Stone Books

I happen to be a student of Ruth Stone and it was interesting to finally read some of her work. Everyday she reads our work and tells us what she thinks and this was my opportunity to get the other perspective. I found it fascinating to be able to look into her life (I wanted to say "soul" but she hates that word). My favorites are "Plumbing" and "Nuns on the Bus". She is also a wonderful woman who is dear to my heart and has extremely influenced my poetry and life.

Ruth Stone again and again gets directly to the heart of the cosmos, splitting open the common and revealing the complex meanings and truths in our world. Is her title "Simplicity" tongue in cheek? The poems are often deceptivly simple. You read one easily and are without realizing it, suddenly knocked off your feet by its meaning. Stones poems are not light, they are not frothy. Her work is as heavy as her name yet as comfortable to take in as lemonade on her Virginia porch in childhood. This is a poet who will be remembered and read well into the future.

I think Slime Time is a cartoon. Its worth1 point and it's a very good book. Two boys win a game show called SLIME TIME His skateboard it got bad over night. The game was on TV. The sisters did not win the game. It's a silly book so if you like a silly book here's the one for you. Getting dunked in chocolate sauce and spread with feathers is for the losing team . Its is a wacky fun filled book.

I read this book in Elementary School and still remember how good it was! It is written very well and deals with a unique subject, two friends and a "Nickelodeon-type" game show. A toy line called "Dino-Tots" (or something like that) is also featured in this book, with a reoccurring jingle that I'm sure you'll memorize before the end of the book. I wish that this book would go back in print so that I could buy a copy of my own. I also hope that there will be a sequel in the future!

Fiona Robyn's "stones" aren't poems, exactly -- some are, but others clearly are not. Each one represents a moment of quiet, focused attention, part of a daily practice which Robyn began three years ago to try and revitalize her own interest in writing. Blogging was integral to the project, it seems: from the beginning she wanted a space where she could collect and share the literary equivalent of small stones picked up on a walk and carried home in a pocket. "They might be a snatch of overheard conversation, the sun moving behind the cloud, or a cat jumping on the lawn," Robyn writes in the introduction. "They set off a quiet 'ah!' inside me, like a toddler saying 'look!' They are nothing special and something special all at once. As time went on, I got better at remembering to notice the world around me. Not just to notice it but to scrutinize it, engage with it, love it."

When Robyn announced that she was publishing a book of selections from the first three years of the blog, I had my doubts about how well it work. But in fact they make a surprisingly satisfying collection. Like insects trapped in amber, the very delicacy and ephemerality of Robyn's "stones" invite closer examination. As fragments of concentrated attention, many of them engage the reader in an active search for additional images and ramifications, in the same way that a modern translation of Sappho challenges one to fill in the lacunae.

What I love most about Fiona Robyn's "small stones: a year of moments" is the intimacy of it. We travel through time with the author--with chapters/stones organized by month--and splash in and out of moments lit by imagery that wakes up our senses.

Each stone is a place marker for that day--a little glimpse into the wonder of life--a fragment of poetry that offers a palpable moment of carefully observed grace. From the glittering to the bruised, the mundane to the magnificent, I savor each small stone as I would a visit from a dear friend or the taste of a rare dessert.

Consider this small stone from January:

"The sun sags in the sky. Half a lemon sits face down in a puddle, scenting the water with citrus. Everything tightens against the cold."

I can see, taste and feel the weight of early winter in this small stone. And from April, this light kiss of sound and image:

"a digger tips its scoop: the sand slides out as if from a cupped palm"

July's full-body invitation awakened me to my own full-blooming truths this month:

"Lie on your back on the grass, become quiet. One by one, they step forward. The chopped circle of the moon. Honeysuckle scent edging the breeze. Swallows weaving counterpoint, and above them and aeroplane in poor imitation. And next door's roses, punching holes into the evening, as red as the reddest lipstick."

In each moment, Robyn gives us something deeply perceived and fully felt. It's as if we are offered again and again a cup of fresh sustenance from the source that is language itself. Robyn concludes her introduction with an observation about how collecting small stones has impacted her:

"As time went on, I got better at remembering to notice the world around me. Not just to notice it but to scrutinize it, engage with it, love it. My eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands opened up."

I experience her book very similarly. It is both an invitation and a meditation...to enter my own depths and pay attention. To express my love of language through use...to receive each small stone as a holy, ordinary thing. And to live my life in humble service to the words that lead the way.

I'd highly recommend that you keep "small stones: a year of moments" close at hand and refer to it often. You just may find your whole body opening up a little more fully to the mysteries of our world.

I read it once a year to brush up. I also use it as a reference book for specific topics.

Stone and Bachner were both active in the famously independent Eastern Massachusetts Chapter of the National Organization for Women in the early 1970s. Bacher was also moderator of one of the earliest women's radio talk shows in the Boston area, WBUR's "If A Woman Answers. . . Hang On." For 25 years, individually and together, they have taught consciousness raising techniques and public speaking in a variety of venues and occasionally even for profit. This updated edition of their 1976 handbook suggests a solution to every problem a fledgling public speaker may face (including how to manage hostile questions), and not incidentally weaves in a great deal of anecdotal material concerning (1) the history of women speaking in public and (2) the shift in public manners that a genuine restructuring of the relations between the sexes requires. Highly recommended for its second-wave historical as well as its practical value.

This book, like the others in the series, is an absolute joy! All of these books have morals, without being overly preachy. Like the other reviewer said, I agree that the funny part was Stacy breaking the pencil sharpener. When I was Stacey's age I, too, "broke" a pencil sharpener but it was my mom's office pencil sharpener. I couldn't fit it back together so my mom was upset about the mess just like Ms. Zachary is in this book (however I was able to get it back together later on luckily). So when I read about Stacey's pencil sharpener dielema, I chuckled because I could relate!

You;ll like the part about when Stacey broke the pencil sharpener.

The main characters in Welcome Inn : The Spell of the Black Stone are sisters Molly and Gwenn. This is the fourth book of the Welcome Inn series and one of my favorites from when I was younger.

This is taken from the back cover:

Molly O'Brien's archaeologist uncle is always sending her unusual presents. His latest gift is a black stone that supposedly has power over a legendary sea creature called the Sith.
Then Molly finds a strange boy asleep on the beach. Kelvin apparently has no family, and he seems more comfortable in the water than out of it. As the mystery about Kelvin deepens, Molly begins to wonder: is Kelvin really one of the magical sea creatures her uncle told her about? What is the truth behind the Spell of the Black Stone?

I am 16 years old and I still go back and reread these books by E.L. Flood. ( Secret in the Moonlight, Ghost of a Chance, The Skeleton Key and this one). Read them all! Especially the first two! They are great!

The story takes place on blackberry island, and the book is about a young man named gwen and his aunt molly. Thay are supposed to find a cricher that is a man eating fish.

The book was good and I think the book was advintreist becouse there was a part where gwen and his aunt molly got into a hillocopter, with some guys and they were looking for the cricher and the cricher was right under them andthey passed over it.

This book was very good. It was very interesting. There was always a question in the beginning or middle of the book, but at the end all the questions are answered. My mom got it for me because I liked the Magic Treehouse books so much. I didn't think I was interested till my mother bought it for me but when I started reading it was great. The whole book is about bugs! Everyone in the book is a bug, except Spider Kane, who you can guess is a spider.

I thought this was going to be just another book that my mom and I would read for school but this turned out to be the best book I ever read sending me on a quest for any other spider Kane books. Spider Kane and his band of the MOTH are the coolest bugs ever tracking missing gold and going under cover to help other bugs. I loved the mystry! I loved the suspence I just loved this book. Spider Kane can do anything he is awesome. I wish there were more books to read about him. I couldn't put this book down we read it in 5 days then I lent it out to my friends. Then I read Under the May Apple Tree and I need more, my mom says Mary Pope Osborn is a genius because this is my summer vacation and I'm begging to read this series.

Spinning Flight is for the reader who is curious about spinning and flying things. Some may wonder why do skipping stones veer to the right, why does a Frisbee veer to the left at the end of its flight, why do golf balls have dimples, how does a boomerang work. Others may be interested in spin stabilization of bullets, bombs, rockets. Still others will be fascinated by the role of spin in spaceflight, the landing of probes on distant bodies or by what spin can tell about the formation and life story of asteroids and comets. Lorenz uses a minimum of vector mechanics and equations to explain these phenomena and provides many illustrations based on cleverly instrumented flight experiments. Next time you skip a stone, you will think of it as a rewarding experiment not just an idle pleasure.

(I am the author - I think the book is not half bad - but let me quote from a recent
review of the book by H. K. Moffatt {whom I do not know} in Nature magazine (Vol.444,
14 Dec 2006 p.820):
'In his fascinating book Spinning Flight, Ralph Lorenz provides a rich feast of examples
of such spinning bodies, some occurring naturally, some contrived for pleasure or for a
practical purpose, some exotic..........Lorenz covers these phenomena and their various
manifestations with great skill and economy of exposition, whetting the appetite for the
more detailed treatments that he cites in an extensive list of references, many quite recent...
The book is well organized....there may be something for every one within its attractively
designed cover

A great overview of fetishes, charms, and amulets made by Southwest Indian tribes. I like the mix of stories from Indian's folklore and the power from the fetish would provide to user. Now my collection of fetishes have now taken more meaning and understandings from Indian point of view. Also there is notes about material used in making the fetish. Why the color plays great role in fetish. Great reading and must reading if you collect fetishes from Southwest.

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, columnist and reviewer for MyShelf and author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered

Here they are!
Five guidebooks,all part of a series, that look and feel more like art books.

Five guidebooks so closely related that they become a library or set suitable to give as a gift to anyone who lives in, travels in or just loves the Southwest.

Published by Rio Nuevo Publishers, an imprint of Treasure Chest Books, these slender paperbacks have a different polish than most guidebooks, both outside and in. The covers have a satin-finish feel. The pictures in each are full color and so well done you may feel less tempted to buy a piece of art in any one of these categoriesýor more tempted as the case may be. There are diagrams and maps in full color and other information like histories for the artists, the genealogy of related artists, etc. Anything that will help a reader/art lover to understand the subject better. Bibliographies, indexes, suggested readings and pronunciation guides are also included as needed.

Mostly, these are helpful well-written guides by knowledgeable authors like Kent McManis, Mark Bahti, and Robert Jeffries. Youýll find them on Amazon and other sites that sell books under their separate titles and here they are:

A Guide to Zuni Fetishes and Carvings, both Volume I and Volume II
A Guide to Hopi Katsina Dolls
A Guide to Navaho Weavings
A Guide to Navaho Sandpaintings


(Carolyn Howard-Johnsonýs first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards.
Her newly released Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remember has won three.)

Amalia is truly genuine. While in Sedona I had a shamanic session with
her that was empowering. Her connection with the earth is undeniable.
Since then, I have read her book. She sincerely shares her spiritual journey with the reader. I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this book, especially if you have a strong connection to Mother Earth.

Amalia was the guest speaker at a meeting I attended and, loving to commune with nature and Mother Earth myself, found her very interesting. I purchased a copy of her "Spirit of the Stones". The book was fascinating. I could put it down only momentarily for the essentials and also to pause to reflect and contemplate the messages Amalia received. Her story is captivating and told with honesty, sincerity and openness. "Spirit of the Stones" breaks new ground and provides thought provoking ideas and messages. A 'must read'.

I couldn't put this book down. It was very enjoyable, gracefully written and the writing style was eloquent and personable. It gave me an intimate connection with the earth. I learned a lot from this book and I felt like I was on the journey myself. The author is delightful!

A shaman for our time, Amalia is the real deal. In the tradition of Dan Millman's "Way of the Peaceful Warrior", Amalia digs down deep for the courage to live the experiences leading to shamanic wisdom. In her true story of a woman's unique personal journey of self discovery, Amalia sacrifices all to answer a call from Mother Earth. Giving up her home, her husband and her successful naturopathic career in Australia, she travels to many unusual locations on the planet where Earth's energy is uniquely manifested in massive stone formations. There, Amalia uncovers her special power to retrieve ancient knowledge held in the stones over the millennia. Amalia's story is fascinating and grounding. As Earth's consciousness ascends during these next few critical years, Amalia will probably be in the middle of the fray leading many of us in her shamanic dance pounding out much needed healing messages from Mother Earth. I could not put this book down.
Paul,
Sedona, AZ