For all you fans of women's gymnastics, this is the book you have been waiting for! It leaves no stone unturned in the gymnastics happenings between 1966-1974. We see the descriptions, both in word and in Code of Points illustrations, of the routines performed by famous gymnasts such as Caslavska, Tourisheva, Rigby, Korbut, Zuchold, Janz, and many others. The pictures are terrific! So are the bio's.

This book takes you back to the glory days when women's gymnastics was performed by WOMEN, not by anorexic teenaged dwarves. In fact, it inspired me to resume gymnastics after an 18-year hiautus!

I got in touch recently with Mr. Simons, the author, to order Volume II, but it has not yet been released. Please do so immediately, sir!! So many people are waiting eagerly for it!

The most wonderful women's gymnastics book written.
I have been waiting for a long time for volume II, and that is the ONLY dissapointing thing about this book. Worth every cent.
Mr. Simons----please put out Volume II soon!!!!

It just does not get any better than this. This book is an absolute must for any gymnastics fan. I bought it as soon as it was published and do not understand why volume 2 is not yet available. I understand four volumes were originally planned. I really hope they will be out soon.

i first read the title story in this collection during high school. it was included in some kind of short fiction anthology used for an english class, but this particular selection was not assigned by our teacher. regardless, and intrigued by the title, i delved in one night. i have never made a better literary decision. the author's phrasing is sparse and careful, and it stays with you. i could not shake my mental images of the story after walking away from the book, and certain elements resonated even though i had not yet gained enough life experience to fully understand them. such is the power of susan minot's pen.

i purchased the entire collection at city lights bookstore in san francisco some months later, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the selections. "lust" is definitely the cornerstone, written in a more illustrative and almost instructive manner than the other pieces, but there is grace and gravity to each tale. "sparks" and "blow" are continual favorites, not only of mine, but of all my friends who have read the book. many times, i have reread a story and gained an entirely different perspective on its meaning. there is enough space left in the writing to allow the reader to superimpose him/herself in the situation (often featuring much less action than dialogue), and of course that reader's perspective will change over time. the beauty of "lust & other stories" is that it travels well. the stories stay with you. it is a unique piece, perhaps impossible to top, and the author seems to understand this, having returned to writing novels since the release of this collection.

i also find the cover art on my copy to be very unique and interesting. it features a slightly dated, 80s style photograph of a woman standing with her back to the viewer, arms crossed, looking down and slightly away. in other words: rough road ahead.

there simply are not enough words to express the indelible imprint that ms. minot's work has left on my psyche. short stories are like tattoos. and susan minot's work is subtle, intense, artful ink.

wonderful book...edgy, tense stories that explore lives where people are not necessarily comfortable in their own skins. of all the short stories in this book, the title story "lust" has stuck with me the most. the perfect book for delving into on a gloomy day...

When I usually purchase collections of short stories, its with the intention that the book will be a series of easy reading to spread out over a long period of time. However, the first time I opened Lust, I was hooked. The first story was so real, I felt like I was telling it myself of listening to a good friend. It articulates the young 20's culture of today perfectly--why we use sex, drugs, alcohol, friends, family in the way that only this generation does. I've loaned this book to every one of my friends, and strongly encourage every young woman to read it and enjoy.

i think that it was a great book since i live in new endland it was kinda scarry

Well from the other reviews I'm not sure what they were reading! I have read this book several times and love it more each time I finish... Danielle Steel makes the war era come alive for those readers who were not yet alive to experience it... I found this book to be well written and very uplifting... Lianne and Nick have found someting beautiful and lasting in the face of all that destruction from a war...It gives me courage to fight for what I believe in. Danielle Steel gives me faith in human nature.. She also gives me the courage to stand tall and be accounted... Thank you for making my life just that much more blessed...

I am a new reader of Danielle Steel's book! "Crossings" was my very 1st book of hers, that I read.. I have to say, It's a great Love Story!! I think everyone should read it.. I hardly didn't put the book down. This book is a amazing. Everyone will love it.

I don't know what else to say, except this is a great love story.
It's a journey when you read DS, I've read all of her books, and they are all wonderful. If you read her, be prepared to read all 50 of her books though, you'll be hooked.

Anyone, vegetarian or carnivore, who is looking for a useful and delicious collection of recipes should own a copy of this book. I eat a broad range of foods and didn't think I'd be that interested in exclusively vegan dishes, but I've been pleasantly surprised. Every dish I've tried from this book has been incredibly rich-tasting and delicious. Last night I served the Caribbean Black Bean soup at a gathering and it was the hit of the party; it had amazing depth of flavor. Despite the complexity of tastes in these dishes, the recipes are all very easy to follow, and every step is explained clearly, so even if you're a novice cook, you shouldn't have any problem creating incredible meals. There are lots of cool cooking tips, and the book is actually quite fun to read. It's also beautifully laid-out and designed, and the cover is a knock-out! The Voluptous Vegan would make a great gift for anyone who wants to avoid animal products, who is allergic to dairy, who is trying to eat healthier, or who just wants to learn how to prepare scrumptious, delicious meals and desserts. I HIGHLY recommend it!

After receiving this book as a gift it looked so appealing I gave a copy to a friend I knew was interested in vegan cooking. She raved so much about all the recipes and how much she enjoyed actually "reading" the book that I decided I needed to take a closer look and was I ever impressed. I'm not a vegetarian however I can't eat any dairy products and it's always a challenge to find interesting recipes that don't use milk or cheese. I just got a new pasta machine so tonight I made the squash ravioli with white bean sauce, frizzled leeks and sauteed arugula. I couldn't believe how creamy and decadent the meal tasted. mmmm.... Even my meat eating boyfriend had two large helpings!! (Bummer no leftovers). The book also has lots of good cooking tips and takes the difficulty out of menu planning. I'd highly recommend it!!

I am writing this because of the person who said the recipes were bland -- i couldn't believe it! So far I am not only impressed with this book, but genuinely thrilled to have found a really gourmet cookbook for balanced, healthy vegan meals. If I'm having people over they don't even notice there's no meat. It's so elegant, and the ingredients come from across the globe (you do have to carry a lot of groceries for some of them!). The issue I think someone would have is, one must have access to good health food and specialty stores and special produce. You have to have a food processor, blender, spice grinder etc. and the recipes have many elements so it takes a while to complete. But the results for me, so far, are wonderful. I wonder if the person who found it bland was using old spices and substituting ingredients? I am a trained chef, and I think the recipes are somewhat complicated, so can imagine that the average cook might find some of them time-consuming to reproduce adequately. If that is the case, my advice is, make sure you've got the necessary equipment, get fresh organic produce, grind your own spices (or use brand-new ones) and leave yourself an entire afternoon to do it right.

Is there anything in this world more pure than the LOVE which exists between a mother and her child?

This book is the story of Via, an eight year old girl who just lost her mother. It could have been a very sad book, but surprisingly it isn't. It is however a book about family, happiness, LOVE, Childhood memories, dreams, wishes and wonders, and especially about Mum.

One of the things I liked most about the book was that it really felt as if an eight year old was telling the story, and, for a few moments I was allowed to go inside her mind and her heart. Through her account of what was probably the worst day of her young life she makes you laugh, cry, sing, dance and above all... REMEMBER.... you go back to being a child, when everything was simple, when anything made you laugh, and where just hugging your mother made everything alright.

One of the best books I have read this year! The Tiny One captures so well the heart of a young girl, the book could have been written by a child. Minot has a keen eye for the inner depths of a child's wisdom. The book is not so much about the death of this poor girl's Mum, but about the loving memories she has shared with her that have shaped her heart and soul. Conversations between young Via and her Mum are so tangible you feel as though you have witnessed them. You grow in just a few pages to appreciate and love the relationship between mother and child, making the knowledge that Mum is gone that much more heartbreaking. This book does not allow you to be a bystander. You must participate in the relationship forged through chapters of bonding between Mum and Via. They are so much the essence of love, that when Via finally accepts her Mums death, she knows her Mum is still with her, in little fragments and sparkles. Minot is incredibly accurate in depicting the heart of a child, and the voice of Via is a loud, strong, memorable force. The relationship Via had with her Mum is a strong memory in all readers minds, helping to keep her alive.

Eliza Minot's first novel about an eight year old who loses her mother takes the reader through a single day in the life of the child,Via, but also through a lifetime of love between a mother and a child. As the day progresses, Via recalls moments in her past that bring both Via and her mother to life in the mind of the reader. Via becomes much more than just a character in a novel; she becomes a very real person as the book unfolds for the reader.

Via's character reminds the reader of similar child characters such as Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster and Elizabeth Berg's Katie, (Durable Goods and Joy School,) who have experienced adversity but have the will to triumph in spite of tragedy.

"Folly" by Susan Minot is a wonderfully written tale of a woman's choice in a time when a woman's marriage is everything. This tale of heartbreak and intrigue is fabulous. I was fascinated by this decision a wonderfully charismatic woman must make. It has a tremendous amount of charm and heart. It's very well written with a lot of emotion and power. There are moments of "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton (which is a classic and can't be surpassed) but, this novel certainly has a lot going for it. I was very happy with my read. I recommend it.

Is it possible to write a tragicomedy of manners without descending into the literary equivalent of Merchant and Ivory territory? Susan Minot's Folly makes a courageous try, aided by a sparse, unemphatic prose style. Ms. Minot's prose style underscores the sharp contrast between the spare passages and her rare flights into extended fantasy or metaphor.

The plot commences in 1917, leading us through a few decades in the life of a Boston well-to-do woman. The "real story", as so often is the case, is the effect of the social milieu upon all its denizens. Although in "social content" Folly brings to mind the novels of Edith Wharton, it must be said that Ms. Minot is unwilling to draw the simple solutions to the social issues she raises that Ms. Wharton might have painted two generations ago. No swift damnations come to those who people this novel merely as a result of their station, nor is easy salvation to be found in flight to a more "free" way of life. Instead, the story is laced with a pleasing ambiguity--perhaps an escape is possible, but the exits are not clearly marked.

"Literary fiction", that sad refugee of obscure collegiate publications, has evolved into a stylized genre no more aesthetically pleasing (and a good bit less entertaining) than, say, science fiction or a well-crafted mystery. Ms. Minot can justly be accused of writing a version of the "MFA litmag" novel, yet she shows the form is not without its virtues. The near-gamesmanship with which she crafts each sentence to achieve studied, quiet precision in her style and ideas makes this story eminently readable and in its own way quite evocative. One might not wish for the slow, gentle satire and complex despair of Folly in every novel one reads, but Folly is certainly worth the effort. Ms. Minot's work, though bearing the stigmata of "literary fiction", suggests that practitioners of this dour form can resurrect interest by placing precise execution of a worthwhile plot first, and saving the "cute" turns of phrase and wails of despair for the literary seminars. Although not everyone will like Folly, it is very satisfying for those who wish a "good read" with a modern sensibility.

Susan Minot's prose is so lyrical, so musical and rapturous, it's a wonder one can pay attention to the story.
Folly, however, IS a story, one that harkens back to memories of The Awakening, Yellow Wallpaper, and other stories of women trapped in imperfect, unfulfilling marriages during an era when even to admit such a thought could lead to one's downfall. When forced to make a choice, Lillian's world opens to self-discovery. Folly is an elegant examination of the inner workings of the heart of a woman.

I have several reactions to this book. The first is that the prose is beautifully evocative and Susan Minot has constructed a beautiful book. I also had the feeling, voiced by several other reviewers at least, that thee is a odd sort of flatness to the story and to the life of Ann Lord, who appears on the surface to have had so much. I think, however, that this may be intentional. As she approaches death, the layers are stripped away, and all of the possessions and relationships that she has had are stripped away. Who can say what would be left as the center point of consciousness for any of us at that point?

For Ann Lord, the weekend of her best friend's wedding, all those years ago, and her weekend affair with Harris Arden become the focal point. As I read the flashbacks to that weekend, I had a sense both of deep sadness and simultaneously a great excitement and sense of possibility. Both existed in that time, and both are carried forward in memory. I think the sense of being so alive and having the heights and depths of love and emotion and death all in that short compressed time is part of why all that returns to Ann Lord as she waits to die.

Many reviewers have been extremely critical of Harris Arden and questioned why such a cad has the significance that he does for Ann and how that relationship may actually diminish her in some way. He is certainly not a sympathetic character, either in his interactions with Ann or in his treatment of his fiancee. I also can only guess whether that weekend was an anomaly for him or whther such relationships were common for him. If it was as distinct and seperate a time for him, a moment out of the normal round of his life, I can have some empathy for him. I am unsure of that.

After spending a couple of years on my bookshelf, I was finally tempted to read this novel. Evening is unlike anything I've ever read before. The prose is not clear-cut, with ramblings and confusion throughout the entire novel, but once readers get into the flow of the story, this morphine-induced reality-versus-fantasy begins to take shape. Evening tells the story of Ann Lord, a 65-year-old cancer patient on the verge of death. Family and friends take vigil at her bedside, and through the haze and confusion of Ann's heavily sedated mind are many ramblings about unconnected things, short memories that pass through in an instant then quickly dissolve. Only one thing remains sharp in Ann's mind: the weekend she spent at her best friend's wedding and the man she met there with whom she fell in love. Harris Arden was not just a weekend fling, he became the pivotal moment in Ann's life from which love, loss, hope and reality begin. Susan Minot's stunning, eloquent prose writes of a love story between Ann and Harris; a life story involving Ann's three husbands and her five children; and a death story of the final moments of a woman's life and those things that can never be left behind. Choppy at times, confusing at others, but this unique writing style creates an authentic other world where consciousness slips between reality and dreams. Excellent and powerful; a vivid portrayal of the end of a life.

I agree with the writer from Burnaby, B.C. As one who has sat by a bedside and watched a parent die, this book was incredibly evocative and realistic. I found myself crying several times from the memories that her writing stirred in me.

I truly loved this book. It was among the best novels I have read in years. It was beautifully written; lyrical, poetic and expressive. Minot was able to bring back the feelings of lost love, and of that first moment when two eyes meet and electrically connect. Anyone who has loved and lost someone -- whether it be a parent, or an unrequited love -- will find truth in this novel. I truly understood and could relate to the main character (Ann Lord), and maybe that is why I loved this novel so much. I would highly recommend this book. I will keep this on my shelf, long after I have recycled the novels that have been recommended to me through "Oprah's Book Club."

Monkeys, by Susan Minot, is a colourful novel about life in a large family. It is about seven children, called 'monkeys' by their mother. The book follows the seven Vincent children as they grow up, and learn to live on their own.
Rosie Vincent, the Vincent's mother, was the character who seemed the most real. She brought their household together, tried to hide their father's alcoholism, cooked and cleaned, and did most of the work in the family. While Rosie may seem well-developed, the other characters were not. Because the novel was so short and there were so many characters, I had no connection with any of them. While the point of the novel was that life is hard in a large family, Minot could have gone into further depth on this topic. There was not enough room in the story to describe the emotions of all her characters. Seven children are too many for what this book is trying to tell about.
Minot is talented at making the reader understand what is going on without directly saying it. However, I felt there was a lack of foreshadowing in this novel. If each chapter stood alone they would make nice short stories, but put together they lacked something. If there was a link between chapters, something to connect them, this book would have been more interesting. However, instead, I often found myself thinking, "How is this important or relevant to the rest of the book?"
The first and last chapters were interesting and moving. In 'Hiding', Sophie is the narrator and I get a sense of who she is and what she thinks. This book would have been much more captivating had each chapter been told from each of the children, and the remaining two chapters told by the mother and father.

This book describes one woman's painful childhood in an upper class New England family. The book deals with difficult subjects (alcoholic father, death of mother) with an acute deftness and touches of unexpected humor. The first chapter is written from the child's point of view and starts with a "typical" family Sunday of church, ice-cream, and the beach. It ends with the children and mother hiding in a linen closet to play a prank on the father. The ending of the chapter is unexpected, but rings oh-so-true. "Monkeys" is brush-stroke writing at its best.

This book will do it for you if you come from a large upper-middle class family. You need to approach it from a sibling stance. If you don't have a background to relate, then you will most likely not appreciate the beauty and pain Susan Minot put into this work. If you can understand, then you will love this book forever.

Susan Minot's male characters have always been a mystery. They've obsessed and enthralled and ultimately disappointed her heroines, but we were always left confounded by them. I am thinking mostly of the love interests in Folly and Evening. We only find out through the casual discussions of disinterested characters that these guys are heartless. Finally, we are in the mind of one of these flighty males, and I for one am relieved to know what he's thinking. I understand him better than I thought I would. In that way, Rapture as a whole is insightful and comforting with its universal pain type theme. My only objection is that the whole time they are engaged in an act to give HIM pleasure, and it is in fact only the female who is transported by this, going so far as to call it "worship" (had to stop myself from throwing the book at this point). It heightens unnecessarily the degradation and the disappointment that the woman is facing. However, I really enjoyed this book, and struggled with the star rating. And for once it was nice to know what the man in a Susan Minot book is thinking. He wasn't such a mystery after all. In fact, I recognized myself in him. And of course that is the beauty of this novella- that we will recognize ourselves in both characters.

I was introduced to Minot's work with "Lust," a short story with which I fell in love. "Rapture," however, was a much different experience. After almost abandoning this book several times, I finished it to find that I still didn't care for or sympathize with either character in the least. I feel as lukewarm about this experience as Benjamin and Kay do about theirs. While perhaps my indifference to this text is evidence of Minot's artistry, one would like to be moved in some way by literature, be it the words, the imagery, the characters, the setting---something, but this piece leaves me void, and I feel none the wiser or richer for having read it. I feel like I have just given myself to a very bad lover, but maybe THAT is the beauty of this work.

Is it possible to write a book in which a single sex act encompasses the entire story, and yet have that same book be about much more than sex? Susan Minot proves that it can be done in "Rapture."

Let's be clear here: "Rapture" is not a book about sex. At least, it's not only about sex, which seems to disappoint some readers, given the premise. It's also a book about relationships between men and women, about misunderstandings that can occur between them, about love and intimacy, about distance and disappointment. It's essentially about the things that can go right and wrong in a relationship, and about how very different one person's perspective can be from another's.

As "Rapture" opens, the reader observes a rendezvous between two former lovers, now together again unexpectedly, just beginning a sexual interlude. As it progresses, we are given insights into their past from the perspective of both the man and the woman, and we can see how each interprets the same events. Sometimes their take on their shared past is similar, but other times (more often), they see it in widely disparate ways.

As the act progresses towards its inevitable conclusion, the story takes surprising turns. While at least one aspect of the ending is somewhat predictable (how could it not be?), the tone and mood established by Minot's tale at that point give even that a new angle. What would likely be a trite and pithy conclusion in most authors' hands becomes refreshingly new again in Minot's treatment of it.

When all is said and done, "Rapture" is an insightful look at relationships and modern attitudes about love and intimacy, and at how sex can color one's view of these things in surprising ways. It is not intended to titillate its readers, but rather, to communicate to them. It's not a particularly happy book, nor is it sad. It is, however, a compelling story, elegantly told, and unremorsefully observant. Minot proves her skills here, both as a storyteller and as a canny observer of human nature.