This collection gives the reader a real taste of Ireland, from authentic folklore to tales of the contemporary Irish. I especially enjoyed the stories by Loree Lough, Mike Sackett, Lisa Kamps and Shannon Katona. Pick up this book when you only have time for a short read. . . any story you choose will be entertaining.

This book had no real mystery. The book was boring. It was ok at the end. I am 10 years old and everyone in my book club (11 girls) rated this book poor.

Shannon is an Irish girl starting school in San Francisco in 1880. But her friend Betsy is now going off with her other friends, the Fabulous Four. And then one day, their kind young teacher is replaced by a mean substitute. Where did their nice teacher go? Shannon must find out.

Shannon is starting school in San Francisco (1880). But since she is Irish and just moved here things are diffucult for her. Her neighbor Betsy who has been Shannon's friend all summer long went off with her group of friends. Or as they prefer to be called the Fabulous Four. Which include cruel Margaret, bookworm Rebecca, Betsy, and just in the middle Jeanette. But the girls seem to be so nice to Margaret, even how mean she is. And another thing is troubling her. Mi Ling is Chinese and can't go to the school. But where is Mi Ling in the day? Why is Margaret so mean but has friends? Where did Miss Kennedy go when they had the mean subsitute? Shannon must find out.

Every year, I purchase New Stories from the South, but I always buy last year's, in paperback, then I might take another few months to read it. So I've just finished the 2000 issue and will start on 2001 one of these days (I have it in my pile of books somewhere). I never regret having purchased or read these anthologies. They always include good writers, both new and familiar, and the stories are an interesting combination of themes, locales and styles. The South is a part, sometimes subtle, but always there, and the characters are seldom sterotypical, their stories never trite. Pick up any of these issues. The stories are timeless.

One wonders a bit at the subtitle: The Year's Best, 2000, and then one remembers this collection, the latest in a long line of such anthologies stretching back to the 1980's, was edited by Algonquin Books' Shannon Ravenel, and she knows more about these things probably than anybody else.

Nevertheless, I would call this a mixed bag of Southern storytelling. Allan Gurganus's "He's at the Office" has a clever premise, one familiar to anyone from a close-knit, aging family, and once again showcases Gurganus's sharp eye for detail and razzmatazz prose style, but the ending is silly and the story collapses because of it. R.H.W. Dillard's "Forgetting the End of the World" seems much ado about nothing and strains for a significance it most certainly does not achieve. These are two of the weaker links in the chain. Among the stronger ones are "Mr. Puniverse", a marvelous comedy of unrequited passion, Romulus Linney's "The Widow", which has the rhythm and cadence of a good Appalachian folk ballad, Melanie Sumner's "Good Hearted Woman", the book's longest piece and most obvious crowd pleaser, about a young woman's confrontations with work, love, and family, and Margie Rabb's "How to Tell a Story," my own favorite of the bunch, and an incisive, very moving, and all-too-true look at the dog eat dog world of university creative writing programs and one young writer's determination to tell stories despite what happens to her and the stories she tells.

This is an attractively designed paperback. Each story ends with an author biography, with the writer revealing why he/she wrote that particular story.

it is a useful dictionary for the general purpose. The number of terms included in this book is not enough for professional use (may be due to the limited no. of pages, 204 pages). Well, I like this book anyway. I recommend this book to the college student and any housewife who loves to know more about foods.

I purchased this book based on the information it contained. I compared several books on the subject off the rack of a bookstore, mostly looking for a thorough explanation and strategy for the Memory for Addresses section of the exam, as this was the part that was proving to be a major stumper!

As I went through the first excercises, I found there to be several errors in the address checking section. The answer key is unreliable, as you can plainly see whether two addresses are alike or different.

Small errors aside, I proceeded with reading the rest of the book. And then I get to hour 17, the dreaded timed test for the Address Memory section. The section consists of several sessions of memorizing a chunk of information, working with sample questions with and without said chunk (none of these answers count, these sections are just there to assist you with memorization,) and then finally answering the set of 88 questions that actually does matter. In the middle of the different sections belonging to the same chunk of information, the chunk of information magically changes. I memorize the new chunk. And then it goes back to what it was.

Very disappointing.