Rebecca Books

This is the second volume of a trilogy that I have read three times over the last several years. I seldom read a book more than once.... I found it particularly fascinating for how it handled the question of why we have not been contacted by aliens and who might be out there waiting for us to be ready. An interesting speculation.

This is a story of young love and family. Deana and Tucker Murray, a young couple with two small children, buy an old house that needs someone to love it back to life and the Murray's are just that couple. Hard work brings satisfaction and, with it, the ups and downs of life as a couple.

Deana and Tucker find friendship in the neighbors and the wonders of owning your own home. Money is in short supply and Tucker is able to cut down and sell Christmas trees to provide a little extra. This becomes a yearly business for him and he is even able to save enough to buy Deana that diamond she didn't have when they were married. As in all things, just when everything is going right, something goes wrong. An old tree, a saw and the next thing the ambulance is coming.

Ms. Rinaldi keeps the reader on edge by building the story up until you find out who is hurt. Then she keeps the reader wondering if anything will ever be right again. It is a story of deep loss but holds the hope of recovery by discovering that life can go on, just in a different way.

This was one of the most helpful and interesting texts that I have read. If you like law, this book provides case analysis of a few cases in such a way as to enlighten you to the complexities of the legal method involved.

This is one of the most encouraging books i have read about discovering God's destiny for your life and then taking Biblically based steps for pressing through into its fulfilment!

It fits extremely well with another book called "God's Timing For Your Life" by Dutch Sheets. Together they form real ammunition for persistent prayer. And that is what is needed, because what this book also brings home is how much we have an enemy who is determined to prevent us from reaching our potential in Christ.

It's a manageable size with little or no padding. My friend felt that the book was a little bit "formula based" and i can understand what she is saying but I think when you set it in the context of other writings by the author that isn't really the case. They are simply setting out principles which God Himself has established as part of His covenant relationship with us (another neglected aspect of our Christian walk)

If all God's people read and consistently applied the principles contained here i believe the Body Of Christ would make a far greater impact in this world for His Kingdom.

So read and be blessed!

Although I have long enjoyed Rebecca Rule's newspaper column on New Hampshire writers, I had never read any of her fiction (having somehow missed "Wood Heat" in 1992 and the hardcover printing of this collection, 1995). My loss. Rule's incisive, earthy prose captures the spirit and daily grind of small-town rural life with affection and humor, devoid of sentimentality.

Her characters are mostly natives who go back at least a couple of generations. They hunt, trap and fish, attend library committee and selectmen's meetings, bring up kids and fight with their spouses, usually about money. These are regular people. There are no drunkards, wife beaters or down-and-outs. When couples wrangle, you feel for both of them. Piercingly, you feel the anxiety of their children.

Many of Rule's characters strike an instant chord of recognition. The sour-tempered, know-it-all naysayer, Mort Wallace, who's got nothing better to do but waste everyone else's time cranking away at every public meeting. In "Yankee Curse" Mort absorbs the unspoken but imaginative curses of his neighbor Miranda Coffey who knits her way through a School District Meeting: "May your neighbors steal from your wood pile, Mort Wallace." "May a rat die between the studs of your bedroom wall." Or the grouchy lakefront neighbor who guards her turf by making her newcomer neighbors miserable in "The Best Revenge." There's more than one in every town.

Some stories are delightfully lighthearted. "Lindy Lowe at Bat," one of the few stories told in the third person, is a warmhearted tale of Little League baseball, the adult undercurrents on the sidelines, and a girl's determination. Dryly humorous, "The Widow and the Trapper," narrated by the flinty trapper, follows the surprising journey of a blossoming relationship, set against a background of trout, loons and human coexistence with nature.

But the most gripping stories are those dealing with family tensions and troubles. And the most gripping of those are the ones narrated by children. The troubles of their parents loom large and scary. Within the framework of rescuing a small cat from a tall tree in "Three," Rule evokes a time of grief, calamity, and anxiety for the future, culminating in a moment when a child puts herself in danger because bad things come in three and the thought of "the third bad thing" happening to her mother is unbearable.

Adults are often scary to the children who love and depend upon them. In "Walking the Trapline," the father is a man (like many of the men in these stories) who does what he wants and abides no backtalk from anyone. Though the narrator's younger brother is expected to learn about the trapline from age 9, less is expected of her. "He allowed me to come along when the weather was fine and the dishes done." The story, following a long, cold day on the trapline, focuses on the shifting family dynamics as the children band together for comfort and companionship, but defect into small betrayals in competition for their father's approval.

A day's fishing with her crusty grandfather is fraught with anxiety for the narrator of "Peach Baby Food Sandwiches" who awaits lunchtime with dread. Though the old man had consulted her about the peach baby food sandwich, his diatribe concerning her usual diet made it clear the consultation was rhetorical only. "I said no more on the subject but watched in quiet horror as he laid out sandwich makings on the scrubbed-pine table." The story is laugh-out-loud funny, but her fear and dread of an adult's explosive anger is palpable.

Rule's stories are beautifully crafted. Her situations are recognizable, often ordinary. A man whose family has been living in a cellar hole for four years buys a boat, "though he knew Phoebe had the money spent, though he knew she'd pop a gasket when she found out (maybe even because he knew)." A woman who decides to run for selectman, against her husband's wishes. A woman coping with a miscarriage by walking in the woods, in the footsteps of her dead great-grandmother.

The core of the characters' inner lives, expectations and background emerge seamlessly from the setting and situation. Each story is a small gem, a complete world in microcosm. These are classic stories, full of New England flavor, wit and subtlety.

There's atleast 20 books in this growing Steve Parish Story Book series but for some reason Amazon only lists a couple. Bilby's Burrow is one of the older books, published back in 2004 but still one of the best.

I've only come across one average book in this series, Koala's Big Day. The rest are sensational! Amazon only sells a fraction of the titles so you will have to look elsewhere to get the rest as well. All have Australian animals as the main characters with the series covering land based mammals, reptiles and even including ocean based ones such as clown fish and dolphins. This is a very successful series sold not just in bookstores but wildlife parks and well anywhere that sells postcards and souveneirs in Australia so there will no doubt be hundreds in this series in the future.

In Biby's Burrow a bilby is chased by a dingo and manages to evade it. When it emerges from its hiding place the bilby realises it is lost and has no idea how to return to its burrow. Other Australian wildlife that watched the chase (a bettong, spinifex hopping mouse, stick-nest rat, and numbat) explain to the bilby the direction it came from, helping it find its home.

The thing that differentiates these books from most picture books is that the illustrations are photographs and not drawings. The best of the books that Amazon sells are The Cranky Crocodile and Little Devils.

The success of the Steve Parish story book collection has resulted in Rebecca Johnson putting out a similar sort of series (A Walk in) with North American wildlife such as A Walk Through The Desert and A Walk in the Prairie. But buy the original Australian ones, they're the best, well except Koala's Big Day!

The book is in really good shape and only has some underlining that doesn't deter from quality

This is truly bits and pieces of me. Bits of me and my life are in each and every story, including the musical stageplay that is included (about a piano bar). Two of the stories in the collection are spot-on, are memoirs and are very dramatic, although the latter might be considered more on the humorous side - it's written as a monologue and is indeed XX rated: Viagra Dialog. Each story is unique because they're totally different from one another and from any other stories I've written. If you read my "Love Has a Price Tag", another collection of short stories, stageplays and a screenplay, you'll already know my style and the realness and imagination that goes into my writing.

I hope you'll enjoy this one, too, as well as my other books.

In Bitters, Rebecca Seiferle offers a haunting, almost ominous dialogue with the spiritual dimension. Her poems are classic. They are a welcomed departure from the pop-psychology, cliché, word play driven, confessional poetry that pervades much of modern poetics. Seiferle's poems are deeply lyrical, complex, and highly compassionate, depicting the human spirit at its best. Her poems are philosophical without being pedantic, lyrical without being lifeless and intense without being esoteric. This is great poetry. Her latest collection, Wild Tongue is equally phenomenal.

Can't rememeber the name of the movie--and it will drive me nuts
until so. But the story is about a millionaire who decides to
take on another identity, parting ways with a poor reputation of
being a party rich girl. So she becomes a management trainee. She , Jennifer/Jenny, soon falls for an average guy named Blackie.
But he turns out to be a reporter undercover...and so the story
goes. Lot of fun!