For those not so inclined to the more basic side of the voluntary simplicity movement, I'd recommend "Your Money or Your Life" by Dominguez and Robin.

Charles really is presenting here a paratyme switch, for us many Americans who live to buy things. It showed us some stategies on spending less and living more.

This book is a strategy about slowing down the pace of our daily lifes in order to do what we fill is important. It is not a easy strategy and might not fit everyone, but for us it seemed to fit very well what we want to be about. The book contrubuted to us organizing our household so that I could start a small business. It helped alot.

It is an easy read with great examples. I highly recommmend this book for anyone to read.

There's a Polish saying that to be a man one has to plant a tree, raise a son, and build his own house. Well, I've got the tree part down, and I'll settle for raising a male beagle, but at some point I'm going to get out of apartment dwelling and build a house. When I do it'll be made of stone, so I picked up this book. Reading it was a bit of fantasy for me, but from what I can tell it's quite instructional with many great photographs to back up the text.

It details how to make a correct foundation, how to build archways, and also has nice tips about how much mortar to make and how to control the logistics of construction and supplies. It also has dashes of humor.

If you're going to make a stone house, or need info on the process for a book or project, I suggest this title to help you out.

-- JJ Timmins

Mr. Long discusses the "slipform" method, which he rejected for the cost of the lumber, the time spent in preparation,the appearance of the finished work (which, he argues, resembles veneer), and its limitation to modular designs. (From his description, apparently slipforms are moveable forms in which stone walls are built, which forms are slipped up to the next level to build the wall higher.) He acknowledges that the slipform method inspired him in developing part of his own method, which uses an interior frame wall and a loose sheathing piece as a form for the back of the stone wall.

The BOCA National Building Code, which applies in my town, requires that rubblestone walls be a minimum of 16 inches thick. Mr. Long recommends substantially thicker walls (dependant on height of the wall), although he refers to an unidentified building code that allows 12 inch walls to 35 feet in height. To me, it seems to be a great waste of space and energy to build build stone walls thicker than they need to be. I have ordered more books on the subject, as I believe it is easier to read an extra book than to gather, stack and mortar an extra 20 tons of stone. However, I expect that this book will be of use to me if I ever actually get around to building in stone.

Unfortunately, several typo's have been noted.

This is an excellent adventure book that takes a Conan like hero and plots him against all sorts of evil (and good), including some Cthulhu creations as well.

Originally Ghor was an unfinished story by Conan creator Robert Howard. Upon finding this unfinished story, a magazine decided to finish it. What they did was have a different chapter every month written by a different top fantasy writer. It made the reading interesting.

While most of the chapters were great. Some were excellent. Unfortunately there were a couple chapters that I just wanted to get through to reach the next writers' chapter. Overall a really good read.