I purchased this calendar last year and not only did I enjoy it, but my entire family as well as visitors really enjoyed the pictures. It's a full size wall calendar with one large picture on the top fold and small pictures on each day as well on the bottom fold. Also the daily blocks are plenty large enough to write appointments for the day. Each month depicts an area in Ireland, then each little picture is a small shot of different places in the main area. I loved the calendar so much last year that I just purchased the one for this year -- I got it and it's every bit as beautiful as the one from last year! Buy it, you will be glad you did!

I have bought an Ireland calendar every year for the past six years. I always get one for my grandmother and usually one for me. This is the best calendar out there. There is almost one photo per each day highlighting each county. There are some truly beautiful photos. I also like that there is plenty if space to write appointments and such in the large boxes beneath each date. I highly reccommend this calendar - it's well worth it's cost.

If you are looking for a fresh, new look at "The Troubles," this is the book. I found the book to be disturbing because all three of the stories centered on children and their peripheral involvement in the North. In each of the stories the adults were too caught-up in the day-to-day difficulties they encountered due to the circumstances. None of the children written about were understood nor were their feelings and concerns acknowledged. It is heart-breaking to watch how these children suffer without the parental-figures in their lives even realizing the impact the war is having on the children.

McCann's work is filled with subtlety and original crisp images that are culled with attention to detail. The novella and two short stories here feature experiences of youth affected by political turmoil in Northern Ireland. Yet the stories are not heavyhanded about the politics; they explore the lives of three adolescents while integrating the colonial frustrations into the narrative. This ie easily one of my favorite reads from the past year. The stories read quickly, but they have a density to them and a richness in language and emotion. While the tone seems brooding, there is still something to celebrate about the well written characters and insights that McCann offers in this work

Northern Ireland, with its troubled history and its extreme enviroment, is an easy subject for second-rate writers, and actually you can find a lot of would-be thrillers, unlikely to get a second edition.

For the same reason, Northern Ireland is a difficoult subject for good writers. That's why you can find many interesting non-fiction books, but really few good novels.

With "Everything in this country must" Colum McCann proves once again to be a great writer. While reading it, I was nearly overwhelmed by emotions. And I was amazed by both the simplicity and the effectivness of his writing.

It's a little book, just 150 pages. You could read it in two hours. But because it's a great book I would suggest you to read it very, very slowly, enjoying every word, every line, every emotion. And in so doing, may be you happen to realize that McCann is deceiving all of us: he writes poems disguised as short stories.

This is a great calendar. The pictures really show the wide variety of landscape that Ireland has to offer. This is a bit oversized, but necessary to fit all of the pictures that are included. It's nice to have a calendar that has more than 1 picture a month.

I must admit, I have been purchasing the 365 days in Ireland calendars for years. This one is an overwhelming winner in our household! The upcoming year's calendar doesn't disappoint. It is stunning.

Ever dream of going to Ireland? Go there through the beautiful pictures -- spread out over many present and historic sites, you can see the beauty and color of the Emerald Isle. This calendar is a full size wall calendar with one large picture on the top fold and small pictures on each day as well on the bottom fold. Each month depicts an area in Ireland, then each little picture is a small shot of different places in the main area. Though loaded with beautiful pictures, daily blocks are plenty large enough to write appointments and special occasions.

This is a beautiful calendar that would be stunning in any home for residents and their guests to admire from month to month. Buy this one, you won't be disappointed -- a true beauty to behold!

This was one of the worst books ever!
It was more fiction than truth. Poorly written and
such a fantasy. No need for fiction when writing about a truly
gifted and talented performer!
Awful, Awful, Awful

Dancer is an extraordinary novel, affecting me more profoundly than any other novel I have read in a long time. Vivid and hard-edged, rather than lyrical and beautiful, it fuses fact and fiction seamlessly, bringing to life ballet star Rudolf Nureyev and the many secret worlds he inhabited. From his first public performance, when, at the age of five he performed an exuberant dance in a hospital ward for Russian soldiers wounded in World War II, he was considered more athletic than subtle, and as he grew older, his legs were regarded as the source of "more violence than grace."

Nureyev's "wild and feral" style of dance meshes perfectly with McCann's prose. Paralleling the athleticism and drive of Nureyev, McCann's writing is bold and straightforward, characterized by short, powerful, descriptive sentences, often in a simple subject-verb-object pattern. Avoiding all frills and sentimentality, McCann favors strength over lyricism, and power over prettiness.

Through the first person observations of almost two dozen characters who touched Nureyev's life in some way, McCann shines light on Nureyev's personality and his development as a dancer. His family, teachers, lovers, and even a schoolboy bully, a stilt-walker, and the captain of an airplane, who filed an "incident report" about his atrocious behavior aboard a plane, all comment on his actions and the choices he makes, personally and professionally, as his career soars.

The deprivation and sadness experienced by most of these sensitive observers in their own lives contrasts vividly with the excesses and hedonism of Nureyev's adult life and illuminate, without need for authorial comment, his arrogance and boorishness. At the same time, however, these multiple viewpoints also humanize Nureyev in many ways by showing the extent to which these other characters are connected by love to others and to their history, while Nureyev becomes a "living myth...cared for and coddled and protected by the mythmakers."

Filled with intriguing characters, ranging from simple Russian peasants to Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, John Lennon, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, and the stars of ballet, the novel is a monument to the power of the creative spirit and a testament to the dangers inherent in a life from which all other controls have been removed. Rudi always "tore [a] role open...by the manner in which he presented himself, a sort of hunger turned human." McCann brings this voracious human to life. Nureyev leaps off these pages in a huge and stunning grand jete. Mary Whipple

Serious readers will disregard the nonsensical review by the reader from Michigan. Sorry you were disappointed, but this novel is a work of fiction, not a biography! It is, quite simply, an amazing piece of writing, a tour de force utilizing every,if not all, narrative points of view to construct a world based on reality. Mr. McCann is an incredible talent. From the opening scene depicting life on the Russian front during WWII, until the final pp.listing Nureyev's personal collection at auction, there is not one misstep. McCann's sharp, yet lyrical prose and concise imagery are a trademark. This writer does not need to 'know' the man; he realizes the soul. Having met this writer, I'll mention that he says he cannot write poetry; I disagree. I highly recommend this novel and this writer, and agree with the reviewer who mentions the NY Times review. This novel deserves to be recognized and promoted - that it has not been is a serious mark against those 'Powers That Be'!!

McCann skips gracefully between two wonderfully-told stories, tying them together in a stunning climax, in this his new novel. His ability to paint pictures of prose rarely ceases to amaze - pictures that range from beauty to despair. The book spans generations of a family - from early memories of cranes dancing in Georgia to playgrounds in Manhattan, and ties in the history of the construction of subway tunnels through to their modern-day shelters of despair. The history that is highlighted here is fascinating - histories of rascism, love, politics and friendship. And the reader gets drawn into each and every one - involved with, and part of each one. One feels that McCann must have spent huge amounts of time researching, combined with prolonged periods of time with the people who reside in these tunnels - his writing and emotions are so real. This is a novel to buy, soak up and talk about. Watch it closely, it is destined for greatness (or at least a Booker).

There are 1300 km of tunnels under New York city. They were built in the early years of this century by Irish, Italian and African-American navvies, working under the most appalling conditions. Today, as well as carrying millions of people in trains that are often overcrowded and sometimes dangerous, these tunnels are home to unknown thousands of vagrants and homeless people. Colum McCann sets his latest novel among these lost souls, telling the story of a family which is an unusual mix of Roscommon Irish and Georgia negro. This Side of Brightness starts with a historical event: the 1916 collapse of a tunnel which caused three workers to be forced up through tonnes of soil on a spume of pressurised water. They survived their ordeal, but the fourth member of their gang, an Irishman named O'Leary, was never found, his body stuck somewhere in the shale that separates the Brooklyn river from the tunnel that still carries trains beneath it. The book deals with the lives of the survivors, particularly the young black man named Walker who continues to work as a sandhog and marries O'Leary's daughter. The story is told with tenderness and understanding, carefully avoiding the temptation to sensationalise. This is how you write about the poison of racism sloshing through every corner of society; this is how you tell what racism means for ordinary human beings - the casual savagery of the police, the all-encompassing disdain of white people, the soul-destroying subservience of the blacks. Walker remembers the gentle times of growing up in Georgia. His wish to return there with his white wife and son is not dimmed by the realisation that if he ever did so, both he and his son would almost certainly be hanged. The book is written in alternating chapters, contrasting the struggles of Walker through four generations with the lives of the broken men and women who live in the labyrinths beneath Grand Central and other New York subway stations. Both narratives come together in the final few chapters in a resolution that is as frightening as the lives of the protagonists. This is the third of Colum McCann's books; the other two Fishing the Sloe-Black River and Songdogs foreshadowed the promise which is realised here. It shows a writer in scintillating form. His mastery of language is brilliant; he is as adept at evoking an image by a phrase - men working on skyscrapers high above Manhattan "piercing the virginity of space where steel hits the sky" - or by a single word - New York streets "cantankerous with car horns." In an Irish Times article last year, he told how he had avoided successive American St Patrick's Day extravaganzas to spend the time instead with the subterraneans who nicknamed him "Irish" and put out the word that even though he was a "white boy" he was not to be molested. The stories he heard and the life he shared on those occasions come through in this splendid book which puts him right at the top of today's Irish writers. Do not be surprised if it is mentioned for the Booker Prize.

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I just had to get that out of the way. The story is intense and visceral. The characters are so well developed that you are completely drawn into their world, whichever world they are living in.

I have recommended this book to several friends and they in turn have given it to their friends and so on and so forth. It's been an interesting experiment watching how this one book as affected so many different people I know and don't know.

The story and language are engaging and appropriate. You don't have street people speaking in perfect, educated English. The imagery and rhythm of the language transport to exactly the place Colum McCann wants you to be. He is a skilled storyteller with the gift of a keen observational eye. Nothing gets past him. It was the details, the little things that I loved about this book. It truely is one of the best books I'll ever read and read and read again.

I enjoyed this book. It is not your typical book with conflict and tension leading to a climax and then resolution. If you go in expecting that of Songdogs, you'll be sorely disappointed. Instead, go into this book looking for a journey and then sit back and enjoy the journey Songdogs takes you through. The characters and images are very well put together. The writing is so evocative at times, that I could smell the dust and feel the sun on my back as they built the wall. The writing is excellent. Colum has a wonderful gift for transporting you into the lives of his characters. This book will give you a nice introduction to Colum and his writing.

One of the only novels I've actually reread immediately because I didn't want it to end. Would make an amazing film.

A tiny bitten over-written at times and yet ot still manages to be profound and beautiful and even, on occassion, harsh. The last 50 pages are pure classic. Truly unforgettable. Someone should make a film of this novel.

a whole lot of attention for this young writer, but I don't see the goods ... a real bore

This is one of the most magnificent collections of short stories I have ever read. Disarmingly provocative and true. The final story Cathal's Lake is truly a classic in contemporary literature about Northern Ireland. A reading experience I will never forget.

In each of the stories, believable characters tell their stories in a manner which is a joy to read (and re-read).
McCann really knows how to get the reader's emotions running high through the lovingly crafted words and painstakingly described thoughts of his characters.