Professor Allen Speer has kindly shared with us the innermost thoughts of his Confederate ancestor, Colonel William Henry Asbury Speer through a diary and a number of letters to his folks back home. While the diary does show the horrors of the war and the problems of being captured, the focus of the work is to show the inner conflicts suffered by those who answered the call to duty to fight for their nation (whether it was the Confederate States of America or the United States) and the pain those men felt because they were fighting against friends and family.

The bitterness of family members over the war and the death of loved ones is made painfully clear by a letter written by Col. Speer's mother several years after he was killed fighting in the 28th North Carolina at Reams Station in August of 1864. This book brings us closer to understanding the complexities of the Civil War, a war that was not only fought between nations, but between friends and families.

C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia as a series for children, but it is clearly as imaginative and planned as any popular adult fiction. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the fifth book of the series and tells the story of Lucy, Edmund, Prince Caspian and the irritable Eustace. These old friends sail on a rickety boat named the Dawn Treader. As they travel in search of the lost land of Aslan, they encounter many unforgettable situations. Aslan is a magical lion that helps the creatures of Narnia keep peace with the other wicked creatures. Lucy learns when to use her magical healing water, and Eustace learns tobe forgiving and generous. Eustace claims he was kidnapped because while journeying to the Narnian world, Edmund and Lucy brought him along by mistake. Throughout the trip Eustace keeps a journal that C.S. Lewis shares with the reader occaisonally. While keeping the journal Eustace realizes that he has been quite a bother along the voyage. From the beginning of the story, Caspian has been searching for distant relatives of his Father. As he finds them, he uncovers mysteries and facts of his past.
I really enjoyed The Voyage of the Dawn Treader because C.S. Lewis portrayed characters that I can relate to. The adventure in the story keeps you reading and thje humor makes you laugh.

Although, in specific details, this book does not follow the television series entirely, it is still a worthwhile read; and provides readers with various details about the characters which the TV series does or could not, due to the limitations of the medium (characther depth, etc.). The book is basically a novelization of 10 choice episodes from the first 2 series of Waiting for God, the BAFTA-nominated television series about the misadventures of two OAPs (Old Age Pensioners), Tom Ballard & Diana Trent. If you are a fan of British Comedy, this book is definitely for you--regardless of whether you've seen the TV series (shown on PBS in the US) or not.

It's nice to know that next to things like 'Box Office Poison' and 'Strangers in Paradise' there's more like it available in my favorite subgenre, namely 'The Waiting Place' (this books collects #1-6 of the series).
I compare it mainly to Strangers in Paradise because it really is a lot like it, only it centers around more and more various young people. Where it differs from Strangers in Paradise is in the fact that it doesn't try to built a humorous factor in it. It just 'reports' everyday, typical life.

It's about:
Jeffrey just moved with his parents to a place far away from where they used to live. He came from a big city and now has to live in a minor village full of rednecks, with all their presumptions. Needless to say he's having a hard time at it. In the meanwhile the other youngsters there are also trying to create some movement in their lives, since their habitat in itself offers little.
Most of the time all the characters are dealing with typical problems you face at their age (the phase between youngster/young adult), like insecurity about oneself and about girls, wether you're gonna fit in, and how you're gonna tell your parents your "awful" secret. Some of them start realizing the difference between what things used to mean to them when they were kinds and now. It has a high "Deja-Vu' factor.

This book collects the first 6 issues, like I said, which are not a completed arc. That is not a bad thing because there ARE no arcs really, it's more like watching an ongoing tv-series. Little subplots start and end all the time, but they are intertwined, there are no 'real' endings anywhere.
Another, what I consider, strong point is that Kelly (he writer) tells it like it is, no romanticized elements. This makes it unpredictable all the way, you never know what is going to happen next. Artwise it's pretty nice. It's no Terry Moore but that's mainly due to the difference in style, not in skill. It's very clear and more than sufficient. My conclussion shall not be a surprise: if you like Box Office Poison and/or Strangers in Paradise (for those who haven't read those: comicbooks about 'real life', in all its aspects with as little as possible exaggeration) this will probably be to your liking.

This book has a great amount of wisdom within it's pages. It really unveils the Serenity prayer from a Christian viewpoint. Each devotional focuses on one of the key words in the Serenity Prayer (God, Grant, Serenity, Accept, etc) and has a discussion topic around that word. The words are cycled throughout the year. Why is this book out of print - I don't know!?!?!

PS- The only negative point is a lack of a good subject index.

This book is well researched, well designed and well executed. The photographs are entirely in B&W and are beautifully reproduced here. Walter Burley Griffin and his most talented wife Marion Mahony are still fighting their way out of the shadows of Frank Lloyd's Wright's "presence"..however this book greatly enhances our knowledge of the legacy the Griffin's built here. Bottom line, Walter and Marion were a powerful architectural team and Illinois/Iowa both house an unbelievable collection of their prairie school gems. I would highly reccommend this book as a starting point for anyone interested in exposing themselves to the Griffins are their influence on Frank Lloyd Wright and the prairie school. FYI the first 1/3 of the book is text and the rest photographs.....I just wish the book was bigger and longer.

The main title of this book can be a little misleading, for the entries date from 1939-40, before the war in France really heated up. Sartre saw no action during this period (he was in his early 30s), but he WAS in military service on the front during the "phony war." Mostly, he had a lot of time to think and write.

Sartre worked on some of the foundations for _Being and Nothingness_ and existential theory in general, so there's some of that here, but this is a marvelously HUMAN document. As well as the sort of intellectual blasts one expects from him (Flaubert's _A Sentimental Education_ is deemed to be "clumsy, disagreeable ... utterly idiotic"), Sartre writes of his insecurities ("In relation to Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rimbaud, I have a distinct inferiority complex because they managed to destroy themselves"; "It's true, I'm not authentic. With everything that I feel, before actually feeling it I know that I'm feeling it ... I fool people: I look like a sensitive person but I'm barren ... I am nothing but pride and lucidity").

There's a lot about his love of women and burning desire for beauty -- to be IN something beautiful; and his total failure at friendships with men, save for what he termed women-men ("an extremely rare species, standing out from the rest thanks to their physical charm or sometimes beauty, and to a host of inner riches which the common run of men know nothing of ... I'm a woman-man myself, I think, for all my ugliness").

Sometimes he is flip, sounding more like he's trying out aphorisms for size ("I would condemn someone definitively for a linguistic mannerism, but not because I'd seen him murder his mother"), and sometimes simple and sincere ("A day begun with a breakfast is a lucky day"). Above all, he broods on the nature of freedom and authenticity. This is a much more accessible work than much of his fiction or polished essays.

This historically-arranged selection of poems about warfare and its effects on the human mind, body, and heart, covers nearly 200 years between the late 1700s and the 1960s. Produced in Britain, and read by two British actors, Paul McGann and Regine Candler, it concentrates on English poets, with short forays into works by American authors.

Warhorse selections - "Charge of the Light Brigade", "In Flanders Fields" - are mixed with less well-known poems like "The Dead Statesman", a surprising (at least to me) burst of post-WWI bitterness from Kipling. Glory and horror intertwine from the earliest works to the most recent, but horror dominates as the present approaches. Changes in attitudes about war and patriotism come to vivid life. The effect of hearing these works read aloud is almost one of traveling in time. Paul McGann reads the lion's share - not surprising with so masculine a subject matter-and is IMO much the better reader, tho Ms. Candler is strikingly effective in places. The majority of works are from WWI - the period that produced so many gifted poets - and in them one hears older, strongly-held beliefs about Duty and Country clashing with the despairing fury engendered by the incomprehensible waste of trench warfare. McGann is able to bring understanding and force to everything from innocent jingoism to pity, from rage to transcendance, without forcing the material. His readings of WWII and Cold War pieces (Reed's "Lessons of the War", Lowell's "For the Union Dead", and McGough's "Icarus Allsorts" are remarkable) bring home the fear and ambivalence felt by a humanity realizing its power to destroy itself and the earth that supports it.

This is a very hard to rate novel, part of me wants to give it a lower ranking, but I think it deserves what it gets. The main problem is that it is set over a long period of time, over ten years in fact. This causes a lot of problems. For one it suffers from Villainitis and there is no clear and present villain through out the whole novel only a few minor villains that really can never be taken seriously. Also because the "journey" in the title is a life journey and not one event the novel is broken up into different adventures and problems rather than one long quest. All these adventures allow, Tol, a farmer's son, to rise to greatness in the Ergothian Empire, right up to the side of the Emperor. He defeats wizards, rebels, and battles with the mysterious monster XimXim.

This is most definitely a beginning novel to a trilogy, it's leading up to the bigger story that is going to happen in the second and third novels. That being said, it does an excellent job setting that story up (should have probably stayed away from the classic Arthurian love triangle though) for what is coming. It is well written, has tons of action, a tad of mystery, and more magic than most. For those that love kender, a third of the novel takes place in the kender land of Hylo, so there are plenty of pesky kender. But still it was a set up novel, so don't expect it to be one full novel with another episode coming, it answers almost no questions, and if you can't go without them I suggest waiting until the second Ergoth volume comes out.

Final Thought: They named a monster XimXim, what's next WakaWaka?

In 2025, compared with the anarchy that surrounds it, Edinburgh remains a calm island of no crime. Though rationing is a way of life and entertainment only comes in the form of a festival for tourists, the clever City Council occupies the restless residents with a weekly lottery. How can individuals not play when a five-minute shower a day is a potential prize.

However, a missing person interrupts the lottery nirvana when Kennedy, a winner, simply vanishes. Rumors spread quickly, and the concerned Edinburgh leadership hires private investigator Quint Dalrymple to quickly learn the truth. Before he can solve that case, murdered bodies begin to appear in the Leith, leaving the City Council in a panic, a city in fear, and a pressured Quint trying to stop a body count from growing any further.

Award winning Paul Johnston's world is radically different from that of today. Global warming has reached extreme levels turning the climate into the Big Heat. Everything seems rationed and centrally controlled. Still Quint remains an interesting character with his obsession for the blues standing out in this drab world. Mr. Johnston brings in his full cast from the previous two books, but instead of the welcome return of old friends, this sends a clever story line spinning into chaos greater than his surrounding countryside. Doomsday fanatics will relish WATER OF DEATH and its predecessors for its descriptive look at an apparently dying society trying to survive. However, readers of other science fiction sub-genres will struggle with the plot's anarchy.

Harriet Klausner