Ware Books

Ah, Shakespeare. Everyone's heard of him. Even if you weren't an English major in college, chances are you had to at least read Romeo and Juliet at some point during your freshman year in high school, and Hamlet and Macbeth probably came along a couple of years later. Maybe you read King Lear or Twelfth Night in college. Maybe not. Maybe you enjoyed reading those stories; maybe the language was a little too cumbersome for your taste. Love him or hate him, however, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone over the age of 12 who hasn't been introduced to a Shakespearean play. But what do we know about the man who penned all those plays?

That's where 101 Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare steps in. Author Janet Ware gives us 101 pint-sized tidbits about the man called Shakespeare: trivia about his life, about the language of his plays, about Elizabethan times, and about his plays and poems. The section on Shakespeare's life contains some of the most interesting bits in the book. For example, did you know that scholars aren't entirely sure that the man called "William Shakespeare" actually wrote all of those plays? Will Shakespeare had only a grammar school education and never traveled, so many researchers are skeptical that he could have written such sophisticated works. They believe that all of those plays may have been written by someone else: theories range from Edward de Vere (the seventeenth Earl of Oxford) to rival playwright Christopher Marlowe to-get this-Queen Elizabeth I.

The trivia tidbits in this book range from the obvious (men usually played women's roles in Elizabethan theatre) to the obscure (many of Shakespeare's plots and characters were lifted from other sources). There are plenty of speculative questions raised, too, although most of them don't seem to really matter (for example, one section was entitled: "Was Shakespeare gay?").

The author reminds us throughout the book that there's a lot we still don't know about Shakespeare, and we may never know the answers to some questions. But she does raise all of those questions and provides various theories from scholars to help you make up your own mind about him. True Shakespeare enthusiasts may already know a lot of the trivia in this book but may find one or two tidbits of information that they weren't aware of. Anyone with only a passing interest in Shakespeare, however, may find this book a little dull for their tastes.

Personally, I love to collect trivia, and I love many of Shakespeare's plays (although I didn't know much about the man before I picked up this book), and I found the various theories and little-known facts to be fascinating. Pick up a copy of 101 Things You Didn't Know About Shakespeare, and dazzle your friends with your newfound knowledge.

To those interested in British earthenwares but not necessarily lustreware, this work could change things. Thoughtfully structured by manufacturing region, Gibson's book shares all the positives of ACC publications and its one negative: lacklustre (sorry) design. The color is abundant, photographs good, the text readable. When compared with the comparatively poorly-produced Shiffer editions, ACC books present high value.

I have a fundamental aversion to political correctness being applied to classic fairy tales. Therefore, I approached this book with a great deal of skepticism. The story goes pretty much close to form until the point where the wolf has tried to blow the brick house down and failed. Once the wolf is sitting down exhausted from his efforts and crying over his failure, the pigs come out and tell him:

"There, there Mr. Wolf, you don't have to be so sad. You have a remarkable talent and there are much better things to do than just blowing down houses."

They then take him to the local fair where the wolf gets a job blowing up balloons for the children. At the end he has been transformed into "the big, glad wolf."
Despite my skepticism, I enjoyed the book. The illustrations are colorful and catch the eye and the message is not so extreme that I couldn't live with it. It is a worthy modification of a classic tale.

This is truly a classically written "hornbook" which makes it both readable and suitable for a specific reference search. Sections on Arbitration are stronger than Mediation and other alternatives to negotiation but the whole book is quite worthwhile. In an attempt to be very thorough, there is a slight tendency to overdue the trivial in the footnotes and some future editing to avoid the obvious would be helpful. Well done and a worthwhile resource!

My husband is a collector. I bought this book for him for Christmas. He has thoroughly enjoyed it and was able to find out what some of his figurines are worth.

He also has bought new figurines at good prices comparing the prices with the book. If you are a collector of figurines in this area, I would recommend this book. (especially if you are an ebayer.

Sequel to "Flight of the Mariner", this book continues the tale of David Shaw, and tells of his search for the woman he loves in an alien world. Similar to the Martian series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Paul Ware's story is full of cliff-hangers, and never fails to keep its audience gripped, with fabulous battles and vivid descriptions. It's the typical hero vs evil formula, but with enough twists and sub-plots to make it special.

This book contains a good deal of technical information on specific Bomb Vessels, including everything from the actual ship's drawings to their sailing characteristics. On the negative side, I would like to have seen detailed historical accounts of these vessels in action.

Unlike Ware's The Binding Contract, I really enjoyed this book. The fiction was good, the erotica was hot, the resolution satisfied.

There is a bit of time-travel in this, hinted at in the title. It requires no machinery, and is rather more like the process in Richard Matheson's Bid Time Return (in film, called Somewhere in Time). It worked without making me roll my eyes heavenward.

I did roll my eyes heavenward for other reasons. The bdsm erotica was hot--not simple torture, where the woman is merely maimed as opposed to aroused and well-brought-off. The heroine has a love/hate relationship with the pain/pleasure switch, and the plot kept me guessing as to what might happen next or last.

The only downside to this was that once Tab A was going to get near Slot B, it often seemed to be the same sequence of what gets handled how.

I hope she writes more like this one.

I found this very helpful since this is a new area of collecting for me.

For lovers of T.G. Green's timeless Cornish Kitchen Ware, this book gives interesting information about its history and production. It's a very slim, soft-cover volume and, proportionately, pictures do outweigh the text. However, I have to admit that if there were only pictures to look at that would be enough for me! Atterbury has had access to some of the most comprehensive private collections of Cornish Ware that exist and the photos offer a glimpse into the world of the avid collector. Saying there are more images than text gives the impression that it's only a pretty picture book. Not true! Peter Atterbury has obviously put effort into finding tidbits of history, information on imitators, the other designs T.G. Green produced, Cornish Ware's cultural presence in Britain and insight on its future (yes, there is one!). I love this handy little reference book. It's helped me make up my mind about which pieces to buy and which to leave, and it's feeding my dreams of finding treasures I didn't even know existed before I read the book.