I started to read this book on the weekend and found myself unable to put it down. For me reading the story of two lesbians, one with cancer, the other caring for her was extremely powerful. Their honest account of the treatments left me sitting with my mouth open. I was especially interested with Maurs obsession about losing her body hair and her delight when it began to grow back. This books is written as a diary, the style works well and like the back blurb says C-word is 'utterly unputdownable'.

This is a book about the different ways the diagnosis of ovarian cancer affected two active members of the lesbian community in Melbourne in the 1990s. When Maureen O'Connor was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in February 1996, she delayed going to hospital so she could appear in the Performing Older Women's Circus production, 'Still Revolting'. The C-Word describes the daily battle Maureen (Maurs) fought over the next two-and-a-half years.

Maurs grew up in a working-class family in Melbourne, worked in the public service, and later became head technician in the Women's Circus.

When her partner, Jean Taylor founded the Performing Women's Circus (POW) in 1995, Maurs moved on-stage and became a clown.

The C-Word is an honest and forthight account of cancer. It deals with the loneliness the partner of a sufferer faces, the gruelling treatments with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and the terror and calm of facing death. A story of a powerful partnership, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of community.

Reading this book is an emotional experience, and it is utterly unputdownable.

Maggie Garrett is a struggling PI in San Francisco. Her best friend keeps trying to set her up with every single woman she knows and her best friend's partner has recommended her to psychologist's attorney. The psychologist is being accused of sleeping with one of her patients. First the attorney hires her, then her father wants to pay to get the information first, then the step-mother wants to pay to get the information first. She agrees to all of them and then the dance begins. Taylor reveals each piece of evidence to the reader as her character finds them. Nothing is what it seems to be. Garrett goes undercover looking for the perpetrator only to find other crimes being committed. Things become even more complicated when murder is committed. Now Garrett is searching for a murderer! Garrett is an interesting and finely drawn character. Her friends are just like yours and mine. If you like mysteries cozy and with a lesbian PI, this is the series for you.

Completely enjoyed The Last of Her Lies. It's a great read and I look forward to reading more of Jean Taylor.

This is a great book - it tells the real facts about shark (and other types) cartilage with none of the hype. Unfortunately, the publisher decided not to send it to the bookstores.

These people are ahead of their time - if you had a chance to catch the Guggenheim retrospective of the same name, you know what I am talking about. In 50 years, more people will know about Arakawa and Gins than right now, but why wait? We need to change the direction of humanity NOW!

This book goes though the vast output of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, from Arakawa's thought-provoking conceptual paintings from the 60's, to their more current philosophies about the body and architectural surround.

The pictures are colorful and vivid, every page is different and exciting. Their newer computer renderings of beautiful organic housing projects will blow you away. When you open a book like this in a room full of people, everyone will gather around you to get a look! When something is different than the norm but still maintains logic and beauty, it naturally attracts people.

Get this book before it becomes a collector's item.

The title of the book perfectly describes author's purpose: study the Dutch and Eurasian society in Indonesia. We live through the rough conditions of the early colonists under the stingy United East Indian Company (VOC), the lack of contacts between Dutch and Indonesian society, most of the relations being between non-Dutch mercenaries and local Indonesian people, the influence of Enlightenment on Batavia, the change with the bankrupcy of the VOC in 1800 and the British occupation. And then Dutch direct administration until 1942 which many Dutch and Eurasian remember as Tempo Doeloe, a magic era with European children being raised in a totally javanese world of music, gamelan, puppet theater, contacts with the refined Indonesian courts at their adulthood, a society obsessed by Dutch speaking as symbol of class and fear of indentity loss but mostly using Indonesian because the refined and ancient local society. This was not so dreamlike for the Indonesian (Dutch were nicknamed the Butchers of Asia). Anyway an excellent book on one of the longest Western presence in Asia that ended abruptly with the Japanese invasion in 1942 and Dutch final departure in 1949.

The publication of the Tex formatted version of Almgren's famous big regularity paper makes the original three-volume, 1700 page paper much easier to read. Especially, since Almgren developed the whole new machinery, it takes time for the beginning readers to become familiar with the terminology and to consult essential materials in the Appendix. Readers who have suffered reading the original three hand typed ``telephone books'' will appreciate this all-in-one book.

As in the title of the book, the paper provides a method to deal with the regularity problem of mass minimizing surfaces in higher codimension. This paper not only gives the optimal upper bound of the Hausdorff dimension of the singular sets, but also provides a possible approach to understand the structure of the singular sets of mass minimizing surfaces. This deep but famous paper contains several ingredients to be understood and explored. It is worthwhile for people who are interested in geometric measure theory to spend some time on reading it.

This book brings people up to date with what has been said by African Americans and let's everyone know that there are successful African-Americans out there, and that they know what it takes to become and stay successful!

The photographs by John Bigelow Taylor are wonderful, but this book has a paucity of explanatory text. I don't just like to look at pretty pictures. I want to know about the jewelry. Who made it? How was it made? Who wears it? How is it worn? Why was it worn? What is the human history behind it? I particularly want to know all this about ethnic jewelry. You won't get it here.

No people are shown wearing the jewelry, so the book is sterile. There is no cultural context. It's a lot to pay for no additional knowledge about ethnic jewelry.

This is, indeed, a very beautifully photographed book. The represented pieces are all exquisite.

Though, it's true that there could have been more background information provided, giving the book a rating of one star, as the first reviewer did, is grossly unjust - an act of spite rather than of informed criticism. Clearly, the book was never meant to be a exhaustive examination of all the ethnological aspects of each piece (though there is ample annotation); such a book would have run to 2000 pages rather than 250! So the Splendor of Ethnic Jewelry is not a doctoral thesis but rather a stroll thru a museum; in this case, the Ghysels Collection. A coffee-table book if you want, but beautiful none the less and of the highest standard.

If you have previously had no interest in ethnic jewelry per se, this book will open your eyes to the extraordinary artistry of these ornaments created by the world's non-industrial peoples. Each object in itself says much more than an accompanying treatise ever could, and I cannot imagine anyone coming away from this book without a desire to learn more.

A second copy purchased for a friend who deals in ethnic jewelry was very much appreciated.

This is a HUGE book filled with georgeous close-ups of really inspirational jewelry. A favorite of mine!

Account of how the fearless leader hoodwinks yet another pidgeon. Too bad Toomer & the rest of them couldn't honor & respect those who truly deserved it...their wives & mothers.

I suppose the motivation for writing this book in the words of Gurdjieff in Beelzebub's Tales would be: 'to destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, rooted in him, about Gurdjieff himself".

I always thought that Gurdjieff took care that his own image was not without tarnish; this has been explained as his way of getting his followers not to identify the man with the teaching. Paul Beekman Taylor completes this work and achieves a clear separation, without leaving us any shadow of doubt.

Gurdjieff according to Mr. Taylor was a womanizer, father of his sister Eve and about half a dozen (if not more) of other children, who Gurdjieff left to their mothers to raise shunning all resposibility like plague (at least he did so with Eve). His Gurdjieff wrote appallingly childish letters in bad taste to Mr. Taylor's mother, Edith Annesly Taylor, who said of Gurdjieff: "He is not a nice man", and kept coming back to him like a jojo for about 25 years.

Jean Toomer, one of the many lovers of Edith Taylor, comes out much cleaner. As Gurdjieff would say: "very handy, no children, just handkerchief".

Nobody is a prophet in his own country; only very few of Gurdjieff's relatives, official or unofficial, seem to have learned from him about the things he taught. Mr. Taylor is almost family, but he learned at least one thing. His book has a one page record of the conversation he had with Gurdjieff in 1949, in which he said: "Come see me in New York, you pay me for summer here with story there, at Child's. Story is breath, life. Without story man have no self." Gurdjieff died before Paul Beekman Taylor told his story to him.

Now 50 years later he achieves with his story a good increase of the distance between Gurdjieff the man and his teaching.

Paul Taylor's book has two perspectives. One is that of an insider who grew up within the Gurdjieff movement. His mother was Gurdjieff and Jean Toomer's lover. His own father remains an unsolved mystery. He tells many stories of the rather Bohemian love affairs the various members of the entourage "enjoyed" -- although they mostly sound miserable and crazy.

Taylor, an English professor at the University of Geneva, also manages to put Jean Toomer and Gurdjieff into a larger academic perspective -- commenting on Toomer's race, and Gurdjieff's proximity to other philosophers and writers of his period.

The book is well-written -- maintaining at one time a personal perspective, and a wider, more objective, academic perspective. For Gurdjieffians and Toomer fans alike -- the book is highly readable and informative.

-- Kirby Olson