Sex, war, peace, the ingredients to a great play. Lysistrata is about women who are tired of losing their sons in battle. The women band together to bring peace by forming a pact, they refuse sexual intercourse with their husbands unless the war is brought to an end. However, that is only the beginning of the bag of tricks she has up her sleeve.
The play is an absolute riot. I've seen this play performed live and while there were some good moments, I liked the book better. The book has a lot more witty humor and a sense of building frustration that the play lacked. The sexual innuendos are nothing too rash as to be insulting or offensive but rather appropriate, something college students can well appreciate. The "love scene" between Myrrhine and her husband Kinesias will leave you rolling on the floor. The use of props such as the "phalli" and towels are brilliant in accompanying the humor. It's funny to read (and picture) how the women "man-handle" their husbands to try to bring peace to the land. As a college student I've read and studied this book and found many interesting values covered that are appropriate for a Rhetoric or gender studies course. The theme of women suffrage, rising up against the men in a time when women need to be heard, is dominant in the play. Women banding together to fight for a common cause is something I have not read before and was pleasantly surprised of. For a Greek play, the women are portrayed as being very human, rather than being serial killers and jealous lovers and the sort. The women are characterized as being very sleek and sexy, something always to look forward to! The men aren't desensitized either; rather the men are just as human as the women.
I recommend this book for any college rhetoric course or even an Interpretation of Literature course. It's the best of both worlds in terms of being very entertaining and having a fair share of educational value.

Lysistrata is perhaps my favorite of the Greek plays-it's never pompous or overbearing, and it never overwhelms itself with flowery prose. In addition, it's one of the few Greek plays I've read that portrays women as genuine human beings rather than murderers, decorations, or idiots. They're smart, sexy, and socially aware, especially in a time when they were very seriously repressed.

Lysistrata is an intelligent Athenian woman who is sick and tired of the Greek city-states warring against each other. She calls all the women she can round up and comes up with a strategy to end the wars: Keep away from their husbands' beds, and the men will make peace with other cities to make peace with their wives. After a great deal of whining, the women agree to deprive their husbands of sex until peace is achieved. But that's only the beginning of what Lysistrata has planned...

Too many feminist tales end up being heavy-handed-though women are on the side of peace and right in this, it doesn't bang you over the head. The men are human as well. The comedy is sly and witty (though full of mild sex talk--nothing too raunchy) and the scene where one young woman unmercifully teases her love-hungry husband will have you rolling.

I can see someone making this into a movie-in modern or ancient settings, the dialogue can still be deciphered without a translation program *wink*. It's a story about the power that women can wield and the lengths that they can go to.

Read, laugh, guffaw! You won't regret it!

This is probably the most entertaining play I've ever read, and it was written more than 2,000 years ago! Aristophanes brilliantly critiques the rigid gender roles of ancient Greek society in several dozen hilarious pages.

Aristophanes writes of a group of Greek women who, in protest of war, refuse to have sex with their husbands, and the plot is a glorious success. Aristophanes depicts men begging their wives for sex, and paints a picture of Greek women not very dissimilar to the women of contemporary Western society.

"Lysistrata" is a crucial reading for anyone interested in Greek history, feminism, or anyone who just wants to read a devastatingly funny comedy about sex.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

For a topic as lovely (powerful and mystical) as this - the Northern Lights - its really sad how quickly the author reverts to sappy science drama writing. I was really disappointed by this book and am baffled by the other glowing reviews. All I can think is that this format - the Ken Burns approach to narrative drama in an actual historical event - has become so ubiquitous that people expect it in their science writing too.

Dear Lucy Jago,
I really enjoyed this book! I read the complete title so I knew it was about the MAN who unlocked the secrets of the Aurora Borealis... not about the "powerful and mystical Northern Lights". What an amazing man he must have been. Thanks for showing us his human side, strengths and weaknesses. I'm still left wondering what else he might have been able to accomplish if he had lived longer (and had a more healthy life style!)
I thought this book had a good balance between the technical aspects and storytelling. I didn't want a physics book about Aurora, if I did, then I would have gotten one. I wanted a history of science book, I wanted to know the "story", I wanted to meet the people, I wanted to know the community reaction at the time. I got all that and more.
Thanks for your fine work, I had an enjoyable few hours reading it.

Lucys book was such a joy to read.
It is great to find someone who writes with a searing passion that forces the reader to locate the nearest needle and thread and then proceed to frantically sew their eyes OPEN just to finish the entire book in one sitting.
This book was impossible to put down and there was no way something as inconvenient as sleep was going to keep me from finishing it.
The end result being that I now have an insatiable craving for cloudberries, reindeer milk cheese and Glogg. And I want to move to Norway and spend the rest of eternity staring at those lights.
The Northern Lights will take your heart and soul right up into the heavens and force you to question your very existence on mere terra firma.
There is the most wonderful Norwegian saying by Sigbjorn Obstfelder that reminded me of Bierkeland...
"Jeg er visst kommet på feil klode."
(I seem to have come to the wrong planet.)
A Perfect metaphor for the man, who thanks to Lucy Jago is finally a star.

"Norrøna-folket det vil fare, det vil føre kraft til andre." (The Norse will travel, they will give strength to others.)
-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

Aurora "Roe" Teagarden is your typical librarian: thick, coke-bottle glasses, long brown hair, sensible librarian-like clothes, single, lives in a small town - you get the picture. She doesn't have much of a social life and has resigned herself to having her Saturday nights free. But, once a month, on Fridays, she meets with her fellow murder-mystery enthusaists and they discuss a real murder. This Friday it is Roe's turn to present the case of the Wallaces. She spent hours preparing and arrives a little early at the community center to make sure that everything is ready. However, she cannot find the woman who unlocked the building, laid out the cookies and coffee and set up the chairs. When she does find her, she wishes that she hadn't as she has been murdered and displayed in the kitchen in a gruesome fashion. Even though Roe is in shock, she cannot help but notice that this murder bears a startling resemblance to the Wallace case. Could one of the club members have taken their little hobby a little too far? When other bodies begin to pile up, all copycat murders from famous past crimes, Roe cannot help but wonder which victim she resembles...

This is a fun, short, easy mystery read that I sat down and read in a couple of hours. Roe is a likeable character whom most readers will relate to as being in her shoes at one time of their lives or another. The other characters are also fairly interesting, but not as fully fleshed out as I would like. Charlaine Harris doesn't really present the plot in such a way where you would be able to solve the mystery on your own with the clues presented so the ending has a surprise twist, but it was a nicely paced story. The romantic subplots were a little perfunctory, but added a nice touch to the story. I enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it, but I really loved the Lily Bard series and highly recommend those books. Keep in mind that most of the Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard books are out of print, but they are worth hunting down - especially the Lily Bard series!

This book introduces us to Aurora Teagarden, an amusing, intrepid and self-deprecating almost-30 librarian. She shares her interest in historic murders with a group of crime buffs who have formed a group called Real Murders. They meet once a month to discuss murders and murderers of the past. Strangely enough, murders begin to occur which mirror these past murders and which include members of the group. Aurora teams up with the Arthur, a local policeman and member of Real Murders, and Robin Crusoe, a mystery writer, to solve the murder cases. No one is above suspicion, but the solution is a surprise. This is fun, light reading.

With "Real Murders", Arkansas author Charlaine Harris introduces us to an unlikely heroine caught in a bizarre series of gruesome murders. Aurora Teagarden, local librarian, leads a calm, quiet existance but has one curious hobby--a fascination with sensational murders. She and several other townsfolk have formed "Real Murders", a discussion group dedicated to discussing famous murder cases. But among their members is a person whose interest in the details of the world's most sensational crimes is more than a mere curiosity--it is academic. At once amusing and chilling, "Real Muders" is an enthralling read that engages the reader in the small-town world of its characters and leaves them anxios for the next installment.

A claustrophobic novel about a turn of the century Antarctic expedition which turns into a murder investigation when one of it's members is found dead on the ice. The bulk of the novel involves discovering the victim's past and how it interconnected with the lives of the other team members. An interesting, light-weight novel with a twist at the end. Read it on a snowy weekend.

If you've read everything you can find on Sir Ernest Shackleton's trips to Antarctica, seen the traveling exhibit with Frank Hurley's extraordinary photographs and memorabilia from the Endurance, and still crave more about Antarctic expeditions, this book will keep you interested and dreaming of such exploration for a few more hours.

Written in 1978, this is a murder mystery set near the South Pole in 1909, the same year as Shackleton's first expedition and five years before the Endurance epic. A similar crew of explorer-scientists and sailors, with the same attitudes and prejudices that one finds in the literary record of the Endurance, perform similar tasks under similar conditions, with one big exception. Captain Eugene Stewart (sharing initials with Ernest Shackleton) must also investigate his own crew as he attempts to unmask the murderer of Victor Henneker, the expedition's representative of the press, who intends to record the voyage for posterity.

With the same care for historic details and period attitudes which one sees in some of Keneally's later, prize-winning books, such as Confederates and Schindler's List, Keneally reveals Henneker to be a blackmailer who holds damaging information about almost everyone in the crew, their reputations vulnerable because they have violated the inflexible moral strictures of Edwardian England. A cuckolded husband, the secret lover of a married aristocrat, a mountain guide who may be responsible for a fatal excursion, a man tried for theft, and others "guilty" of homosexuality, Zionism, illegitimacy, and heresy reflect the pettiness and rigidity of "civilized" life in England and offer motivation both for the murder of Victor and for participating in the expedition. The book's conclusion is also consistent with the mores of the day. While this may not be the greatest mystery of all time, it is certainly one in which the author has done all his homework, well worth reading for the context it provides for other (real) expeditions of the day.

This is not really a book of Antarctic exploration. Keneally uses this ploy to show us a group of 26 men who spend many months in complete isolation during arctic darkness. The men have different backgrounds and different professional specialties. An uneven lot, if there ever was one. But, of course, they completely depend on each other. They must work as a tight community - and we await Keneally's thoughts of this "experiment". He introduces Victor Henneker, a journalist who has collected unsavory facts on people he meets, including most of the members of the expedition. Henneker gets killed, and his notes now become public knowledge. How do the explorers deal with what they now know about each other? Do they look at them now with different eyes? Most important: do they still trust each other?

Keneally gives us a fascinating portrait of people under the stress of a predicament they cannot flee. A fascinating book.

The book Arctic Fives Arrive is an okay childrens book. It doesn't really make much sense in the beggining though. Childrens books don't have too though i guess. I didn't like the ending on it because i couldn't even understand what it was talking about. All in all though, the book to me would rank 3 out of 5 stars.

Children love this story which is a fun way to introduce the concepts of math (counting by fives), the arctic habitat, geography and natural phenomenon (the northern lights). As a teacher, I've used this book with three to six year olds. It is one of those rare books that lends itself beautifully to building several lessons around. It is easy to expand upon the books' concepts for the older children but the younger children love as well. It's simple but rhyming, poetic text and captivating art work make it a book that children ask to read again and agian.

"Aurora Floyd" may not be the best novel Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote -- the honor goes to "Lady Audley's Secret" -- but, the book is still intriguing because of the contrast it makes with the other book and many other comtemporary novels, especially "Jane Eyre." And if you don't have these historical interest, the book is pretty interesting thanks to its good story telling.

"Aurora Floyd" follows the history of the heroine of the same name, who has a shady past left in France. Aurora, unrestrained morally in her youth, hides some secret, but still attractive enough to make the two heroes fall in love with her. Without telling the nature of the secret, Aurora, strong-willed and candid, a gives a clear warning to one of them, proud Talbot Bulstrode, that he may one day regret his rash action if he dares to marry her. While he vanishes from her to marry other woman, tame and tender-hearted Lucy, the other suitor meek John Mellish succeeds in winning her heart, and he immediately marries her, not knowing her secret. As the time goes on, however, her hidden secret emerges from the past, and finally catches up with Aurora, living now quietly in a countryside. She must face the past, but how? While she is tormented by the sense of guilt, her husband began to suspect something wicked is going on, and he too began to suffer.

The story is melodramatic, but it is the merit of sensation novels, the genre in vogue during the 1860s, and Braddon, as she showed in her previous (actually written almost at the same time) "Lady Audley's Secret," is very good at handling the subject. It is notable, however, that the author intends to do something different this time, spending more pages on the analysis of the psychology of the characters. The result is a mixed bag; sometimes she shows good descriptions of characters with a witty touch, which reminds us of Thackeray, the story sometimes gets slower because of too much philosophy. Compared with the fast-paced "Lady Audley's Secret," her new experiment may look somewhat damaging.

But as a whole, the book is agreeable, and after you finish two-thirds of the book, Braddon makes the plot speedier. The last part includes one of the earliest examples of detective story, and a good (but short) portrayal of detective Joseph Grimstone's work is still fascinating. But the greatest merit of the book is its sub-text dealing with incredibly violent passion of Aurora, whose image is clearly mocking the typical angelic image of Victorain women. One of the book's scenes, in which the heroine gives a shower of blows with her wrip to her stable-man who bullied her dog, caused sensation and scandalized some critics. The description is still impressive today.

In conclusion, "Aurora Floyd" is a fairly gripping story, even though it is not the best place to start reading her books or Victorian novels. If you think you are familiar with those Victoraiin novels, or want to read one of the effect following the impact of Bronte's "Jane Eyre," try it.

Trivia: Braddon lived long (died in 1915), and before her death, she even watched the filmed version of her own "Aurora Floyd." Her life story is as intriguing as a story she wrote.

[NOTE ON THE TEXT] Oxford University Press's "Aurora Flyod" uses the later edition of the book while Broadview Press's uses an earlier edition. The former one is considerable changed from the latter, so for the academic use you must be careful.

Having devoured Trollope, Willkie Collins, I happened onto Aurora Floyd and was truly surprised to find such an outstanding story so beautifully written. A dark secret revealed, a murder and a love story, this is a wonderful book.

this has lots of nice pictures of houses you couldn't possibly afford.

This is a collection of 25 homes (published by Bacelona's Loft Publications) mostly built in rural - not necessarily mountainous - regions. Roughly half of the homes are located in the united states, with three by architect David Salmela in Minnesota and one in Michigan (Brininstool + Lynch Architects) - not exactly what American's refer to as mountainous regions. Some of the other architects featured include: James Cutler, Hariri & Hiriri, Eduardo Sauto de Moura, Alfedo DiVito, Fernau & Hartman, and Frank Harman. Most of the homes contemporary and woodsy and some, such as Salmela's, employ a regional vernacular. The photos are excellent and clear. Almost all the featured homes have floor plans. A disappointment is that few have site plans or site sections - which I find helpful to the understanding of a 'mountain house'. Although the title may at times be deceptive, this is a beautiful book at a fair price. Until somebody writes a monograph on the Northwoods best kept secret - David Salmela (and I do hope somebody does) - This is one of the best sources of his work.

Un hombre enfrenta la realidad: la muerte se aproxima a paso seguro. Decide entonces dar la ultima batalla y recorrer los caminos del sexo, tratando al mismo tiempo de descubrir el eterno misterio de la luna. Dar y recibir es una forma de no morir. Una narracion impecable, magistral. Escenas eroticas que transportan al lector al espiral de sus propios deseos. Hay que leerlo.

I must agree with "a reader from Riga" - although an interesting story, I was very disappointed with the level of English. It did indeed read like a high-school essay which is such a shame - the story of Aurora and Alfreds deserves better! I would have liked to recommend the book to non-Latvian friends but was embarrassed, due to the poor language. I did lend it to my mother, without divulging my thoughts, and having read it, she said the same thing.

In all due respect, (since the reviews are getting so personnal...) this might be an interesting story from an interesting lady... but the writing is horrible! It reads like a high-school essay, with very awckward sentences, corny emotional passages and failed attempts at high-literature. The story could have been good, but this book was not a pleasant read, no matter how interested I am in the history of Latvia during and after WWII. Sorry...

In regards to the last review of my grandmother's book - I must reply with all due respect in the following manner concerning the statement that it makes my grandmother seem very daffy,etc.. What MUST be understood is that my grandmother was not yet out of her teens when she married and her world turned upside down. She was but very young and yes,certainly niave and selfcentered as many are at so young an age. One must take into consideration that the world was far more innocent at the age of 17 in those days as compared to this age group now. Yes, she was truly this niave at this time in her life, perhaps as a result of NOT wanting to face the harsh reality - it was her personal way of responding and perhaps a way of denial regarding the reality around her. I hope readers will understand as well, that in the book, it is stated that, the time frames may be askew as the result of memory. This book's value is for life experience amidst great hardship and not historical accuracy data.

I have been looking forward to reading "A Bone to Pick" to read how Aurora Teagarden comes into her inheritance. The story opens with Aurora Teagarden attending weddings for both her mother and Arthur Smith and the funeral of Jane Engle. Aurora then inherits Jane's house and finds a sinister surprise inside.
Aurora, as always, has lots of character detail and internal dialogue (love her hair : >), but
I was disappointed to find little charactization for benefactress and Real Murders ex-cohort Jane Engle. There was also little sleuthing in this story. Aurora gets to know her new neighbors through a couple of social events, but does not beat the street to try to solve the mystery. This installment shares the great atmosphere and the small-town setting with the rest of the series, but I didn't buy the mechanics of the story. Neither did I appreciate that Jane Engle just "didn't have time" to put things back the way she found them.
"A Bone to Pick" is effective in that it made me want to read the rest of the series, but mostly to fill in the blanks this story leaves and see if Harris' characterizations develop further.

When Aurora "Roe" Teagarden attends Jane Engle's funeral, it is more of a kindly gesture to someone who used to belong to the Real Murders club with her before the club stopped meeting. Roe considered Jane a friend, but didn't really know her that well. So she is startled when Jane's lawyer informs her that she is the heir to Jane's estate. Suddenly, Roe goes from scraping by on a part-time librarian's salary to an heiress with a home, nice jewelry and $550,000 in savings. Roe isn't quite sure what to do with herself and her newfound wealth. However, she realizes that all is not as rosy as it seems when Jane's lawyer keeps hinting that there may be some problem that she needs to solve for Jane. When Roe goes to check out Jane's house, it has been broken into and searched, but nothing was stolen. Roe is determined to figure out the secret and eventually discovers Jane's hiding place and pulls out - a human skull. As Roe waffles between handing the skull over to the police or tossing it in the river, her life takes a few unexpected turns. Her ex-boyfriend, a police officer, moves in across the street with his new, very pregnant wife; she starts dating a minister; her mother gets married; her best friends gets engaged; her new neighbors are throwing welcoming parties for her; she inherits a cat who soon has kittens; everyone in town is gossiping about her relationship with Jane and her inheritance - the list goes on and on. Needless to say, Roe doesn't spend a whole lot of time investigating who the owner of the skull was until the rest of the skeleton is discovered at the end of the street...

This is the second installment in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series (Real Murders is #1) and it is a pleasant, fast read. I read it in a couple of hours and enjoyed it, but it isn't anything that is very memorable. The mystery is rather lacking because we don't know who the skull belongs to, but Roe doesn't really go out and try to figure out who it belongs to - the answer just kind of falls in her lap at the end of the story. Charlaine Harris does introduce some interesting new characters, however, and she keeps up with a few of the old ones from Real Murders so it was nice to see time passing in the small town. I would have liked to see a bit more of a plot regarding the mystery side of this "mystery", but this book is more of a fiction novel with a little bit of a mystery on the side. Still an enjoyable read, but I must say that the Lily Bard series (Shakespeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, etc.) is far superior than the Aurora Teagarden series.

In this second book of the series, Aurora Teagarden inherits a house and a substantial amount of money from Jane Engle, a former high school librarian. Aurora is surprised at this bequest since she had not counted Jane as a close friend. However, she becomes even more surprised at what she discovers in Jane's house. She becomes acquainted with the neighbors on Jane's street while assessing the possibility that they were involved in a crime which she thinks was committed in the neighborhood. A light and enjoyable read.