The reason I love this book is for its simplicity. Day-by-day, there's nowhere to hide your progress -- or lack of it. Completing the daily page is my little reward for making it through a workout, because I'm not one of those fitness types who does it for fun.

This is one of the best (if not the best) calendars I have ever owned (way better than that ridiculous cat loooover calendar I bought in an effort to placate my irascible wife). John Jerome's calendar is particularly valuable for all the logs provided where you can tally all the miles you run, your times, your splits, and other comments (as an example, my entry for January 1, 2003: Finished the annual Hangover Classic 10K. 6.2 miles, 62 minutes, threw up twice. Wish I hadn't had those last two bottles of cheap champagne. Next year will be different). Jerome also offers words of encouragement, tips, and many pithy quotes (some well known, some more obscure). This log book/calendar comes in spiral format (up/down) and is slightly larger than typical desktop flip calendars. A great way for marking time!

"The Complete Runner's Day-By-Day Log and 2003 Calendar" has as its greatest strength the ability to encourage the committed runner. This doesn't mean the fast runner, or the experienced runner, but it does mean the runner who intends to stay on the path of running fitness with consistency.

How will you, the committed runner, be encouraged? First and foremost, by the recording and tracking of your workouts. It isn't complicated. There are spots to write down the important aspects of your run. While you could do this in a spreadsheet like Excel (which I also do), what you'll find here is an attractive layout. Instead of looking at he clinical cells of a computer program, you get to see things in a comfortable format.

The log will help you consider the value of each run, and realize the hard work you are doing is paying off. Should you feel burned out, you can look back and see what might have caused it. Over-training? Bad weather? Too many miles? The log will show you.

The charts of times, paces, and all of that you probably have in another running book. That's great, but this is handy to have together with your own times. Comparisons are more easily made.

Likewise handy are the tips, but, again, if you've ever read books like "Road Racing for Serious Runners" or "The Competitive Runner's Handbook."

The graphics are the quality you expect from Runner's World magazine. Good stuff.

If you like the pithy quotes sprinkled throughout, you'll love "The Quotable Runner: Great Moments of Wisdom, Inspiration, Wrongheadedness, and Humor."

I fully recommend "Complete Runner's Day-By-Day Log."

Anthony Trendl

Whether you have children or not Buy this book. If you have children read them the landscape poetry in here. They will sing them in their sleep. It will take them on magical journeys to happy places and you also.

I just started browsing through a book of his poems in spanish one day and loved them, but my spanish is marginal. This has the spanish poems side by side with english translations, many of which I don't really like because they do things like switch words and lines and take a little too much freedom and change the spirit of the poem, but that's okay. You can read the spanish, read the english, and see exactly what has been changed, but the beauty is in the spanish ones, and though his vocabulary is large, yours doesn't really have to be to appreciate the sound and sight of these poems in spanish. I love many of the sonnets, plus the king of harlem, which reminds me of HCE from Finnegans Wake, this character that becomes the landscape itself, "after walking", and many others from the poet in new york. I've just been getting into some spanish poets after reading some st john of the cross and seeing what types of flows and life can be infused into words in this language, and these dark, bloody grimy oozes of language have had me high for weeks.

Brilliant, emotions of positive and negative are tasted in this work

This is a superb book that will be of enormous use to those who must counsel families of troubled teens. These teens are a group of individuals who need acceptance,love, inspiration, and guidance. This book gives the counselor practical tools that are time tested to help families gently and wisely direct their teens onto a path of hope and success. The reading is fast and easy, filled with practical case studies that hold the reader's attention. It will also be useful for families of troubled youth to read, particularly if they are not already in counseling. I recommend this book without reservation.

"Weaver and his colleagues have produced another winner for clergy: a casebook which covers most of the difficult situations in which pastors are called upon to be a first, and sometimes primary, support and helper. Each case presentation is followed by critical issues to be aware of, relevant information, including community and national resources. Most pastors will be grateful for this book a number of times each year. Sections in the first chapter on the child's personality development and on effective parenting will be appreciated by most parents." --David K. Switzer, Emeritus Professor of Pastoral Care, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

This is the long awaited basic textbook for osteopathic medicine. It is surprisingly complete, covering philosophy, history, research, and manipulative techniques. The beginning osteopathic student may find it most useful for its practical discussion on the techniques--high velocity, myofascial release, etc. I believe it is also helpful in standardizing our terminology, which will make it easier when taking board exams or talking with colleagues from other osteopathic schools. It includes contributors well known within the osteopathic community, including Michael and William Kuchera, Melicien Tettambel, Eileen DiGiovanna, and many others. As a family practice resident I frequently turn to this textbook first when I want to know more about how to treat a patient or when preparing lectures for students and housestaff.

This text is actually required reading for most if not all osteopathic medical students. It is a 'textbook', however, and hence completely (sometimes exhaustively!) comprehensive. But it is easy to read so that anyone with an interest in OMT will get a methodic how-to for myriad techniques, also a thorough history of osteopathic medicine to boot! One of my OMT professors at the University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine wrote or co-wrote a few of the chapters so of course, I think those are the best! If you are looking for an educational approach to learning manipulation and the reasons behind it, this is a valuable resouce.

The author does an excellent job in demonstrating the influence of John Locke on the great thinkers who founded America. Backed by an enormous amount of scholarship, and written clearly, this book removes any doubt about the roots of classical American liberalism. The ideas on which "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are based were derived from the writing of Locke (and others). And ideas move men to action. The Founding Fathers were true believers, and not (as the leftist movement in academia would have us think) merely attempting to justify the economic supremacy of the wealthy class over the masses. Their beliefs stemmed from a long British tradition of freedom in which Locke played a major role. The author argues his case with cool and meticulous logic. "Locke in America" makes a major contribution and is a pleasure to read.

I really got an insight to the way John Locke must have been thinking at the time

It takes a certain amount of moxie to publish a memoir about yourself as you lapse into fogeville. I wouldn't have the nerve, fearing not so much that I would bore my readers, but that I would reveal the poverty of my mind for all the world to see. Two hundred and fifty pages, perhaps 75,000 words of, by and about myself! Now that's a little scary.

So it was with some misgivings that I picked up this handsome book by John Jerome, professional writer, editor and (I could quickly see) prose stylist extraordinary. Well, I'm glad I did. He did a lot of research on aging and it shows. That knowledge, along with his observations on the experience of aging, is what makes this book so interesting. We geezers like to compare notes, and with Jerome we have someone who likes to share. I'm sure by now he wishes that he HAD taken out all the "embarrassing stuff," but we, John, are glad you left it in!

Jerome gives us a little of what he likes to do, satisfying work, canoeing, gin and tonic in the evenings. He recalls his neck surgery and a canoeing trip, why he cuts the grape vines and why he chased the beaver from his pond. He makes me jealous as hell with his idyllic New England lifestyle and his beautifully rendered prose. He makes sharp observations (One of the benefits of aging: "...no one's looking. You're invisible when you're old" p. 237; "Most men bore each other stiff" p. 242), and tosses out witty asides ("I am in favor of sensation for the aging...Let us celebrate our nerve endings while we can" p. 238) like there's nothing to this writing gig. That's one of the beautiful things about being a writer: you can still make those words dance when you're sixty-five. (The Beatles lyric from a few decades back, "Will you still need me/Will you still heed me...when I'm sixty-four?" is jumping through my head. Stop it!) Or at least John Jerome can make those words dance. His self-deprecating, yet self-affirming style reads as easy as shucked oysters going down. I'll whisper this since I'm sure it's a heresy, but I find him a lot more interesting than that Thoreau guy he keeps quoting.

He waits until the latter chapters to talk about suicide and sex. For me he could have waited a little longer with the sex. As he notes, referencing writer Tim Cahill, "Nobody, ever, is interested in your bowel movement" p. 102. Amen, I say and add the sex life of old men. But Jerome knows this. I think he felt, after having scolded Thoreau for leaving sex out of his journals, that he ought to fess up. He sees suicide as "An option, that's all. If and when." (Although he reports on having tried it when he was ten.) And then there is this profound insight on page 250: "Kevorkian, I now realize, serves a level of despair much deeper than I can quite conceive."

The book ends with these memorable words (as Jerome joyously contemplates a task that needs doing yet again): "After all, as Camus pointed out, Sisyphus was essentially a happy man."

Thanks, John, for sharing, and for expressing it all so well.

I just turned 62 and my parents are 82 and 85!!! So this book covered all bases. I really need all the info this book provides. Along with being informative, it is entertaining. So glad I came across this book. Easy reading but I'm reading it slowly to make it last! P.S. Wonderful picture on the cover, however, I wish the title was something different. I read it between a brown paper bag! Ok, so, don't you glance at the title of the book that folks read in public...and rush to judgement? Heavens forbid that someone would think I was approaching 65!

Your College Experience: Strategies for Success 4th ed by John N. Gardner and A. Jerome Jewler.
This book is excellent for a first semester college introduction to academic life. It deals with the issues students need to address for academic success such as critical thinking, time management, active learning, learning styles, reading, writing, listening and speaking, test taking, library use, computer use, academic resources, advisors, relationships, diversity, stress management, finances, alcohol, drugs, and sex. The book has six parts: 1. Strategies for success, 2. Plan ahead, 3. Take charge of learning, 4. Hone your skills, 5. Get connected, and 6. Know yourself. There are one to four chapters in each part totaling fourteen chapters, about one per week for a semester. There are exercises and guiding questions for a personal journal at the end of each chapter. A highlight is the interactivity provided by the CD-ROM packaged with each textbook. Each chapter has a self-assessment, has exercises from the book formatted to use on the computer and refers to textbook pages, has additional exercises not in the textbook, quizzes, crossword puzzles, and journal assignments that can be done on the computer. The CD-ROM links to many Internet sites for additional information and self-assessments. The book comes with a free four month subscription to InfoTrac, an online library. This book is good for the visual learner, the CD-ROM is particularly good for the kinesthetic learner, and the discussion exercises are good for the auditory learner. There are also supportive materials for faculty who adopt the book, and the CD-ROM is available on Blackboard and WebCT as online course management tools.

I bought this book my first year of college, I am now a sophomore and STILL using it. I found it so helpful. I even recommended it to friends.

I really enjoy the author's insightful commentary and humor that includes a touch of witty sarcasm. The data is easy to read and complete. This guide is habit forming!

This is a comprehensive and intelligent study of the work of John Staub, who designed many of the most notable structures in Houston (both domestic architecture and commercial structures). He designed an incredible number of buildings, and not only in Houston, but in other parts of the country. For a student of architecture, and for someone interested in the history of Houston, this book is a must.

John Jerome has, in recent years, become one of my favorite writers thanks to his elegant and straightforward prose style. I ordered "Blue Rooms" the moment I heard it was out, and I was not disappointed. This is a terrific book.

"Blue Rooms" is about a lifelong love affair with water. From playing in the muddy San Marcos river as a boy, to kayaking the cold waters of Canadian lakes as a grown man, it seems Jerome has always been fascinated by water. Most of the earth's surface, he points out, is water. So is most of the human body.

What strikes me most about this book is the way in which Jerome takes a personal obsession and makes it understandable to his readers. By the end of the book I could have sworn I had a lifelong love affair with water, too, even though I'm a mediocre swimmer who lives in hills far from any large water source. Really, this is a terrific book. Go out and buy it. You won't be sorry.