The cover alone is worth the price! Each stone in this photograph of 46 specimens of turquoise is identified at the start of the book. High quality natural stones from the most important mines of the Southwest are pictured side by side with treated and plastic versions.

The book is a collection of 10 articles written for New Mexico Magazine. Titles include "Turquoise and the Native American", "Buyer Beware: Hidden Facets of Turquoise", Young Native Jewelers Signal Change of Guard" and "The Plight of Old Pawn". High quality photographs of famous mines, artisans and jewelry, both historic and current, will whet the appetite of would-be collectors but also leave an impression of love and respect for the land and its native inhabitants.

Read this book under a strong light to catch the full depth of color!

A probing, insightful analysis of Therese's inner life.

"The Inner Life of Therese of Lisieux" is a short and powerful study of Therese, carefully researched and fascinating. In ten short chapters O'Connor examines Therese's way, Therese and the priesthood, and reveals what was original in Therese's thought and life against the context of her society. Her study of "the rough, unpolished details of her days" yields a deep understanding of Therese's life as it was lived. Don't miss it.

This is a wonderful resource for teachers. A variety of activities are given for each goal. Ladders to Literacy provides activities that parents can do with their children at home, including parents who are on the go.

One Belfast Boy begins with An Old Story, a very brief history of Northern Ireland. It then continues with A New Story, which is about young Liam's life in Belfast. The text follows Liam through several of his days at home, in the neighborhood, at school, and with the boxing club. The photos which illustrate this book tell their own story, sometimes illuminating an event such as the pre-school soccer game; sometimes chilling the reader with a terrifying contrast: boys leaving school / soldier watching through his gunsight. Touching, moving, excellent book which gives new meaning to that sometimes hackneyed term, "cross-cultural."

This short biography of Therese is a rich introduction to her life. Carefully researched and rich in details that bring Therese to life as a real woman. Not an exhaustive biography, but what there is is excellent.

It's one of life's little ironies that you find yourself engaging in things as you grow older that you hated when you were younger. Maybe hate is too strong a word. It wasn't that I hated grammar, but that I really didn't give it much thought, and felt that time spent in English class doing so was wasted. Since then, I've become not just a writer who wants to be read, but also a teacher of writing, who has to convince his students that grammar is important.

Having resources like this book by O'Conner certainly helps. Rather than the dry stuff foisted off on middle- and high-school students, O'Conner leads through examples. This is a nice companion to her earlier book, Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, which covers some of the wrong-headed beliefs that most students emerge from secondary school with (such as the incorrect idea that it is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition, which I just did). It's a good writing book that gets you to thinking it's time to pick up the pen and write something, and that's how I felt several times while reading through this one. In fact, her section on point of view "cured" a bit of writer's block I was having with regard to one story that had been lingering about in my mind for the last four years and which I had been unable to start.

I'd be tempted to do away with the writer's handbook for these two books of O'Conner's, but that wouldn't be smart. These are good, but they aren't a reference so much as they are an explanation for why grammar needs to be observed.

Patricia O'Conner's Words Fail Me presents so many practical insights into effective writing that I suspect it would be valuable to almost any writer. And there's a bonus: she has a great sense of humor. She debunks the faux pas fallacies that snobbishly tell us how not to write -- don't use contractions, don't start sentences with conjunctions, etc. And she tells us how these supposed 'rules' came to be. Wisely, O'Conner's most important rule is this:
"Your first duty to the reader is to make sense. Everything else -- eloquence, beautiful images, catchy phrases, melodic and rhythmic language -- comes later, if at all. I'm all for artistry, but it's better to write something homely and clear than something lovely and unintelligible."
I read quite a lot, mostly nonfiction (philosophy, reference, science, theology, and wilderness travel). Inevitably, reading compels me to write -- I've submitted more than fifty book reviews to this forum. Yet I'm never quite happy with my writing. This is not unusual. "Your favorite novel or history or memoir is just someone's last revision," says O'Conner.
As a student I disliked studying the nuts and bolts of English. Words, their accuracy, economy, and artistry, interest me far more now, and this book is the first "how to write" text I have read. At the risk of belaboring the obvious (because good writing doesn't): it was a good choice.
Highly recommended.

I bought a personal copy of this author's last book, WOE IS I. After reading it and realizing how clevely it was written and how useful the content was, I went out and got 5 more for several friends. We have all found it wonderfully helpful for those vexing questions of grammar and usage. Well, Ms. O'Conner has done it again. In her witty, breezy, upbeat style she has written a truly readable book about writing. It seems like literally millions of us are communicating more and more - both instantly and globally - these days thanks to the Internet. Writing clearly and in an interesting manner has become more important than ever. And, since our own written words are often our first introduction to others, it's beneficial to each of us to learn the tricks and tips that make writing flow smoothly and represent accurately what we really mean to say. Ms. O'Conner example's are from all sorts of literature and from her own imagination. I laughed out loud at Kim and Alec in the hot tub. And several quoted passages have inspired me to read the works in which they appear. I hope this book finds a wide audience. It would be useful for anyone who writes and aspires to do it well.

I agree with several recurring criticisms in these reviews: O'Conner's neglect of the issues surrounding the title (though you can roughly figure it out for yourself, something she may have intended), her arbitrary approach to other grammarians--one moment scoffing at their rigidity, the next moment unloading stink-bombs and rhetorical miscues of her own--and the relentless witticisms. But I use this book almost every day; when I read, I keep this and a copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary close at hand. Having read it, I'm proud to be able to pinpoint all sorts of grammatical errors in stuffy scholarly journals like the Wilson Quarterly. Her glossary and bibliography are immensely useful, and the indexing and chapter layour make it easy to relocate relevant material. It is not very comprehensive, but it has the potential to sharpen your awareness and basic understanding of grammar. I've moved on to the 'Elements of Style,' and have found O'Conner's book helpful in navigating that text as well.

Grammar and fun. How odd those two words look in such close proximity to each other. Granted, Fowler can be amusing at times, particularly when he's in full peevish mode and attired in full curmudgeonly armor. Mencken certainly summons up a fairly regular chuckle, when dealing with topics related to English/American usage.

But if you're like me, you tend to gloss over those exceptions and hearken back to 9th and 10th grade English classes, featuring Messrs. Strunk & White, supplemented by the latest book of torture published by McGraw Hill, with an exercise book on top of that. Ugh!

I wish now that Ms. O'Conner's witty, 227 pg. text had been available at that time and that I would have had English teachers enlightened enough to use it, even if only as a supplement.

"Woe is I" is a pleasure to read. She accomplishes that rare deed of sallying forth against the convulsive, recalcitrant, obfuscating, hydra-headed monster that is English Grammar and actually coming out of the battle victorious.

She accomplishes this through sheer force of wit. This is not your typical handbook of style, as you might glean from reading over the sample pages. That will give you an idea of the charm and humor that Ms. O'Conner brings to bear on various grammatical bugaboos. Some of my favorite examples: "Back to the drawing board. 'Back to Roget's Thesaurus.'" "Agree to disagree. 'People never really agree to disagree. They just get tired of arguing.'" "Bite the bullet. 'Save your teeth.'"

This book is helpful, no matter what your level of English proficiency. I recommend it to students, writers, lovers of language, Reference book junkies, word-freaks, ESL teachers, English teachers, teachers in other disciplines who need help in grading papers or to anyone else who wants to brush up his/her grammar.

BEK

I've had a pretty good education (high school, college, and some graduate school), but I've never been taught the basics of grammar. For whatever reason, teachers weren't teaching proper English when I was in school. What I've learned, l've learned on my own. No wonder I sometimes think twice (or maybe three times) when I have to choose between "who" or "whom," "which" or "that," "it's" or "its," "me" or "I," etc. I don't consider myself stupid or uneducated, just handicapped by a typical 1990's high-school and college education. In fact, I had resigned myself to being handicapped until I discovered "Woe Is I" a year ago. Wow! It's the only grammar book I've ever seen that really explains good English in plain English. That means it's perfectly understandable to someone like me who's never been taught all the grammar terminology: gerunds, indirect objects, dangling modifiers, whatever. You don't have to know any of that stuff to read and understand this book. A friend of mine once heard Patricia O'Conner say on a radio show that you don't have to know all the parts of a car to drive one, so why should you have to know all the parts of speech to speak correctly? "Woe Is I" is proof of that. In addition to being easy to read, it's also entertaining. Who would have believed that a grammar book could be funny? Oh, and if I've made any grammatical mistakes, don't blame Ms. O'Conner. Blame me, or all those teachers who never taught me.

I first saw this book whilst touring the Prado in Madrid, and I fell in love instantly. Such illustrations and paintings! Such a wonderful history of the horse, using art as a basis. The only drawback is the relative weakness in Indian court paintings (which are chock full of horses). Other, itÂ's just wonderful. Stubbs fans take note: this is the book for you, and any other fan of horse art (especially little-known peices). So buy this book, and may the horse be with you.

Here is a collection of essays by Irish men and women (as well as Irish-Americans) edited by Tom Hayden that accomplish a number of tasks:

* Giving historical information about the famine * Describing how it affected their families * And saying how they will move on knowingly

It includes people such as Gabriel Byrne, Jimmy Breslin to Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. It isn't the definitive historical work on either Irish history (in general) or the Famine (in particular). It is, though, a good starting place.