Sarah Booth is an engaging heroine. She is a PI, and a bit of a slut, and you have to love her and Tinkie, as well as Madame Tomeeka, the recurring psychic; Sweetie Pie, her dog; and Reveler, her horse. Jitty, the resident ghost, is a bit of a pain, and rather tiring, but all in all, this was a well-written cozy. You can just feel the delta heat burning!! I'll be back for more.

Sarah Booth Delaney is not your typical southern belle. She started a P.I. business to hold on to her family's plantation. She is the last in the line of Delaney's with no sign of a progeny in sight much to the chagrin of a resident ghost named Jitty. Jitty is around to give Sarah Booth a hard time and to add the comic relief. Haines has created a witty, well-written novel rich in southern charm and atmosphere. The character relationships work as well as if not better than the mystery. I was a little disappointed at the conclusion of the book. If the author had not taken the easy way out at the end I would have given the book 5 stars.

Sarah Booth does it again! The "Bones" mysteries are fun, but as a former Ole Miss GDI and sipper of an occasional cocktail, the character of Sarah Booth is what makes this series my favorite. These books are like potato chips - no one can read just one.

I really enjoyed the book. I felt connected to the characters- as if Christine had dropped into my life-pond as well. I regret that the book had to end - but one of the few books that I did finish before starting a new one!

Leo Booth was truly inspired when he wrote this delightful book. I read it 2 1/2 years ago at a time when I needed to see what a difference negative thoughts and attitudes can make in our lives. Difficulties, disappointments, heartaches, etc. can be overcome. I love this little book. I've read it twice and it has a permanent place in my library. I also read Zukav, Redfield, Gray, Williamson, Morrissey, Weiss, Orloff, Jampolsky, Walsh, Myss, Ford, Hartmann, etc. Although I usually prefer non-fiction, this is delightful.

I truly went through some hard times before I read this. Both at school and at home. But this book sure did help me. I beleive that the gifts that the angel, the frog, the mule, the fox, the Bermese cats, the sheepdog, the hedgehog, the snail and the pig gave to each other the main spirtule gifts life always offers. Perseverance, Forgiveness, Integrity, Joy, Commitment, Patience, Acceptance, Courage, Trust and Change. The Gift that I would give to Mr. Wogglebug would be Love. There's a power in the Gift of Love when it's Love that you least expect. I think I like Cedric the frog best of all. I just love froggies. How they leap and hop and the sounds that they make. RIBBET! Ever since I learned to love the Frogman I loved froggies. I have even decided that when my puppy dies I am going to get a pet frog. And the Frogman NEEDS to read this book!

Penrod Schofield is a very bad little boy. Well it is not even that he is a bad child it is just that he gets blamed for every thing that happens; for instance when his sisters dress disappears and ends up in dukes dog house and Penrod got blamed for it even though duke took it. He enjoys writing, and playing with his dog Duke who is almost always with him. Penrod thinks of himself as the class clown and tends not to be very truthful. Penrod has an unimportant role in the school production of The Round Table, but do not tell him that because he thinks if he dose not go the show will not go on with out him. Through out the book Penrod grows up a lot in my opinion for example he tell his father the truth at the end of the book which I did not think would happen. He does get in a lot of trouble whether it's eating too much candy or squealing on his sister.

I did not like Penrod because it was in my opinion aimed more for boys and not as much towards girls or maybe it was just me but I was not entertained through out the whole book. There were most definitely parts I liked for example parts were Penrod is in conversation; one part I did not like was the excerpts from Penrod's book about how Mr. Wilson is killed. I liked the conversational parts because through out the book you are kind of in Penrod's head, and I did not like that. But in conversation you sort of get both views from both people not just what Penrod thinks. Don't lie because no one will believe you even if you are right, that is the moral of this story. I hope my review helped.

The Penrod series of novels is one of the most effective evocations of the experience of being a child ever written. They deal with the daily life and trials of a boy of eleven and twelve in turn of the century (1900) Indiana. The humor is found in the petty hypocrisies of the adults and the naivete of the children and how those two things intertwine. If you have ever day-dreamed in school or yearned for the favor of the prettiest girl in your class, you will appreciate these stories. NB. They are period pieces of the purest kind, so you should expect terms and attitudes to reflect the age from which they come.

"Penrod" is a great novel -- interesting, enlightening, profound, grandiloquent and one of the most hilarious books ever written.

Aspects of the subject matter, however, while generally accepted in the early 1900s and treated kindly herein by the author, would simply not fly under today's political-correctness coercion. As far as popular literature is concerned, it is effectively a banned book. Consequently, "Penrod" eventually will fade from general literary consciousness, and linger only in the memories of those who truly appreciate a fine novel.

As a parent, I do not like this book. I have two boys and they both love it. They would read it every night If they could. I find it very frustrating, on most pages there are more things wrong they the number they ask for. For instance, if it say 4 things are wrong, my boys usually come up with 6-7. I have tried to donate this book to charity several times, but my boys will not part with it. I just don't have the heart to get rid of it without their consent. Your kids will love it, As a parent I don not recomment it.

Wacky Wednesday

Theo LeSieg

Reading Level 1.2 

Wacky Wednesday is a great book for younger children! I would really recommend it! The illustrations are wonderful, bright, funny and very cute! Wacky Wednesday is a very good book for finding and helping children to look for different objects. It is really quite fun trying to find the things that are wacky!!

This book deserves more than five stars and is one of the best beginning readers ever created!

Wacky Wednesday combines the interesting repetition of a beginning reader with a fun set of picture puzzles. The two features are wonderful together for encouraging careful observation (useful in life, as well as in word recognition).

As a result of this brilliant book concept, Theodore Geisel (a k a Theo. Le Sieg -- Geisel backwards, and Dr. Seuss) have teamed up with New Yorker cartoonist, George Booth, to create a fun classic that will be enjoyed by parents and children for many generations to come.

Imagine a day that begins when you look up in bed over your head, and see something funny:

"It all began with that shoe on the wall.

A shoe on the wall . . . ?

Shouldn't be there at all!"

A child wakes up one morning to finds increasing numbers of unusual objects in rather odd places. Pretty soon, the objects even begin start to split apart. "And I said, 'Oh, MAN!' And that's how Wacky Wednesday began."

The child looks out the window and sees a bunch of bananas growing in a normal tree and water running through a garden hose with a long section missing in it. Out in the hall, a candy cane holds up a part of a hall table, one door has two knobs, and a picture is upside down. In the bathroom, the child wears one sock while showering, there's a palm tree in the toilet, one faucet is upside down, and a fish is swimming happily in the shampoo bottle.

In the bedroom while dressing, four things are wrong (including more misplaced shoes). In the kitchen, this grows to five. On the way to school, there are six. Later, down the street, there are seven. Outside the school are eight. In the classroom, there are nine.

That's when cognitive dissonance sets in. The teacher says, "Nothing is wacky here in my class! Get out! You're the wacky one! OUT!"

Outside the school now, there are ten new wacky things. Down the street, eleven more . . . then another twelve.

"I ran and knocked over Patrolman McGann."

"'Don't be sorry,' he smiled. 'It's that kind of day. But be glad! Wacky Wednesday will soon go away!"

"Only twenty things more will be wacky."

"Just find them and then you can go back to bed."

And with that, "Wacky Wednesday was gone . . . and I even got rid of that shoe on the wall."

The pictures present lots of opportunities to help your child notice how things work. Water needs to go through something to come out the other end. You need a door at the end of steps to get into a house. Windows cannot stand by themselves in the middle of a lawn. People don't drive sitting in the back seat of a car. The beauty of this kind of picture juxtaposition is in the opportunity to have many conversations with your child to open up the beauty of how things fit together, and don't work so well when they don't fit.

As for the beginning reader aspect, the book has many one syllable words that rhyme. This provides the maximum ease for decoding the letters and turning them into words. I put in the examples of the rhymes here to make that point for you.

I thought that the ways the details in the pictures were jumbled were quite imaginative. The wacky elements are well distributed on a page, and seldom repeat the jokes. This makes it continually interesting to search for them.

Ultimately, the book is rewarding too for the idea the teacher expresses -- that the child is having a wacky day rather than that anything is really wrong. We all have days like that. Then, suddenly they are over. That is good psychological reassurance for your child. You should encourage that thought, as well.

After you finish enjoying the book, I suggest that you each try your hand at creating a two page layout with pictures and a simple rhyme. That will make you both appreciate the book more, and give you a fun experience together.

Enjoy finding what needs to be unwhacked!

I just finished an old paperback of this book. It is currently out-of-print, and I hear it is about to be reissued. It was recommended to me as I prepared for a holiday in Hong Kong and Japan. Martin Booth's extreme detail can be tedious at times, but more often than not, he vividly recreates places and situations through sensory details, compelling language and rich characterization. Despite the protagonist's relentless downward spiral, I remained hooked until the end--an ending that is inevitable, but somehow I maintained some tiny morsel of hope, perhaps as Hiroshima Joe himself did.
I must repeat a concern from another post, since it exactly mirrored my own reaction. I did not know in advance that the main character was homosexual, and I was surprised at how matter-of-factly it was revealed and how convincingly it became a part of our understanding and compassion for Joe--THAT IS until near the end when he grossly attempts to seduce and assault a young boy. It did not ring true to his character--however unhinged Joe had become--and it does not ring true to accepted understanding of child molestation. It runs the risk of perpetuating the falsehood that all gay men COULD be pederasts.
That serious concern aside, I think the novel is a masterful achievement. It deserves to have renewed exposure.

Like Steve Rosse, I found this book abroad. I came across it at the British Council library in Mexico City, and was also deeply effected. I think of it often, and it really came to mind after reading John Lanchester's "Fragrant Harbor" which seems very soft edged next to "Hiroshima Joe".

You can really feel Hong Kong in this book--and not the usual high end of the city where you would expect to find an Englishman like Joe. He is clinging to the very edge of the respectability that his Englishness gives him, and the fact that others know how close he is to falling gives him a scary vulnerability. He has lost all face. He is an addict and a thief, and his loss of control leads him to abuse the only person he can imagine is weaker than he is--a child.

Taken prisoner by the Japanese during the siege of Hong Kong, Joe never goes home when the war is over. Martin Booth so convincingly sets up Joe's past that we ache for him as he is now.

Booth builds up real suspense in telling Joe's story, something that few novels manage these days when you have no doubt that the protagonist will triumph for the sake of the sequel. Joe is threatened from so many different sides that you cannot imagine how his story will end.

I found a battered paperback edition of Hiroshima Joe in a crummy guest house in Chiang Rai, Thailand, in 1990. Read it cover to cover in one sitting, then walked around stunned for two days. Threw away the copy I had, and I regret it to this day, because I haven't ever met anyone else who's read this book, and for a while I thought I might have imagined the whole thing. How wonderful to find that others have read it, and liked it, and I wasn't halucinating. I hope some day I find another copy so I can read it again. Mr. Booth, thank you so much.

One of the better Tarkington tales I've read. An upbeat and at times humorous story about a middle class family and their two early 20-year-old children ( one boy and one girl ). The girl, Alice Adams, is the focus of the story, as she struggles to be liked by the town's society folks. She doesn't have the social prestige nor the money to attract many beaus.

This leads to turmoil, and Mrs. Adams tells her husband to leave the mediocre paying job he's had all his life to start his own company so they can be rich and pay their children "advantages". He does this, after many trepidations, but the basis of his newfound business is a stolen glue formula from his previous employer. This ultimately leads to his demise.

There is a bit more to this story, but all in all, it is a story of class envy, snobbery, and greed. Tarkington's main point, however, seems to be that every dark tunnel of life ultimately has some other exit that inevatibly lead to light -- as even in the Adams's darkest hour their was hope yet.

Alice Adams was funny and definitely some good quality writing. At first I thought it might be too old-fashioned since it was written in the early 1900's, but when I read it I was able to compare Alice's desire to be popular to teenage girls today. My only negative thought about this book is that some characters especially the mother, repeated things a lot. The mother had several lines that she said at least 5 times throughout the book, and that was somewhat annoying. Otherwise the book was great!

Booth Tarkington is one of my favorite authors. Noone captures the spirit of the person better than he does. The way he makes Alice Adams come alive makes me want to be there and meet this wonderful young lady. If an author can make me want to do that, he is excellent in my book.
The movie ending is the opposite of the book ending, which disappointed me, because I wanted it to be true to the book. Nevertheless, I also wanted Alice to have her dreams come true. If you really absorb yourself in the book, however, you will see that her dream DOES come true, just not necessarily the way you want it to.
There is also the beautiful way he paints the whole family into the book. I won't give it away, but you will see the intricacies woven in.
I found myself totally absorbed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.
Please read this book! You will love it!

Nocturnal is an excellent book, no doubt, but if I had leafed through it before I had bought it, I would have thought twice... Especially for the price. The art in the book has a very broad focus, and depending on what you're looking for, this might not be the book for you. Definitely eye candy...but I was expecting a little more.

An indispensible refenence for designers to the music/nightlife industry and an entertaining look book for anyone who's ever been clubbing! A huge "thank you" to the team who produced it! Worth every penny.

The plastic cover alone is worth the price of admission. A beautiful visual trip.

This book has almost everything you'll want to know. It has many recipes for men, women and teens. It also describes very well many smells of different essential oils used in perfumery. I wanted to be a little creative and make up my own perfumes. I just wish there were more tips on what scents compliment eachother so that this was easier.

This basic overview of the history and crafting of scents is a must for the small soaper or toiletries-maker's library. It has some good basic recipes to start with, and would be of interest to those involved in medieval studies.

Perfumes, Splashes & Colognes is an education in fragrance. This is a great book for the unschooled reader. The author takes you through many aspects of fragrances, their classifications, the crafting of fine perfume, and the history behind fragrances.

The recipes are informative with a description of the type of scent it will make along with the instructions. Resources for obtaining ingredients are included along with suggestions for storing, and gift giving. I have throughly enjoyed this book.

Not quite up to "Penrod," but still a lot of fun. The ending lacks the satisfaction of that of its predecessor--but there's no way it could match THAT.

Another collection of tales about Penrod Schofield and his playmate Sam. Together, the two of them get into more trouble than Dennis the Menace and the Little Rascals combined.

The tales contained weren't as interesting as the original Penrod however I was laughing out loud a time or two. Tarkington has the mannerisms down pat for a twelve year-old boy living around the WW1 area.

This book is listed as a juvenile book, however, I wouldn't recommend it for children unless they weren't afraid of dictionaries and some politically incorrect references to African-Americans. There is also a chilling tale about Penrod and Sam finding an old gun in Sam's father's drawer and what occurred with it. Too real in today's world, however the result of the tale was sobering.

This is a fine story about young boys growing up. There is a great deal of humor in it, much that is common to little boys. I think that is what makes a book like this so funny. I can relate to it.
However, the electronic version needs to be proofread to remove the countless spelling and punctuation errors. It is a shame that nowadays with all the tools available that editing of this kind is done. Whoever put the e-book together should be ashamed of their lousy work.

After seeing the rave reviews on this book, I decided to order it. As a designer, I was extremely disappointed, there was not a shred of anything in this book that I found useful. If you're looking for ideas and inspiration, I wouldn't recommend this one, if you want coffee table clutter, go for it.

My first impresion of this book was very very bad. I thought to myself that there is no use for such a book and that it is an ugly, cheap looking and unattractive waste of paper and dollars. But after spending some time with this book and diving in to the layouts i realized that i was mistaken. There is indid something in this eperiment that is very interesting and good, and it has the distinct imprint of a personal work that to me is fascinating. good work!

This is not a regular book, you dont read it, you have to experience it emotionally, if you dont have the patience to do so, dont bother. But if you do, you are about to travel through a whole new media. never seen anything like it!