5 comments about The Blessing: A Memoir.

1. Gregory Orr's The Blessing is a moving and powerfully written memoir about his experiences specifically around death and shame and how his 1960s family dealt with tragedy. The title is misleading. Poetry is the blessing, but it isn't introduced until near the end and survival through poetry really isn't what this book is about in this reader's opinion.
   
   As a young boy, Orr accidentally shot and killed his younger brother and struggled with guilt through his remaining teen years. His father, a narcissistic and amphetamine-addicted small-town doctor, doesn't help matters by his own selfish adventures and escapes. And his mother, though aloof and distant, is his only hope for parental attachment. But she, too, dies tragically before Orr reaches adulthood. Then, in yet another ironic and tragic turn of events, Orr finds himself barely escaping death as he participates in civil rights activism in the Deep South. Most effective is Orr's use of language to capture internal and emotional conflict.



2. This book started out very strong--we emotion and written word. But going toward the mid point of part 4 it started to unravel. I really thought by the way the book started I would continue to be moved..but I was very disappointed by the book. I found myself forcing my way through so I could finish it; it was hard to finish it because it just wasn't nearly as good. I will try to read some of the author's poetry and maybe that will bring back to a good place about the author--but I just don't know. :(



3. This book is shocking in its stark retelling of an emotionally brutal childhood. I was drawn in instantly. I found myself holding my breath and staring into the room at the conclusion of a page. I was stunned. The moments of the story have lingered with me. My mind poured over the events. Later even after I had moved on to other thoughts, the emotions lingered under my thoughts, so that I would often pause in the middle of doing tasks. The writer seems to be seeking peace through resurrection and forgiveness.



4. This book is shocking in its stark retelling of an emotionally brutal childhood. I was drawn in instantly. I found myself holding my breath and staring into the room at the conclusion of a page. I was stunned. The moments of the story have lingered with me. My mind poured over the events. Later even after I had moved on to other thoughts, the emotions lingered under my thoughts, so that I would often pause in the middle of doing tasks. The writer seems to be seeking peace through resurrection and forgiveness.



5. Orr's book is an amazing chronicle of his early years, and an essential window into how art - in this case poetry - can play an important role in survival and transformation. The writing is clear and forceful. Highly recommended for anyone interested in memoir.

3 comments about Memoirs of a 1000-Year-Old Woman: Berlin 1925 to 1945.

1. Memoirs of a 1000 Year Old Woman is a book that should be read by everyone. It details everyday life in Nazi Germany through the eyes of a young girl. Ms. McBride meticulously takes us through her day-to-day activities with careful attention to detail. We see what life was like for the ordinary citizen, caught up in the maelstrom of war.The author relates the problems of living with rationing, bombing raids, restrictions imposed by the government, etc. Ms. McBride's courage, strength, humor, and independence shine through the pages. This book is a wonderful historical record of the times. I highly recommend it!



2. Memoirs is an easy to read account of a girl growing up in Berlin during WWII. The book includes contemporary news sources, song lyrics, recipes, and other interesting information about that time. A good read for those interested in women's history.



3. Memoirs of a 1000-year-old woman is a compelling account of life in berlin during WWII. The author provides a wealth of fascinating information about life in Nazi Germany. By taking the perspective of an ordinary girl growing up in berlin, the author enables the reader to imagine what it would have been like to live at that time and place and gain an understanding of the psyche of the people of WWII berlin. Memoirs is an important historical and sociological text that will be of great interest to readers.

2 comments about A Taste of the Sweet Apple: A Memoir (Woodford Reserve Series for Kentucky Literature).

1. I have not read such a beautiful book since To Kill A Mockingbird and have not read descriptions of a southern family written as well, or better, since The Ponder Heart. Superb writing.



2. Jo Anna Holt-Watson is a truly wonderful "story teller." Seldom are readers treated to such captivating tales of childhood imagination, without a hint of false pride. In "A Taste of the Sweet Apple: Memoirs," the author is able to hold our attention by graphically producing a setting in rural central Kentucky, Woodford County, that calls on figments of all of the reader's senses: the farm sounds of the "skid" being pulled by the mule, the vision of the heavy mist over the Bluegrass at dawn, the smell of stables laden with manure, and, of course, the almost indescribable taste of chewing tobacco, when it is first surreptitiously wedged between cheek and gum by a seven year old girl.
   Ultimately, this is a heart warming story of a child's love. Almost too innocently written, Pee Wee Watson has a brilliant flair with words that will actually make you laugh out loud in one instant and become 'teary-eyed' in the next. Her 'Memoirs' of her life on the farm in the '40s recalls a tender relationship with 'the hired help,' whom she brazenly persuades the reader into loving as much as she assures that she probably really did. Her tender feelings toward these simplistic, but ardently faithful 'keepers,' is not wasted on wishy-washy endearments, but rather is skillfully woven into her story, as told in the first person by a genuine tom-boy and sometimes romantic, but always head-strong girl. This is a 'must read' for all who crave a clever yarn by an excellent spinner, ... from whom I predict, ... we will hear again.
   
   -- Thomas S. Markham, Lookout Mountain, GA -- A devotee of Southern literature

5 comments about Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America.

1. I read this book in one weekend and found it difficult to put down. The author's wonderful use of description and reflection made me feel as if I were on a journey with her, traveling back and forth between America and Iran. It seems to me that the sense of disconnection the author describes can resonate on many different levels, even for those of us born and raised in the States.



2. To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America
   Persian Girls: A Memoir
   Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
   Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America
   
   The books came in great condition. Funny in Farsi is the most hilarious book I've read in a while and really portrays the experience of growing up Iranian in America. I am now reading Saffron Sky and have not read the others yet.



3. This book is presented as a collection of reminiscences from girlhood and womanhood between Iran and America. Gelareh Asayesh shares the inward labors of carrying two great yet incompatible cultures in her soul. Every vignette is a gem to admire at length, to laugh, cry or sigh over before even moving on to the next page.
   
   I picked up this book after enduring a heartwrenching goodbye with a compassionate Iranian woman of this same generation who felt that we could never last as a couple with our different cultural backgrounds. As an American, I truly believe that it's impossible for me to understand Iran. This book won't change that; it won't change you into somebody who knows and will even reiterate the futility of trying. But you will be left with a very emotional and meaningful sense of a world you CANNOT know.



4. This is an absorbing account of the author's divided identity as a Muslim woman who grew up in Iran in the 1960s-1970s and then remained in the U.S. where she was a university student at the time of the revolution. Now married to an American and working as a journalist, she is torn by her desire to return to the beloved Iran of her youth, its 3,000-year-old culture, and the large, loving family who still live there.
   
   The strictures imposed on women in the Islamic Republic (the rigidly puritanical dress codes, the denial of social equality for women) are only a part of the difficulties she faces as she begins a series of return visits to Iran in 1990. The dominance of the West in the material values of educated and upper middle class Iranians has been replaced by the tyranny of the fundamentalist and hard-line religious leaders who dictate social policy. The dominance of the West in controlling Iran's oil-rich economy through the CIA-installed monarchy has been replaced by the social and economic upheaval brought on by years of war with Iraq and isolation in the world community.
   
   With all this in the background, Asayesh articulates the human toll resulting from the revolution by describing its impact on the lives of the members of her family. She reveals this most vividly by contrasting her idyllic childhood against the realities of the present. Everywhere there is division, right down to her own efforts to recover a personal identity. Her sense of self is continually frustrated by the lack of continuity between the memories of her life as a girl and her current life in the West. Asayesh has a journalist's eye for detail that takes the reader beneath the surface of her subject and any easy generalizations about the Islamic Republic. It's an excellent book to read after Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran."



5. Wonderful read. I couldn't put it down. I am marrying and Iranian born man after 10 years of dating (persians like to take their time, lol). I finally have confirmation into his world and family from long ago. He grew up in Mashed, felt the bombs rock Tehran and took vacations to the Caspian. When I read passages of the book to him, HE HAD TEARS IN HIS EYES AND A SMILE FROM EAR TO EAR!!! SO many of his stories of childhood were brought to light in such a descriptive and truthful manner by the author. Saffron Sky gives a brief yet complete history of Iran, family stories that anyone can relate to regardless of origin and a way to bridge the gap between East and West.
   WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 comments about The Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir.

1. This is a nicely written book, a beautiful memior of chilhood on a farm. It starts slowly but by the end I loved her writing...



2. I didnt pick this book randomly off the shelf, I work in Sleepy Eye MN, closely with the people. I did not grow up in Sleepy Eye, but in another small farming community. I know some of the people who she is talking about, although I do not know her or any of her immedate famliy. There was a huge uproar here about this book when it came out and I had to see what it was all about, of course!
   
   What I found was someone I knew, a girl raised with the same type of envirnment I think most of us were raised with in small midwestern farm towns. The local stories, small town attitude, where everyone knows everyones business and you are judged by your last name, relatives and great-grandfathers history 'all those Haalas are crazy'. I found myself and my friends in her stories, my sister, my parents. Its a story about life, the memories of a girl and a kid becoming a woman the fast way, by becoming a mother. She made me feel I was with her @ the nuns retreat, when her dad shot the puppies, on her uncles bike. I was rereading a story I already know. It was creepy, but comforting. I think thats talent.
   
   I really enjoyed this book, the style is different, jumping around, even mid story, to different, semi-related stories, different then what I'm used to, I guess. Her discriptions make me see the tree, the barn, her uniform, blue and white on the steps of St. Marys Catholic School. Beautifully discripted. Definately not the brutal, horrible book some people 'couldnt even finish'.
   
   If you grew up in a small town, or in a large close-nit family, you will relate to Nicole. A glimps of snipits of small town life, real or imagined by her, is truely what this novel is.



3. In my long reading life I have rarely come across a book written in such compelling and poetic language. I have just read Nicole Lea Helget's memoir in one sitting and can scarcely catch my breath. And to those who might question the authenticity of the book, please remember that a child's interpretation of happenings may not always agree with that of an adult who was there, too, but that does not make the child's recollection any less true. Just think about the mysteries and taboos in your own childhood!



4. This collection of beautifully written short pieces work together to give a view into a difficult Minnesota childhood. It's a stark story, and slim in several ways. Pages aside, it lacks context, and the landscape is almost missing, which is odd for a farm story. The writer's gift with words is considerable, and the final chapter left me gasping (what a tour de force). Did I like it? yes, I did. Still, I have to ask, as a child, was there no laughter? Was her entire childhood taut and poetic, all smashed grasshoppers and bleeding animals? It seems in a family like this, there might have been at least some laughter. I guess that is another area where the book is slim--I didn't sense the fullness of a life when reading it. Perhaps she will write a longer exploration of her life, or a novel. If she does, I'll definitely read it, as she is quite a writer.



5. I agree with the earlier reviewer, as far as mean people and animal cruelty go. I could hardly finish the book myself, not only because of the animal cruelty and abuse but also the author's total indifference to it. I don't particularly care to read about people abusing and killing animals (killing a mother cow because she wants to keep her calf, and shooting 13 puppies because "they are ugly"), and basically that is what a lot of this book is about. Not a very good or interesting read, author is whiney and self-absorbed - don't waste your time with this garbage.

5 comments about On a Wave.

1. This should give you a general idea of how good this book is: After reading the last page, I turned to page 1 and started reading it all over again.
   
   When was the last time you read a book twice?
   
   Ziolkowski's style is like a perfect wave--clean, gorgeous, and unique. It's not just about a surfer searching for perfection, but a boy searching for himself in post-Vietnam era of sunny Florida, where everyone is tan and bleachy-haired, Led Zeppelin is on every radio, and pot is as prevalent as palm trees.
   
   The story begins with the author at ten, still reeling from his parents' divorce and craving diversion like any normal kid. But it is surfing that becomes his ultimate grace, giving him confidence and the room to dream outside the troubles at home. When his family begins to unravel, his heartbreak at dreams realized and lost will strike a sympathetic chord in anyone who is connected to the sea, to family, and to one's true self. The author's search for his identity comes full circle--beginning, ending, and beginning again--on a wave.



2. I loved this story of a young boy's passion for the ocean easing his growing pains. Very well-written.



3. thanks for the prompt delivery! I will definitely look for you again when ordering



4. Thad hits the nail on the head! Having grown up in Melbourne Beach during the time period described I feel qualified to speak on the authenticity of the scene depicted: perfect, took me back in time! Anyone who grew up in the space coast area during the 70's will be able to identify some of the characters described. This is an execellent book for the non-surfer as well as the surfer. This book will remain on my annual reading list along with Caught Inside, Lighting out and West of Jesus. Thanks Thad for an execellent read!



5. Excellent.This book will stay with you long after you read it. As a 50ish surfer from the Texas gulf coast this book reminds me of why I consider myself lucky.

1 comments about The Unknown Bobby Fischer.

1. This book isn`t only about Fischer. It contains many stories about Fischer and other players. It contains many games of Fischer, but also games between other players. It contains pictures of Fischer and other players too. What i especially loved about this book was the stories, about Fischer and other players. It contains many games from Fischer`s 64 simul tour of the US, and quite a few stories from these simuls. It contains articles and other things. " A Bookstore in Argentina " was quite intriguing, but as was other stories and stuff. It also contains letters from Fischer to Larry Evans in the 70s. It is all in all a great book about chess. It isn`t a teaching book, but many stories about players in the 50s,60s and 70s. Combined with interwievs, pictures and other stuff. Many games are included, and in a sense i do believe we can all learn something from these games...you know what i mean when i say it isn`t a teaching book. This book is a true treasure, and while i admit i regret buying mnay of the books i own this one is great.
   It`s ashame it`s currently out of print, especially since it is a newer book ( 1999 ). If new copies arrive, or you see it in a used book-store grab it and never let go!!

5 comments about The Division Street Princess: A Memoir.

1. I have to echo all the other five star reviews here, added by Soloways or not. This is a well-written, engaging, moving story of a child's life growing up in Chicago. I read it in one gulp.



2. I read Divison Street Princess and loved every page. SOloway writes wonderfully, and evokes a certain America magically, she has created a very important memoir.
   
   I feel the book is so important in Americana culture and Jewish-Americana cultural archives, that the book should eventually be entered onto an online Internet site, free of charge, so that readers in the future, and I mean the FUTURE, like 500 years from now, can also read this moving memoir! Also, this would make a great movie in the Barry Levinson vein of Hollywoodiana. The murder of the little girl and the arrest of the murderer would make a fantastic 1950s Chicago movie story, with Soloway's memoir bookending the movie on both sides.



3. I was drawn into this wonderful book by the details of daily life in 1942 as seen, in the first pages, through the eyes of a four-year-old child. And I stayed with delight to absorb that little girl's increasingly acute awareness of family, friends, neighbors, and the urban neighborhood itself, as she grew into her early teens. The way in which the reader comes to know and ultimately care deeply about the parents, Min and Irv Shapiro, and the future of the family is especially satisfying. While the time and the place are unique, I believe that everyone of any age will find something familiar in this lovely memoir.



4. Author Elaine Soloway remembers Chicago in the 'forties as the best of times and the worst of times. Now in her sixties, she presents an unvarnished, microscopically precise yet warm and loving account of growing up in a supportive Jewish family above her family owned mom and pop grocery story in Chicago's Humboldt Park.
   
   The author remembers/reconstructs every detail--how her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors spoke, dressed, worried, loved, and argued--as the world of their Jewish enclave was dissolved by the drip, drip, drip of postwar mobility. She notes, "Television, suburban backyards, and supermarkets were draining our close-knit block of its friendliness, its familiarity."
   
   Soloway's excellently written account will bring back the past for those of us who shared the same time and place. For those who did not, it will serve as a valued lesson on how we got from Chicago in the 'forties to the Chicago of today and what we gained and at what cost.
   
   --Lowell Streiker
   author of The Old Neighborhood: Memories of a Chicago Childhood--1942 to 1952.



5. The book brought back so many memories from the old neichborhood. It is a good book for all ages.

3 comments about Of Men and Mountains.

1. Author: Douglas, William O. (William Orville), 1898-
   Title: Of men and mountains.
   Edition: [1st ed.]
   Publisher: New York, Harpers [1950]
   Edition Date: 1950
   Language: English
   Notes: Autobiographical.
   Physical Details: xiv, 333 p. maps (on lining papers) port. 22 cm.
   Subjects: Cascade Range.
   Wallowa Mountains (Or.)



2. An account of explorations within the tangled, rugged fastness of the Pacific Norhtwest, Of Men And Mountains is informal autobiography, deeply personal and revealing. A book of adventure and discovery, it is full of the excitement, the strength, and the exaltation that men have found in the wild.
   
   The narrative at times rises to those solitary moments when man "under conditions of grandeur that are startling can come to know both himself and God." At homelier levels it moves with authority and expertness through the accumulated lore by which man has found how to survive in the wilderness and to accommodate himself to it joyfully. But always the narrative is characterized by a freshness of observation, by a shrewd wit, and by a reverential humility that mark Justice Douglas as unmistakably of the company of Thoreau. -- from book's back cover



3. Living in Brazil, I can't remember exactly how I happened to find this book. The important aspect is that I found it, I read it and even some years later I still carry some passages in my mind, so I have to regard this book as a good one.

   It is a kind of autobiographical narrative of the youth of Mr. William O. Douglas, who later in life became a Supreme Court Judge in America.

   An interesting aspect, is that later I learned that as a Judge, Mr. Douglas would very often give shelter to the 5th. Amendment in his sentences, and by reading the book, we can sort of understand how his personality and his passion for freedom was formed many years before.

   It is a first person narrative of his early years as a child and later as young man, and we can clearly understand his respect for wildlife and independence in a human's being life.

   Recalling his early expeditions as a boy in nearby mountains, Mr. Douglas describes us the forests, rivers and rainbow-trouts of his youth. At a certain time I started to think there was too much information about trout-fishing, but we should always forgive and understand a man when he decides to tell us about his childhood. :)

   This book is not about the Supreme Court Judge, but on the contrary, it is about the poor boy who grew under the mountains and borrowed some of their magnificent dignity from them.

   I hope to read some of Mr. Douglas' Law writings one day, so I can finally understand the whole man and close this chapter. But this will still take some years, and until then, all I can say is that I have nice memories from this book. By the way, a pretty hard to find book.

3 comments about Cowboy Princess: Life with My Parents Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

1. who enriched our lives over five decades.
   
   Cheryl Rogers Barnett has truly written a memoir full of Love, Respect, and Admiration for her late parents, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She writes of the people they were, before she was born, the circumstances of her adoption - yes, Cheryl was adopted by Roy and his first wife - and growing up in the Rogers-Evans* (Roy's first wife died while Cheryl was still a young pre-adolescent child, Dale lovingly took her on as her own) household. Roy, bless his soul, was in many ways, a real cowboy who eschewed the Hollywood lifestyle and could live in the great outdoors - in fact one of their early homes out at Lake Hughes was in a wooded setting - with rattlesnakes! Knowing that this wouldn't work, Roy moved in closer to Los Angeles, but always made sure that his children were grounded and did not have airs about them.
   
   Barnett writes about her growing-up in the Rogers-Evans household, and in reading it one kind of wishes that too were put of a family that truly lived by the Cowboy Code. Roy and Dale were among the kindest folks one could ever meet, and I sure wish I did. Both Roy and Dale were unfailing kind and considerate to most people they met. It speaks volumes that in the one instance Roy ever got angry at fans was when they chose to want to visit him on the day they were burying Cheryl's little sister, Robin, and only AFTER these uncouth and rude people insisted in visiting him, having no consideration for the grief of the family.
   
   She writes of the wonder horse Trigger, of how George "Gabby" Hayes was as different in real life as he was in the movies. Gabby, bless him, was a trained Shakespearian actor who was more accustomed to wearing tweed suits than a bandana and chaps - still, he too made the roles his very own. There are the Hollywood stories and vignettes of growing up knowing John Wayne and so many other Western heroes and other television and movie celebs, written straightforward, (the reader will never have the feeling that this book is a gossipy read) of Nudie the Famous Rodeo Tailor whom Roy helped to get established in Hollywood, and finally of the last decades when Roy and Dale, seeing how different Hollywood had become (mid-1960s), chose to move out to Apple Valley, and live out their lives there.
   
   Throughout it all, Roy and Dale always gave deep love to the people they knew, and encouraged their children to be the best and fine folks in their own right(after learning she was adopted, Cheryl underwent a quest to learn about her real parents, with Roy and Dale supporting her every way). With the happiness there were the tragedies, first Robin, then the young son who died serving in the U.S. Army, and the adopted daughter from Korea, killed in a senseless road accident. Throughout it all, Roy and Dale's faith in God was never unwavering and was always solid. They lived the true meaning of the Cowboy and Cowgirl Codes.*
   
   *(on their very last record together, Roy, Dale and son Dusty recorded a song written by two great friends of mine, Chris Hillman and Steve Hill entitled: "God's Plan" ...that pretty well sums up the honest and rich meaning of the lives they lived.
   
   A warm memoir of a time when the tinsel Cowboys were so very much real - and real people too, unlike the sad imitation that Hollywood has become these days. Thank you, Cheryl Rogers-Barnett for a heartwarming read, and for signing my Roy Rogers-Dale Evans lunchpail in Wickenburg, Arizona last April.



2. I loved this book! I became a little girl again with eyes wide open in awe of my heroes - Roy and Dale. Cheryl is very honest about the fun, the hectic schedules, the grief over the loss of her siblings, her rebellious nature in an innocent way, the strengths and weaknesses of her well-known parents who raised their family well, loved them dearly, lived a honorable life and had a lot of adventures in the way. Where the fans viewed Roy and Dale as super heroes ... Cheryl presents them as parents. I highly recommend this book!



3. Cowboy Princess: Life With My Parents Roy Rogers And Dale Evans is Cheryl Rogers-Barnett's true story of growing up as the daughter of "the King of Cowboys" and "the Queen of the West", whose popular exploits on movies and TV captivated the nation. Joy, the gruelling demands of the entertainment industry, the terrible loss of three siblings, and the lively personalities of those who shared their lives with Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Cheryl Rogers-Barnett fill this highly readable and personal account. Highly recommended for fans of Roy Rogers and the western movies of yesteryear.