Dunne Books

Scarred by one experience in World War I, Alec Marquand has had a mental breakdown and will not communicate with others, although he is sometimes tempted. He is an old man now, and the novel is told in a series of flashbacks, as well is in the present tense. The flashbacks are to the War, but also to an earlier time when Alec worked on an archeological investigation in northern Scotland, and comes across a mute young woman who was raised on a remote island without ever being spoken to, as part of a mad experiment. She represents innocence, and Alec becomes infatuated. While I found the novel quite readable - Booth is a good story teller - the War scenes are not exceptional, and the best part of the earlier flashbacks is the depiction of how Alec sets about his archeological work. On the other hand, the thought processes of the old man, his interactions with staff, and most of all his appreciation of the garden in which his asylum is set, are wonderful.

"Islands of Silence", by Martin Booth is one of the finest books I have read in quite some time. This work has been compared to some classics in the genre and while in most instances this type of comparison is empty hyperbole, this work is remarkable and the comparisons are legitimate.

The irony, of the eventual role men who refused to inflict violence against their fellow man would play, is that they would often face the same dangers and peril and do so unarmed. The young man who is at the center of this novel becomes a stretcher bearer in the trenches of World War I, a locale that ranks as one of the most miserable man-made atrocities of History and Literature.

Prior to the war our protagonist is a young archeologist working amongst the Islands of Scotland in search of the history they hold. During his work he meets a young woman who is at once the victim of ignorance and cruelty while she enjoys her life without the benefit and burden of knowing how she came to her existence. She represents an enigma that the author places at the center of Alec's life. As a result of his wartime experiences Alec chooses to remain mute, voluntarily adopting as a defense the same characteristic his island friend had thrust upon her.

Mr. Booth writes beautifully even when his prose takes on brutality that reminded me of Steinbeck. Like the author I mention he can take a placid afternoon moment, and in an instant shatter it and the persons unfortunate enough to be present. "Islands of Silence", is a wonderful work, enjoy.

Alec Marquand never speaks. He never willingly communicates with another person. He is very old now, close to the end of his life, and incarcerated in a mental hospital. But it wasn't always like this. Once he was a young man, an archaeologist fresh out of college mapping the Stone Age in Scotland, and there, on the remote and much feared Island of Silence, he discovered a secret destined to haunt him the rest of his life -- a beautiful girl. Given time, their strange and fleeting relationship might have blossomed into something more, who knows? He never got to find out. WWI took him away, spit him out on a totally different sort of island under a rain of bullets, and baptized him in a carnage too horrible to remember. He has not spoken since, but he has never forgotten the girl.

Written from Alec's point of view in chapters alternating between his adventures as a young man and his life now as an old one, ISLANDS OF SILENCE is a strangely haunting novel. Although I found it slow going and in places was bored to the point of skipping whole paragraphs that seemingly had little to do with the plot, the prose was poetic, the details singularly perfect, and I worked my way through to the last page and was rewarded by an end satisfyingly appropriate for a story as mystical and sad as this one. Martin Booth has created here a horrific portrait of war, painting the devastation in chapters I will not soon forget. It would be hard to call ISLANDS OF SILENCE a love story; equally difficult to consider it a coming-of-age novel. Rather, it is a beautifully if sluggishly written account of one man's attempts to come to grips with a world that has hurt him too much.

Readers who enjoy complex, mystical tales of love and loss will most likely find ISLANDS OF SILENCE a brilliant addition to their collection.

Martin Booth's "Islands of Silence" is a very good read and an interesting love story. This novel tells the story of Alec Marquard, an aged, self-imposed mute and veteran of WWI who's winding down his days in a mental institution. It's told in first person narrative (with Alec as narrator) with chapters alternating between the present and past. Booth's writing is vivid and his pace perfect for the story as Alec's condition and the mystery of what caused it are patiently revealed through Alec's memories and thoughts.

The story begins in a mental ward where Alec has been a patient for a very long time. He's in possession of his faculties, but has eschewed speech for many years and as the story progresses the reader begins to understand Alec's motivation for this silence. We're given glimpses of his childhood and the memory-portion of the story really takes off when Alec puts his archaelogical degree to work investigating brochs off the Scottish coast. When researching ruins on an island off the coast, he sees a beautiful and mysterious young woman (note: I would not characterize her as otherworldly, she is very much human flesh) who is incapable of speech--although she is able to make sounds. Alec is mesmerized and eventually is able to meet and spend some time with her in an almost intimate setting. She allows him to make sketchings of her and there's even some minor physical contact. In spite of her inability to speak any language, she and Alec communicate during their brief time together and Alec either falls in love with her or becomes infatuated (the reader can be the judge). I found this part of the novel a bit of a stretch, but Alec is young at the time and the woman is very beautiful, so who knows? It is about this time that WWI is starting to heat up and pacifist Alec is incarcerated for his refusal to serve in the military (his military step-father is behind the charges) and taken from the coast and his incipient romance.

After multiple beatings and several months in prison, Alec is offered a release if he's willing to serve in the miltary with the medical corps. This section of the book is particularly riveting and revealing. Booth's depiction of the March 1915 naval assault on Dardennelles, Gallipoli is so well-rendered that the reader is almost transported to the beach (much like the opening scene on Normandy in the film 'Saving Private Ryan') and the horrible scenes and thoughts that follow. Alec shares his thoughts prior, during, and immediately after the assault and Booth provides the reader little chance to catch his or her breath. It's gripping stuff and brings the book much closer to its conclusion.

All in all, the writing is wonderully vivid and the alternating past/present chapters works very well in the context of the novel. I found the love story to be central to the story, but also a little difficult to buy into. I particularly enjoyed the war writing and the present day musings of Alec and how the author tied everything together. Part mystery, part war-novel, and major part love story, this is a very good read and one that's recommended.

I read about half of the book and couldn't muster up the energy to open it back up again. The book is quite boring - aside from D's tales on the road with Run DMC. I hardly think that Darryl lives up to be the voice of reason he assumes himself to be. Half of the half I read was spent trying to convince the reader of how ignorant we are to today's rap music and how the state of the industry is at an all time low. Give me a break, please.

...And those pictures of him are all out completely friggin' stupid.

This book was released but only a few days before Run Dmc made it's final New Orleans appearance at the House of Blues.As I left the concert that night,outside of the Marriott Hotel, a soft timid voice spoke out "Hey man,I sure like all that Adidas you have on."It was DMC.As I was completely charmed and engaged for those next few moments by this gentle giant,so will you be by this wonderful memoir.Covering his entire life and carreer and alcoholism and consequent pancreaitis, Mr.McDaniels quietly tells raps greatest story.The only flaw for was that theres not enough insight into the actual creative or studio process that quite literally changed pop music.(C'mon,"How'd ya do it Dee?"!!)Other than that,this along with Chuck D's caustic "Fight the Power",are a must read.

Anyone who is a fan of Run DMC or rap will love this book for the behind-the-scenes look at the early days of the group and the music. Anyone looking for a human interest story about maturing and becoming a man despite decadent surroundings will also probably be pleasantly surprised. Although it is a good read for anyone of any age, I would seriously suggest that this book should be required reading for high school kids. It really teaches a lot of great life lessons in a way that kids can relate to. It paints the picture of what most kids would consider to be the ideal existence - that of an international rock superstar living a life of decadence - and then gives the reader a very clear picture of why such a lifestyle is not so ideal. In doing this, it makes the reader question a lot of their own beliefs (e.g. "If only I made $X more a year, then I'd be happy" and "If I could have women falling at my feet, I'd be the luckiest guy in the world."). I would argue that it may help kids change the course of their lives early on and avoid having to learn a lot of hard lessons by experience.

The only (minor) flaw is that the book uses a lot of street slang and poor grammar. In general, I have no problem with writing in a vernacular if it helps put a story in its proper context or helps an author relate to a particular audience, but it is out of place here considering the content of the book. Gangster rap acts defend the violence and disrespect common to their music by claiming that they are only reporting what they see on the streets and are acting the way they act in real life. D adamantly opposes their behavior and discusses the flaws with their arguments, suggesting that they should aspire to be better people and do positive things with their talent and popularity. To be consistent with this line of thinking, the book should be presented in proper english. Surely, in editing the book, Haring must have noticed the many times the author switched tenses mid-sentence and used "ain't"s, etc. This would lead one to believe that there was a conscious effort to leave the poor language and slang in the book. The question then becomes: How is intentionally sounding ignorant any different than ganster rappers intentionally "keepin' it real"?

But if you look past the language and get to the meat and bones, you will find that the book has a whole lot to offer and that Darryl is a great guy. I can hardly wait for his solo album....

Who knew DMC was the soul of Run-DMC?

This is an important book, and if there is any justice, it will sell well, be read widely, and have as much influence as the early Run-DMC music did. This is NOT your typical, ghost-written celeb bio. Even those who know nothing about DMC the musician can be helped and uplifted by this book.

Oh, sure, there are the usual rock anecdotes about life on the road, the women, the parties, the money, and the drugs. (What?!? Run-DMC doing drugs? Unfortunately, yes.) There are even quite a few amusing stories about the genesis of Run-DMC (did you know that Run and DMC hated the name at first, but were convinced to use it by Russell Simmons?) There is talk of career highlights (playing "Live Aid,") the glasses, and writing lyrics. For those interested in rock history, there is ample enough grist for them.

What makes this an important book, though, is where rock-stardom ends and growth begins-- and DMC pulls no punches in laying out what he sees as the straight dope on what it means to be a real man, and what he hopes for the future of both rock music and society as a whole.

He does this in a powerful way that few rock stars (or even regular guys) ever attempt: by laying out his own mistakes for all to see (including almost dying from alcohol poisoning,) taking responsibility for them, and then talking about what he learned from them. It is painful to read at times, but even more powerful because of that.

D says things in this book that no one in the music industry has had the balls to say-- but you don't feel like he's criticizing, he's just calling it like he sees it. He thinks that a lot of the rap-metal groups are just calling up the negative vibe, that a lot of the other rap that glorifies money is just hurting the normal kid by skewing his priorities, and that fame and adoration should be given to those making lasting musical contributions (like Eric Clapton) not the to flavor of the moment. He talks about Tupac's death in a way that might surprise you.

D also talks about organized religion, spirituality, being a father, and, above all, being true to himself.

Above all, he encourages you to be true to yourself, too.

When we finish the book, we feel like we've met a real man and a person of some substance who is struggling to make his life and the world around him a better place.

It is totally understandable, after reading this book, why DMC is almost nowhere to be found on the latest Run-DMC album.

He has grown beyond Run and Run-DMC. And as we can see by that sorry "Crown Royal" album, maybe D was right in pulling out.

You can tell that all of this has been hard on D, that he is trying to grow as a person and a musician in a situation that wants him to stay the same.

All I can say to D is: Live Positive Forever and Ever.

You're doing the right thing, man, no matter how hard it is.

THE MAN WITH MY CAT follows THE MAN WITH MY NAME as second in Paul Engleman's Phil Mooney series.

Phil Mooney use to be a paramedic field officer with the Chicago Fire Department, but now it looks like he has taken up amateur sleuthing to fill his time. In this mystery, Phil has inherited his father's Maine coon feline named of Phull. I have to say, if I had a cat with as many nasty habits as Phil claims this one does, I would give it to my nearest enemy as a payback. Although Phil has been tempted to do far worse to Phull, he has talked himself out of it each time; the cat, like the car he now drives, belonged his late father. For putting up with the cat, his quick-witted wife Frankie says he should change his name from Phil to Phool. When Phil takes Phull to a vet, the cat is catnapped. With his bad habits, I would of said good riddance, and Phil is tempted to do the same, except that he loathes the person he suspects. Catnapping soon turns to politics, murder and mayhem.

Paul Engleman's presentation of the seedy side of law and politics is very well done! He doesn't write too strong or too colorful in this subject as our most popular suspense authors do these days. He does get right to the heart of it and leaves no stone unturned. In Phil and Frankie's struggle to fight back I found myself, like many will, identifying with them and cheering them on. The characters in THE MAN WITH MY CAT are well defined and remarkable. The plot seemed to be well thought and took many imaginative directions.

Light-hearted and witty, Paul Engleman's "The Man with My Cat" features wisecracking duo, narrator Phil Mooney and his writer wife, Frankie. Phil, on the outs with the Chicago political machine (see his first Moony novel, "The Man With My Name") has some time on his hands and only one job to do - get rid of the cat, inherited from his father, whose spraying habits have doomed him to neutering at the very least.

But someone steals his unwanted cat from the vet's office and then someone murders the vet. There's a lot of personality and politics before getting to this point and some slapstick and quick thinking in getting to the solution. The mystery is fun but the star attractions here are Phil and Frankie and Engleman's clever, sparkling writing.

Phil and Frankie Mooney do not want a cat, but his father's will forces the couple to accept Phull. However, the arrangement fails as the eight-year old tomcat sprays everything that does not move and then some. Neutering is out due to the age of the feline until their friend Pat Ryan introduces them to a vet willing to perform the surgery.

When Phil arrives to bring Phull home from the vet, the receptionist informs him that a woman has already picked up the cat. Upset because the cat is missing, the Mooneys and Pat begin to search for the abducted feline. Instead of locating Phull, they find the murdered corpse of the vet. The police suspect Phil and Pat killed the victim. Their investigation has taken on an even more ominous demeanor because prison is imminent if they fail to uncover the identity of the culprit.

Anyone who cares about cats will understand the dilemma facing the eccentric protagonists who do not want the feline, but are unable to let Phull go. THE MAN WITH MY CAT is a clever satirical mystery that guides readers through the sewage of Chicago politics. Paul Engleman has written a thought-provoking tongue-in-cheek mystery that will appeal for those who want to read about something outside the mainstream of the genre.

Harriet Klausner

Phil Moony inherits two precious things from his father, a cat and a car. He desparately wants to ditch the cat, but as the story opens, every time he works up enough nerve to do so, he backs down. Finally, the cat is one step closer to being laid to rest, but it is stolen, and the vet chosen to do the dasterdly deed ends up dead instead.

This is a charming, witty story filled with terrific dialogue, colorful characters and delightful mayhem.

Fast reading. Wonderful writing and dialogue.

Cris

Nobody would read this book to learn about Belize or the casualties left by Hurricane Hattie. This memoir belongs to the category of Foreign Service Tales -- like Durrell's "Esprit de Corps." Laughter helps you survive almost anything, even working for the consul from Hell. Although I wish Conroy had focused exclusively on his time in Belize -- because that's where the action is -- memoirs do tend to meander, like real life, and anybody who ever worked in a consulate will recognize Conroy's predicament.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because I read it as a foreign service adventure commentary, NOT as a travel log of Belize. As a daughter of a foreign service officer and as an avid listener of f.s. stories thereof, I chuckled about the various snafus, ridicula, and adventures of this young man and his family on their first post.

Conroy is funny and the book is very readable, but I didn't give him a higher rating because I didn't think he tried very hard to know the people of Belize, or the country itself. He has a lot to say, all true, about the poverty and the governmental inefficiency when he was there, but didn't notice any of the natural beauty or the native culture(s) in this unique little place. He got really distressingly cold-blooded when he wrote about Hurricane Hattie, a tragedy in which there was great loss of life, and seemed mostly concerned that he wrecked his boots! If you want to know Belize, I would recommend that you read Zee Edgell's fine book BEKA LAMB, which is a nice antidote for Conroy's fin-de-colonialism attitude in this book. Conroy's attitude is reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh in this book, but although he is (almost) as cruel, he is not half so funny.

Our Man in Belize is the story of Belize before satellite TV, before tourism, and before crack.

In 1959, Richard Timothy Conroy, something of state department misfit, was posted as U.S. vice consul to British Honduras, a lowly job in one of the backwaters of the diplomatic world. Two years later, one of the worst hurricanes of the century would strike an unprepared Belize. Out of this mixture of colonialism and disaster, Conroy builds an entertaining, fanciful memoir of life when the driving was still on the left. Or, as likely as not, in the middle.

The just-arrived vice consul recounts a trip into the Belize City of 40 years ago:

"The car crunched over the land crabs that had crawled onto the road to enjoy the last heat of the day ... The two-mile drive into Belize along Princess Margaret Drive was a drive into another century. Out at the racetrack, the few houses, for all their bleak shabbiness, had a cheap modern look. A failed subdivision on the edge of an abandoned town in a small country with unsupportable pretensions .... The old part of Belize presented, as we entered, a certain harmony of man, dog, and environment. Even shabby charm ... But the big difference was the number of inhabitants in the streets. The desolation that had so marked the new settlements was replaced by a town teeming with life, on foot, paw, and bicycle as well as rooted in the salty ground."

Conroy quotes U.S. state department reports of the time that the country has "a road going west, and a road going north; both going nowhere." He reports, too, that except for the Fort George Hotel, Government House, and a few houses in the British section which had piped-in water, most of the city collected its water in cisterns "with the occasional rat or cat for body and flavor." He tells of some of Belize's great eccentrics: "Paddy," who would filch the American consulate's copy of The New York Times, and then, after removing all his clothes to wash them in the sea, would sit naked on the public seawall reading The Times while his clothes dried. And of "Bugger," a chess-playing Polish physician who always wanted to go to Africa, so when offered a position in Belize City, he quickly accepted, learning only after he was half-way there that Belize wasn't in Africa.

After his British Honduras post, Conroy did a tour in Vienna, then left the state department for the Smithsonian Institution. Happily for us, Conroy's time in government work didn't ruin his knack for a good story. He's published three mystery novels and can tell a tale with the best of them.

Witness: The sedate dinner party when giant roaches, attracted by the candlelight, drop from the ceiling into the gazpacho, or the story of a fool-proof method for stopping the cook from stealing your scotch.

That these stories have, as the author admits, taken on a life of their own, are perhaps as much fantasy as fact, does not at all detract. Such recasting of reality, however, is likely behind Conroy's irritating and otherwise unexplainable habit of changing the names of nearly everybody, and even of some cities and countries, long after most of these people are gone and the events forgotten.

Some old Belize hands, including those who knew him personally, take exception to Conroy's tales. It is not, after all, always a flattering memoir. He tells of the petty stupidities of the U.S. government and of the bunglings of both the British and the local Creole establishments, albeit disguising the identities of the participants. Conroy revels in juicy and unflattering gossip. He reports, for example, the story of the long-time Belize City department store owner who, after getting a nice settlement from the insurance company on losses from Hurricane Hattie and the looting afterwards, piled his Rover full of cash and drove north to the Mexican border, outrunning a customs inspector on a bicycle and violating British currency exchange regulations then in force.

More significantly, Conroy also could be faulted for focusing on the details, however amusing, of personal discomforts and calamities caused by Hurricane Hattie, rather than on the human tragedy the hurricane caused. Hattie struck on the night before Halloween 1961, killing more than 400 Belizeans and destroying much of Belize City. Conroy gives short shrift to the misery of homeless Belizeans in the shacks of Hattieville (which Conroy misidentifies as the site of Belmopan, the new capital) yet lightheartedly claims that after Hurricane Hattie young girls in Belize stopped wearing underwear, in a primordial reproductive reaction to a natural disaster. With an irreverent nod, however, to Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and a wave to the captivating scoundrels of In the Garden of Good and Evil, Conroy's is the kind of memoir which, to paraphrase William Powell as Nick Charles in Shadow of the Thin Man, we enjoy no other kind than.

Conroy says he has not been back to Belize since 1963 and proposes that today's Belize he would not even recognize. He suggests that Hurricane Hattie may have been, as it were, a watershed in Belize's history, the turning point from the old colonial backwater past to self-government and a move to a new order of politics and business on a wider stage. The final laugh of this memorable memoir, this one on Vice Consul Conroy himself, may be that the Belize of the 1950s, with its entertaining eccentrics, bordellos, heavy drinkers, comic politicians, inept diplomats, dope airstrips in the bush, auto-theft rings, and port thieves, is not that much different from the Belize of 1998.

Some people think it is fun to do a parody of a song, but this book extends comedy to make fun of literary personalities for more than half a century. I have fond memories of being in the presence of three of the authors mentioned in this book, usually for readings from a book that I had not read. Just knowing that such people exist is part of the omniscience of our journalistic age, but I have read books by more than a dozen, most of which were pretty funny. Comedy skits are becoming a fundamental part of the way in which many people develop an understanding of the world. At the cutting edge, the raw material which the world provides is more mysterious than the nature of jokes. Entertainment values can skewer select lives in ways that are most amusing when the punishment is self-inflicted, and education can become an effort to addict people to reading with this kind of expectation. My life is as prone to this addiction as any, with several movies adding to the knowledge that I have of a few more creative efforts. Comedy is a habit that has become widely admired as the nature of reality has become so skewed that a major reason everybody is not equal has to be because we know different jokes. Parody is a pretense which allows J. B. Miller to make obvious how difficult any effort to produce a meaningful reflection of our times became in a century which followed the great minds, Freud and Jung, joking about polymorphous perversity.

You ought to be curious about what is in this book, if you have any appreciation for how funny people's thinking has been lately, but you can't depend on anything that it says because the disclaimer on the page before the Contents says: "Don't believe a word of it." With 44 selections in the 235 numbered pages, at an average of 5 pages per author sampled, selected, folded. spindled, or mutilated, which were preceded by a ten-page introduction dated May 2002, in which the satirist claims he was nine when he pocketed pages from Virginia Wolff's journal dated 1936, which could mean J. B. Miller was born before 1928, and might have been 74 when he produced these reflections on "these ink-stained wretches" (p. xi) who supposedly "entrusted these pieces to me on the understanding that I would never share them with anyone. So here they are." (p. xii).

Was rock funny? In the "Rabbit Rocks" by John Updike, Harry Angstrom is in a man band, leaping and tripping on a speaker cable, falling off the stage for a compound fracture of his right leg. Janice tells him, "You're a joke. They're calling it Lame Rock." (p. 100). Then in the List of Works by Joyce Carol Oates, there's "I'm a Believer: Musings on the Monkees." (p. 112). That's more like a reminder than a joke, coming after "Whodathunkit (I did)" (p. 111).

People don't always plan to get old, but "Harry Potter and the Rolling Stone" by J. K. Rowling describes Keith as something worse: "The heap coughed and then closed its eyes. Harry assumed it had gone back to sleep." (p. 223). The theme is how quickly things get old in this culture. "Even Harry was getting a little long in the tooth for the kids these days; every six months they were on to a new action figure or boy band. He was thinking of retiring himself--after all, who wanted a nineteen-year-old boy wizard?" (p. 225).

There is something great about freedom: a culture which allows so much to be going on that none of it fits together. The ideal moment in the book, THE SATANIC NURSES, for me, was in a set of rules by Norman Mailer on meeting women, designed to avoid the problems he had, and learning from his mistakes. Try to picture the dating scene from Norman Mailer's point of view: "How was I to know? I had two tickets to the Timothy McVeigh Lethal Injection, which the press had made out to seem like the hottest event in town." (p. 32). This did not turn out to be a great date for Norman Mailer, however much it reminds me of the old-fashioned procedure by which someone might be pictured dancing upon the air in the great poem by Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The wit in this book is like the wry verse from this poem by Wilde:

It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair :
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare :
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air !

The J. R. R. Tolkien parody, "Lord of the Strings," has a brilliant idea about string which was magic, so when a string was tied around Balbot Biggins' finger, "he found that he was able to remember things." (p. 38). Evil Knitting Needles and The Return of the Yarn finally result in a "(Big battle with string.)" (p. 39).

The song parody in this book, "penned by an evidently irate Cole Porter," (p. 40), reversed the idea of the famous song, "You're the Top." Typical ideas:

"You're a fiend
I'd say more but it'd be obscene." (p. 41).

That idea might be quite common, now, as everything becomes more uninhibited. The wit is in being able to say things that take some thinking to figure out what it sounds like, not just how it looks. "You're an ist that's Fash" (p. 41). In the song, it might be twisted around like that so it would rhyme with "You're the stock market crash," but I suspect there is a deeper meaning. Normally, it would not be polite to say some of the things in this song, or this book. I shouldn't even tell you what line rhymes with "A stupid joker." (p. 42).

When I read the list of authors parodied, I couldn't wait to dive into this book. I've read a majority of the originals and always enjoy a good parody. Unfortunately, this book wasn't it. Sometimes there's a fine line between funny and stupid - but this book never gets close to that line; it stays well over on the stupid side. Miller did manage to capture the style of the originals, but the attempts at parodies were senseless and void of humor. Don't waste your money; don't waste your time. If you're faced with getting a root canal or reading this book, go to the dentist; you'll enjoy it more.

This is the stuff your English teacher never told you about.
Miller has put together a fine collection of satires. He's not only well read, but well versed in The Marx Brothers, Mad Magazine, Beyond the Fringe, Monty Python, and Jackass.

I haven't laughed so much since the last time I laughed this much, which never happened before. This book is HILARIOUS! If you like literary satire, this book is for you. The Harry Potter spoof had be falling off my chair. Unfortunately I was driving at the time. When I woke up in the hospital I asked the staff where my copy of THE SATANIC NURSES was. They thought I was making fun of them, so they had me operated on by Dr. Thousxisamspams. I think he was the guy who killed Andy Warhol. Anyway, during the operation he started reading the book, which he must have found somewhere (it was probably MY copy), which made him laugh so much (I think it was the piece called She's a Right Ho, Jeeves, the send-up of P.G. Wodehouse) that he botched the operation, and now I have a dirty grin stuck on my face. Anyway, the book is pretty funny. But read it on a train or something.

With all the concern about homeland security I've been reading a lot on the subject. This is definitely one of the best (and clearest) descriptions of the Patriot Act, and it's helped me understand the complexities of the act and the way it impacts us. The passages describing prior attempted terrorism acts (in New York City), made me realize that 9/11 was one in a series of attempts. I also liked learning more about real police tactics and reading the behind the scenes descriptions of real crimes.

With all the concern about homeland security I've been reading a lot on the subject. This is definitely one of the best (and clearest) descriptions of the Patriot Act, and it's helped me understand the complexities of the act and the way it impacts us. The passages describing prior attempted terrorism acts (in New York City), made me realize that 9/11 was one in a series of attempts. I also liked learning more about real police tactics and reading the behind the scenes descriptions of real crimes.

Although this book could have gone more in-depth on certain subjects, I also liked the fact that it covered a lot of ground. Crime scene science, the structure of the NYPD and the use of new technology were especially well documented. It is definitely a must-read for anyone interested in true crime and policing. And if you can't tear yourself away from shows like Forensic Files and other true crime TV series you'll love this book.

New York City is a pretty exciting place, so I imagined, when I bought this book, that I would be reading a pretty exciting book. After all, it was written by the former Police Commissioner, Howard Safir. And, while Safir was already out of office when the tragedy of Sept. 11 occurred, he was there during the Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima cases. That's essentially why I decided to read this book, to find out what Safir was thinking during all that chaos. To my great disappointment, he didn't tell us much. In fact, throughout the entire book, there is very little feel for the man Safir is. Perhaps he and his ghost writer weren't able to communicate or maybe Safir is just trying to forget those dark days as 'top cop'. I don't know. What I do know is, this is little more than a commercial for his new venture into homeland security. Lots of fluff, very little else. Too bad. I was hoping for more.

I love gentle, Brit reads. And after Blackthorn Winter, I was ready to get cozy for another. However, Turning for Home did not have the same charm for me. The young, central character of this story was all about emotional dysfunction with episodes of recreational shagging and discourses of abrasive "effen" language. If you are a lover of Pilcher and Willet, with a penchant for gracious and somewhat moral tomes, this offering may not be your cup of tea.

This was a sweet, heart-tugging book with a memorable and well-developed cast of characters of many different types. It takes place mainly in a small rural village in the countryside outside London.

The elderly and often-cranky Lady Pamela hires the vivacious and headstrong young Maeve Delaney as her companion. After an initial period of awkwardness, the two women arrive at a truce and actually begin to enjoy each other's company. Lady Pamela lost her only daughter many years ago and Maeve lost her mother to emotional detachement when she was young, so they form and interesting attachment, although never as "mother and daughter" per se.

To cope with her boredom with country living, Maeve makes Lady Pamela's prematurely retired racehorse her pet project. She is determined that he race again and this goal inspires Lady Pamela as well.

This was a lovely, feel-good book that immediately engaged me. Not great literature, but worth reading.

Twenty-six years old Maeve Delaney needs a job fast as she is running out of money and does not want to ask her wealthy dad for cash. She reads a newspaper ad looking for a caretaker companion to a disabled elderly woman and decides the job is perfect for her. She makes up a phony résumé and obtains the position though she seems too young to do the job. The employer Henry Benham wants to simply placate his bossy wife by hiring someone to care for his octogenarian mother.

Maeve and Lady Pamela get on quite well together as the youngster ignores the older woman's rants and provides a breath of freshness to the geriatric invalid. Soon she encourages Pamela's lover Sam Elwes to spend more time with his beloved and persuades her charge to begin racing her horse Irish Dancer. As the two generations get acquainted a loving bond similar to a grandmother and granddaughter form that gives Pamela a reason to live, but what will happen once Maeve moves on?

This is an interesting relationship drama that serves as a comparison between the "old" and the "new". Maeve is an intriguing protagonist who combines the impishness of Holly Golightly with the right degree of responsibility for the safety of her companion. She gives Pamela a reason to live unlike the elderly woman's wimpy son or her authoritative daughter-in-law, who have done everything in public tastefully just short of announcing the wake. Fans who relish a modern day tale of manners will want to read this English character study.

Harriet Klausner

Maeve Delaney is a free-spirited Irish girl down on her luck in England. By chance, she becomes companion to the bedridden Lady Pamela living alone in the rural countryside. This is the story of how this highly irreverent, vivacious, and totally charming young woman transforms every life she touches and makes an indelible mark on the village.

She seems totally wrong for the job, but Maeve reminds Lady Pamela so much of her own headstrong youth, that a tenuous bond forms between the two. Lady Pamela still grieves for the daughter she lost and for the secret she carries. It isn't long before Maeve has the woman not only out of bed but fighting her wimpy son and his domineering wife for control of her own destiny. Maeve also finds the one catalyst that will infuse Pamela with a new determination to live---a has-been racehorse, appropriately named Irish Dancer, is pulled out of retirement and trained to compete again. Infusing both women with the adrenaline rush and excitement they crave, Irish Dancer provides some of the novel's most exciting scenes.

The cast of supporting characters is well-defined and provides deliciously romantic as well as tender and poignant subplots. Included in this are: Sophie, Maeve's dearest friend and the mother of twins adapting to her husband's rejection; Matt Digby, the veterinarian who loves them both; his father, David Digby who finds himself flattered by Maeve's friendship; Henry, Pamela's milquetoast son who fears Bunty, his shrew of a wife; Sam, the love of Pamela's life who was never able to marry her; Mohammed, Maeve's exotic friend; Flora and Freddy, Sophie's precocious twins; and Diana Tripp, the put-upon secretary who instantly bonds with Maeve in a covert alliance.

The reader won't soon forget the irrepressible Maeve and the lives she transforms. Warm, romantic, and touching, this cozy story is compelling from its breezy opening to its gripping ending.

Apparently USA Today and other reviewers think Susan Konig's book, "Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (and Other Lies I Tell My Children)" is "downright Bombeckian." I've read the classic "Mom" books by Erma Bombeck, Teresa Bloomingdale, and Jean Kerr. This book doesn't have anywhere near the same quality, humor, and insight as those.

If you want to read not-so-funny accounts of a lazy, "stereotypical" mom, keeping-up-with-the-Jones' mentality, run-of-the-mill stupidity, and husband-bashing by an over-anxious-to-fit-in-and-be-noticed-as-cool personality, by all means, check out this book. I cannot recommend this book unless you wish to have all your fears confirmed about what children will do to a seemingly normal career woman.

Lest you think I can't relate to Konig's subject matter, I will assure you that I am a professional engineer with a husband, a house, and four young children of my own.

Skip this book. Stick with a classic like, I Should Have Seen It Coming When the Rabbit Died by Teresa Bloomingdale or Please Don't Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr.

This is really a treat as Ms. Konig let's us into the inner workings of her family - and her own head.

"Why Animals..." makes a great gift - I've given at least twenty of them and everyone has appreciated the read.

I hope there's a sequel!

Are you a mom with young kids? Maybe you have a toddler and are pregnant again? You will be nodding your head, saying, uh-huh, laughing, totally identifying with this mom. Probably saying, "Hey, I could have written this!" I'm enjoying this book and as a mom to two young ones, a 3 yr old, and an 11 month old, I recommend it. (I read it in the bathroom or while nursing!)

Maybe we have our new Erma Bombeck in Susan Konig who supplies some wonderfully humorous and amazingly honest looks at motherhood in her new book, which is a compliation of realted essays. It's been over 20 years since I had todlers but Konig brought it all back to me - the fun, the funny, the insanity!

This book will be enjoyed by mothers of all ages and circumstances.

Thanks to these authors for putting together a resource for the significcant others of those affected alcoholics and drug addicts. While, so many self help books written for family members label those who want to help as co-dependents, this one does not! Instead, I was able to read about several options I have as a parent of an addicted teenager to help him. As a result, I was able to find several teen oriented support meetings that my son can has gone to and I feel that I have helped him...finally! Thank You!!

"Addiction-Free" by Gene Hawes and Anderson Hawes fills a niche in the literature on alcoholism and addiction. Alcoholism and drug addiction is universally recognized in American medicine as the disease of substance abuse and represents one of America's largest epidemics. Studies put the numbers of alcoholics in the U.S. at 18 million, and the numbers of drug addicts at five-and-a-half million. Consequently, one of the greatest imperatives in America today is to help these alcoholics/addicts begin recovery before they ruin their careers, impoverish their families, get imprisoned, kill others on the highway, or finally kill themselves in car crashes, overdose, or liver failure. This imperative is answered in full in "Addiction - Free; How to Help an Alcoholic or Addict Get Started on Recovery." It explains all the little-known ways by which millions of former alcoholics/addicts actually have started recovery, and are recovering today. It tells how to get help with starting recovery in any community, anywhere in the U.S. It guides readers to all of the medical treatment programs there are for alcoholism/addiction. Importantly, it also advises how those individuals closest to the alcoholic/addict can start recovery from the deep emotional injuries they themselves have suffered, while also helping the alcoholic/addict in their lives to recover. For the many millions of Americans who desperately need it, "Addiction-Free" is indispensable and even inspiring. The book is well organized, easy to read and can be read through or used as a reference for individuals, families, and professionals.

This book focuses exclusively on achieving sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous, and it (unfortunately) ignores any other way to quit drinking. Numerous studies -- as well as common sense -- show that alcoholics/addicts are a diverse group, and that many people benefit from approaches OTHER than those that are based on the 12 steps. AA is fine for people who have a religious or spiritual bent, but other groups (like Secular Organizations for Sobriety and SMART Recovery) are appropriate for alcoholics who want to become sober without relying on a Higher Power.

This book would have been much better if it had been written from a more open-minded perspective.

This book was bery interesting, and it taught me alot about Genghis Khan. It captivated me and kept me reading it all the way through! I would recommend this book to anyone!

Blue Wolf was a highly captivating book, and it successfully portrays in novel fashion the life of Genghis Khan. It was definitely a book I could not stop reading, and it sent me on a quest to look for more information on the great Mongol leader.

This book is a novel but not one for the serious readers of history and historical novels. This is a great book for an adolescent but not for the developed critical thinker and or reader. Thank you.