Richmond Books

Fish Kisses and Gorilla Hugs is a cheerful picturebook about a six-year-old boy who imagines every excuse he can to delay his bedtime. His mom knows he's stalling; she takes the opportunity to play a silly, friendly game of kisses, hugs, pinches, and pokes, all inspired by their favorite animals. Broad, colorful, yet simply themed artwork practically leaps off the page in this charming read-aloud storybook ideal for just before bedtime.

i returned this book before reading it to my son. the book teaches whinning to get more attention. i was looking for a book that was playful and helped me show my love for my 4 year old. this book may have helped with that, but the underling "whinning to get what i want" theme was too strong. i would not buy this book.
i would strongly suggest the book "i love you so" by the same author.

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.

This is an adorable book about a little boy that won't settle into bed (has lots of excuses) and the tactics his exasperated but loving mother uses to coax him to stay in bed and go to sleep. Each page will have you and your child doing gorilla hugs,fish kisses, ect. along with the characters of the story. The illistrations are great and my 3 year old thinks it's hilarious. It's a fun way to end the day. Highly recommend.

Pamela K. Kinney's HAUNTED RICHMOND tells of various Virginia ghosts, from those who inhabit governor's mansions and theatres to a seafood tavern's ghostly resident.

Haunted Richmond, by Pamela Kinney is a tour guide through Richmond, Virginia. It relays stories, legends, myths, and historical facts that dispatch supposed haunting or ghostly lore in the area.
Pamela Kinney is a published author of fiction, horror, fantasy, paranormal romance, and science fiction- under the pen name Sapphire Phelan. She resides in Chesterfield, Virginia with her husband, Bill and pet cat and dog.
I didn't find anything that would make this book stand apart from others in its genre. That's not to say it wasn't interesting, it was. However, it followed the path of others of its kind. It gave supposed accounts, tales, and sightings, along with pictures.
At times the wring could be a bit understated. It tended to jump around a bit, as well. If giving the history and then moving on to the myths or stories, I feel it best to stick to that format and not go from one to the other and back again. Some of the pictures left something to be desired, such as: The Haunts of Richmond Tour, The State Capitol, and the Coulters Theatre Seat. There were a few comma errors and typos throughout the book.
The book had some very strong elements to it. The pictures of: The Vampire Crypt, Confederate Granite Pyramid, The Dooley Mansion, and the Castle Thunder Prison were outstanding. The stories: Byrd Theatre, The Terrible Fire, The Catastrophe at the State Capitol, and Hollywood Cemetery were particularly interesting and well written. At times, the humor added was a delight, like in the story of the Berkley Plantation. I think the most interesting aspects to me were the historical facts that the author credits. This made the book stronger in a way that even if you do not believe in the paranormal, the tragedies and history behind some of the locations are fascinating to read about. She also gives specific addresses and websites in case you want to visit them. If you are going to be in the Richmond, Virginia area, I'd recommend taking this book along with you.

Kelly Moran,
Author and Reviewer

Pamela Kinney's life has been far from normal, at least by most people's standards...

Growing up, her mother predicted - with perfect accuracy - such events as the deaths of relatives or the re-emergence of old friends. Kinney herself had numerous brushes with ghosts during her upbringing, including witnessing transient spirits in haunted houses and waking up in the middle of the night face-to-face with apparitions standing beside her bed, scowling at her while she slept. She even felt the lingering presence of a cat that she had previously put to sleep as its ghost hopped on her bed and pranced around, just like old times.

Nothing that she's experienced, though, comes close to the encounters described by others in Haunted Richmond, a chilling account of the history - and present - of the Cradle Of The Confederacy. In it, Kinney provides a detailed overview of the many unexplained phenomena that continue to befuddle residents and visitors alike, as well as the history that helps frame the legends in proper light.

Kinney makes special mention of the following claim of parapsychologists: those who are killed suddenly, in tragic or traumatic circumstances, can cause hauntings to occur. Taking the violent, deadly, and oftentimes brutal history of Richmond into account, that claim is a grave understatement. Kinney presents compelling back stories of tortured slaves, children dying in catastrophic fires, and lovers slain in defense of their beloveds. She also cites the grave atrocities endured by prisoners, Civil War soldiers, and Native American tribes. All these events give rise to the various ghost sightings in abandoned houses, at hospitals, and even on state highways throughout the region.

Rather than a trumped-up collection of ghost stories designed to scare the bejesus out of fireside Boy Scout campers, Haunted Richmond is a thorough, informative, well-researched account of real history and its real consequences. Makes for perfect late night reading - just make sure all the windows and doors are locked first.

This book was given to me as a gift because I am both a lover of Richmond, Va. - particularly Hollywood Cemetery, and interested in the supernatural. What a disappointment! It is not only badly but carelessly written and there are too many inaccuracies to pass without comment. The section on Hollywood Cemetery is rife with errors (Sherwood Forest was Tyler's home, not Monroe's, Jeb Stuart is at the other end of the cemetery from Jefferson Davis, not "next to him", etc.)and the writing is sophomoric. Where there may actually be supernatural activity, why put it in the lunatic fringe category by repeating such absurd stories as the iron dog changing direction? (Cue bad scary movie music). I couldn't go on with the rest. Some of the pictures are nice.

TV Moms is an illustrated guide which is packed with black and white photos revealing the programs and shows which created images of mothers for television audiences. From the black working single mother portrayed in Julia to Edith Bunker in All in the Family and Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch, TV Moms examines the images and roles represented by television mothers.

This is a cute little book and nothing more. Pass it up and pick up a copy about the making of the shows which are shabbily covered in this tired little publication. The photos are nothing rare or extraordinary, and the writing is dry and stale. The concept is a cute idea, but the potential is unrealized. Too bad. The quality of the book is poor. Poor photo reproduction, poor paper quality. A quickie knockoff book. There's nothing in here you haven't read before in TV nostalgia books. Sorry, Moms.

Do you wear pearls and heels to sweep the floors? ; ) Me? I'm more like Peg Bundy! Well maybe not *that* bad! TV Moms: An Illustrated Guide" is such a GREAT little book! There's almost every TV MOM you can think of in this book and some you may have forgotten. I know I had forgotten some of these moms and it was great to "see" them again! I highly recommend this book because it follows women as they changed through the decades and I found it more insightful than any sociology textbook could EVER be! This is a fun and interesting book and even my kids like reading it too.

I have always been a fan of shows like"I love Lucy" and "Leave it to beaver." I read this book almost daily. It is amazing! Full of information, well Written, Funny...Ray Richmond deserves a Nobel Prize for Literature for bring this gift unto our earth.

Lattimore only tranlsated a small number of Greek lyric poetry and poets and are collected here.

They are in the same vein as his Homer translations to get an idea of how he renders the Greek into English.

The book is very small and very thin, so please know that when purchasing it.

The translations are on the dry and stiff side.

Greek Lyrics
anthology
trans. and ed. Richmond Lattimore
University of Chicago Press, 1960

I'll admit to not being the best critic of poetry, but I did enjoy the works anthologized by Lattimore. It includes what I'm slowly learning to be the big name classic Greek lyric poets Pindar and Sappho, as well as twenty-four others. Most are represented by fragments, but these fragments are enough to give a sense of what I felt were the three most common themes of the poets: the state, desirable qualities of the individual (often in relationship to war), and personal stories.

There was quite a range of the type of poetry. Many of the poets like Archilochus, have a very journaling feel to their poetry. They were using verse to chronicle the major events, their thoughts and feelings. Solon and others focused on poetry that criticized or praised the city-state they lived in, or compared their own state to others. There was also a number of epigrams, some that were quite invective toward individuals.

Classic Greek poetry has a style quite different from modern verse. While it often compares or makes referrence to gods and mythology, the language itself doesn't soar to impossible limits of imagination. There is prodigious use of metaphor and simile, but it seems rooted and grounded. So birds may fly with the speed of Hermes, but they don't soar across the heavens blazing like a comet trailing the tears of heaven . . . or whatever.

While I'm still processing, overall I enjoyed the Greek verse. It has a different flavor than what I'm used to, but its economy of language and blatant honesty as poetry makes for a flavor that is quite palatable.

Culled together from the extant works of dozens of Greek lyricists, the late Richmond Lattimore's anthologized translations show simply and elegantly the beauty--and hilarity--of Greek poetry. This is great reading for those familiar only with Homer or the tragedians. Lattimore's selections show the broad range of the verses' subject matter. Here we have not only lofty religious texts, but tender love poems and goofy verse insults, too.

Lattimore's anthology, incidentally, makes a great companion piece to Burton Raffel's more loosely-translated collection, Pure Pagan, available from Modern Library.

Recommended.

I have really enjoyed reading this series of books. It is well written and keeps you looking for the next installment. If you love reading Christian fiction I highly recommend this book. Reading is my favorite pasttime, and I feel this has been time well spent .

Maybe I'm being a smidgen on the generous side with the 4 stars, but compared to other stuff written bu Bunn this is gold. The characters sort of grow on you...at least they did for me. As for the writing, it's adequate but nothing stunning or wonderful. The dialogue's believable, for the most part anyways. The cover is very nice. The plot is at times a mite boring but generally the heroes end up okay so life's all good.
The concept of the Night Angel is neat. Okay, that's my scattered thoughts about this book.

This book was very well written. I read A LOT of christian fiction and this series has really captured the feel of the time period it is written in and weaves a very interesting tale that is quite engrossing. The book description up above is a little misleading in that it leads you to believe the story is going in one direction when really it takes an entirely different direction with its lead characters then what you are led to believe after the first book. I don't want to say too much, or give anything away. The ending is very surprising and not what I expected and slightly frustrating because it leaves you hanging and the next book doesn't come out till early next year of 07. But it really is very well written, like I said, not how I expected it to end at all and I am not sure if I like how the story and relationship of main characters is ending up but I still highly recommend it if you've read the first book which was VERY good too. It should be interesting to read the rest of this series....can't wait for the next one!

I would say by the end, I did not feel a thing for any of the characters. By the end of the book, none of them seemed to grow that much. I typically enjoy books where I am so engrossed in the story, it's as if I'm in the room with the characters eavesdropping on conversations. Not so here. I was very detached from this book and found myself skimming pages. I felt the attraction to the lawyer, Dalton, was contrived. I initially picked up this book from the library due to the interracial aspects, but it happened so fast and without explanation. SAme goes for the relationship with Lance. We never saw/read them have any deep meaningful conversations until AFTER they had sex and hooked up. It just was all very blah. Janelle was not a heroine in my book.

This was an excellent book. I truly enjoyed this novel. Once again, Ms. Bunkley takes our history and brings it to life through a novel. It was a very pleasant read that made you think. It was nice reading a positive novel about African Americans. This book keeps your interest going and you won't put it down. I found myself reading the chapters in the grocery store lines and racing home so I could finish it. I've read three of her novel and all three were great.

WILD EMBERS, A PLACE WHERE LOVE WAS MADE. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE LOVE SCENE WAS GREAT. YOU COULD ONLY VISUALIZE IN YOUR MIND WHAT WAS GOING ON AS THEY WERE IN EACH OTHERS ARMS. WHY DID THE BROTHER HAVE TO DIE. A GREAT BOOK FOR MEN TO READ, AND TAKE NOTE!!!

Most books about Richmond have focused on what we call the "great and good", that is the powerful families who have traditionally dominated the city. Tyler- McGraw, however, chooses to concentrate on the history of the ordinary people of Richmond - working class whites as well as African Americans and woman, who are almost completely forgotten by the official historians of the previous generations.

As someone connected to the city by family ties and who is intimately familiar with the place Tyler - McGraw's history rings true to me and much more than any other book I've seen about Richmond it reflects the history of my own family and of the Richmond I know. A good book, highly recommended.

Overall a pretty good read but I was surprised to find many prominent Richmond inhabitants and residents and other Virginians virtually passed over while many lesser lights, nationally (and, I feel quite sure, locally) speaking, received extensive treatment. While I appreciate the author filling what is surely a void in Virginia historical reportage, in the interest of truth in advertising I would have preferred Ms. McGraw and her publisher call the book, "At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia and Its Minority and Female People."

The setting of this book is May of 1862, the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Day's Battle. These were terrible battles that had high casualties. Eric Fry in the Confederate army hopes that he will perish in battle. He is in love with his brother's wife. They have been corresponding but he has never expressed his feelings for her. Read and find out what happens to Eric. By Ruth Thompson author of "The Bluegrass Dream" and Natchez Above The River"

Writing as a Small BusinessQualifying Laps: A Brewster County NovelSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelTravelersThe Bluegrass Dream: A Wilderness Adventure of Early SettlersNatchez Above The River: A Family's Survival In The Civil War

An excellent historical novel for the Civil War. Many stories and books are written about the generals. This novel gives an outstanding description of life as an ordinary soldier from the 23rd North Carolina.

Excellent detail and descriptions of life as a private in the Southern Army of the American Civil War.

even the title is hard to read without a grin -- really, EVERY culture?? the book is obviously dated, and the language is sometimes outright offensive in its treatment of non-european people and cultures, but that was the time in which it was written... ignoring that, the book provides much useful information for those interested in the snake and its cultural implications/symbols in world religions throughout history. i've not checked to see if there is a book updating the ideas he puts forth here, but admit it would be nice to see how a more modern writer would treat the information. although i cannot say it covers every culture in history, i can say that it offers a glimpse into many different ideas surrounding this animal. howey has also written a book about cats, and another about horses, which might be of interest to you. although his style is as dated as howey's, i prefer jack conrad's "the horn and the sword" (focus: bulls) because of the (for me) more logical format and sense of organization.

A comprehensive study of serpent symbolism from the Nagas of India to the solar serpents of Mexico to Saint Patrick's routing of the serpents in Ireland to the story of the archangel Michael slaying the dragon. I like it. The underlying theme is that ancient peoples worshiped serpents but that Christianity wiped out serpent-worship.

For me, the chapter on the serpent gods of ancient Egypt held the most interest since it helped to explain the winged serpents painted in the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, which became my quest as described in my book, Blessed: A Quest for Atlantis in Egypt Leads to Apparitions of the Virgin Mary. If you've ever studied images from King Tutankhamen's tomb or any of the other tombs, or the Book of the Dead, or if you've ever visited the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, you will have been amazed to see the preponderance of hieroglyphics using serpent images and also the number of painted illustrations in which the serpent is human headed, winged, or entwined around an image of what Egyptologists call a solar disc. This book offers an explanation for these images plus the corresponding fascination with serpents that many other ancient cultures displayed.

It was originally published in 1955 and so is somewhat dated in the use of words and opinions. However, I love that it is free of the modern new age need to twist serpent symbology into a connection with kundalini, chakras, spiritual centers, and vibrations traveling up the spine, etc. In other words, it explains what the ancient cultures believed or anyway what archeologists believe they believed, i.e. the author just says it like it is without getting flowery about serpents by loading the serpent symbolism with chakras and kundalini or even alien occupations.

Carole Chapman is the author Blessed and When We Were Gods.

"Forward to Richmond" is certainly an ironic title for this volume in the Time-Life Civil War series that focuses on the Peninsular Campaign since this particular military fiasco was General McClellan's attempt to do an end run around the Confederate army. Because the topic is limited to a single volume, Ronald H. Bailey (and the Editors of Time-Life Books) cannot go into much depth in terms of the specific battles of the campaign, so you do not get as much detail as you do in those volumes on specific battles like Shiloh or Gettysburg. Chapter 1, "A Young Napoleon," provides a concise biography of the Union Army's commanding general as well as his efforts to train his troops to become soldiers. Chapter 2, "Clash at Ball's Bluff," relates the second defeat in battle suffered by the Federals (after First Manassas) because of unseasoned officers, failures of communication and a poorly run command structure. Chapter 3, "The Troublesome Commanders," looks at how the South was as much troubled by Beauregard's inactivity with the Confederate army as Lincoln was plagued by McClellan's slows with the Federals. Chapter 4, "'Stride of a Giant,'" covers the beginning of the Peninsular Campaign, with the Army of the Potomac finally breaking out of its confinement south of Yorktown. Chapter 5, "Victory Within Reach," makes a strong case for how McClellan snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Chapter 6, "Stalemate in the Swamp," relates how the Battle of Seven Pines ended in a stalemate that still forced the Army of the Potomac to end the campaign. I for one would much rather have seen this book split in half, with the first three chapters turned into a volume that talks about how both sides were looking for commanding generals and the second dealing with the actual Peninsular campaign in considerable more detail. Being bottled up on the end of the James Peninsula is worth an entire chapter. All of these volumes make excellent use of contemporary photographs and illustrations, but "Forward to Richmond" contains many fine examples of watercolors from the time period. Whatever the shortcomings of the text, the accompanying images are first rate.

I am a Civil War buff, having visited numerous battlefields and read many, many books on the topic. This volume serves nicely as an introductions to General McClellan and his role in re-building the shattered Union Army after the First Battle of Bull Run in the summer of 1861. It does a great job of describing the build-up to McClellan's Peninsular Campaign, which was his attempt to do a waterborne end run around the Confederate Army that was guarding Richmond, the Confederate capital.

However, I feel that it is mistitled because it only covers the first half of the Peninsular Campaign. The text stops when Lee takes over for the injured Joe Johnston so we read nothing about the conclusion of the Peninsular campaign, including a majority of the battles.

The book is beautifully illustrated and well-written. A novice to the Civil War will learn a lot, but even this old dog learned a couple of new things with this one.