I love Edward Lear's story and James Marshall's illustrations are magical. I don't like the version with Jan Brett's illustrations. I've never liked Jan Brett's illustrations. I've spent hundreds of hours looking at children's books and I always pass over Jan Brett's books. Her illustrations just don't appeal to me. Her illustrations are distinctive and I can always recognize her work but I don't like them. There is just something missing--they don't have any life to them or something. I can't explain it. I have always loved James Marshall. His genius transcends understanding. His illustrations complement Ed Lear's beautiful tale perfectly.

A very good illustrated version of the classic poem- the pictures are beautiful with a distinctly exotic flavour, great for all ages!

This book is just so cool. Longing for a trip to the tropics? Read this version of the book to your little one and you can at least feel like you are there. The illustrations are really sweet. They have a lot of details so that kids kind find new things with each reading. My two-year old loves this book. It is a great twist on an old tale

I love this collection of poems. The poems are well-organized and compelling. A good read! Not just for men--I'm female and enjoyed going through the book.

.

There is nothing but water in the holy pools,

I know, I have been swimming in them.

All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word,

I know, I have been crying out to them.

The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words,

I looked through their covers one day sideways.

What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.

If you have not lived through something, it is not true.

-- Kabir, translated by Robert Bly (p. 282)

This eclectic offering of verse reminds the reader of what he has lived through. It illuminates forgotten & ignored experiences through rhythms and images of people who have made their lives' works out of committing the unconscious to the written page. These nuggets of truth find value as they elicit Truth from the reader's experience.

DON'T trace out your profile

forget your side view--

all that is outer sutff.

LOOK for your other half

who walks always next to you

and tends to be who you aren't.

-- Antonio Machado, translated by Bly, (p. 366)

It's difficult to flip at random through these pages, and not find an echo of something stirring deep, writhing in forgotten darkness. These words shine from the page to cast the shadow of that "Other" in sharp relief upon your mind. This is not a book of pretty verse, not poetry to read to grandma during the Christian Ladies Tea Party in the rose garden. These are words to sever the bondage to dysfunctional social programming: "We have been busy accumulating solace / Make us afraid of how we were." (Rumi, p. 135)

Although the subtitle says "Poems for Men," I'm certain women will find power & freedom in these words, too. Some poems specifically name masculine woes, sorrows & challenges. Where these do not apply directly to the lives of women, perhaps they will open a portal into men's souls for the other gender.

I've nearly worn mine out and will soon be getting another copy. If I only had one book of poetry to take to a desert island, this would be the one.

I have been hooked on the power of words in poetry -- secretly, of course, since I'm a guy -- since I was a little kid. I have absolutely no problem with reading an entire book of modern poetry and coming away with a single line, a single image that moved me, the hunger is that great in me.

I found this book back in '92 when it was first published. It spans the centuries and the continents; but has a healthy dollop of contemporary writing that is stunning. It's quite possible to imagine that all greatness belongs to ages past; this book proves that a lie by nestling examples of past excellence with their contemporary heirs.

My favorite pieces especially include "Becoming Milton" (p. 81), "The Colonel" (p. 89), "A Story About the Body" (p. 266), and "What Happened During the Ice Storm" (p. 249); which I have redubbed "A Sack Full of Ears," "Entombed in Tanks," "A Bowl Full of Bees," and "Frozen Pheasants," respectively. I just read the last one at a poetry reading in New Hampshire on the first Wednesday in January 2001. A third of the way into the poem, the entire room audibly gasped and tensed. At the end, I felt a tremendous sense of redemption and relief overcome the SRO room as they burst into applause. No credit is due to myself; it's entirely the power of Jim Heynan's words. If you believe, or need to believe, in good poetry, you should own this anthology and read from it frequently, as I do.

And the search continues ...

SQUIRE'S LEGACY is a story told with so much love of the author's family.It is a true story that any of us who have grown up in the mining communities of West Virginia in the 30's,40's and 50's can relate to in many ways. When I started reading this book,it touched my heart like no other. I read this book aloud to my husband. Being a native New Yorker, I knew he might not relate to the book as I did,and I wanted hime to know what my life was like growing up in southern West Virginia during that time. We were both held captive by this book,from beginning to end. We laughed together and cried together at their joys and their tragedies.In this book,the authors JAMES AND ELLIE WHITE have caught the very essence of what family is all about. Theirs is truly a love story told with much love and tenderness.

Many have tried to portray the lives of the coal camps and the trials the people endured. This one succeeds highly.
I was the young boy who lost his father in a coal mine accident and knew Clifford and Ethel very well. Jim shows a
keen and accurate memory on these events and Ellies "editing" and writing are superb. They are to be congratulated. It has been said that someone is not really dead until they are forgotten. Jim and Ellie have assured Clifford and Ethel will not be forgotten for many years.

My husband and I grew up in the same area as portrayed in this book. We felt the honesty, storytelling, and details of the lives mentioned were just like we remembered. We laughed, and cried and wished others would read and apply the values taught in this book. It reminded us of hard times, hard work, the love and lessons we grew up experiencing. We would recommend this book to any and all who long to be inspired.

Breece Pancake killed himself with a shotgun in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in 1979. He was 26 years old at the time and had just completed a graduate writing program at the University of Virginia. Four years later "The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake" was published, a collection of twelve stories that posthumously established his literary reputation as one of the finest short story writers in twentieth century American literature.

Pancake grew up in the hollows of West Virginia and each of the carefully wrought stories in this collection deals with the seemingly desperate lives of the working poor in that part of the country. They are remarkably crafted stories, written with a deep sense for the locale and the people from which they are drawn. They are also models of precision, the kind of stories that deserve to be read over and over, studied for the way in which they use foregrounding and the mundane details of everyday life--albeit everyday life that quietly screams with the desperation of poverty, deadening work, drinking, promiscuity, and brutality-to draw complex portraits of people who endure, even when endurance is no more than a substitute for hope. As he writes in "A Room Forever," the story of a tugboat mate spending New Year's Eve in an eight-dollar-a-night hotel room where he drinks cheap whiskey out of the bottle and eventually ends up with a teen-aged prostitute: "I stop in front of a bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can't run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It's always there."

The best of these stories are "Trilobites," "The Honored Dead," "Fox Hunters," and "In the Dry." But there really isn't a weak story in the bunch. Every story is captivating, every one an exemplar of what good short story writing should be. At the end, the only thing that disappoints, that leaves the reader discomforted, is the thought that Pancake died so young, that these are the only stories we have by a truly remarkable writer.

In this volume, the writer's surviving voice really hits home and stays there. Like that perfect song that stays in your head and carries you through the day, Breece Pancake's words and wisdom echoe through the reader's mind forever after reading them. In this life, there is always something around to remind of a Breece Pancake story. From the time weathered fossils in the creek beds to the rare West Virginia 120 m.p.h. strait stretches, after reading this volume I see Pancake everywhere, no matter where I am in the world. Like the trilobite preserved beneath the earth that hides it, these stories are a tangible (and for some reason widely unknown), history of a time and generation that, like the tragedy of Pancake's suicide, is destined to be repeated if ignored.

There are times when things come together in such a way that you know it's perfect. It can be a phrase of music, a blending of colors and sounds in film, or, in this case, the words of a story. This book tells stories that fall together in a timeless way, but are still firmly rooted in a specific place and time.

Having grown up in West Virginia, there were parts of these stories that spoke to me from a sort of "native" perspective. But more to it was the emotion that was the core, the skin and the stitching of each of these stories.

It's a good book to own. To read from when you feel like being taken to another place for a while. And to carry a piece of that place with you once you put the book down.

Project Manager's Desk Reference is a complete, well-written guide about Project Management intended to college students and to any person not familiar with this subject.

The topics covered by this book include Project Planning, Scheduling (PERT), Controlling (Earned Value Analysis), Reporting/Evaluating and Risk Analysis. The book also discusses other subjects that certainly will be faced by the Project Manager, like how to Improve the Communication Skills, how to Solve Problems and Making Decisions.

This book is not intended to experienced managers that need more tools to conduct their projects. These people should look for specific books about the aspect of Project Management that they need to deep into, like Risk Management.

This is direct and to the point. Lewis' writing style is solid and very readable. He does not have a pretentious know it all attitude like so many authors have today. Not only is this an excellent desk reference, but it also can guide you through the essential concepts needed for effective PM duties.

This book was a Required Book for a Project Management college course that I took. The book gives a good overview of the basic Project Management techniques that everyone uses, however, it does not get into real detail about some topics. It is good for the beginning Project Manager, or a student, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone studying for their PMP exam. The PMI PMBOK is a better reference for studying for the exam in my opinion.

Harrison, a Cambridge student (and prospective journalist) meets Charles Rainier on a train. Rainier is an MP, and his past is somewhat mysterious, in that two years of his life are "missing": he has forgotten what happened to him between sustaining wounds in the trenches in France and waking up two years later in Liverpool. Harrison becomes interested in Rainier and in his past, and tries to help Rainier recover his memory.

In one sense, "Random Harvest" is a very dated novel: it was first published in 1941 and reads very much as a period piece, the dialogue feeling very stilted in places, almost a pastiche of upper class English speech of the period. But despite that, I thought that it had a lot going for it, not least because Hilton manages to keep the plot interesting for the reader by peeling away the mystery of Rainier's past gradually.

More interesting than that however, were Rainier's views on inter-war Britain - his character reflected a seeming loss of self-confidence, a deep dissatisfaction (almost an irritation) with the Empire, disillusion with the result of the sacrifices of World War One, and exasperation with socio-economic changes. This added another dimension to the novel.

In all, an enjoyable read. I'll even forgive the howler in the first pages of the novel when the two main characters wonder how the England cricket team will do in the next Test Match, despite the fact that they are travelling through England in November! And despite the fact that England were not playing abroad......

G Rodgers

I had first seen the wonderfully sentimental movie, which is one of my favorites.

The book is not so sentimental. In reading the book, I was unprepared for how well-depicted would be the pain of the protagonist's psychological plight, how thought-provoking this book would be about society, and how much an individual could realistically be shown to be at a loss - no matter his external circumstances.

This is very much about someone who senses that once his life had meaning to him, and he had happily occupied a niche in the world - and can't rediscover it. The author is so wonderful in conveying this desperation.

Mr. Hilton also wonderfully conveys the highs and lows of both the well-born establishment, and the utterly displaced, of inter-war England.

And amazingly, he brilliantly evokes the wonderfully dreamy feeling of being in love. The scenes in which Smitty finds the small town, climbs up to the small lake in the hills, what he sees when he awakens, and the following several days, must be among the most moving in fiction.

I also love how the author shows the differences in personality between the earnest, sweet, easily alarmed, humble Smitty and the somewhat cynical, immensely able, practical-joking, self-deprecating Rainier - much of the difference seems engendered by the way they're treated and their places in life.

I love how subtly the author shows Mrs. Rainier's reaction to Rainier's discoveries - it's just brilliantly done. And the book's ending could not be more satisfying.

This is a more thought-provoking book than Goodbye Mr. Chips - and as much as I enjoyed that, this is a better one. I loved this as much as Hilton's So Well Remembered - which is high praise.

Random Harvest is my all-time favorite story. It might well be called The Wonderful Story or The Beautiful Story. Who hasn't read James Hilton's Good-buy Mr. Chips or Lost Horizon? This book, in my view, is his best work. It was this work that convinced me Hilton had to be a mystic although I don't know that. I do know that on one level, the earthy one, this is the best romantic novel I've ever read. On another level, social or historical, the work is a bringer of hope- written during WWII about WWI and ending on the eve of WWII the story speaks directly to our own uncertain post 911 era. But most importantly this is a work of spiritual completion. It can be read as the story of two people, or for Jungians in particular the coniunctio (union of opposites), the reconciling of the male and female within each of us, and in another context the "Marriage Feast of the Lamb"... This is, indeed, "The Wonderful Story."

Excellent book that highlights the fundamental building blocks of any VLDB from all perspectives. Instead of dwelling on information that is already available in the manuals, it highlights all components for architecting a large system and is a definite read for anybody who wants to understand not only the oracle but all the building blocks that make it possible namely, OS, hardware and storage.

Now a days there are lot of Oracle books which confuses the readers with inaccurate information. But this book gives 100% accurate and pracical information. And James knows about the topics he is talking. Not that just cut and paste from Oracle documentation or some metalink notes.

Great book and I have already recommened to most of my friends.

This book is packed with useful information that is otherwise hard to find. It covers Oracle, Unix and hardware issues in approximately equal depth. The focus is on issues that can affect the scalability of large OLTP Oracle systems. Because of the expansive scope, some issues are only lightly treated. Nevertheless, there are many nuggets of highly detailed and invaluable technical information.

This was a solid but kind of simplistic entry in the Outlandersseries with a strong central adversary in Ambika...though she came offas Xena's evil twin. She was just a little too much of the arch-Amazon to be be believable. All in all, it was a fun book with plenty of action and energy.

This entry into the Outlanders series was very entertaining with an engaging new character and new locales. Some of the on-going characters were relegated to the back seat but the book still held my interest all the way through

Wreath of Fire is an exceptionally well written novel. Mel Odom was able to introduce a brand new enemy in the form of a sensual female warrior named Ambika.

He did an excellent job in bringing over the tension between Kane and Brigid and was able to write the characters in the manner that we've all come to expect over the past few years. He also did a wonderful job in bringing up new questions regarding the Barons and their needs for ore and computer equipment.

The data brought up about the western islands was very well written and I enjoyed the history that he created for the novel. That includes all the history on Ambika as well.

This novel is an exceptional tale and I hope that Mel will continue to produce them when he gets the time from his hectic writing schedule.

Robert A. Heinlein was one of the original grand masters of science fiction and this Reader's Companion by James Gifford professes to be the complete and authoritative guide to his work. Gifford has catalogued over 200 works by Heinlein and provides extensive cross-referencing along with an extended chronology of Heinlein's life and major works. Beyond the well known novels and short stories there are entries for every known Heinlein work, including his nonfiction articles and essays, films, rare and never-reprinted stories, unpublished works, and even the unwritten works known only from notes and outlines.

Clearly, the more you know about Heinlein's work the more you will find this reference work to be useful. Gifford's focus is more on detailing the background and history as well as providing critical insights into these works than in providing synopses. Granted, such synopses would make this book perfect, simply because only the most ardent scholar or fan is going to have read even half of the works that Heinlein wrote, but such an omission is certainly within the purview of a Reader's Companion. I am teaching "Stranger in a Strange Land" for my Science Fiction class this semester and picked up Gifford's book to find out useful background information to pass on to my students. But once I started researching that particular topic I quickly found myself paging back and forth pursuing various threads. Devotees of Heinlein's science fiction will find this book useful, not only in providing a fuller appreciation of what they have already read, but in suggesting other works to find and devour as well.

This is probably the best reference about Heinlein's works that's ever been written. One of the best thing about it is that it's complete and very well organized, so that you can find whatever you're looking for in a few seconds, very handy.
Since I've bought it I've consulted it hundreds of times, I couldn't do without it.

This is an absolute must have for any serious Heinlein fan. Gifford obviously put a lot of work and thought into crafting the Heinlein Opus list, which provides a complete compendium of everything Heinlein has written. There are also tidbits about Heinlein work not published as well.

Gifford's precise, clear, and unbiased commentary on nearly all of Heinlein's works is interesting and concise. It does a great service by providing a clear chronological progression of Heinlein as a writer, which gives the reader a fuller understanding of the works produced at a given time in Heinlein's career. I often felt nostalgic when going through commentary because I could remember the work and the period of my life that I read it, and the enjoyment that it brought me at the time.

This book is indeed a companion for Heinlein fans.

This book brings to life the hard, gritty and dangerous life of working on the railroad. While there's a ton of romaniticized railroad books, this one give the reader insights of what the working stiff had to endure. It does it, however, with an obvious love of railroading, and of the man the book is about.

"Set Up Running" is not a book of dry statistics of Pennsy RR trackage, assets, debits, or passenger-miles served. Neither is it a sensational narrative of harrowing accidents, up-set locomotives, or exploded boilers (although O.P. does have a few close scrapes, and the line of rail jacks exploding one after another as his massive 2-10-0 freight locomotive thunders down a track under repair sets the reader on the edge of his chair). No, this book is better than those sorts of books because it brings a man--actually two men--to life. We come to know O. P. Orr very well indeed through the eyes of his son, the author, John W. Orr, and we end up knowing John as well.

This book shows American history as it should be written--giant machines moving the citizens and the commerce of the land, a huge railroad corporation with all the bureaucratic "snafus" of any multi-layered business as those snafus are seen by and sometimes affect the career of an engineman, the impact of the Great Depression on one family as typical of America as any could be. Historical facts are all here, but they are facts as seen by two very real, very human people, a father and a son. Were all history books written so well, we would all understand history far better and read it far more willingly.

My own grandfather was an engineman, through his road was the Frisco rather than the Pennsy, and my own father was a great lover of trains, though his career paths took him in a different direction. I came along late in my father's life, and, by the time I had the ability and the leisure to write about him, he was gone and his history with him. "Set Up Running" is the type of book I wish someone could have written about my own father, and I know of no higher praise than that. This is a book for railroaders, historians, Americans, and every father's child. At the end, I hated to have to say good-bye to O.P.--and to his son John--but I left knowing much more about the first half of 20th Century America, and I really enjoyed the telling.

This is what too many railroad histories lack -- the human element. This is the story of a man and how he ran locomotives across Pennsylvania. It is also the story of his son, who loved trains and loved to listen to his father's stories. If you are frustrated by railroad histories that are nothing but an endless series of stock transactions, then this is your book.