Idaho Books

I enjoy Judith Freeman's books. I've read Red Water (loved it), and her first novel, Chinchilla Farm (pretty good), and now this one which I almost enjoyed as much as Red Water. Part of it is that she & I both harken from Mormon country. She speaks in a language that resonates with me. Her characters are real, multifaceted and for the most part, unpredictably wonderful as they discover places in themselves that they didn't know existed. And to me that's the essence of life....(re)discovering places in our selves that we have forgotten as life has become predictable or challenging or we have without intention moved away from the best of who we are.

The "folded map is... easy to read" is only true if you get out of the vehicle and spread it out on the hood. Very difficult to use in the car without someone to help. It's an accurate map that should be on pages rather than all these folds. The Twin Falls street guide is on one side and the map on the other. I rarely use it and have gone back to printing what I need off the Internet.

A Stranger Here is not the type of book I usually read, I grabbed it at the library on an impulse. I was pleasantly suprised with the way Mrs.Wyss wove Jada's intricate personality and her relationship with everyone -including Starr Freeman's ghost- around her. Jada and Starr represent the things we can learn from those who lived, and died, before us; and they teach each other to appreciate the beauty around them. "Oh, Beauty are you not enough? Why then do I cry after Love?"

I read the condensed Readers Digest version of this book years ago when I was in my early teens and loved it. I always thought it would make a good TV movie or mini-series akin to The Awakening Land with Elizabeth Montgomery. It's about homesteaders at the turn of the century, several very different people who have to make a place to live in the forest. They all have different motives, different experiences, and ultimately different outcomes. I highly recommend this book for anyone!

Includes a number of submissions from high school teachers and college professors and, as one might expect from such a collection, some are better and more accurate and useful than others. That being said, those that are helpful are extremely so. I have been teaching The Sun Also Rises for the past 11 years and I learned a good deal about the novel itself and various new methods of presentation. A worhty purchase if you plan to teach the book.

Loose-leaf bound, so you can remove the pages you want to carry with you. Very clever. Covers the Sawtooth Wilderness and surrounding areas from Challis to Lowman to Ketchum. Includes detailed descriptions and good contour maps. Black-and-white photos.

This is like an encyclopedia and a yellow pages of Yellowstone in one volume. The book definitely is getting space reserved in the car for the trip. There are better books for planning what sites to see, but this one has the best accumulation of information about the park.

This is an excellent regional history. A lot of insight to the happenings of the era.

"When the Apple Falls" is a well written book. The story line is believable and ends with an unexpected twist. You will feel connected to the main characters and feel invested in the outcome.

While I marvel at the research done by the author, the plot is too far-reaching and convoluted. It's exhausting to try to follow, and I found myself just wanting it to be over with.

This book was first published in 1998, the same year as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. However, from the text, it appears to have been written much earlier. There is a major character named Hermione. And, there are 13 "sacred hallows" - some of which look very, very familiar. The story has other similarities with HP7, so it does seem like JK was influenced by this book.

Katherine Neville is a truly gifted writer. Her books are well researched, paced to keep you turning the pages, and are definitely more "literate" than the offerings of most authors in this genre. If you thought the DaVinci Code was good, you'll think Magic Circle is great. After you read this one...try her book "The Eight". It's amazing!

I am in total agreement with Booklist and Publishers' Weekly! Good grief! If Neville was trying to 'wow' us with her intellect and intelligence, she had already done that quite nicely in "The Eight", a novel which blended the tale with extremely informative and thought-provoking historical reference. I hope "assume" is not the wrong word- but I assume, since Neville does not credit outside sources with her research, that she does her own or is herself possessed of that photographic memory of Ariel's which is, while both admirable and enviable, at root the bane of this book! When upon completion of a reading, you find that you could reasonably extract the entire storyline and reformulate it into a very enjoyable short story with little effort...well, let's just say if I wanted to get from Vermont to San Diego- I would not go via Iceland and Miami. Katherine Neville jumped into my top ten favorite authors with "The Eight", among Elizabeth George, Greg Iles, John Case, Jeff Long. Her obviously incredibly wide range of knowledge and experience [and maybe a little AADD?] is great fodder for her writing, more of which I look forward to in earnest. I, too, will hang on to my copy of "The Circle", but it will go into my reference section for further study on myriad factual tangents too numerous for even an above-average reader to fathom at once!

This book was a mess. At first I thought that it was going to be interesting and suspensful, but I was wrong. The main plot line of the story is good, but the background and historical chapters are confusing and totally distracting. I love books of this nature and this was a total disappointment.