England Books

Mary Stewart is a great writer. I'm glad that I discovered her again. This book keeps you guessing until the end. I really enjoyed this book.

Back when I was in high school, my bookshelves were filled with the Gothic romances of Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney. In my mind's eye (especially on a dark and stormy night!), I liked to cast myself as one of the the intrepid governesses who finds employment at the manor house of a devastatingly handsome but brooding lord with a plethora of mysterious, murderous relatives and eavesdropping servants. While I always questioned why these young women used to traipse out at midnight into the fog-shrouded moors - wearing only a diaphanous nightgown - to investgate a spooky noise, I was nonetheless captivated by the way all three of these authors could spin such breathtaking ambiance and make a reader feel as if they were right in the scene. I was, thus, delighted when an associate sent me a paperback copy of the newly re-released "The Ivy Tree" by Mary Stewart. Her heroine is a plucky lady of mystery who or may not be who she really says she is, and the scintillating underscore of sexual tension throughout the chapters makes this the kind of read that should be enjoyed with a pot of herbal tea, a fire in the fireplace, a cozy comforter, and a storm outside one's windows. Even with the passage of 40 years since I originally read this title, it's a cleverly orchestrated mystery that still feels timeless.

Christina Hamlett
Author of "Movie Girl" and "Screenwriting for Teens"

First Sentence: I might have been alone in a painted landscape.

Annabel Winslow has been dead for four years. Mary Grey, over from Canada, looks enough like Annabel to be her twin. When Conner, foreman at Whitescar, stumbles upon her, it takes a bit of convincing that she is Mary. Con, and his half-sister, Lisa, work up a plan for Mary to pretend to be the missing Annabel long enough to ensure her grandfather passes the ownership of Whitescar to Con in his will. Annabel Winslow has been dead for four years. Or has she?

This is Mary Stewart at her very best. With lovely nods to Josephine Tey's "Brat Farrar," which I also loved, "The Ivy Tree" is a more complex, layered book, although the clues are there for us to find. Stewart's characters come alive and even have reader questioning just who is Mary? There is that constant threat of danger. Her descriptions and use of imagery make me go back and re-read passages for the pure pleasure of her words. It is a story of love, loss, and hope is wonderfully timeless. Stewart is always such a pleasure to read and this is one of, if not the, best of her works.

This book is wordy and descriptive--half of our book club really appreciated her use of words, and half found it tedious. The beginning is a little slow and hard to engage in, but stick with it because the plot thickens enormously in the middle and the twist is so much fun! It has a dramatic conclusion that made for some fun conversation at book club.

All of Mary Stewart's works are good. This is one of her best mysteries.

We came into this series from the back end. Then purchase preceding works to catch up on the story line as the characters were compelling enough to warrant further reading. Deborah Crombie's Inspector's Kincard and James is such a pair. Their personal lives intermingle with their cases. As readers, we root for each installment. Her stories are keepers as we weed our shelves to make room for new favorites.
With "In a Dark House," Ms. Crombie apply demonstrates her ability to rank with Martha Grimes in creating the stark and brutal side of human relations. Knowing how the personal issues evolve, we concentrated on the deftly plotted case and the steps taken to reconstruct the crime from almost non-existent clues in this great police procedural.
Nash Black, author of "Qualifying Laps" and "Sins of the Fathers."

Deborah Crombie continues to deliver a series worth reading and rereading...this entry is no exception. Balancing jurisdictional disputes, personal life distractions, and a strong sense of historical detail, In a Dark House is another superb example of Crombie's sensitive portrayal of character, place and pitch-perfect plot. If you haven't read her work yet, get them all and be prepared to enter a world you won't want to leave.

I thought that the two books previous to this in the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series were slight disappointments. Kincaid seemed relegated to a side character with Gemma taking the lead. IN A DARK HOUSE is an excellent mystery that brings the two back to equal ground and re-establishes them as one of the best partnerships in mystery fiction.

'In a Dark House' is my first foray into the world of Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James and, mostly likely, it will be my last ... which is strange because the book has all the hallmarks of a good detective/mystery series. The author has obviously done her research on the story's setting (Southwark section of London) and criminal investigation procedures. And the story, an interwoven affair involving arson and murder, has surprising yet plausible plot twists. But why is "In a Dark House" so forgettable?

Well it strikes me that the characterizations, especially of our investigative duo of Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James, are just a bit too manufactured. It felt something out of EastEnders (a UK soap opera) rather than anything realistic. I also felt the author, who is obviously a talented writer, played too safe in her narrative. I wanted high drama, conflict, and the tangible feeling of suspense ... and I didn't find any of it.


Bottom line: a competent mystery perfect for the beach but certainly the sort of book you won't want to keep on your bookshelf afterwards.

Deborah Crombie's James & Kincaid series just gets better and better. Here the setting is Southwark, not a usual venue for London-loving writers. As always, Crombie provides a physical map with her text, although her descriptions of place are so excellent that it's ironically unnecessary. The aged warehouses oozing toward oblivion in the Thames, the aggressive marks of gentrification (for an even better take on this hot topic, see _Kissed a Sad Goodbye_) mingle with the tang of traditional cheeses from the open market by the cathedral and the wacky/wonky lives of the fringe business people who flourish in spaces between the run-down and the rave restaurant review.

Crombie's characters are equally vivid, not only the series stars, but also the agoraphobic in her doll's house and the oddly honest self-made politician. The characters are given dead-on details that call them to mind for the reader, even after an absence of many chapters. Yet Crombie never falls into the grey-page plague of prose. She uses her omniscient narrator's voice and swaths of unforced dialogue to convey both news and nuance. Her skill at plotting really shines here, as she moves among three sets of self-absorbed characters and the police, never once making the reader feel that "now for something completely different" sense of dislocation.

This is a mystery worthy of a re-read - first class!

This was my first Magic Tree house book and I was really impressed. The story was well-done, and the concept of the tree house time machine reminded me of when I was a kid with a tree house in the woods with books strewn across its floor. In a way, many of us did or do have a tree house time machine to carry us away on wings of imagination, and I guess that's one of the reasons why these books are so popular. Osborne is a skillful writer, and I liked that she was realistic about the medieval culture that the siblings visited while still remaining a children's fantasy. Many young adult books set in medieval times shy away from the fact that civilization smelled horrible in those days and life was lived unhygienically by today's standards. A modern person entering the culture would be shocked by the smell, and most time-travel books ignore this, even the adult ones. But it adds to the suspension of disbelief that in this story, Jack and Annie notice such things.
I also learned things about Shakespeare and his era from this book, even though I've taken classes on the Bard in both highschool and college. Osborne includes facts in an unpatronizing way that really supplements the story. The extra facts listed in the back of the book are a great added bonus, and I'd be willing to bet that most kids read and remember them as well as the story.
I'll be ordering more of these great books next time my kid brings home the old Scholastic form for sure!

J. Lyon Layden
The Other Side of Yore

Mary Pope Osborne has found a way to make it enjoyable for young people to read. There is a series of her books which will keep the student spell bound for the next chapter book.

Stage Fright on a Summer Night happened in England, which is where I live. Jack and Annie got to see Shakespeare, which I like alot. They did one of my favorite shows, which is Midsummer Night's Dream. I really liked this book alot because it was the 15th one I read this summer. Magic Tree House books are great because they teach you about all different places, people and things. They are great adventures!

My 1st grader hates to put it down, he would rather read Magic Tree House books, than play video games. He even reads them to his class and explains the story for show and tell. In his kindergarten class the teacher would also let him read the Magic Tree House books out loud, not to give her a break, but to promote reading out loud. Great books!

I could write the same review for every "Magic Tree House" book. We were introduced to the series when my oldest son was 5, and just starting to read. We got the #1 book (the Dinosaur one) on audio when he was learning to read independently. Then he started to read the book along with the audio. Now, at 7, he is bound and determined to read every book in the series, in order, of course. He just finished this one. The words are fairly simple, so the series is great for kids ready to tackle chapter books - they won't get frustrated by having too many words they cannot sound out. They are all ten chaper books, with a little larger type and good line/paragraph spacing, making it easy for kids to keep their place. They all tell a little slice of history in a very interesting way. Everyone in the family learns something everytime.

I thought I knew the woods. "Reading the Forested Landscape" allows you to see what is in front of you, but not seen. I will never look at a woods in the same way again. Tom Wessels does a masterful job of showing you how to "read" the landscape. The book is a "detective novel" of information. I will read it again and visit the woodlands and do a bit of detective work. Great fun.

...makes more sense after reading this book. The chapters give an introductory look at what you see when you walk through a forest and what it means to the ecosystem and to you if you're just curious or you are in wildlife management.

Before I read this book, I knew the woods had stories to tell; now, I can begin to understand them. This book is a forensic reference demystifying the clues the forest has to reveal. Each chapter describes, in depth, a particular setting and the clues found there. The drawings, unfortunately, are not as good or helpful as the writing. I would have preferred photographs, but it's only a small drawback.

See that tree? - that stone wall? - How about that mound of earth in the woods? Never noticed them before? Well this book will help you to discover all kinds of 'hidden' clues that help us to understand how the land was used in the past and what forces helped to make it the way it is today.

This is a wonderful book to read and then put into practice as you ramble around the wonderful landscapes of New England.

I have grown up in new england and studied the biological sciences for 20 years and Tom Wessel knowledge and wonderful insight to the natural world is amazing. the book is a wonderful read and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the outdoors and natures beauty.

My boyfriend and I checked this book out from the library so often that I finally bought him a copy! The all of the recipes that I've tried have been quite good, though many in the book are quite heavy. Some of the dishes have become staples, especially the delicious meatloaf. The highlight of the book is the Kennedy trivia and family photos, not to mention the lovely food photos (the desserts are pure eye candy!).

This book contains recipes and recollections of a great American family, the Kennedy's. It contains the family's favorite, Meat Loaf. I made this on 4-27-07 and it was incredibly delicious! The Lobster Stew is a rich stew which is quick to make and elegant at the same time. The Honey-Pecan Sweet Potatoes are so good, you'll want to slap someone! You will also enjoy the family fotos included in the book and the little stories that go with them.

Interesting collection of recipes & anecdotes, spoiled for me by the overly servile tone of the authors. Actual recipes that I've tried are delicious, easy to follow & easy to cook. Wonderful photography. Well worth buying

I love the Kennedy family and I love New England. This is the best cookbook I have ever read. The photos are amazing, and the stories are wonderful. Everytime I read the book it makes me hungry for authentic New England seafood. It also makes me wish I lived in New England.

I bought this book as one of our prizes for out annual 4th of July races. I skimmed it and copied a few recipes before placing it on the prize table. Wonderful stories with every recipe. The three recipes I made have been excellent. The meatloaf is the best I've tasted and easy to make.

I plan on ordering another copy for myself and trying more recipes.

It's about as miserable as possible, both as literary criticism and as history. Worst reading of the sonnets ever, and that is quite a remarkable achievement. A cringe-inducing embarrassment.

Who am I to go against readers as obviously astute as the seventeen who have rated this book before me and unanimously given it five stars just because it is an insane book by a crank without the slightest idea of poetry, art in general, the creative process, the times of Shakespeare or Shakespeare himself? So: another five-star rating for this gem of the lunatic conspiracy theory genre.

--Bob Grumman

Whittemore's claim begins with a particular interpretation of the first two lines of the first sonnet: "From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's Rose might never die." According to Whittemore, "Rose" (capitalized and italicized in the original, and appearing capitalized 11 more times in the 154 sonnets) means "Tudor Rose Dynasty" of which Queen Elizabeth was the last monarch.

If Whittemore is correct, then the Earl of Southampton (to whom the first 126 sonnets are apparently written) was the actual last Tudor who never became King. The sonnets are thus a tribute to Southampton and his royal claim and the first two lines are a plea to the young Earl to beget an heir so that the Tudor Rose dynasty can continue.

Whittemore's reading of the sonnets allows him to present a unified view of the mysterious verses. In my opinion, his analysis holds together quite well, providing the sonnets with internal consistency and transparently relating them to historical events. In some cases, the sonnets actually explain historical events that were previously mysterious (Southampton was convicted of high treason after the failed Essex Rebellion of 1601 but his life was spared while his co-conspirators, including the Earl of Essex, were executed).

Whittemore's interpretation is much more compelling than the usual "we don't know what the sonnets mean." In fact, he brings the sonnets to life, hugely increasing their power and interest and pathos.

Of course, Whittemore's interpretation rules out the commoner "William Shakespeare" as the author. Whittemore assumes from the outset what Mark Twain and many others have suspected: "Shakespeare" is a pseudonym. William Shakespeare of Stratford who never wrote a letter, didn't own any books, didn't teach his children to read, and who could barely write his own name, did not write the plays and poems which were so obviously written from the perspective of nobility. (If you are 100% certain that "Shakespeare" was NOT a pseudonym, then Whittemore's book obviously isn't for you.)

The book itself contains each of the sonnets side by side with Whittemore's interpretation. The author also provides some background information and many pages of detailed line by line cross references between the sonnets, Shakespeare's work, de Vere's writing, possible sources etc.

For me, personally, understanding the meaning of Sonnet 140: "Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press/ My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain/ Lest sorrow lend me words and words express/ The manner of my pity-wanting pain" was worth the price of the book. It's obviously a threat, but against who and why and under what circumstances? Whittemore seems to have figured it out.

Read "The Truth Will Out" by Brenda James.

Then read the first line of Ben Jonson's two page dedicatory poem to Shakespear in the First Folio, which goes

"To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name"

Which can be written

"To draw no NV (Shakespeare) on thy name"

NV is NeVille - how Henry Neville sometimes signed himself.

Neville was in the Tower with Southampton, for the same offence and also sentenced to death, and Brenda James thinks HE is Shakespeare! To be or not to be ... was written when he was in the tower under sentence of death!

I think the three were brothers, Oxford (1548) 15 years older than Neville (1563) who was 10 years older than Southampton (1573). None of them would have discovered their true identity until they were in their late teens or early twenties. Elizabeth was 15, 30 and 40 when they were born.

Neville had even more experience of Italy and France than Oxford - and they had a great deal in common - Neville was also very interested in Italy, astronomy - I believe he actually met Tito Brahe in Vienna - and in plays. For 6 months of the year he lived in the middle of London, close to Oxford, and near Blackfriars, where the protoplays were performed. Neville and Oxford had relatives in common - Neville was closely related to Cecil. For some reason he has been completely forgotten about - even though he was thought by a number of his contempories to be the most bookish of his generation at Oxford. I think James I went for writing lessons with him in 1604. The King James Bible is almost certainly his work - written after Oxford died.

Oxford worked closely with several writers, and a great number of the plays concern him - and the proto plays of the 1570s and early 80s were probably by him - and although the text of the plays has not survived, some of the names and plots have, and they are very similar to Shakespeare's plays.

I think that most of the finished, polished, works of "Shakespeare" are by Neville, who would have worked closely with Oxford from 1586, or so, onwards. The history plays were an important political project, that would have been supported by Elizabeth and Cecil - from 1586 on Elizabeth paid Oxford £1000 a year - about $1m in todays money. The original plots of a number of the plays, and maybe the writing - before they were rewritten and polished by Neville - may have been by Oxford, and his assistants.

A number of people in the 16th century thought Elizabeth had children. One or two were executed - it was against the law to say she had children! The others that we know about wrote about the rumours in their diplomatic dispatches - I think there are records in Madrid, Paris and maybe one or two other European capitals. But not in England! Where state censorship was very effective. Elizabeth, who was highly sexed and had no access to effective contraceptives, probably had 5 or 6 children.

Henry VIII had several illegitimate children who were placed in noble families - and some of them were a similar age to Elizabeth, in her Court, and did work for her, during her reign. If her father could place his illegitimate children in noble families, why couldn't she? Do not forget that noble families NEEDED heirs - and Oxford, Neville and Southampton were only sons, with curly orange hair! How many people do you know with curly orange hair? I know that the gene for red hair is recessive.

Who knows - Elizabeth herself may have joined in the writing of the plays - she may have helped come up with some of the extraordinary plots - I believe that she was pretty literate herself, and really enjoyed the plays!

So there you go - the works of "Shakespeare" were a family affair! And Neville was a seriously interesting chap himself - one of the founders of two party democracy, a principal player in the London Virgina Company - which was one of the first large capitalist enterprises - it had more than 600 shareholders - and became the USA. Neville tried and failed to persuade James to change his finances from feudal to Parliamentary - we needed the Civil War to sort that out. The "New River" bringing clean water into London from Hertfordshire in 1613 was his idea I believe - and it is still there today, nearly 400 years old.

I will have to buy the book!

While I always loved the language of Shakespeare's Sonnets, I had more or less given up on them. They were obviously deeply autobiogrqaphical, but to what and to whom did they they refer? Were they heterosexual love poems or, as commentators reluctantly came to assume, homosexual tracts directed to the Earl of Southampton who had been the dedicatee of the two long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece? But how did the latter jibe with the failure of anyone to come up with a connection between the man from Stratford and the Earl? And what sense did it make when the first thirty or so sonnets where addressed to a young man urging him to marry and reproduce himself? And what about the "rival poet" and the "dark lady" who appear in the later sonnets? Many commentators have given up in despair and the orthodoxy became that the autobiography was irrelevant to the poems which had to be read things in themselves without outside reference. So I gave up. Until, that is, I looked into Hank Whittemore's "The Monument."

Whittemore works from the assumption that "Shake-speare" was a pseudonym for Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. The reasonihg behind this has moved from "crank" status to a new kind of orthodoxy, and indeed is all that makes sense of the disrepancy between the life of the man from Stratford and the poems and plays. We can't look at all the evidence and argument here, but we can look at how this assumption helps to explain the content of the sonnets. Whittemore sees them as a chronological series directed by Oxford to Southampton, who was his son by Elizabeth I, secretly put out for fosterage with the Southampton family. This is the famous "Prince Tudor" hypothesis, and before readers throw up their hands they should look carefully at the evidence. I would have dismissed it as improbable except for the fact it does indeed make great sense of the sonnets. The first set about the failure of the young man to marry for example: directed by the Stratford man to Southampton they make little sense and are positively impertinent, but seen as directed by a father to the son he could not acknowledge, but whom he passionately wanted to perpetuate the Tudor dynasty and so ensure his own position as potential King (Henry IX) they fall into place. Add to this that the proposed bride was Oxford's daughter Anne (whom he did not believe was his biological child) and the matter becomes alarmingly obvious. The one hundred central sonnets that follow this series Whittemore shows to be a day by day chronicle of the days spent in prison (the Tower)by Southampton under sentence of death from Elizabeth for his part in Essex's rebellion - one of the jurors in the trial being Oxford himself.
The "dark lady" series refers to Elizabeth herself, and the "rival poet" is of course the adopted persona "Shakespeare" behind which Oxford was forced to hide.

Whittemore takes each sonnet and goes through it line by line showing the code or special language that Oxford used and which explains so much of the persistent imagery of the poems. He examines and cross-references the usages to all the "Shakespeare" works, and includes a detailed chronological history of the historical events that parallel the action of the sonnets, ending with the death of Elizabeth and the dramatic pardoning of Southampton by James I when he ascended to the throne of England. At this point Oxford, as part of the deal with Robert Cecil and James had to completely abandon any ambitions for his son ("I must not evermore acknowledge thee...") and leave the Sonnets as the only "Monument" to the truth.

This is a huge book and a huge enterprise. A shorter version evidently exists that leaves out the details and references, but the reader who is willing to be patient will, as I did, get thoroughly enthralled with the details of the evidence. As poem after poem emerges making complete sense in the context of its writing vis-avis the tormented life of the young Earl of Southampton and the agony of the father who could not acknowledge him but loved him with a moving and desperate devotion, and a picture of great drama and passion emerges. Given the unorthodox theory that he is supporting, Whittemore needs to go to these extraordinary lengths to be convincing. He will be challenged of course, and rightly so. Sometimes he might be overanalyzing and putting too much faith in the sonsistency of the "code." "Beauty" might always refer to Elizabeth, but sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Even so, any critic is going to have to show in the same massive detail why he is wrong. This is not a work that can be dismissed as the Baconian codes and cyphers were (rightly) dismissed. When, as in sonnets 30 to 35 for example, the exact reference to the trial of Southampton and Oxford's agonizing part in it become obvious, I have a vast sense of relief, of insight. At last it makes sense. The reader does not need to look at every last note to each poem. Once you get the idea it is enought to read the poem, read the Wittemore' "translation" and get the historical (day by day) context. The notes are there for further referrence and for the scholars. This is an immense work of scholarship, of a very rare kind, one that serves the reader as a source of revelation, and the scholar as a mine of information and dispute. You may not buy it all - and you will have to work at understanding the basic premiss and clear the mind of the cant associated with standard "Shakespeare" biographies, but for all those who like me have been frustrated by a failure to make sense of the most profound autobiographical sequence in any literature, this is a powerful breath of fresh air. If the poems were "Shake-speare's" Monument, then this magnificent book is Hank Whittemore's own Monument and will itself father many distinguished offspring as its possibilities are realized.

"Right Ho Jeeves" was first published in 1934 in the UK, though was first published in the US under the name "Brinkley Court". The book is set in England and features Wodehouse's best known creations : Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Bertie is the book's wealthy, good-natured and rather dim narrator. He's a member of the "idle rich" and, rather than having to work for a living, lives off an allowance provided by his uncle. He spends much of his time in the bar-room of the Drones Club, is fond of the occasional wager and has an appalling dress sense. Luckily, Bertie has Jeeves, to look after him. Without Jeeves, Bertie's life would be a mess : he makes an excellent hangover cure, his bets usually win and is intelligent enough to rescue Bertie from nearly any situation. He disapproves of Bertie's more garish items of clothing, and will - occasionally - take it upon himself to deal with the offending item.

The book opens with Bertie's return from Cannes, having spent two months on holiday with his Aunt Dahlia, his cousin Angela and Madeline Basset - Angela's best friend. Arriving back at his flat, Bertie is surprised to learn that Gussie Fink-Nottle has been a frequent caller in his absence. Gussie, an old school-friend of Bertie's, is something of a reclusive character : he doesn't drink, looks rather like a fish, prefers country life to the city and is a noted newt-fancier. Gussie has apparently fallen in love, and has - wisely - taken to visiting Jeeves for his advice on how to win the young lady's heart. However, following a disagreement with Jeeves about a white mess jacket purchased in Cannes, Bertie decides to take over Gussie's case.

By sheer coincidence, the object of Gussie's desires is none other than Madeline Basset - who, after the trip to Cannes, has returned to Brinkley Court (Aunt Dahlia's stately home). Bertie sends Gussie off to the stately home in question - though his motives aren't entirely noble. As well as spending time with Madeline, Gussie will also be delivering a speech at the local grammar school's prizegiving day - a job Aunt Dahlia had intended for Bertie. However, when word comes through that Angela has brokern off her engagement with Tuppy Glossop, Bertie and Jeeves race off to the countryside to offer their support. Naturally, Bertie's attempts to ease smooth things over land everyone in a great deal of bother.

A very easy and enjoyable read.

If there's one thing Bertie Wooster should never do, it's make elaborate plans to bring estranged lovebirds back together.

And he demonstrates just why in the second full-length Jeeves novel, a screwball disaster saga that sees Bertie confidently trying to fix people's lives. Of course, things go horribly wrong, and Wodehouse's arch, nutty look at what happens next is an absolute gem.

When Aunt Dahlia summons him to Brinkley Court for a prizegiving, Bertie sends his newt-fancying friend Gussie instead -- especially since Gussie is enamoured of a girl staying there, the soppy Madeleine Bassett. But when Bertie hears that his cousin Angela has broken off her engagement to Tuppy Glossop -- and his aunt is in need of money -- he rushes down to assist all his relatives and pals by advising them to feign such sorrow that they're unable to eat.

Unfortunately his plan falls through, and they manages to enrage the cook Anatole to the point where he storms out. Even worse, the prize-giving is a disaster and the wrong people end up engaged -- and pursued by homicidally angry exes. Only Jeeves' formidable brain can somehow save the day -- and Bertie's behind.

P.G. Wodehouse made a pretty good living off of spoofing the upper crust of England, and the subtlely intlligent servants who bail them out. "Right Ho Jeeves" is a prime example of his writing -- some small mistakes rapidly balloon out into a crazy tangled mess, which only an intelligent manservant can rescue Bertie from.

Much of the book's charm comes from its complex plot and series of disasters (such as Tuppy's homicidal rampage). And as usual, poor Bertie finds himself the object of young ladies' affections -- in this case, the appallingly goofy Madeleine thinks he's madly in love with her, when she's not rambling about fairies and bunnies. If there's a flaw, it's that Jeeves' final solution is a bit limp.

But Wodehouse's writing is what really makes the book timeless. It's arch and wry, whether he's describing basic actions ("He leaped like a lamb in springtime"), or goofy dialogue ("But if you were a male newt, Madeline Bassett wouldn't look at you. Not with the eye of love, I mean").

Jeeves and Bertie are the perfect comic team -- Bertie is proud, goofy, and not terribly bright, while the quiet Jeeves is a towering intellect with wry wit. And they're backed by a colourful, small cast of nutty aristocrats, schoolboys, sharp-tongued aunts and cousins, newt-fancying fish-faced men, and a girl who talks about how "every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee bitty star is born." Yech.

"Right Ho Jeeves" is a hilarious, tangled farce of love, money, jealousy, dinner jackets and the mating rituals of newts. Absolutely priceless, from start to finish.

got the blues? melancholia got you in its grip? the prospect of death got you down? jeeves to the rescue! nothing like a good wodehouse read to cheer one up. problem is, the man wrote just short of a million books, and not all of them are good. so where to start? right here, with this book. of all the wodehouse books i've read, this is my favorite, the most consistently entertaining. just what the doctor ordered to smash you in the funny bone and get a smile going on the old face.

If you love Monty Python, Faulty Towers, and the like, you'll love RHJ. The glowing reviews on this page are spot on. This is timeless stuff. And Cecil's reading (if you incline towards the recorded version) is terrific. Laugh out loud funny. I adored every moment!

It is rare that I derive such pleasure from a book, but Right Ho, Jeeves, gave me a delightful surprise. Not only does Wodehouse make an art of the satirical novel, but in the process wraps the reader up in the witty speech of Bertram Wooster and his strange arrangement of friends, family, and butler. Bertram, or "Bertie," as he is commonly known, stumbles through the entire novel with the idea that he alone must bear the weight of being the sole aid to his friends' problems. Despite several attempts at a kind reprimand from Jeeves, his personal servant, ("I beg your pardon sir... What I intended to say, since you press me, was that the action which you propose does seem to be somewhat injudicious."); Bertie continues to give it his best. Among other things, Wooster implements the best intentions while attempting a match between old friends, but with little success: "All he had to do was propose." "Yes, sir." "Well, didn't he?" "No, sir." "Then what the dickens did he talk about?" "Newts, sir."

Despite the playful banter, colorful characters (such as a sensitive French cook), an inept yet lovable narrative voice found in Wooster, and of course, Jeeves, behind all is an incredibly clever satire on the "upper crust," so to speak. Although, admittedly, many readers cannot associate directly with the early-middle twentieth century, one cannot help but feel the idle, privileged and somewhat clueless lives of the English aristocracy seep from the pages of Jeeves. Wodehouse does a wonderful job of capturing the lives of people who have nothing better to do then dabble about ridiculously in the lives of one another.

Indeed, Wodehouse does much to reflect the over-privileged lives to which Bertie and company cling to so humorously. However, what might have become a novel filled to overflowing with hilarity and drama is brought back down to a more substantial level with the constant subtle humor and patronization brought in by Jeeves. "Jeeves, don't keep saying `Indeed, sir?' No doubt nothing is further from your mind than to convey such a suggestion, but you have a way of stressing the `in' and then coming down with a thud on the `deed' which makes it virtually tantamount to `Oh, yeah?' Correct this, Jeeves." The nature in which Bertie and the rest are virtually ignorant to Jeeves' little jibes such as this shows clearly the statement of Wodehouse, how the aristocracy is too self absorbed to notice even the slightest. In short, this is a wonderfully clever novel, which keeps the pages turning with quick wit and snappy humor. I highly suggest it.

I've worked my way through this entire series now, and while the first dozen or so (this is no. 23) were generally well done -- good, reasonably accurate descriptions of London of the 1880s, pointed contrast between Society's drawing rooms and the miserable existence of the laboring classes, vivid character development of both working cops and the elite -- the last few have shown a definite decline. Thomas Pitt, Inspector and then Superintendent at the Bow Street station, and a both very talented and highly empathic detective, has now been stripped of his position by the Forces of Evil (the entirely fictional and extremely melodramatic "Inner Circle") and dumped in the lap of Special Branch, where he's beginning to learn how to be a secret policeman instead of a public one. The "Seven Dials" area of London is a pretty minor player in this one, too; the author should have called it "Alexandria," because that's where Pitt is sent to gather information on a beautiful and patriotic Egyptian woman living in London who is caught red-handed wheeling a dead bottom through her back garden in a wheelbarrow. Also implicated is a high Foreign Office official, which is how Pitt and his "M"-like boss, Narraway, get involved. If the details of the motive for the murder become public, the government could fall, Egypt could erupt in revolt, and Suez might even be lost. Can't have that, right? The action is low-key, the plot development takes its time, and the reader will enjoy the scenery, both internal and external. At least The Inner Circle manages not to appear this time, and it's fun watching Pitt trying to deal with a totally foreign milieu -- even though Perry could have spent a lot more time painting its details.

I never really liked political anything, even in Anne Perry, but I could not put this one down. I finished it in one day. She did not disappoint me!!!! Thanks Anne

elizabeth cohen

Classic murder mysteries rely heavily for both their effectiveness and their appeal on a "slight of hands," and one of the tricks is a set of characters in whom one can become interested enough to relate to them in some way. Another is to create an ambiance that arrests the attention and keeps it. Anne Perry has a great knack for creating both memorable characters and an interesting stage on which they play out their roles in the story.

Her Seven Dials is an amazing recreation of Victorian England in the earlier days of the queen's reign. The era is young yet, and the political turmoil that will set the stage for World War I and the social changes it brings is just beginning. Some of the older characters can remember the Napoleon wars. Thomas and Charlotte Pitt are paradigms of lower middle class life in the period, with their fate in the hands of Thomas's mentor in the Secret Service, Victor Narroway, and their maid servant and her beau, Samuel Tellman, in theirs. The interactions among all of the characters gives as much a feeling for the period as does the mention of hansom cabs, harnesses, and horse manure in the streets. Even the yellow skies and the chocking, smog filled London streets is classic for the era.

Perry's characters are charming and detailed, each a work of art in them selves. The maidservant is spunky, savvy and sensitive, used to the school of hard knocks, and her friend Tellman is gruff, masculine in an "old fashioned" sort of way, and smarts under the unfairness of social inequality and the period's newly arising sense of social empowerment. The stiff, formal society in which Charlotte Pitt grew up and still has family is faced with an erosion of their privileges and with a growing sense that they are on the threshold of major change. They are like dinosaurs waiting for the asteroid to strike them.

All of this sets the background for a puzzling murder of a man who should not really have been where he was at all and certainly not dead. The central characters push forward in an attempt to make sense of the confusing, almost irrational facts. It is this irrationality that is part of the slight of hands. Eventually Pitt must go to Egypt to unravel the mystery by back tracking the murdered man and his alleged murderess.

The venue in Egypt is Alexandria, a city to which I have been about three or four times. The descriptions of Victorian Alexandria might still easily pass for today, although the city today is more Western than Cairo and much more so than Thebes. The description of the rug suq was definitely memorable. The quarrel that leads to a small riot in the book reminded me of the minor violence that occurred among men there and in Cairo in the few days before Sadat was assassinated. Like the brewing sense of political unrest in the book, here too, everyone felt the tension in the air; everyone knew that something was afoot, but no one knew what was about to happen. It was a very tense time, and so was Pitt's Egypt.

I can not for the life of me understand the author's description of malaquia, an Egyptian soup--which I refer to as "frog-pond"--made for special occasions, as "delicious." I found it slimy and green. The latter I could handle, the former I couldn't. The mention of the sound of what seemed like crickets to Pitt, also brings back memories. Actually the sound is not crickets but a similar one made by small frogs in the canals and on the banks of the Nile. It's very restful. All in all, Pitt's trip to Egypt was as memorable for me as for him.

A delightful mystery.

Anne Perry doesn't disappoint in this recorded book. Read well, and easily one for the bookshelf.

Very descriptive and historically accurate. You'll love her vivid pictures of Alexandria. Egypt comes alive. I'm a harsh critic but this work bowled me over.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the flow and the storytelling narrative. I read this book in 3 days, and I couldn't wait to to hear what would happen in the next chapter. I would like to know how the other characters turned out, but otherwise no complaints. My husband attended a similar English school, and tells some of the same stories.

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'Stand before your God' by Paul Watkins (1993)

This is an enjoyable book, particularly as it is so well-written. Language is powerfully used, rich, textured, poetic. The book has been well-polished. The writer has made the effort to avoid merely mudane humdrum ways of expressing what he wants to say, and has gone out of his way instead to look for more exciting and innovative clever ways to get his ideas across and make his points instead. It is a good example of a book to hand to someone who wants to see how writing looks and sounds to the ear when it has been done properly.

The writer has observed life well in this book. He expresses many things in ways that make the reader want to say: 'That's exactly it. You hit the nail on the head there. That's exactly right, and couldn't have been put better than the way you have said it.'

The book itself is about the permutations and combinations of school life of an American lad being educated at some of the 'best' schools in England, from age 7 to 18, with the boy flying home to the USA during school holidays.

As respects content, the book tends slightly towards the mundane in places, slightly towards the contrived in other places, but that's only to be expected and it's no less of a book for that. It is a little thin in places on events which are sufficiently out of the ordinary to grip the reader's attention.

The silly capital letters thing was annoying. There was no reason to capitalise particular things in the book in the way they have been capitalised. The writer doing that reminded me of Iain Banks' 'The Wasp Factory'. The technique worked there because the lad there was eccentric, but it doesn't really work with a person from Eton.

Overall: An excellent book. 5/5.

Tailor-made on Saville Row for the American, male, prep-school Anglophiliac, of which, for better or for worse, I ressemble, Paul Watkins' "Stand Before Your God" brought me back into the schoolboy world of English and American boarding schools, especially the multifarious social and economically derived snobberies. It gives the reader a visceral sense of a taken-for-granted lifestyle and the assumed noblesse oblige of preppies from a prior generation. Watkins writes well and evocatively,the above caveats excepted...

Every boarding school kid should read this. At my school, the entire community, faculty and students, was required to read this. And though being at the Dragon School isnt exactly a RI co-ed prep school, so many of the things ring true. Even boys riding mattresses down stairs in their dorms at night, lol. Its a superb read.

I think I would have responded to this book in a very different way if I had read it while a teenager or college student. I would have identified with the adolescent pressures and the adolescent attachments. However I was less impressed by the adolescent angst of the first 80% of the book as I was by the reflection in the final 20% of the book. In this section Watkins identifies 3 themes. First, Watkins describes his growth and movement from the body of a boy to the body of a man through the story of learning to throw the javelin. He describes beautifully and simply the first time he became aware that he had control of his muscles and strength and was leaving the awkwardness of childhood behind. Second, Watkins simply and clearly describes the discovery of his inner reservoir of strength that he develops first as a survivor and observer and finally as a writer. Third, through non-accusational reflection he realizes he was sent to the Dragon School and Eton to fulfill a perceived weakness and vulnerability that Paul's father felt toward the elite uppper class. Thus he sends his child to the best schools to protect him from the barbs of aristocracy. Why do father's do this to their sons? Each man must wrestle with his own vulnerabilities and make peace with his inadequacies. I was also left wondering whether he forgave his mother in the same way he seemed to forgive his father for sending him into this elite and cold experience while still a small child?

I liked ballet shoes so since this was the sequil I wanted to read it and was disapointed. It's not as funny and there's not as many crazy adventures as the first. It also has lots of flaws that the first didn't have. But read the third shoe book called dancing shoes way better than even the first one!

I think Theater Shoes is a great book fo kids intrested in acting,dancing or singing.This book had three strong charcters intrested in diffrent areas of theater so it was easy to find a charcter I could relate to.I would suggest this book for girls ages 9 to 14.

Theater Shoes is a wonderful story with an attention grabbing plot, a lovely setting, and a well thought out conflict and resolution. This is, now, one of my favorite books and I really enjoyed it.
Throughout this story, there is a great plot. In this book, Sorrel, Mark, and Holly's parents die. They are forced to live with their grandmother, a bitter, but famous, english actress. She puts the children through a Childrens Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. Almost everyone in their family, before the children, had been a famous in the arts. Their grandmother was determined to keep the family tradition. At first all three children hated the academy. They thought that all of the teachers were too harsh and too serious. Then, after getting used to it, the academy "grew" on to them. Each of the three children discover something about themself at the academy. Sorrel, the eldest, discovers that she is a real actress. She can be very dramatic and play roles quite well. Mark finds out that he is a really fabulous singer. Little Holly can do a lot. She charms almost everyone at the academy with her adorable ways of doing things.
There is a lovely setting in this book. It takes place in England! I have always wanted to go to England, and by the way Noel Streatfeild, the author, describes it in the book, it seems so beautiful. It is in such detail and it is so easy to put an image in your mind.
The conflict / resolution in the story, almost stated in the second paragraph, is the children are forced to go to an academy, by their bitter grandmother, that they have no interest in. But in the end, it all pans out. Each child learns something different about themselves and are now striving to learn more. They end up loving the academy and treating it like their home. It means more to them now, than just pleasing their grandmother. Do you think that all of the hard work the children put into learning will result to something? Read this wonderful book and you will find out quickly.
In conclusion, this book was really great! I think that one reason why I liked it so much was because I can really relate to it. I love to do musical theater, and I think that reading about something that I really enjoy helped me understand the text better than it was already described. You don't have to love musical theatre to enjoy this book, but I think that it really helped. This book was enchanting and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did!

I started the Shoe books a few years ago. The first one was absolutley stupendous and cute. This one is amazing too.

Although each book is its own story, they are all linked with an amazing writing quality and performance.

This one is the story of Holly, Sorrel and Mark, whose grandfather, who supports them, just died -- so they go and live with their grandmother who puts them in an Academy for Stage Training and Dancing. It starts out rough but they learn to like, and even love it.

The overall story is really sweet a precious, which still warms my heart to this day.

This book is about three children named Sorrel, Mark and Holly. When their grandfather dies and they are sent to live with their maternal grandmother, and former famous actress. They are sent to the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training so that they can carry the family's stage tradition. Holly is very good at dancing, Mark at singing and Sorrel at acting. The grandmother is very distant and cold, yet the children find love in their nanny and other family members. Meanwhile, they must put up with their talented, bratty cousin.
The story is wonderfully told and once again, the characters are completely lovable. Kids and adults will love this story, especially Shoes fans.