I would agree, this edition is pretty lackluster. Not only that, the stories are inconsistent. Some are extremely well done, especially the better-known stories;and the writing is great, but the symbolic devices, such as paintings and mirrors, are way over-used.

This lends a repetitiveness to most of the stories. The gloomy tone, revealing the hidden darkness of man, pervades throughout. For someone of his talent, Hawthorne repeats himself. I think his novels are far better than his short stories. I would recommend Scarlet Letter and House Of Seven Gables instead.

Hawthorne is one of the greatest short story writers of the English language--of any language. I won't go into too much detail of the stories that make up Twice-Told Tales (I'm saving that for the Library of America edition), but I want to take a minute to talk about this Reader's Digest Edition. It only contains the 'Twice-Told Tales', but those are some of Hawthorne's best known stories: 'The Minister's Black Veil' and 'Dr. Heidegger's Experiment'. It's a well made volume with nine illustrations that aren't very well done. Really, you are better off getting the Library of America edition of Hawthorne's Tales and Sketches. It's more complete, better crafted, and doesn't have those horrid illustrations. What is interesting about this edition are two reviews contained. One by Poe and the other by Longfellow. Unfortunately they are here 'in an adapted form' which is a problem Reader's Digest seems to have. It's nice to have them here, but it would be nicer if they were in the original form. I give a five for the stories, but a 2 for the Reader's Digest edition. So I've settled on a three for this review.

This Modern Library edition of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales is one of the better I've seen in a long while. (A reveiewer below has mistakenly reviewed a Reader's Digest edition of the stories in this space. There are no illustrations in this book, and contrary to that reveiwer's estimation, the selection of stories here is very wise indeed.) Any good collection of Hawhtorne's stories should include the classics such as "Wakefield, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, "The Maypole of Merrymount," and "The Haunted Mind," as well as a few of the lesser known stories, of which there are many. This collection holds an excellent mix of both, with an amusing and insightful introduction by Rosemary Mahoney, and very informative notes by Gretchen Short. Hawthorne was, and remains, the American master of the dark, psychologically driven tale. I would challenge anyone to read, "Wakefield," "The Gentle Boy," or "The Hollow of the Three Hills" without feeling at least a little frightened and thrilled. These are among Hawthorne's best stories in a handsome new collection. I highly recommend the book.

I looked forward to reading this book after hearing a great interview with Ellis on NPR. But getting passed the first few pages was simply too distracting to go on much further. This book is absolutely shot through with gramatical errors, typos and simple spelling inconsistencies. Please,at this point I don't even care how you spell the term "worldview". Just please spell it the same way consistently. And while we're at it, I might also mention that the letter spacing in this book is awful. Some lines appear to be one long word. Does the publisher, Boyers/Bowerdean even care about this? Or did they just drop Ellis' essays between two covers? Somebody get on the blower to London and let 'em know.

I came upon this book a year and a half ago; never have I seen such a logical presentation of the implications of cosmology, and the possible reasons for us existing, presented so well, and so eloquently. Dr. Ellis (G.F.R. Ellis) is a noted cosmologist who has cowritten with Hawking. And he delves into the possible implications of the "anthropic principle" as few scientsts have the courage or knowledge to do. A MUST read, especially if one wonders about the possibility of a purpose in Creation

The original Book of Deer described as "one of the principal antiquities of Scotland" is a ninth century Celtic/Pictish Gospel illuminated manuscript, preserved in the Library of Cambridge University UK. It was copied and illustrated by unknown monks in the Celtic monastery of Deer near Aberdeen. The illustrations have a childlike quality, and such colour as remains is washes mainly now in pastel colours. Strangely for what was intended to be an important ceremonial book there are obvious errors in the Knotwork borders. The text is in rather bad Latin with later Scottish Gaelic additions. It differs markedly from the later Book of Kells which still has sophisticated, extremely detailed initials, illustrations, and title pages still in vibrant colour. It also differs clearly from its intricate and elaborate Pagan predecessors such as the Gundestrup Cauldron.

This book has three photographic plates, the front cover plate and its reverse, mirror imaged, showing the poor preservation and obvious fading of the original. It also has modern line drawn accurate representations of all the drawings, illustrations, and initials, by Roy Ellsworth, from it namesake. These contain much more detail than the equivalent photographic plates due to fading of the original from the original probably black inks to dark and sometimes light brown. These modern illustrations show the colour washes as crosshatched shading. They show almost lost details, hopefully, in the same line strength as the original had in the ninth century.

The illustrations from the Book of Kells appear reproduced in numerous places from one of my T Shirts, to embroidery, WWW sites and numerous other places. This would be impossible from either the photographs or the accurate line drawings. This book therefore also contains simplified, and slightly corrected, drawings of the illustrations to demonstrate construction methods. "To allow an exploration of one's own colour arrangements".

The colourful history of the book from a description of the foundation of the monastery at Deer, to its rediscovery in the library of Cambridge University, including its association with the historical Scottish King MacBeth, is by the noted Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis. He also gives detailed descriptions of all the illustrations comparing them with both earlier, and later Celtic treasures. He is of the opinion that the rather strange depiction of legs and feet, of the apostles might be an echo of the squatting position in which Celtic Gods are often portrayed.

The Book of Deer is one of the most neglected Scottish historical resources...It is an important piece of evidence in the search for Lowland Gaelic... so too is it the earliest known Scottish Gaelic. It appears to have been written in response to the Norman plantations of the period, since although Gaelic had been written down in Ireland from an early stage most of the land contracts were oral, unlike the Anglo-Normans who wished to colonise the Scottish lowlands. Thus it is a good counterweight against much of the later historical revisionism in Scotland- most people in North East Scotland are unaware of the book or the fact Gaidhlig had been spoken in the Lowlands.

The text of this book alone is worth five stars, but I'm afraid the pictures are not very interesting, which is why I've taken a star off. By the way I believe PBE is co-author, not sole author of this work. This work has gone some of the way towards making this book better known.

This book was so extremely bias against the Romans that one could easily conclude that the author lost his most beloved ones in a battle against the Romans!! Even his phraseology throughout the book betrays what seems to be a personal hatred of this ancient race. I found his contemptuous remarks to be distracting to the ease of reading. That aside, the author struggles in this book to portray the Celts as a culture much more advanced than was perceived by the first hand accounts of ancient Greek and Roman writers and historians. In doing so he resorts to some fairly weak leaps of logic. His primary view seems to be that to arrive at historical accuracy all one needs to do is to reverse whatever the Roman accounts were in each and every case.

The arguments in this book for Celtic superiority over the Romans is so tainted that in some cases I actually laughed out loud. Reading this book one would think that the armies of Rome won most of their battles by dumb luck. Which is not bad considering that Rome's greatly outnumbered armies eventually conquered almost all of the Celtic lands and added Britian to the Empire, holding it for over 400 years!

If you're interested in names and dates this book is fine. But if you're interested in what the ancient Celts and the Italic/Roman people were actually like, and how the cultures interacted, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Peter Berresford Ellis has done, I think, an excellent job portraying a culture whose accomplishments are far too easily dismissed in favour of other well documented ancient cultures. To present his representation of a culture that traditionally recorded historical events orally, Ellis has had to make some insightful points using the material at hand and has made good work of presenting it in a fashion enjoyable to read.

Quintus Dauntry thought he had it all: a carriage, a summer home, a secure place in London society. Until he saw the woman in white. Was she Cecilia Walters for whom Quinn had fancy, or Rebecca Burchett, the quiet vicar's daughter?

This book is ambiguous here. Who is the heroine? The ghost story was interesting; however, it was not constructed well. It seemed the story was going into different directions. Was it a romance, or a ghost story? The backdrop, however, was good, worthy of a Merchant Ivory drama, or a Jane Austen novel.

This book, a spin-off of Ellis's "An Uncommon Governess," brings back the same wonderful characters in this delightful novel. Dauntry is a wonderful hero and the heroine is realistic and loveable. I describe the romance as "quiet" : no fireworks or unrealistic events to throw the hero and heroine together but only a simple romance that works well.

The book would have been five stars except for two small drawbacks. First, Dauntry's "Dilemma" comes at the end of the book and really isn't explained why he is having his mental anxiety (sorry, but I don't want to give too much away to those who haven't read the book). Second, the ending pages are very cryptic. Perhaps I just didn't get it, but I thought the end was too sparse and I had to reread the last several pages before I figured out what happened to everyone.

On the whole, great characters and a good plot. I enjoyed it and hope you will, too.

One of the sad facts of modern life as that the "have-nots" among us tend to die earlier and with less fanfare and official interest than the "haves". Ellis Portal is a homeless person who at one time was a judge. He's been on the streets for several years. Two years earlier, he was instrumental in solving the murder of a young homeless girl. Since that time, he's gone into isolation, living rent free in an abandoned government hatchery. A fellow street person and friend named Queenie walks 13 miles from the center of Toronto to find him. She believes that one of her homeless friends, a woman named Melia, has been murdered, although it looks like she froze to death. Since winter is just beginning and the homeless are fairly smart about living in the elements, this doesn't seem to be a probable cause of death. More suspicion is raised when a threatening Bible verse is found on her person.

Ellis doesn't really believe that Melia was murdered, only agreeing to look into it because of his respect for Queenie. Several other deaths of street people follow, all found with a different threatening Bible verse. Ellis doesn't mention it, but he has received several of these verses himself. The other link between all the deaths is that the victims appear to be court "groupies", those people who hang around courtrooms observing trials, possibly because they suffered at the hands of the justice system. It's difficult for Ellis to think about reentering the judicial environment because he is so far from the lofty heights he occupied as a judge. However, most fortuitously (and implausibly), he is offered the opportunity to serve as an Officer of the Court which gives him a bird's eye view of what's happening in various courtrooms.

Although the police don't seem terribly interested in the deaths of the impoverished, there is one man named Matt West who goes beyond a token effort. He finds out that the various deaths have been caused by administering the poison curare. And there appears to be some kind of connection to a crostic puzzle about saints that's appearing in the media.

Aubert has a gift for writing descriptive passages, some of them almost lyrical. She also introduces various elements of homelessness that bring the street people closer to the reader. What does one do with a winter coat when one has no home? How does one live with the constant rejection by the so-called civilized people? However, I felt she was less successful overall than in the first book in the series, Free Reign. For one thing, Ellis is not really that down and out. He earned some money and is able to live in a boarding house (which, oh so coincidentally, happened to be a house where he once lived with his family). It was much more interesting when his abode was a self-made shelter in the outdoors. Secondly, all the victims received one Bible verse and died; Portal has received about a dozen. I've never been too fond of the main character having an "aha!" moment where all becomes clear. Aubert is a good writer and the focus on the homeless interesting; but overall, the book is only average.

I always liked Dorothy Sayers assumption that her readers were intelligent, educated and well read. Rosemary Auberg seems to start with the same assumption while leading her reader through interesting avenues. Her characters seem so real that one must decide if one is up to meeting them. Her clues so honest and wickedly devious they are a joy.

The way Flutie copes with the poverty & turmoil of herfamily is in ever-increasing silence. She is not only afraid to speak,she is afraid of being. As I read I wondered if I was supposed to like this book, this heroine, this mute misery. I often had to re-read sections to make sense of it & sometimes that sense was horrible. Partly because of Flutie's inarticulateness, partly because of her raw-boned neediness, partly because of her hidden voice. This is a devastating coming-of-age of one very lost girl stumbling toward womanhood. Worth the effort!...

Flutie is shy, pathologically shy, but her voice emerges in the narrative that emerges from her thoughts, in fits and starts, just as her life emerges in fits and starts. We see her in these few pages go from 13 to 20, to being unable to speak in class to trying. Her family is as rich and real as the scenes painted by her imagination, so the story becomes not only a personal one but also a story about people stuck for different reasons in western Oklahoma. Flutie's shyness could be a metaphor for the silencing of her people. The book is like poetry, every word in place and evocative of the interior and geographical landscape of Flutie's life. We see a debt to her indigenous ancestors and a debt to her parents. The narrative does seem to end too quickly, with a decision that seems to come without much preparation, as if it is too pat and too expected for what has come before. But I read that last few pages a few times to try to reconcile myself with the ending, and I still liked the book. It offers a wonderful, rich story.

This is a nice easy reader about a child with a home microscope. Observation of common objects is presented with a good discovery approach, but Greg's family is depicted in a (very 1960s) sexist manner that diminishes its usefulness.

This is a wonderful book for any budding scientist. It is the story of friends using Greg's new microscope to look up close and personal at everyday objects found around the house. The book contains illustrations of items they observe under the microscope...like sugar. It would be a great book to go along with a new microscope.

Glennette Percy appeared in the author's earlier work, "Change of Heart." In that book, she lost David Walker to Emily Brooks. In Adrienne Ellis Reeves' second novel Glennette is not pining over "the one that got away." She is, however, fighting a growing realization of an attraction she has for an old family friend, James Ellington. The two friends catch up on old times and help each other through personal disappointments, all the while ignoring their feelings. The action moves slowly in this small town story. It is a sweet, chaste story I'd rate PG...

This reviewer believes that the operative term for this writer's work is, 'simple' -- as in easy on the senses, and uncomplicated. The nice thing about Ms. Reeves work is that she never abrades the reader's sensibilities with gratuitous sex and unfulfilled foreplay -- even while in pusuit of the obvious. This is one that will make you smile. You can introduce either your mother or your young daughter to this author's work -- without apology or shame.

It's one of the most stupid book I ever read, it's boring and has no sense. The author had surely drunk some alcohol before he wrote it. DON'T BUY IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WAIST MONEY.

I loved this book. It is a great story, but impossible of course. In this account of the late Senator's life, his story becomes a fictionalized account of being allowed to return to earth as a moving man.

I love the way the fictionalized Senator/Moving Man fits in with the 9:00 - 5:00 crowd, perfectly at ease with politicos and blue collar workers as well as the folks he goes on runs for. He is the man for everyone; the regular guy who gives his job his fullest effort. One can imagine the Senator whom we remember seeing with shirt sleeves rolled up, hard at work on the campaign trail or poring over work in his office on a moving run, sleeves up, sweating and grunting while moving somebody's heavy sofa or living room set. Robert Kennedy was nobody's slacker and this fictionalized portrayal of him will certainly bring smiles to many faces.

Just think -- the next time one of your moving men gives his job his best effort without an occasional glance at the clock, you just might think of the late Senator.

As a moving man myself, I appreciated the moving company atmosphere and Seattle setting in "When Bobby Kennedy Was a Moving Man." While delving into the moving industry a little bit, Gordon's book focuses more on Bobby Kennedy being reincarnated into Regular Joe mover and the conflicts going on in his mind. (Note: this Bobby Kennedy reincarnate, however, is NO regular joe mover when it comes to the moving job though...)

I was captivated by this book and I liked it so much, it took me only two evenings to finish. If you are into JFK conspiracy theories, blue collar workers, reincarnation, or the moving industry, I would highly recommend "When Bobby Kennedy Was a Moving Man" to you.