School Time Books

Charles Dickens was a great writer. A simple statement, easily and often made, but its correctness is confirmed and enlarged with each story that I read.

He was so good at what he did, and was so well-loved in his time, and so often imitated, that he is easily dismissed or parodied. No matter, He writes physical comedy, social commentary, irony, and pathos with a sharp ear for vocabulary and conversation and an internal clock for pacing that is nearly infallible.

This tale focuses on Coketown, an early industrial city blighted by its creating industry, its owning tycoon, its proto-organizing workers, its ambitious MP, and his morally-bankrupt protégé. Hard Times is considered one of Dicken's strongest statements against the grinding poverty of the unrestrained industrial might of the time.

This is not Dickens at his best. No offence to the narrator, who does a good job but I think the story itself is rather boring. Especially when compared with his classics "Great Expectations", "A Christms Carol" and "A Tale of Two Cities".

I picked up this book at B&N because I had just read two Jane Austin novels and I thought this would be a light read. I was wrong. The beggining and the end had a purpose in the story but the middle could have been much, much shorter and the ending made a little longer.

I liked the character of Mr. Bounderby. He was very well developed. I would even say over-developed, but he was the only one. How did Sissy influence the youngest Gradgrind? Why didn't we know of Mrs. Bounderbys inner turmoil till she ran to her father? Every character had something missing. What happened to Mr. Bounderby once he was found out? Why is Sissy so special and what did she really do for the family?

It was a long book where nothing much happened until the last quarter and when it finally ended I felt cheated because it lacked a complete story line and full characters. The story line could have been forgiven if I was more satisfied with the characters.

Hard Times was written in 1854 by England's greatest novelist Charles
Dickens (1812-1870. It is the shortest of his novels. The novel was originally published as a weekly series in "Household Words" periodical edited by Dickens. The novel reads quickly telling a story that is still relevant in our own post-industrial 21st century Western Society.
The novel is set in fictional Coketown set in the English Midlands. The first scene is set in a classroom where children are being taught by rote
learning. Only FACTS yells Mr. Gradgrind who has raised his two children the feckless Tom and the more impressionable Louisa to eschew the emotions of art and the heart to stick strictly to practical learning.
Enter into the town Mr. Sleary's circus. Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is a young girl whose father is employed by Sleary to ride horses. He deserts Sissy who is adopted by the Gradgrind family. Sissy befriends the lonely lass Louisa. Louisa is forced into a loveless marriage with the bloviating humbug industrialist Josiah Bounderby. Bounderby has crafted a false story of a difficult childhood while disdaining the love of his mother who lives in the country.
We also met the tragic Stephen Blackpool a miner who is wed to an alocholic wife. Stephen is in love with the beautiful and kind Rachael. He will be framed for the robbery of Bounderby's bank which was really robbed by Tom Gradgrind.
The novel is divided into three parts covering several years. Many of the characters come to a bad end. The novel attacks industrialism, the state of British education and the necessity for entertainment in the lives of everyone.
All of Dickens fictions are worth reading. Hard Times is a good introduction to the second half of his career in which he moves to more serious themes. A Victorian classic which will be enjoyed by the discriminating reader.

Although not one of his more popular novels, Charles Dickens' Hard Times still stands as a classic among classics. Carrying on with his highly prolific writing style, this novel is a bit more bleak than his other renown works, but enjoyable from the start, especially with Dickens' excellent choice of character naming.
Suitable for most ages, this classic should not be passed up. And with the Norton annotations and notes, this edition will help readers understand better the context in which the author writes in.

This book is recommended for teens/young adults however I say this book is for the young and old. Great story line and you'll fall in love with the main characters. Enjoy.

ISBN 044022019x - This book is a little on the romance-y side for some, my teenaged self included. Fortunately, I'm no longer a teenager and found it entertaining.

Devonny's father is a wealthy man - and that might be the most positive thing that could be said about him. In 1898, men make the rules and the decisions and women follow, and Hiram Stratton has decided that his 16 year old daughter will marry Lord Winden before the world knows the family's shameful secret: Devonny's missing and presumed dead brother was insane. Insanity likely flows in Devonny's blood, so getting her married off is of some importance. Giving her father a titled grandchild, however, is of more importance.

Devonny, on the other hand, knows the type of man she'd like to marry - and Lord Winden is NOT that type of man. In fact, she tells him what she thinks he is: horse manure. Then she is forced to apologize when her father orders her to accept his proposal. She is in desperate need of rescuing...

Tod Lockwood, boy of the twentieth century, has no interest in rescuing anyone. First of all, his mother - a strong, capable woman - would be appalled at the thought of a female who needed rescuing. More than that, Tod has decided to get rich first, and fall in love later. If only Time weren't intent on mucking up his plans. While filling bottles at a public pump at Stratton Point, which Tod markets to tourists as "designer water", Tod is flung back in Time and brought face to face with Devonny, who begs him to save her.

The story itself is nice, if not fantastic. The greatest problem is that Cooney didn't make much of an effort at telling a stand-alone tale. Readers like myself who haven't read Both Sides of Time (Scholastic Classics) and Out of Time will find the vague and incomplete references to the happenings in those books annoying. One paragraph was all it would have taken to bring latecomers to the series into the loop, but Cooney failed to do that. The closest she comes is a recap that starts on page 167, by which time, my annoyance was pretty intense - too little, too late. I found it worth reading, but suggest others might find it better to read the series in order, or not at all.

I loved the first two books before this one and she seems to make it a filler book. Like the author needed to get this part of the story out of the way so she could write the rest. I see how meeting each other changed Devonny and Todd, but it really was sort of a waste because Devonny ends up marrying Lord Winden anyway, and Todd...well he does whatever. and where was there father in this book? because in the next and last book it says that their parents had gotten back together, so shouldnt they have been talking in this one?

Okay, so I really, really adored the otehr two books in this series, but a couple things in this particular book really annoyed me:
1.) The characters all seem to have split personalities, because their mood changes in the blink of an eye.
2.) Tod fell in lvoe with Devonny, who's brother Strat fell in love with Annie, Tod's sister. This absolutely SCREAMS incest. Eew.
3.) Um, hello? Isn't this series suposed to be more about Strat and Annie, the much more developed and inruiging characters of the story?

Otherwise, I'd say this book is pretty good. It'd just be better if it was independent instead of in a series, is all.

I have read the whole series by Ms. Cooney, but to me this one's the weakest of the four. The story of Anne and Strat was going good, and then she has to bring Devonney and Tod in to the scene. But I do believe that she had her reasons. During the period, women were suppressed by male, and Devonney was way ahead of her time. It did both Tod and Devonney good to learn about the past and present(or future) and realize their potential as a human. Although it was an odd-one-out from the Quatret, it was a good read.

I love the rather blunt, racy tone of this book. Hamel calls for all employees to be activists, to aggressively promote their own ideas for new products or services. The title of the book ''Leading the Revolution'' refers to the need for such activists to be at the forefront of driving innovation in business. For me this book is a nice complement to Good to Great by Jim Collins who talks about how CEOs need to grill their best people for new strategic ideas. Both authors recognize that the CEO can no longer generate all the ideas personally and hence that innovation needs to be bottom-up. Hamel's book would have been even better if he had developed a concept of leadership that showed how being an activist is showing bottom-up leadership and that our understanding of leadership in general needs to change accordingly. A must read however.

Exellently written and excellent information.The best thing about this book is that I didn't really need to read it at all!.But most people from CEO's to students do need to read it.I'm not sure that most people can learn from this book as it promotes a mind set you almost need to be born with,and that school,work and society generally try to crush out of you,as the author points out,yet the premise of this book is totally correct,innovation is the only competitive advantage left to leverage in the modern world,or soon will be.The authors writing style is engaging and motivating,it is no B.S.,no punches pulled,straight to the often humourous point.It is skillfully written to get a serious point across in a friendly way.Even though not stated directly,the thing needed in business as well as your personal life is empathy,to customers,employees,to your own coming obsolesence,to new idea's,and death to sentimentality for what worked in the past,thing's most people seem to lack,things the education system aims at crushing.This book attempts to prise open closed minds,it has all the right ingredients,but I can only wish the author good luck in suceeding in getting the message across to the majority.Judging by other reviews its not yet working,people still don't get it.The cynical side of me see's this book as a well crafted introduction to,and motivation to hire the authors consulting firm,but frankly most people will need more help than any book can offer.If you already get it,this book is well articulated and should help you see your own nature better,and give you the confidence to keep conflicting with others and refusing to comform,if you don't get it then this is a good introduction into an open mind and some empathy rather than mindless conformity to old mindless conformity ways of doing things.

With this book, the author brings out the new concept of "nonlinear innovation".
"In a nonlinear world, only nonlinear ideas will create new wealth", he writes. "Radical, nonlinear innovation is the only way to escape the ruthless hypercompetition that has been hammering down margins in industry after industry. Nonlinear innovation requires a company to escape the shackles of precedent and imagine entirely novel solutions to customer needs."
"Whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to stink," Hamel said. "The same goes for same with strategies. How many organization carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is too late?"
Change itself has changed, Hamel insisted - the pace of it is exponentially faster than it was in the Big Brands era. Motorola missed the shift to wireless technology by only a year, but in so doing lost a strategic war to Nokia.
This book is about 10 fundamental rules that can help companies reach new heights of growth and success:
1) Set unreasonable expectations
2) Stretch your business definition
3) Create a cause, not a business
4) Listen to new voices
5) Design an open market for ideas
6) Offer an open market for capital
7) Open up the market for talent
8) Lower the risks of experimentation
9) Make like a cell - divide and divide
10) Pay your innovators well - really well.
In this book, the author shows excellent awareness on the topic of innovative companies in last few decades. The book has many examples and case studies, which were later used by the other authors of leadership and management literature. For example, the case study "Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue", being the part of the book, and also separately published in HBR, was quoted in the books by Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz, Anand Sanwal and Gary Crittenden, Peter A. Gloor, Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler, Alain Fayolle, and Wesley B. Truitt, to name a few.
The design of the book is also excellent. It has lots of color photographs, and the layout of the book overall is very innovative.
I highly recommend this book, as well as the author's further publication "The Future of Management".

Some good ideas on driving innovation, but in hindsight, some of the cited companies haven't passed muster if one tracks their long term business performance. One of my favorite quotes from the book - "At Enron, failure - even of the type that ends up on the front page of The Wall Street Journal - doesn't necessarily sink a career". Yeah right! This kind of thinking puts one in jail.

The Internet, says Gary Hamel, has done more than provide another sales channel and communication tool, it has restructured the basic concepts of time and place that business has traditionally depended on. Only companies that continually restructure themselves, and are able to overcome closed-minded, entrenched attitudes will be able to survive and implement the radical innovations necessary to generate wealth in the future. He has outlined ten design rules for innovation:

1. Unreasonable expectations: The beliefs of the organization set the upper limit on how much innovation is possible for the company. Set goals that reflect a higher reach.
2. Elastic business definition: Do not let your company be bound to a narrow self-concept. Searching for unconditional opportunities will expand your opportunity horizon.
3. A cause, not a business: A business can draw strength and courage from allegiance to a transcendent purpose.
4. New voices: Revolutionary strategies must be found by listening to revolutionary voices. Seek input from the youth, the periphery and newcomers.
5. An open market for ideas: Create a dynamic internal market for ideas within the organization.
6. An open market for capital: Don't set hurdle rates for new projects when those projects promise to be innovative, sustainable and financially beneficial.
7. An open market for talent: If you give people the chance to do interesting, innovative work and solid compensation, they will join you and stay with you.
8. Low-risk experimentation: Know how to manage the consequences, if a risk doesn't work out.
9. Cellular division: Divide your company into a large number of revolutionary cells. When your company stops dividing and differentiating, innovation and growth slow.
10. Personal wealth accumulation: If you want an entrepreneurial spirit at your company, you must pay people like entrepreneurs. Offer stock options as incentives.

The book is (at best) a third rate utopian hack job, that maybe has some interest for those who have a special interest in utopian lit.

I enjoyed reading "Looking Backward." It speaks much about the problems facing America near the turn of the century; the problems that affected almost everyone in America every day. The problems of greedy monopolists is the most evident, but also others. The book is not as much as a story as it is the author laying out his groundwork for a perfect society with a story sort of, but not really, built around it. There is sort of a romace, but almost the entire book is characters telling the protagonist what the future is like. I do find it funny though. Back in the 19th century, authors GREATLY underestimated the technological progress of mankind. Just decades later, it was the opposite- and authors were greatly overestimating it.

... and yes the rosebush of man was indeed transplanted into that fantastic utopia delineated by Bellamy, and that land was called Russia, where the rosebush of the bog, which had lived since the beginning of time, was thenceforth dead in a space of less than 75 years.

Of all the pictures fun to imagine for the student of socialisms and utopias, American and otherwise, is to visualize a young Aldous Huxley or George Orwell sitting down near their respective public school fire places, during a cold and clammy English afternoon, and reading Looking Backwards. It is very easy for the reader to see Huxley and Orwell, if they did in fact read Bellamy's rather quaint vision of utopia, reflecting to them selves as they wrote their dystopic masterpieces, A Brave New World and 1984, respectively, "Alright. But what if...?"

Just like Huxley's and Orwell's works, Edward Bellamy is reacting to the horrors of his age. Violent confrontations between labor and capital in every corner of the United States were all the rage, and strikes before the age of enforced collective bargaining or binding arbitration were no joke. Imperialist wars in every corner of the world were threatening a world wide war--seemingly every other year. There were rumblings of an international socialist movement that was yearly gaining strength in Europe in spite of serious legal restrictions--while Bellamy was in University in Germany, he would have had a difficult time avoiding knowledge of the imprisonment of SPD leaders August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht as well as the banning of the Party by von Bismarck's government. What most likely struck the most horror into Bellamy, though, was the absolute wretchedness of the slums that so many Americans were trying to survive in, and the inability of anyone to even try to create a way out of it that can not in some way be traced back to self-interest, greed or outright violence.

Looking Backward is an attempt to imagine a world where poverty and ignorance are abolished in the sentimental tradition of Charles Dickens--hero of Bellamy and the novel's protagonist Julian West--coupled with a truly novel bureaucratic technocracy. It was at least in part the influence of Bellamy's idealism that Leon Trotsky found most loathsome in American socialism, whether he knew it or not, when he unforgettably called the New York Socialist Party leader, Morris Hillquit "the ideal Socialist leader for successful dentists." Marx would likely have written off Bellamy using the language that Julian West uses to describe the Mesmerist, Dr. Pillsbury, who puts him into a one hundred thirteen year catatonic--a mere quack. What both Trotsky and Marx would have grudgingly realized on reading this book is that Bellamy was one of the few people in America in 1887--aside from a handful of socialists, anarchists, and union-syndicalists--who was openly hoping for a day when human beings would leave the realm of necessity and enter the realm of freedom.

The world which Julian West enters at the close of the twentieth century, when entreated by Dr. Leete to rouse him self, is a radically altered one. As Rip Van Winkle woke up in the Catskills to find that he no longer owed his allegiance to a King and at first finds that this is a truly bewildering situation, West finds a world even more bewildering to a Boston Brahmin. Complete and total state ownership of all means of production had been achieved during his long sleep, but even more shocking was that the United States was no longer a country suffering from any social ills. Cooperation reigned in the place of the pecuniary interests of individuals. The mentality of dog eat dog, which bred both ridiculous ostentation and indefensible poverty, had simply vanished leaving in its place a world of light labor, high culture, and nearly universal contentment. The state is run by disinterested pensioners--yes, Bellamy believes such a political animal would exist--in such a way as to ensure that the profit motive does not exist, and all that men, and women, truly compete for is glory. All work to the benefit of this cooperative commonwealth to the best of their ability and equality in the most literal terms. This is not Julian West's Boston.

What becomes apparent to the reader traveling with Julian in this new world is that in many ways Julian has not left the close of the nineteenth century. Boston at the close of the twentieth century, in spite of the technological revolutions and complete reordering of the state and economy, is very much the same for Julian West. He enjoys the highest of high culture through the intricate wall card telephone system of his acoustically treated room; drinks fine wine and smokes great cigars; at communal kitchens all eat cuisine that only the leisured rich could have afforded a century before. The blessings of civilization are enjoyed by all alike to the point that where, affectively, all have become members of a universally leisured single class. The impoverished and the working classes of America, seemingly, had nothing to lose but their poverty, ignorance, and despair. The truly leisured class had, seemingly, only their haughtiness and arrogance to lose. This is where some of my troubles with Edward Bellamy begin, and where some of his own prejudices become apparent.

Bellamy identifies the world in his Boston as having been broken down into truly distinct peoples. As he puts it at the opening of his work, America was organized upon "the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant." The ignorance and poverty that so horrified Bellamy was not the only thing about the poor that seems to have been truly their own seems to have died with them.

In a truly disturbing way, any notion of how Boston, and America, changed between 1850 and 1887, escapes Bellamy's consciousness. The "labor question" has been solved through nationalization and making all people work, in one capacity or other, if they want to have anything other than bread, water and a prison cell. What have happened to the Babel of ethnics, the massive networks of parochial organizations, ethnic clubs and sport organizations that were the wellsprings of life for so many Irish and Irish Americans? There is no evidence in the improved Boston of the late twentieth century of anything other type of respectability than Bourgeoisie Protestant respectability. The people of this appallingly genteel world may very have only the variety of one of their singular stores, which have absolutely no variety in products. The twenty-first century reader is left with the truly weird possibility that Julian West and Dr. Leete, after having exhausted the topic of how much better the present is than the past, will have nothing left to talk about but yachting and literature--what with conflict being abolished.

The transplanting of Victorian notions of how the world should be run is nowhere more apparent, and more disturbing for its implications, than when West and Leete speak about what portions of the world are organized on the system that America is organized upon. As Dr. Leete explains to West how international relations work in this era, he states:

"[T]he great nations of Europe as well as Australia, Mexico and parts of South America, are now organized industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse commerce of the members of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions."

The white man's burden and civilizing mission does not go the way of the self-interest in idyllic Boston of the future, and an idealist as deeply committed to social justice as Bellamy could not conceive, even in fiction, of any group outside of the boundaries of western society having achieved the level of sophistication that they could live in a classless society. One has to wonder what the old Confederate states would finally have looked like, and whether old rebels and unionists shook hands across a bloody chasm while educating American blacks up to civilization. Whatever, Bellamy thinks about race in America, and how West would have thought about it--the only black we see in this book is the faithful body servant of West in the nineteenth century, one Sawyer, and nothing of consequence comes out of his mouth--we can easily surmise that his utopia was close to being for whites only.

Though Bellamy's idealism reads as totally genuine, Looking Backward has some very vital imagination lacking in it. Bellamy has his cooperative commonwealth based upon the principle that all work which serves the common good is equally important, but Bellamy finds it necessary to have West paling around with Leete, a retired physician. In a world where leisure and not labor is the rule, and where the masses are washed and wholly civilized by the exacting standards of an upper class education lasting until at least the twenty-first year, why was it necessary to have Leete be a someone that would be a portrait bourgeoisie respectability? The laboring intellectual, of astute and subtle brilliance with the gnarled hands of a quarter century of hard labor, is the glorious possibility of this world which Bellamy creates for the reader but never actually realizes. Though slightly saddening, this fact probably made the book more readable to the members of America's upper class, and possibly even more plausible to them.

From the vantage of the twenty-first century, Bellamy has an ability to appear hopelessly ridiculous. He could not have known how collectivism would lead to mass murder on a colossal scale in Europe and Asia in the Twentieth century--though he would not have been surprised how much of it was done by men and women who looked on the red flag as their own. Nor could he have foreseen how the "backwards races" of the world would struggle for their own freedom in the second half the twentieth century, and have several become great powers in their own right by its close. Radio, motion pictures, television, digitized recording devices, the internet, air travel and the hydrogen bomb attached to an intercontinental ballistic missile probably never entered his imagination. He should not, though, be faulted for this. His future was one infinitely brighter than the one the world suffered through, as the nations of the world gorged themselves on the most murderous wars and massacres in mankind's history. For all the novels faults and short comings, it is a profound piece of republican idealism, premised on the very American belief that people coming together can actually change lives.

Julian West is put to sleep by a mesmerizer (a quack) in 1887 and wakes up again in the year 2000. He encounters a Dr. Leete who explains to him in great detail how the world has changed - mainly how it has been transformed into a magnificent socialistic Utopia where everyone is the same. There is no war, no competition, and everyone lives in peace and harmony. Bellamy was a true believer in Marx and his theories and he wrote this book as a pleasing presentation of Socialism and, to him, its saving graces. When the government controlled everything and everyone, he believed everyone would be treated the same and there would be no class/economic differences and struggles. It's kind of laughable, in a way, because it depicts people in a way that seems contrary to human behavior. Bellamy also didn't have the benefit of the 20th century and the horrors inflicted by Stalin, Mao and others in the name of Marx to temper his overly optimistic views. It's a classic, though, of Utopian literature; one might even imagine it the last of its kind, but Utopia will always beckon a fevered imagination that sees great unhappiness in the world.

Useful introduction to eBay. Covers topics such as listing your auctions, length of time to run an auction, where to find items to auction, and other assorted topics related to selling on eBay.

This is a pitiful attempt at writing a book. Tons of mistakes and a 2 year old could have written it. (i.e. online buyers are most willing to psend under $50.00 for a product). Doesn't he even have a spell checker? He lists a bunch of websites at the end to visit, but most the links don't even work.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!! (Luckily I just got it at the library)

I found this book to be informative. It breaks down the basics for new eBay sellers. If you are looking to sell on eBay you should consider the Truth about eBay. While the ideas are not new, they are presented in a clear fashion which makes them understandable.

Donny Lowy owns a wholesale company I purhased merchandise from him. What he said I was getting and what I received which was useless was a major chasm. You have to pay by check so you can't chargeback, pictures on his site are only used for representation purposes.

This is the first book I've read where there are actual mistakes in it. References to items that are not in the book. Stay away from his books and especially his company.

This is a pretty good starter book for eBay. It takes a nice direct approach to buying and selling on eBay. Enjoyed it.

Reading the reviews of Canby and Maslin never gets old. Crowther is another story, but even then, he consistently points out something that makes you think about a particular film in a new way. For movie lovers, this is a great resource.

There have been stretches of time in which I was almost oblivious to movies and recently I decided to repair my cultural lacunas. I signed up with Netflix, moved a recliner to the living room and stocked up on Diet Coke. Now, what to list on my queue? Most of those movie books have such abbreviated descriptions... If I'm going to wile away a couple hours, I need to be convinced it's time well spent. I spotted the updated and revised (through 2002) best 1000 movies according to the Times, and noticing the inclusion of a couple obscure favorites, bought the book. The movies are in alphabetical order with the personnel listed first and the date of the review at the end of the narrative. Twenty-nine critics lend their views about films going back to 1931. Hollywood productions dominate, though there is a good smattering of independents and foreign works.

The reviews stand as they were written on opening night, without further comment- a very New York Times thing to do. Many of the reviews hold up as well as their subjects- "Casablanca", "On the Waterfront" and "Star Wars" were appreciated from the get go. However, many glossy Oscar winners are excluded: "Dances with Wolves", "Titanic" and "American Beauty" are absent. "As Good as It Gets" is not good enough, but "About Schmidt" is about as good a review as Nicholson can get- it's included. Is there a Merchant-Ivory film that was somehow overlooked? Highly unlikely.

In the back of this compendium, the Times lists its 10 Best for each year. Quite a few of these movies do not have their review among the currently favored 1000, though their fall is not explained. Of course, the most striking contradiction is to find a movie that was condemned as irretrievable trash on release, only to have wormed its way up from the flotsam. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is such a movie. R.A.'s review from 1968 will crack you up.

I'm sure everybody will have a few favorites that didn't make the cut. How could a movie as hilarious as "A Fish Called Wanda" not be included? Kasdan's poignant "Grand Canyon" was somehow overlooked. Yet, a few great but obscure productions are recognized. The marvelous documentary "Brother's Keeper" is included.

In the preface, A.O. Scott comments on the vagaries of cinematic appreciation. Most of us are more influenced by trends and buzz than we realize. And, if you are overdosed on a particular genre, the best of its kind may pass without notice. Still, I wish a current summation about the great classic movies had been included, even if it meant the Times had changed its mind. In conclusion, I'm still using my Guide, though if it persuades me to rent a movie, I'm not apt to admit it.

A notoriously contentious activity, this book is sure to start a few arguments. Picking 1,000 movies to label "best ever made" is not easy and will create some surprise at omissions and inclusions. For instance, the inclusion of "Face/Off" - which initiated my Nicholas Cage veto - and the omission of Princess Bride, is indefensible. It is a parochial list also with Hollywood movies reigning supreme. However, I love the use of contemporary reviews for each movie. Reading Frank S. Nugent's response to opening night at The Wizard of Oz in 1939 is magical and gives the movie fan a nostalgic experience. You may guffaw at some of the preposterous choices and wish for a more current update (1999 version) but you will enjoy these critical reviews of your favourite movies.

You've got to hand it to the New York Times film critics. For one thing, they have the absolute best NAMES of anyone in the cine/crit biz. Can you ask for better monikers than Vincent Canby, Bosley Crowther, Hilton Kramer or(my favorite) Mordaunt Hall? More recent critics like Janet Maslin, Stephen Holden or A.O. Scott (not included here, he's so new) may not have such professorial sounding handles, but they more than make up for said lack in their actual writing, which in all their cases generally reflects a critical sensibility which is both casual and scholarly. They likely benefit from the increased seriousness with which the artform itself has been taken over the past century and from simply having a sense of film history that their critical forebears could not have possessed. (They know that the movies are NOT some passing fancy that in time may go.) And stylistically, they tend to be leaner, meaner and much less flowery than,say, the aforementioned Mr. Hall.

But times do change, and critical writing styles along with them. What makes this book so fascinating is that its editors have seen fit to re-print the original reviews, unedited and unannotated (although editor Peter M. Nichols notes in his preface, that almost every film's "cast box" has been expanded and terminology, in some instances, changed). If the reader, takes in Mr. Nichol's preface and/or Janet Maslin's introduction, he or she won't be surprised to learn that many of the actual reviews included in this volume are indifferent or downright negative. Browsers casually thumbing through this reference work on the "thousand best movies," however, are likely to be a bit more puzzled to find one negative review after another.

It happened to me, I opened the alphabetically arranged volume to the "D's" and immediately found a fairly negative critique of DIVA and a fairly lukewarm one of DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. That's when I opted to read the introductory remarks, but even then it wasn't quite clear just how these 1,000 best were picked or just who did the picking.

Yes, aside from the actual reviews, there are Top Ten Lists for the years 1931-1998 (the volume itself was published in '99 and is thus about due for an update), but these don't necessarily correspond to the selections either. For instance, the 1967 John Boorman film POINT BLANK gets a so-so review from Mr. Crowther, and is not included in the list of the year's best (suggesting that his colleagues were similarly unmoved by the film). So who decided, in the interim, that it really IS a gem (rough and uncut though it may be)? Editor Nichols? Janet Maslin? General critical consensus (which seems doubtful in this case).

Nichols explains in the preface that we can expect such turnabouts "for films that have risen in common estimation..." since their initial reviews were published. That's certainly true in the cases of BONNIE AND CLYDE, CHINATOWN and GRAND ILLUSION (to cite his own examples), but again I ask you, how to account for the inclusion of POINT BLANK?? Or--to go from a Lee Marvin vehicle to a Lee Remick starrer--why is even a good, solid drama like the above mentioned DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES included? That film is something of a sentimental favorite of mine, since I was 13 when I first saw it and felt very grown up indeed to be able to "understand" this obviously adult drama. But objectively speaking, can one really include this relatively modest revision of a TV drama on a list of the all-time greats of CINEMATIC history.

Well, not to worry. In the last analysis, one man's canon is another man's fodder, so it's probably best to not fret too much what's included or not included on this or any "best of" volume. What you get, if you're lucky, are some good tips on things you might otherwise have missed. Taken in that spirit, the NYT guide joins many others in aiding movie lovers of all stripes to make some intelligent selections. In this case, you just have to keep in mind that the significant factor is not the actual review but the fact that someone somewhere along the line ultimately saw fit to include the movie in this esteemed reference guide of record.

As far as the actual 1,000 best films ever made. You could argue about that until the cows come home...from the movies.

I won't say this is an indispensible book. Swap one film reference book for another and you're likely to learn about films and directors you otherwise wouldn't. The operative word there was likely. I've had Ebert books, Pauline Kael books, VideoHound's books, Entertainment Weekly references, etc. They are all good, but the critics works especially.
As opposed to getting a shortened synopsis and rating system, you can get a critical eye, with contextual perspective and a detailed analysis. The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made offers that. And not from one voice but from over a dozen NYT critics over the decades.
I don't abide by those who call this dated. It was published when it was, and though there may be updated editions, this is still a fantastic book to have. After all the majority of films made were in the 20th century, and the influence those films and filmmakers have resonates now. Including the archived reviews, which feature the NYT tradition of refering to people as Mr., Mrs., Ms. etc., each films leading castmembers, their characters, the lead production credits and film lengths are given. Plus a year-by-year list of the paper's Top 10 films, and an index of the films featured categorized by genre and country of origin.
Oddly enough though is that there are reviews in this that are negative and sometimes scathing. Perhaps this is because the films were appreciated by other Times critics, enough to place them on the Top 10, or the films themselves have proven better than initially thought. Neither Bonnie & Clyde or Chinatown made the Top 10 list.
But this is a trifle, and enforces the critical need that films, as art & commerce require.
If you are a devoted film lover as I am, this book is a terrific member of any collection.

The only reason I finished this book was because I had to review it. The writing is horrible. I have no idea how this book was ever published.

Mabinogion myth meets the 'modern' day in this tale of recurring rivalry in a Welsh valley. Three young adults start out as friends until a curse of love and revenge from unknown eons ago descend upon them. Time and time again, century after century, one man kills the other for the affection of the woman. Will it be the same pattern for Alison, Roger and Gwyn?

I must admit to reading the Owl Service twice, as I could not fathom it the first time. Welsh legend combined with language from four decades ago left me frequently perplexed. Take the title, for one. I thought it was about owls delivering messages. My fellow philistines, it pertains to a complete dining set decorated with stylized floral owls. (With this tip, this review is already helpful!)

The atmosphere of the book is heavy, brooding, eerie and leads you to expect, like the Welsh villagers, that something is coming down from the mountains. Alan Garner weaves magic that you suddenly realize you are at the center of a storm. Let this story blow you away.

I agree with the reviewer who said this book needed a few more chapters. I really enjoyed it and it kept me intrigued all the way through but at the end I felt 'was that it?' - I felt I must have missed something and reread the entire book through again. Sure I did pick up a lot of subtext that I missed first time but I still was not satisfied with how it turned out. The themes of class and sexual envy were interesting but perhaps not entirely suitable for a children's novel - albeit one for big teenagers - and the relationship between the three main characters is a little ambigious. I like the way the class differences between the characters intensify as the novel progresses though you're quite sure how far this is the result of finding the dinner plates, or how far it reflects the characters real natures.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story is how it uses old welsh myths as a background - it interested me enough to start looking up some of this stuff on the web - amazing I wasn't aware of its existence before.

I think all in all its more a book for adults than kids - though I was a fairly precocious reader I don't think I would have made much of this when I was a teenager. A better choice for kids would be 'The Dark is Rising' series by Susan Cooper which explores very similar themes.

Reading Alan Garner is not a spectator sport. You have to participate quite energetically: be alert to pick up on all the clues. He doesn't do explaining. That's why some readers have been left feeling bewildered.

With that in mind, let me set the scene for The Owl Service, especially for American readers who don't have some of the background needed to pick up on the small hints he drops in the turn of a phrase. All this is established in the early chapters, but not spelt out.

The central figure is the young teenager Alison. Her father died and her mother remarried. Clive Bradley is a well-meaning but emotionally clueless man, though of course he is aware of the typical issues of stepfatherhood. He has his own son, Roger, about Alison's age. So they are an upper-middle class English family on holiday (vacation) in a house that Alison's mother (or strictly speaking, Alison) owns in a deep isolated valley in Wales and where they have a local Welsh woman, Nancy, who works for them as cook and housekeeper. Nancy has a son, Gwyn, about the same age as the others...and attracted to Alison. Then there is Huw Halfbacon who is - or appears to be - a slow-witted garden servant (why do all the villagers address him with a title of great respect?)

Now already you have three tensions established: first, the UK class thing of the householder and the servant, with differing levels of money, speech, and education. Nancy is conflicted about her "Welshness" and wants Gwyn to get out of it: she actually prefers to be in the English world, where she says "I know my place" lowly though that place is. Although she has sent Gwyn to the best local school, she doesn't like that they teach him Welsh language and history.

This leads to the next tension: the Welsh/English thing, with all its past memories of the Celtic resentment of the down-to-earth, practical, invading "English" who pushed the dreamy, poetic, magic-believing Celtic nations, with their Gaelic languages, to the western fringe of Britain, and from the 5th century onwards often treated them as tiresome eccentrics.

And finally, do I need to stress the tension of having two teenage boys and one girl. This is what brings to life the ancient curse of repetition that hangs over this remote Welsh valley, known and understood by the locals talking Welsh amongst each other in the shops: the ineluctable repetition of an ancient drama of magic, jealousy and murder.

OK. Now let's develop the characters a bit. Clive, the stepfather, is a "rough diamond." He's made a lot of money and has no patience with nuance. Wants money to resolve everything. His first wife left him - they don't talk about that, especially the son Roger. Alison's mother was criticized for remarrying so soon and possibly for money.

Nancy the cook grew up in the valley but left it following a tragedy and spent most of her life in the nearby town, Aberystwyth. Now she has returned, full of a sort of inverse snobbery and tremendous conflicts about the Welsh v. English thing. I won't go into detail on the revelations about her previous links with the house and indeed with Alison's mother Margaret, a shadowy background figure we never really see. [SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT - It turns out that Nancy's story was yet another previous re-enactment of the ancient cycle of doom...]

She is wedded to the old concepts of immutable class: the noble born and the humble are fine in their respective stations, but she despises the nouveau-riche like Clive Bradley.

Gwyn is a tremendously sympathetic character: mocked for his "country bumpkin" nature by the bigoted English, yet in fact full of ideals and dreams beyond them and in fact well-educated from the grammar school. Has a really, really bad relationship with his mother. Incidentally, again for American readers, Brits understand immediately why Nancy is "me Mam" and Alison's mother is "Mummy" and what that means in class terms.

Every time the centuries-old trapped elemental force of the unhappy Blodeuwedd, the woman made by the wizard out of flowers, finds a modern emotional situation that resembles the one of her ancient tragedy, it manifests itself through the girl of today. It can come either as a terrifying predatory presence that has the nature of a huge fierce owl, or many owls, and will go "hunting," or as a blessing of sweetness and light, with wildflower fragrances, representing the original nature of Blodeuwedd. You will have to see what happens in this wondrous book.

A few quick translations of things I suspect aren't American usage:
If someone is conning you with a tall tale, he's said to be "pulling your leg." If you suspect this, you can tell him "Pull the other one, it's got bells on" - (so more rewarding than this one.)
Packet of fags - cigarettes.
Petrol - gas
Torch - flashlight
Anorak - windbreaker
Ping-pong - table tennis
Snooker - table ball game like pool
The ab-dabs - feeling spooked
Pebble-dash - a rough stucco-type wall finish with tiny stones embedded in it
Flitch - a half-side of bacon. See the part where Huw Halfbacon explains his name.

I agree with previous reviewers that this book will likely be lost on young children, and likewise on adults and young adults who like their books obvious and don't want to invest the time in re-reading. Alan Garner is the writer's writer. His work invites and rewards study.

For me, this is one of the best books I've ever read, and it's had a profound influence on me as an author. Garner takes ideas and compresses them so tightly, the book reads like poetry. There isn't a single wasted word here; there's no "filler", no unnecessary stage directions. The dialogue is outstanding. Unfortunately, this results in a reading experience that's confusing the first time around. The second time through, things become clearer. What's amazing about this book is that I've read it about a dozen times, and every time I read it, I discover something new, hidden in the text.

There are moments in the book that have haunted me for years: the moment when Gwyn goes up into the attic and picks up the plate, and everything changes. The scene where Roger and his father look through the photos Roger took on the riverbank is one of the eeriest things I've read.

What I found really interesting is that recently I picked up a copy of Ysabel by Guy Kay (a best-selling author in his own right), which also features a love triangle lived out in the modern day, and what struck me was that Garner's economy with words and his technical ability to convey feelings and atmosphere is vastly superior to Kay's. Kay hits you over the head with *how important everything is*. Garner lets the events speak for themselves.

The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars was because of the ending. I agree with other reviewers that this was the weakest part of the book for me. I always feel with Garner's books that they must be missing a page or two from the very end, and I wish he'd left them in.

In the sequel to Summer of My German Soldier, Patty Bergen journeys (against her parents' wishes--what else is new?) to Europe with the intention of visiting the family of Anton, whom she sheltered during WWII. In Europe, Patty encounters various people, particularly romantic encounters. She must grow away from her dependence on men like her abusive and controlling father, away from her need and desire for a mother, through her stomach issues, and into her own. Unfortunately, the story is slow and uninteresting. Although thoroughly introspective, Patty really doesn't have anything new to say. Things that were appropriate for a teenager seem winy for an adult. The sequel lacks the complexities, personal and interpersonal, and the dramatic excitement of the first novel. Grade: C+

I, too, read this after 'Summer of My German Soldier'. Actually, this is not a bad book, but is a disoppointment after the first, gorgeous novel. The heroine goes to France, and decides to seek the family of Anton. However, she meets someone else. This is a realistic book, and anyone would probably done the same things as the heroine does.

I really liked this book, and I found it intresting to see what happened to Patty after the events in "Summer of my German Solider". It was exactly the opposite of what I had thought about when I read "Summer of my German Soldier". The characters were more grown up, and had to deal with different issues than in "Summer of my German Solider". If you liked "Summer of My German Soldier" you will like "Morning is a long time coming" also.

I know many people on here thought they'd read this book and it would be just as good if not better, than the prequel. Exepct that NOT to happen to anything. BUT I thought this book was very good. We see Patty moving on with her life, trying to the past where it belongs, and finally turn into a beautiful lady. She becomes more brave with her oppinions, more confidant...the time she spends in Paris is realistic, because she ran out of money, and she liked it there. So she did wot any other girl would've done. Stayed for the cute guy. Who hasn't? She finds out more about who she is as a person. She finds love with Roger, and it's very romantic. When she goes to germany, I feel she didn't speak to the father because she figured she didn't need to anymore. Why bring up the past with a stranger? She found her closure or didn't need it. I love this book for being realistic and true to human emotion and reactions. There's no huge drammatic make-up scene between her and Roger. Just natural.

This is not a story about her finding closure of Anton's death, this is a story about Patty growing up and changing into the better person she needs to be. This is also not Patty's Autobiography where you read every single detail of her non-exsistant life. And if these things are all you see, then you've completly missed the point of the story.

(I know this review is long, but it should be READ)

This book was very dissapointing. I LOVED "Summer of my German Soldier" and couln't wait to read the sequal. But once it was over I felt the book was very structured. If you have read this book and was dissapointed you can probobly relate.Even though the detailed emotions were good. The book only mentioned Anton a few times, plus Patty liked lost the gold ring because she didnt wear it or even mention it. Almost everything Anotn had taught her was gone. The she meets Roger in Paris and almost half the book takes place there. But in my opinion Roger is a JERK and Patty is so desperate for love and to selfish and proud to take Ruth's so she goes for the first good looking thing that comes along. There is also only 1 chapter on Anton's family and Patty only spends about 10 minutes there. This book was a big let down compared to how great SUMMER OF MY GERMAN SOLDIER was! Plus it did not answer many of the unanswerd questions that the pre-qual left behind!! I was not pleased with this book. It was complicated,and rushed.

Story Time is about Kate and her genius uncle George going off to a school that is like a cross between military school and horror movie. First only the test every day and the protein shakes seem to be a problem at the school, but later Kate and George see that the principal has been try to cover something up. That something is a demon that takes over people through books. The plot of lies and the demon glues you to the book, but with a few people dead, several posesed and a very bloody tramatic ending I would not advise this book to anyone under 8
[...]

THIS WAS THE MMOST BORING BOOK THAT I HAVE EVER READ. I WOULD NOT RECCOMEND THIS TO ANYBODY.IT IS CONFUSING AND DID I MENTION BORRING.


P.S. MS.D PLEASE DON'T TAKE OFF MY GRADE SPELLING ERRORS

SIGN_
THE BOY WHO DIDN'T LIKE STORY TIME

Story Time is about two kids named George and Kate. George is a genius and Kate ... well isn't. One day George an Kate get invited to the Whittaker Magnet School which boasts the highest test scores in the U.S. The school is a dreary place where kids take tests all day long and never have any fun. The school turns out to have a terrible secret of demonds and murder. George and Kate must end the demond's murdurous ways and at the same time bring the school to justice.

luv-
Sam

P.S. This is my second book review because I didn't like the first one and realized I needed a better grade in Ms.D's class

P.S.S Hi Ms.D!!!! and Gabe

Bloor creates a satirical world where gifted children are invited to attend Whittaker Magnet School, created by the local County Commission which has developed a Leave No High-Scoring Child Behind Program. All the children do is focus on a Test-Based Curriculum. Creativity and personal connections are crushed. Standardization, routine, scripted lesson plans, and memorization become the norm. Sound familiar?!?!

It should! Because these days, public school children spend about eight percent of their time taking standardized tests, and your child's teacher probably is required to perform a highly proscribed lesson plan most of the time.

However, most of this wonderful satirical story could have been written as a longer short story, or a novelette, as there is a great deal of extra material here that's not very interesting or relevant, and makes the whole thing drag on (hence, only two stars).

"Story Time" is a creepy, quite amusing, horror children's story. Those are a lot of descriptions, right? Well, "Story Time" is a lot of things. It's a mockery of the education system, a frightening horror story, a fun romp through the park, and an amusing read, all in one.

For readers coming from "Tangerine" and "Crusader", it may be a bit difficult to digest. "Story Time" is not quite as good as those other books, but it's not bad either. Instead of the strong character and structure that his previous books gave us, Bloor now gives us a dark, humorous book that deals with something completely different.

Moments of "Story Time" are disturbing. The deaths have little impact, though, and that's why it's not quite so difficult to absorb the first time around. Then again, when rereading, one realizes just how many creepy, frightening moments there are.

The humor, though, is quite worth it. The mind-numbing aspects of the school and their obsession with top scores on standardized tests just made me laugh aloud. It's an accurate mocking of some systems that teach purely around the "fill in the bubble" system. Can anybody truly learn from that? No, and enjoy laughs while reading those parts.

The characters are interesting, the plot fun. Overall, it's an enjoyable book, even if a bit creepy, and I liked reading it quite a bit. No, it's not a masterpiece of fiction, and no, I don't love it as I do Bloor's other works, but for someone looking to laugh at school systems or just sit down with a fat, slightly creepy book one afternoon, here's something to read.

I loved Ammie, Come Home and Shattered Silk, two previous Michaels novels with some of the same characters, but this one, though it had some good moments, is nowhere near as well-written. As others have noted, familiar characters have changed for no apparent reason. Instead of a coherent ghost story or mystery, Michaels seems to have dumped the entire contents of "The Golden Bough" and other works on folklore and magic into the book--and it's way too long. Worse still, after all that buildup we still don't get a very good payoff in spite of a couple of neat twists at the end.

A relatively feeble outing for Ms. Michaels.

Since I loved Ammie, Come Home and Shattered Silk when I was younger, I bought those two and this 'sequel' for my Kindle. I vaguely remember reading this one when I was younger, but I couldn't even finish it this time. First of all, who WERE these characters? Secondly, Why was Karen's name changed to Kara ? (That annoyed me more than her complete turnaround regarding her characterisation - she turned into the people she seemed to loathe!). Seriously, the name change of the character bugged me so badly I had to put the book aside. It just made me nuts. Normally, I'm a huge Barbara Michaels fan, and I really really wanted to love this book too. Alas, not meant to be.

I have been a big fan of Barbara Michaels for years now, and I always snap up her books whenever I come across them. Sadly, I hate to admit that this was not one of her better books. Granted, I enjoyed reading it - and I did read it from beginning to end; however, this one wasn't as believable as many of her other books. Yes, I realize that this book, like most of her books, deals with the supernatural and as such, the reader must suspend disbelief somewhat. However, the characters in this book were all far too quick to accept what was going on. What normal person says (esentially), "Oh, you're trying to kill me. You must be possessed."?? The bulk of Michaels' characters in her other works take some convincing before they agree that they are indeed confronting the supernatural... that's what makes those tales believable. Sadly, this book was lacking in that department.

Continuing with her characters from Ammie, Come Home and Shattered Silk, Stitches is the story of Rachel, who works for Kara and Cheryl (from Shattered Silk) in their vintage clothing boutique. One afternoon, some quilts are left on the store's porch. Shortly after that, Rachel is taken in by Kara's family (Ruth and Pat from Ammie, Come Home)for the holidays and that's when the really strange stuff starts happening. It seems something in one of the quilts is exerting control over Rachel, and to stop it, they'll have to figure out the quilt's history.

Stitches in Time is an excellent psychological thriller. And readers familar with Michaels's other books, Shattered and Ammie, will find parallels between the events of those books and Stitches in Time. All three are worth the read.

Also recommended: Ammie, Come Home and Shattered Silk

This book is actually a sequel to "Shattered Silk," one of my most favorite books by Barbara Michaels. It's set in the POV of a completely new character; a young woman working on her masters degree. The reason I'm dissappointed is that Shattered Silk had to do with a woman overcoming a horrible marriage that completely ruined her self-esteem and then ending up with a new satisfying business while solving a decades old murder case and reuniting with the love of her life. In comparison Stiches in Time ended up being a lame sequel. Michaels uses too many supernatural themes in her later works, and this one is a prime example. The main character in this book, who gets a job in Cheryl and Kara's vintage clothes shop did so because she had a crush on Cheryl's husband. Then a possessed quilt comes along and takes her over and she along with the rest of the crew have to figure out the origins of the quilt and try and save her. It has a happy ending like all of Michael's works, but I struggled to finish it. If you haven't read it yet, read "Shattered Silk." If you like Michael's newer books with her supernatural themes, then read this one, you'll probably like it to.