Finestein's translations are so awful, it is no wonder that few English speakers want to know who Tsvetaeva is. She loses the rhythm, rhyme, literary devices, and everything for which Tsvetaeva's poetry is so loved. The duality of meanings and word play is also completely lost. Try Angela Livingstone's translations - they are excellent.

Read this book! and read about her life. She witnessed so much darkness and her words open up these experiences, lay them bare. I really wonder what her writing would have been if she had lived a different life, one without so much tragedy. She also recognized, as did Virginia Woolfe, that it is difficult for women to write amidst the responsibilities of everyday life -- "I have no time to think . . . I have only ever been myself in notebooks . . . for all my life I have been leading a child by the hand." Her work stays with you long after the book closes.

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892, published her first poems at 18, and was married with two children when the Russian Revolution began. She endured numerous hardships -- one of her children died of malnutrition -- and a period of exile. She returned to Russia in 1939, but was so beset by her circumstances that she committed suicide in 1941. These passionate and autobiographical poems are deep and important. I don't know Russian, so cannot comment on the translation. From them one learns about Tsvetaeva the artist: her subjects are love and transformation, nature, poetry, love, and her complicated, exasperating country -- and, later, the bleakness which enveloped her. Poetry was serious business in Russia, and this poet was one of the greats.

I read this book while on vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine, so it seemed appropriate for the time. Coughlin's writing style is a bit pedestrian...as if he hasn't had much experience writing. However, the story is fun to follow. Brian Kelly is a modern day hero, mixing compassion, humor, and an f-you attitude into a engaging character. The first half of the book is better than the second and the love scenes are awkward, at best, but it leaves you dying to read the sequel. If you're looking for great literature, this isn't it. But if you're looking for a good story to read while on vacation, go for it.

Since I live here in York County (just up the road from Brian Kelly) I really loved this book. The locations are all real and it is such fun to read the names of the local establishments in a novel. Some have changed since the setting of the story but most are still as described. The characters are very appealing and I cared about what happened to them. Am anxious to read the sequel.

The Classic Slum, is a good piece of historical writing for its intended audience the facts are present and largely have to be accepted, although given the means to validate them, I expect they would be accurate. Roberts writing has been clearly limited up to the time of his parent's death, which seems to have been a definite decision on where the book should end. By using this limit effectively and creating some fascinating dialogue Roberts has succeeded in writing about a dreary Salford slum in a light and sometimes-funny way.
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This book looks back to Edwardian English society. The author happens to have grown up during this time and gives a vivid account of the "Working Class" society in which he lived. A must read for someone who is interested in British history.

Kate Brannigan is a Manchester-based private investigator that is having a bad day. She is investigating the robbery of a Monet painting from one of her client's homes. What really gets her craw is that during the previous day she installed the client's home security system. Kate is also involved with a second case involving industrial sabotage. Kerrchem is facing a rash of lawsuits after one of its cleaning fluids killed a man. The police stated that the man died from inhaling arsenic.

Kate does her best to solve these two cases despite her trouble with her boyfriend. Apparently they are at a crossroads after a previous case and they are having trouble getting back in the swing of things.

I knew I had to read more of Val McDermid's work after reading A PLACE OF EXECUTION. One thing I enjoyed about CLEAN BREAK was that it was easy to read and I liked the characters. Kate is not a superwoman but she works very hard at what she does. She is loyal to herself and her friends. She knows when she is wrong and she knows when to ask for help. I really enjoyed reading her story and I intend to read the other books in the Kate Brannigan series in the near future.

It's like a sorbet - light and refreshing. It's not too heavy on character development, but just enough to keep the characters interesting without an Oprah-esque heaviness. It's got a couple of different mysteries running at one time, but the writer handles that with ease. There was one section (a chase through Europe) that was a bit long, but other than that, this is a very good, very quick read. It's similar in style and tone to Patricia Cornwell's early work. And beware that it's a British book, so there are a few phrases that might be a bit difficult to understand at first.

The book was great. It was informed, accurate and very well written. It reviews the recent times of Manchester United Football Club, and their team. It also tells the reader about the financial backing of the club and how it has risen to become one of the biggest clubs in world in the last ten years.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who admire's the genius of H.L. Mencken. Manchester has created an in-depth account of the "Lion of the Twenties," from his early childhood in Baltimore as the son of a German-American cigar company owner, to his acendence to the pinnacle of the American intellectual renaissance of the 1920's. Manchester sculpts a palpable and staunch profile of the self-described "conservative anarchist," who made his mark as the editor of the influencial American Mercury magazine, writer/editor for the Baltimore Sun, and author of The American Language, the penultimate chronicle of American English. Mencken was a prolific pundit, scholar, social critic, reader and writer, blessed with a caustic wit, a hair-trigger mind, and an impossibly contrarian nature. His voracity for reading was so deep that he was known to read a motor repair manual "just because it was another human being trying to communicate." No one escaped his crticism with socialists, Christian Fundamentalists, and politicians particularly targeted. Manchester's writing, as in all his excellent works (I also highly recommend "Goodbye Darkness," Manchester's memoir of his combat service in the South Pacific as a U.S. Marine in WWII, five stars)is wonderfully rich. Manchester's style also has a lot of Mencken in it, which is another reason I liked the book. I don't know if he was consciously attempting to pay homage through stylistic similarities, but the cadence, language and were reminiscent of Mencken's works, and gave me the feeling it was really Mencken telling his life story through the hand of Manchester. Not a bad guy to emulate, even when you're as good as Manchester.

The masterpiece of one of the greater Italian writers of the twentieth century. The search of the own roots and the sense of the own life returning to the origin countryside after emigration in America. Also one meaningful testimony on Italy during and after the second world war (and on the point of view of an Italian on the U.S. in that time). Still today a book a lot being involved.

Tony Warren had his hand in the early days of Coronation Street, this book has that feel to it.
I have read it many time since having Mr. Warren sign my copy which I purchased in the Arndale Center in Manchester UK (Pre IRA redecoration). If you like British soaps or anything english, get a cup of tea and get ready for a ride

I realized too late that this book was only 416 pages, not the original 510 pages so it omitted several of the (less popular?) games. Otherwise, it is a great book with many uses for all ages and abiliies

Barbara