This book was written with belly laughs in mind for the Christmas season. The zany illustrations fit perfectly with the great writing. Kids of all ages will be happy to find this book in their stocking!

I bought this book because my family loves the water and boating. The book is well written and fun for all ages. It's a delightful "tall tale" of Christmas on board as told by the salty first mate. I highly recommend "Sailors Night Before Chirstmas" to anyone, young or just young at heart who ever wondered, just how does Santa get to people on boats. Reading this Christmas story just might become one of our family's holiday traditions.

The original 1993 edition of this book by Pat Califia is now replaced by this new edition by Patrick Califia (same person by the way). The chapters are increased from 6 to 10 and more information is included while everything else is updated. There is a lot of basic information here but this isn't a how-to book -- its focus is more on the mental and emotional and social aspects of starting out in SM (or BDSM if you prefer). So if you are starting out because you or a parnter knows you are interested, this book will help you figure out what next steps to take, how to discuss things, where to find resources and community; it will not teach you to tie knots or flog.

Whenever someone asks about information about the SM Community, I have two required readings...Sensous Magic and the Leatherman's Handbook by Larry Townsend.
I think Pat does an outstanding service to the community with this
publication. This first edition was very difficulty to obtain, so with this second edition, a new generation will benefit from her knowledge. As she says..if we don't take care of ourselves, who will.

Who was this mysterious man? Bill Hamlin-if that was even his name-was a mystery. A tall, dark, sexy mystery, but still, not one Cara Davis was really sure she wanted to solve...especially when it became clear he was on the run from some deadly danger he declined to discuss.

Who was this woman of mystery? Cara Davis was lying about her identity-that much Bill could read in her smoldering brown eyes. Question was, could he trust this pretty lady when she swore she wasn't connected to his enemies? If they were going to pose as a married couple, he'd have to find out her secrets...even though he could never reveal his own.

from the back cover of book

Harlequin Intrigue #315 3/95 * Who was this mysterious man? Bill Hamlin-if that was even his name-was a mystery. A tall, dark, sexy mystery, but still, not one Cara Davis was really sure she wanted to solve...especially when it became clear he was on the run from some deadly danger he declined to discuss.

Who was this woman of mystery? Cara Davis was lying about her identity-that much Bill could read in her smoldering brown eyes. Question was, could he trust this pretty lady when she swore she wasn't connected to his enemies? If they were going to pose as a married couple, he'd have to find out her secrets...even though he could never reveal his own

Doug Rice is going to be one of the most important and valuable writers coming from the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st. Century. Period.

Doug Rice returns with his unique style of appropriated and created material, generating short pieces that are both beautiful and bizarre. His words slip into the reader like no other, burning inside you from the first page to the last. Theme wise, he ranges from religion, sex, art, death, life and all their complex inter-relations. Rice's control sits as a study in the economy and the power of the written word. Anyone with an interest in minimalist styles and experimentation should give his work a solid look.
As powerful as all the textual experiments in this collection are, none sit quite so strongly as the early piece that focuses on Kathy Acker and Rice's last memories of her. The elegiac tone comes through powerfully and personally, but Rice keeps a tight hold on it from slipping over the top into sheer sentimentality. This one piece almost sums up all of the book's themes, and I found myself continuing to think on it well after I finished the book.

Rice C. Bull was a Union private that documented his soldier life from being a raw recruit in 1862 to final muster in 1865. Rice covers his involvement with the 123rd New York Infantry of the 12th Corps, Army of the Potomac. Bull defines the daily life of soldiering he sees firsthand from learning drill, getting acclimated to army living and eventually facing the enemy in battle. Bull brings forth the carnage and despair faced by many soldiers in combat at Chancellorsville as he is wounded and his diary comes to life as he brings the horrors of war to the reader. Wounded and taken prisoner, Bull allows us to learn about just what was going through his mind and how others suffered with him. Bull follows the 12th Corps to Gettysburg and then south to join Sherman's Army that eventually becomes involved in the famous "March To The Sea". Bull brings home the interesting tale of this march and how the army on a daily basis foraged, marched, skirmished and camped. To appreciate the daily soldier grind this book I completely recommend!

I was looking at some Civil War correspondence and writings posted on the web, and much of it doesn't make sense or was difficult to read due to atrocious spelling and grammar of the writers in that time period.
I then got to watching a 4 hour documentary called "Civil War Combat" on the Discovery Channel where they covered the battles of: First Manassess (aka Bull Run), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Little Round Top, spending 1 hour per battle.
In the Chancellorsville hour they repeatedly kept quoting from the memoirs of this Rice Bull. I figured there had to be something about what Bull had written or the way he wrote it for them to have quoted him so much. I was right.
I quickly found this book at a good "used" price on Amazon.com and gobbled it up. It was excellent, very very readable, and very informative. Bull had a common education, but was a gifted writer. He explains why he volunteered to fight, how he was wounded, went home, came back, and was around to March with Sherman to the Sea. He even touches on his post war experiences. He saw a lot, and shares a lot.
The horrendous conditions the soldiers endured are still beyond my comprehension.
Those who fought the Civil War certainly define "sacrifice" and Bull Rice's memoirs verify it, telling it all from a regular soldiers perspective!

I have to agree with the other reviewer. I read this book when it was first published. It was wonderful. I have been looking for Rice's next book ever since. I loved Bag of Bones and all the recent Sharyn McCrumb books (not the Elizabeth McPherson's). If you like your Southern Fiction with a dose of the supernatural, you will love this book!

I read this rather obscure book about two or three years ago, quite by accident. I was looking for a copy of an Anne Rice book for a friend and stumbled across this novel- something about the title and the cover art made me pick it up and look it over. I love mysteries and so I decided to buy it, although I was unfamiliar with the author. This is not an easy book to find in your local bookstores, so you may have to check it out of a library. BUT DO IT! This is more than a mystery book- the writing is intelligent, the characters are interesting, and the style of the writing just flows....I couldn't put this book down for very long! I can't praise this book enough- any fans of Ruth Rendell or Sharyn McCrumb would likely fall in love with this story as I did. The only problem is- the author hasn't yet written her second novel

"Swords of Mars" is the 8th of 11 John Carter of Mars books that Edgar Rice Burroughs gave to the world. It first appeared serially in the "Blue Book Magazine" in six parts, from November 1934 to April 1935, and is one of the best in the Carter series. For the first time since book 3, "The Warlord of Mars," Carter himself takes center stage, rather than making a brief cameo appearance, and his return as the lead character is perhaps the best single element of this book. This time around, Carter goes to the Barsoomian city of Zodanga to put an end to the assassins guild that is thriving there. In the first half of the novel, Carter goes undercover to infiltrate this Murder Inc.-type of organization, and this segment is extremely tense and exciting. In the second half, Carter's wife, Dejah Thoris, in what to any reader of this series must come as an instance of Dejah vu (sorry...couldn't resist!), is abducted again, and Carter follows her kidnappers to one of the Martian moons, using one of that planet's first spaceships. His subsequent adventures on the moon propel the reader into the realm of pure fantasy. Both parts of the novel are as fun as can be, although very much different in tone.
This novel features very few of the inconsistencies--both internal and with other books in the series--that mar every previous Carter novel. There are some, however. For example, the great Scarlet Tower of Greater Helium is referred to in this book, whereas in previous novels, this tower was referred to as being in Lesser Helium, and besides which, was destroyed in book 5, "The Chessmen of Mars." More of a problem in the current volume are the book's implausibilities. For example, Carter & company jump out of their spaceship on that Martian moon, without bothering to check on the moon's breathable air. Fortunately, the air is just fine, thank you, although Burroughs makes nothing of this...surprising, given the pains he had taken in previous books to explain the breathable air on Mars itself. The invisibility-inducing hypnosis that the moon people use against Carter is a bit much to buy, but that's alright; it's all in good fun. But Burroughs' theory that a person who lands on this 7-mile-wide moon would be the same relative size that he would be on Mars--in other words, that he would shrink in proportion to the planetoid's mass; his so-called "compensatory adjustment of masses"--is, as Carter puts it, "preposterous," though, as it turns out, such is the case in the book. Like I said, it's all in good fun. And this book IS as fun as they get.
Oh...one other nice touch. As pointed out in the ERB List, a fine Burroughs Website, if you take the first letter of each first word of each chapter in this book, you will find a secret message that Burroughs incorporated for his new bride. A nice touch.

It's a great book like the rest of the series! Buy it

For anyone who has grown up in the Upper Midwest during the mid-20th century this book presents, in short form, all the things you heard as you were growing up - Lutheran or Catholic. "Ya know, ya gotta watch out for those Lutheran/Catholic kids...they think different 'cause their church is done in Latin." What a hoot! Martin and Nelson have captured the essence of growing up Lutheran in North Dakota or Minnesota!

I was amazed, when I went to this page to get the ASIN # as I was preparing my "Pretty Good" Minnesota Fare list - "Pretty good" meaning real good in Minnesota speak - that this book had not been reviewed at all. Let me remedy that here and now.

For those uninitiated to Scandinavian-American Cuisine (I belong to those who glorify Mary but am familiar with the Lutifisk/Lefse/Rice crowd by geographical, social, and political proximity. See also "Cream Peas on Toast" by the same authors,) Glorified Rice is jello-ed, fruited rice - the recipe for which is helpfully found on page 84. When I first saw the review of this book in the Sunday Fargo Forum (1994), I rushed right out to my local bookstore and got one. (Which was a feat in itself, as North Dakota had only relatively recently repealed the "Blue Laws" mandating that all non-food stores be closed on Sundays so as to encourage employers, employees, and the general populace to sit around all day glorifying rice and God or at least not doing anything "heathen" like going to K-Mart to pick up cleaning supplies.)

The gist of this hilarious and thought-provoking series is that 2 American Norwegian Lutheran farm women got together and "it dawned on us that the world needed us to write a few little books comparing and contrasting such things as Lutheran and Catholic ways, ... and all the baggage and trappings that go with these kinds of things."

Here are some of their "findings":

"They had fish frys...We had Lutefisk suppers

They had Patron Saints... we basically fended for ourselves.

They believe in the infallibility of the Pope...We believe everyone has a few bad days now and then.

They had the shroud of Turin ... We had old bathrobes for wisemen, old sheets for Mary and Joseph, gunny sacks with rope belts for the shepherds in the Christmas play, and other miscellaneous swaddling clothes.

They had miracles...We had Miracle Whip

They danced...We couldn't risk getting that close

They worked on Sundays...We napped on Sundays. They worked in the fields on Sundays... We drove around and looked at the fields on Sundays

They sold indulgences... We sold church anniversary cookbooks and centennial plates.

They had cardinals who wore red hats for investiture ... we wore red hats for deerhunting

They went to St. Paul, MN ... we went to Minneapolis, MN."

I thought Tigers would be great to use for a presentation as a lesson in an English language development (ESL) class. And it also would be a good interdisciplinary assignment--write it in English class and illustrate it in Art class. It would also be a good writing-across-the-curriculum activity for the art class. I showed it to my high school class today and we had a great discussion about proverbs and sayings in various cultures. A Punjabi girl who recently enrolled in my class shared one with us and it was the first time she had spoken up in class so I was pleased. It is interesting to see how many of the same ideas transcend language and culture and this beautiful book opens the door to have that conversation. Susan Davis, English teacher, Modesto, CA

I read it during my lunch time, enjoying it thoroughly. Not only is it a work of art, but a work of wisdom as well. A key to the proverbs at the back of the book was helpful in articulating these Korean pearls of wisdom.

I think my favorite on "character" is "It is dark at the base of the lamp." On "cooperation," I especially liked, "An empty push cart makes more noise." On "eating," I loved," Licking the outside of the watermelon." These proverbs help me see and understand human frailty, while suggesting something greater to strive for. They are whimsical, correcting me gently for my oversights. A great book for anyone under the age of 112.

Barry Zeve English teacher San Francisco, C

My husband grew up knowing both the author (Sandy Rice) and Joy. This story is very real and down to earth. Joy is an inspiration, and Sandy's writing keeps you reading! I have already reccommended this book for several families dealing with cancer.

This book takes a unique perspective in that it presents the story of a woman and her battle with breast cancer, but through the eyes of the caregiver. It is also a good Christian testimony of how God has and can touch lives and make a difference in them. I think it is a helpful text to anyone who is going through the struggle with any kind of cancer. It offers hope to those who feel hopeless