Town Books

I was a student at the university where Ms. Blum taught while she was pregnant. Working in the book business, I stumbled upon an advertisement for this title in the publishers' catalog. (Of all catalogs to accidentally be placed in my mailbox, of all the pages the catalog could have opened to when it fell out of my mailbox, and of all the things that usually distract me from noticing a name I found familiar - it's a wonder all the pieces fell in place.) Anyway, I immediately ordered the book - if for no other reason than for the fact that it intertwined with my personal history with the university and the Pennsylvania towns she writes about. But I think the book is more than a piece of history. Her words are fluid and poetic. I gobbled up the chapters as if it were chocolate-y fiction, sneaking it in between breaks at work. It speaks to me as a woman, as a "non-traditional" worshipper of religious faith, and as someone who hopes to have her own children someday. I would, and have, recommended this memoir to many people.

I read Ms. Blum's book for a Sociology class. I actually started reading it before hand on the recommendation of a friend. I must say that this book is amazing. Ir gives you a view of gay life away from the normal booze drugs and sex. Also Ms. Blum is extremely witty. She is brutally honest about her pregnancy and the troubles it caused her! She also talks in DEPTH about the birth of her daughter. Though I thought some of the sex scenes were too graphic other than that I thought this book to be an amazing read!

I hope my review isn't seen as less credible because of this, but I know Louise, her wife, and their amazing daughter. She attended a summer camp where I was a counselor and I have to say that she's the most self-actualized individual I have ever known. She's an amazing person, due in no small part to what her moms have gone through in bringing her into the world. :)

I'd been wanting to read this book for quite a while once I realized it was out there. I was amazed at how this slim volume brought such a myriad of emotions to the surface. One minute I was laughing, the next minute I was so sad, then I was angry and militant, then disgusted at the evil of some people, then comforted by the love that Connie and Louise obviously share. It's a great book...with a wonderful, frank, conversational style that doesn't hide the facts, but doesn't spare the rich details. You feel like you are right there with them. The dialogue is honest and fleshed out very well. No small wonder, considering Louise's writing abilities!

Whether you are gay or straight, consider reading this book. It will help you understand how hard it is to be gay and how wonderful it is as well. And hopefully, it might make you see that it doesn't matter what sexual orientation parents have...just that they truly love and want their children. :)

Louise Blum has given us a book that will make you laugh at the outrageous behavior of "decent" people, will make you cry for her struggle to be accepted on her own terms, make you ache with her yearning and cheer for her triumph. Whether you love women or men, the love story touches your heart. But mostly, this book is glaringly honest and doesn't shy from truth on any front. I loved it!

I picked up this book while wondering aimlessly through the aisle at the local library. I thought it would be something to pass the time. Needless the say, the book draws you in, makes you laugh, cry and get angry, all while thinking to yourself "I've been there before". I truly enjoyed the book and would gladly recommend it to all women, whether you are a lesbian or not.

The perfect reader for southern enthusiast and small town living fans. Does an excellent job of describing, in deatail, the towns and their enviroments. Gives me a years worth of weekend trips at my fingertips. A must read!

This informative volume describes a number of towns that would otherwise surely go unnoticed by the non-Southerner. Basic population, economic and climate data are followed by descriptive sections on recreation, housing, health resources, and the like. An occasional anecdote or personal interview might have added a bit of color, but this is a more complete book than most others about those charming, artistic, or undiscovered places we want to find out about, and it may be the only one of its kind on the South. I am happy to own it.

This is a very handy, concise and yet comprehensive guide to help in your search for that delightful Southern town offers good quality of life and yet within reach of a city's conveniences.

There are useful statistical highlights, Cost Of Living index and web links. The books provide information on the community, eateries, attractions,education,etc.

I would recommend it to anyone that is looking for a guidebook to assist in their search for a delightful town to re-locate and live.

Most people spend more time planning where to spend their vacations than they do deciding where to spend their lives (or their retirements). Fortunately for us, the authors of this book have done a huge portion of the legwork for us: finding the best small southeastern towns, evaluating them through a set of clearly defined and excellent criteria, visiting each one, and gathering relevant information to help us not only decide where to go, but to also help us connect to the community once we get there. I would be lost without this book, not even knowing where to begin. The books is also well-written, engaging in style, and easy to use. For example, you can skip sections you're less interested in because there are frequent headers common for each town, and you can also search towns by state, climate, geography (e.g., coast or mountains), and other factors of interest.

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Our Primordial Soup...steamy, smoke filled speakeazies. Jazz, Pims, crazy Italian suits...expresso e un biscotti, gratzi! Gauloise? Non, Gitanes, merci!!!
The Conductor Of The Groovy Juice Symphony.

A must have for anyone interested in youth culture, swinging london of the 1950s and 60s, and the Mod scene... Something of a youth exploitation or confessional novel, but nonetheless an excellent picture of the generation born in post-world war II England, the first (and possibly one of the last) to be better off than their parents, the children of Britain's baby boom, obsessed with Italian fashion and American Jazz and all night clubs and coffee houses-- this is a portrait of one such youth and his life... It's the best piece of this type to come out of this period and seen by many as MacInnes' best work. Of further note by MacInnes are the other "London novels", Mr. Love and Justice and City of Spades. What a shame it is that no publisher has cared enough to keep these great books in print.

The thing to keep in mind about London in the late 1950s is that it wasn't cool. London wouldn't become one of the capitals of youth style until 1963 and later (brilliantly recounted in Shawn Levy's READY, STEADY, GO!). In this great novel, Colin MacInnes paints the portrait of an age that has received little attention, a time when England did not yet possess a full-fledged youth culture, a creature whose time was coming round at last, and was slouching towards Soho to be born. In the depiction of teens in search of self-authentication and self-realization, the novel is very much an English equivalent of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD.

Like the Kerouac novel, ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is brilliant not for its story, but for its characters and the almost sociological and anthropological quality of its chronicle. Above all, it chronicles the social upheaval that was already taking place in London, with the central place that drugs, jazz, sex, and alcohol was more openly playing in youth culture. There is also a new and heightened consciousness of race, as well as an absence of the values that had been the mainstay of the previous generation. Although it wasn't yet the sixties, you can feel it coming throughout the book.

I don't want to mislead a prospective reading by promoting this as one of the great classics. It isn't. But like the central character, who is an aspiring photographer, the novel serves as a fictional photo essay on a neglected and under-romanticized period of English life. I can't imagine anyone not truly loving it.

The novel was in the 1980s made into a fairly decent musical (with an absolutely astonishing opening sequence) starring Patsy Kensit and with a host of musical performers in minor roles, including David Bowie, Ray Davies, and Sade. But I would definitely recommend the book over the film.

MacInnes's novel, set in 1958, London, demonstrates the status of the teenager as a new economic class is demonstrated early on when the narrator tells us: "This teenage ball had had a real splendour in the days when kids discovered that for the first time since centuries of kingdom-come, they'd money, which had always been denied to us at the best time in life to use it, namely, when you're young and strong. ... it had a real savage splendour in the days when we found that no one couldn't sit on our faces anymore because we'd loot to spend at last, and our world was to be our world..."

The narrator is a free lance photographer who takes pictures of the night life and of anything depicting the new London and its denizens, hoping for an exhibition. He loves jazz music, is integrationist, and against class. He lives in a slum named Napoli because he enjoys the low rent and how he is accepted, no matter what he does, and no one questions his background, educated or class. He wouldn't be treated that way in Belgravia, the fashionable, upscale district of London.

He has a bunch of interesting friends, such as the very friendly Fabulous Hoplife, who swings the other way, and the Wiz, a huckster who wants to make it into the bigtime, realizing there's a goldmine with the economic prosperity and renewed London. He wants to get there via illegal means, much to the narrator's chagrin. There's Big Jill, a big and friendly les to whom the narrator confides to about Suze; she's kind of like an older sister to him.

But he's really after his dreamgirl Crepe Suzette, or Suze, a pretty girl who's getting her kicks by sleeping around with every black she fancies. He's very upset when she tells him she's getting married to Henley, a fashion designer in his forties for whom she's a secretary. "I'm marrying for distinction, and that's a thing that you could never give me," she tells him. Despite her importance, she's not one of the most interesting characters here.

But when the narrator learns of the racial tensions going on and reads an anti-immigrant tirade in a news article condemning the Commonwealth Act, which allowed emigration from the former colonies to the UK, he sadly says "I don't understand my country anymore. ...the English race has spread itself all over the world...No one invites us, and we didn't ask anyone's permission... Yet when a few hundred thousand come and settle among our fifty millions, we just can't take it."

The generation gap between three groups are interesting. There are people like the narrator, growing up when the war was already over, and thus progressive, anti-Empire, and accepting blacks and Indians. People like his oafish stepbrother Verne and Ed the Ted, in their mid-twenties, lived through the war, were more patriotic, pro-Empire, and are spiteful of teenagers. And people like the narrator's father like the 1950's because they lived through the hell of the 1930's, unable to find good work, starving, and seeing the war as a godsend for the employment opportunities.

MacInnes's historical novel is a look at a post-war Britain, defanged of its empire, and having experienced a political faux-pas in the Suez Crisis. It also examines race relations in Britain ten years after the Commonwealth Act, and how British commercialism got roaring with the newfound prosperity. The tensions between whites and coloureds came to a head in the Notting Hill race riot, which takes place in this book. The movie that was adapted from this cut out most of the thoughtful parts of the book, but it's one of my favourite movies, and I see this book in a new light.

Part of the Becka and The Big Bubble series, Becka and the Big Bubble: All Around Town is a lighthearted, rhyming children's picturebook about a young girl who likes to blow bubbles - then ride on them! Adopting the name Becka and The Big Bubble for herself, she floats atop her bubble like a dream, seeing everyone all around town, but when the wind carries her so high that her bubble bursts, she's in big trouble! Becka has to figure out how to save herself in the nick of time, and return home to her loving parents, in this whimsical adventure. Also highly recommended is "Becka and the Big Bubble: Becka Goes to the North Pole".

I read Beck and the Big Bubble-All Around Town to my two-year-old son every night. He doesn't understand the story yet, but he loves the colorful illustrations and seems amused by the rhythmic language. I've also given these books as gifts to my nieces. They are a few years older than my son and they love the concept of "bubble travel". They think Becka is very cool and pretend to travel places on bubbles just like Becka. The Becka books are a fantastic way to introduce kids to the concept of other places and cultures outside of their own.

An easy fun book for boys or girls. I took this book to my son's preschool and the class went crazy with cute stories about where they would like to go.

I bought every one of the Becka and the Big Bubble books for my 3 year old son. And I'm happy to say he loves every single one of them! I'm sure your kids will enjoy them as well.

Really like the new cover design on the paperback edition of this great book by Shelley Pearsall. This story of a math club at an inner city school and their quest to construct the world's largest tetrahedron is a winner. Don't know what a tetrahedron is? That's another good reason to read this book. The paperback edition also has a pattern for a tetrahedron so kids can make their own. The recipes for barbecue sauces, cannonball cornbread and chocolate truth cake are extras that make this book special.

Even if you don't go to an urban school (or didn't as a kid), you can connect to this story that starts with a lame math class and a pretty lame math teacher. The math teacher gets desperate and comes up with this idea about breaking a world record for making four-sided triangle thingies (tetrahedrons). Needless to say, his students don't leap all over that idea, but somehow James, Rhondell, Marcel, and Sharice end up doing it. Pretty soon you will be all caught up in the lives of these four characters and the people around them. Because each character "talks" in first person, you see different points of view on what's going on with the project--can they do it? Is it a dumb idea? What's the point? Is it really helping anyone learn math (or anything else)? What happens if they do it? I never got the four characters mixed up (like you do in some books) and the author made them seem so real that you just want to hug Sharice and get Marcel to talk and... If you are a clever reader, you'll see that the story itself is kind of a tetrahedron--four characters, four sides... Anyway, it's a great book--check it out!! P.S. Another cool part of the book is how it includes the drawings that James doodles...

You know what author Shelley Pearsall's got? Flexibility, baby. Loads of it. Let's say, for example, that you write a rip-roaringly good bit of harrowing historical fiction (as she did with "Crooked River"). Now you'd like to follow that up with another book for kids. Do you follow the straight and narrow path of always writing with an eye on the past? Or do you get inspired by a group of students at the Alexander Hamilton School in Cleveland, Ohio? Pearsall opted for the latter, and the result is the surprisingly good, All of the Above. Now I avoided this book like crazy for a while. Why? The crummy cover. But open that same cover up and you find a story that never loses hope but that also never treads into the world of mindless optimism. There's a gritty reality hiding at the core of this book. The surprise is that it's a pleasure to discover it for yourself.

Seventh grade math teacher Mr. Collins is the first person to explain to you how, "the tetrahedron project began with one of my worst classes in twenty years of teaching". In that class you have some pretty odd kids. There's James Harris III who basically comes across as future jail fodder more than anything else. There's also Sharice who does well in school but has trouble at home. Rhondell works hard but she's so timid and stuck in her own little shell that it's hard to get her to do anything besides cower. And then of course there's local celebrity Marcel, who's father owns the best known barbecue joint around. What do these kids all have in common? Well, they're in the math club. Not just any math club, though. Mr. Collins has this crazy plan. You see, a California school once built a "Stage 6" tetrahedron and got into the Guinness Book of World Records. Collins thinks this group can do better. But when personal problems and a devastating bit of vandalism bring the project screeching to a halt, it's up to the kids, not Collins, to come up with a new plan. Told in ever changing first person narrratives, Pearsall weaves together the story's fight and ultimate success.

What did I appreciate about this book? Well, the description makes it kind of sound like a "Stand and Deliver" type story with a healthy helping of "Dangerous Minds" to boot. In essence, the old plotline where a white teacher comes to town and gets the inner city kids to believe in themselves. Oop. Aack. We're all pretty tired of that story, to say nothing of how insulting it can be. Appreciate "All of the Above", then for turning that tired old chestnut of a parable into something fresh and new. Yes, the idea to create the world's biggest tetrahedron is thought up by Mr. Collins, the resident white math teacher. But the guy hasn't a clue what he's doing. He's pretty much willing to give up on the idea, the Math Club, and the project itself when the going gets a little rough. He's not goading these kids into doing more with their lives. Not much, anyway. Their families are doing that. And when push comes to shove he and the kids are helped by the janitor, hairstylists, and the owner of a barbecue joint far more than just dinky little Collins on his own. I half wondered if Pearsall plucked his name from "Pride and Prejudice", knowingly or on a subconscious level. Heaven knows it kind of fits him.

It's obvious that Pearsall has spent a fair amount of time in high schools across the country too. When James Harris III says, "You ever notice how school clocks do that? How they don't move like other clocks do; they jump ahead like bugs?". Yup. I've noticed that. So has every school librarian, teacher, and child attending public school in the United States of America. It just takes a well-attuned author to pick up on it. Pearsall zeroes in on other little things as well. I liked that for every foodstuff Marcel mentions there's an accompanying recipe that follows. This is true of even the less tasty treats, like "Willy Q's Cannonball Cornbread". The reader is informed at the end of the recipe to, "Cover and refrigerate leftovers. Trust me, there will be a lot". I also enjoyed that the first person narratives were sometimes voiced by adults as well as children. Sometimes books of this nature limit their narrative voices, thereby narrowing the possibilities for the story itself. Pearsall doesn't fall into that trap. If Rhondell's Aunt Asia is the best person to talk at a given point then that's who's talking. Nuff said.

What the book did that others of its ilk sometimes fail to is come across as timeless. The Nikki Grimes novel, Bronx Masquerade, may have sported some top notch writing, but the slang alone dated it within a year of its publication. This is not the case with, "All of the Above". For one thing, the slang is popular without being trendy. Pearsall doesn't spot the text with the newest technology, partly because her characters couldn't afford it, and partly because it would date the book considerably in a few years. I was also rather touched by how well Pearsall was able to distinguish between the voices of her characters. You wouldn't think Rhondell was talking when it was actually Sharice and vice versa. And I appreciate that there were happy endings in this book. Better still, they appear in a true and honest manner without so much as a whiff of Deus Ex Machina.

What didn't I like about the book? Well, it's hard to get around the fact that what the kids are trying to do is rather small. Then again, that's kind of the point. This isn't about getting everyone a free ride to Yale or anything. It's about breaking a world record, which is a seriously kid-friendly concept. Still, it's going to be difficult to sell this story to kids on that idea alone. "Hey, kids! Want to read about a class that glues tetrahedrons together?". Booksellers and librarians are going to have to hand sell and booktalk this one on an individual level. And even then it's not going to be a story for everyone. Add in the unattractive cover (note the school bus yellow shade) and you've a book that's going to have to work to get people to pick it up. Once they do they'll be fine. Just getting there is the difficulty.

To be honest, I don't think this book is going to get the attention it deserves. But for those few lucky souls who get a chance to read it, "All of the Above" is a lively wonderful recount of a project that actually occurred at the Alexander Hamilton School in 2002. Pearsall lists every true fact that she has put in the book in her Author's Note at the back and it offers the reader a sense of closure. This comes across as a fine title and one worth perusing. If you can, sneak it into the reading pile of a kid you know. You'll find them pleasantly surprised.

Sharice:
"As we get closer to finishing, I start having dreams about what's gonna happen when we do. In most of my dreams, there is this big flash of light when we finish the tetrahedron and our school isn't a crumbling, peeling-paint building anymore. It's rainbow colored. (I know this sounds kinda weird.) And our giant pyramid sits on top of the school roof shooting out colors all over the neighborhood, like spotlights. Houses turn shades of red, and orange, and blue. And people stop their cars and roll down their windows to take pictures of the sight."

That their one-of-a-kind tetrahedron building project gets off the ground at all is astounding in itself. ALL OF THE ABOVE is a tale of four inner city public school kids -- none of whom are initially friends -- and their math teacher. The teacher, Mr. Collins, acknowledges that he was frustrated with his teaching, his school, his students, and himself when he impulsively announced his brainstorm: a plan to have students come together in an extracurricular math club for the purpose of building a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron.

"What the heck is a stage seven Sierpinski tetrahedron?" you might (or might not) be tempted to ask. Well, as I learned, thanks to Rhondell, the member of the student quartet with private dreams of one day attending college, it is a structure composed of 16,384 little tetrahedrons which, in turn, are three dimensional geometric shapes that have four faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle.

And to understand what about this particular book caught my eye -- a book that was formerly to be found amidst my stage seven mountain of review copies -- is to get a sense of my life-long affinity with numbers and mathematical concepts. For front and center on the book's cover is that key number 16,384, a number I instantly recognized as being part of my habitual childhood recitation of the exponents of 2. You know, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384...

Oh...you didn't walk around middle school with those sort of things streaming through your head? Well, regardless, readers will be intrigued by the four urban students (and the teacher) who are all facing personal challenges inside and outside of school:

James Harris III:

"I stare at the window behind Collins and think about how good it would feel to jump out that window and send all that glass flying into the air like one of those jagged comic book pictures with the word 'CRASH' written above it. Get out of school, Collins' class, all the other dumb teacher's classes -- and never come back."

Marcel:

"Ain't spending the rest of my life working at Willy Q's Barbecue. Saying sweet things to customers who don't deserve sweet. Smiling like I care about selling rib bones and chicken wings and pig meat.
"Ain't joining the Army either, like my daddy thinks. Won't salute nobody. Least of all, him."

Sharice:

"You see, foster non-parent #5 (Jolynn) doesn't allow anybody at home when she isn't there and since she isn't there most of the time, I'm not allowed to be there either. Which is why I mostly end up sitting in the blue plastic library chairs, or in the mall food court, or riding around on the city bus (or wherever I can find a seat without too many weirdos or drunks around)."

Rhondell:

"Sometimes I imagine college as a big wooden door where you have to knock and say the right password to get in. Only people who know big words like metamorphosis and epiphany are allowed inside. So, I think I try to save all the words I can because maybe, deep down, I believe they will somehow get me inside college without money or luck.
"But around here if you talk and act like you have dreams, or as if you think you are better than everybody else, it only causes trouble. So, I keep most of my college words locked up in my head, and I try to make it through each day by saying as few words as possible. 'She's quiet' is the way most people describe me, and I figure being quiet is just fine because it means you won't be bothered."

ALL OF THE ABOVE vaguely reminds me of The Breakfast Club. In this case you meet these four random students who just all happen to be in the same math class when their frustrated math teacher decides to launch a seriously wacked math project and all four kids wittingly or unwittingly find themselves captive to the process. And me, the former math team member, found myself right there with them.

So join in. Grab yourself a stack of colored paper, some scissors, a glue gun, some munchies, and partake in the Tetrahedron Club.

I thought this was a great book to read. It had excitement, romance, and great characters. I especially like Gloria and Baby Raymond. Anyone who has read it and didn't think it was good is a loonatic.

Now, this woman can really write--turn a phrase--find the right word--pull us in with her language--so much so that she is worth reading just for the rhythum of her words. Her characrters are extremely well developed--especially the Cajun, ex-con 'girl boy' Harlan and the young single mother, red-diaper-baby, nurse Glory. But there are others, many others, major and minor--who pop off the pages as living breathing people that never feel contrived. The location of this story, New Orleans in the 50's, is also developed as a living character, important to the story and part of this book's accomplishment. Likewise, American Culture--and our knowledge of the events that are just around the cornor, the history that is about to unfold and our characters will have to encounter and deal with are palpable --esp. racism and to a lesser extent sexism, homophobia and even the rise of the New Left appear. Then there is the action--?? what action?? yes-each character is struggling with issues--real, serious, issues of the moment and issues of the spirit--so the title tells it all--"All Saints" -- everyone is, in fact, and in deed, worthy of sainthood, even when life is confusing--which it generally is. (Also--this story takes place on, and close to, All Saint's Day in New Orleans--so there is another inference to the living mass as Saints--crowds in parades where our characters find themselves--and all the saints that came before and are now dead, ie: why we celebrate all Saints Day--which is a nice touch). But still, while the characters and their struggles are moving, insightful and shows off the authors talents there isn't much happening. It is testament that the book is so very readable that it doesn't matter too much that there isn't much happening to pull us along. But there would be a lot more readers for this book if the story itself had half the depth that the characters do. Still --read this book--it is good, real good, maybe near great--but not quite.

Karen Palmer's "All Saints" is a wonderfully paced debut. Her sense of place and atmosphere is so detailed and sumptuous, the reader can almost feel the soggy Louisiana heat. Her characters all ring true, especially the Cajun convict Harlan Desonnier and Glory Wiltz, the nurse unable to tend to her own spiritual disease. But Palmer has an ability to create unforgettable minor characters as well - Telford Gaudin, Louis Chopin and Lonnie Dee not only support the major characters but are interesting in their own right. Palmer has an eye for the telling detail and an unsurpassed ear for dialogue. BUY THIS BOOK!

Karen Palmer's intelligent study of three people pushed to the wall by their own mistakes is a real find among the hoards of trash on the bookshelf. All Saints stacks up well against the novels of Annie Proux and Jane Smiley for storytelling but far exceeds either of these Pulitzer Prize winners in pure writing talent. Palmer's writing is deeply sensual and loaded with startling portrayals of character, absolutely gives off sparks. No author writing today stays as intimate with her characters, allowing the reader to experience their internal struggle while pulled along by an ever-thickening plotline. The narrative comes with three points of view, each identified with a lead character: Harlan Desonnier, a Cajun and recently released prisoner having served time for accidentally killing his wife; Glory Wiltz, a nurse with a baby from a mixed marriage; and Frank Doyle, a fallen priest. One might suppose Harlan, Glory and Father Frank represent the trinity of the human spirit (heart, intellect and soul) under trial. But what really characterizes this novel is that it is about something. Most novels today are action-packed little ditties full of sensational plotlines and superficial, stereotypical characters in cliched situations. Palmer's novel is full of real characters, who encounter themselves in the consequences of their own actions. Rarely even in a good novel do you get a good ending, but in All Saints, Palmer accomplishes the miraculous: three terrific endings! Each of her characters reaches a separate fate, each realizing something about themselves we as readers can identify with in our own circumstances. I heartily recommend this novel to anyone interested in a reading experience that goes beyond entertainment.

This book will guide you step by step (literally) through the magnificant temples of Angkor. And even if you weren't planning to go, you will want to for sure, after viewing Michael Freeman's superb photographs and reading Claude Jacques' expert commentary.

No matter where you wander on the very large site of Angkor, Freeman and Jacques are right alongside you, suggesting places to look and explaining what you are looking at. There are maps and temple plans, a glossary, and an index. For visitors with limited time, the suggested itineraries (from one to seven days' length) will let you make the most of your visit.

The book is especially helpful for photographers. Freeman, who has photographed professionaly at Angkor for over a decade, describes the best vantage points and subjects, suggests the best time of day to shoot, and provides itineraries that take you to each location just when the light is best.

The book is well designed and contains many helpful features. For example, a cross-referenced list of architectural features and mythological scenes makes it easy to locate temples that contain whatever the visitor is most interested in seeing.

In short, carrying this book with you is like having an expert photographer and historian as personal guides during your visit to Angkor. You probably won't even need to engage an actual guide, unless you want to pick up a bit of local color; everything you need is right there in the book.

This book is a fantastic combination of pictures and facts for people wanting to visit the Angkor temples. The pictures stir the imagination and the text provides the facts to go with the pictures.

In fact I recently used this book as my guide while visiting Angkor. It provides a section for each of the most-visited temples and will also give you information on suggested time to put aside for each visit and the best time to go. In fact, my guide at Angkor said this was the best guide book he had seen, and I saw other people using this same book to guide themselves around the temples like I did.

This book provides suggested itineries to the temples and the best times to visist for photography. whether you can actually manage to combine the two is debatable on a short visit. The books main downfall is not its content, but its weight which is quite heavy because of the good quality paper used.

The climate (extremely hot and humid - air conditioning is a worthwhile investment) can make visiting these monuments as trial at times, but they are worth the effort. All the buildings are unique, covered in exquiste carvings (which books can only hint at) and original. Some are still partly swallowed by the jungle. Straight out of indiana Jones.

Get this book, let your imagination wander and visit these amazing ruins if you can before too many other tourists turn up - for they are a world wonder not to be missed. And don't forget your camera - these are places begging to be photographed.

Claude Jacques is an expert on Angkor, and has studied its history for 30 years. Photographer Michael Freeman has been taking pictures of Angkor for over 15 years. Together Ancient Angkor is the product of a partnership that has yielded over 350 color illustrations, and a well-written guide to the ruins of Angkor.

Included are detailed plans and descriptions,[even of lesser known temples not found in other guides]. The book is well thought-out -with suggestions of various itineraries, and information on hotels and other items pertaining to travel . This serves not only as a great tourist guide for travellers planning a trip to the ancient ruins but also a great book for armchair travellers with lush color illustrations and meticulous descriptions.

A lovingly prepared compilation of superb color photographs, maps, history and scholarly explanations of the major world monument that is Angkor Wat. The authors thoughtfully include suggested itineraries ( ranging from one to six days ), sites ranked by interest, peak times and locations for photographing and even helpful suggestions for accomodations. A must for planning a visit to Angkor Wat or for preserving memories.

Readers will no doubt wonder why they would want to read this book rather than a myriad of other coffee table books on the subject of the Roman Empire. I can not claim that I have read
"almost all" of them. I have not. I have read only some of them. What makes Liberati's book different... and better... than these others is that she organizes her work topically and not just geographically.

The pictures are scrumptious, simply scrumptious. The picture on the cover is bettered by a plethora of other pictures in the book. A *two-page* picture of the Coliseum appears on pages 18 and 19. Then come pictures and text portraying the history of Rome. These are followed pictures which show the promulgation of Roman civilization throughout Italy and throughout the ancient world. There are pictures of the Las Farreras aquaduct, the Temple of Diana in Nimes, and the port of Caesarea.

She is not just presenting a bunch of pictures. One could find out something new. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in Roman history.

The strength of this exquisite book is in the pages of beautiful reproductions of artifacts and artworks from throughout the history of the Empire. On 292 pages, the book encompasses 358 color photos, 30 color drawings (mostly architectural) and 45 maps.

The book is organized in five sections - an overview of the 11 centuries of history; social aspects from shelter to spectacles; the splendors of the capital; Roman civilization in Italy; a tour of the Roman provinces.

The text is accessible and the captions are packed with information but the illustrations are not only breathtaking but representative of every aspect of Roman civilization. An excellent introduction to Roman history or a valuable addition to a collection.

In Ancient Rome: History Of A Civilization That Ruled The World, Anna Maria Liberati (Museum of Roman Civilization, Rome, Italy) has effectively collaborated with freelance journalist and art history expert Fabio Bourbon to lay out a beautifully illustrated and thoroughly "reader friendly" coffeetable artbook showcasing the architecture, politics, culture, art, and artifacts tracing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. An ideal addition to school and community library collections, the hundreds of full-color images (many of them never previously published and available to the general public) wonderfully enhance an informed and informative text making Ancient Rome especially accessible and recommended to the non-specialist general reader.

This book is not much on narration -- but it isn't really supposed to be. The book is filled with outstanding photographs, prints, drawings, maps, and architectural plans that will be useful to anyone in the business of teaching social studies. This is one of those wonderfully inexpensive oversized hardcover books that makes you feel good just by owning it.

I had to read and review this book for a class, and I thought it was great. I had not read any of the books referenced by Ms. Marcus, so it was difficult to tell how sucessfully she represented the authors, but thats really my problem, not hers. I would say that I don't like such heavy use of literary sources in these types of books, but it is usually because I haven't read the books.

I'm happy I chose this book to review, between the nasty review and its mention on the board, (and Ms. Marcus's rebuttal) this will be an easy book review to write.

In Apartment Stories, Sharon Marcus takes the reader on a stunning tour of the interior spaces of the nineteenth century novel. The views that Marcus offers are always exciting. Following her from behind as she weaves her way through dark regions of apartment houses is often exhilirating. Particularly pleasurable is the way she bounces around London. And although sometimes she seems to bend over to make her point, even this rewarding

In an elegantly written and persuasively argued volume, Sharon Marcus uses the idea of the apartment building as a tool to comb out two sets of terms that tend to clump together in discussions about the 19th century: man=city=public, woman=home=private. In a work made pleasurable to the general reader through her clear and careful writing and her judicious use of footnotes, Marcus proposes a world of 19th century men, women, homes, and cities, that interact in more messy and interesting ways than we've learned to expect. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

There has been a recent interest in theories that undermine the undertakings of the Enlightenment and Modernism toward presenting a world made up of clear definitions and distinctions. This trend has thrown light upon those cultures and periods of history previously dismissed as irrational, decadent, or retrogressive. Further, owing to Post-Structuralist interests in language, scholars have increasingly turned towards realist novels and literature from the period being studied to unearth peculiar social environments that have remained concealed in the purely formal analyses of historical accounts.

Sharon Marcus in Apartment Stories identifies the novel as a significant mirror of everyday life. Literary criticism and cultural history, for Marcus, are intertwined disciplines that feed on each other. In Apartment Stories she uses an analysis of the nineteenth-century realist novel to illuminate a discourse about (not `on') apartment houses of the time. Employing texts that she calls `atypical', as a heuristic device for exploring the range and complexity of nineteenth century debates on domesticity and urbanism, Marcus sets herself the ambitious task of questioning conventional conceptions of the distinctions of private and public, interior and exterior, as well as masculine and feminine. She probes the text not only in terms of seeking social and physical implications of the described spaces but also in terms of the manner in which the narration itself inscribes spatial relations and establishes zones as exterior and interior, private and public, mobile and fixed.

Apartment Stories is divided into three parts. The first part, "Open Houses", discusses the apartment house as a space that refutes readability as a private, opaque, and interior space. The second part, "The City and the Domestic Ideal", discusses the cultural preference for the single-family house over the lodging houses (that resembled apartment houses) of Londoners. The third and concluding part, "Interiorization and its Discontents", deals with Paris during the Second Empire. The author claims that Paris became interiorized after 1850 and thereby challenges the established interpretation of the Second Empire Paris as one of spectacle, flânerie, and circulation. She also questions the famous notion of the Goncourt brothers that "the interior is going to die. Life threatens to become more public". Marcus, in view of the Parisian apartment house, explicates the impossibility of ever fully interiorizing the home.

Sharon Marcus's Apartment Stories provides interesting insights into the world of the bourgeois in nineteenth century Paris- though her ideas are not always convincing and not always substantiated with documentation. Her elaborate endnotes that occupy 81 pages at the rear of the book fail to provide the convincing evidence that more architectural drawings and photographs might. The book leaves the readers constantly searching through the text for `real' images of the physical character of the apartment houses to which they may correspond the analysis of the novel. In the absence of such documentation, the author herself feels the need to stop every now and then in order to summarize and locate within the overall scheme of the book what she had just written (which is also what makes the writing of the book-review easier). These impediments that occlude the understanding of her new insights are further assisted by what could be considered a methodological oversight. Her structure of discussions of the interior and exterior space rest upon the individual descriptions of interior and exterior space. The discussion does not flow from one to the other and that, I feel, strengthens the distinction between the two. A discussion of the in-between transition spaces, apart from perhaps the character of the portière, between the street and the house, that one would expect in a discussion of interior and exterior spaces, is also absent.

Marcus works from an impressive bibliography, one that partially compensates for her deficiencies in documentation and illustration. Apart from a slight error in quoting the publication date of James Stevens Curl's The Victorian Celebration of Death as 1872 instead of 1972, the bibliography, along with the book, becomes a wonderful resource for any scholarly study of nineteenth century France and England in the fields of feminist theory and criticism, geography, urban studies, architectural history, literary criticism, and interdisciplinary research on everyday life.

Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill edit BEDLAM'S EDGE, a top pick for fantasy readers. It's a volume of new urban fantasy containing works by the best modern writers of the genre, from Eric Flint to Diana Paxson, and presents a series of adventures, from a desperate search for a bottle in which a powerful and dangerous djinn is trapped to an alternate fantasy history in which the faeries become involved in America's Civil War. Powerful characterization and to-quality writing make this a distinguished collection which stands out from the crowd of fantasy anthologies on the market.

Since I like Misty Lackey and Rosemary Edghill enough to buy them in hardcover, I'll focus on the other stories.

"Bright As Diamonds" by Barb and Michael Caffrey reminds me most of the Lackey/Edghill collaborations, as their style and story reflect that "universe" faithfully. I appreciated their use of the Brisingamen and elements of Scandinavian fantasy -- they incorporated lesser-known mythology into the Lackey/Edghill universe in a smooth manner.

"Bottle of Djinn" was also amusing, and a modern version of the djinn versus humans.

In "Red Fiddler", Dave Freer brings his updated Fear Dearg, the Irish "red man" transplanted to Africa, to us in a thoroughly enjoyable story. True to form, Dave finds some way to bring the forgotten tricksters of our past into a modern world, while keeping their low and vile humor wickedly certain.

"All That Jazz" by Jenn Saint-John..all I can say is, "That idiot, Norenlod."

"Six-Shooter" by Ellen Guon and "The Waters and the Wild" by Misty Lackey were both compelling looks at more disturbing topics. Suicide, in "Six-Shooter" is.."encouraged" by evil beings who then consume the souls of the hapless suicides. Some of the souls fight back for as long as they can. "Waters" begins with a man explaining how someone helped him through a difficult adolescence, and although a sniper's bullet takes him out of this life, he finds that person again.

All of the stories were written by seasoned professionals, even if some of the authors are not widely known to the discerning reader. The skill with which they write is clearly evident, and I look forward to future collaborations in this universe, and perhaps even solo endeavors by these authors (one can only hope!).

Ever wondered what was just around the corner? Felt like you were being watched, but when you turned around, nobody was there? Maybe you were wrong. Maybe there is something there, behind the flats and props of ordinary reality.

Mercedes Lackey, Ellen Guon, and Rosemary Edghill created a look behind the scenes in their Bedlam's Bard series. What would happen if elves continued to exist in the present day? What would happen if they came to America with the colonists? And what would they be doing?

In Bedlam's Edge, they've opened their universe to other writers, including talented newcomers Barb and Michael Caffrey (who sadly, passed away suddenly and too young), who share their own takes on the world of Urban Elves.

Dave Freer and Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey's co-authors in the Heirs of Alexandria series (if you haven't read the series, go immediately and buy all of them, including A Mankind Witch, the latest.), Roberta Gellis, Rosemary Edghill, India Edghill, and Mercedes Lackey herself all contributed to this excellent collection of short stories.

Do you have to have read all the other books in the series to enjoy this one? Heck, no! In fact, it stands alone better than most anthologies do.

This is a terrific collection. Every story is a jewel.

Walt Boyes
The Bananaslug. at Baen's Bar

I'm new to this series, but I am familiar with most of the writers featured in Bedlams Edge.


I'll buy and read anything that Dave Freer writes from Pyramid Scheme on down to his grocery list, (that is if Mr. Freer wrote it). Mr. Freer's stories are a delightful half bubble off center; far enough off center for the story to be enjoyable and close enough on center for the story to be believable.
Mr. Freer is the first author that I'd buy sight unseen.

In Red Fiddler, Mr Freer leads the reader along effortlessly as the story unfolds as a seamless whole. A very enjoyable read!

Mr. Flint is another author I buy sight unseen.

Mr. Flint caught my attention from the moment I first picked up his "Philosophical Strangler." His inclusion in Red Fiddler was very welcome extra.

Barb and Michael Caffery's "Bright as Diamonds" delighted me very much. It was as delicately written as the necklace that the heroine wore in their story. I have added Barb and Michael Caffery to my list of buy sight unseen authors.

Ms. Lackey and Ms. Edghill are added to my "Must Buy List" also.

I haven't mentioned the rest of the authors out of time restraints. All the stories in Bedlams Edge are worth purchase on their own merits, the reader lucks out in that they're all in one place.

Kudos to Ms. Lackey and Ms. Edghill for making this book happen and letting other writers play in their universe.

K. P. Caudell