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I read this book in order to prepare myself to transcribe for Mrs. Miller's upcoming novel, and I found it to be a lovely true story that encompasses World War II, but more so, the forever changed lives of those who lived it. Easy to read and easier to connect with, this story brings to us not only the war but our vital human connection with those around us and around the world, the importance of peace and understanding, and a lesson on the fallible nature of stereotyping our "enemies". I look forward to Mrs. Marako Miller's coming novel, which I expect to be even better.

Ever since my June 12, 1999, comments on "Bridge To The Sun, I've received many personal e-mails requesting a copy of my movie video. Please do not ask me to violate copyright laws. Do as I did...keep checking your local cable listings or inquire of the classic movie channels when "Bridge To The Sun" will air again, and then set your VCRs accordingly.

Having lived in the modern Japan for 10+ years, I was impressed by how beautifully Mrs. Terasaki captured the spirit of Japan, and somewhat jealous that she experienced things (I don't mean the war, mind you) difficult to find today. This is a great book, and my only complaint is that she didn't write more.

Incidentally, I actually found out about this book from a Japanese mini-series that was re-broadcast recently called "Mariko". It had a few more details not found in the book, such as the fact that Mr. Terasaki used phrases regarding Mariko (esp. "Mariko is not well today") as a code with his brother and others in Tokyo to relay how discussions were progressing during the tense time right before the Pearl Harbor attack. Also, I found out that Mariko is alive and well and living in the US.

I attended Mariko Miller's lectures about her family and just had to have the book. For those who want to know major events since, Mr. Terasaki was the liaison after WWII between Emperor Hirohito and MacArthur. He was "writing" a book during this period, but when Mariko got it translated from the court Japanese to the more common dialect, it proved to be much more valuable. Publicly Emperor Hirohito said very little about WWII. He dictated his thoughts on it to Terasaki instead. Terasaki's book proved to be an invaluable historical document. Mariko lives in Wyoming and is writing her own book. She mentioned in her lectures how easy it was to figure out where her parents were on a given day and time in the days leading up to WWII. She just requested their FBI files and it was all there. Keep an eye out for Mariko Miller's book. It should be even better than BRIDGE TO THE SUN.

As literature, this book is not the best. However, as a historical first-hand document that recounts a personal, interesting, and very unique story, this is superb. This book may not read easily for some since the writing style can be a little scattered. This characteristic, though, reveals a rawness in the writing. Terasaki is genuine, and she opens a window to many intriguing subjects. These subjects include: foreign policy between Japan and America surrounding World War II, cultural contrasts between the two countries, perspectives on love, the life of ambassadors in the WWII era, Japanese perspectives on Americans in that era (and vice-versa), the treatment of the different classes of people in Japan, separation of civilians and government, Japanese WWII propaganda strategies, Japanese military actions in China before the US entered the war, Japanese perspectives on the American occupation after the surrender, and so much more. This text contains plenty of substance, even if not in a most polished form. I would recommend borrowing a copy through your local library rather than paying $$ for it.

Robert Armstrong grabs your attention on Page One and it only gets better from there. I rarely have time to read a book cover to cover, but I found the writing, pacing and characters in this new mystery compelling.

Chief of the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care, Dr. McDonell, DVM faces the conflicting demands of the realities of his job, the laws that govern it, and a boss who is more involved with the Health Department's public image and catering to special interests. Add to that, he may have the clues to solving a series of deaths of Houston's homeless. Something powerful and vicious lurks on the quiet streets at night. Canis will keep you sitting up late to see how it all ends.

Totally believable with a nice twist at the end. I am trying to decide who will play Dr. McDonell in the movie! I am ready to read Index of Suspicion and Oryx, which I hear is due out this Fall!

Robert Armstrong has written an amazing mystery. The main character, Dr. Duncan MacDonell, DVM, is both very believable and likable, and so are the other characters in the book. My complete attention was held from start to finish, and Mr. Armstrong's humor showed through at times, adding some fun to the reading. I never guessed who the real culprit was. Several characters could have been the murderer and that only made it more exciting. I never expected the outcome, so the ending was a total surprise. I am excited about CANIS and plan to read more of Robert Armstrong's books. He's an excellent writer. You will not be disappointed in this book!

Dr. Duncan Macdonell is not your typical protagonist. He's an older, rounder gentleman with a penchant for smart-talk and one of the most thankless jobs in the world-- he heads the Houston Department of Animal Control.
As an animal lover, I cringe at the statistics he presents on the number of animals destroyed by the city each day, but he inserts these figures skillfully within his compelling story and doesn't use them as a plot device or shocker, simply to establish Dr. Mac's mindset and feelings about his job.
The story is written in an easy, comfortable style that is akin to having an old friend tell you a tale over dinner rather than florid prose that waxes eloquent and makes you want to skip paragraphs. Not a word is wasted in Dr. Mac's world!
Finally, the mystery aspect of the book is excellent. Armstrong had me suspecting everyone but the kitchen sink, then still managed to surprise me at the end. The plot is believable, fast-paced and well worth your time and money. Skip James Patterson's new one and buy CANIS instead!

I'd had a "sneak peak" of the first chapter, so I was curious to see what this book was like and where it was going. It wasn't what I expected ... it was BETTER!! :D From page 1 it had me hooked. It was a VERY entertaining book which I couldn't put down. Every chance I got, I read more, then I felt like I'd lost my best friend when I finished. I only have a few authors I enjoy, Robert Armstrong is now in that list, he's a great writer!! :D Can't wait to read Index of Suspicion and the next one he's working on now!

After reading the first paragraph of Canis, I found myself wanting more. Robert Armstrong has weaved a tale of intrigue mixed with politics and a bit of humor and has captured the local flavor of Houston. The characters were believable and the story compelling. Armstrong is definately an author to keep your eye on...Bravo!

L.C. Martin

I subscribe to Ann's newsletter, and have purchased just about all her informational material she offers,and the good news is, Ms. Kullbert has plans to self-publish this title later this year or in 2009. That means we won't have to pay the outrageous prices this book is being offered at. We are artists, and "starving" maybe not, however, I prefer to purchase art materials with my extra bucks. Also, she offers a companion CD to this book with video clips on technique and printable line drawings from which to practice. Third, my fellow artists, she is just about finished her 3rd book...so watch for it!!!

This is a wonderful guide to rendering all the little details that can make a colored pencil painting special. There's a CD (available separately) of short movies of the author working on the projects in this book, and the CD and book together are an unbeatable combination. It's almost as good as private lessons from a master artist. I learned a great deal from this book.

It is not only a pretty book but very interesting and helpful.

This book is beautiful, full of great step by step information, color recipe information, and tips for beginners to advanced. A keeper!

I really like a lot of her techniques. They are easy to follow and very basic. Her books are good starting books. I have found others to show more techniques too that are great. It's just good to have a variety, since many artists have varying approaches. I basically will go with colored pencil artists whose work is excellent. I will not buy a book by an artist who does crappy art work, even if the techniques are great according to other readers. To me if the techniques are great, so would be the artwork.

Unless you are a rabid collector, do NOT give your money to these ridiculous people who are selling this book for $170. Yeah, this book is out of print, so what? Everything in this book can be found online for FREE. In fact, you can even watch video demonstrations of the techniques discussed in this book, showing you how to do them better than any text could. And again, it's all free. Don't waste your money.

It is crazy that I would have to pay over $200 to own this book! Is it bound in human skin? Does it have the secret of eternal life and youth?As another reviewer noted,reprinting this book will NOT result in frenzied card throwing mobs overturning cars and looting stores.The first press run seems to have come and gone without causing civil unrest on the part of card throwers-I've never met a card thrower in my life.In fact,I've never met anyone who mentioned WANTING to learn card throwing.The audience to whom this book appeals is tiny and nothing will ever change that.Relax, folks.This will turn out to be "too hard" for 9 out of 10 people who try it-all 50 of them.Now, REPRINT THIS BOOK, Please!

I was "forced" to get this book online without paying for it because no economical alternative exists. I completely disagree with the people on here who don't want this book reprinted because they think that the world would soon become saturated with card-slingers, thus taking away some of the glory of being the only guy in town who can chuck an Ace of Spades through the Washington Post. Please keep in mind that like ALL hobbies that require:
a) reading a book
b) lots of practice and dedication
...means that 99% of the population will buy the book, skim through it and put it on the shelf next to their dusty diet, magic coin trick and gardening books.
Even if his fellow slingers & magicians busted his ballz for releasing trade-secrets, Jay should definitely reprint this book so 1% of people who read the book and follow through with it will keep the art alive.

This book is amazing, as previously stated, but I am STRONGLY against any reprinting of it. One of the things that makes card throwing so amazing is the fact that so few people know about it / how to do it. Imagine everyone being able to throw cards. Personally, I think this book is perfect in its current rare form, and should NOT be reprinted.

I am a semi-pro card thrower in the national card throwing league (ctl), and I have to say that this book is the bible of card throwing. The techniques I have learned from Jay's book have helped me a lot. I was struggling on the tour last year when I got to talk with the famous Bill 'the Hand' Strongtide who recommended I read this book and it has really helped my form this past year.

I have a copy of the first edition of this book and am still mesmerized by it. When it first came out, everyone I knew at design school who bought it felt like the information and techniques had given them an out-of-body-experience and it quickly became THE book to own, learn from, and emulate. Anyone who buys this book and applies the material and techniques will become better at drawing, rendering, and creative presentation methods...it is a sure-fire way to achieve "star power" in your office and in front of your clients!

great book! Out of the dozens of hand rendering guides I looked at, this was by far the best and the easiest to learn from. It tells you what pencils, markers, and tools to buy to achieve certain effects, and gives you step-by-step rendering instructions for tons of different types of materials and lighting situations. I highly recommend this- in fact, it should be mandatory for interior design students!

This is an excellent resouce for the study of rendering. After detailing the elements of color and design, it describes, step-by-step, how to achieve many finishes both interior and exterior. It is both instructive and informative.

It's really hard to say too many things about this book. Even older editions of Color Drawing are great, but this newest one goes above and beyond the call of duty. In an age when a lot of books get re-released as new editions with few substantive changes, Color Drawing breaks the mold by updating the techniques with current technology (i.e. Photoshop). It's great to see that the author and publisher realize that pure hand-drawing and rendering is quickly becoming a thing of the past and that the practitioners of today and tomorrow need to have excellent computer skills too. This book is full of very useful tips for combining Photoshop with hand drawings to create great effects. So even if you have an earlier edition, do yourself a favor and buy the new one anyway because you will learn a lot.

This is the standard for rendering in architecture and interior design as far as I am concerned. It will most definitely become a required textbook for my classes in visual presentation in the years to come. Doyle takes you step-by-step into the process of rendering with marker, color pencil, and pastels. But he doesn't just spoon feed you the recipe for each material rendering, he presents the basis for a process that allows you to render virtually any material not found in the book.

"Consolation of Philosophy" was on the syllabus for a "History of Philosophy" class I took my senior year in college. To say that I loved it would be an understatement. I still have the copy I read back then (academic year 1980/1981) and I have re-read it several times over the years. I treasure this book like none other.

I looked through my copy to type out a passage that I find particularly inspiring, but found that I couldn't because there are so many. I've recommended it to literally dozens of people, and every one to took me up on my suggestion thanked me for it.

_Here you find the unequivocal declaration that not riches, not high position, not fame, not physical pleasure are worth pursuing in-and-of themselves. Such things are of value only if they are obtained in the pursuit of the highest Good. This highest Good is demonstrated to be God. Moreover, Boethius points out that when evil men succeed in obtaining such goals over the righteous, then they cease to truly be men- they are beasts and subhuman. This is a refreshing reminder in the modern world, a world not unlike that of late Roman times.

_All happiness, all worth, all reason for being, lies in the One and the Good. Even when we commit immoral acts, it is a result of ignorance on our part in seeking this ultimate goal. Indeed, to turn from the quest of finding the One is to cease to exist at any meaningful level. There is no "fire and brimstone", or talk of eternal torment in hell here. There doesn't need to be. As long as you willfully or ignorantly stray from the Path then you are in hell. And to not find reconnection with the One and the Good is to cease to exist. All of our earthly existence is for the purpose of reawakening to our true nature. This truth lies within all of us and it is only reached by personal introspection (Know thyself.) Only in this way will we return to the eternal Source that lies beyond time itself.

_The consolation of the Consolatio lies in the fact that suffering serves a purpose if it puts us back on the true Path. Moreover, earthly recognition of virtue is irrelevent. God always recognises the man of virtue if the masses do not.

Boethius, in his "Consolation" written in prison shortly before his death, turns to the pre-Christian philosophers and the tradition of Rome and Greece for aid and comfort. The work is one of the most historically important works ever written: it is through Boethius that we had knowledge of Aristotle during the middle ages.

The work takes the form of a Platonic dialogue, mixing prose and poetry as the author slowly convalesces with the aid of Philosophy, his "nurse." This literary style has been imitated many times since.

The work ought to be read not only for its historical and literary appeal, but for its arguments, which are as cogent as they were nearly two thousand years ago.

I don't read a lot of philosophy texts, but I read this one after my father died and was surprised to find it very meaningful and truly consoling.

The Consolation is a philosophical treatise written by Boethius (c. 480-524 A.D.) while awaiting his execution after being imprisoned by the Gothic emperor Theodoric. The first time I heard of Boethius and his most famous composition was, as so often is the case, when I was reading another work. The work in question is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole. The main character of O'Toole's novel, one Ignatius J. Reilly, had based his entire life and worldview around the philosophy of Boethius and his assessment of Fortune. A great work in its own right, A Confederacy of Dunces left a lasting impression in my mind and, when by chance I came across a copy of the Consolation in the used bookstore I jumped at the opportunity to see for myself what Boethius had to say.



The work is composed of five books beginning with Boethius struggling to make sense of his imprisonment and pending execution. Confronted with a fate that is seemingly at odds with the virtue and faith with which he has conducted his life, Boethius is about to succumb to the sorrow that is filling his thoughts. Just then he notices the presence of a woman in his cell, the awe-inspiring Philosophy. She bemoans that Boethius, once such an avid student of hers, is now about to abandon all that he had previously gained. Thus begins a journey of reason and contemplation between the two until Boethius in the end finds the consolation that he had almost given up upon. Interspersed between the dialogues of Boethius and Philosophy are a number of poems that range in subject matter and content. More numerous at the beginning of the work, the poems often times serve as transitions between arguments or help to put difficult concepts into a clearer light. Thus a remarkable harmony is reached between prose and poetry that can be appreciated even in an English translation, a rare feat indeed.



It is perhaps significant to understand the time in which Boethius lived a bit better to gain a more accurate reading of his work. Living long after Constantine's conversion to Christianity in the 4th century A.D., it is widely accepted that Boethius was a Christian and believer of the tenants of the Catholic Church (at a time when the Gothic emperor Theodoric, also a Christian but belonging like all Goths to the heretical Arian sect that believed that the father and son were not of one substance). One must find it a bit peculiar than that at no point in Boethius' text is Christianity mentioned in any overt context. To find a believer in his last days before death turning not to theology for comfort, as one might expect, but rather to philosophy has raised many questions about the nature of Boethius' belief. But one only has to look to the title of the work to see that Boethius is choosing philosophy for the subject of his work and could very well indeed have thought theology a better consolation, although one that would be and should be treated in an altogether separate treatise. With this in mind, Boethius draws on the works of the great philosophers and thinkers of antiquity; Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, St. Augustine, the Stoics, and the Neo-Platonists. This feat being all the more remarkable because Boethius apparently relied on his own memory to produce the arguments and passages seeing as he had no access to any literary sources while imprisoned.



Boethius has rightly been called the last classical man. Indeed his thoughts and works can be seen as forming a bridge etween the classical world and the Middle Ages. The Consolation influenced countless numbers of theologians throughout the Middle Ages and direct references are to be found in the works of masters such as Dante and Chaucer. His lonely contemplation of good and evil, fate and free will, fortune and the nature of happiness certainly still have an allure to inquisitive minds to this day.

Initially I borrowed this book from a friend and read it at bedtime. The short chapters are perfect for a quick read at bedtime, while waiting at the doctor, etc. Phillip Gulley is fabulous at taking the "normalcy" of life and applying Biblical principles to deepen the experience. His humor causes me to laugh out loud repeatedly. This is a fun and fresh way to look at the Eccelesiastes text. After devouring my friend's copy, I purchased this one to share with my dad. He is loving it as well!

Philip Gulley uses the words of Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season", as a springboard for essays on life. He happens to live in the small town of Danville, Indiana, where he grew up, so his stories have to do with the people and customs of his small town. Gulley is a Quaker pastor who holds to traditional values and the sovereignty of God, but this doesn't hinder his sly wit or wry observations on the absurdities of modern-day life. His choices of stories range from the addition of a screen door to his home under "A Time to Build" to a list of his prejudices and pet peeves under "A Time to Gather Stones Together". This is a good book to read a bit at a time as each chapter stands alone. It's also a good way to escape from stress and to get a laugh and a new perspective on life.

I was given a copy of this book by my sister, Mrs. Fruits, who is featured in the "a time to let go" chapter. I also have a signed copy. This is a wonderful book (along with Phil's others) to pick up when one needs a spiritual "pick me up". I have circulated these delightful books through the membership of my Episcopal church and have incorporated some of his stories into sermons. I am a Hoosier from Hendricks County who now lives in Washington State and it is often a nostalgic trip for me when I travel the roads and streets of Indiana in Phil's books. But anyone could benefit from these stories about every day people dealing with every day life.

This is an excellent book, as are all of Philip Gulley's. They are "feel good" books, and I enjoy them all. Although this particular book is not a story evolving around the local townspeople, as are many of his, it is still an inspiring read. I hope Mr. Gulley continues to crank out his particular type of humor/inspiration for years to come!

What a great book about the sweet simple side of life. It made me want to move to the author's small town and settle in with my family. I have enjoyed everything I have read so far by this author.

I chose this book for my leadership development program at work. I enjoyed reading it, and found that it sparked a lot of ideas for things I could do to improve my own workplace. This book is short, funny, and to the point.

In this book, the author uses a short story to tell readers how a gifted boss and a great employee together can create synergy. The story starts with the author asking for help from a wise mentor, Max. He and Max spend a weekend together in Arizona, visiting different companies and talking with each other.

According to the Max, a gifted boss creates a magnetic work environment to attract great employees. He/She emphasizes goals and standards over procedural how-to rules. What is hired is help, not just time and efforts, from employees. He/she also cares about the personal development of employees by placing them outside their comfort zones. As for firing employees, a gifted boss helps them find new jobs.

In the book, Max also sheds light on a great employee. A great employee does not have to be expensive to hire. He/she is looking for a change and a chance. This great person is naturally productive and wants to be trusted that work will be done without constant supervision. He/she usually has one or more skills that are superior to those of the boss. As a result, great help is given to the boss through checking on the boss's work. A great employee also understands customers. He/she is entrepreneurial and is confident enough to seek measurement of his/her work and wants to be paid accordingly. Such great employees have to be courted by gifted bosses for they seldom change jobs. Courting here means a gifted boss has to be a friend and look for a chance to open up for offering a job to this great employee. This may happen after many years after they have become friends.

The author really understands how to be a gifted boss and the nature of a great employee. The story-telling writing style of this book makes it interesting and different from that of other books in Business.

This book is a great one for those involved in business. It takes you on a journey that will certainly change your ordinary views about work, salary, and boss-employee relations. The Gifted Boss is for those who want to make a change and to elevate standards in the workplace: the best workplace for the best employees!

Very wise and up to date. I bought 2 for my store managers to read. This book identified some of my attitudes and policies even though I hadn't identified them myself--for example Nordstrom's employee review system. Thanks.

I haven't read the book, but the example cited in the publisher's review, that of John Kilcullen, former chief of IDG Books during the 1990s, makes me hesitate. The idea that Kilcullen, one of the most heartily despised bosses in the computer book publishing industry, would be cited as a "Gifted Boss" because of a neat trick in luring in a name author, is sad. Go ahead and read the book, but skip over the parts about Kilcullen, he's no examplar.

The product was great and Woody's book store communicated great through email about the purchase and ordering information. The only thing is the number of days that it took to ship was confusing; I thought it would get to me sooner, but what the number of days meant was when it would be shipped as opposed to it arriving to me.

This is a great book. Inspiring, entertaining, hilarious, and real. Mark doesn't pull any punches in this. It is not a self-pity book nor does it try to lecture the reader. It is a real account of someone who is very inspiring, yet doesn't pretend to be what he isn't.

Once I started reading this I couldn't put it down. Awesome!!!

Mark Zupan makes you think about what you have, not what you do not have.

He may be in a chair, but he is not handicap. Mark Zupan speak frankly and openly about his life before and after. He does not blame anyone for his injury.

Make you think you life is O.K. and despite what happens you can survive and go on.

Life is not so bad.

Sometimes, people who have been "handicapped" in some manner end up withdrawing into themselves. A few of them are downright miserable. Mad at the world for being stuck in the situation they're in... the best they can hope for (because they're depressing to be around) is to have people feel sorry for them.

Mark Zupan (who, hopefully, you know from the astoundingly-good, and deserved-to-win-the-Oscar documentary, MURDERBALL), is NOT one of those people. He doesn't WANT anyone to feel sorry for him. (In fact, he doesn't even want to be seen as a "role model," or an "inspiration," though [sorry Mark!], to a lot of people, he is.)

Mark was an athletic, fun-loving 18-year-old, having a blast in South Florida when everything he knew changed in an instant. Sleeping off a night of heavy partying in the back of his buddy Chris Igoe's parked pickup, he had no clue when his friend got in and (also drunk) drove off. Not too long thereafter, Igoe swerved off the road and Mark ended up flying out of the truck-bed, over a fence, and into some dense foliage overhanging a small lake. (Igoe had no idea Mark was in the truck bed, so when the police came, they never looked for him.)

Mark regained consciousness, only to find himself unable to move (he didn't know it yet, but he was paralyzed from the neck down), hanging upside-down from a branch with his nose just inches from the water... and getting closer by the moment. He hung there for 14 hours, before a workman heard him yelling for help.

And that's just the START of the story!

In the years that followed, he has not only become one of the star players of the sport known as Quad Rugby (a.k.a. Murderball), his attitude about his "situation" (whether he likes it or not!) has helped untold numbers of others* to better cope with their own situations.


* I know of what I speak. My young and lovely wife has been in a wheelchair for several years due to Multiple Sclerosis. After seeing the movie MURDERBALL --and *especially* after meeting Zupan at a tournament, her attitude went from "good" to fantastic. She's no longer "the girl in the wheelchair." She's simply my wife, who's fun to be around, and who's interested in doing the things she CAN do, rather than fretting about the things she can't.

-Jonathan Sabin

A fast paced, gritty look into an Athlete's brush with death and the long road to recovery. If you are looking for the next inspiration for a cheesy After School Special on overcoming adversity...don't read this book. If you are looking for a well written, insightful look into how one guy copes with tragedy and disability, then this is an excellent read. To say Gimp has texture is an understatement thanks to its subject, Mark Zupan, a quadriplegic athlete who was made famous by the documentary Murder Ball. Gimp details how this proud, perhaps arrogant athlete dealt with a tragic accident that cost him the full use of his limbs thanks to drunken night that resulted in a brush with death and a debilitating spinal cord injury.

Gimp does not spare us the details that are often left out of such stories including the uglier side of human emotion. The books subject faces Zupan's denial, doubt, guilt, fear, despair and loss as a result of his tragedy. While he ultimately comes to terms with his injury and recovery, it is not without some serious setbacks, some self inflicted. It is this part of writer Timothy Swanson's writing that really sets Gimp apart. He does not spare Zupan some hard looks into his darker nature to include arrogance, self indulgence and outright self destructiveness at times. If there is a villain in the book, it is Zupan himself and his own feelings of despair and anger. It is Swanson's description of Zupan's struggle with his own dark feelings and fears that give the story its power.

The book is not without its own sense of humor and offers a dark amusement that Zupan has for the hand life has dealt him. Gimp deftly shows Zupan's outlook on life which is headstrong and confident but not without his fair share of hidden frailty in the face of a near death experience. In fact, the description of the actual accident that describes Zupan clinging to life, literally perhaps, is the book's strongest section. I have many friends who suffer from war wounds, especially brain injuries from IED's or "danger close" air strikes and I can say from personal experience that Gimp does an excellent job at looking at how proud warriors (in Gimp's case a world class athlete), deal with injury and recovery. I recommend this book without reservation to certainly anyone who knows someone who suffers from a disability or who has seen the documentary Murder Ball. The book has broader appeal to fans of sports writing as well since the book leaves no doubt that Zupan is an athlete. The fact that it is an easy read and has a brisk pace is no small feat given that other works of this genre tend to drag on, lack direction and are often burdened with sappy and clichéd, touchy-feely housewife book club nonsense. Zupan's force of will as described by Swanson carries the book along as does the suspense of how he will cope with each stage of his recovery and his entrance into the world of quad rugby aka Murder Ball. I thought it was a great read and recommend it without reservation.

This is easily my favorite Classic work of literature. Unlike many of the other classics, such as the Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, and others, this book kept my attention the entire time and I couldn't wait to finish. Robert Graves does a tremendous job of translating it into an easily readable version.

book includes the original story of Cupid (Pysche). perfect gift for lovers possessing a sash of intelligence.

Apuleius' The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Composed in the second century, this picaresque work tells the tale of Lucius, a man whose curiosity in magic and indulgence of sexual pleasures leads him to accidently transform himself into an ass. What follows are the various trials and hardships he endures as well as the tales he hears throughout his travels. It is not until the intervention of the goddess Isis that Lucius is transformed back into a man, and he devotes the rest of his life to her cult.

Apuleius' storytelling is lively, witty, an often sexually explicit. Indeed, many forms of fetish are showcased within the pages, including beastiality. More often than not, the novel indulges readers in their guilty curiosities while also providing hilarious and adventurous prose, with a splash of red-streaked violence thrown in for good measure. However, despite being written nearly two-thousand years ago, what may shock the modern reader most is how approachable and familiar is not only the humor but also the sentiments and sensuality of these Roman characters. It is not difficult to imagine Lucius' world.

The Golden Ass offers readers a romp through ancient Rome through the eyes of a contemporary while also entertaining. It is also a highly revealing documentation of religion and magical belief in Greco-Roman polytheism, and contains the only complete description of the initiation into a Mystery cult. The true essence of the novel is that it is a fable culminating in the religious transformation of the individual and the embrace of salvation (soteria). However, the pagan salvation was not one of the afterlife, but of this life, and involved changing one's perspective of the world and also of life and death. The ass in the ancient world was seen as the most base of animals, an utter slave to its desires, and Lucius' transformation at the end should be read as symbolizing his overcoming of those passions.

The Golden Ass is bawdy and shocking, but also intelligent and satisfying. Graves' translation is fluid and easy to follow. The prose is as enjoyable (and perhaps rewarding) to read today as it no doubt was nearly two-millennia ago.

Everyone should read The Golden Ass, especially this translation. Just reading it can deepen a person. It's one of those books to be treasured and re-read every few years, finding new insights and humor. The Cupid and Psyche portion is rousing and sly and stands alone. I've given copies as gifts over the years and notice my friends still hang on to them long after.

This is certainly an entertaining reading experience and Robert Grave's translation makes this 1800 year old novel come to life for modern audiences. The book is full of stories within stories, a device that I found very entertaining and reminded me of the best works of A.S. Byatt. The story within a story approach allowed for multiple wild digressions of the most fantastic types. Stories of magic, murder, rape, incest, poison, bribery, theives, beastiality, orgies, homosexuality, and all other manner of hair-raising encounters populate the multiple stories within stories.

Yet there is certainly a strong central theme and storyline in the plight of poor Lucius, the attorney turned into a donkey. The world and humanity are seen anew through the eyes of an ass.

The book does take one major departure with the longer story of Cupid and Psyche, skillfully told. The book ends with another change of pace when Lucius devotes himself to the gods, especially the goddess Isis/Diana/Artemis, the White Goddess.

I think the book was excellent and would never have survived so many centuries if each age did not find the human condition to be much unchanged despite the wild and wooly tales encountered here.