This installment, the Book of Curries and Indian Foods, presents recipe suggestions for all major courses, from meat dishes to pickles, accompaniments, breads and drinks. Special chapters are dedicated to poultry, vegetable dishes, fish and shellfish, and desserts. Classics such as yogurt dishes, tikkas, chutneys, curries, milkshakes, naan, spiced tea and tandoori chicken appear next to unique dishes such as cilantro and chile fish, coconut spiced cod, duck with honey and lime, pork in spinach sauce, rose water pudding, and shrimp and mustard seeds.

From apricot and chicken curry to white and red radish salad, this collection of recipes, while not all-encompassing, is a great introduction to the richness of the Indian cuisine - and at a relative bargain price, to boot. Also recommended for fans of Asian cooking: this series' installments on Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese and Chinese Cooking and on Stir-Fries.

The illustrations are wonderful--as funny as the text. (Take a close look at the cover--the title, author's and illustrator's names, even the publisher's logo, all are blowing away.)

Annie Lee wants a baby in the worst way. She begins her overkill to insure this happens, driving her beleaguered spouse to seek shelter and comfort elsewhere. Even worse, Annie Lee begins to call the local Poison Control Center on a daily basis and sometimes more than that. She acts with the counselors as if she already has a baby though she is not pregnant and her husband has moved from Pike, Colorado to Seattle to escape her latest obsession. This marriage appears busted unless they can find a common peak like the restaurant they both want to open.

WAIT AND SEE, ANNIE LEE starts off as a hilarious satire that rips the basic tenets of society. However about half way into the tale, the plot takes an unnecessary turn to cuddly capriciousness and loses some of its edge. The story line overall is amusing due to the eccentric and likable characters including Annie Lee (as long as she is not part of the reader's household). Michelle Curry Wright shows the right stuff for those readers who want something completely different.

Harriet Klausner

After reading this book, you will forever wonder about "the woman behind the waitress". ...And don't forget to tip!

Imaginative Australian author Garth Nix gives new zest to fantasy fiction with this return to the Old Kingdom. We focus on Lirael and who she is. Unaware of her parentage and abandoned by her mother, she is unlike any other clairvoyant living in the Clayr's Glacier. Moreover, she does not posses what should be her birthright, the Sight, the gift of being able to see into the present and future.

Nonetheless, it is on her young shoulders that the very existence of the Old Kingdom rests. There is much to oppose her, including an age old evil force. Lirael has little to help her save her own heart, courage, and the ever faithful Disreputable Dog.

Those hoping for a neatly packaged and happy ending will not find it. Instead the story concludes whetting appetites for more with hints that there is greater danger and adventure to come in Nix's third in this series, tentatively titled "Abhorsen."

- Gail Cooke

For the black community of Harmony, Mississippi, to simply survive these noxious injustices would be an admirable story in itself. However, two courageous residents of that community, Winson and Dovie Hudson are able to rise above and end many of the wrongs. These women are some of the unheralded heroes who literally risked lives, jobs, and homesto fight the national civil-rights effort at a local level. They are the common soldiers in a frightening war. They are survivors with an amazing story.

Though co-written by the famed civil-rights-era author, Constance Curry, "Mississippi Harmony" is told in first person as Winson Hudson talks directly to us. Reading the book was like listening to the best of storytellers.

The Audio cassette version of Jim Valvano's book, THEY GAVE ME A LIFETIME CONTRACT AND THEN THEY DECLARED ME DEAD, features the inimitable voice of Jim Valvano telling (not reading--TELLING) the story of his life with all the enthusiasm we remember and cherish. There is a laugh in his voice and genuine humor in his stories, most of it at the expense of the author; there is sadness, of course, and hurt; but there's no cynicism.

The listener will be, perhaps, surprised by Valvano's early desperation to achieve goals he set for himself--and entertained by the lengths to which he went to reach them. The result is both inspiring and enlightening, considering the cloud under which he left his position as the head basketball coach at N.C. State.

The brew of life, joy, and good humor at the top of the sports world has made this tape a favorite among my family and friends. It's the only one we can all agree to hear in the car on long trips; I can't keep a copy in the house. That's why I'm ord

Curry is intent upon defending Tolkien's work, and in general does so ably. He makes cogent arguments for its relevance, and draws some interesting parallels between it and the thoughts of social, ecological and economic theorists. I particularly found his account of LOTR's resonance with people in the former Soviet Union interesting.

Curry doesn't make as convincing a case for Tolkien's writing as literature, partly because he resists ascribing any flaws at all to the work. It's possible to believe, as I do, that LOTR and the Silmarillion (the latter not discussed by Curry) are great literature, and still see them as products of a specific time, place and culture, with attendant flaws. Nothing is perfect. In addition, Curry's apparent ignorance of modern speculative fiction weakens his arguments -- he quotes LeGuin, criticizes some early writers such as Peake, and mentions Pratchett, but beyond LeGuin doesn't seem aware of any other meaningful, literary speculative fiction. This means that his argument for Tolkien's uniqueness isn't very strong. His rather humorless approach also means that popular culture doesn't get addressed--he seems to have entirely missed the subversion in "The Simpsons".

I agree with many of Curry's criticisms of "modernity" and his environmentalist viewpoint, and it does seem that LOTR resonates strongly with those views, though I tend to resist polemical writing even when I agree. Readers who do not share Curry's views or who were looking for a more traditional lit-critical work may find this book less than congenial.

Curry's book is divided into a lengthy introduction, four chapters,and a modest ending of roughly 15 pages. The focus of Curry's analysis on Tolkien's popularity centers on Lord of the Rings, since both LOTR and The Hobbit are the two stories that the world has responded to best.

Early on in his introduction, Curry confronts academic / literary snobbery towards Tolkien head on. Most of this criticism is based on the attitude that Tolkien's work is irrelevant in our world because it is seen as nothing more than juvenile escapism that does not deal with any of the problems that plague (or have plagued) our modern day world. Meanwhile Curry tells readers that he intends to look for help in explaining Tolkien's popularity through post-modernist ideas which may in fact refute the very criticisms made by the intelligentsia. He also tackles other criticisms of Tolkien, such as alleged racism,class,oversimplification of good verses evil, etc. An incomplete laundry list of other topics that Curry covers in the book includes: reviewing Middle Earth (especially LOTR)as potentially great literature, exploring LOTR's Christian and Pagan aspects,its spirituality,nature and ecology,comparing magic verses enchantment in Middle Earth,social aspects of The Shire,the idea of wonder and how to invoke more of it in our world,and looking at Tolkien's hope to make a mythology for England.

Since the part title of the book announces that Curry wants to deal with the subject of Tolkien and "Modernity", it would help to give potential readers who may not be familiar with the idea of Modernism a brief synopsis of what Modernism actually is. Actually Curry's definition, that Modernism is

"a world - view that began in late seventeenth-century Europe,became self-conscious in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and was exported all over the world with supreme self-confidence, in the nineteenth (century).It (Modernism) culminated in the massive attempts at material and social engineering of our own day. Modernity is thus characterized by the combination of modern science, a global capitalist economy, and the political power of the nation-state."

provides a sufficient explanation, although his idea neglects the notion that various interests in the world may not always be so neatly aligned. However, potential readers do need to understand this idea in order to judge whether they should bother reading this book.

Making my own "world-view" judgment, I do not agree with Curry's pessimism regarding what Modernism has brought us or what it will bring us in the future. However,his use of modernist / post-modernist arguments in trying to explain Tolkien's popularity are both thoughtful and keen.Readers may argue on how solid Curry's arguments are, but I would recommend reading them anyway.

Curry ends his work by speaking of Tolkien's offer of hope without guarantees. Curry invites that reader to think that this statement means that Modernity should be fought by those who are disillusioned with it. But Curry clearly states that Middle Earth offers a vision of peace between peoples, with nature, and with the unknown. Is this book a polemic on behalf of post - modernist leftism? Good question.But ah Mr. Curry, does not the Road ever go on?