The Rose and the Ring is one of those special literary treats which happen when a writer for adults turns (in this case) his attention to the world of children. It's a classic fairy tale, told with Thackeray's customary insight into characters, an excellent story for reading aloud to children who have not been enslaved by the thought-preventing pace of anime. Look for an edition illustrated by the author.
As a young man this terrific author intended to be an artist. He submitted a portfolio to illustrate one of Dickens' novels which Dickens rejected, so Thackeray switched careers. We know what we gained ; the illustrations show what we lost.

I read the Rose and the Ring in grammar school through The Great Books Series (rust cover series) . Very, very funny "satire" that is fun for both kids and grown ups. I misplaced my great books copy. Luckily library has a copy. Books like this should never go out of print! And there should be a movie of this. In First Search of nationwide libraries, there appears to have been a play written based on this (not available through interlibrary loan unfortunately).

If you liked The Princess Bride, E. Nesbit, Sid Fleischman or Astrid Lindstom, you'll appreciate the humorous narrative.

Wish I still had the old original edition hardcover! I read it as a child, and learned a formal style of rhyme long since antiquated, which made Shakespeare that much more palatable after. What a wonderful companion for a rainy weekend, as in my childhood!

Reading Kathy's story will bring out every emotion that a human being can feel: love and hate; despair and hope; fear and courage. Not only does she open her heart to her readers, but she leads them through the "why me". Kathy's story is told in a form of writing that lets readers' know it comes straight from the inner most depth of her soul. Any person in an abusive relaionship should read this book to understand why they must seek help now.

The most powerful, truthful, and heart-wrenching story I have ever read on Domestic Violence, or for that matter, even seen in real life cases of abuse! This women went through hell! However, as you will see when you read this book, the author, Kathy Williams, teaches all of us what "Survival" is all about. Most of us would not have been able to endure such things as Ms. Williams did, and still live to talk about it!

This is a book that all organization, shelters, and groups should read, and possibly have Ms. Williams speak about her experience. She is truly an inspirational to all!

This book is very graphical, so be forewarned. However, a very good book for everyone.

This is a riveting account of one woman's battle with an abusive spouse, and what she had to do to make her life right again. If you want to read something that will make you laugh, cry, and challenge you on the most visceral level imaginable, you need to read this book.

"Advanced Stellar Astrophysics" is an exact title for this book. It is an advanced monograph on stellar structure. It is, both in style and substance, strongly reminiscent of Chandrasekhar's work on the same structure. Like Chandrasekhar, Rose works every topic out in his own way, including as much background as he needs (e.g. both his succinct treatments of electron gases and of general relativity). This gives the book a remarkable unity and intelligibility, and is a most welcome change tor the usual run of "advanced monographs" which all too often are half-assimilated hodge-podges of other people's work.

This is a great book for anyone interested in advanced stellar phenomena. Easy to read with adequate math rigor, this book is a pleasure to work through. The layout of the book is pleasing to the eye and flows well. Equations are displayed in a spacious and predictable manner which allows quick reference and reduces distractions. Pedagogical discussion is succinct and cogent. Dr. Rose is an excellent teacher and, as usual, Cambridge Press has printed an outstanding book with outstanding attention to detail.

I like everything about the faeries, I have many books about it, amd I think that this book is more good than many others like that, the text and the illustration is good, I need it

Throughout time there has been a very human fascination with "little people", otherwise known as fairies. Whenever something happened that couldn't quite be explained, it was often attributed to the "fairies".

THE BOOK OF FAIRIES: Nature Spirits From Around The World by Rose Williams is an exquisite anthology of tales from the fairy realm that brings together stories from all over the world. The beautiful illustrations by Robin T. Barrett bring these fanciful tales to life in radiant "Fairy" colors.

Williams' fairy stories show the deep connection between fairies and nature. There are stories here from a variety of cultures, including Irish, English, Chinese, French, and even American Indian. Each story explains how the "fairies" help humans in many different situations.

Although marketed as a children's book, anyone interested in the fairy realm will find THE BOOK OF FAIRIES a fascinating volume.

You will enjoy the many discoveries this book has to offer and it is beautifully illustrated with a color photograph and planting recommendations for every plant. I cannot recommend a better book for a Houston or Gulf Coast gardener, either expert or new comer, and I have read them all! It focuses on plants that truly do well HERE. It skips azaleas, hybrid roses, tulips and all the other fussy plants pushed by the local nurseries do great anywhere but here. Instead it offers beautiful and underused (and for the most part - EASY) alternatives.

One of the best book's on Texas gardening.

When you work in other field and want to have a complete image of what astrophysics is, but do not have enough time for read more than two hundred pages, then this book is for you. It uses the mathematical language that make it a serious treatise and covers a fine range of actaul knowledge.

The Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh...in his 100 Acre Wood Eden...are celebrations of friendship and loyalty. Maurice Sendak's WHERE the WILD THINGS Are, startlingly glimpses into fun; adventure and beckoning unknown dangers inhabiting the seemingly guileless imagination of children. THE VELVETEEN RABBIT might be thought to complement these major modern works of CHILDREN MYTHOLOGY. "How Toys become Real..." is subtitle and theme of this superbly crafted fable about LOVE: its promise; pain and overwhemling power to miraculously transform. Like all great fairy-tales, cuentoes and parables, the story is Once-upon-a-Time simple. It can be read to any child over three, and read by any child eight or older(3.5 g/e). It is told from point of view of a "really splendid, fat and bunchy Velveteen Rabbit...with coat spotted brown and white...real thread whiskers...and ears lined with pink sateen." The toy rabbit "quests" the love of his playmate master(BOY)that can...according to Mentor and friend THE SKIN HORSE...grant REALITY.
"When a child loves you for a long, long time...not just to play with...but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL."

Adorning this story is the wonderous art of illustrator Donna Green. In this 1995/98 edition, the "picture book" is illuminated with beautiful oil, acrylic, and lush pastel paintings that glow, and shimmer Life-like and LOVE-like. It is beautiful art work intrinsically conveying Margery Williams' mythical message to the young and young-at heart. (10 Stars)

Daughter Anna (now 19 years old) loved this book. It was her favorite above all others. As we sorted through some old kid things for give-away purposes, we stumbled upon this old, well worn copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit." She insisted we keep the book for HER children.

This was her book that Mama (me!) had to read to her again and again and again. As soon as the last word was read on the last page, it was "Mama, please read it again!"

(how I miss those days, by the way!)

The book also has a powerful message about Love that children understand and cherish.

This is a wonderful book. No child should be without their own copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit."

This is a heartwarming story about a toy rabbit filled with sawdust that wants to be real. He realizes what the meaning of "real" is when his owner, a young boy, gives him the answer for which he searches. My wife bought this book for me last month. I missed it as a child. I've learned the lesson in this book in traditional ways, by trial and error. I would have loved to have this treasure as a child and thank my beautiful wife, Lori, for giving it to me, now. Only real love has any meaning or longevity, at all. I ask you readers to not pass up this gem of a book. It is a must for children and adults alike.

This is one encyclopedia that is actually fun to read and browse. I fully join in the earlier reviewers' praise for this book. I do, however, have a couple of constructive criticisms. First, much too much space is devoted to non-literary historical and political figures and events. Hopefully, the next edition will cut down on this stuff, so that more "minor" writers can be included, especially contemporary writers and writers from the non-English speaking world. (In this respect, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature is probably a more comprehensive reference.) Second, too many entries about particular works are merely brief plot summaries that do not convey to the uneducated reader (such as this one) the essential meaning or significance of the work in question. That said, Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia is one great reference book to have around.

A handy reference work for scholars, literature students, readers and booksellers, the headings include authors, titles, literary terms, fictional protagonists, historical personages, and so forth. This is one to keep at arm's reach, right there next to the dictionary.

A quick & ready reference for unfamiliar terms encountered during literary jaunts and journeys, and a great aid for booksellers needing some accurate background information to list a literary find online! One wishes the numerous online booksellers just entering the fray would purchase a copy, and familiarize themselves just a little with the world of books and literature of which they have become purveyors! - I've seen listings that betray the seller's ignorance of the difference between Winston Churchill the British statesman (& prime minister), and Winston Churchill the American novelist! A quick check of this easy reference work would have made the difference between accuracy and diletantism!

Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia is the most complete one-volume encyclopedia based on literature. Its entries are numerous and cover a vast variety of topics, from 'portmanteau words' to 'The Inferno.' I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in literature or who need some extra help in that subject to get by.

I would in fact prefer to award this 3.5 stars, but the Amazon system seems to compel one to choose between 3 and 4, and I think 4 is too generous. To begin with the text, there is no doubt that this is not the best Shakespeare to buy. It is to a large extent based on the Oxford Shakespeare, which - quite rightly, in my view - has attracted a lot of criticism for some of its peculiarities. Thus, for example, Oxford prints TWO versions of *King Lear*, the quarto text and that of the folio. Norton rightly takes issue with this, and produces the kind of conflated text that most readers would want, but adds the other two AS WELL (so we are offered THREE versions!). This kind of thing is, in truth, academic self-indulgence - it shows an undue respect for academic concerns which to most readers are not of the slightest interest. There is a similar tendency to pay scant regard to what most readers really want and need in the Introduction: that tells us a good deal about Shakespeare's time, and the material is interesting, but it is not often shown to be relevant, or necessary, to an understanding of what Shakespeare writes. The explanatory annotation accompanying the texts is not bad, but often inferior to that of comparable editions, notably Bevington's. The introductions to individual plays are usually stimulating, but not necessarily convincing. Thus Greenblatt on the one hand says about Macbeth's murder of Duncan, "That he does so without adequate motivation, that he murders a man toward whom he should be grateful and protective, deepens the mystery ..." (p. 2558), yet adds a few lines later: "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth act on ambition ...". Precisely, that IS Macbeth's motivation for the murder, as Macbeth himself points out unequivocally in 1.7.25-7 - there is, therefore, absolutely nothing mysterious about his motivation. The edition does, however, offer a number of good references to other writings about Shakespeare. All in all, I do consider 3.5 stars is a fair "grade", in seeking to assess this for the benefit of the majority of readers looking for a complete Shakespeare to buy; but I consider David Bevington's by far the best edition of the complete works, then the Riverside, and only then this one - though, with its annotations, it is certainly more useful than the Oxford edition on which it is based. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

I confess that after examining 5-6 of the top-selling complete Shakespeares I tried not to like the Norton. There are less expensive editions, there are editions with glossy pages and colored photographs, there are editions that are half the weight and bulk of this leviathan, which is far more Shakespeare than the average reader--perhaps, even scholar, for that matter--would ever require. But despite its bulk and unwieldyness, its 3500 (!) thin, flimsy pages, its sheer excess, I couldn't ignore its advantages. The small print enables the publishers to squeeze in contextual materials--in the introduction and appendixes--that in themselves amount to an encyclopedic companion to Shakespeare's works; the introductions to the plays are written not in "textbook prose" but in an engaging style worthy of their subject; and perhaps, best of all, this is the only edition that places the glosses right alongside the "strange" Elizabethan word instead of in the footnotes. You can read the plays without experiencing vertigo of the eye. So this is the edition, though you may wish to go with the smaller, bound portions that Norton publishes of the same edition--especially if you can't afford the cost of a personal valet to carry this tome from home to office. On the other hand, the complete edition is excellent for doing crunches and other aerobic exercises--activities many of us who read the Bard are abt to ignore.

As a fervent admirer of Shakespeare, this complete collection, comprising excellent introductions to each play and helpful textual notes as well as informative writings on the history of both England and the art of acting that shaped Shakespeare's writing, was like a dream come true. While before I had to walk around trying to find a good edition of the play I wanted to read, now I can open the Norton Shakespeare and read without being afraid of not understanding words or missing the point of the play. This book's obvious drawbacks are its heft and, as mentioned, its delicate pages, but these are easily outweighed by the abovementioned advantages! Buy it and read!

Fortunate SF readers will have encountered William Sanders' earlier novels _Journey to Fusang_, a fine, funny-serious, alternate history about a North American colonized by the Chinese instead of the Europeans, and _The Wild Blue and the Grey_, another alternate history about Indians from an independent state as pilots in World War I. Even more fortunate folk may have encountered some of Sanders' other work, published in a variety of categories.

Sanders has recently returned to writing SF, mostly in shorter forms. He has published such excellent stories as "Elvis Bearpaw's Luck", "The Undiscovered" (which was nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo), and "Jennifer, Just Before Midnight". He has also published a new SF/Fantasy novel, _The Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkestan_. Even more recently he has published a fine mystery, _Smoke_, and an excellent science fiction novel, _J._ -- both are very well worth finding.

This is a very fine contemporary fantasy, with an exciting story in the forefront, as well an involving love story, plenty of humor, and even a message. The message doesn't get in the way of the story: instead, the story supports the message, and the message is a passionately presented and definitely worth hearing.

The title characters are Billy Badwater, a Cherokee and a Gulf War veteran, and Janna Turonova, a doctor from Kazakhstan. Janna is in the US partly to alert people to the terrible environmental damage done in Kazakhstan by Soviet nuclear testing and toxic waste. Billy meets her at a powwow, and they fall in love. Soon Billy finds himself chasing this woman across the western U. S., and on a reservation in Nevada he finds evidence that much as the Soviets used the Asian people's land as dumping grounds and testing grounds, the U. S. has used Native American land in the same way. The fantasy element arises from a monster that is called forth by the toxic waste in Nevada. Billy, aided by Janna and some other friends, especially his dead Grandfather, is pushed to use Indian magic in battle against the monster. The story is exciting and involving throughout, and the love story is convincing and sexy.

This gem of a genre-bending book defies catagorization. It's grand! There really is a Ballad of Billy in this book, and it goes like this:
"Billy Badass was a warrior
From Oklahoma way
A hero of his nation
Who had wore the Green Beret.
He met the purtiest lady
She was from a fur-off land
And Billy Badass fell in love
With the Rose of Turkestan"
Jerry Dwayne, of Jerry Dwayne Austin and the Piss-Cutters
House Band of "The Last Church of Naked City, Losers Welcome" Las Vegas, Nevada.

Billy Badass is our hero's nickname. His enrollment card in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma states his name as William E. Badwater. And the Rose of Turkestan is Janna Turanova , of Kazakhstan, part of the former Soviet Union. A bunch of yonegs have been messin' with stuff they don't understand, causing all manner of real radioactive nightmares out in the Nevada desert. And Billy and the Rose become embroiled in the imbroglio.

Notwithstanding the impending destruction of the planet, Sanders and his characters maintain a sense of humour. There are dealings with a minor bureaucrat in the INS, threatening mean and nasty things regarding Janna's VISA (the immigration status - not the Credit Card.) Bureaucrat says: "We don't just hand out the Green Card to everyone who asks. There are criteria to be met, guidelines to be followed - do you have any idea how many people want to come to America to live?" To which Billy responds "Some of us already ran into that problem." And regarding the flawed, lone law enforcement officer on the Bucktail Springs Reservation: "Leonard isn't exactly your Tony Hillerman breed of Indian cop."

And this isn't exactly a typical Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror/ Mystery/Action/Romance. It's a uniquely delightful brew!

BALLAD is brilliant, as is its author, William Sanders. This book is a must-read for any fan of contemporary literature. A fascinating blend of SF/Fantasy, Horror and social commentary, BILLY takes you to places you'll love -- heights of which you've only dreamed, and depths of darkness in which you might fear to tread. But Sanders safely guides you through it all with the talent and imagination of a master storyteller. The book contains everything that makes life worthwhile: true love, heroism, motorcycles and monsters. Who could ask for anything more?