I actually hate to read, and I am extremely picky about which books I like to reread, but after reading this for the first time I am sure that there will be a second, as well as a third and fourth. Ricardo is a masterful storyteller, and the world he creates is so vivid and well-conceived that it is easy to lose yourself in his stories. The only fault I can find is with me, for not reading it sooner. --

I'm not much of a fantasy book reader, but a friend of mine who is a fantasy book guru suggested I read "The Blood of Kings" by Ricardo Flores. So I ordered a copy, and when I received it started scanning through the first several pages, and immediately got hooked. "The Blood of Kings" is a very creative tale which captivates the reader from the first chapter. The urge to find out "what happens" compels one to read without pause; indeed, I completed my reading within just a few sittings, and am now wondering how soon to expect the next installment from Mr. Flores. I heartily recommend this book, both to fantasy connoiseurs, and to "first-timers", such as myself.

Ricardo Flores is truly a gifted story teller. I first heard of him when I read some of his short stories on the Internet. I enjoyed them so much I had to buy his novel. It is a wonderfully crafted fantasy story. I highly recommend it!

Ricardo - Keep up the good work!

So you don't know the differences between giants, trolls, and ogres? How about oafs, churls, and louts? Did your liberal arts education not cover which part of a castle wall is properly called a merlon or a crenel? Or perhaps your science background failed to equip you with the knowledge needed to distinguish fat from tallow or parchment from vellum? Are you unsure if a particular wizard is trustworthy?

Then you clearly need a copy of the splendid reference by called the Book of Weird, a venerable stockpile of arcane knowledge. The author, Barbara Ninde Byfield, has termed her work, with both modesty and accuracy, as "Being a most Desirable Lexicon of the Fantastical. . ."

The often tongue-in-cheek entries are truly both informative and often hilarious. For instance, we learn not only that are churls "ill bred, and very likely low born" but also are provided with the insight that "If they serve beer, they slop it: if they drink beer, they belch."

Byfield even provides an appendix of sorts of "Useful Information" wherein you can learn about weights and measures (of course, you may already know that a firkin = 56 pounds and that an ell spans 4 feet), a list of legal holidays (including various Sabbats), and some medicinal advice that may not be for the squeamish.

This is the sort of book that will improve one's spirits. It's clever, smart, and fun. My only regret is that my large format copy of the 1973 edition finally fell apart because of continued use. Still, this smaller format version is worth finding and hanging onto. Also, you might find an even earlier edition published under the somewhat confusing and less descriptive title The Glass Harmonica.

Gotta go perform some rites. . .

After reading a brief description of THE GLASS HARMONICA (as this book was originally known) back in the 1970s, I searched for it off and on for 20 years. When I finally found it in the 1990s, you might expect the wait to have created an expectation the book could never meet. But it did. THE BOOK OF WEIRD is an absolute delight for anyone who enjoys fantasy, history and myths and legends, spiced with a playful sense of humour. It is also surprisingly useful, particularly if you are a writer of fantasy. One of my absolute favourites.

Written with sly with and an incisive understanding of the legendary, this book explains everything (almost everything) you could want to know about living in the world of faerie tales. Each entry is a gem, and the appendix has more outre information than you could shake a rat at. Fits well with Brian Froud's Faeries.

This book is one of the best I have ever read. It will keep you hooked all the way through. The best part was taking truth and turning it into something very exciting. This is coming from someone who doesn't like to read. Brain Boru Fought his way from nothing to high king gathering loyal followers form all parts of Ireland. Quit wasting time reading this and find a copy of the book.

Another wonderful book by Morgan Llywellyn.

This is a historically accurate novel that keeps you glued until the very end. I found myself transported to a time of medieval towns and kings. Brian Boru had me rooting for the Irish from start to finish!

A real page burner, get away from those dusty tomes and read what a real writer has done with history. Take the skeleton from the archives of librarys with stuffy stated details add flesh, and personna with accurate research and voila, you have an outstanding, interesting, and highly readable piece of literature that should be required reading in the halls of Academia....

This book just flowed. It's a book that grabs you and won't let go. King-Gamble wove a wonderful story of courage, love and betrayal. Excellent read.

Shayna DaCoata a former gymnast turn physical therapist. Beaumont Hill(Beau)the only African American skier on the U.S. Oplympic team.

Beau is hurt thinks he will never walk again. He is placed in a Denver rehabilitation center. He has no hope for a life and is as mean as a snake.

Shayna is the therapist who sets out to not only see that he can walk, but ski again. Beau fights her at every turn but she doesn't give up on him.

The cross story has her younger brother in trouble,Beau's father trying to put him jail for the next 20 years or longer. Not to mention a cover up about how Beau got hurt.

Even though they try to avoid each other,they are both working to help the other one with out. As they succeed in getting to the bottom of all the problems, they realize they are in love with each other.

This is a must read story that will touch your heart in more ways than one.

Marcia, I look foward to your next book.

This is an excellent book. I recommend this book because it simply flows. I haven't finished reading this book, but I can't wait to get to the end. If you are considering purchasing this book, believe me, you won't be wasting your money.

Romeo and Juliet

Felipe Gravier and Lorenzo Schiavo review:

We think that Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers whose families are in a terrible fight which prevents them from coming together. How far the couple will go to be together becomes the focus of the story. Of his richest poetry. The opening and closing choruses are some of his most outstanding work. Romeo's It is a brilliant love story but not much more. It still possesses however some wooing of Juliet is fabulously written. The Friar gets the best lines. Mercutio is one the best friends of Romeo. It is not as good as Shakespeare has written but it's still a fabulous book and up there with his best work. One part of the play we didn't like was that for the tow families get arrange there two kids had to die.
The English language wasn't finally finished so Shakespeare had the liberty to create words and play with the language, as he liked. That's why It was so difficult to understand what each character wanted to express so the teacher had to explain us each of that words and teach us all the words in that age and told us which were the words in the English of today.

This book provides lots of Shakespeare's Storys like "A Midsummer's Night Dream" and "Hamlet" with a children's fairy tale twist. The storys are the same as Shakespeare's, but easier for children to understand. My favorite story was Hamlet because I had just seen the play. A while after we read Children's Shakespeare and it helped me to understand Hamlet better.

Shakespeare is for kids and adults in E. Nesbit's creative mind. I always liked fairy tales, but I couldn't read Shakespeare very well. In Children's Shakespeare E. Nesbit turned his work into fairy tales without changing the story and morals. This book is not much like Nesbit's other books because it was written by Shakespeare, but I bet there are some simularities.

This book was a overall well writen book and I beleive E. Nesbit put a lot of hard work into her books in her life-time. I'm sure if she were alive now she would still be writing good books to this day.

I got this book for Christmas and have enjoyed just browsing through it, though I expect it to be useful as a reference book as well. I think the author (or maybe the publisher) did a neat job of updating the King James Version so that the quotes sound poetic but are still easy to understand. (They did away with all the words like 'thee' and 'thou' and so on.) I have recommended this to people in my church because I think its topical arrangement makes it easy to find what you're looking for in practically any subject area.

I found this to be a very useful desk reference book, also interesting just for leafing through when I have some down time at my job. I had not realized before that so many familiar quotes and phrases come from the Bible. The book is organized by topics in alphabetical order, making it easy to look things up. There is also a very handy index. It is not in hardback but has that kind of 'sturdy paperback' binding, so should hold up well after a lot of use.

This has been useful to me for magazine writing. I also do some speaking at my women's group, and this is a great source of quotes. It is organized by topics, so it makes it easy to locate just the right quote for what you need. One interesting difference between this and other quotation books is that the author has used the King James Version of the Bible but has carefully modernized some of the difficult "antique" words from the old version. I think that helps a lot, because in places the King James could be hard to understand.

As a fellow bio student to others I have but only one thing to say, Give me a break!! Do you know how long the book is ?!?!? And do you know how thick this book is?? If you are in AP bio, you have to know every single page by heart ! Ok, honestly, this book is good and probably the best AP bio book there is, just be sure to read this book over the summer to get the information. One test is 60 pages of text in this book. The book is also very comprehensive.

This book is very well structured, has wonderful illustrations, pictures, and diagrams. I agree that it is an excellent introductory biology text as it touches base with all facets of the subject.

"Biology: The Science of Life" is an extremely valuable guide to a thorough and complete understanding of basic biological concepts. In AP Bio, it not only helped me through the class, but caused me to permanently fall in love with biology. I'd love to meet the authors to thank them in person for this wonderful book. I'll buy it, because it will always offer me a connection to my first, playful, yet professional encounter with biology.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the Black Panthers I picked up this collection one day and read nearly straight through it. I came away with what I think is a fairly good idea of the goals of the Black Panther Party, not the same one I had generally heard or been taught growing up. Instead of them being the black racists many tend to think they are, what would be the equal opposite of the KKK (who, versus the Panthers' few years of existence, have been operating for more than 100 years), I learned that they could be more adequately labeled as classists, in the Marxist-Lenin tradition. As Eldridge Cleaver, one-time minister of information for the Black Panther Party, "You speak of an 'undying love' for black people. An undying love for black people that denies the humanity of other people is doomed. It was an undying love of white people for each other which led them to deny the humanity of colored people and which has stripped white people of humanity itself." I don't see a lot of "hating whitey" there, as Horowitz and other conservatives would have you believe, but more of a gelling together of the dregs of humanity in an attempt to alter its condition, the stance that Malcolm X eventually evolved to, and, later, the Panthers.

Perhaps we as humanity have come a ways, maybe thanks to them, since the Panthers first took up arms, defying the police to beat, shoot or incarcerate them. I say this because eight years ago a similar movement began in the southern highlands of Mexico, another marginalized group taking up arms in order to say,"Take notice, we're not taking it anymore." Instead of being branded thugs and criminals, the Zapatistas captured the hearts and minds of the world and continue their quest for equal rights and protection under the law.

According to their own writings (the real beauty of this book), these guys are not the black KKK or black neo-nazis, contrary to some opinion.

I found the writings of Eldridge Cleaver, a one-time candidate for president, to be some of my favorite.

I'll close with a citation from Julian Bond, which I think sums up what the Black Panther Party was really about: "What the Panthers do more than anything else is they set a standard that young black people particularly want to measure up to...It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militance, of just plain forcefulness, the sort of standard we haven't had in the past. Our idols have been Dr. King who, for all his beauty as a man, was not an aggressive man." Even Dr. King began to take a more aggressive approach before he was gunned down. It's not hate or intimidation, but standing up for oneself as a man.

I recommend complementary readings of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Wretched of the Earth.

this Book should Bring People Together.The Black Panthers wanted a Better Today.still to this day we are facing the same Problems of which they spoke on 30 years back.no misguided words here their own words.a must Read for all to Better understanding Voices of Hope&a Better Tommorow for all future Generations.

The Black Panthers Speak is the BEST book out for Americans who want to know what the Panthers stood for. Nobody's interpretation of what the Panthers were about, but only the speeches, letters, and court transcripts of Black Panther members. This book should be read by Americans of ALL ethnicities. Use it to understand that the Black Panthers were a party for ALL people in the struggle for freedom.

First of all, the design of the book is exquisite; it's a pleasure to leaf through this book, full of colorful high-quality illustrations. After reading it, however, I found the content a bit disappointing, most of it was re-hashing of the fairly well-known facts, although with a few interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout. This book would be great for someone with a passing interest in Ancient Egypt, it gives a good general overview of what life might have been like during the New Kingdom.

Chronicle of a Pharaoh is a readable in-depth look at pharaoh Amenhotep III, one of the three greatest kings of ancient Egypt. The layout is superb as it chronicles his life with a year-by-year format. Contains a generous amount of personal minutae, reinforced with pictures and plates on almost every page. Outstanding in all respects, this one is a keeper.

I agree with the first reviewer--it's amazing that Joann Fletcher has pieced together so much about Amenhotep and presents it in a way that conveys an actual life. The little details, like the name of his family cat, make this book tons of fun. An all-around beautiful book.

This was a play first published in 1593, with the theme of King Edward's struggle against the Welsh prince Llewelyn ap Gruffudd, otherwise known as Llewelyn the Last. Llewelyn was a prince of Gwynedd who adopted the style Prince of Wales in 1258 and was formally recognised in this role by King Henry III at the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267. Edward I became King of England in 1272 but it was only on his return from the Crusades in 1274 that he had to confront the problem of Wales. In 1277 he invaded Wales and Llewelyn was forced to pay homage. Several years of comparative peace followed but hatred of English laws and settlers caused the Welsh to rise again in 1282. The king crushed the revolt and Llewelyn was killed. These events prompted a Welsh bard to ask "Is this the end of the world?" and another to yearn "Ah God, that the sea would drown the land!".

Llewelyn is rarely mentioned in English literature so I read the play with interest. This edition is edited by the late G. K Dreher who wrote an interesting introduction and modernized the spelling and punctuation. I did not expect to find new historical insights into Llewelyn but was interested to see how he was portrayed to an Elizabethan audience. In fact, George Peele is surprisingly sympathetic in his presentation of the man who posed such a threat to the English crown. As Dreher points out, the play was written for an audience of people who "under Elizabeth were enjoying health, expansion, new knowledge, relish and hope". They were citizens of a country in the midst of becoming a great power and enjoying a cultural renaissance. Peele knew that they would sympathize with King Edward's desire to unite Britain under one monarch but would also respect the motives of the Welshman who fought for the rights and dignity of his own people.

Although practically unknown today, George Peele was highly respected by his literary contemporaries. He was an Oxford "Maister of Artes" and the play contains a sprinkling of the Latin tags and classical allusions that we expect from an educated writer of his time but my own favourite passage is a homely one:

(The Friar's novice responds to his master's command to visit town in order to buy food and wine)
"Now, master as I am true wag,
I will be neither late nor lag,
But go and come with gossip's cheer
Ere Gib our cat can lick her ear ."

This new edition of the play published by the Iron Horse Free Press in Texas.

George Peele's King Edward the First Modernized & Illustrated

Peele, George. King Edward the First. Ed. G. K. Dreher. Midland, TX: Iron Horse Free Press, 1999;
ISBN: 0-9601000-7-5 (hardcover, 224 pages with illustrations).

The publication history of George Peele's chronicle play, Edward I, begins in 1593, as the Stationers' Company register tells us:

Die Octobris./. [1593] Entred for his Copie vnder thandes of bothe the wardens an enterlude entituled the Chronicle of Kinge Edward the firste surnamed Longeshank with his Retourne out of the Holye Lande, with the lyfe of Leublen Rebell in Wales with the sinkinge of Quene Elinour [.]

Alternately called Longshank, Longshanks, and Prince Longshank, Peele's Edward I was performed fourteen times by the Lord Admiral's Men between August 29, 1595, and July 14, 1596. The play's successful stage history occasioned the printing of a second edition, which appeared in 1599.

At least eleven modern editions have been published since R. Dodsley's 1827 text, the most recent of which is: King Edward the First, a retroform edited by G. K. Dreher, published by Iron Horse Free Press. Publisher George R. Dreher, son of G. K. Dreher, notes that the "aim of this edition is to provide . . . a few unriddles in the text, modern spelling and punctuation, and an introduction for readers who are not familiar with the play." Partly a celebration of Peele's life and works and partly a tribute to Dreher's father's scholarship, the volume brings together G. K. Dreher's previous editions of Peele's Edward I (Adams Press, 1974) and David and Bethsabe (Adams Press, 1980). The new edition also includes an introduction, a commentary, and 23 images: 8 medieval illustrations from the British Library, plus 1 each from the Public Records Office, Eton College, and the Beinecke Rare Book Collection (featured in Edward I); 12 illustrations from museums around the world by the artists Raphael, Michelangelo, Salviati, Rembrandt, Chapron, Berton, Beckmann, Picasso, and Chagall (featured in David and Bethsabe). Together these components fashion a useful volume for a general reading audience; indeed, this text does more than any previous edition to popularize Peele's work. Although not a critical edition, the book will perhaps be most valuable as a teaching text for undergraduate studies.

George Peele (1556-96), born in London, was one of the principal writers of chronicle history plays in the Elizabethan literary movement, which culminated in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays and Henry V. Peele was educated at Christ's Hospital, Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), and Christ Church, Oxford where he won praise as a translator of one of the Iphigenias of Euripides. In 1580 Peele married Anne Cooke, daughter of an Oxford merchant. With Ann he returned to the environs of London in 1581 where he pursued an active literary career in association with the "University Wits", a group of playwrights that included John Lyly, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Watson. Peele's works concern courtly and patriotic themes and can be classified according to three main categories: plays, pageants, and miscellaneous verse. In 1589, in a vitriolic preface to Greene's Menaphon, Nashe suspends his condemnation of most late-sixteenth-century English writers to praise Peele as the "chiefe supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of Poetrie, and primus verborum Artifex" who "goeth a steppe beyond all that write." In 1592 Greene considered him "no lesse deserving" than Marlowe and Nashe; "in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour." Peele's surviving plays are: The Araygnement of Paris (1584); Edward I (1593); The Battle of Alcazar (1594); The Old Wives' Tale (1595); and David and Fair Bethsabe (1599). His miscellaneous verse includes The Tale of Troy (1589), Polyhymnia (1590) and The Honour of the Garter (1593), an epideictic poem to the Earl of Northumberland. Excerpts from Peele's writings were first anthologized in 1600 in Englands Helicon and Englands Parnassus.

Peele's Edward I combines three narratives, each announced by the original text's full title: the Chronicle of Kinge Edward the firste surnamed Longeshank with his Retourne out of the Holye Lande, with the lyfe of Leublen Rebell in Wales with the sinkinge of Quene Elinour. Peele derives the first story, the return from the Holy Land of King Edward I (1272-1307), from at least four different chronicles, but chiefly those of Grafton and Holinshed. Peele shapes his account of the life of Llywelyn (?-1282) from popular tales of Robin Hood. The third story is an unhistorical account of Queen Elinor portrayed as a divinely judged murderess. Peele subordinates the second and third narratives under the first in order to frame the play's central plot of Edward's glorious military victories over the Scots and Welsh, especially his devastating campaigns of 1277 and 1282-83 in which he conquered the Welsh principality of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.

Edward I resounds with nationalistic pride at a time when England's victory, in 1588, over the Spanish Armada continued to fuel public celebrations. Edward's first speech in the play, for example, invokes a providential design for England's history:

O God my God, the brightnes of my daye,

How oft haft thou preferu'd thy feruant fafe, By fea and land, yea in the gates of death, O God to thee how highly am I bound, For fetting me with thefe on Englifh ground?

G. K. Dreher's modern edition standardizes the text's spelling, punctuation, and stage directions, thus achieving a very readable version:

O God, my God, the brightness of my day, How oft hast thou preserved thy servant safe, By sea and land, yea in the gates of death. O God, to thee how highly am I bound For setting me with these on English ground.

This latest return of Longeshank will certainly contribute to George Peele's popular reputation as one of the most important chronicle playwrights in Elizabethan England. In addition to Peele's Edward I, Iron Horse Free Press currently offers three other books by G. K. Dreher: Samuel Huntington, Longer Than Expected (an illustrated essay on the Presidency of Samuel Huntington, first president of The United States in Congress Assembled); Now the Dog is Quiet (a novella written in opposition to world hunger); and Ourselves & One Other (a collection of Christian devotional meditations).

Author George Peele was in a group of London playwrights, precursory to Shakespeare, known as the "university wits" as were Marlowe, Lyly, Nashe, and Greene. In 1587 Thomas Nashe called Peele "The chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primum verborum artifex (most excellent artist of words)," and "one who goeth a step beyond all that write." Editor George Kelsey, through extensive research of primary sources at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, has provided a retroform of KING EDWARD I, solving several riddles in the text that he discusses in the 43 page introduction covering Chronicle History Plays, Sources, Structure, Theme, Characterization, and Diction. In the special insert of DAVID AND BETHSABE (SAMPLES) Dreher juxtaposes Peele's verse with parallel Bible passages from the 1525 translation by Miles Coverdale and demonstrates that Peele worked directly from the Latin and used as sources the Psalms as well as Samuel II. Dreher offers a 35 page discussion of Peele's viewpoint, emotional involvement, and style. The book is 6 x 9, 224 pp., with color printed case, 20 illustrations from the finest museums around the world, a Foreword, Introduction, Comments, and Bibliography.