Boyd Books

Written by Marcella Anderson and Elizabeth Volstadt, the very highly recommended short stories anthologized in Young Patriots focus on the experienced boys and girls had as they lived through and participated in the American Revolution. Organized into section (The Road to War; Hostilities Begin; The Revolution in the North; The Revolution in the South; A new Country is Born) and chronologically presented, these tales of young heroism begin with "Polly and the Boston Tea Party" (December 1773) and continue through to "Learning from the President" (April 1789). Brief introductions to each story provides historical backgrounds. Also of note is a time line and suggestions for further reading.

This book is very educational about what it takes to raise a lamb, in the basic terms. My 6 year old loves the beautiful photos and the story. If you have a child who loves lambs, this book it great!

If you have only experienced the movie, let me make it as clear as possible: you have barely scraped the surface. This a very rich and rewarding novel that will absorb you into another time, a far away land and a completely alien mentality. Welcome to the Floating World of the Geishas in its twilight.

This is the true story of Mineko Iwasaki (whose personal autobiography is also available under the title Geisha: A Life) presented in the form of a novel by a brilliant Arthur Golden (too bad he did not follow up his success with a second novel).

Japan in the years following WWI was a country in transition. The old ways were on their way out yet they have a way of soothing the soul of any nation, especially one found itself caught in limbo, between progress and tradition. In this transitional world Sayuri is offered the chance to become a Geisha. The unique color of her eyes, her patience and artistic abilities soon propel her to the position of the most famous Geisha of them all. But one should always be wary of what he wishes for.

Fame and success are never a guarantee for personal happiness. Predictably, Sayuri's love story is bittersweet and has many false starts. In fear of spoilers, I shall only say that life is never boring.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

This is one of my favorite. Well written and beautiful story. I couldn't put it down.

Arthur Golden spent a fair amount of time researching this book, speaking to geishas whose stories in one form or another appear here. The book basically presents the biography of one geisha who through often very harsh events in her life transforms herself from the daughter of a fisherman into one of the most famous geishas of Japan. Both she and her sister are thrown into geisha houses to be taught this profession although her sister falls quickly into misfortune. Geisha houses demand strict discipline and service and have firm hierarchies that allow the use of power either purposefully or with cruelty. Jealousies and rivalries threaten the course of this woman. Once she achieves her goal, there remain tough decisions about whom she will serve. Economics and survival prevail over personal preferences and sentiment. The stability of her career is precarious as numerous events threaten to destroy it as they have for other geishas who are then often dragged into lives of prostitution. The intrusion of WWII presents other unexpected challenges and compromises to cope with shortages and lean times. A vivid and captivating book.

This book was easy to read and kept me turning the pages. I personally did not agree with the ending, and wished it would have ended differently but will not put any spoilers out there :)

Definitely worth reading :)

This book arrived in perfect condition just when I was told it would. It is so well written and completely mesmerizing. I enjoyed every minute of reading about this woman's story of a culture so steeped in tradition.Amazing book. You'll love it.

This has Dahl written all over, it is makes you want to laugh at the sheer nonsense of it gasp at the huge outrageousness of and cry at how Sophie finds a home at last with her friend the BFG

one of Dahl's best

The BFG is a about a girl that gets taken away by a big friendly giant from the orphanage. She gets taken to a dried up magical land and has to hide or another giant will eat her flesh!
I like this book because it is adventurous. You never know if a giant is standing behind you about an inch away from eating your flesh! SCARY! This book is so great, that I will never stop reading it until I am eighty! (Just so you know I am only eight and a half).

Well, this book was first read to me when I was 5, I am now 20 and it has never been surpassed as my No. 1 favourite book, especially if I want a quick read and a good laugh.
I would recomend this book to all ages, even those who are young, as the eating of Human Beans is for a weird reason, not very prominent in the forefront of your mind. One might suppose this would be because none of the eaten childers are named or introduced in the book. It all happens elsewhere, and does not happen anywhere that the story is actually happening, (childers do get eaten in England, which is where the story is set, but none that Sophie has ever meet).
All in all, a very good read and worth the money, however much you spend.

Roald Dahl is the author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Matilda," and "The Witches" and other children's classics. The BFG is about a girl who lives at an orphanage named Sophie. When Sophie sees a giant, when she shouldn't have, the giant has no other choice but to snatch her. But the giant isn't like the other giants. Good thing or otherwise he might have eaten Sophie after taking her from the orphanage. In the giant's world, things are very different for Sophie. After she learns about the other giants who do eat people, she creates a plan to save the world from them with the BFG's help of course.

Great story for a read aloud. Kids love listening to and reading along with the descriptive language.

Bob Woodward drew heavy criticism for his purported 'death bed' conversation with Bill Casey (which Casey's own wife denies.) Woodward deserves more criticsm for his patronizing "criticism" of the Bush administration's post-Iraq war failures.

Woodward has long been held in high regard by the conservative elitists as he has long traded inside access for less-than-scathing stories about the corruption and ineptitude of our various political leaders.

Very little within this book comes as "news," let alone as shocking as very little was reported that wasn't covered within the various 'evening news' programs. Furthermore, Woodward does little to corroborate the testimonies of the various interviewees (such as cite documents or statistical analysis.)

Truth be told, there is a much more sinister story to be told and Woodward never attempted to broach such controversy, instead relaying on the well publicized and unobtrusive truth that was known the world over.

I cannot fathom the beautification and brilliance that Woodward must have bestowed on the Bush White House in his previous accounts of the decision making of this embarrassment and dangerous power base. However, to his credit, most of those who are positioned to know may still have their informative hands bound behind their backs out of fear of violating their individual confidentiality contracts.

Obviously, Bob Woodward mcuh prefers to maintain his inside connections rather than telling the American people the entire truth of the corruption that led to the 2003 Iraq war.

I sought a truly insightful and informative book, instead, I read every passage feeling as though Bob Woodward is concerned more about his own status rather than telling the world of the truth within.

Bob Woodward does a good job of presenting a selection of the day-to-day functions of the Bush Administration in getting the US into Iraq, for good or ill. He doesn't present the reader with heroes or villains, nor does he draw any moral/ethical conclusions about any of the players. He does draw conclusions about what happened and why, but the conclusions are based on solid evidence and interviews, often with people whose names have seldom or never been in the news. The picture that materializes out of this book is of a chief executive who, once he was elected, really didn't know or care how anything got done, and who surrounded himself with other religious-right neoconservatives who were equally determined to do it. There are key points in the book where suggestions or decisions are made, or deceptions are presented as truth, and in most cases, Bush is not present. he just wasn't around. If the book has a protagonist, it is Donald Rumsfeld, who is determined to control every last detail of the War, and who is allowed, by a cowed and frightened bureaucracy, to get away with that, with the results we have before us now.

Either Woodward is making this book up as he goes along or he feels the best way to communicate Bush's character is to tell as many lies as he possibly can. Beginning in the prologue (xiii), we are told that in the mid 1970's, the CIA fresh from turning most of Latin America into military dictatorships, "was at perhaps its lowest point." On page 3, we are told that although George W. Bush is not known to have shown up for duty with the Texas Air National Guard (all the records of this Congressman's son's service, if there were any, having mysteriously disappeared) he learned to fly the F-102 jet (and why not, many a movie has shown us that a child can do it first time out of the box.)

I'd relay more lies had I not stopped reading.

This is an excellent study of how bureaucratic politics can deform the foreign policy process. You don't have to agree with Woodward's conclusions to benefit from this book.

Bob Woodward once again shows his ablity as a writer. His book is not partisan and clearly states the background regardin Bush' decision to take the country to war. It is easy to read and quite informaive regardless of your political ideology. I would highly recommend it to those who don't feel they get the facts from the newspapers or the Sunday morning tald shows.

Walter Isaacson's resume reads much like that of his subject; businessman, publisher, head of a non-profit society and author. One wonders where he has found the time to produce this book and the biographies of Henry Kissinger and most recently that of Albert Einstein. He is definitely not an Academic and has produced a highly readable book that is aimed at the general reader, not the academic historian. As a general reader I appreciated this very much. Isaacson includes many of the little touches that an academic historian omits, believing that the reader is already familiar with them. For instance, Isaacson provides a very handy currency converter that allows one to convert from 18th century British pounds to American dollars and French livres, and compares the purchasing power of 1790 American dollars to 2002 American dollars. There is a "cast of characters" and chronology at the back of the book that allows the reader to clarify who is who and when things happened without having to hunt through the text. The text is replete with facts that I found to clarify many things. For instance, I knew that the shift from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar involved the addition of 11 days, meaning the George Washington's birthday was shifted from February 11th to the 22nd. What I did not know was that in the Julian calendar the New Year started on March 25. Thus, in the Julian calendar Washington was born on February 11, 1731, but his birthday is February 22, 1732 according to the modern Gregorian calendar. The one-year difference has always confused me, but now I understand the origin of the problem.

As stated, this is not an academic history. While there are 70 pages of notes, the book focuses on readability not on academic analysis. This is great for most readers, but will disappoint others who want more analysis and academic speculation. Franklin's life is told in a straightforward chronological manner. All of the aspects of his life are covered: the self made businessman, the publisher, civic leaders and creator of such civic institutions (such as lending libraries and fire brigades), the scientist and perhaps most importantly the wily American ambassador to France. He comes across as one of the most "modern" of the founding fathers and one of the most indispensable. I got a much better appreciation of Franklin the scientist, one that transcended that of a man whose chief contribution seemed to be flying a kite in a thunderstorm. The kite flying may, in fact, have never actually occurred, at least in the way it is generally pictured. (Franklin did not think that much of it, reporting it many years after the fact and well after the French had proven his ideas about lightening to have been correct.) I did not realize the extent to which he developed much the modern terminology of electricity and the many of the ideas that were to from the basis of the electricity age of the 19th century. He was also interested in thermodynamics and many subjects such as ocean thermal currents.

I read this book after reading McCullough's John Adams and I received a somewhat different view of Adams. Isaacson's references McCullough's book but does not view Adams in quite the same light. Adams comes off as being very suspicious of everyone's motives, bordering on paranoia. This is the most generally accepted view, leading me to question the extent to which McCullough whitewashed Adams' severe personality flaws. This reinforces the idea that one must read several books to get a balanced picture of a person or event.

As a kid, growing up in India, Benjamin Franklin was known more for his contributions to the field of science. Little did I know that he was one of the founding fathers of the USA. And so when Walter Isaacson (a former editor at TIME magazine) wrote this book, I bought this book. Back then, the main reason underlying the buy was the fact that I felt (and I still feel) that TIME was very unbiased and expected the book to paint Benjamin Franklin as the man he was, and not a "whitewash" job of painting the greatness of the man.
Isaacson did not disappoint and has done a commendable job (I dare say brilliant) of depicting Benjamin Franklin, warts and all. It was a voyage of discovery for me, personally. The scientific acumen was one of the less important facets of his life. On the other hand, the book enlightened me on a statesman sans pareil who played a very important role in shaping a fledgling nation. What stands out in the book is the fact that Franklin was a very pragmatic/practical man, and I dare say he would have been a perfect person to lead a nation during a crisis.
Once I was done reading the book, I found my admiration for a great man almost become pure hero-worship.

If you want to learn about Ben Franklin this is a fine read. If you want to be entertained try something else. Isaacson's style is ponderorus and lacks energy and flow. Who would have thought that Franklin's wonderful life could be recounted in such boring detail.

Benjamin Franklin's long and productive life has a special appeal to many people. As Isaacson suggests, perhaps he is the founder who appeals to so many people because he seems more accessible. There are several things I learned in this book that I had not really considered before, mainly his relationship with his family and the opinions others had of him in succeeding generations. As the author remarks, we picture him (somewhat inaccurately) as a spectacled, elderly man engaging in his kite experiment or we see him dispensing maxims about industry and frugality. In reality, there was much more to the man than these images would suggest.

We sometimes stereotype famous individuals of the past as one-dimensional, but we are delighted and sometimes chagrined to learn that they are just as complex as we are. Franklin was no exception. We see in this book aspects of his relationships with people and his family that we would not normally come across in a brief glance of the man. He would, literally, be distant from his common law wife Deborah as his overseas trips would end up as years away from home. He would part ways with his son (illegitimate son) William over the independence debate. He would champion the cause of the artisan class and the middling sort, but just as easily associate with the powerful and the rich.

His varied interests and life experiences certainly endear him to many people. Not many founders can claim to have done as many varied things as Franklin. He wasn't a skilled orator or debater, or as deep a political philosopher as other founders were, as the author touches on, but these are probably other examples of why he seems more accessible to people. He was both conservative and liberal on varied issues, but was generally more democratic than other founders. He was also a very tolerant man when it came to religious sects. He was a scientist who believed in practical inventions and solutions; he wasn't as caught up in the language or theories as other scientists were.

I've left out much on his well known role during and after the American Revolution. This isn't to minimize his accomplishments in his profession or in the critical events of his day, in which he was often a key player. The author ably covers all of these important facets of Franklin's life. The numerous acquaintances with various people in this country and those in England and France, the flirtatious correspondences with some of his women admirers, and so forth are also ably covered here.

Clearly, the author likes this middle class / populist appeal of Franklin's and tries to present him in such a light. This is a wonderfully written biography that sheds much light on the man.

I am a fan of narrative nonfiction history, so I was a bit offset when I started reading Benjamin Franklin. It's not really a narrative biography, but by the end of the first page, I didn't care.

The book is well written by Walter Isaacson and it is about a fascinating man. I knew very little about Benjamin Franklin when I began this book. Not so now.

Isaacson looks at the many facets of the man's life--printer, author, politician, diplomat, revolutionary, inventor, scientist. Franklin was a man who defined his time and defined America, as can be seen by the fact that's he's the only American who signed all 4 crucial documents in America's founding.

Isaacson also looks at Franklin's faults and contradictions. Though Isaacson tries to figure out how they could exist in Franklin, he never quite manages to get inside Franklin's head.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable read. I came away with a new appreciation of Franklin.

This is a clinical but important retelling of what is perhaps the worst naval tragedy in US history. It is well worth the time and effort to read what it takes to be a real American hero. It would also appeal to those with shark or science interests or simply WW2 buffs who want a Pacific perspective on the war.

In this book, the captain of the USNS Indianapolis is court-martialed for losing his ship in an act of war. In fact it was the Navy brass themselves who should have been convicted of murder. They sent the ship out without escort, they didn't provide the captain with intelligence which might have prevented its torpedoeing. When the ship didn't arrive as scheduled the situation descended into such a comedy (certainly not the right word!) of errors that make you, the reader, want to scream. And, as is usually the case when the brass screws up, they cover their own rear ends and nail somebody who doesn't deserve it. This is a shocking story of institutional irresponsibility, but its also a story of incredible heroism and fortitude. And, finally, justice -- although meager -- is done. You will speed through this book. It is so compelling that you will drop everything else and read it from beginning to end. And when you're finished you'll conclude that the Navy betrayed these brave crewmen in the extreme. And you'll be grateful that even at this late date, they are beginning to get the recognition they deserve.

This book was simply amazing. I don't need to describe it in detail. Lets just say there were scenes in the book where I cried. I have read hundreds of books on World War 2 and this by far is the deepest. I actually thought I was there with them feeling their thoughts and fearing their fears. This book is a must.

excellent book about an injustice done to a naval officer of wwII. Taken from the survivors' accounts, this book describes the hell that all of these men went through to survive five days at sea. It also tells how they exonerate the captain of the Indianapolis as not being at fault. It is only too bad that the navy only does this after the poor man kills himself from the shame of the original court -marshal! He did his best for his men during that time and should have been given a medal of honor! This account starts with him shooting himself so it can be a bit tough to listen to.

There is quite a bit of language in this book. Just letting you know.

You probably already know what the story is about, somewhat (the ship sank and many of the survivors set adrift with no boats suffered the fate of becoming shark food). What many don't know until they pick up the book, like I did, is the whole story of the Indianapolis; a string of mistakes and oversights, that resulted in an unnecessary sinking of a ship, death of hundreds of men and then the scapegoating of the ships captain who was left out to dry by the Navy.

I didn't find this book to be a non-stop page turner, but I did find it to be a lesson in history. Not just military but history in the sense that the military, in this case, or government, or big business, or life for that matter is not fair. In this case, people screwed up, people above the captain of the ship, but the old adage that the captain is fully responsible for whatever happens on or to his ship, ended up being used by cowards in the Navy, military and government to save their butts and string up a man loved by his men.

To some up the book in a few sentences would not do it justice, but it should be read. It is a story of not just abject horror and betrayal, but also of bravery and courage and needs to be read to be understood.

I could only get through 150 pages of this insufferable main character. Since I only read a fraction of this 500-page book, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt by rating it 2 stars instead of 1.

Tony Lord is absolutely perfect in every way. He's a hard-working working-class guy who is brilliant, a star athlete (in TWO sports), gorgeous, and dating the prettiest, richest girl in school, who has saved her virginity just for him. He has a rough patch (to say the least) but we already know that he ends up as a famous lawyer with a gorgeous movie-star wife. Oh, for Pete's sake!

What's more, Patterson likens Tony's persecution to that suffered by Jews (via his lawyer [!]) and blacks (via his football teammate [!]). It was all too much. I had zero sympathy for what could have been a very sympathetic character.

I purchased the book because i really admire Richard Nourth Petterson for his book THE EXILE , though , reviewing Silent Witness has it's difficulties.

Of course , As in the former Petterson's book that i've read , toward the end I felt very intrested in whats about to happen , But im sorry to say that the book , in its complex didnt thrill me much , until the last 100 pages more or less.

The Exile is very different from this 1 , within every page I read ,I was consumed with suprise and shock so much I couldnt get my hands of the book so I must say im pretty dissapointed for this one .

to summon it in few lines

great ending chapters.
full of information about the characters and emotions but lack of suprises and didnt really thrill me as a reader.

Silent Witness is the first book I've read from Richard North Patterson. When I finished, I was left to wonder why I hadn't yet picked up any of his previous works. This book was fantastic. Patterson grabs the reader in the first few minutes and keeps him completely captivated throughout this legal thriller. I particularly liked the way he made effective use of movement back and forth in time to tell his story. Patterson pulls the story forward with strong character development, providing a range of emotions and motivations that spans the character set. Start to finish, this is a great story. Now, I'm off to tackle some more from Patterson that I have been missing.

This was my first Richard North Patterson book. I really liked it. Easy to read and easy to follow. I had trouble putting it down.

This is one of those books you can't put down, and hate to see it end. I liked it so much, I bought one as a gift for my daughter. I read many novels. This one was in my top 10 of all time.

This is a gripping tale of what happens when organizations don't do their jobs. I know the parents of one of this mass-murder's victims who was able to conceal his crime because of the once common arrogance of hospital's and their medical staffs. As a hospital administrator, I can report that much has changed in the physician credentialing process because of the death and mayhem wrecked by the murderer Jeff Swango!

I have been in health care for over 35 years & have encountered very poor practitioners in every discipline. It is shocking that medicine does not police itself better. It certainly polices non-physician providers. One would think that physicians would require the highest standards in all physicians & would assist those whose care is substandard & even dangerous to unsuspecting patients. Nothing has changed since this story was written. I say to all people to be very careful in selecting a healthcare provider.

Not only was this book a great read, it also displays the significant truth about the world of medicine. This type of behavior (ignoring what's in front of you) happens everyday in medicine. All credentialing personnel should be required to read this book.

This is a fascinating story about how the medical establishment did not detect a psycopath in their midst. Even after detection, they allowed him to continue as a doctor.

Even more upsetting was the failure of the faculty of the college of medicine at Southern Illinois University to detect and fail incompetent students. These students, including Michael Swango, were allowed to continue; even after episodes of total incompetence. If these policies are common at other medical schools, it offers an explanation for the large number of substandard physicians.

I was given "Blind Eye" when I first began working at a physician monitoring program as a clinician. At the time, I was under the impression that because physicians have so much responsibility to "do no harm," they would automatically report themselves or fellow physicians if they believed they were impaired mentally, physically or emotionally. How wrong I was!

"Blind Eye" represents the epitome of how our medical system supports physicians, even when they are dangerous to themselves and others. Through a painstaking and exhaustive review of the life and career of Dr. Michael Swango, James B. Stewart illustrates how easy it was for a medical doctor to manipulate nurses, colleagues, administrators, patients, and even his own family into believing that he was a competent physician. Stewart further demonstrates how the "good old boy" system is alive and well in America, in which doctors look the other way when something seems wrong, even when evidence to the contrary is right in front of them.

If I had not read this book, knowing it is a true story, I probably would not have believed that a physician could truly get away with murder; now I am truly convinced that this is, unfortunatly, the case. "Blind Eye" should be required reading for every person who works with or sees a personal physician.

There are numerous reasons why you should not read George Eliot's epic novel of 19th century life in England, Middlemarch. First of all the book is quite long--700 plus pages depending on the edition. More significantly, the novel largely deals with the romantic, social, cultural and political life of a small English country town during the three years 1829 to 1832, with particular reference to the efforts to pass a Reform Bill. This subject is not likely to be everyone's cup of tea. Thirdly, the book is, to quote Virginia Woolf, "one of the few English novels written for grown up people." It is certainly erudite, but to a large degree it is esoteric as well. The grown up person should also be an English major concentrating on 18th and 19th century British and European literature, with a graduate degree in world history, a familiarity with Greek and Latin literary history, a firm grounding in British 19th century political history, be an expert Trivial Pursuit player and be on intimate terms with at least four George Eliot scholars! The book reads like a college student's term paper in English Lit 101 in which the student tries to impress the professor by using a big word where a small one will do nicely and by using every name and obscure reference the professor alluded to in the lecture in hopes of getting an A. Granted there are footnotes (some 300) in the back of the book to explain the more obscure references, but it is a pain to have to keep flipping back and forth to learn that Tully Veolan is a Perthshire estate in Sir Walter Scott's novel, Waverly, or that Grinling Gibbons was a 17th century sculptor and painter. Finally, given the large cast of characters and the fact that many of them are related to each other it is difficult to keep track of who is who and their relationship to each other. The book would have benefited from a listing of the characters (a practice with many such books of this scope, as for example the works of Dickens).

To be fair, the last half of the novel, when Eliot develops the human drama of the story and moves away from the social and political issues foci is gripping and compelling reading. Some people have criticized this part as being too negative, but it is when people are trying to deal with adversity, in real life and in fiction, that we most associate with them.

The plot centers around the comings and goings of various characters in the community of Middlemarch, but focuses on two main characters. Dorothea Brooke is a young (19), idealistic, religiously devote girl who chooses to marry the Rev. Edward Casaubon, a much older religious scholar of sorts inspired by the idea of developing mentally under the guidance of her wise husband. But Casaubon is a prig, set in his ways, and ultimately the marriage flounders as he is revealed as a venial and jealous man.

The second focus is on Dr. Tertius Lyngate, a young idealist surgeon who comes to Middlemarch and is installed, despite local opposition, as the head of a hospital by a wealthy banker with a dark past which comes back to haunt him. Dr. Lyngate marries Rosamond Vincy, the beautiful daughter of the mayor but that marriage also flounders because of her shallowness and material desires.

Sub plots abound: the affairs of Sir James Chettam, a wealthy neighbor of Dorothea who, after being disappointed in seeking her hand, marries her sister Celia; the political aspirations of Dorothea's uncle; the aspirations of Will Ladislaw, a seeming upstart with an attachment to Dorothea; the affairs of Fred Vincy, a likable but profligate young man who loves Mary Garth an unattractive but good hearted girl; the actions of Peter Featherstone, a rich old man whose money and estate many people aspire to, and ultimately the appearance of his mysterious son; the belated appearance of Mr. Raffles, an unscrupulous man with knowledge of the past that affects several of the characters.

Money and religion seem to be at the heart of most folks in Middlemarch and small town gossip abounds. If this sort of thing, wrapped in eloquent language, is enjoyable reading for you then Eliot's novel will give you hours of pleasure. But given the comments above, I really cannot give it more than three stars.

This is a wonderfully sophisticated, intelligent book with sharp commentary on multiple social issues of her time.(and ours in certain aspects) All of the characters are wonderfully imperfect, restrained and original and are caught in the intriguing webs of dilemmas but their behviors are very coherent with their characters and subcultures. This author truly deserves our utmost respect.

My comments are related only to the electronic version/aspect of this edition of Middlemarch rather than on the classic story. While this edition is readable it's a huge disappointment. There are so many typos that the reader is easily and regularly disturbed by trying to sort out misspellings, missing periods, or mangled sentences and paragraphs. Very unprofessional of Amazon to offer books that haven't been thoroughly edited. Kindle is a wonderful device - why not make sure the books are perfect? Why should a customer expect less in an e-versions than one does in hard copy?

Masterpiece? Greatest English novel? Well, I don't know about that -- it's very good, but it's not perfect. But it is funny, and it's a page-turner. Our heroine, Dorothea, is an intellectual stuck in a very provincial town, and she just wants someone she can have an intelligent conversation with, and whom she can help do some kind of serious work. A very marriageble but not especially bright gentleman courts her, and brings her a puppy as a present. Dorothea doesn't _mean_ to be rude, but she speaks her mind, that she doesn't approve of having pets just to pet them -- she thinks dogs are happiest when they have some serious work to do. I laughed out loud at this point, as at so many others. I know just how she feels! And I also understand the sighs that her friends sighed as they rolled their eyes. That's our Dorothea! The gentleman caller eventually marries Dorothea's sister, and they (and the puppy) live happily ever after. Dorothea lives happily ever after, too, but only after being very, very serious about things for several hundred pages. You'll love her, and you'll laugh all the way.

I love this book (I have read it before) and thought I would get it on Kindle since it is one of my favorites. Unfortunately the Kindle version must have been slapped quickly into digital format via optical character reader or something similar, with no quality check done on it. It is full of typos that would have been easily caught with a simple spellcheck, for example instead of the word "call" it said "cal:" There are numerous examples of this and it is very distracting.