The pictures in this book are great fun--Trina Schart Hyman skillfully captures the atmosphere of each season with a complexity of familiar objects, including the small details that always make her work a joy to wander into. The poetry, however, was not as good as I had expected. The poems lacked internal unity, resembling a list of separate events that never transitioned well enough into each other to evoke the desired image (of that particular month). There were occasional gems--phrases that stood out like holidays in an otherwise unspectacular "year." For example, "January" begins with these lines:

"The days are short,/ The sun a spark/ Hung thin between/ The dark and dark."

And the first two stanzas of "June":

"The sun is rich/ And gladly pays/ In golden hours,/ Silver days,/

And long green weeks/ That never end./ School's out. The time/ Is ours to spend."

Among several other noteworthy passages, my favorite of all is this one from "March":

"The mud smells happy/ On our shoes."

Read it for the gems, not for a unified sense of the season, and you'll be rewarded. But then again, the pictures are reward enough!

Today, many children only know about poetry from Dr. Seuss. A Child's Calendar is a rich introduction to the imagery of poetry that has entranced all who listen since the days of wandering story tellers and shamen. In this volume, classic New England situations and events are beautifully illustrated in warm, heavily inked water colors showing beautiful brown and pink faces amid nature's wonders. Although no one would buy this volume solely for the poetry, the resulting book of illustrated verses makes for the raw material for a garden of happy memories tended by reading to your child (or grandchild) and listening while she or he learns to read to you.

Each month is featured, beginning with January, with a brief poem and two beautiful illustrations spread over two pages. The illustrations are clearly well deserving of the Caldecott Honor.

I found some of the imagery particularly meaningful, and these lines are included below:

January -- "The sun a spark/Hung thin between/The dark and dark."

February -- "And snapping, snipping/Scissors run/To cut out hearts."

March -- "The timid earth/Decides to thaw."

April -- "All things renew./All things begin."

May -- "And Daddy may/Get out his hoe/To plant tomatoes/In a row."

June -- "In golden hours,/Silver days."

July -- "Bang-bang! Ka-boom!"

August -- "The pavement wears/Popsicle stains."

September -- "The breezes taste of apple peel."

October -- "Frost bites the lawn."

November -- "The ground is hard,/As hard as stone."

December -- "We were fat penguins,/Warm and stiff."

The subjects of sun, earth, plants, animals, and change recur in almost each poem.

One of the charms of this book is that it makes the harsh weather interesting and appealing, helping a child understand the balanced nature of the year and his or her role in that balance. For someone who lives in a warm climate year round this book will seem very magical.

After you have finished enjoying the book, I suggest that you and your child partner discuss other cycles that she or he has noticed. You could talk about the daily cycle of the sun, the monthly cycle of the moon, the twice daily tides, or even three meals a day. Young people often have trouble developing a perception of context for what is going on around them. This book and your discussions can help. You will also encourage someone who may want to write some poetry. If so, why not start with January and describe what is happening where you live?

See and hear the most in the beauty around you! Capture it for others to enjoy!

Updike creates a poem and word picture that accurately and wonderfully describes each month of the year. His short, simple poems are packed full of words and imagines that conjure up seasons and holidays, emotions and activities throughout the year. Hyman's illustrations are an added bonus, as she brings each month to life through the eyes of a family and their friends. I highly recommend this one -- it's beautiful

I thought that "The Coup" was a curious novel. It's written as the memoirs of Ellellou, President of the fictional African country of Kush. Ellellou reflects upon the events surrounding his acquisition of power, his relationships with his various wives and mistresses, the effects of US and Soviet intervention in Africa, and his earlier life as a student in the United States.

I suppose you could look upon "The Coup" as a satire on post-colonial Africa and the Cold War. But really, this being an Updike novel, it's just as much a tilt at American society: much of the novel is devoted to Ellellou's time in the US, and in particular his encounters with the Nation of Islam. Ellellou is just as much disconcerted by the Nation of Islam's intolerance of his realtionship with a white woman as he is by the racism of his girlfriend's father. And there's many more relfections on American society.

In all, I thought that Updike's writing in "The Coup" was less assured than I've become accustomed to. The satire worked far better in the "US" parts of the novel than the African bits, not surprising as the former seems to be Updike's forte. As such, I found it an uneven book. It's noentheless worth a read if you're looking for Updike trying something different.

Updike has created a strangely loveable tyrant in Ellelou. An impotent, Islamic fundamentalist zealot, Ellelou is the president of a mythical African socialist republic, Kush, and he narrates this great bad dream of a book. His voice is expertly used to comically tease out and eventually lay bare the self serving hypocrisy at the heart of Soviet and US power politics as the cold war nears its end in the late 60s/early 70s. A supporting cast is wonderfully sketched. The bureaucratic toad with the silk Parisian shirts and penchant for all things western, Ezana, is very funny. The delightfully spirited yet doomed liberal Amercan wife of Ellelou, Candy, (whom he seduced and transplanted to Kush having met at university in America) recalls the noble yet faintly ridiculous "human shield" volunteers who set off to deflect the American bombs in the recent Iraq war only to fall out along the way in a cloud of petty squabbles. Ellelou's many other wives are a joy to behold and often quite saucy. The American diplomat Klipspringer is wonderfully vacant, simple of mind and outlook, eternally buoyant and optimistic, no doubt he went on to great things under Reagan!

This is all great fun and no one escapes the author's scalpel that dissects, via jibes and faux-dogmatism, the vacancy at the heart of everything. All are treated equally here: middle class America, drunken (stereotypical unfortunately) Russian missile crews, the USA's private racial embarrassment, the world's great religions, clownish black Muslim students, superpower policy in the poorest countries, arrogant white liberal professors (who understand Africa better than Africans...!), naive peace workers, the paper-thin nature of African government, jet-setting diplomats, all are given equal rights to make themselves look foolish - which is a lot of fun but not very optimistic. Updike's future is always bleak. I think he sees the future of human history as a facsimile of its past, only bigger and worse: more war, more violence, more division, more exploitation, more dogma, more illness, more pollution, more greed, more stupidity - and ultimately, no doubt, a perfect peace. But there'll be no one left to enjoy it. I think he's probably right, humans can't help themselves and we're all fiddling while Rome burns. Updike's unique strength (his obvious talent aside) is that he's one of the few writers who sees this and points it out, without offering any sort of optimism, solution or last chance. Certainly, he's the most eloquent of these visionaries. His gift is to get to the heart of matters and show us that there's little of merit there.

The novel loses a little focus from the point where the former King of Kush's head (a Soviet funded re-animated robot version of the one decapitated publicly by Ellelou) speaks to visiting tourist parties. This leads to an odd and dreamlike penultimate segment in a sleek mirrored glass city, a capitalist Eden that has sprung up in the Sahara thanks to the discovery of that slippery black stuff that causes so much trouble today. But there is a staggeringly powerful and amazingly well written mid-section in which Ellelou travels the remote regions of Kush's badlands, with his stoned and racy wife Sheba in tow, and the narrative switches effortlessly between his college days as a disgusted, vaguely amused and mostly detached student in the States and the parched present as the president of next to nothing. A great book, buy it and read it, it has a lot to say about our own troubled times but absolutely nothing to offer them, which is - I think - the whole point of John Updike.

It took me 15 years but I finally did it. I finished reading "The Coup" this week and that means I have read all of Updike's published novels and short story collections. I'm no expert but this one has got to be one of his best. All the usual Updike elements are there: flawless prose, "tragicomic" situations (emphasis on "comic" in this book), character development, and the pace is just right. The scene where the protaganist meets the parents of his American girl friend is simply hilarious. If you're a fan and haven't read "The Coup" you're definitely missing out. I highly recommend it.

The priest Thomas Marshfield writes what amounts to a confession whilst undergoing therapy.

Marshfield (not surprisingly seeing as this is an Updike novel) is a highly-sexed individual - indeed, it is doubtful whether he worships God or sex more. Much of the novel is Marshfield's internal dialogue as he tries to reconcile his obsession with sex with religious doctrine.

I thought that "A Month of Sundays" was a curious work - written at times with wit (which was a bit hit-and-miss) and word play (which I thought was often strained). I thought too, perhaps wrongly, that Updike had been influenced by Nabokov's style of writing.

Although this is a short book, I felt that it tended to drift in places and got weaker towards the end. Interesting, but not one of Updike's best.

This is a fabulous book. It marries esoteric philosophy and ultimate, base humanity better than any book I've ever read. This combination gives it the ammunition to truly shoot to the core of a reader. And I found it quite easy to read.

I found this book absolutely amazing. Though the Rev. Tom Marshfield is utterly despisable, he is also completely endearing. The prose is masterfully written. I only found it difficult during the first 3 pages. Updikes knowledge of theology impressed me, as well as his indepth treatment of the subject. Updikes juxtapositioning of sex (seen usually as profane) and theology gives this novel its unique edge. Highly recommended reading for anyone who has dared to ask the hard questions of religion and to search them out, and has suffered morally and spiritually as a result.

"John Updike has said that 'religion created Greek literature and died within its embrace.' Another religion may or may not have created Updike's works, but this volume of essays shows that the embrace is long-standing, seductive, many-sided, and by no means moribund. With obvious affection and clarity of vision, these crtics have hugged the Updikean shore very well indeed." Anthony C. Yu, University of Chicago Divinity School.

"From an abundant but contradictiory world as it is, John Updike has in fifty books recorded in prodigious detail 'an intense radiance we do not see.' That underglow is explored in these fifteen thought-provoking essays about the religious dimension of his work. Some essayists protray his themes as Lutheran, Barthian, or Kierkegaardian, but all see this work as a lifelong Pilgrim's Progress, with Updike a pilgrim who is sometimes in motion upwards, but at other times only watches while God moves inexorably toward him." Doris Betts, author of "Souls Raised from the Dead" and "The Sharp Teeth of Love."

James Yerkes is the editor of a wonderful collection of essays dealing with the topic of faith in a delightfully down-to-earth manner. John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace (Eerdmans, $24). That longwinded title may scare away Updike admirers who fear wading in the dark waters of academic posturing. They need not worry, for the book is a relatively breezy read, with only a semi-occasional wandering into verbosity. For instance, Yerkes (who teaches religion at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa.) writes about Updike in the light of having watched and enjoyed the Jack Nicholson film, As Good As It Gets. Nothing stuffy here.

James A. Schiff writes that for Updike, "God permeates every aspect of human life so that his presence is felt in and around households. Updike doesn't state his beliefs in so many words, preferring--as most artists--to "suggest that the possibility of there being something greater beneath the physical surface." As Updike wrote in Assorted Prose, "Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intense radiance we do not see because we see nothing else."

Schiff sees God presence in Updike's writing, although "beneath the surface, pushing through, as well as above the world, providing light and hope."

If you share an enthusiasm for Updike, be sure to check out editor Yerkes' excellent Web page called "The Centaurian" devoted to Updike.

There are two stories in this collection that are incomparable: "Enoch Soames" and "Savaranola Brown". For the story of Enoch Soames alone, this collection is perhaps worth the price. Enoch Soames is a disheartened poet who is unappreciated. One day he becomes fed up with his inability to court fame (his second book sells 3 copies) and so makes an agreement with the devil to travel to the future to learn what's been written about him in return for an eternal trip to the Devil's home. I can't reveal what happens next, but suffice it to say that the story revels in metaphysical twists and fascinating character sketches.

Most of the other stories were disappointing (John Updike admits as much in the introduction). But if you've never read Beerbohm, this is a good place to start.

I first read "Seven Men" a few years back when Harold Bloom listed it as essential reading in his book on the Western canon.

The book consists of short fictional portraits of various characters in the world of Edwardian arts and letters. Beerbohm was a satirist with a nimble touch -- he had the ability to poke fun at the pretensions of the art world while maintaining a gentle, bemused humanism.

Sir Max seemed to view the vanity and foibles of human nature not so much with scorn as with an endless amusement, and reading any of his essays or parodies or satires is like spending the evening chatting with a wise and witty friend.

Beerbohm once wrote, "How many charming talents have been spoiled by the instilled desire to do 'important' work! Some people are born to lift heavy weights. Some are born to juggle with golden balls." Beerbohm was an admitted juggler, and yet his seemingly "light" work is ultimately more insightful than most so-called serious projects. And often much funnier.

Beerbohm was also quite a caricaturist, and his theater reviews (many out of print) are still great to read all these decades later.

Get hold of this book and start off with the classics "Enoch Soames," the story of a third-rate poet who, convinced of his own greatness, makes a deal with the Devil in order to travel to the future to enjoy his posthumous success (with comic results), and "Savonarola Brown," a hilarious sketch of a frustrated playwright and his great "unfinished" opus.

Beerbohm's contemporaries referred to him as "the incomparable Max," and it's a title that fits. I wish I could've met him.

Bernard Shaw called Beerbohm "the divine Max," and this collection of short pieces will tell you why. The book consists of short character sketches of six men (Beerbohm is the ever present seventh), and each one is a small masterpiece of Edwardian parody and humour. Beerbohm's line sketches of each one of his (imaginary?!) characters are included at the end of the book. Some of the tales have an unexpectedly supernatural twist (the neo-Faustian bargain struck by Enoch Soames being the best of the lot). Three cheers for the NYRB Press for bringing these forgotten gems back into print.

Well i read this book in college, and then saw the movie as my first date with the girl I'm gonna marry. This hardcoevr addition was perfect for hidding a ring.

I really enjoyed this book,. I read it a few years ago, and it really stuck with me. I would give it more stars if I could.

It is so very well written and interesting to read.

... Personally, I think that the movie was not as bad as people say it is, but the book is much better all the same. The Portrait is not for everybody. If you like Victorian era and its writers, if you love Edwardian age and its geniuses, then you'll love this book.

The Portrait is about a young American woman, Isabel Archer, whose destiny seems to be one of the most unforgettable ones in the history of literature. She stands before a choice, not wanting to lose her own identity, she struggles with both her husband and society to free herself from the chains of morality and emotional torture that she was used to while being married to Osmond.

I think that The Portrait of a Lady is James's best novel. He surely showed the world the true beauty of language and its colorful expressions.

Updike can write splendidly. However, he cannot be compared favorably to even good past or great contemporary authors. In this book Updike is more of the same labored almost beautiful writing. I found Trust Me to be much of the same. For a good short story look elsewhere. However if you are interested in Updike read his earlier books. It seems that as his career lengthened he changed his writing to try and leave a more refined and antiseptic waft in the readers mind, perhaps he had thoughts of stuffy British grandeur.

As far as short story collections go, this has to be one of Updike's best, also one of my favorite. I've read a lot of his work, and I believe that he is just getting better and better. The stories in this collection are beautifully written, solid and strong, and fascinating. I bought this book and read it in one setting. If you're just getting into Updike and his style, read this collection; if you're an Updike fan, you have to own it.

The audio casset version of this book is outstanding and is read by the author, which is always a great asset. The short stories are artful character studies that vividly describe the souls of your neighbors, your friends, or yourself in a modern setting. The details are so charming you'll want to listen to it over and over to pick up all the nuances.

I find it interesting that this book was included in the selection of Horror Anthologies.

Given the way I feel about golf, it was all too appropriate!

I am always a little at a loss to review a work like this which has 30 essays, short stories, and poems in it, humorously illustrated by the talented Paul Szep. Obviously, in a thousand words I cannot review each work. However, there's also no relevant way to give you an overview except to say that this is much of the best writing about golf that anyone has ever done, looking beyond how to improve your score.

Let me share a few highlights with you, much like you might compliment a golf partner on the best shots in his or her round. Imagine that we are all having a tall cool beverage while I do this after finishing a long, hot round.

I thought the funniest work was "Drinking from a Cup Made Cinchey" written in 1959. Updike has obviously had a golf lesson or two, as the other works make clear. This essay is a satire on all of those instructional articles that you find in Golf Digest. Updike begins by pointing out that occasionally there's a slip between cup and lip (but he humorously avoids that phrase). So he takes the simple task of picking up a cup and drinking something from it, and writes it up in golf instructional style. I couldn't stop laughing. I think I got a better idea of the golf swing from this non-golf swing instruction than I ever did from taking a lesson!

"Swing Thoughts" from 1984 captures the problems that we all have with using the conscious mind too much, but with more self-consciousness than even the most self-conscious golfer ever had.

The part I least agreed with was "The Trouble with a Caddie." Updike doesn't like them, but I find having a caddie one of the pleasures of the game. He dislikes everything from the company to handling the tip. Perhaps it is hard for someone with a solitary occupation like writing to get over that preference for solitude. Book tours must be rough!

The best fiction was "Farrell's Caddie" from 1991 with all due respect to the Rabbit Angstrom material that is well known from the Rabbit books. It transcends golf in a valuable way.

The best poem was "Upon Winning One's Flight in the Senior Four-Ball" from 1994. Many of Updike's later works look ironically on the effects of our changing golf fortunes as the body starts to produce less and less satisfying golf. This one is very well done without having the negative tone that some of the others do, hinting at decay and death.

The book is divided ino three sections: (1) Learning the Game (2) Loving the Game and (3) Playing the Game. The works are about equally distributed among the sections.

If you're a golfer, you know that people love to give golf-related gifts but never know what to give. I suggest you solve their problem by putting this book on your Amazon.com wish list. Then on those cold winter's nights, you can curl up with this book to help you conjure up your own golf dreams!

When John Updike brings the depth and breadth of his intelligence to bear upon a subject, the light of his insight and wisdom radiates from his silky prose. One expects to be enlightened as he reviews contemporary novels or tackles current questions of theology. I didn't know what to expect from his essays on golf, but having read "Golf Dreams", I would say that Updike loves this enigmatic game every bit as much as he loves fiction, theology, and philosophy. If we find a writer's love in his attention to detail, then in these essays Updike shares his deep love not only in the details of the game itself, but in the details of playing of golf in New England and his love for his golfing companions. It is as if in a life of a writing discipline, book tours, speaking engagements, and other demands, Updike can rely upon the fidelity of his foursome and the bucolic mysticism of golf itself as a source of constant and dependable pleasure. Fortunately, because like most of us who play, Updike's pleasure does not depend upon his mastery of the game; but our reading pleasure does depend on Updike's mastery of lucid prose to express his golf dreams.

As someone who generally appreciates good writing, I looked forward to reading this collection. It only left me infuriated. Updike is an amazing writer. He truly knows the art and beauty of the craft. But all of his stories belie his misogyny. Men resent their wives, women are portrayed in one or two negative ways--it ruined the whole book for me. So I switched to Flannery O'Connor instead. Good writing, no misogyny.

The Afterlife and Other Stories by John Updike exemplify the admirable qualities of John Updike as a writer. No matter what your perception of Updike's "take" on the world (and while we're on that subject-let us not confuse the character's feelings and views for those of the author), one is forced to admit that Mr. Updike is a very gifted writer.

There is a lot to admire and be entertained by in The Afterlife and Other Stories. Mr. Updike clearly demonstrates why he is known as one of the greatest prose stylists of the past century. These stories make the things one would typically view as mundane come to spectacularly sparkling life.

The locations of these stories have a personality of their own. Houses and landscapes interact with characters in a ways that, while difficult to describe, are very character-like in their own right. This gives the stories a sense of wonder that is palpably felt throughout the book.

Forces of nature-the blowing of a breeze, a rainstorm, the heat of the day, the light of the moon in the middle of the night-all echo the inner workings and turmoil of the character's souls. This gives the book an almost spiritual intensity...something lacking in much of today's two-dimensional "cookie cutter" writing.

The Afterlife and Other Stories is rich in imagery, meaning, and irony. There are a lot of interesting points and perspectives for the reader to ponder. One cannot read this book without having been challenged, entertained, and moved.

The tales told in The Afterlife and Other Stories taken individually are very entertaining. Taken as a whole, The Afterlife and Other Stories is something very special.

Updike is a powerful writer. I have enjoyed several of his novels. However, I appreciate his short stories deeply. The Afterlife and Other Stories is probably my favorite collection of Mr. Updike's stories. I recommend this book.

Updike is the greatest English prose artist after Colonel Sirin's great North American campaign! To that reader from Seattle: what do you mean you appreciate good writing?...if one's social squabbles get in the way of loving art, then one is a philistine!

A story of the trials and tribulations of two middle-class married couples, told in minute detail by Updike.

I should have thought that this novel would be of interest primarily to readers who are themselves either married or in a close relationship, perhaps as a cautionary tale. It's interest to single people (ie like me) might be less, or thinking about it, might be again as a cautionary tale - but this time as a warning of the perils of marriage!

I found that the book was well-written (Updike is a skilled novelist) but the characters lacked real passion and even anger, given the problems they were confronting. I refected that perhaps that might have been part of the message Updike intended to impart: that infidelity and deceit are an integral part of the modern marital experience, to be expected and dealt with as such. If so, it's a pretty depressing message.

The only Updike I've read, and what a struggle. A book where nothing happens. there's a car crash. That's the big excitement of the book. The characters are totally incapable of making a decision, and when they almost make a decision they can't stick with it. After that happens about the sixth time, I started feeling really cynical toward this book. And then Updike proceeds to analyze his characters to death, pontificating about life, love and everything in between, only it has no relevence to the so-called story or to the characters who don't act in any way as the author describes. Fact is they don't act at all.

I'd rather read a book where the character act, even if its rashly, even it gets them into trouble -- I don't want to read a book with a bunch of whiny, spoiled, middle-class cowards.

The writing ranges from ponderous to lyrical, but the story is flat. What good is a decent writing style when its applied to such trash? I hope this was an experiment on Updike's part, and not typical of his work. I'm not too enthusastic to try another of his books any time soon.

An expert of marriage institute, exploring the deepest fears, anxieties. Very painful but necessary catarsis reading. Loved Updike from the very first book of stories I have read for his sad, thought-provoking writing, because the world is not like in a commercial, bright and beautiful, it is dark, sometimes ugly and painful. Interesting to see the USA: America where marriage is ideologically the center, but it is crashing under the cover of neat two-storey houses. "Marry Me" is a very Updike book that should be read for us to see our sufferings put in precise words.