Xanth is a magical world of fun and puns. It is a parallel world to Earth/ Mundania. Everything that happens has some double meaning, so always be on the lookout for words like "paradox" and "pair of docks." Everything living in Xanth is magical and everyone has a seperate talent. I began reading the Xanth series last summer, almost a year ago, and I've read about thirty since then. I recently read the first novel, so don't worry about reading the series in order, they all have there own storyline and you can catch on fairly quickly. hope that you enjoy the series as much as I have.

This book is great! It is the first book I've read by Piers Anthony, and I plan to read many more. The first book,"Centure Aisle", introduces you to Dor the "young" magician, Smash the young Ogre, Princess Irene, who can grow plants imedietly on her command, Grundy the golem, he can talk to anything living. Their adventures take them all over Xanth and beyond. I was so into this book that I could not put it down for weekend,I have a tendency to read slow. Thanks to this book I look forward to reading instead of dreading it. The Charcters are colorful and well portrayed, I've recomended it to many and they love it and are hurrying to the book store to get more of the Xanth novels. Enjoy reading this as it will take you far into the reaches of Xanth and you will not want to come back to the real world.

Someone once told me that you can't READ fantasy, because it is a "visual" thing. Well... Piers Anthony has opened up the movie theater in my mind with the Xanth Series. If you love fantasy (and puns), I HIGHLY recommend getting lost in the beautiful, funny, and exciting world of Xanth. PS... it's much better if you start from the beginning, so if you're going to read them, get "Spell for Chameleon" first.

Every year I read Wolf Story to my second graders and at the end of the year when I ask them their favorite chapter book read to them, Wolf Story is chosen every year to be the favorite. They love to follow the adventures of Rainbow and Michael. When you complete Chapter 1, the kids are hooked. They can not wait for the next day. I have even had kids who have been sick ask if I can re-read a chapter that they missed or if they can stay in at recess to read the missed chapter on their own.

Wolf Story is wonderfully written and captivating to young children. Every year I can not wait to read the book. I find myself anxious to share the next chapter.
When my own children have children, Wolf Story will be the book that I can share with them. I strongly recommend this book to every child and to every adult who enjoys reading to their children at bedtime.

This is a nearly perfect read-out-loud book. I have shared this book several times with my daughters (now 10 and 12). I am looking forward to the time when I can begin to read it aloud to my three year old son. The story within the story (the struggle between the Wolf, Rainbow and the heroic farmer boy Jimmy) effortlessly keeps the children involved. The external story (the father and son inventing the animal adventure tale over several days) makes me laugh out loud with its sly humor and insight; the boy's missing shoe gets me every time. It's great to see that a reprint edition is available again.

It's a tough business to tell a child a favorite story again, and again, and again, both for the storyteller who's tired of telling it and for the child who has, like a true die-hard fan, grown into a very devoted yet demanding critic. The story must be told "just-so", exactly the same way it's been told before and at the same time fresh, new, and even better than ever. Wolf Story is a story about telling a story, and both a parent and their child will recognize themselves in 5-year-old Michael and his father as they share the ritual bedtime story, a story about a very nasty wolf named Waldo. Little Michael seems to "know" the story even before he's heard it, but he isn't altogether conscious of this. He knows it much better than the tale's storyteller/author, his father, and isn't shy at all offering suggestions when his father doesn't tell it right.

Guaranteed this clever book will have you both laughing out loud at times, but I was also very pleased to find an amusing children's book that manages to operate at different levels without the wisecracking or cynical tone so common in children's literature now. Children can easily see the story from the point of view of the father, of little Michael, the scary wolf and the little farmer boy, Jimmy, who stands up to him. This makes the story all the more delightful for them. What a treat!

Anthony Calfo's "Book of Coral Propagation" was a pleasant read. It is a nearly all text book, but the author's easy-going, sometimes eccentric, writing style makes even difficult topics simple to understand. It is focused on the profitable, commercial propagation of coral, but there is a healthy amount of information for the casual owner of a coral reef display tank. The book covers topics on captive reef care from planning, equipment, and hardware to water quality issues, supplements, and feeding to shipping methods and recieving protocols to propagation techniques. But, the most important part of the book is the coral family overviews. The author covers the proper care of all of the coral species seen for sale in the trade. There are many other books that do the same thing, but where this book is different is in the discussions about profitability of species. This is the first book that I have read that discusses expected growth rates and ease of propagation. This is invaluable information for anyone serious about coral propagation. If you want to grow and propagate corals for display and trade with fellow aquarists, or to sell on a small-scale to local retail stores, orto make the jump to full-time, for-profit coral gardening, you must have this book.

The "Book of Coral Propagation" is now my favorite book in my 40-some reef/marine aquarium book collection. If you are looking for a first-rate book on coral propagation and husbandry that is in-depth, up-to-date, and full of ground-breaking information, then look no further. Don't assume this book is just about propagation for the commercial sector or hardcore reef aquarists. It provides a holistic view on the husbandry of corals too, that even beginners can appreciate. In order to propagate corals, you need to understand how they thrive and grow, and this book will be your ultimate guide. So even if you don't plan on propagating corals, this book will still provide more information on husbandry than any other book out there. The coral family overviews themselves are worth buying this book. This book is thick, and it's not full of filler. Unlike most books in the hobby (and industry for that matter), this book actually contains valuable knowledge - and lots of it - derived from years of bona fide research, practice, and experience! There are many coral books out in the marketplace, and a few coral husbandry books, but all fall short of providing practical and useful information that aquarists can really use. Most of these so called coral books are reiterations of biology books or make good coffee table books (pretty pictures). This book is radically different! It is so refreshing to read a book that is actually useful. Looking at a picture book full of pretty corals is not going to help you grow and care for corals in your aquarium. Not only is this book useful, it is very easy to read. It's amazing how a book with so much knowledge and detail can be so painless to read and comprehensive at the same time. I would highly recommend all reef aquarists add this book to their current book collection. No matter how many books you have, you will find this book most useful and full of innovativation, insight, and revolutionary knowledge based on real-life experiences of the author. And if you don't have any coral books yet, then look no further, save your money, and buy this book first!

If you are interested in reproducing your corals, THIS is the book you should buy! Intended for commercial coral propagation, this book is also +excellent+ for the private, home based reefer as well.
It discusses not only coral propagation, but also coral needs, do and don'ts, also other important aspects like water quality and ways to optimize it with simple but very effective tips...in a nutshell: no matter if you are a newbie or advanced reefer, commercial or private, this book should be in your reef aquarium reference library!

I read this book and it helped me pass!!! The test Questions were jusk like the in the book. It covers everything that you need to pass!!!

David Aloisi CCNA

Not much else to add to the previous reviews. If you study for the CCNA certification, this guide would probably be all you need to pass the test. I would also get the Lammle's book as well to cover any blank spots... If you are ready to take it beyond the CCNA level, I would also look into getting the following books:

1. "Cisco IOS for IP Routing" by Andrew Colton. A lot of information on IP routing protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, etc.).
2. "Routing TCP/IP, volume I" by Jeff Doyle. Covers just as much as the Colton's book.
3. "Interconnections: Routers, Bridges..." by Radia Perlman. Good academic info on routing and bridging. Overkill for the CCNA to CCNP level though.

I used this book to prepare for the CCNA Certification Exam and was very pleased with my results. Chiarella did a great job explaining the IOS fundamentals and setting up scenarios for final preparation. The practice sections ROCKS! Seriously. After reading this book, you won't see a question on the CCNA Exam that doesn't look familiar.

This is the third book of the incarnations, it is the best save only the first book "Riding a Pale Horse." The characters come to life in this amazing sci-fi fantasy. The book is set to the life of the woman destend to become fate and to face off with Satan. A wonderful book, a must read.

This book was one of the best I have read in this series! With a Tangled Skien is a story on how each single life is a thread that is woven into a never ending tapestry, and how three women use their abilities to fend off outside evils who try to change the tapestry of life. Anyone who loves fantesy will love this story!!!

This book, like all of Anthony's books, (especially the other books in the "Incarnations of Immortality" series), is one of the most incredible books I have ever read. Most books are good only for one, perhaps two, satisfying reads, but I picked this one up as new release many years ago, and am enthralled by it to this day. This book, nay this entire series, is an eye-opening and soul lifting expereience. Anthony's take on the Fates and all of the rest of "The Inacarnations of Immortality" is very uplifting. This story is so involved that you truly feel as though Anthony was prodigiously watching the entire ongoins proceed from some covert vantage point. It has an almost unconcertingly "real" feel to it for what I consider to be a very fantasical story line. It is an incredibly involving and emotional story of the role "The Fates" play in the unfolding of peoples lives and how, even though life can be painful, all of lifes trials are for a reason and for the best in the long run, (no matter the pain a character may endure).
I highly recomend this book to any person who truly loves science fiction, fantasy, or is seeking an enthralling introduction to the wonderful world of sci-fi/fantasy.
Like I noted in the ranking, I consider this to be a definite top ten, and that is including all of the rest of this series in that top ten listing.
Take my word for it folks, this is a great literarary investment, even if you have never before held an interest in this genre. I definitely suggest that you burn rubber to add this book to your personal library today.

Philip Larkin once remarked that he felt the poet should take the reader by the hand and lead them right into the poem. Maybe that is just another way of saying that his poems are accessible and will touch you even when reading them for the first time.

Yes, Larkin does embody the somewhat grumpy spirit of post-war Britain, but like all good poetry they are about the something that seems to be missing in our lives. There are some feelings no writer has ever put more precisely. Formally rather conservative (rhyme, no daring metaphors), the vocabulary is utterly down to earth. "Talking in bed should be easiest," Larkin begins, only to find out that with the lengthening of the silence "It becomes stil more difficult to find / Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind."

The feelings expressed may not always be nice, nor is this much of a self-help book, so it is utterly opposed to the spirit of our times, but this "old-type natural fouled up-guy" will make you love poetry if you are not yet sure about whether your do ("to prove our almost-instinct almost true: / What will survive of us is love.") Get this European poet looking at himself as if he were a complete stranger as a contrast to you confessional poets!

In five years, nine Larkinites have posted reviews to these pages. One laments the death of poetry's ability to move the masses, laments the lost world in which poetry was a master art, in which Longfellow might hold a theater in thrall with tales of Gitchee Gumee.

Why doesn't everyone who reads in the English Language know Philip Larkin?

Oh, this Larkin is most assuredly not for every taste--he is ugly, rueful, bitter, timorous, and in these he is wholly and perfectly one with his poetic voice. He is a formalist--a large quantity of rhymed iambic pentameter at a time when most "poetry" is indistinguishable from prose except in the way the lines are arranged--who sounds, miraculously, astonishingly, colloquial (the particular mark of his genius). Many of these poems attain a perfection--Aubade, High Windows, This Be The Verse, others, all relatively well known--that literally staggers the imagination. As with the (classic) jazz to which Larkin was so devoted, in which the players continually found "new" notes to blow, and even created new musical vocabularies when the old ones were exhausted, Larkin finds boundless new resources inside the English language and then bursts poetry's integument asunder when his straightlaced, albeit eccentric, formalism seems to hem him in.

Unlike most contemporary poets, Larkin creates lines you remember--indeed, cannot shake--and want to memorize for the delight, and mortification, of self and friends.

Larkin does not, by the bye, deal in any manner of obscurantism. What he means is clearly on the page. It may not leave you in the sunniest of dispositions, but it will lift you, powerfully, to another level of poetic appreciation.

This is a book for life by the major voice of my time.

This is the standard edition of Larkin's poetry. Larkin did not publish a great deal in his lifetime and the addition of a number of previously unpublished poems adds a good deal to his canon. Even with these additions, Larkin was not prolific and wrote no long poems. His reputation rests on a number of short poems written in a characteristic and deceptively simple style. Larkin achieved both accessibility and considerable power with direct, chiselled lyrics that use relatively simple words, metaphors, and allusions. His best poems deal with uncertainty, anxiety, the problems of aging, and aspects of personal disappointment. This wouldn't seem to be very promising but Larkin captures eloquently important aspects of life. There are also some fine and short nature poems. Easy to read and very rewarding.

I picked up this book after reading the USA Today review, which was essentially an unconditional rave. I decided to give it a try, but figured I'd probably be disappointed, as few books live up to the praise heaped on them. But GABRIEL'S STORY was a pleasant surprise. It begins with vivid homesteading scenes - all the toil and the poverty of it. Makes me glad I wasn't a homesteader, and it made it reasonable that Gabriel would want to run away from it. The journey that he sets off on is truly engrossing, well-plotted, with beautiful language and great descriptions of the Western landscape.

It looks like the novel is being compared to Cormac McCarthy's work. There are some similarities, but GABRIEL'S STORY is a bit more hopeful than McCarthy's work. The world is still harsh and dangerous, but Durham seems to have more faith in humanity, in family and friends. Also, I thought it was interesting that the reviewer in USA Today said that he was a city-dwelling white guy that still got into this book about a black boy in another century out on the plains. I felt the same way. Yes, the main characters are black, but their racial identity is only part of the whole world of the story. They're black like James Joyce's characters are Irish or Faulkner's are Southern - it matters, but it doesn't change the fact that anybody can connect with them. Altogether a really good novel.

Here is my reaction to one of the best books I have ever read. The book is "Gabriel's Story" by David Anthony Durham. The action takes place in the 1870's. The protagonist is Gabriel, an African-American youth who has just turned 16. The other characters are his brother Ben, just turned 14; his step-father, Solomon; his mother, and his uncle. Gabriel's parents were freed slaves. After their freedom, they lived in Baltimore, where Gabriel enjoyed the big city life. Then his father dies, and his mother decides to go west to Kansas to join and marry her first love, Solomon. The two were separated by slavery. Gabriel doesn't realize that they were in love before this time. Gabriel resents his mother's remarriage and the hard life homesteading on the Kansas prairie. He has all of a teenager's resentment of everything with something real to pin them on. He makes a friend, an African-American orphan his age whose name is James. Together the boys decide to join a group of cowboys and help them drive some horses west to Texas. What the boys don't realize is that these are very bad men they have fallen in with -- the very worst men there could be. As the trip begins, Gabriel and James gradually discover what these men really are, and now their greatest desire is to get away from them. The rest of the novel contains their picaresque travels with the men, trying to leave the men, and trying to return to Kansas. The author has done a marvelous job with this book. The plot is exciting and adventurous, with many twists and turns. The characters and their relationships are complex. The description is wonderful. I felt I was with Gabriel every step of the way on his journey. On Sunday I read in a frenzy from 2 to 6 because I couldn't stop until I finished this book. At times my heart was pounding and I almost stopped breathing as I said aloud, "Oh, no!" I was so involved in this. In addition, the author's writing is beautiful and eloquent. I wouldn't have predicted that I would fall in love with a book one might call a "Western," but this novel defies categorization. The aspect of African Americans homesteading is unusual and interesting. I immediately wrote to the author to thank him for this book, and I hope other people will enjoy it as well. It might be a good one to recommend to teens.

Page-turner, can't put it down, tour de force, and all those other cliches apply to Gabriel's Story. Actually, I could put it down, but only because I had to. Couldn't wait to pick it up again.

Gabriel's Story is an amazing adventure -- perfectly plausible -- of a teen aged African American in the 1870's who leaves his family's Kansas farm unannounced. He and a friend join a crew of cowboys headed for Texas....

How to tell more of the book without giving away bits and pieces of the story that is best discovered by the reader? Can't be done.

Suffice it to say that Gabriel sees and experiences more than he could ever had imaganed. He is handicapped by racism, his youth and inexperience, but boasts the distinct advantages of intelligence and a good heart.

If you're overly sensitive to violence, beware; but it all rings true to the times and is never gratuitous.

Now stop reading reviews of the book and buy it, you'll be glad you did.

For years I have struggled to learn horary astrology -- until I came across this book, that is. The author makes it seem so easy! The writing is clear, easy to read, and extremely well-organized. The book takes you step by step through the process of interpreting a horary chart so that you understand everything along the way. There are lots of historical notes that put things in perspective and there is lots of humor too. This is one of the best astrology books I have ever read. Thank you, Anthony Louis, for this wonderful book.

This is not a book for beginners. You have to know some basic astrology to get into horary, but once you decide to learn it, this is the place to start. The author does an admirable job of making the minute rules and definitions of horary clear and understandable. His analogies and examples are outstanding. This is an excellent guide to horary, and it is hard to recommend it highly enough.

Anthony Louis makes the obscure world of horary astrology clear and easy to understand. This is a truly scholarly work by a master teacher. No astrologer can afford to be without it.

When I first met my wife, I was delivering pizzas as my only source of income. She let me listen to the first tape (as a test I later found out).

I couldn't believe it! I mean here was this guy that I had seen on TV for years... but could never afford to get his tapes. (Nice mindset, huh?)

Well, I guess I passed the test because after I listened to the first tape, I couldn't stop. I had to have the next and then the next and then all of the sudden I was 30 days into the program and I was a different person. Every part of me had changed - THE PAST DOES NOT EQUAL THE FUTURE!

Together we became so enthralled with Tony's work that we started attending his live events. WOW!!

The man is a Master at what he does! My life is living proof -

Now, we live in a 5-bedroom house on a golf course. I drive a Mercedes Benz S320 and we make a high six figure income from our Network Marketing business.

If you are thinking about making this purchase - DO IT!

If you don't think you can afford it - DO IT ANYWAY! Don't ever let money stop you from experiencing what life has to offer you!

Whatever reason might be coming up in your head right now as to why you shouldn't do this - Cancel that thought and do it now!

Just like Tony says: "So many times in life we talk about what we 'should' do. You know, I 'should' do this. Or, I 'should' do that. Pretty soon we end up just 'shoulding' all over oursevles.

Turn yours "shoulds" into "MUSTS" and buy this system NOW!

And, have an outstanding life!

A friend!

I love this program. I'm on it for the second time around and it's even more powerful than the first. I'm a person sometimes difficult to motivate - but Tony does it, no matter what the critics may say. He doesn't have a PhD, but this stuff is so much more coherent and worthwile - not to mention energetic - than most with PhDs (including myself) can ever hope to produce. How does he do it - I don't know. What matters is, that it works. The program really represents a big help, support, a coach, if you will, in day-to-day life. It works on so many levels. Even if you're just interested in human psychology, you will get lots from listening to these tapes. Afraid of flying? Thinking that your diet won't work because it did not work so many times in the past? Thinking that you're hopeless in some respect and that you're "just not the material" to achieve something you're after? Feeling that there are too many obstacles and foes around you hindering your every action? Wanting something, but being unsure what it is exactly? Seek no more. Get these tapes/CDs and give it a sincere effort. There is no way that you can fail (as Tony will teach you).

I received the cassette version of this program as a gift, and I really believe it is the best gift I have ever received. I am currently listening to the program for the fourth time, and each time I get something new out of it. The positive changes in my life since starting the program are remarkable. The very minimum you will get out of this program is the right frame of mind for starting each day--which alone is worth more than the price. But if you really get into the program and use even a tenth of what you learn, you can achieve fantastic success in your life. I couldn't be happier with this program, I'm a big believer in it and I highly recommend it.