Charles Dickinson is a wonderful writer who should have a much larger readership than he seems to. He employs his clear and winning prose to describe the lives of ordinary people living their daily lives, but there's always an interesting little kink in those lives. In "The Widows' Adventures," two elderly sisters leave their suburban Illinois homes for a trip to Los Angeles. One of the sisters is blind. She's the one who's driving. The sensitive protagonist of "Waltz in Marathon" is a loan shark. The artist hero of "A Shortcut in Time" lives in the town he was born and raised in, yet on a familiar neighborhood path he meets people slipping back and forth in time. For a man with many regrets, there is the temptation to try to tweek the past. Unfortunately, he is not the only person with this compulsion.

I recommend this novel highly, and I envy anyone picking up a Charles Dickinson book for the first time. A banquet awaits you.

Though the premise - time travel - is a sci-fi staple, Dickinson's latest ("Rumor Has It," "The Widows' Adventures") is more psychological than speculative. What speculation there is revolves around the role of fate in our lives and how small actions can have unforeseen consequences. But mostly this is the story of a man's mid-life self-assessment, the role grief and guilt have played in his life, and the man he might have been.

Shakily married to Flo, his childhood sweetheart and now a hard-working pediatrician, Josh Winkler is an unsuccessful artist beginning to face up to his mediocrity - by avoiding work as much as possible. It's a summer of storms in Euclid, Illinois, the only place either has ever lived, and their teenage daughter is making her first real break for independence. The marital tension, fueled by Josh's growing unreliability, goes back to the roots of their relationship - an "accident" that left Flo's brother dead and Josh's permanently brain damaged.

Then one day, running the path behind his house in a storm, Josh slips 15 minutes into the past. Which prepares him to believe and help the desperate young girl who claims to be from 1908 and whose plight becomes more desperate with every moment she's gone. As the town - and Josh's marriage - roils with believers and non-believers, Dickinson explores how a jolt out of the accustomed tracks of life can change a person in unanticipated ways.

Dickinson's complex characters reveal themselves in sometimes surprising, but reasonable ways. Examining the paradoxes of time travel and the inevitable consequent ripples, Dickinson also speculates on how circumstances may be shaped by chance, but the essential tenor of a life depends more on the nature of the person. A well-written, thoughtful, understated novel which should add to Dickinson's readership.

There are no new time travel plots -- I think that's pretty much been proven. And in fact, the time travel & causality portion of the plot here are a bit like the movie Back to the Future as it might have been written by Charles DeLint. And yet Dickinson has arranged familiar elements in a completely new fashion. I've never read anything like it (including DeLint). A Shortcut in Time is the strangest and most interesting novel I've read in a long time, and probably the strangest and most original time travel book ever written, and has a most unexpected ending. The book is filled with genuine characters and genuine emotion. It's weird, and I loved it.

I saw this book at a thrift store and passed it by. The next time I came to the store the book was still there. I picked it up and was hooked by the 3rd page. Being very close to my own sister I was given a glimpse of what our future would be like if we were in the same situation. The sister's journey is a wonderful one. I enjoyed every page and was sorry to get to the last one. I highly recommend this book.

The premise of two widowed sisters, one blind, one alcoholic making a cross country car trip to confront the son of the blind sister on his lack of contact with her sounds unbelievable at first, but the way Dickinson handles it, it all makes sense in the end. The movie, the Straight Story, which was a true story and came out after this book, also dealt with this drastic last ditch attempt by seniors to mend fences with relatives whom they had lost closeness with. In the Straight Story a farmer crosses the country on a tractor/lawn mower because he is visually unable to drive a car to see a long estranged brother. In Widows' Adventures the blind driving sister takes directions from her sighted sister from Chicago to California by taking back roads and driving no more than 20-30 miles an hour! Ultimately, it is not the driving itself that provides the treat of reading the book, although the sequence in which the ladies almost get caught by a police officer is hilarious, but the self discovery that occurs when they decide to go on the physical and emotional journey.

I absolutely loved this beautiful, touching, and very funny book about two sisters on the road trip of their lives. Two widowed sisters, one blind, the other a bit of an alcoholic, they are on a cross-country automobile ride. It sounds simple and trite, I know. There are mishaps along the way, many of which you might be able to guess at, yet this sweet pair of women is truly engaging and Charles Dickinson deserves more attention for the work he's done.

Richard Sewall skillfully amasses a large shuffling pile of letters promising insight into the true Emily Dickinson. Starting the book left me hopeful for great things to come. He methodically, almost puritanically, reviews the lives surrounding and including the Dickinson family piling the letters upon each other. Yet, in the end, what possibly made Emily Dickinson withdraw into her room and from the world? Forced to abandon suitors by her Father, rejection by Sue after a brief gay encounter, agoraphobia? Any and all possibilities are buried under the letters and placed in obscure footnotes at best. Emily Dickinson is possibly the greatest poet from North America, and probably was a Gandhi-like reincarntion for the feminist movement in the United States; yet "The Life of Emily Dickinson" doesn't deliver through Richard Sewall's storm of letters.

Richard Sewall's biography of Emily Dickinson, first published almost thirty years ago, is deeply researched and beautifully written. For anyone interested in the life of the great poet, it is indispensable.

But this biography suffers from the same fate as other studies of Dickinson, namely the poet's own secretive nature. There is a distressing lack of sources available about Emily's life and so scholars are forced to over-emphasize the few that do exist. This applies most notably to the writings of Mabel Todd, mistress of Emily's brother Austin and the source of much of what we 'know' about Emily. Whether you view Todd as a well-meaning interloper or a selfish adulterer, her impact upon Dickinson scholarship has been enormous. Sewall acknowledges his reliance upon her writings, and even their undoubted lack of objectivity. But then he proceeds to accept everything she wrote, enthusiastically passing Todd's opinions to the reader under the guise of his own genuine scholarship.

But let the reader beware of such phrases as 'may imply', 'may have been', 'seems almost unavoidable', 'would seem to be', and so on. These abound, particularly in Sewall's discussion of Emily and Austin's wife Susan. He relies almost exclusively upon Todd's writings, which are understandably biased against her lover's wife.

Sewall provides an admirable portrait of Emily's ancestors and of her early years. There is also insightful analyses of many poems, a discussion of the books she loved, and the mystery of 'The Master Letters'. It is only when coming to her adult life, with Emily's dramatic retirement from the outside world, that Sewall is forced into speculation. He writes, "The whole truth about Emily Dickinson will elude us always; she seems almost willfully to have seen to that." And he is correct. The one blot upon his otherwise fine work is that he couldn't accept this simple fact.

Emily Dickinson is easily my favorite poet (also see my review on "Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson", which every poetry lover should own). I took a college course that focused on Emily Dickinson and these were the two books used for that course (there were optional books, which I also read, but nowhere near as good as these). The author's analysis of some poems can be questioned (whose cannot?), but the wealth of material presented is incredible. This is THE reference book about her life. So, if you want details about the woman behind the beautiful words, then get this book. Also consider visiting her house in Amherst (MA), which still has tours during the warmer months. All three things will give you a very good look into her writing.

An exceptional combination of fable and realism. Every character changes and grows in ways that are pitch-perfect believable and touching.

A great book about being (ab)normal in the Midwest. Lots of information about crows and working at a sporting goods store. It's a murder mystery, too. Kind of. Well, maybe not. If you like Larry Brown and Charles Bukowski, you'll like this.

"How can you print a piece of your own soul," Dickinson, p. 51

This is the 2nd in the Krull and Hewitt's "Lives of ..." series. The book contains 19 chapters on 20 writers in birth order: Murasaki Shikibu (973?-1025?), Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Charlotte & Emily Bronte (1816-1855 & 1818-1848), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Jack London (1876-1916), Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), E. B. White (1899-1985), Zora Neale Hurston (1901?-1960), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

This is a perfect book for young adolescents and pre-teens who as they grow and mature frequently feel awkward. Krull introduces us to the idiosyncrasies of the literary. Some of the authors were loners, eccentric, a wee bit peculiar. Michael Jackson's behaviors might seem normal when held in comparison. Some retreated into themselves. Some sought out adventures. Some as adults were unsuccessful at the ordinary.

Some worked at a young age to support the family. Some took daily walks, very long daily walks. Some were not healthy and therefore wrote in bed. There were some similarities and some differences, but they all shared a singular conviction to write and write they each did well.

Hewitt's delightful portraits of the writers are precious. My favorite portrait is of Frances Hodgson Burnett of "The Secret Garden" fame. Her hat is the secret garden.

Given the high price of the book, I was surprised that Krull did not include a list of the authors' books and/or poems and the publication years. END

This book is a fun and informative book. The pictures are filled with humorous meanings and hidden information. The book keeps the reader's attention by keeping the included information short and simple, but also makes sure that the reader gets as much possible about the author. This book is great for kids and students to use as a report source as it is filled with great information. Kids would rather use this book as an information source rather than an encylopedia since the information is easy to understand. Authors in there are some you may not know, ( Murasaki Shikibu) and some well know ones ( Charles Dickens). I am glad I purchsed this book. I really liked the pictures which are so vibrant with color. This would make a great buy.

"A Eucharistic Manual for Children" is a clear, uncomplicated explanation of the eucharistic liturgy of the Episcopal Church. I have used the booklet for five years to teach communion instruction for children ages five to ten. I like the layout of the book, which offers separate sections for Rite I and Rite II liturgies, including the rite of Baptism. The pages alternate the actual text of the service with explanations of why we do what we do. Simple line drawings are also offered for children to color in. Another great feature of the book is a center section that includes a glossary and several useful charts of the cycle of the church year, elements of the altar, and liturgical vestments. These charts are ideal for use in training acolytes as well as the new communicants. Best of all, the book is so clear and straightforward that it can be used with ease by parents, teachers, and families in bringing children into this most important rite of the church.

I like this book because it is funny and realistic. It makes you laugh and it makes you cry. It is enjoyable to read adn the author is Jacqueline Wilson.