No comments about A Letter from Phoenix Farm (Meet the Author Series).

5 comments about The Victoria's Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming: And Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer.

1. This is a very moving account of one woman's ordeal with breast cancer. I read it in only a matter of hours; I was impressed with not only her courage and strength, but with the humor with which she dealt with cancer.
   
   Whether you have cancer, know someone who does, or simply are interested in finding a cure, this is a great read on the subject.



2. I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29. Exactly 1 year and almost 2 months ago. Humor is what helped me through my year of hell. I had a masectomy, 16 chemo treatments and 33 radiation treatments. Mt new lift kit is scheduled for next summer. I tell my story to anyone that will listen. Jennie Nash hits it right on the nose. Funny, my name is Jen. Thank you..



3. As a mother of a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient, I found this book to be extremely helpful in offering me a glimpse into the dynamics of this disease. The emotional and physical pain of the author brings to the forefront how very devastating this disease is to all involved. I have bought this book as gifts for friends who have been diagnosed after a survivor recommended it to me.



4. I read this book cover to cover. It is very worth reading for anyone facing mastectomy and a choice of breast reconstruction methods. The author had a terrible time recovering from breast cancer surgery, but it is very important to distinguish between the physical difficulties caused by the surgery itself (relatively minor) and the physical difficulties caused by the choice of reconstruction (major). The large abdominal scar mentioned in another review is a feature of her "free TRAM flap" reconstruction, a reconstruction choice that can have excellent cosmetic effects when it works but is very physically costly otherwise. I recommend instead the books on breast cancer by Musa Mayer, who is more thoughtful (and also a survivor) and much more medically informative.



5. This book, The Victoria's Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and other Lessons I Learned from Breast Cancer, was just what I needed. I was diagnosed with the dreaded BC three weeks ago. I went through a lumpectomy a week ago. I spent the last 3 weeks pouring over technical medical books, reviewing statistics, researching information on the web and learning as much as I could about the disease. I purchased this book on a whim, thinking it may give a perspective that would help alleviate the stress I was going through.
   I laughed, cried and also realized that I was not alone. The descriptions of friends and family mirror my situation as well.
   The book is now an all time favorite of mine that I hope others will read and also be inspired to tell their story.

5 comments about But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous.

1. I am from New Jersey so I was thrilled to read a memoir about "one of my own" become as successful as Jancee has become in the world of reporting. Once I got my hands on it I loved the New Jersyisms as well as the wonderful writing of her life as a writer. This book is perfect for anyone who is down in the dumps and needs a good laugh. Jancee knows how to deliver :)



2. I waited a while before I purchased this book. It was definitly worth the wait



3. You do not need to be from Jersey to love this book. Anyone who spent their adolescence cultivating a thin, fragile veneer of coolness to cover an inner dork will relate to Jancee. I did not want this book to end. I can't wait for the follow-up on the rest of Jancee's life. Funny, touching, and entirely real. (Just like a true Jersey girl!)



4. I loved this book! I loved the throwbacks to old fashion, Jersey-Hair, and general 90's quips. I laughed a lot. The pieces on celebrities were like a bonus of reading a trashy tabloid inside a novel. It was unlike what I normally read, it was refreshing and very enjoyable!!



5. I picked this book up because of the cover. I loved seeing 80's hair do and I read the back to find it amusing enough to buy. I never really knew who Jancee Dunn was before I read her book.
   
   I enjoyed the quick read and liked how it bounced between her family and her work, it is a story of someone my age(36) and it mirrored experiences of coming of age during the 80's and early 90's. I loved it.
   
   Heartwarming and honest

2 comments about Selected Letters (Penguin Classics).

1. A page-turner is what this turned out to be for me. I first read about Lady Mary while reading another book whose author described her as 'an intrepid 18th-century traveler'. That intrigued me. I meant to get Lady Mary's 'Travels' and found this delightful book instead. Her letters were so enjoyable it was hard for me to put this book aside. There's so much humor, wisdom and intelligence in her writing. She had a true spirit of adventure. I came away from this book admiring Lady Mary very much. It's a real shame her work is not more well known.



2. I stumbled upon this book while researching an essay on early modern women writers and quickly came to admire this wonderful woman. She has an intelligent and amusing way of describing and relating people and incidents. She has all the intelligence, brilliance and wit of Jane Austen. I highly recommend this for all those who love the lives of intelligent, spirited and talented women.

2 comments about Women of the Bible (3951-5).

1. I bought ten of these books to use in our women's Bible study for the fall. I had one book which I showed the other ladies and they all agreed it would be a good study book. We have not started the study yet, but are looking forward to it in the Fall.



2. Women of the Bible
   Good book, we are currently using it in our women's Bible Study at our church. Good directions and offers questions that prompt discussion.

5 comments about Juicy: Confessions of a Former Baseball Wife.

1. ...but then you're left with a bad taste in your mouth.
   
   I've read a few of these autobiographies from trophy wives of stars and they're pretty much all the same, and all have the same themes. Let me sum this book (and about 3 others) up for you, to save you some time:
   - Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, I had a tough childhood
   - It's really, really difficult for me because no one takes me seriously, because I am just so much prettier than everyone else
   - I spend more on clothes, beauty products, and spa treatments each month than 5 average families spend on food and rent
   - The only wage-paying job I've ever had involved me showing off my amazing body, but again, don't hate me because I'm beautiful
   - I really thought my incredibly handsome husband who couldn't keep his pants zipped for FIVE MINUTES before we were married would be faithful to me! And I was totally heartbroken when he cheated!
   - Even though I ditch my kid(s) with the nanny every chance I get, my children are my life! And I am such a great mother I could win awards!
   - I would LOVE to get a real job and support myself like a normal person, but going back to school is just too hard, so I'll keep living off the alimony, thanks. That is, until I can find a new rich guy to pick up the tab of my incredibly shallow and image-focused lifestyle.
   
   Yawn. Jessica Canseco obviously has some big issues with Jose and wants to make him look bad, but just makes herself look like a gold-digging bimbo. I mainly read this looking for some kind of input from a baseball wife on the whole steroids-in-baseball issue but all I got out of this about that was: people in baseball do steroids. I did learn a lot about how baseball wives have tons of unnecessary plastic surgery when they get bored.
   
   I will say that Jessica does seem self-aware about the shallowness of her life in some points, but in others just seems completely self-absorbed and clueless. The book was very obviously ghostwritten, and despite that, the platitudes and therapy-speak still get very old fast.
   
   I think books like this are valuable for one reason, and that is to serve as cautionary tales for women who follow celebrity men around thinking they are one wild night away from the good life. Jessica may have been rich but her life seems incredibly empty and devoid of meaning to me. No wonder these trophy wives are so anxious to have kids - they probably need something, ANYTHING, to latch onto to give their lives some kind of shape or meaning. If this is grabbing the brass ring, I'm happy to be living in the slow lane of life because no amount of money is worth giving up your self-respect, in my opinion. It's too bad so many other women don't feel the same way.



2. Juicy is an appropriate title for this book. A great read for the beach. No, it's not deep and insightful, but rather, fun and trashy. Highly recommended!



3. Who probably wish they could look half as good as Jose's ex-wife. While her tale wasn't the most profound or riveting, it wasn't anything to scoff at, either. Unless you people have walked in similar shoes, shut the hell up with your judgments - what was it Jesus said? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Or something like that, but you get the point.
   
   It's funny how women get blamed for a men's misbehavior, even though Jessica ADMITS that she was addicted and co-dependent on her relationship to Jose. We forgive drugs addicts, alcoholics, even gambling addicts, yet when a woman, and an attractive one at that, is stuck in a rut, she receives the big brush off, is labeled a gold-digger, a bimbo, an idiot, she should have "known better," etc etc etc....Yet everyone else is entitled to forgiveness, compassion, and understanding.
   
   I found the former Mrs. Canseco's story to be of some use as perhaps another woman in a simiar situation will recognize the signs and bail out before her own self esteem spirals further downward. One thing you petty naysayers need to remember is how young she was when she met him. How many times do we hear of the influential older man taking a naive woman as his partner and molding her into what suits his needs? A man with a healthy self esteem would want to find an equal partner, not a young, unsuspecting female he can crap on. (Another similar scenario would be OJ and Nicole Simpson). Yet Jessica is blamed for being an unsuspecting woman, then a (co-dependent) addict, and she still gets reamed for trying to find her own way (whether it be posing in Playboy or writing this book).
   
   As for the comments on being an unfit mother, and the reviewer who wrote that Jose would make a better parent only because he did steroids, you have got to be kidding. Another case of misogyny and sexism - does the same reviewer blame Nicole Brown Simpson for her own murder and the murder of Ron Goldman?
   
   Maybe Jessica is cashing in on the Canseco name, but after all she's been through, I say she is well deserving of doing so.
   
   Also, if you are going to judge someone by their recreational drug use and sexual exploits, I suggest you move out of the country, hell, move off the planet and colonize one of your own - news for you - a lot of people experiment and it doesn't make them UNFIT or BAD and in fact, I admire her candor for coming out because it is an integral part of the story and relates to how BAD she felt about herself, and how she used drugs to escape and tried to save her marriage by pleasing Jose.
   
   However, I suspect it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
   
   I will sum up this review by saying that while the book was enjoyable and a fast read, I do wish I had saved my money by going to the library instead of purchasing it. As I stated, it wasn't groundbreaking enough to part of my book collection.



4. From the Playboy pics, it looks like she is on steroids, too. Trophy wife, but aren't trophies made of plastic?



5. I bought this book because I already knew what Jose had to say, but wanted to hear what Jessica had say. The 1st half of the book she said absolutely nothing except repeat how she would catch Jose cheating, they would fight, break up, and get back together again. In fact she just repeats this throughout the whole book. How many times can you read the same story before you get bored?? You really get to the point where you just want to slap her and knock some sense into her for being so stupid.
   
   I really dont know why I kept reading this book. I kept hoping something eventfull would happen, but it never really did. I wouldnt recommend this book unless you want to hear an ex-wifes story about how her husband cheats on her and abuses her in a never ending cycle of 230+ pages

1 comments about Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (Palgrave Studies in Oral History).

1. Rosie's Daughters
   
   Nowadays, to find a woman CEO leading a Fortune 500 company is no longer a novelty. The most recent list has a dozen, including the bosses of Pepsi, ADM, Kraft, Xerox and Wellpoint. A couple of years ago, a woman was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. And perhaps, if she'd she taken her underdog rival more seriously, a woman would now be the Democratic Party's nominee for the Presidency.
   
   But some barriers - seemingly a lot lower and less elite -- remain formidable. Anyone who reads Jane LaTour's revelatory Sisters in the Brotherhoods, will come to understand why it's not unlikely that Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country, will have another woman president before a woman is ever elected president of a national blue collar construction union in the U.S.A.
   
   LaTour, a former Teamster herself, as well as a union democracy activist and award winning labor journalist, has produced the most illuminating history yet written of America's most embattled and undeservedly obscure civil rights movement.
   
   Beginning in the late 70's, there began a dramatic, sometimes violent battle by ordinary women to vault over the parapets of blue-collar male privilege. But why are most of us just learning of these battles? Even on the Left, the claims of far smaller groups - think of the transsexual and the transgendered -- are more often invoked than the rights of blue-collar women to pursue a vocation in the trades without risking humiliation, beatings or social isolation.
   
   True, not all of Sisters is unfamiliar territory. Some was explored in the 2005 film North Country (working title "Class Action"). It starred Charlize Theron in the fictionalized story of Lois Jenson who battled against sexual harassment and union indifference in the mines of Minnesota. Eventually, Theron/ Jensen prevailed after decades of legal struggle.
   
   LaTour's stories in Sisters are altogether darker, richer and more diverse. Hollywood's working class heroines are stunningly beautiful individuals whose struggle - generally pursued through the courts -- elevates and isolates them from other women. They triumph because of their greater endowment of character and charisma - and beauty contest looks. Think of Erin Brockovich, the ex-model and unemployed single mom without a B.A. who almost single-handedly takes on and defeats PG&E.
   
   In the beautifully crafted stories of Sisters, there actually are some tradeswomen who have movie star looks. Most don't. There are white graduates of elite colleges and black welfare moms; some strive to be good Marxists others just want to be crackerjack plumbers; there are lesbians and heterosexuals; inspirations range from those who dreamed as little girls of a career in the trades to those who simply liked the prospect of making three times the median wage.
   
   LaTour follows a dozen women who got past the trade union barriers - past apprenticeship programs that favor relatives and co-ethnics; who got by -- at least temporarily --hiring hall favoritism; and on the job harassment --- to become journey plumbers, iron workers, electricians, carpenters.firefighters, telephone technicians, truckers and electronic technicians..Sisters is about women who adopted - after the main cycle of 60's and 70's radicalism had passed -- social movement building as their survival strategy. It's about the difficulties of trying to fight the institution you want to be part of. About how to build a social movement without any real resources or sources of outside support. And about the way a big swath of American labor unionism has adopted solidarity for the few, the white and the male.
   
   All this, Sisters shows, helps to explain why compared to middle class and professional women, blue collar women have had a much harder time making their way. Like the troops who landed on the Omaha Beach, despite their bravery and capacity for organization, they've had a hard time getting off the beach, Thirty years ago, women were radically underrepresented in the trades - only 2%. Since then, there's been some progress, but they still haven't hit 3%.
   
   But does it even matter that there are huge and even brutal obstacles to women becoming plumbers, operating engineers, or working on high iron? Why can't these women just stay in their job segregated ghettos - working in traditional women's fields of health, education and welfare? Or go to law school if they're serious about making money?
   
   Reading the stories in Sisters, you're able to appreciate why - beyond the abstract questions of rights and justice - because the tone of the stories isn't what you'd expect. The women have suffered a great deal, but this is no festival of resentment. Those who've survived have the same pride in their craft that men do. Rather than simply rehearsing their humiliations; we hear expressions of gratitude - like the woman who paid tribute to the guy who watched her back when threatened by a knife wielding "brother." What finally persuades is the common decency and deservedness of the women pursuing these difficult vocations.

5 comments about Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire.

1. This is the first book published in English written solely about the life of Agrippina. FYI the original title of this book, published in England, was "Agrippina, Mother of Nero." The subtitle of this book is great because she really embodied all of this. She used marriage and sex to get power and make political decisions through first her brother Caligula then her husband Claudius then her lovers Seneca, Dio and others then finally through her son Nero. When Nero was a child emperor and he was advised by tutors, namely Seneca, Agrippina wielded huge influence on the entire Roman Empire. The first and pretty much only woman ever able to do that in ancient Rome. Even after Nero grew up and killed Seneca and everyone else who plotted against him Agrippina still influenced Nero on public policy and probably advised him on who to kill next. Barrett argues that she made wise decisions. However, it wasn't enough to stop her son from killing her in 59 after a lovers fight. Apparently they had an argument and subsequent falling out and when you fall-out of favor with Nero you could count on certain death; mother or not. Barrett's got some great stuff in here. A section on "Significant Events and Figures" is a great reference and contains lists like Agrippina's husbands, lovers, and victims. He also has a good timeline of her life, a few maps, and a lot of further reading in the huge 20 page bibliography. It is the only book in English on the subject.



2. Overall, this was a very good biography of Agrippina. The author should be commended for writing a biography from the perspective of a highly influential and important woman during Imperial Rome. The author certainly takes an academic approach to the study, and appears to have done a good job with research and use of sources. His treatment of Agrippina seems fair and even-handed. The author does a very good job of providing the story of Agrippina, the Imperial family, and other important Romans. My only criticism of the book is that somewhat more background about Roman society, social classes, the economy, foreign affairs was needed. Nevertheless, the author has provided us with a very informative and entertaining biography. I will undoutedly read his newest book on Livia. I highly recommend this biography of Agrippina.



3. The only reason that I didn't give 5 stars was the constant latin quotation. Sorry I'm taking Latin at present, but it wouldn't kill an academic author to write a book ENTIRELY in english! Besides that pet peeve, this was an excellent book! Not a fast read, but worth it. Barrett writes a wonderfully balanced tale of one of the most reviled women in Rome and shows that she was simply an ambitious women who wanted the most for her son. Albit she was a bit overzealous, she is not as bad as everyone assumes!



4. I have had a copy of this book since it was first published and have found it an invaluable resource. Anthony Barrett discusses the life of Agrippina and her times completely, and presents a well-formed opinion on the more obscure and difficult aspects of Roman history. Claudius, for example, comes off as being intelligent and politically astute rather than an ugly, dithering fool. The complexities and politics of Claudius' reign are very well discussed. Aspects of Agrippina's life (that are usually taken for granted) are examined in full by Mr. Barrett. Did she poison Claudius? It certainly appears to have suited her aims in keeping Nero as the sole heir to the empire but there are so many inconsistencies among ancient sources that renders it impossible to definitely say Agrippina did the crime.
   
   Mr. Barrett also discusses the closing years of Agrippina's life as the Empress Mother particularly well. He covers the lack of any information about her in sources and relates her presumed murder at Nero's hands in detail with a critical view of what Tacitus, Suetionius and Dio say what happened. He does not go into detail concerning points of view that suggest Agrippina was, in truth, involved in a conspiracy but he does make mention of this idea and footnotes the article.
   
   In short, a very readable and balanced account of the younger Agrippina. Mr. Barrett takes the time to present a full picture of Agrippina, her family and her role in Roman history. In particular, I found the description of Nero's youth and path to becoming Claudius' successor as more detailed and of greater use than Miriam Griffin's book about Nero. The bibliography is among the more useful I have encountered. Readers will find Mr. Barrett's account of the early empire to be stimulating.



5. Agrippina was the sister of Caligula, the wife of Claudius and the mother of Nero. She survived the first two but was murdered by the latter in spectacular style: after surviving an elaborately engineered attempt to kill her aboard her sailboat she swam to shore only to be stabbed to death by Nero's henchmen. Like Agrippina, Barrett proves adept at keeping afloat: despite the many competing and unreliable sources, he avoids turning the book into a set-piece, overly-footnoted plethora of quotes and counter-quotes (or worse still, an extended book on coins). He explains, in terms a modern reader can easily understand, how Agrippina used her considerable powers of tact and persuasion to win influence in a patriarchal system. He also displays a keen sense of humor, not least in dispelling some of the many myths about Agrippina. Which is not hard: the Roman historians Tacticus and Suetonius accused her of cheating on all her husbands, sleeping with Caligula, murdering Claudius and then sleeping with the newly-installed Caesar, her son Nero, and if you don't immediately chuckle at the sheer implausibility of these charges, you'll at least find some amusement in the Freudian implications.

3 comments about Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Commune.

1. Highly recommended. The book relates the difficulties and even traumas that the youngest member of a family had to face after being uprooted from a comfortable suburban life and thrust into her mother's "dream" society. The author portrays the other residents of the commune (even ones that might seem less than honorable in terms of honesty and work ethic) with sensitivity and understanding. What is especially interesting is the fact that many of the incidents related could be from the present. A group of the residents went to a three day workshop and came back with a "Secret" that they would share with no one. And meditating upon the secret had to be done under a blanket if a "non-initiate" were near-by. Her short-lived experience at the local elementary school was especially sad. A black teacher effectively ostracizing a Jewish student (Sandra) and white boys making black students leave the sidewalk as they came by could happen today in more subtle ways. Abject poverty in surrounding hills in rural Virginia was also heartbreakingly described. The reader is left to decide for himself or herself about the long term effects and/or fairness of Carla (mother) taking her three daughters and starting this commune at the foot of a mountain; especially the effect on the youngest member (the author) who had to spend her formative years without companions near her in age.



2. Notes from Nethers: Growing Up in a Sixties Commune is the true-life memoir of author Sandra Eugster, largely centering around her adolescence in a commune in rural Virginia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The commune Nethers, started by Eugster's mother Carla, was meant to promote social change and grounded in the counterculture of the era. Immersed in the culture shock of commune life at the tender age of nine, Eugster had to adjust along with her older sisters to the complexities of commune life, weekly consensus meetings, days of silence, sweat-hut rituals, and more. Yet even more challenging was making the re-adjustment to the outside world after the commune dissolved - studying for SATs (given that her own education ended at third grade), and gradually learning social skills that she'd never had the opportunity to cultivate amid years of isolation from "normal" people her own age. "The wish to return to innocence came with the thought that by removing the barriers between adult and child, the children could be the bridge back to innocence. But the force of nature goes the other direction, and many children lost their innocence devastatingly early. I often think I was fortunate not to have been molested. But in a sense I was. My exposure to sexual matters was premature, as was my close contact with extreme human peculiarities and, ultimately, the harsh reality of adults doing what was right for themselves as opposed to their charges." Highly recommended as a matter-of-fact glimpse into what commune life was truly like: the good, the bad and the ugly.



3. Sandra Eugster tells a compelling story about her experiences growing up on a sixties commune. She is thrust into an adult life-style without the background and skills to cope with it, and certainly not by choice. The book gives a rich and detailed picture of life on a hippy commune. For those of us who lived during the same times in a more conventional way, it paints a colorful canvas of an alternative way of life. The author's relationship with the other members of the commune, her mother, and sisters involves the reader emotionally and keeps one wondering what could possibly happen next.
   I highly recommend Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Communeas an informative and entertaining real life memoir.

3 comments about To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border.

1. In our 21st century world, this meditation on the ordinary becomes a poetic statement about finding one's way, and is so needed. A work that broadens ones vista, the subtitle of the book, "Reflections on Living on the Border," contains new visions of life from ancient wisdom. A small book, the author Esther de Waal explains how and what to do with the new found in places like, "So when I went walking along the stretch of Off's Dyke that ran only a few miles away, I came to know afresh the world that had earlier delighted my father." This book tells the way to live in the world. It speaks of living with the inner world of the heart and mind, as well. For me, these are important.
   
   "All our lives are inevitably made of a succession of borders and thresholds, which open up into the new and promise excitement or fear. The traveler encountering unknown places has all the exhilaration, the thrill of another country." For some time, I have sought to find newness of seeing things and knowing things, and also in regard to people in my life. This book helps to change the reader in ways that open the eyes to new ways of living and seeing. It is a work of vision and ongoing renewal. Again, in a book, she accomplishes with clarity and easy style lessons of the meaningful in life, and finding meaning.
   
   She writes about pausing in the book. Titled "To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border," published by Morehouse Publishing, she writes about living a spiritual life, of living life within the Anglican Communion. The book is both dear, as in personal and telling, and objective as in telling and demonstrating. "Above all I want to explore the role of thresholds, of the crossing-over places, not only geographical ones but also metaphorical thresholds," she writes in her introduction. This book is for the spiritually inclined, for the religious individual, and for the seeker of new life in living.
   
   Our world is uncertain. Her instructions on living a better life go like this: "The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it." Originally published under an imprint of St. Mary's Works called The Canterbury Press Norwich, this formerly English book will find many readers in the United States. She says so many things that speak to the Anglican religious way of living, and so many things that speak to a society that is diverse as America. She finds the central places of the spirit in her writing. Two other books are noted here as worthwhile: "Living with Contradictions: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality" and, "Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict." One quickly gets an idea of the thrust of her work from the titles.
   
   Laying a way to enjoy and reflect on the ordinary in life, she draws large inferences in this book: "...we find ourselves touched by something primal, that repetition of birth and death, dying and new life, experienced again and again, year in and year out, repeated throughout our lives." These are some patterns of the day, like the simple task of bowing ones head down during the day in the bright light, "...giving glory to the great God of life for the magnificence of the sun and for the goodness of its light to the children and men and to the animals of the world."
   
   Here is another nugget from a book that flows and contains nuggets of establishing oneself in a place. Esther de Waal quotes from many sources. Here she quotes John Howard Griffin's diary: "August 6, 1969. 5:45 a.m. Before dawn. With the beginnings of the predawn-light some of the birds come to life--not with singing yet, but with a kind of murmuring. I carried my coffee out on the concrete porch and drank it walking back and forth. The air is cool, almost cold, and fresh. Light came slowly. I watched the trees assume black shapes through the fog. I thought of Tom who saw the sounds, smelled the same predawn freshness, allowed the same silences to do their work in him."
   
   For people who like a good read, the 102-page book categorized as spirituality is intelligent and inviting. There is importance in opening up and being inviting to one's surroundings, as the book blurb states. I agree, this is a book that sees "A threshold as a sacred thing..." Her book is like the porter in St. Benedict's rule who waits at the gate, the work "...shows us a conversation between the holy and the everyday..." Esther de Waal points the way to enjoyment.
   
   --Peter Menkin, Pentecost 2007



2. Deceptively slim, this book of meditations from de Waal's reading and personal experience asks for careful reading and cogitation. I found myself reading it aloud, softly and slowly, in order to take in the deep meaning. This is truly matter for Lectio Divina. A quotation: " If the borders are not frontiers, and if the thresholds are continually crossed and recrossed, then we open up to the new." Readers of de Waal will find familiar sources-- St Benedict, Celtic writings-- as well as fruits of de Waal's wide current reading. This book should become a spiritual classic.



3. Esther de Waal never lets us down! In To Pause at the Threshold she explores how even the busiest life can be lived mindfully and prayerfully. She attunes us to what the Celtic Christians called "thin" moments, those times when what is before gives way to the new, when God is experienced as most palpably present. Life is immeasurably blessed, she assures us, when we receive the next moment, the next event, the next person with reverence and expectation. This fine little book is a lovely companion for the one who lives life on pilgrimage.