Butler Books

Aduulthood Rites is a solid continuation of the story line begun with Dawn. Lilith Iyapo continues life with the Oankali. This story has the feel of struggle concerning racial domination (of the extraterrestrial kind) and how kindness from your rulers can complicate but not necessarily alleviate a situation. Layers upon layers of meaning here. Warning: Octavia Butler is highly addictive. Read one and others are sure to follow.

I enjoy books that make me think. This one did. I have only read 3 of Octavia's books, but they are all dynamite. I rarely read a book through at one sitting, but I raced through all three of the exogenisis series. The many layers of meanings made me think about so many things in the "real" world. These books challenged me in many ways and I am still expanding as a result. Thank you, Octavia!!!!!!!!

I gave this book to my daughter for her bridal shower and it brought tears to her eyes, though it may have been due to the comments I wrote inside the cover.

Statements like 'Behold the tortoise, he only makes progress when he sticks his neck out!' and more give the reader food for thought with a little humour in a world where everything is safe and how it should be. Read this, and maybe you will gain the inspiration to try something different, something outrageous, something courageous.

There is plenty of fun to be had in this fast-paced, romping tale. The alphabet grows out of control, going from the ends of the universe back to Zippy, the dog of the boy who threw the snowball that started the whole delightful mess. This is a fun way for kids to learn the alphabet and how to play with words. I highly recommend it!

A fun and silly story about an avalanche that manages toinclude all the letters of the alphabet! The illustrations are wildand whimsical too.

Having spent a year in Africa, I can assure you that the illustrations so beautifully painted by John Butler, recreate the African plain. Most of the colors are yellows and oranges, with the brown mud. Bashi is born into an elephant family whose young females all protect and mother him, as is the norm. It is a good thing they do so, because Bashi's natural enemies are out there awaiting an opportunity. Unfortunately, they almost find one when little one day old Bashi is caught in the mud by the water hole. Luckily, his mother digs out around and under his feet and finally gets him free. The reader gets the idea of just how hard it is for the wonderful little creature to survive his first day of life on the African plain. Children loved it at a recent storytime I did.

This book provides a magnificent escape, with its astonishing illustrations that somehow really do capture the flat, endless essence of the desert savannah, the world the elephants and their potential predators inhabit. There are ordinary books with ordinary illustrations, and then there are books like this, with perfectly executed lines and colors. When you close the book, it is almost as if you've been to Africa, or seen a film of it. I suppose it is somehow like storyboards of a film. Anyhow, it is a beautiful, distinctive book that adults will like as much or more than child readers will. In addition, its story includes a deep motherlove between adult and child elephant that is moving in a calm, realistic way. A really excellent book.

Travelled for work to Benin and this book was great for my hobnobbing over the weekends. It is also very well written, my parents, who were not travelling with me, read it too, just because it was so much fun to read. There are also details as to who you can contact in a certain town for good guids, which I'm sure is useful. I did not make use of this and regret it. Only negative, though you cannot really expect this from a travel book, is that the historical chapter is somewhat incorrect and over-simplifying, but for that you would better get a history book. All in all, a great purchase for anyone going to Benin.

Thank you Stuart Butler for your candor, insights, and helpful information for traveling in Benin. It is a beautiful country with warm, wonderful people. Your book helped prepare me for what to expect, what to avoid, and how to enjoy Benin to its fullest. I also appreciate the folk lore stories and actual historic events you described. I would highly recommend this travel guide as it contains dependable and realistic information. I will definitely look forward to you sharing more of your travel adventures in future travel guides.

This wee book is not in the class of the things we get from Behan,Shaw,Wilde, Doyle,O'Carroll or even the McCourts;but in spite of that,I really enjoyed it.Everyone who knows anything about the Emerald Isle,has a bit of knowledge of Blarney,The Blarney Stone and Blarney Castle;but Butler has taken the art of Blarney to a whole higher level.Make no mistake about it,real Blarney is a true art of the first order.
First of all,Blarney only works with things Irish,because only the Irish can master the language the way they do.That is not to say,that one cannot understand and love the gift of Blarney,even if it is not part of your soul.Reading this book kept reminding me of that master of Blarney stories,Hal Roach.
A couple of things in the book that really got me were:
"In the Blarney Magazine of long ago it was said that any hotel proprietor who failed to welcome a guest properly was a man who was quite likely to sharpen a razor on the tombstone of his father to cut his mother's throat."
"If you can deal with Killarney Blarney,you can deal with anything."
"It is a Blarney principle that truth is too important to depend on such things as facts."
"With what sort of evidence can anyone question our genius?"
"This story may not be true,but in Ireland a story that deserves to be true is given full factual status.So it must be taken for real."
"Money,it was said bitterly on all sides,is only an obstacle to financial progress."
Here's your key to understanding Balarney; Enjoy!

If one has a hunger for a bit of the wit and light-heartedness of Erin's Isle (Ireland), this book is for you. As it goes on a delightfull ramble trough all sorts subjects you get to see them in the light that only the Irish can. Whether you bleed green or not, this wee book of witt will make you smile.

This is wonderful storytelling and very interesting. The historical focus shows in-depth research on the part of the author. I really enjoyed the book.

This soldier's tale made me think about all veterans coming
home from war and the many adjustments they must make to life.
Reading the events that shaped this young man's life were interesting and reasonable and made me want to see what happens
next.
It was evident that this author did much research to write
such an interesting historical novel.

P.G. Wodehouse may be most famous for Jeeves, his perfect "gentleman's personal gentleman", but his trademark humor is evident in books that do not feature Jeeves and Wooster at all. Such is the case with "The Butler Did It" a light-hearted romp that takes itself only slightly seriously and allows the reader to join in on the fun.

Retired butler Augustus Keggs has made a living of serving the moneyed elite and has it in mind to financially secure his future. The manner in which he assumes to do so is by exposing a secret marriage tontine that was put together by a bunch of millionaires just before the Great Crash. The last offspring of these millionaires to escape the marriage game will inherit close to a million dollars. Keggs hopes to persuade one of the two remaining possible heirs to help things along in their favor, and to cut him a slice of the pie. But where money (and greed) is involved, things hardly ever go as smoothly as planned.

"The Butler Did It" is a fast-paced whimsical read, full of pithy dialogue and curious characters who poke fun at themselves as well as the art world and the social order. Wodehouse is a master of the understatement, crafting descriptions of characters that manage to be both subtle and laugh-out-loud funny. Reading Wodehouse is always a pleasant and amusing diversion from the ordinary.

Fans of P.G. Wodehouse often refer to Jeeves as a butler, but as Bertie Wooster reminds us, Jeeves is actually a gentleman's gentleman, a valet. But on occasion, Jeeves is pressed into service as a butler, and performs quite well.

Imagine the surprise that many P.G. Wodehouse fans have when they open The Butler Did It and find that the butler in question is a Mr. Augustus Keggs, the English butler for one J.J. Bunyan, an American multimillionaire. But this Keggs is a worthy character who fans of Jeeves will find to be very rewarding.

The book has one of the most intriguing plots in all of the Wodehouse novels. As the story opens, it is the night of September tenth, 1929, just before the collapse of the American stock market. Bunyan is entertaining a group of bored millionaires who are having a hard time deciding how to spend the money they are raking in. Among his guests is Mortimer Bayliss, his art curator, who cannot help but want to stir up the philistines. Bayliss proposes that the men each put up $50,000 with the proceeds of the tontine to go to the last of their sons to marry. Naturally, they have to keep the whole matter a secret or deny themselves the possibility of ever having grandchildren.

The book then glides forward in time to the mid 1950s in England as the end game of the tontine arrives. Mr. Keggs is a fellow tenant with Lord Uffenham (who has fallen on hard times), whom he formerly served as a butler, and his niece, Jane Benedick. Mr. Kegg's own niece, Emma, is engaged to marry Roscoe Bunyan, son of the late J.J. Bunyan, of the tontine. Like the wise and omniscient butler he is, Mr. Keggs had recorded the conversation that night and knows all about the tontine. The tontine is down to Roscoe and one other. Mr. Keggs decides that the time has come to intercede.

Jane is engaged to one Stanhope Twine, a hopeless sculptor, but the two cannot marry because Twine hasn't the funds. Mr. Keggs suggests to Roscoe that Twine is the other member of the tontine, and that Twine will marry in a heartbeat if he can get hold of some money. Keggs suggests that Roscoe buy a percentage of Twine's future earnings in exchange for a payment now. Keggs naturally hopes to be well paid for his advice, and is thoroughly annoyed when Roscoe only gives him fifty pounds for information about a tontine payment of over a million dollars.

Here's where the plot begins to unravel. Twine takes the money and jilts Jane. Roscoe jilts Emma, and Cupid is not exactly being served.

But Keggs has been playing a game. Twine isn't really in on the tontine.

Next, Keggs sells the information to Roscoe for $100,000. Roscoe doesn't want to pay and hires a detective to get back the agreement as well as Roscoe's letters to Emma.

In the meantime, Bill Hollister falls head over heels for Jane and she for him . . . having known each other as children. Bill Hollister's name really is in the tontine, and Mr. Keggs has to try to sort out all of the romances and the money. Ultimately, he succeeds . . . but in a way that no reader could hope to anticipate. It's a marvelously funny story with great plot complications.

To my way of thinking, this is one of the five best P.G. Wodehouse books I have read.

Capital! Capital! Capital!

By Train At Night: Sixteen Short Stories is a sometimes disturbing, yet psychologically compelling collection short tales by Janet Walker McDaniel that view life through the dark side of a mirror. From "Standing on the Promises" and "The Sound of Wings" to "Half-Moon Rising" and "The Winnowing", the horrors of both body and mind form a twisted background for survivors of atrocity and people pushed to the limit of terrible, soul-rending choices in this highly recommended compendium of original and superbly written short stories.

Janet Walker McDaniel's short story collection, Train At Night, has a smokey, woodsy flavor of the deep south. Her stories will engross the reader until you become a part of them. Her prose and otherworldly, mystical relation with the short story is an incredible read.
Admittedly, I am not much of a short story reader, but her characters and places drew me in to her minds web, like an unsuspection fly to a date with a spider. Before I knew it, I had read the entire book and was looking forward to reading it again.
If you like the 'other-beaten-path' of reading, Ms. McDaniels, Train At Night, is a book sure to please you. : )

This book is fun for reader and child. My 16-month-old was squealing with delight as I turn each page. He's especially partial to frogs and there's a great tree frog in this book. Mom needs to learn how to make some of the sounds but it's well worth it to hear my little one so excited! Thanks for an awesome book Mr. Butler!

Love John Butler! We love his "Can You Cuddle like a Koala?" book too. This one is very similar. We love all the different animals he introduces in his books!