I purchase this book and was amazed at the detail of the photos and the text. Not only did I enjoy the many photos of the Shar Pei but the text was informative and useful. Each page is in rich and bright color and is in a glossy format. I have never own a book with this type of printing. The book itself is made with high quality paper and is made the best I have ever seen a book made. The cost of this book is well worth it. And the information of the care of this breed is wonderful. I gain more knowledge of my dog and had helpful hints for my vet also. I have use the information obtain in this book for the care of my dog and the medical needs also. This book would be a wonderful gift for any Shar Pei owner or breeder.

I just knew someone had beat me to the punch in reviewing this book.

Check this out. Are you interested in taking over the world one block at a time? Are you interested in thinking out of the box in doing so (no pablum like "we need to start our own businesses" or "we need to elect people we really really trust")?

Pick this book up. Trust me. I'm willing to bet that there is at least ONE social invention in this book that would change your life if you just tried it with a few friends.

Now in an fully updated and expanded second edition, A Young Person's History Of Israel by David Bamberger is an ideal introduction for young readers as to why the state of Israel came about as well as why it, among all other nations, is so very special. This superbly written and organized history begins with describing the land the people of the old Palestine that existed for hundreds of years under Muslim rule. The next section is devoted to describing the origins of early Zionism that were to lay the groundwork for the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. The third section recounts the turbulent creation of an independent state of Israel. Section four is dedicated to the fight to build a viable state amidst hostile nations. The fifth and final section is devoted to describing the democratic state of Israel as it exists today. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white historical photos throughout, A Young Person's History Of Israel is a welcome and highly recommended addition to any personal, family, school, or community library collection.

Wonderful display of Klein's work and great indepth content. A must buy for a fan of Yves Klein!

As an actor, I fell completely in love with Zoyka's Apartment. Bulgakov has an amazing capacity for imagery. The characters are vivid and enthralling. His sense of comedy remains unsurpassed by the writers of today. I highly recommend this hysterically ludicrous play to any fan of Bulgakov. You may also enjoy reading anything by Kurt Vonnegut, his work runs along the same lines as Bulgakov's.

This book is dead brill! A bit dated in parts, but such is life. Adrian, would-be intellectual, full-time hypochondriac, part-time carer to the aged (against his will), and all-around social observer, is a teenager you have probably met. he tries too hard to be himself and in the end is as barmy as a fruitbat. Townsend's style is joyous and rarely hits a sour note; young Master Mole and The Love Of His Life Pandora are marvelous; the Familia Mole (extended and temporary) are insane in a normal kind of way. This book looks at the normal world through the eyes of a child on raging hormones and scattered education who might himself be off his chum by just a tad. Read it and groan all over again over those teenage years of bliss we all weathered...

I first read "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole" a few years ago for a writing class in college, and I absolutely LOVED it! I read it over and over! I knew there was another book, but couldn't find it anywhere until a few months ago when I found it on-line. I just finished reading "Adrian Mole: The Lost Years" and loved it just as much as the first one! Are there any other Adrian Mole books? If anyone knows of any other and where I can get them, please e-mail me!

The diaries of Adrian Mole are extremely comical and entertaining. I cried of laughter through all of them - once you start reading them you can't stop and time flies by so fast. So if you're looking for something funny, easy and fast to read, and a book that will stay in your mind and heart forever, read Adrian Mole Secret Diaries - you won't regret it.

For readers, this is a four-star entree meal. Garcia's prose is richly seasoned. His characterization is complete and immensely human. With his style of writing, he creates for the reader a prose that is complex, ornate, baroque, and deeply satisfying.

The novel's scope ranges over the youth and old age of three characters, caught in unrequited love, surviving civil wars, deforestation of landscapes--both psychological and also natural--and outbreaks of cholera. Behind this hubris, Garcia details the fine distinctions of love and love lost.

This novel, finally, gets better when you finish reading it; the sensual prose seeps into the reader's memory and makes for a haunting, echoing satisfaction. Yes, the ending is fulfilling. In fact, the last 50 pages of the book are simply incredible, but of course, the readers needs to read everything prior to this--as set-up--to get the reward of the finale.

This is an incredibly satisfying novel.

Love in the Time of Cholera written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a truly marvelous love story. As you read the book you'll find that you are effectively drawn into the steamy backwater of coastal Columbia a century ago, with all of the sensual stimula of unrequited love.

The author's powerful descriptive narrative quickly transforms the scene as the reader will feel a master storyteller totally engrossing. The story is about a love between a man and a woman, a love so strong that after being rejected early on in life carries on to later life... yes, fifty-one years later the love is rekindled. Truly making this story one of shear beauty.

Not only this, but the author makes this story unbearably touching, your heart will be taken away by the power of this love story. If you haven't read any of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books, this is where to start as compelling as this story is... the true nature of this story bursts with the magic of ordinary life told with a rich human flair.

This is a book that simply cannot to be ignored. Lush, sensual and poetic in its prose, Marquez spins a vivid tale about a man's love for a woman that waits fifty years to come to fruition. Beneath the imagery and romance, however, lies Marquez's sharp observations on the nature of relationships, marriage and old age -- all told with Marquez's brand of humor, wisdom and unflinching veracity.
The imagery pops alive in the mind's eye like no film can. In a tropical Caribbean setting, sometime between the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the environment becomes just as much a character as Florentino Ariza, and the dramatic story unfolds of his love for Fermina Daza. I'd love to recommend this for mature teens, but to truly savor it, you'll have to have lived a little. In the end, no matter what age, you will be the better for having read this masterpiece!

There is a new band of translators who are trying to capture the feel of original cadence and language by applying the cadence and language of modern English. Strict translation is sacrificed for readability; this, in turn, is mitigated by plenty of clear notes and commentary. Elio Zappulla's new iambic pentameter, unrhymed verse translation of "Inferno" by Dante Alighieri succeeds as such a translation. It is a joy to read. Dante's 14th century masterpiece, one of the first major works to be written in the vernacular (of Italy), is appropriately translated into the ordinary and occassionally coarse words of English. The result is anything but ordinary; sometimes reaching the extraordinary clarity afforded by the verse (over the prose). If you enjoyed Rober Fagles' translation of Homer's "Odyssey" or Everett Fox's translation of "The Five Books of Moses", then you will breeze through Zappulla's "Inferno". I hope that Zappulla is already preparing translations of "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso". --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other notes: The book is pleasantly typeset. The paintings by Gregory Gillespie are, unfortunately, an unnecessary distraction. I found the diagrams in a Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed translation much more illuminating.

Dante Alighieri's three part epic The Divine Comedy ranks highly among the literature of the world. Written in early Italian and rhymed in terza rima, it's 100 cantos display impressive allegory and use of scholastic philosophy. In INFERNO, the first volume, the narrator finds himself "half of our life's way" (around 35 years old) and lost in a forest at night. When day breaks, three savage animals bar his escape. The Roman poet Virgil (best known for his AENEID) appears and tells him that Heaven has sent him to lead Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and finally Heaven to bring him out of his spiritual malaise.

Dante's Hell differs from the traditional view of everyone together amongst flames. Here the dead receive different punishments based on their sins. Thus, the lustful are caught up eternally in a whirlwind, and astrologers and magicians have their heads reversed (so those who tried to fortell the future can only see their past). Nowhere, however, does anything seem wrong. The dead are placed into Hell not by an unjust God, but by their own decisions and actions. INFERNO is a slow beginning, most of the grace and beauty of the Comedy lies in the subsequent volumes, PURGATORIO and PARADISO. However, this first volume has a solid role in the allegorical significance of the Comedy. Dante wrote not just a simple story of quasi-science fiction, but a moving allegory of the soul moving from perdition to salvation, the act which the poet T.S. Eliot called "Mounting the saint's stair". While INFERNO may occasionally lack excitement on the first reading, the next two volumes thrill and upon reading them one can enjoy INFERNO to the fullest.

I believe that the best translation of INFERNO to get is that of Allen Mandelbaum, which is published by Bantam (ISBN: 0553213393). Mandelbaum's verse translation melds a faithful rendering of the Italian with excellent poetry, and has been praised by numerous scholars of Dante, including Irma Brandeis. Here's an example from Canto XIII, where the poet and Virgil enter a forest where the trees are the souls of suicides:

"No green leaves in that forest, only black;
no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled;
no fruits were there, but briars bearing poison"

Mandelbaum's translation also contains an interesting introduction by Mandelbaum, extensive notes (which are based on the California Lectura Dantis), and two afterwords. The first of these, "Dante in His Age" is an enlightening biography of Dante and how he came to write the Comedy while in exile. The second "Dante as Ancient and Modern" examines Dante both as a wielder of classical knowledge and as a poet working in a new and distinctly late-Medieval style (the "dolce stil nuovo") which broke poetry out of the grip of Latin and made it something for people of every class.

Dante's Inferno, the best of the three books of the Divine Comedy, is a revelation. The imagery is powerful, the language wonderful, it description of damnation almost terrifying. It is one of the most vivid religious books ever written, on par with Paradise Lost. Dante does not just recite catholic cannon, however. He has many contemporary references to Italian politics (a subject I knew little about before reading the Divine comedy), to church politics, to classical works such as Homer and Herodotus. To read it is to see the world in the middle ages, long before the reformation. Do not be intimidated by the prospect of reading a 14th century epic poem. After the first page, the style will become familiar and you will revel in the intricate detail of Dante's underworld.

As for this particular edition, it is excellent. Ciardi gives a very good translation and, unlike other translators, preserves Dante's occasional scatalogical references and profanity. In addition, there are several useful maps of the Inferno as well as copious, informative (and necessary) endnotes at the finish of each Canto. The only way the edition could be better is if the notes were at the bottom of the page, but the Cantos are short enough that flipping to the end to read the endnotes is not the finger-breaking maneuver you might find in other editions.

This was an enjoyable and classically difficult Russian authored book to read (the other I have read is Tolstoy.) The most striking similarities between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are their intricate use of rich characters, immense dialogue, subplots, and foreshadowing.

The book starts out with a meager and demented man, Raskolnikov, shutting himself off from society, but still interestingly enough, shows much compassion and pleasure in the company of the downtrodden. Raskolnikov wants to prove a theory to himself, and perhaps to the world, that powerful men are able and predictably will seize power by force and are justified in doing so. In other words, Raskolnikov sought after a proof of his belief that he could murder a villainous old pawnbroker and be able to maintain a guilt free conscience. In order for powerful people to complete this task, they must separate their feelings and morals from society and demand the isolation that waits for them.

However, Raskolnikov has a weakness for the downtrodden victims, and seems to seek their approval. As a result, he confides in a prostitute, Sonia, who happens to represent all of the maltreated people of the world. With a confession, Raskolnikov's world is not as it seems and his preposterous theory is in ruin.

Crime and Punishment is a very difficult, but valuable and memorable read. I highly recommend reading this book, and even I would suggest reading the cliff notes version to follow up on the important symbolism saturating the novel. This book is not just about a theory, but about human society, class structure, and consciousness.

I initially approached this book with a great deal of trepidation. I had never read Dostoyevsky, and was concerned that I would get bogged down in some lengthy, mind-numbingly boring, nineteenth-century treatise on the bestial nature of man or something. I am happy to report this is not the case. Instead, and to my delight, it is a smoothly flowing and fascinating story of a young man who succumbs to the most base desire, and the impact this has both psychologically and otherwise on himself and those around him.

To be sure, the book seems wordy in places, but I suspect this has to do with the translation. And what translator in his right mind would be bold enough to edit the great Dostoyevsky? But this is a very minor problem.

What we get with Dostoyevsky is dramatic tension, detailed and believable human characters, and brilliant insight into human nature. Early in the novel our hero meets and has a lengthy conversation with Marmeladov, a drunkard. This conversation is never uninteresting and ultimately becomes pathetic and heartbreaking, but I kept wondering why so much time was spent on it. As I got deeper into the book, I understood why this conversation was so important, and realized that I was in the hands of a master storyteller. This is also indicative of the way in which the story reveals itself. Nothing is hurried. These people speak the way we actually speak to one another in real life, and more importantly, Dostoyevsky is able to flesh out his characters into whole, three-dimensional human beings.

And what a diverse group of characters! Each is fleshed out, each is marvelously complex. Razujmikhin, the talkative, gregarious, good-hearted, insecure and destitute student; Sonia, the tragic child-prostitute, with a sense of rightness in the world; Petrovich, the self-important, self-made man, completely out of touch with his own humanity; Dunia, the honorable, wronged sister: we feel like we know these people because we've met people like them. They fit within our understanding of the way human beings are.

Dostoyevsky also displays great insight into human nature. Svidrigailov, for example, talks of his wife as liking to be offended. "We all like to be offended," he says, "but she in particular loved to be offended." It suddenly struck me how true this is. It gives us a chance to act indignantly, to lash out at our enemies, to gain favor with our allies. I don't believe I've ever seen this thought expressed in literature before. In fact, it never occurred to me in real life! Petrovich, Dunia's suitor, not only expects to be loved, but because of his money, and her destitution, he expects to be adored! To be worshipped! He intentionally sought out a woman from whome he expected to get this, and is comletely flummoxed when she rejects him. His is an unusual character, but completely realized.

There is so much more to talk about: the character of Raskolnikov, which is meticulously and carefully revealed; the sense of isolation which descends on him after committing his crime; the cat and mouse game played on him by the police detective. I could go on and on. I haven't even mentioned the historical and social context in which this takes place. Suffice to say this is a very rich book.

Do not expect it to be a rip-roaring page turner. Sit down, relax, take your time, and savor it. It will be a very rewarding experience. And thank you SL, for recommending it.

It would be easy to dissect the plot of this timeless classic, to go into teh writers prison time and gambling habits and addcition to excess and misery. That would be simple. Instead I will talk about the craft of writing itself. This book excels not so much based upon form in the plot structure. The story is simple and even when examined rather sad and simplistic. Instead it is the craft of writing. Nearly 500 pages of true poetic writing. Writing that sustains even as to some points it bores. By bores I mean in length and depth of personal introspection. Through American fiction we are used to action, action, action, dialogue explaining what the action was. In Russian literature there is a focus on history in relationship to the main characters and their circumstances. Russian literature is concerned with the political forces that shape lives, in America we are concerned with how fame shapes the body politic. Take Dreiser's Sister Carrie as an example of the desire for fame at the cost of morals in comparison to the theft of money for survival, from a despicable person.
What I often do with "heavy" books like this is I get the Cliffnotes to accompany the book as I read it, to in a sense have both a discussion internally and a map so that I don't miss any of the rich fields along the way. That is how the classics should be taught, with an eye to the brains that have yet to be initiated into such heavy patience reading.

I just read the book today and finished it. It took me like eight or nine hours. A WALK TO REMEMBER is about this man-Landon Carter-in his late fifties that tells the story about his senior year and that he gets to know this wonderful girl-Jamie Sullivan-that he has known for most of his life and spent part of it making fun of her behind her back. Jamie wasn't an average teenager and most kids from school thought she was strange. But Jamie was really special and if you read the story you'll know why. Throughout the whole story Jamie is nothing but sweet and kind to Landon and everybody else(and I do mean everybody). And Landon finds himself falling in love with her. She changes his life and pretty much makes him a better person. The first few chapters weren't really that exciting but afterwards the story was starting to get interesting. The ending was so moving and sad. It really is a beautiful story. If you saw the movie you'll find that the book is a bit different but its still really good. Its not the best book in the world but its the best that I've read. So buy and read the book.

Well, I'm a guy. And this book was only the second "romance" novel I've ever read. And I bought it for my 13-year-old daughter--but then I decided to read it first after seeing the words "first love" on the back cover. I wanted to see exactly what kind of "love" author Sparks had in mind. Anyway, this novel was pretty good. And I DID cry, just like the main male character, Landon Carter--the "I" of this 1st-person narrative--assured me I would. But the story was VERY predictable. I haven't read Sparks's other books, so I don't know how they compare to _A Walk to Remember_. But one thing that really distracted me was the "tone" of the writing.Sparks has the older adult Carter reminiscing about when the story occured, but has him telling it in the language a high schooler would use. From the get-go and throughout the entire book, however, I imagined this story being told by the ADULT Carter--as if he and I were sitting in front of the fireplace. So, to me, the language didn't match the age of the one doing the reminiscing. In spite of that, I really loved the story. And it's not at all trashy. Which is why my daughter is reading the book now...as I type.

A Walk To Remember by Nicholas Sparks follows Landon Carter, a seventeen-year-old boy living in the quiet town of Beaufort, North Carolina in 1958. He is considered dangerous and rebellious although he is actually not. Jamie Sullivan is the daughter of Hegbert, a widowed Baptist minister. She is a "goody two shoes" who is often made fun of. She takes care of stray animals and spends time at a local orphanage.
In Landon's senior year of high school, he decides to take drama because it is an easy class. However, he does not know that the drama class is expected to put on the senior play, The Christmas Angel, written by Hegbert Sullivan. Jamie will undoubtedly play the female lead in the show, but Landon is unexpectedly asked to play the male lead. He reluctantly agrees although he knows his friends will taunt him.
Finally, opening night of the play comes and the play is a hit. When Jamie first comes out in her angel costume, he thinks, for the first time, that she is beautiful. On Christmas Eve, Landon goes to the orphanage with Jamie and falls in love with her. Then, on Christmas, he brings her to his house for dinner. The next day, he kisses her for the first time.
Jamie begins to feel unusually tired but Landon dismissed the thought that anything could be wrong. He soon learns that he is wrong and that Jamie has leukemia. With Jamie getting worse by the day, Landon finally realizes what he needs to do to help himself and Jamie. Now, he asks Hegbert, and with his permission, he asks Jamie to marry him. She accepts and has a walk to remember while walking down the aisle, arm in arm with her Hegbert. Landon realizes how much he cares for Jamie and thinks about how unexpected is that he fell in love with her in the first place.
I would strongly recommend A Walk To Remember because it is a very sweet, romantic story, which has a bittersweet ending. I think that many people can appreciate the emotional aspect of the story, but I don't think that the average male reader would enjoy it as much. I enjoyed this story and I think that others will too.