messages, no lessons to be learned, just life in New York in the late 'Eighties or early 'Nineties at its most intense, presented as "business as usual," with corrupt politicians, lascivious prosecutors, moronic members of the jury, conceited stock market honchos, cynical lawyers, less-than-bright policemen, political opportunists, socialites, priests, opera singers, real estate agents with five thousand dollar manicures, rich faithful wives who deserve to be strangled, only it never occurs to anyone to strangle them, mistresses on the make, petty criminals, silly immigrants, bone-headed journalists, feminists of both genders, racial and ethnic tension - and on and on. The book is really a lot of fun.

On the other hand, the opus falls just short of making its author, well, "the Balzac of our time." No scene is picturesque enough to be called cinematographic, and for a novel 800 pages long that's a bit, well, loquacious (on the author's part). The author tends to explain too much, and fits people and scenes together in such a way as to promote his own outlook, leaving the attentive reader no choice but to examine it. Upon closer examination, one realizes that Mr. Wolfe's main purpose is to show that people in general are vile, selfish, obtuse creatures (without exception); that life is a pretty ridiculous affair; and that any joy a person ever derives from living is brief, accidental, and usually comes at the expense of others. To put it plainly, THERE IS NO GOD in this novel. It was written by a fierce atheist. There is neither faith, hope, nor love in it. None. Life is algebraically plain and tedious.

(I realize I said earlier there were no moral messages in the book. There aren't any. The above is an OUTLOOK, not a message).

Literature thrives on extraordinary situations in which characters are inspired to perform extraordinary acts. The element of surprise in Wolfe's novel is purely circumstantial. Folks have no fre will in this story. (All atheists are determinists more or less by definition, I suppose).

In the past, I've had some interesting experiences related to the publication of this novel. Two years after it came out (in the early 'Nineties, I believe), the news finally reached the Philistines, and by Philistines I mean those representatives of the middle class (and, sometimes, the upper middle class; I have nothing to say about the actual upper class since no one, not even the representatives of the said class themselves, can figure out what the hell they're up to, what it is they do all day, and what their problem is) ... uh ... where was I? ... Philistines ... those representatives of the middle class that once in a while make a half-hearted effort to appear CULTURED, which, in their view, means catching a program on the History Channel once in a while and telling others that they're reading "this book, it's actually pretty good." They never seem to finish this book. I mean, they sort of struggle through the first twenty pages, and then skim through the rest, and make plans to read it properly when they visit Aruba next year, or some such. They're always too busy, they never have any "free time." One gets the impression that if they stopped being busy for a moment, civilization would just collapse and never recover. Anyway, this dude had a copy of "Bonfire" in his briefcase and was telling me (his colleague) how everybody had recommended this book to him. He was going to read it when he had some free time. He actually DID take it to Aruba (there was also a wife involved, I believe). He came back, I believe, without having finished it. A year later he died. He was a good guy, too. Reading just wasn't "his thing," as Philistines like to say.

Anyway, when "Bonfire" came out, the hype was considerable, which for me is nearly always a turn-off. And then the movie came out (which, incidentally, was far more politically incorrect than the book, and the choice of actors and actresses was just UNBELIEVABLE; I loved it). So I put off reading "Bonfire" until, oh, I don't know, maybe after 9/11. By that time, home video games had become astonishingly popular, and crime rates started dropping everywhere across the nation, including New York (for which then-Mayor Giuliani took all the credit, of course). When I finally got to read it, the novel struck me as a bit dated. Not that any issues described in it with a flourish, social and otherwise, had become a thing of the past. The overall societal set of problems had shifted a little since the novel's publication, that's all.

The story is constantly balancing on the edge of political correctness, even though it never goes beyond the boundaries, not once. Even so, few other authors would dare show a book that probes so many "untouchable," "sacred-cow" issues to an editor, and few editors would touch a book of this sort with a hundred-foot pole. The advantage of being Tom Wolfe, I suppose, is that during the decades he spent being a journalist and creating his own style (starting back in the '60's), the man gradually accustomed everyone to the fact that he says outrageous things and gets away with it. The degree of outrage has increased over the years, and today Mr. Wolfe can get away (I would imagine) with saying pretty much anything, because he knows that no one will take it (or him) seriously.

It is worth remembering, while reading this novel, that its author belongs to the glorious school of Southern authors with New York careers: the crux of American literature. God bless.

Tom Wolfe excels at culture, or at least he certainly used to, pulling together the genuine thoughts and actions of various subsets of people and so capturing the essential creature of a movement.

In this, Bonfire never disappoints. He shows us glitzy and amoral Wall Street moneymakers, portraits of an imploding criminal justice system, variously-motivated community 'opinion leaders', and more. All of this takes ages to set up, pushing the essential action back a few hundred pages as the forces-that-be dance. Nonetheless, Wolfe performs his monkey-trick, still new at this stage in his career: all of these cultural -elements-as-characters collide at once.

Because Wolfe is so talented at culture-writing, the story comes off brilliantly. And yet, it *is* culture-writing. If you aren't willing to read deeply into each of these culture characters, you will despise the immense exposition afforded them. Wolfe remains interested largely in the culture side, and his characters are more cultural stand-ins than timeless personages.

Bonfire of the Vanities is a terrific vision of New York in the bond trader's heyday, which few describe more vividly than Wolfe. But perhaps it is not a whole lot else.

I do not think an author puts more into his books than Wolfe. This is a story so much more than about the greedy 80's. As you are reading you are saying to yourself exactly what Wolfe saids seconds later, as if he is in your mind. Its about political correctness gone awry. And its so "New York City" and you have to live and work there to totally see how Wolfe is so accurate even 20 years later.

Sadly now as you read this great novel, you think to the disaster of a movie. So altered and so miscast. And reading about the making of the movie, the same fictional pressures of politically correctness in the book hampered the actual movie. For example Morgan Freeman's a great actor but his character is totally different than the book. This is a movie that SHOULD BE RE-MADE.

In any event The Bonefire of the Vanities is a MUST read.

Given the current graft, greed, and "me,me,me" on wallstreet (what's new) this book might be a little outdated but is still one the funniest ironic books about New Yorkers, and especially Wall Streeters, I've read.

In all 31 flavors of "Law and Order on TV, the NYPD and DA's office disposes of a case from the incident to the trial in an hour--sometimes two if it's a two-part episode. In "Bonfire of the Vanities" Tom Wolfe does the same thing in about 700 pages. That's because Wolfe brings to bear all the complexities of trying a case in the real world.

In the mid-1980s, Sherman McCoy is a bond salesman at Pierce & Pierce, a self-described "Master of the Universe" with a three million-dollar apartment on Park Avenue, a wife who spends thousands on decorating it, a six-year-old daughter who attends a pricey private school, and a mistress named Maria Ruskin, who herself is wealthy from marrying a much-older man. One night Sherman goes to pick Maria up at the airport and their Mercedes Benz becomes lost on the seedy streets of the Bronx. They're approached by two black kids, and from there the "Master of the Universe" becomes an unwitting pawn of a black "reverend" hungry for publicity, a drunken British reporter hungry for a story, and a Bronx DA hungry for re-election. Because in the real world, cases aren't solved in an hour and "justice" is a game won or lost based on who can cheat the most and get away with it.

Like an ancient Greek tragedy, McCoy has to pay for his hubris. So do some of the other characters, although others are seemingly rewarded for their bad behavior. This is certainly not a novel of white hats and black hats where the good guys triumph and the bad guys get their just reward. If you want that, you'd better stick to the TV.

What Wolfe does so well with this book is to paint the "big picture" of New York City in the 1980s with its melting pot of Irish, Italians, Jews, blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Wasps. All of these rival factions collide with the McCoy case to depict not just the justice system, but society as a whole. It's an unflattering image to say the least, even viewed through the prism of satire. More importantly, the image of black against white and rich against poor is still applicable today in America's major cities. That makes Wolfe's book as relevant today as it was back in the `80s.

Wolfe's writing itself can get a little tedious and long-winded at times. There are so many nuances and complexities and tangents going on throughout the book. While these provide richness and depth, at some point it becomes overkill. The stuff about the mayor and the Episcopal Church was interesting, but not really necessary. As well there are...so many ellipses...and exclamation points! It can be a little irritating after 700 pages.

Still, it's a relatively minor flaw in what is a great book that even at 700 pages shouldn't take too long to read because it's so funny and clever that it's hard to put down. I had previously read Wolfe's "Man in Full" that came out ten years after "Bonfire of the Vanities" and has many of the similar themes of race, class, and a rich man in legal peril, though it takes place in Atlanta instead of New York. I'd recommend that book as well.

As for the 1990 movie of "Bonfire of the Vanities" it pretty much makes every critic's worst list, so I wouldn't recommend that. The movie does stick to at least most of the book's main points. In its defense, it would be impossible to depict all the subtleties and nuances of Wolfe's novel on the big screen. Trying to adapt it really was an impossible mission.

That is all...

If you are an elementary music teacher, read this book to your third and fourth graders and accompany it with a "show and tell" of musical instruments. Allow your students to touch the instruments (have a trombone, a flute, a violin, a drum, etc) and use this book to emphasize how to treat the instruments properly and not damage them. They'll be so excited for the "petting zoo" that they wont realize that they're learning something practical that will save you repair money later. You could also discuss vibrating and resonating and teach/reinforce what actions allow vibration and resonation in each individual instrument (buzzing for brass, bow movement for strings, air splitting and reed vibration for woodwinds, etc) which they'll love, especially if you let them try it themselves. It will also get them excited about instruments if you are trying to recruit for an orchestra or band program. It's also good for going over vocabulary and the students get really into it if you get really animated. :)

John Lithgow is a genius! I purchased this book along with his other children books and activity items, as well as his CDs. I love them all - great songs, educational for children to learn about instruments, love and lots and lots of fun to dance to!! I highly recommend his books and stuff.

This was a birthday present to my very talented 28 year old son who isn't sure what he wants to be when he grows up but is really quite "remarkable." He said the book "hit the mark."

just wishing to introduce musical instruments to children. The dialog has a cadence and rhyme that makes the book enjoyable to the reader and listener. The illustrations are fantastic; colorful and accurate. This book goes one step further than just entertainment: it educates the reader/listener to the musical instruments of the orchestra. A must have for any early childhood library!

I love this book almost as much as my 3 year old son does, and that is A LOT! He demands that I read it at least once every night, just before bed, and I have to say that it's not a request that I shirk. I love this book; it is sheer poetry. I can recite most of it by heart. And the illustrations are a delight. This book has helped nurture his early passion for music, and that makes it all worth it.