I was very displeased when I finally got my copy of this book in the mail. It is completely based on religion. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, but it is not mentioned in the preview before you buy the book. I would not have purchased it if I had known. Now my Mother has nothing to read, and I feel bad. Maybe Amazon should include this information in the preview so more people won't buy a book that they can't use.

Thank God for the spiritual aspects of this book. For those of us with a deep spiritual faith and reliance on God's faithfulness in our lives, I found the book healing and practical. The process of transitioning from a full house where children are our reason for getting up each day to the empty house is covered with practical compassion.

If one must set aside the religious aspects of "Empty Nest", one can. That's the strength of this book. The real heart of the book lies in the shared experiences of mothers' whose children have left them alone. The sudden realization that an empty nest is the best signal that a mother has done her duty as completely as possible is made a bit more palatable by reading the similar experiences of other mothers.

This in no way represents the true life of anyone but another lost breed cashing in on his C-31 mom he grew up in toronto and occasionally came to CURVE LAKE

HEY DREW have another glass of stereotype pal

This book was great! Loved it. It was witty and full of humor laced with truth. I can't wait for the second volume.

This book was so interesting and funny, I didn't even stop at the typo! I just 'flew' over it! Give me 10 stars please. Or just 'give' me the missing star of Heather Zenone and make it an 11. I enjoyed this book from the beginning to the end. And wanted some more. I'll tell the whole world to buy this book, so he HAS to write some more!!

As an alumnus of Hillsdale College and someone who knows practically every person quoted in this book, I was disappointed. The author fails to look beneath the surface of the tragedy at Hillsdale and takes the easy route of casting aspersions on former Hillsdale President George Roche III and his son, Lissa's husband, George Roche IV. While these two were certainly not perfect, the author fails to understand that much of the turmoil within the college and the faculty was going on well before the events chronicled in the book. Unfortunately, the author relies on information and interviews from questionable sources and current faculty members who are obviously attempting to protect their reputations as well as that of the college -- for example his usage of information from the Hillsdale Liberation Organization is questionable being that the "HLO" is actually a group of dissatisfied former students from the college. The death of Lissa Roche may deserve further examination, but it needs to be done by someone who understands the politics and powerplays as they happened at Hillsdale College over the past 15-20 years, not just the past 2 or 3. The author fails to provide a compelling case for his claim that Lissa was murdered and he also fails to explain the situation at Hillsdale that apparently led her to take her own life.

This book provides a very nice review of Hillsdale College's dedication to further education without government intervention. It also reviews the recent tragic death of Lissa Roche. While the latter issue is interesting, I found the historical review of the college's committment to independence most uplifting. Decades before Affirmative Action was put into place, Hillsdale College denied government assistance so that minorities and women could attend its school - helping them fulfill their dreams.

Based upon the author's premise that "there is not one single shred of evidence that (she) actually committed suicide," Roger Rapoport's "Hillsdale: Greek Tragedy in America's Heartland" seeks to open up what certainly has to be one of the more controversial police investigations (and findings) in recent memory.

Lissa Jackson Roches, dauthter-in-law of the college president and noted editor in collegiate academic circles, is found dead in the Slayton Arboretum of Hillsdale College, itself a noted--and respected--liberal arts college . When the facts are laid out by the author, of course, this book, indeed, resembles something right out of Aeschylus or Euripides--or for perhaps many of the modern audience--a soap opera.

Alas, however, this death and "investigation"is not fiction and Rapoport is determined that, as in "Hamlet," "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." In this case, it's a peaceful college town in Michigan, complete with its own set of codes, secrets, innuendo, and tragedy.

Rapoport's examination of the case is done with an eye to the critical, taking the official police and court findings and, looking askance at what he finds, begins his own investigation, as it were. His line of thought, his own questions, indeed, do raise more than "a reasonable doubt." He also presents the other individuals involved--her family members, acquaintances, and friends, making the "Orestia" seem somewhat tame! So many questions, so little time--and, to make further the analogy to a soap opera, so few advertisers to pay for opening up this melodrama!

Rapoport, who presents himself as a disinterested party, certainly raises enough questions that, to me--or any other third party--should warrant a re-investigation, this time as a homocide. His thorough backgrounding of the scenario and its players is also impressive. Rapoport, already an established author and literary investigator, present his book in a style that is quite readable without being melodramatic.

It will be interesting to see what impact it has on the Michigan authorities. Not to re-open this case should, indeed, raise even more questions into the infrastructure of this death. Good luck, Mr. Rapoport! (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

I finished "Red Dust" with mixed feelings: it is not a great book, but it is not bad either. It is interesting, but not profound. It is decently written, but carelessly organized.

What makes "Red Dust" valuable is that is a frank, laid-back portrait of "The Real China" (wince) in the early 1980s, a time (unlike now) when few people were writing down such basic observations as this book contains. These observations are not profound, and they ring hollow only when the try to be, but much that is profound can be gleaned from the mundane. A family's eating habits, how easily people can be duped because it is what they want to believe...these are the substance of life, and all the more so in a place where life is so tenuous as in China's interior.

But two aspects of "Red Dust", the account of Ma Jian's three years spent as a Chinese drifter, curdle the incisiveness of his insights. Despite having taken Buddhist vows, and considering himself on something of a pilgrimage for enlightenment, Ma is a rather self-important person, at least as a narrator. Many of the stories he encounters would have told better if he had been able to observe, sometimes, from the sidelines, rather than making it always about him him him. Understandable human trait, but dangerous in literature. A related flaw is the bitterness with which he filters all occurances. China never has - and probably never will be - a place to inspire bounding optimism, but persistant negativity makes a book just unpleasant to read.

The beginning chapters document Ma's life as an artist and bohemian type in Beijing, and are both tedious and hilarious. Tediously impressed with themselves for bucking convention, for viciously trying to out-artsy each other, and then praising their own genious, but hilariously true to the type of the Chinese avant-garde, especially in the words, not deeds, climate of Beijing. The crowd is eerily familiar.

It is no accident that "Red Dust's" cover bears a plug from "Soul Mountain" author Gao Xingjian, but Ma replicates the Nobel winner's formula so closely that I wonder whether Gao really meant it, or was pleased by the compliment of imitation. Both books are tales of fleeing Beijing for the romanticized countryside in the oppressively political environment of the 1980s. But Gao's book is so much more etherial and important, Ma fares badly in comparison. Ma Jian's writing is merely the Red Dust in the wind from Gao's Soul Mountain.

The author is a native Chinese artist, which makes it hard to understand his prose as he shifts from the present, past, and dreams with many people talking. But after you get through his own primal needs, back-pack and shoes, food & cigarettes, and sex, alcohol & drugs, then your mental filter is set to read the story. Just read every other paragraph and you won't dwell on the insignificant. This book is unusual in that it is written by a native 30 yr Chinese who is on an extended tour starting in 1982 (p17); quite the opposite of a tourist book written by a round-eye.

His writing is really a rambling diary of his bumbling, dirt-cheap, 3-year vagabond tour around China, crashing on and bumming off of friends of other literary or journalist's friends. He is part writer / journalist, part photographer, part poet, part painter, but can't do anything very well (p42), other than shagging women in the same boat. Other women are quite wary of him. One laughs wryly, "The quickest way to commit suicide is to marry an artist (p215)."

His travels start from Beijing, west via train to the deserts of Qinghai, south to Chendu and east via the Yangtze river, then north to Xi'an and further to the Genghis ruins on the desolate Shaanxi steppes along the Yellow river. South through Sichuan and east to Qingdao his birthplace, south along the coast to Shanghai, Canton, Hainan, inland to the Yunnan minority regions, Golden Triangle, and finally Tibet. Certainly a long trek, some with humanity and much in solitary. The situations that he gets himself into can be interesting otherwise it's daily page filler. Sort of a DIY manual on how to hitch for a ride, how to sleep with a roof overhead, and how to sponge a cup of tea or meal off of dolting peasants.

Sometimes he tries amusing scams to earn some spending money, such as, becoming a street barber in Qinghai (p107), selling pot cleanser for tooth polish in Shaanxi (p199), and help setup a Yunnan minority peoples exhibition in Canton (p208) which of course is a desperate flop, as the Cantonese are much too busy making money to come.

There is a map of his travels on the inside F&B covers (HC), and there are 8 detailed map / drawings heading the chapters. There are no pictures in his book, even though he carries a camera through his trip. He carries the camera mainly to impress his credentials as a journalist (p272) to the local authorities, at least enough to get a meal and an overnight bed.

He spends some time in Chendu, to recharge, party with the local literati, and witness the new economy in western China. He talks to new graduate staffers that are slowly mutating into the cynics like himself (p141). Fleeing his shadow he continues his journey to sacred Buddhist sites (p156) and visits an infamous prison at Chongqing. He sees the posted executions list, which ironically reminds him of witnessing an execution who turns out to be of a former lover of his ex-wife (p160).

Once more, yearning for cleansing deprivation, he hikes north to Xi'an and the Yellow river of Inner Mongolia to visit the ageless ruins of past civilizations. Once more penniless, he drops in with the local literati, including a film studio and dance troupe, all local closet dissidents, and earns money as a magazine illustrator for a spell. He sees a museum of 2,300 stone tablets that chronicles classical Chinese history and philosophy (p170) and interviews recovering opium addicts in a state sanitarium (p177).

He visiting his parents, siblings, and birthplace in Qingdao (p205) by the Yellow Sea and he remembers his childhood and how he was a selfless disciple of Chmn Mao. Somehow he has mutated into a rebellious ne'er-do-well with a 7 year itch, who divorced his wife, child, and leaves a mistress who jilted him, to travel throughout China before escaping to the West probably under the guise of political persecution. He keeps in contact with everybody by letters and asks respondents to send them to his next friend-in-the-trade.

Of the redeeming factors for this effort is that you visit areas that no round-eye tourist would ever see or visit, let alone talk about. At the start in order to purge his bad thoughts of Chinese socialism, he walks across the Gobi Desert to see the buried ruins the Grotto of 10K Buddhas (p76). He endures a 1 week long dust storm, then suicidally sets out again, and nearly dies from thirst, crawls into a swollen salt lake; he almost becomes a relic as a tenderfoot walking the desert. Much later, he takes a bus into the Yunnan minority region jungles and learns about reusable burial grounds. He crawls through the jungle, sleeps in trees, and passes by aboriginal huts whose inhabitants are just afraid of him as he of they (p266). When he needs to cross a river in the rain, he finds a raft and single-handedly makes it across within an inch of his life (p276), then he has to climb out of the river gorge before nightfall...makes it to a village and is interrogated and house-arrested. He escapes and continues his journey to Tibet.

In Tibet, he tries to get close to Buddhism, visits with a Han who has exiled himself there and who has learned Tibetan. Now his sidekick, he tries to learn the ways of the monk, attends a sky burial (warning: very gross p311), makes a preposterous attempt at Mt Everest, and finally he drops as a hospital case of diarrhea & dehydration. Denouncing his vagrant life and exhausted from his trek and misery, finally cleansed and survived the privations of his spiritual pilgrimage (p 105), he returns to civilization.

Definitely a modern Chinese Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Dissident Don, he finally finds himself and tells us after recovering for 15 yrs in Hong Kong and London. He says that having money is the key to freedom (p105), yet having money is a quick route to Spiritual Pollution (p223). If you are looking for an existential view of China, then this book is for you, which I read at a local library.

"In a flash, Bao Yu [a character in the Chinese classic A Dream of Red Mansions] saw through the red dust of illusion. He discarded his worldly ties and set off in search of enlightenment."

In 1983, Ma Jian left Beijing to wander through China's rural countryside. For three years he drifted through the bleak Western provinces, the rich Southeastern part of China and through Tibet. He was 30 years old at the time. He intended "Red Dust" to be an account of his finding himself in the loneliness of the journey. It turned out to be the story of his disillusionment not only with Buddhism but also with the ideas he held about the advantages of the simple life. In the end he finds that he wants to give up his solitary wandering and needs "to live in big cities that have hospitals, bookshops and women."

"Red Dust", published only in 2001, is a starkly realistic portrait of rural China at the beginning of the economic liberalization initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. No Westerner would have been able to describe the life of the common people in the impoverished inner provinces of China as precisely and straightforward as Ma Jian. It is a world that is invisible to Western visitors, even if they speak Mandarin. In that sense, "Red Dust" is not required reading for the average traveler in China. But I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the "hidden" life that the majority of the Chinese really live.

"Red Dust" stands out for its unflinching realism and its intimacy with everyday life in China, just as Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk" (1986) stands out for its sense of humor, Simon Winchester's "The River at the Centre of the World" (1996) for its knowledge and entertaining anecdotes, and Peter Hessler's "River Town" (2001) for its lyrical descriptions of the landscape and its endearing sympathy with the Chinese people.

At first glance, this book seemed to be exactly what I needed. However, the author's assumption that a bad father equals a bad impression of god, or even the rejection of a god, is her own belief. While spirituality has its place in our lives, not everyone turns to organized religion for their answers. Drew should learn to keep her religious beliefs out of writing that appears to be research-based and academic. I will pass the book along to someone else, if I don't simply return it.

I've been through years of Adult Children of Alcoholics, writing groups, private counseling and more. I've read every self-help book there is. This is the FIRST BOOK that dealt perfectly with my love-hate relationship with my Dad. It was so direct and targeted it was scary. And because it is a workbook, you must DO the exercises to get the benefit. And while painful, they were very revealing.

My best advice is that you get a counselor/therapist/objective friend to listen to you and make sure you complete all the exercises.

This author is a godsend. She has lived through and healed her father wounds

Jane Drew is a brilliant author with great insight into this area. Many of us missed out on having a father who was there when we needed him... in the way that we needed him. This book is about addressing that wound and moving forward. --Frank Boyd

I have almost the whole series of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Supermysteries and I thought it was different because Nancy only goes to Memphis to sightsee and acompany Frank and Joe on their case.

Best of Enemies was a considerably good book. It wasn't dull and had a lot of action and enthusiasm. The novel shows the relationship of a wealthy Mexican boy, a Texan Confederate troop and a Navajo slave girl through a rough and hard time during the Civil War. Best of Enemies also reflects on how survival may depend on the least expected persons, and, another thing which I liked about it is that you can feel the emotions of the characters and the hardship and joys that they go through. An excellent book which I recommend to young readers who enjoy a good, well written historical fiction novel.

BitchGoddess: The Spiritual Path of the Dominant Woman, is a good read for any woman participating in or curious about BDSM sexual practices. This book is not a manual, but a collection of essays, personal accounts and poems that celebrate the image of the dominant woman through history. As any indivdual who lives life beyond societal norms knows, it can be very difficult to find proper reflection in media images. This book assures us that there is a place for the strong, sexually assertive woman in society. It also reminds us that it's nothing new! So if you're looking for instruction you may want to look to other titles. But if you want to wrap your mind around this inspiring archetype, or celebrate your own goddesshood, this is the book for you!

Do people do that kinky stuff just for sexual pleasure? The answer is no, and this anthology explores the reality that for some people, sex can be a means to spiritual empowerment. Both roles, submissive and dominant, are explored and explained from the view of "goddess" imaginery. While not a follower of this particular part of the "BDSM" umbrella, I did learn quite a bit from the essays and now can better understand when my partners say that I've helped them see "god" -- they should really say "goddess" though.

When ordering this book, make sure to look at the dimensions. The book is small. Very small. I did not look carefully enough to see in advance. Just make sure you know what you are ordering. Other than the size, it is ok. It will be small complement to the game room.

The book gives a great in depth look at all the people involved in the show. The behind the scenes humour and the talented cast really comes through. One of the funniest behind the scenes books I've read - and I take pride in reading them all!

I FOUND THIS BOOK VERY WHITTY.HE HAS SEEN SO MUCH PAIN IN HIS LIFETIME. I COULD INDENIFY WITH HIM IN SO MANY AREAS. I WOULD LIKE TO SIT AND TALK TO HIM.. WHAT A GREAT HONOR.......

This review concerns the original 1940 edition. The trunk which Nancy takes with her on a cruise to South America, along with a similar trunk owned by another passenger, appear to be at the center of a mystery. This book was alright, but I found that it really didn't have a mystery to it until the last few chapters. The first part of the book concentrates on the efforts of the mother of one passengers to keep Nancy from sailing. Ultimately, the mystery is somewhat dull and predictable and the book lacks much action. The book is probably worth reading, but I doubt that it will be one of many people's favorites.

This is one of the best Nancy Drews! the other one is the Tolling Bell. Anyway, in this one, Nancy meets Nelda Detwiler (N. D., same anishiles) and she has been acused of stealing a dimond braclet! A mysterieous trunk appears that LOOKS like Nancy's but is not. (They can't find Nancy's, so she has to use Bess, George and Nelda's close) Anyway, I can't tell you much more. Oh, and they are all on a cruse ship, so Nancy has to solve the mystery before it's over. BUY THIS BOOK OR GET IT SOMEHOW!!

I have read many of Nancy Drew books and like this book. Although this is not in my top list but it still good. This book is worth to read.