I have yet to FULLY finish the book, but so far it has been GREAT! I am though, dissapointed that the editors and reviewers had to spoil the book for me and tell me that Anna's aunt dies. But, I'm on page 50 of 156, not really FULLY finished. Well, great details, very hard to put down. You feel like you are REALLY there! Well, fully recomended to anyone. A must-read book!

I read "Tom Loves Anna Loves Tom, " and was quickly engaged in the love trials of Tom and Anna. This story is better than most, it has unexpected turns everywhere you look! I highly reccomend reading this book if you like authors such as Colby Rodowsky.

Fifteen-year-old Bob Royle has just moved to Oxbridge, New Hampshire, with his mother and is starting his sophomore year at Burgess High School. He has no plans of drawing attention to himself right away, but that plan quickly evaporates when a senior, Carl Riemer, befriends him and encourages him to run for class president. From the beginning Carl is in charge and you can almost see the strings he attaches to Bob.

Although Bob loses the election, it doesn't discourage him from joining the tennis team or playing in the school band. He soon falls for Sarah Ott, who at the time is dating a jock (Eric Lombard) and "just wants to be friends" with Bob. Sarah's best friend Renee Webb, however, is interested in Bob. He returns the feelings half-heartedly, but uses her mostly as a link to Sarah.

"Coming About" mainly focus on Bob and Carl's friendship, if you can call it that. A lot of the time Bob is trying to avoid Carl, and who can blame him? Carl has a strange obsession with Admiral Horatio Nelson and war. He's also a chronic liar, but makes a one-lie policy with Bob; he will only lie once to Bob, which I thought was the lie, but it's not. I won't reveal what it is though, in case you want to find out for yourself.

More strange behavior: Once Carl weasels himself into the Royle home, he begins calling Bob's mother "Mom", which I thought was a little bit weird, especially when nobody corrects him. I suppose Carl's "adopting" Ms. Royle was his way of feeling close to an adult since his own home life is so messed up.

It took awhile for me to warm up to this book because it skips around quite a bit. However, it's a fast read (short chapters, lots of dialogue, and only 185 pages) and an overall good book.

The intended audience is 13 to 15-year-old boys (which I'm not), but I still really liked it and would recommend "Coming About" to anyone who likes reading about teen life, particularly if you have an eccentric friend like Carl.

Great read! It gives voice to a heretofore hardly mentioned voice of opposition from within Germany to Hitler's reign of terror. Following the tragic tale of heroic Otto Kiep from his childhood in pre-Nazi Germany to his unjust demise at the hands of the Nazi monsters was really spellbinding. It really opened my eyes to the plight of Germans who did not support Hitler's mad dreams, yet chose heroically to stay and work within the system to save their country.

In preparing our list of Christmas books to share with others, we had to search far and wide on amazon to find this particular book, a paperback edition of the classic Night Before Christmas.

This is the book I've used for years when reading this story to my own children, passing on Tasha Tudor and other illustrators. Why?

Although we can find the same poem and pay a lot more, with award winning illustrators, the illustrations provided by Douglas Gorsline are surely the best. They are quite colorful, and offer details little children love looking into...cats lie sleepily on the window sill, we see an overview of the town, the presents spilling from the open sack are intriguing and plentiful, and Jolly St. Nick is -- well, quite Jolly (as you can see by looking at the cover!)

The story is an "abridged version" - I'm not sure about other parents, but we read this on Christmas Eve, and we only have so much time and energy. Everything we remember from the classic poem by Clement Clarke Moore is in this version.

(From "'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse" to "He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!" In between we have everything, from the names of the eight tiny reindeer, to a belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly, including dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky".

In other words, don't be scared off by 'abridged'!)

Perhaps a hardcover edition might be more appropriate if you're giving a gift (unless you're giving to more than one child), but this book is one of the best offers we've found!

A classic done simply and inexpensively!

I discovered this book 31 years ago, for my daughter and it is still loved by all the family. The illustrations are wonderful, warm, charming and delightful and bring a special meaning to the story. We still read it to all the young children on Christmas Eve and for adults we read the story and pass a grab bag gift every time the word THE is mentioned. It would not be Christmas without this book. It is magical.

This beautiful book was in my family as a hard cover edition for many years and was a Christmas Eve tradition for my four sons when they were growing up. It's poor battered body disappeared some time after the last of my little ones went off into the adult world. I am so delighted to see it back again, though this time as a nicely affordable soft cover. Clement C. Moore's enchanting story poem already provides an atmosphere filled with warmth and joyful expectation and with the addition of Tasha Tudor's quaint, nostalgic water-colors from an antique New England the Christmas magic is complete!
The winter landscapes fill our senses and Tasha's own gray tabby cat and Welsh Corgi welcome us into this charming world.
Tasha's Santa that you will meet in this book has been portrayed as the poem describes him...a right jolly old elf. He's not that much larger than the corgi and his team really consists of eight "tiny" reindeer. His pointy ears and his Eskimo mukluks add to the delightful ambiance of the book. He dances with the toys and with the happy animals and we can truly believe it will be a happy Christmas for all.
I hope this book becomes a Christmas Eve tradition for many, many more families.

VEry exiting and exquisit book!! A MUST read!!!!!! Some sentences are inappropiate though like "Catholics go to hell" I know the author didn't mean it, probably but it was very irresponsible. Charasca Dimanchenohu

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I can rarely read a novel more than once, but I have picked this up numerous times. The plot just carries you away. Adventure, romance, evil villians....

The two protagonists in this book are Sharon and Tom. Sharon is an ordinary preteen, who is intelligent and very curious. Tom, who is the older one, is also intelligent, but the more outgoing of the two. They get put into a peculiar situation, of being stuck on an island paradise, with no way of getting out. You would think being stuck on an island paradise is a good thing, but not when you are kidnapped by your aunt, in this case their Aunt Eve. She is an old lady, and the others on the island are elders too. Aunt Eve is brilliant, her kidnapping was perfect and she is always one step ahead of the kids. There are many actions from Aunt Eve that are amazingly intelligent in this thrilling and suspenseful novel. It is very cleverly written in third person and in past tense. I very much liked this book because it describes so vividly and I have a clear picture in my mind of what they looked like and I felt like I was there. The writing is glorious because it fits the exact personality as the characters and how they would act. Bruce Clements also did a good job of having cliff hangers and making it just a little suspenseful when it was needed to keep you on your toes. If there was one thing that I disliked about this book was that for just one chapter in the middle, he sort of dragged on and on about incidents and it gets just a touch boring. This book is all about losses emotionally,and about not knowing how you good you have it until you lose it, especially when you are homesick. Overall it is a very well written novel and I recommend it to all ages.

I saw this book on the shelf just when I figured I'd known all there is to know about Object Orientated Programming from "C++ for Dummies".
After a section you get a program exampling the stuff you just learnt. Fine. But then there's this long blow by blow of the code that you just have to skip. It's done even for snippets. This'll have you flippin' pages and wondering what the heck you paid for. If you don't understand the code you aren't ready for this book. Well, the book says you gotta have read "C++ for Dummies". Which'll have you back at the bookstore for "More C++ for Dummies" cause alot stuff in this book isn't covered in "C++ for Dummies". See how money is made?
My advice: Stay away from the 'for dummies' books. They're long, boring repetitive and shy away from a deeper technical understanding of the reading in fear of the reader shelving it and considering themselves a dummy.
Anyone interested in C++ certaintly doesn't want this baby food approach. You can learn all and more free from countless online tutorials. Hey, anything you wanna know can be learned on the net. But if you have to snuggle with a book, the Oreilly collection is superb.