In the spring 2001 issue of "Rain Taxi," esteemed novelist David Foster Wallace not only praised this book to the skies, but even paid for an ad for the book in the same issue--an act probably unprecedented in book-reviewing history. In his review, Wallace said Davis's prose poems are "off-the-charts terrific."

Robert Hass called this "one of the best books of poetry I've read in the last year or so." I agree. I can't say I always understand where Jon Davis is taking me in these poems, but I can say I'm enjoying and being challenged by the ride. I'm especially intrigued by the long sequence of poems the poet calls "The Ochre World." Here the poems work by juxtaposition and implication, each line sparking off the others, each section adding and enlarging the flame that eventually--how?--gives off enough light to illuminate the cave we're in at the poem's close. I don't know of another poet who tightropes along the edge of incoherence so beautifully. The sequence is unlike anything I've read, yet is somehow welcoming in its difficulties. On second thought, I'll go further than Robert Hass: This is the best book of poetry I've read since Hass's own Human Wishes.

Jon Davis was recently a recipient of a Lannan Foundation Award for his work in poetry. It couldn't have gone to a better person, having known and worked with Jon in Santa Fe, NM. However, without a biased personal relationship, this book is phenomenal. Whether you're an experienced reader of poetry or just looking to make your way into this form of reading, Jon's work is accessible on many levels, and will move and impress you, as it has so many others.

I remember meeting Jon Davis at a reading in Salt Lake City. I don't exactly remember the place, but I liked the way he shifted his stance while reading his poems aloud to the crowd of dying soldiers. He tore through the air, a warrior escaping the arrows that flew at him like pigeons in search of the worm of an apple. Jon Davis' words are neither apple nor worm. They're the seeds of our bodies erupting as candles on the bridge to the other side. I recomend this book to anyone who seeks enlightenment in a supermarket checkout line.

I'd just like to attest to the power of these poems. I've not come across a poet as strong as Jon Davis in years.

If it ever comes back into print, it's well worth buying.

This book was very interesting. It is about an orphan girl who is sent away to live with her Grandfather in the alms. She is very happy there making lots of friends. Then she is taken away by her mean aunt to be a playmate with a rich girl; who she later makes bossum friends with. But she returns after being incrediaby homesick. The ending is very happy and uplifting, also my favorite part. Everyone should read this book because it is a VERY VERY good book.

A while back when I was in my 30's (never mind how long ago that was!) I was sick with the flu, and I found a copy of HEIDI, so I crawled into a nice warm bed and re-read the book -- as an adult.

What insight into human nature! And as an adult I appreciated the dry, understated humor. I also appreciated the spiritual insights -- that God will give us what we desire, but sometims uses circumstances we don't like to teach us truths that we couldn't learn otherwise.

When I was a girl I was often turned off by what was called "good reading," but for some reason, I enjoyed Heidi and it never seemed sappy or corny.

Very much worth reading!

Heidi is about a young girl that has lived with her Aunt Dete all of her life. Her Aunt has had enough of her so she sends her up a mountain to her Grandfather. The People of the town are very surprised at what Heidi's Aunt is about to do. They try to warn her but she won't listen. When Heidi and her Aunt get up the Alm, they find that the "Alm Uncle" is not very happy with their arrival. The Aunt doesn't care, she tells the Grandfather that she has taken care of the child long enough. She leaves and never comes back. After years of staying with her Granfather, Heidi learns how to live freely and finds new friends in high places. She learns about the mountains and the cold winters up on the Alm. As Heidi gets older her Aunt Dete comes up again and tells the Grandfather that Heidi needs to go to school. The Grandfather refuses, but eventually gives in. Dete takes Heidi to the city where she finds a new friend, Clara. Clara has to sit in a wheel chair. If you want to know why, read the book! Heidi gets into all kinds of mischieve there, she misses the mountains and can't understand why there aren't any trees. Heidi gets so homesick they have to send her back to the Alm. Clara and the other residents promise to visit her sometime in the summer. The book ends up that Clara and her Grandmother go and visit Heidi and they have the most wonderful time that they never wanted to leave. As there stay at the Alm goes on, the mountain air and hearty food strengthen Clara to where she can walk. Clara and her Grandmother leave with the promise of coming back again.

I really liked this book. It was very real, in a sense that brought you into the actual story. When I read the book, I almost wished I was there in the book listening to their conversations, or eating at their little dinner table. Whenever the book got to eating the meals, it was so real that I got hungry! I would definitely recommend this book to any age group. The author really describes the scenery to where you can picture it in your mind. I loved the book, and I am going to read again.

Thumbelina is not normal girl she is about the size of your thumb, but don't let her height mistake you she can do alot of things other people can't do. Like she can fit into small spaces that you can't. So if you like books that are about people doing extremely different things that you don't think that can do then this is the book right for you to read. This book will amaze your eyes with the colorful pictures inside, and with the amazing things Thumbelina can do.

Hans Christian Andersen's story of Thumbeline is so endearing that it's no wonder that so many authors have written their own versions of it and so many illustrators have had a go at making tiny Thumbeline come to life. This version, translated by Anthea Bell and illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger is brimming with charm, rustic folk sensibilities, kindness and compassion spiked with just the right amount of perilous adventure to make it interesting, and a lovely magical feel. The story is well told in satisfyingly descriptive language. The illustrations are superb! Zwerger does a wonderful job with all of the animal characters that Thumbeline encounters and manages to infuse them with emotion and intelligence as well as country charm. Little red-haired Thumbeline is delicate and sweet in several lovely costumes with a peasant feel to them. You know the tale...a woman tells a witch that she wants a "tiny child" and the magic gives her exactly what she wishes for, a tiny child no bigger than her thumb. Thumbeline is born from the heart of a tulip. She's so beautiful and sweet that every small suitor in the neighborhood wants her hand in marriage, including a toad, a mole and a June beetle. They are not interested in the fact that she does not want to marry them! She gets help from other wee folk in the woodland community and makes a good friend when she saves the life of a swallow. The story ends happily for Thumbeline. It may be desirable to point out to your young ones that not every unattached female needs to find a husband, especially very young ones like Thumbeline, and that kidnapping and force are not true ways to get a girl to marry you! Children are smart enough to know that but it's still a good idea to talk over the odd concepts that a child may be thinking about after you read this story. I love this old-fashioned story and this re-telling adds beautifully to its charm and therefore justifies its conception.

The familiar Hans Christian Andersen story of Thumbelina has received the royal treatment from Susan Jeffers. Her large, lovely pictures make this seem like you are stepping into the story for the first time. Thumbelina is so dainty and sweet that it's no wonder the toad wishes to marry her but poor Thumbelina has a harrowing time escaping from her warty suitor. Share a trumpet vine blossom with Thumbelina, a pair of hummingbirds and a fat bumble bee or take a ride with her on the back of a gallant swallow. This whole story is enchanting from start to finish and the pictures are a delight!

Some of the lists are very funny, but it's missing something in book form because you're missing Dave's delivery. Also, a one-joke book gets kind of thin quick. I recommend only reading three or four lists at a time so the novelty doesn't wear off. Great bathroom reading.

This collection is from the Late Show era, not the Late Night era. However, believe it or not, these top ten lists are funny enough to read and reread. For those of you like myself, who are Letterman fans, this collection, like all previous collections, borders on the essential. Do yourself a favor, though, and buy the Late Night editions as well.

This is another hilarious collection of Top Tens. Will they come out with any more?

Two decades after his experiences, British journalist Jon Swain reached for his pen -- or keyboard -- to pour his memories into a book. In today's over-saturation of commercial memoirs, surely yet another remembering is superfluous, especially one about the Vietnam War, a subject gnawed to the bone by thousands of other writers. But wait: his interest, Swain assures us, is less in war than in love. The book is about his enduring passion for the Mekong region and its long-suffering peoples who have kept their dignity in the pits of hell. It's around the Mekong that Swain witnessed humanity at its kindest and its most brutal all at the same time. Such is war.

Swain writes evocatively and his book should serve as a handy introduction to Indochina and its travails for foreigners little in the know. But there's this, too, to say about "River of Time": rather than a panorama of scenes and events, Swain provides several vignettes of them (from Saigon at war to Phnom Penh at its fall to the Khmer Rouge and to Bangkok at peace from it all). And that's my gripe about "River of Time." Without clear guiding narrative strings and conclusions, it reads like several touched-up newspaper articles blended together and joined by only one unifying theme: Swain himself. Too bad, because the book is chock-full of revealing anecdotes, thanks to Swain's well-honed eye and prodigious memory (as well as contemporary diary notes). The stories about Vietnamese boat people's suffering at the hands of Thai fishermen-turned-pirates are perhaps the best in the whole book.

But don't let me put you off an interesting, if somewhat lacking read. For all its flaws, "River of Time" is worth your money and time -- if only in whetting your appetite for other books about this hauntingly beautiful but deeply troubled land.

When I first became aware of Swain's book, my initial thought was, "Another war correspondent's attempt to cash in on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Indo-China." I bought the book, but more because of my current mania for the subject, not because I expected much out of it.

Swain began to win me over right away. He begins the book with much the same sentiment as I expressed above. The author himself wonders what he can add to what's been written before.

The answer is: A lot.

Swain's style fits the subject: factual, but with humanity; horrified without being overwhelmed. The author's self-professed love for Indo-China is evident. The depth of his feelings enabled me to see and feel the end of Indo-China as it had been.

The highlight of the book is the description of the fall of Phnom Penh and the immediate aftermath. I have read several accounts of these events, written by Cambodians and Westerners, and I have seen "The Killing Fields". None of those tellings hold a candle to Swain's description. The misery, chaos, horror, insanity, and inhumanity comes to life in his words.

Swain's work takes it's place among the best of the field.

I feel a little sorry for a few of the reviewers who have gone before me. I think they may be missing the point. The book does not attempt to provide in-depth military facts, nor is it an attempt at writing a 'suspense thriller', nor is it fiction. Rather, it is portrayal of the experiences of one man [and his friends'] during times of conflict [largely] in Indochina. It is a book of truth and emotion, of beauty and futility, of love and war. Ultimately, it is a book about humanity. Jon Swain has done well, and this book would be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone who is interested in human conflict, Indochina or personal accounts of life in times of extremely adverse and uncertain conditions.

I liked the way the plot carried on in this episode of the NJO series; the sensationalism has been cut back a lot since Elaine Cunningham produced the truly awful Dark Journey. These authors need to be briefed on the difference between character development and melodramatic nonsense before they start a project. Despite the improvement, Williams went a little overboard with Jaina and sometimes the other Jedi here. He, and anyone else writing NJO books, should go read Timothy Zahn's take on Jedi power (he tries not to make even Luke omnipotent). For that matter, George Lucas should go read some Zahn before making any more Star Wars films. I'd also like to see some attention to Stackpole's style here, meaning real character development accomplished so that the dramatis personae seem like real people. This is more a general complaint than something specific to Williams, though. In Destiny's Way, Williams continues the good writing around Jacen and manages to convey many well thought out events in a reasonable space. Considering the above comments, I would have given a rating of 4 stars.

The real problems come in Williams' seeming lack of full proficiency in modern English. I wonder if English is his second language, or perhaps he is from a nation with a non-American and non-British connotative dictionary of the language, because some of his awkward phrasing is truly distracting. Additionally, redundancy was common fare. It was distracting enough for me to dock a point, but I would have preferred to leave give it 3.5 stars seeing as I did like the book.

Finally, I have another general complaint, this toward almost all of science fiction, though the problem manifests itself frequently in this book. Air, when exposed to the vacuum of space, does not freeze! If it did, Earth's outer atmosphere would be entirely composed of frozen air crystals. It is not. Go look at a pressure vs. temperature diagram for air. At extremely low pressure, there is no temperature at which it can leave the gas phase. Also, I notice a lot of references to a substance exposed to vacuum "instantly" freezing. Think about this one, as well. On a cold winter day, an exposed object loses heat quickly. If the weather includes wind, the rate of heat loss greatly increases. This is because the main mechanism for heat loss from an object at about room temperature is convection. An object has to get up toward the thousands of Kelvin before radiation becomes fast enough to be significant. As a general guideline, we can assume that only visibly glowing things are losing a lot of overall energy through radiation. I'll get back to my point. In vacuum, there is no convection. Therefore only radiation is available to carry away heat. This makes heat loss much slower than it would be on a cold day in atmosphere.

Well, I've just finished reading Destiny's Way (the fourteenth book in the ongoing New Jedi Order series). I finished the book feeling that, while overall an entertaining read, it suffers from a plot has no true focus; it seems to be compiled of a number of events that could of taken place between books. The whole "turning point of the war" (sorry if I spoiled anyone, but come on, we all knew the good guys would start winning sometime) that author alludes to, seems more like "the prelude of the turning point of the war". All the main character running around, setting up things to come in future books, or finishing tasks started in books past. It never has a big event that, the other hardcovers, mainly Vector Prime and Star By Star, had.

Now I do like this book, though it may seem otherwise. It has some good writing and does have some important events: Jacen's return, the election of a new Chief of State, the reestablishment of the Jedi Council (it's called the High Council now), and the deaths of a few main\semi-main characters (as happened in the other three hardcovers of the series) and finally a book that's based on Luke! Though Han and\or Leia fans will be a bit disappointed; the two are absent in most of the book.

The book also has the introduction of a handful of new characters:
Supreme Overlord Shimrra, (sorry if it's spelled wrong) who probably have the most impact in future books, A few new senators, an alderaaian senator, Cal Omas, will have the most impact of these, and some new governmental (and Vong) officials.

Overall I think this is a good edition to the series, though it could have been the best if the plot was more centralized.

I have found the New Jedi Order series to be an exciting deviation from the nosediving extended universe literature that came after Zahn and Stackpole. Destiny's Way is no exception to the rest of the NJI series. Although I did read this book in less than six hours one afternoon, yet I never put it down. The plot of this series was clearly plotted out in detail by a myriad of authors who divided up the writing tasks and an excellent job they did. The only thing that bothers me is the mentioning of the Yuuzhon Vong in prequal books that take place before the 6 episodes. These seem to eclipse the real Star Wars story and kinda bummed me out as pathetic as that sounds. Anyway, I enjoy a good, well-written read but despice garbage printed for the money they bring. With my basis in mind, I recommend this book to any who dont want to wait till paperback.

You will be repeled by some of the subjects in this book and bored by others. This is a collection of essays by different authors, each proceded by a summary. Sometimes the summary would have been enough and the actual essay could have been skipped. I kept "wanting more" for each jerk covered.

This book collects issues 7 - 10 and 4 of Todd McFarlane's short-lived Crow series. McFarlane bought the rights to the Crow, but the comic was cancelled after issue 10, because nobody really liked it. Jon J Muth does have a writing talent, unfortunately somebody made the mistake of trying to continue Eric Draven's story, rather than beginning anew.

If you decide to buy this book, do so only for the art, and not for the storyline. It's a shame, considering the vast talents McFarlane has at his disposal