Williams Books

I read my first William book by accident, second by choice and the third by snatching it from my brother's hands. William is the perfect example of what we don't want our younger brothers to be. Dirty and untidy with socks sagging and laces untied, an endless pit of a stomach, a fertile and highly improbable imagination and an inexplicable honesty, William is inexplicably endearing. A must read for all those who want to start liking their younger brothers.

I remember how much I enjoyed reading Richmal Crompton's William books as a child...and I enjoy it as much, if not more as an adult! Her hilarious plots center around a very clever, scruffy English school boy, whose adventures make readers of all ages laugh or cry from laughter. My children and I have become avid collectors of all William books, as I'm sure any reader will understand. I am ecstatic that my own children are also William enthusiasts--showing how inspite of generational and cultural differences, Richmal Crompton's books are timeless classics!

i just love william----who doesn't. everyone who know that scruffy 11 year old will say the same. when my aunt bought a set of these books i thought they were just another set describing the misadventures of a set of kids. and then i met william--i am indian-and my cildhood was entirely different from williams--but i wish it was more like his-through war and peace william learns to have fun-.all his adventures or misadventures leave u in stiches---be sure to read them :-)

Isn't it interesting how most of the people who have reviewed this book are from India, Mexico, Costa Rica etc. It seems that Western publishers don't want to publish anything that's over twenty years old. So the public must content itself with "waiting for the next Harry Potter". The only reason Harry Potter is more popular than Just William is because it is NEWER. Of course these days it's all about the fad, isn't it? Pretty soon all the good books I read as a child - Just William, the Jennings books, the Narnian series - will be out of print.

Are children's books the only victims of this deliberate amnesia? I might as well throw out the Beatles records and stock up on Boyzone and Ricky Martin since after all, new is better...

I am suprised that North America has missed such a classic. Even if it is very English, obviously India can appreciate it, so why not North America. I am fouteen and have been living in Canada for four years now, and have been reading my William books since I was much, much smaller. They are hilarious! Maybe if we write enough of these wistful reviews, someone will read thses books and decide to publish them in North America, too! (Hint)

A very deep map indeed, the second of Heat-Moon's three literary tours-de-force is the story of a county in Kansas. In his first excursion, the best-selling BLUE HIGHWAYS, the author reported on a ten thousand mile sojourn along the old Federal Highways (blue on most maps). PRAIRYERTH grew out of three years of hiking, conversation and archival research in Chase County, Kansas and the result is a living history of both the particular locale and the European invasion of the west. From Knute Rockne's death in a commercial plane crash to Sam Wood's murder to Native medicine, dream walking to newspaper accounts of life on the prairie, and fossils to legends to The Land Institute where Wes Jackson explores the looming demise of the liquid fuel era, this volume casts a wide net. Heat-Moon is clear eyed enough to see the facts and then see beyond the facts to the life between the lines of old courthouse documents and pioneer diaries. He is open to less tangible subtlety as well, admitting susceptibility to hunch, daydream or the message from another's Ouija board. He tells a tale of hawks, buffalo, cowboys and beef, notes the profound damage wrought on the American prairie by McBurger mania and the possibility of recovery in a place of vast flatness and endless wind and sky. He lunches with the dead in old cemeteries and stakes out to observe life in a dying town where nothing happens. There are midnight moonlight hikes and journalistic experiments, pertinent quotes by the truckload and poignant still lifes of moments of love and loss. Such a deep map makes for a long read, but well worth the effort as pieces click into place in later chapters and a pastiche emerges, a hologram in which you can walk between the hills and dip a cupful from a clear flowing spring.

In Blue Highways the inimitable William Least Heat Moon drove across the backroads of America. In River Horse this courageous, spiritually-venerable man floated in a barge across this nation's waterways. In Prairy Erth, he does his exploration mostly on foot. Confining himself to a microcosmic canvas, Least Heat Moon spends over 600-pages describing how he spent months delving into a single county in the heart of Kansas. Packed with maps of Chase County, its hills, waterways, roads and farmsteads, the author tells a sometimes dry but often rich story of one remote but improbably charming spot on planet earth. He meets many of the county's 3,000 residents, hears and tells of the folklore, the history, the textured layers to life in such a location. By the book's end an unknowingly begun spiritual journey reaches its conclusion, which is the way with all of William Least Heat Moon's writings. If you have the time to put into Prairy Erth, it is a compelling book that challenges the nature of individual outlook.

New to William Least Heat Moon, I wasn`t quite sure what to expect with Prairyerth. Having heard about the critical acclaim of Blue Highways, I thought a lesser known work would be the place to start. And I am glad I chose Praityerth.

With Prairyearth, William Least Heat Moon has dug down to the heart of a specific place, in this case, the Flint Hill country of Chase County, Kansas. Not unlike Thoreau`s Walden, Prairyerth is an exhaustive chronicle of one man`s journey to the bottom--historically, geologically and geographically speaking--of one particular and rather insignificant place in the American landscape. Prairyerth, like Walden, is impossible to lump into one clean-cut literary category. Neither pure history, nor pure geology, nor `storytelling` per say, it is rather a brilliant concoction of all three. It is, as the author pens it, a `deep map` of one tiny piece of the New World. And deep it is. Least Heat Moon delves into every square inch, every prehistoric layer of his subject. The result is a stirring and fascinating ride through the discovery, settling, exploitation and ultimate destruction of the American prairie. Half Native American himself, Least Heat Moon walks through the tall grass of the American Sea with much the same spirit of his ancestors. Here was not emptiness as thought the first Europeans, but rather a vast ocean of endless natural wealth. Home to the once vast bison herds, the tall-grassed hills of Chase County were once giant mountains of the Kansas range that were slowly worn down into the Flint Hills of today. Least Heat Moon follows the tracks of the Osage and the Kansa, `people of the wind,` who traversed this area long before Zebulon Pike and John Fremont made their tentative forays across the prairie towards more secure landscapes. The author vividly captures the reverence that the Osage and Kansa held for the `prairie.` Tracking down the stories of the few remaining pure-blood Kansa, Least Heat Moon paints a metaphor for what looms in the future for us, lest we ignore the lessons of the past. Not only does the author richly expose the layer of Native Americana within Chase County, but he does justice to the natural elements of the place as well. Some of the most fascinating parts of Prairyerth are the sections on two of the county`s most enduring denizens, the Osage Orange tree/bush and the Wood Rat, aka Pack/Trade Rat. Least Heat Moon has an ultra sharp eye for interesting detail and oddity and knows how to bring such things to life.

The structure of the work is as ambitious as it is groundbreaking. Every other chapter covers another quadrant of the county. Least Heat Moon spends most of his time analyzing the present inhabitants of the county, trying to distill the essence of `Kansasness.` He chats with the weathered old farmers and ranchers who`ve survived every tornado and flash flood over the last half-century and who entertain no thoughts on living anywhere else. Every voice in the county gets its chance. Feminist cattle ranchers give him the lowdown on castrating bulls, local high schoolers divulge their dreams and the regulars of the Emma Chase Cafe unload gossip unaware of who`s writing it all down. Kansasness, according to the author, is a baffling mix of progressive politics and constrictive convention. A place of often violent contrasts. Kansas was the first state born out of the fires of abolition, first to stimulate integration (Board of Education vs Topeka), yet the `n word` is still commonplace all over the county. The forefather of the county, Samuel Wood, was one of the most eloquent voices among the abolitionists, yet he stopped short of pushing for full integration. Kansas was a place where all people had freedom of opportunity (especially to better oneself economically), as long as everybody kept to his/her own. One of the first states to allow women`s suffrage, it was also one of the first to embrace Prohibition. It also kept its archaic and puritan sex laws on the books until the recent Supreme Court ruling overturned such laws.

In between his quadrant explorations of the county, Least Heat Moon has interspersed chapters comprised of nothing but various epigrams and short passages regarding the state. Coming from sources as disparate as Horace Greeley and Black Elk to graffiti found at the KU library, these chapters are some of the most entertaining and enriching of the book.

William Least Heat Moon is one of the greatest prose stylists I have ever encountered in modern American letters. His writing is rich with metaphor and digression, begging second and third readings of certain passages. While sometimes he expands profusely, Faulkner-like, for paragraphs, clarity is rarely forsaken. It just means reading carefully and slowly. Prairyerth is definitely a book that needs digesting. I took me almost six months to finally devour it up and when I did, I had the distinct feeling of having consumed something grand and very nutritious, albeit a bit heavy. In fact, those without persistent natures would best choose something else to read. Prairyerth is meat and potatoes and requires a lot of chewing. And perhaps that is where the work falls a tad short of its possible ancestor. Whereas one can open Thoreau`s Walden anywhere and revel in the beauty and wisdom (albeit often cryptic) found therein, Prairyerth is nothing if not taken in its entirety. Its just too dense, with too much stuff packed into its innards. In fact, a little editing could have helped the book. Some chapters are a bit superfluous and leaving them out would have only helped the work as a whole. Moreover, Least Heat Moon`s astute observations serve his examination of the natural world far better than they support his delving into the human realm. Somehow a lot of the `characters` of Chase County never fully come to life in Prairyerth. Rather, they seem two-dimensional and oddly trapped on the page. Yet, taken as a whole and for what it is, a grand archaeological and sociological dig through the layers of New World settlement, Prairyerth succeeds grandly. Never has one tiny and often ignored section of the American quilt come to life so vividly and richly as does Chase County, Kansas in Prairyerth. A place so seemingly devoid of life, is, in actuality, overflowing with the past, present and future. All you have to do is look,look carefully. The author himself says it best: `A traveler(who cannot even remotely detect the thousand-mile-an-hour spinning of the planet he rides through space at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, to say nothing of its solar and galactic movements and its precession) writes in his notebook, ~nothing is happening~. Man muses, God guffaws.` Next time you feel that nothing has ever happened or is happening now or will happen where you`re at, pick up Prairyerth and be amazed.

If only every county in the United States had as passionate and articulate a chronicler as William Least Heat-Moon.

I came to "PrairyErth" after having read and loved "Blue Highways." This tome--though longer and less expansive, geographically--possesses many of the qualities I admired in Heat-Moon's earlier work: the narrative tone (there's none of that stuffy, impersonal, third-person prose one finds in some travelogues; the author is himself part of the story), the occasional dips into philosophy and history; the candid interviews with "locals"; and the intense search for meaning in the most ordinary of places.

I have never been to Chase County, Kansas, but after spending a month or so accompanying Heat-Moon through the pages of his book, I feel as though I have. The book is subtitled "a deep map," and that is indeed what the author provides here. Square mile by square mile, the reader is introduced to the prairie, its topography and history, its residents and its wildlife. Heat-Moon correctly understands that the essence of a place is often best captured through anecdote and observation. There is nothing sweeping or grand about his narrative, and that's what makes "PrairyErth" such a delight. It's a detailed, intimate read; one almost has the feeling of looking over the author's shoulder (and back through history) as he ambles and rambles about the quadrangles of Chase County.

If there's one criticism I would offer, it's that Heat-Moon sometimes lapses into needless digressions about himself and the challenges he faced while writing the book. It struck me as a bit self-absorbed--as did the occasional Faulknerian stream-of-conscious, punctuationless prose. These stylistic excesses add little to what is otherwise a magnificent and fascinating travelogue.

If you want to experience Kansas, with its excruitatingly boring places that slowly creep up on you and leave you blissfully satisfied and in awe of beauty; if you're willing to read long passages of flat text just to discover the beauty of burning fields; I highly recommend PrairyErth.

I grew up in Kansas, about 2 hours from Chase county and was always facinated by the hills, the people, and just the auroa that came from Strong City and Cottonwood falls. After reading "PrairyErth" I am even more mesmorized by the locale.

I have been out of the state for 2 years now, and long to go back. Many friends have complained about the long drives through Kansas, the flat scenery, and boring people. PrairyErth brings to life these flat lands and opens up new worlds of community and life.

For me, reading Moon's book was much like experiencing life in Kansas. I did find some of the chapters long, dry, and dull.. but, that's how some Kansas life is. Moon always concludes these sections with a gorgeous snapshot of the land. He shows us what it is like to be in relationship with the land just as we are in relationship with one another.

He concludes the book with a beautiful journey down the Kaw Trail.
"How do you know when the Prairy is in you?"
"When you see a tree as an eyesore."

I laughed until my sides hurt. Sex, Dead Dogs, And Me is thick with outstanding humor. It has it all. Ed writes about extremely funny stories from his youth such as good and bad kisses, workman's compensation for jock itch, the vapors, and the adultery business. If you love to laugh, you'll want this book for your collection. You get a truly all encompassing, across the board variety of wit.

My favorite is Ed's classic tale of stink perfume. It reminds me of my own prank-filled youth. I have read a lot of humorous books, and this ranks among the very best. Ed's writing style brings the stories to life. It was easy to visualize the characters and get attached to them. Fresh, entertaining and comical, I highly recommend it.

I will have to make one correction however. A Canadian girl's lips kiss better. Perhaps one day Ed will get to test that theory.

Linda Oness

The factual, earthy antics of Ed Williams and his buddies growing up in the South make for hilarious reading. Those who were lucky enough not to be targets for their hijinks can consider themselves very fortunate!

it was a great attempt for an unknown. After reading the reviews, I ordered this book. A few of the chapters were good but on the whole it was a disappointment. I could not recommend this book without feeling guilty.

This book was recommended to me by a friend at the university. I had a hard time finding it in the bookstores, so I ordered it here. I have never laughed as hard in my life (my roommate threatened to make me leave our room, then she read it and laughed more than I did). Ed, should you ever come to Oxford, let me know. Maybe we could do something that might inspire a chapter in one of your future books, you southern devil, you!

The funniest book I've ever read. Can't read it at night because I keep my wife awake laughing. At last my search for great Southern humor is ended as long as Ed Williams keeps putting out this kind of quality writing. He is good ... very good! Guess I'm gonna change from Grizzard's Sprayberry BBQ to Ed's Nu Way hot dogs .... that ain't all bad 'cause Lewis did before he left us. Don't miss a real treat. Try Sex, Dead Dogs, & Me for an antidote for the dreadfully dull political babble which we are about to experience for the next few months.

One doesn't usually expect to find oneself laughing when reading a book of criticism written by an academic, much less a book on Shakespeare. But Burt's book is frequently just that, funny to the point of making me laugh out loud. Burt has a refreshingly off-beat sense of humor, and the materials he has discovered--such as an adult movie version of Hamlet--aer themselves often hilarious as well, though not always intentionally so. But far from being just a laugh riot, the book is also a serious, critically sophisticated analysis of Shakespeare's fate incontemporary mass media, where much of hte lnagugae is cut or confined to well-known quotations. Burt's final chapter on films about teaching Shakespeare is quite moving, and Burt has the courage to raise difficult questions without pretending he is able to answer them. He is right to think that the questions are more important than the answers. Burt is to be congratulated for writing his book in a clear and engaging prose style without sacrificing the complexity of his thought.

In his wonderful and fascinating book Unspeakable ShaXXXspeares, Richard Burt, the leading scholar of Shakespeare and film studies, pioneers research into the manifold ways Shakespeare enters into American popular culture. Concentrating mostly on film but attending as well to television sit-coms, Burt offers penetrating insight into everything from mainstream adaptations of Shakespeare to "low" spin-offs in which Shakespeare's language almost entirely disappears. Burt explores both what film and mass media have done to Shakespeare and also what Shakespeare enables our culture to do trhough film and other electronic media. Readers intersted in this book will be happy to know that Burt has since edited a related collection entitled Shakespeare After Mass Media and has co-edited Shakespeare, the Movie II.

One of the many strengths of Burt's truly excellent book is that it not only discusses Shakespeare adaptations but uses Shakespeare, or of ShaXXXspeares, to discuss post-war American popular culture. Burt's theory of the loser as critic has ramifications for all criticism, not just Shakespeare. This is a profound, original, and engaging book.

I happened to be doing research for my thesis on Shakespeare in the university library and, while looking for other books, I was intrigued by the three XXXs in the title of Burt's book on the shelf, so I pulled it off and looked through it. What a daring work of cultural criticism! When I saw the chapters on Shakespeare porn, I marvelled both at the courage of the man to write such a book and how at the publisher who took it on. Of course, I check it out and read it. I especially was drawn to the chapter on action films and Burt's point that while the films cannibalize others, no one in the films ever eats; the characters are anorexic. The book is full of similarly wonderful insights. I am a cinephile, and very much appreciated Burt's quite hip approach to ShaXXXspeare. Now, it's back to those other, rather staid books of Shakespeare criticism, I was orginally looking for.

Whatever you think about Shakespeare, it is impossible not to agree with the points Burt makes in this book. His analysis is right on the money and you will never be able to look at Shakespearean movies or literature in the same way. A fantastic book and a must read.

Wodehouse is perhaps the best antidote I know for depression. His novels are literally unreal, for Bertie inhabits a world of leisure, servants, and privilege, an Edenic world where even the threat of pain, suffering, and mortality have no place, and Jeeves is always there as a deus ex machina. But ultimately we return to Wodehouse (again and again!) because of the language--quite simply, the man cannot write a bad sentence.

I am a big P.G. Wodehouse fan. This series of books is especially fun as each book is easily read and enjoyed. The print size is perfect. Great nighttime reading to relieve the stresses of the modern world.

What can I say that hasn't already been said about the inimitable P.G. Wodehouse???

Carry On, Jeeves is a great starter book for those who are intimidated with the amount of J&W books available (or rather, don't know where to begin). The first story in this book is about the first day Bertie Wooster met his personal gentleman (or valet, if you prefer), Jeeves. The stories easily stand on their own; with the exception of characters being mentioned or being part of the plot, the book is not a novel you have to read front to back. Consider it a literary sitcom, where new scenarios and conflicts arise with each story you read.

My favourite bit about reading Carry On, Jeeves was the last story of the book, where it takes a refreshing twist and is narrated by Mr. Jeeves rather than Bertie Wooster. It was great reading from Jeeves's perspective.

Lots of chuckles throughout and a few hardy laughs. Overall a perfect read.

Carry On, Jeeves is another classic from P.G. Wodehouse. It follows in the same kind of humorous hiliarious vein of his other books that involve Berty Wooster and his Man Servant Jeeves. This is a book that should not be missed. In fact,
all of P.G. Wodehouse's books involving Jeeves and Berty Wooster
should be thoroughly enjoyed by every one.

This volume of ten stories originally hails from 1925. I read them in the 1999- 2000 Penguin paperback edition. While many readers like the covers by Ionicus on earlier Penguin paperbacks, these recent editions with covers by David Hitch are my favorites. They are very well done, reasonably priced and just the right size, which is to say, perfect for the novice or seasoned Wodehouse reader. The stories are also among the absolute tops in the Wooster/ Jeeves canon, and give the back stories that Bertie meditatively refers to in so many of the later books.

As Richard Usborne notes in his invaluable guide, Plum Sauce, five of these stories appeared earlier in My Man Jeeves (1919). Two of the stories there told by Reggie Pepper are here transformed into Bertie's ruminations. Carry On Jeeves was the next collection following the ten stories in The Inimitable Jeeves (1923), and Wodehouse was on a roll. Here's Bertie's first engagement to Florence Craye, and his first encounter with her younger brother, Edwin, the Boy Scout, who rapidly renders unsafe house and home. Enter Biffy and Bingo Little, later fixtures in the Wooster ouvre. Here also Bertie pens his oft- mentioned "piece" for his "good aunt" Dahlia Travers, and her struggling paper, Milady's Boudoir. The last story in this collection is somewhat questionably narrated by Jeeves, but Wodehouse fortunately reverted to telling tales in first person Bertie in the later shorts. Some of these tales also found their way into the Jeeves and Wooster TV shows with even more riotous results. All in all, a capital collection.

I ordered this from Amazon after reading recommendations on one of my Email groups about this. I got in the mail on Saturday after and sat down to look at it, intending just to merely take a quick look. I started reading it and couldn't put it down! This book just completely sucked me in. It's told completely via emails between a two-year cancer survivor (Susan) and a woman she befriends because of an internet post (Lara) who has just found a breast lump. It chronicles the story of their budding friendship and Lara's struggle to not only find a diagnosis but then through treatment and Susan being with her to support her every step of the way via emails. This book should be required woman for every woman over the age of 40 - actually even before then. The information obtained in this book is pretty up to date (considering it was written four years ago) and is a great way to educate yourself about breast cancer. With the statistics being that one out of every eight woman will develop breast cancer the chances that either you or someone you know could develop this disease is mighty high. This book not only contains things helpful for someone suffering from breast cancer, but things helpful for supporting them through their struggle. These women became very real to me; probably more vividly since the author is also a breast cancer survivor. Read this book - and buy an extra for a friend, the library, your local breast cancer support group. This is important!

The nurse practitioner at my breast surgeon's office gave me this book just after I had my bi-lateral mastectomy. I so enjoyed reading this book. It was like meeting two friends, on-line, and not in person. I could identify with so much of what the writer said. It was exactly what I needed at a time when all I wanted to do was to learn more about breast cancer. I wanted to read uplifting and hopeful info, but all the books on breast cancer had were facts and not the real life emotions that are experienced by anyone dealing with breast cancer. Since this was my 2nd time of having cancer, I had some idea of what was ahead, but losing my breasts added an additional dimension. I COULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK MORE HIGHLY, both to the patient and their friends and family. It adds a lot of insight.

My best friend lost her mother to breast cancer and has been a piller of strength for me as I deal with my mother's diagnosis, treatment and recovery of breast cancer. When she recommended this book to me saying that I would not only enjoy it, but would also learn from it, I listened. And she was right!! I have since given copies of this book to my mother and sister who have loved it as well. The book deals with the serious issue of breast cancer, but puts it at a very understandable and personal level. You feel like you have "hacked" into the main character's email accounts and by half way through you want to email them yourself. All I can say is Excellent, Excellent, Excellent!!

Lara and Susan meet through a Breast Cancer Survivor message board. This book is made up of their e-mail responses which shares the fear, sadness, laughter, tears, treatment progress and strength that ensues during Lara's battle with cancer. Susan offers her experiences as insight to Lara, and a wonderful friendship blossoms during this difficult time. Even as Lara fights for her future health, she offers support to Susan as she suffers a loss in her family, and deals with an adolescent teen. Overall, this book had excellent details of treatment options, side effects, breast reconstruction, and advice on what to look for in a doctor.

I lost a close co-worker of 5 years to a misdiagnosis of a breast lump. She had the lumpectomy, was told it was benign and during a 6 month leave from work to focus on her health, her body was unknowingly being ravaged by cancer (with no symptoms). When she returned to work, she got sick with a cough, and within 3 months died of cancer in her lungs, spine, liver. If only she only had known to get a second opinion on the lumpectomy(as this book offers as advice), she may have been able to fight, but she lost this battle. I support breast cancer charities in her memory, and I encourage every woman to read this book to be informed of treatment options and how this disease can be conquered with education. This book was a heartwarming read, worthy of 5 stars.

Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend is the story of two women who meet in an online breast cancer support group & communicate back and forth emails.
I enjoyed this book for four reasons.
One for its writing style. It is written entirely in email. I had never read a book like this before. It was a fun & quick read being entirely in emails.
Two, because it was very informative about breast cancer. There were a lot of medical terms & procedures talked about in the book but the author does an excellent job of thoroughly explaining everything without being boring or confusing.
Three, because the story went beyond just breast cancer. These two women truly became friends & shared their lives, including family, hopes & dreams with each other.
Four, because the book made me cry. Any author that can touch your heart like that (even though the reader KNOWS it is fiction) is great!

Absolutely marvelous! This simple story induces you to think about morals, existence, and adventure. By having virtue, anyone can lead a life filled with wonderful encounters and a way of life that can only lead you to a good future.

I loved this book a kid and bought it for my own children. Each of the three joined my enthusiasm for our dear friend, Dominic.

My son is in the Army and now has a son of his own. I used to read "Dominic" at bedtime, until I knew the story by heart. If I tried to skip a line or a paragraph, my son would interrupt and tell me I had missed a part! Recently, he asked if I would get the book for my grandson. Now my son is reading to his son. I love it! Christina

Throughout my life, I'd always remembered the "first book I ever read" as about some dog who played the piccolo and traveled around with his possessions in a sack on a stick. I remembered it so fondly, like one of those few, golden memories you hold onto from childhood, when you still believed in the tooth faerie and unicorns.

I never remembered the title, though, and the book had long since disappeared from my parent's house. One day I did an extensive Google search with only the words "dog," "piccolo" and "traveler" and managed to stumble across William Steig's website.

I just bought myself a new copy of "the first book I ever read" and can't wait to read it again. It really is a book that has stayed with me my entire life. I just found it astonishing that so many other people wrote the exact same thing in their reviews. How can it be that one book has been the "first book" for so many people? I don't know, but I do know that if you can let it be your kid's first book, they will cherish it forever. I sure did.

This was the first "real book" I remember reading as a little boy. I suppose I was about 6 or 7. I read and re-read Dominic many times and loved it more each time. I suppose it has be something like 35 years since I first read this book and I still remember it fondly. How many things can you say that about?

I read this book when I was a kid and it's wonderful. Anyone who loves dogs should read all of Terhune's books.

I asked my grandma if she could take me to the library. We were looking around for books together, her boring adult books, me books by Margaret Peterson Haddix and dog books. I was in the aisle R-V and spoted a book with the word "dog" on it. I quickly grabbed the book and held on to it tightly glad no one else had seen it. I looked at the cover and saw an adorable dog on it and decided to check it out. When I got home the first thing I did was start reading it. It was new stile of writing for me; a bunch of chapters that were in order but SOMEHOW a bunch of short stories about one dog, put together. It got my interest right away. I stayed up till about 3:00 A.M reading it. It still hadn't finished it. The next day I continued to read it and I finished it. It was the most wonderful, exellent, heart-warming, special, terrific, best, most interesting book I have EVER read (until I read Terhune's other books)! I bought the book shortly after. I discovered there was more Lad books and got them all. I decided I loved Terhune's books and went on a book shopping spree.

For the REAL review: I HIGHLY recommend this book as well as all of Terhune's dog books to everyone young and old. It changed my life dramaticly and I am very thankful for the day I found the book. But, this book is different from Terhune's other books. Not the best, but in my opinion, the very most special. After all, it IS Albert Payson Terhune's firt book and the first book of his I read.

Here's my sister, Shannon Hyle's feelings for this book:
"Reading about Lad, a Dog by Albert Payson Terhune fired my desire to own a dog, not just any dog but a faithful tawny collie who would keep me company, lick away my tears and save my life (it might have been from falling through the ice or from that car speeding around the corner or maybe from our cantankerous cow with the cock-eyed horn. Terhune's book series was based on the very real Sunnybank Lad, "a thoroughbred in body and soul."
I also found Terhune's books very satisfying reading and couldn't get enough of them or of Thomas Hinkle's horse stories.

As long as you can ignore the bigotry of the author (he was a rich, white aristocrat of the pre WWI variety, so he was a snob and a bigot), his writing about the nobility of dogs, his ability to make them live in your mind is still unsurpassed. The author wouldn't pass a modern "political correctness" test, but if you love dogs and you are mature enough to understand that authors are people and thus flawed, this is a book you should NOT miss.

are now legion, as they say. But Terhune was the first person to make them worthwhile to read! I recently came across Albert Payson Terhune's oeuvre, Sunnybank, and Lad, etc. while preparing to purchase a collie for our home. Although we did not eventually get the 'dog of our dreams,' all of my hopes and aspirations, which had been fueled by watching "Lassie" almost fifty years ago, were codified, given life, and made literate in the many books by Mr. Terhune.

His way of writing, (though repetitive in terms and phrases from book to book- a relatively minor point, for the writing is evocative, even if repetitive) is nevertheless easily on a par with many 'good' modern authors today, and is therefore of more merit, than perhaps when they were first written!

As Chronicles of history (the era when cars were first being mass-produced & made available by the 'monthly payment with interest scheme,' so burdensome to modern life) when gentlemanly conduct and lady-like manners were not 'chauvinistic,' all of Terhune's books would make a very nice study of American mores and morals of the 1910-1930's era, especially for boys aged 9-12. Where he [Terhune] shines most evocatively, is in giving that sense of awe and wonder, as one looks with love and affection on a dog that many consider the noblest examplar of the breed as a whole!

What was also pleasant to read, is the honest way in which Terhune describes how literate, intelligent, and societally well-to-do [white] folks looked upon the world, their neighbors, the rise of crime as a mobile menace with the advent of said motorcar (and thus, Terhune makes an eloquent 'apologia' for limiting, rather than expanding[!] mass transportation from inner city to outer suburbs in modern metropolises!) with a frankness that is woefully missing today. In short, when needed, Terhune, like almost all men of his era, is willing to 'call a spade a spade.' Some might call his use of terms for some of the less seemly characters he portrays, 'racially insensitive,' but that is only because we have been brainwashed into thinking civility and crassness are interchangeable cogs on a multicultural wheel!

I, for one, found this utter frankness of Terhune and his overt masculinity (in his descriptions of events and persons) a breath of fresh air- especially after the 'Illegal Alien May First walkout of 2006,' Hurricane Katrina and the Superbowl, the Million Man March, and all the other 'minority grandstanding' one has to endure in this "PC" mad era. Terhune's evocation of an era that should come again reveal that civility, proper manners, respect for property, life, and livestock on a working farm or kennel, are things that any child (or adult!) could/should take a lesson from. Along with Knight's "Lassie-come-home,' these books (in their original issue, and not in modern reprints, which clearly would be 'santized' for 'modern dumbed-down readers') are now prize possessions in my antiquarian bookcase. I will return to them every year, (and read them to my children, whom I homeschool!) to read of a lifestyle, a culture, that once defined what it is to be free, noble, and American. IF I could put it into the fewest words possible, I would say Terhune writes of: Man, dog, and nature. If one could sum up Terhune, these three qualities shine through resplendently in all of his works. I can honestly say, that, for a work of fiction, I am a better man for reading them.

Christopher is an only child of two parents that constantly bicker, and every night, Christopher travels to other worlds for great adventures. He has a cool uncle Ralph that seems the understand him. Soon, Christopher is meeting a young man named Tacroy in the other worlds and running "experiments" for his uncle, smuggling magical supplies back to his own world. Christopher, it is discovered, has nine lives and his so magically powerful that he is destined to become the next Chrestomanci. He befriends a similar powerful young person, a Goddess, in another world. Slowly and without realizing it, Christopher falls into darkness, becoming an angry, unkind, and disagreeable child that is breaking the laws of magic. Christopher must determine who is good and who is just trying to use him. My favorite character is Tacroy, who is quite ambiguous, and yet is sort of Christopher's Sirius Black, as the only one who can identify with him as a spirit traveler and understands him. The book itself is just another beautifully written, incredibly clever and imaginative and magical work from Diana Wynne Jones. The images and so vivid and so brilliant. Grade: A-

Diana Wynne Jones tells the backstory of everyone's favorite enchanter, Chrestomanci, in "The Lives of Christopher Chant". Chrestomanci turned the sterotype of old, sagely wizards upside down in the first Chrestomanci book with his dapper attitude and humorous qualities. However, I'll be frank; I did not enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed "Charmed Life". The story was very slow in places and the ending was very rushed. But, Jones still won me over with her delightful characters, quirky magic, and adept talent at writing meaningful and thoughtful fantasy.

Christopher Chant starts out as a normal boy who doesn't quite understand everything that's going on around him. Christopher never even bothered to tell people, ecspecially his feuding parents and nannies, about his dreams and the worlds he visits in them. But one day, Christopher's new nanny discovers all of the objects Christopher brings back from his dreams, and informs Christopher's Uncle Ralph, a charming enchanter, about them. It turns out that Christopher is a spirit traveler, or a person who visits the twelve related worlds in their dreams. Uncle Ralph soon recruits Christopher for many "experiments" where Christopher must bring him back various goods from the related worlds, and Christopher is only too happy to oblige.

On these experiments, Christopher soon loses many lives at such an obvious rate that he realizes he has nine lives and is a powerful enchanter, even though Christopher can barely manage the simplest of spells. Christopher is soon sent to live in Chrestomanci Castle for training, and he hates it. He would much rather play cricket than become the next Chrestomanci, but everything changes when Christoper realizes that his "perfect" uncle is really an inter-world illegal smuggler, and Christopher so happens to be his partner-in-crime even though he didn't know what he was doing in the first place.

The story is told with Jones' usual quirky prose and humor. Many readers who read the first book will smile as the story goes on and many of Chrestomanci's background is cleverly explained. Christopher as a character is skillyfully progressed from a naive and somewhat cold child to an aware and powerful enchanter. However, the story, as much as I would like to deny it, does suffer some problems. The beginning is a very long drawl, as well as the middle, and nothing interesting happens till Christopher finally arrives at Chrestomanci castle. From there to the ending its a smooth ride. Unfortunately, it appears that Jones didn't know what to do with her ending as its very quick and jumbled. For the last fifty pages, everything is unusally described and very confusing. I just wish that the story had ended with a strong conclusion rather than the sentence "that is really all, except for a letter that arrived for Christopher from Japan soon after New Year ..."

Even though the ending was a jumbled mess, we're still talking about Diana Wynne Jones here, and her brilliant writing and humorous details makes even a very weakly plotted book enjoyable. While I did not enjoy "The Lives of Christopher Chant" as much as I enjoyed the first book, readers everywhere are sure to enjoy how Chrestomanci went from a timid boy into a powerful enchanter.

I read this book many years ago, and did not even realize that it was part of a series until recently. I bought the other books in the series, and was expecting the other books to be similar to this writing style. While the other three books in the series are good stories and entertaining reading, it is "The Lives of Christopher Chant" that is the best of the series. This book has more depth and humor than the other books in the series. I devoured this book in one setting, because of the wonderful imagery and use of dry humor and wit. I actually don't think that you need to read the books in the series in order; besides the first two in the series, these books really don't have much in common with each other, besides the Chrestomanci character. Each book is a wonderful book in its own right. However, it is this book that gives the best background of the world in which Chrestomanci lives. Highly recommended, especially if you like J.K. Rowling - this book is the most similar to Rowling's style.

This an incredibly lovely book that I have read a million times; and each time has been just as enjoyable as the last.
This book is the second in the Chrestomanci Quartet, and is my favorite of the four. The story is about a boy named Christopher Chant who discovers that he has magical powers, and, in due time, a truly amazing and exciting life ahead of him. Buy this book! I assure you that you won't regret it;~)

"Oops!" The dragon spews fire all over Christopher and "There goes another life!" The Lives of Christopher Chant is a book about a nine-lived boy named Christopher. Every night he dreams he gets out of bed, walks around the corner of the fireplace in his room, and slips into a dreary world called "The Place Between." While conducting experiments there Christopher loses some of his nine lives.

Strong things about this book are that the story line moves along quickly, so your interest stays captive. You'll also appreciate how Dianne Wynne Jones's story line is unique. No other author has ever written anything like her "Place Between!" Her strong characters really pull the story together. Take "The Christomancy" (The Magic Governor) for instance. It seems like he was always a strict and stern man born to be "The Christomancy." However, he actually started out like Christopher, angry and bewildered.

More details would improve The Lives of Christopher Chant. Having additional information would make it easier to visualize Asheth's Temple, and why The Living Asheth (the girl who acts as a channel for the god Asheth's power) wanted to get away. More explanation about why silver stops Christopher from working magic would be helpful. Was it Christopher's dad's fault that silver stops him operating magic?

Rush out and buy The Lives of Christopher Chant, it's a page turner! The story line is new and interesting. It is a magic book, and you can never tell what's going to happen! I hope you don't lose your nine lives as quickly as Christopher Chant!

This was my first Anne George book. It's not a book with a heavy plot; it's a book about the characters, and their interactions with each other. Her character development I found unique; characters I started out disliking, I ended up sympathizing with, and vice-versa. You developed an understanding of each character's bigger picture. Personally, the ending was perfect. This is now one of my favorite books.

I absolutely love her books. She writes with such a smooth air. I love the Souther Sisters, they just make you laugh. Definently buy and read the series.

If you understand/appreciate southern culture, you will enjoy this book. Finding your 80-yr old mother dressed for a funeral in a black dress and flip flops - well, what can I say?! This is a light read but fun for those of us who appreciate southern humor.

This was my first experience reading Ms. George's work, and what a wonderful one it was! This a great southern fiction book!!! You feel like your right there with all them in Harlow Al. arguing about whether or not to have a funeral with an empty casket! I really did enjoy this book, and recommend it to anyone who may be interested in reading it. You won't be disapointed :)

Spaces and overlaps and the time space continuum. Family, heart, soul, southern fiction at its very richest. Voices from the grave and a meeting of the generations as a family icon passes through this world. Mortality, as seen through a veil of overlaps and spaces, quirks and characters. Sunrise, Sunset - flows through the chapters like the water of Mobile Bay. Bittersweet beauty woven through the pages with language artistic and lyrical. Confusion and chaos, childhood secrets and the furtive secrets of love and life. One season following another, and don't forget the devil either. This is NOT a light hearted beach read, although the bay beckons and glimmers and the dunes reflect the dimming light. The depth and intensity of this book left this reader breathless and weeping. The characters are as authentic as the Spanish moss and the scent of almonds and are a glimpse in our own humanity. And, perhaps a literal glimpse into the author's own sunset? Let me HIGHLY recommend this book, it goes to the very top of the scale.