There are hundreds, maybe thousands of quotation books. Some are massive attempts to cover all different subjects. Some cover a single subject, like love, politics or friendship. Others cover specific sports or authors. This one covers the big area of things positive. As a lecturer and writer on Positivity and Positive Psychology and a collector of over 400 quotation books, I find this one a real gem. It is loaded with thousands of great quotes you won't find anywhere else as well as popular quotes that show up in the biggest and best giant quote collections.

What's nice about it is the inclusion of spiritual quotes and quotes from eastern approaches, as well as more current psychology and new age texts, authors and speakers.

You can pick a topic for a lecture or writing project or just peruse it randomly and you can expect to be uplifted and inspired.

I had a pleasant surprise one day. After my 10 year old son was browsing it while sitting on the John browsing the book (he picked it up of his own accord and was reading it. That's great!) -- a he came out and showed me how he'd looked in the index and discovered a quote attributed to me-- one from a cover article I'd written for Writer's Digest in 1983, which had later been included among Reader's Digest's Points to Ponder.

If you write a lot and are not an accurate, rapid typist, get speech recognition software. If you are fast and correct, keep on keyboarding. Dragon is good but you will have to make corrections. If you already make mistakes, it does not matter if you talk or type.

Dan Newman takes you step-by-step through using Dragon Naturally Speaking. (For coverage, click on Table of Contents in the left-hand column of this page.) He even includes trouble-shooting tips and resources.

Dan Newman is a great writer, gifted computer expert and a dedicated teacher.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has to write a lot. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

Giverny is located to the north of Paris, and is connected to Paris by the rail line from Gare St. Lazare (which Monet painted several times). The view of nature we get there is a reflection of Monet's very French focus on creating gardens, a lily pond, and walkways that bring natural beauty into our controlled grasp.

I have had the pleasure of visiting Monet's home at Giverny several times since it was restored and highly recommend that you make this journey as well when you are in Paris. Your concept of Monet's work will be changed by seeing his working conditions. The grounds are primarily an extension of his studio, for making observations of nature easier. First time visitors will be shocked to realize that the lily pond was dug and expanded at great effort and expense by Monet. Without his persistence, we would be missing many of our favorite Monet paintings.

Throughout the time that Monet lived in Giverny, his eyesight deteriorated . . . mostly due to cataracts. As an artist friend of mine points out, that eye affliction greatly improved his painting by making it freer and less detailed.

He also pioneered many techniques of al fresco paining, such as creating an artist's studio in a boat for his famous river scenes. This enabled him to capture many unusual perspectives from the water to the river bank. Similarly, one purpose of the Japanese bridge over his lily pond was to give him a similar point of perspective.

The book contains a map of Giverny and Monet's property (purchased in 1890 after he originally rented it), and 81 works that he created in the area.

Missing from these reproductions are the famous water lily paintings that he gave to the French nation which are now housed in the basement of the Orangerie. Be sure you see them when you next visit Paris. Many people go to the Orangerie and never make it to the basement. These are among the greatest jewels of Impressionism.

You will be pleased to see the 25 works from the Musee Marmottan in Paris. These masterworks are also often missed by those who visit Paris because they do not know about this small gem of a museum and its superb Monet collection.

The reproductions are organized around themes: (1) river scenes (from the boat) (2) haystacks [sic] (3) poplars (4) river and fields (5) morning on the Seine (from the boat) (6) the Japanese footbridge (7) the Garden Path (8) early water lilies (9) the late series (my favorites are the rose trellises over the garden path) (10) pond subjects, and (11) late water lilies.

The end of the book also has a chronology of Monet's life and works that will help you integrate this show into his entire work.

You will come away with a new excitement and respect for nature from these images. You will also feel more connected to and with the beauty of nature. Your mood will be lifted, just as Monet intended. What you see will be uniquely yours, also just as intended. Monet pays you the ultimate compliment here of letting you participate in the creative process by arranging the work in your mind to fit your mental needs and perspective.

After you enjoy these images, I suggest that you come away inspired to make what you do more accessible to others. How can you make your life and your work easier for others to participate in?

Live in beauty!

Beyond the absolutely vivid and beautiful quality of the paintings displayed in Monet's Years at Giverny, I greatly appreciate the style of language used throughout the book. Unlike many major art books which often seem to forget about the layman reader, this book reads more like a beautiful story of his life providing great insight into his works.

In college, I was fortunate enough to see a collection of his Water Lilies in Paris. Although at the time I was amazed to see them, through Monet's Years at Giverny I came to fully appreciate them---Not only the paintings, but the man himself.

Excellent addition to any collection!

Do yourself a favour, read this book... God's Divine Love is waiting for you & this book tells you how to receive it.

In the nicest possible sense, this book isn't exactly what the title claims. All to often discussions of change management tend to concentrate on the people side of things and ignore the less glamerous topics such as re-tooling, revised administrative and reporting procedures and so on.
So, just to keep the record straight, this book is primarily concerned with the personnel aspects of change, with all other aspects of the overall process taking a very secondary part in the proceedings.

And now, on with the review:

One of the ways I judge a book like this is by the number of highlights I've made (makes it so much easier to refer back to the key points).
Sometimes I'll go through an entire book and be lucky to have half a dozen highlighted passage.

NOT here, though.

Without a hint of exaggeration I found numerous points worth highlighting in every one of the eight reprinted articles.

Of course this is not entirely surprising given the list of contributors, which includes such "leaders of the pack" as John Cotter ("Leading Change"), Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos ("The Reinvention Roller Coaster"), and Jerry Porras (Building Your Company's Vision").

I'd also like to commend the article "Managing Change : The Art of Balancing", by Jeanie Daniel Duck, (which ended up with highlighting on nearly every page!).

So, whilst the material is not exactly new (the various items appeared in the Harvard Business Review between 1992 and 1998), I'd suggest this well-chosen set of articles is as important now as when the articles were first published.

There are articles from such leading authorities on change management as John Kotter (Leading Change), Paul Strebel, and more. Each article opens with an executive summary, helping you decide if you want to tackle that article then and there, or move on to another that fits your interests of the moment.

Sooner or later, change is about people altering the status quo, and those in charge often turn a blind eye to the fact that leadership is singularly the most important issue when an organization has to implement major changes. This is followed closely by teamwork, of which there won't be any without leadership.

Inside the covers you'll find the collected knowledge, opinions and counsel of those executives and consultants who have dealt with change at all levels. If your schedule doesn't permit you to leisurely meander through hundreds of pages to find a few workable ideas upon which to build some change solutions, then this collection should be highly recommended for you.

GF and C&H also share the ability to make you laugh in almost any frame of the strip. In other words, it's not your standard and very tired "set up, set up, set up, punchline." Sometimes the funniest part might occur in the first frame or in the middle frame. Occasionally it might just be a word, like "Smacky," the name of Bucky's doll (the line, "I'm packin' Smacky" still makes me laugh to think about it, though regrettably that particular strip is not in the book).

Conley also brings Bucky and Satchel alive as it seems very reasonable and natural to have a cat and dog interacting and speaking with people (none of the "thought bubbles" you associate with pet strips like Garfield). And though both animals act very human, Conley still manages to capture and nail the essence of feline and canine behavior.

There are very few books that I find myself revisiting once I've read them. This is one of them. Mr. Conley, if you're reading this, I offer my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for your work. When can we expect the next book?!?! How about a stuffed Bucky or Satchel?

In the meantime, I'll content myself with starting each morning with the daily strip at comicsdotcom and perusing "This Dog is Not a Toy" whenever I need a good laugh.

The Decameron was written around 1350 during an outbreak of plague in Florence. It is the fictional account of ten young people who flee the city to a country manor house and, in an effort to keep themselves occupied and diverted, begin telling stories.

Ten days pass in the pages of the Decameron (hence its name), and each person tells one story per day, making a total of one hundred stories. These are stories that explore a surprisingly wide range of moral, social and political issues whose wit and candor will probably surprise most modern readers. The topics explored include: problems of corruption in high political office, sexual jealousy and the class differences between the rich and the poor.

The titles themselves are both imaginative and fun. One story is titled, "Masetto da Lamporecchio Pretends to be Deaf and Dumb in Order to Become a Gardener to a Convent of Nuns, Where All the Women Eagerly Lie With Him." And, although the title, itself, is a pretty good summary of the story, even a title such as this cannot adequately convey Boccaccio's humor and wit.

Another story that seems surprisingly modern is, "Two Men are Close Friends, and One Lies With the Other's Wife. The Husband Finds it Out and Makes the Wife Shut Her Lover in a Chest, and While He is Inside, the Husband Lies With the Lover's Own Wife on the Chest." A bit long for today's modern world, perhaps, where popular books are dominated by titles such as John Grisham's The Firm, but the outcome of this story is as socially-relevant today as anything that happened in fourteenth-century Florence.

The Decameron, however, goes far beyond plain, bawdy fun and takes a close look at a society that is unraveling due to the devastating effects of the plague. The people in Boccaccio's time suffered terribly and the book's opening pages show this. The clergy was, at best, inept and, more often than not, corrupt. Those who had the misfortune to fall ill (and this includes just about everyone) were summarily abandoned by both their friends and family.

Those looking for something representative of the social ills of Boccaccio's day will find more than enough interesting tidbits and asides in these stories. Serious students of literature will find the ancestors of several great works of fiction in these pages and readers in general cannot fail to be entertained by the one hundred stories spun by these ten refugees on their ten lonely nights.

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

As a mind struggling to repair the damage caused by the American education system, I set out to follow other curriculums from times when learning was actually valued. Since many of the so-called "classics" American students today are forced to read in school are thinly-disguised socialist propaganda, I chose to look to much earlier times. I picked up The Decameron by chance, having remembered it from an off-hand statement a high school history teacher had made once. The book had everything, exalting adventure, romance, heroism, virtue, and other things I had been taught were subjective and dangerous. I found it the most refined and tastefully deviant book I had ever read and I have never been able to understand why students are not exposed to it as the basis for the study of literature.

Boccaccio's stories (told one per day, by each of the ten characters over ten days) give great insight into the midieval paradigm while poking fun at its obvious problems. The tales cover the whole of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, which was very unique for their time. The rolls of heroes involve characters of every culture, race, religion, and background in the known world-- something unheard of before this book. Boccaccio's great love and understanding of women also shines through, the expression of which tops the list of reasons as to why he was exiled from Florence! Most of the stories are based on actual people and events, though the author takes a great deal of artistic license in some cases. A great many little-known facts can be learned by reading the historical notes (one reason why I chose the Penguin Classic version). Boccaccio surpasses every other man of letters (before him or since) in ability and creativity and will no doubt do so for centuries to come.