1 comments about Three Women and the Lord.

1. Written by Adrienne von Speyr (1902-1967), a Swiss doctor and mystic, Three Women and the Lord is a wonderful scriptural meditation on Mary Magdalen (Lk 8:2-3; Mk 15:40-41; Jn 19:25; Mk 15:47-16:1; Mt 28:1; Mk 16:4; Jn 20:2, 11-18), the woman who was a sinner (Lk 7:36-50), and Mary of Bethany (Lk 10:38-42; Jn 12:1-8). Each woman as they meet the Lord represents one of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love's encounter with the Lord.
   
   This book is especially wonderful for getting to know St. Mary Magdalen. Speyr leads us in a meditation on Magdalen, the one who having been freed of seven evil spirits, giving faithful service to the Lord. The Lord has granted her this faith together with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit breathed on her as she was delivered from the seven evil spirits. Her devoted faith of discipleship will lead her beneath the Lord's redeeming Cross, to the Tomb, and to the first appearance of the Risen Lord.
   
   Speyr brings out marvelously Magdalen's devoted and faithful love of the Lord that will inspire any Christian to follow the Lord more closely. What she experienced throughout her whole life with the Lord strengthened her to trust and follow him no matter where he went. Even as he was returning to the Father after the resurrection, Magdalen wanted to go with him immediately.
   
   The sections on the woman who was a sinner as hope and Mary of Bethany as love are just as inspiring.
   
   In this very approachable book for all, we come into contact with the vibrant light of Scripture. We learn how to prayerfully encounter the Lord even in the smallest of passages. In the end we are brought by this prayerful reading of Scripture into the circle of the triune life and love.

1 comments about Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice in the Balance (Women's Biography Series).

1. The second volume of the "Women's Biography" series, Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice In The Balance is the remarkable true story of the first female United States Supreme Court justice. From her humble beginnings on a cattle ranch, where she learned important lessons about hard work, self-reliance, and the greatness of the outdoors, to her studies at Stanford University, her struggle to find a job as a lawyer in an era when law firms did not want to hire women, the responsibility of juggling her career with marriage, politics, three children, and breast cancer, and her nomination to her judicial post of prestige by President Ronald Regan. A solid biography of the "quiet feminist", written for readers of all backgrounds, and especially recommended for school and public library collections.

1 comments about Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle and Her Writing.

1. Considering the vast literary contribution of Madeleine L'Engle, this book surely took monumental effort -- fortunately it doesn't read that way. Carole Chase is to be congratulated for producing a biographical & critical work that is academically responsible and imminently readable; she has created the first comprehensive L'Engle resource and she has done it with "a heart".

   If your reading of Madeleine L'Engle has produced a desire for you to know this fascinating author better -- Suncatcher is for you. Not only will you be engaged by her fervancy and spiritual vision, you will likely be astounded at how widely she has written. Chase has ignored nothing -- drawing from the more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and philosophical/theological writings as well as many of her unpublished letters and other work.

   Plus, this new addition has tremendously valuable new resources for the serious L'Engle reader:

   · Madeleine L'Engle's 1963 Newbery Medal Acceptance Address (Very Rare)

   · A forward by Madeleine L'Engle herself (New)

   · Comprehensive and up-to-date relational diagrams, clearly illustrating the interconnections among L'Engle's fictional characters and families (This is outstanding!)

   · Newly-created, comprehensive character catalog with cross-references!

   · AND... this new edition is fully up to date with respect to Madeleine's most recent books and publications as of late 1998.

   After reading Suncatcher, I wanted to go back and re-read Wrinkle in Time and I disovered many other L'Engle books that I want to read for the first time.

   Read Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle and Her Writing... you won't be disappointed!

5 comments about Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts.

1. I wish I'd known that the book I was paying 14.95 for was a poorly reproduced knock-off of the original edition. The cover art is out of focus, and the internal photos all look like they were run through a bad photocopier. Amazon LLC doesn't let you leave "feedback for the seller," so I urge buyers to proceed with caution when ordering their products. The options I'm able to find online are a)return the book or b)track the shipment. How about an option like "complain that the book isn't worth 14.95, and ask that I be credited ten dollars." Caveat Emptor.



2. Carol Channing's autobiography is a fun read indeed, but is rather choppy. It was previously said that she never really finishes her stories, and that is ture, however, I was never left wanting. Her narrative is very entertaining, and the anecdotes are fun tidbits to tell! There really is one for every occasion!
   
   A must for Channing fans!



3. Now, I understand that as we look back on our lives that we tend to remember the good times rather than the bad, but Carol does so to the point of chronicling a rather dull existence. She leaves out all the stories that made her one of the great survivors in the industry. Case in point, there's no mention of the story when Frank Sinatra beat her to within an inch of death with a pillowcase full of doorknobs. There's no mention of her bloodfeud with Rosemary Clooney and how she once pulled a knife on Clooney and cut off her pinky toe. And of course, the greatest omission of all: Carol has an irational fear of men with mustaches. Could have been better.



4. Carol Channing tells her life story (probably dictated with almost no editing) in her own style - delightfully mixed-up, carefree and uninhibited. Of course she skips around and even SHE forgets exactly what her point was. Is this disappointing? No, she's just being Carol Channing, a true zany. Not Lucille Ball, a very serious and level-headed businesswoman who just played a zany.

   The unabashed love she felt for her best pals- Mary Martin and George Burns in particular, is heart-warming reading. Her disdain for certain others never remotely comes across as bitter,
   for example in the case of the nameless "Yenta" from one of her
   Broadway shows. "Yenta" was a troublesome actress who, Carol later found out, wound up as a dental assistant. "It could have happened to any of us," Carol laments to us with a straight face. As if becoming a dental assistant was like dying in a plane crash! That's Carol... if you stray too far off Broadway you might as well be dead. Her love of life and love of the theater are one and the same, and it pours forth in every page.

   You will notice too that there's no photo of her husband/manager of 42 years, Charles Lowe, whom she divorced very publicly in 1997 after informing the world he was gay and in all that time they had intercourse on two occasions. All mention of him is less than she gives to describe the "pear-shaped" ass of agent Sue Mengers. So you know that there are some sad things the happy Carol would just like to blot out, or, at least not burden us with. She'd rather give us peppy and mixed-up Carol showbiz yarns in no particular order.

   The most controversial element of her tome is the impossible-to-prove assertment that her father was a light-skinned African-American. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, her father's "colored" birth certificate was destroyed. Now I could be wrong, but I think it is merely some of Carol's over-stimulated imagination at play, as when she saw-
   I'm not making this up- a rainbow over Mary Martin's pancreas.
   And of course, it's a little extra spice for selling books. And speaking of spice, the book is worth purchasing if only for the anecdote about a "Chinaman's mustache." I'm not telling, you'll have to read it.

   Those who complain that her book has no order, rhyme or reason just don't know Carol. But "Just Lucky" is a terrific way to get to know this one-of-a-kind theater icon.




5. Carol Channing's memoir is not candid at all. This is the story of a lady that spent 40+ years on the road doing tour after tour after tour because she was in a loveless unhappy marriage. Her abusive husband was living high off the hog with his male lover while she was out performing all over America. She had a terrible life until her husband's death...and only recently she met her current husband, a wonderful loving millionnaire whom she dated originally in Junior high. It's a fascinating story which you will not find in the book.

5 comments about No Place Safe.

1. This beautifully written book by Kim Reid is both sensitive and timeless. It is about so much more than it appears: A daughter's conflictual and complicated relationship with the mother she loves and yearns for, a black child coming to terms with the white majority, a child faced with the unstoppable murders of children just like her, and a child becoming a woman, to name just a few. Ms. Reid's writing is sensitive and emotional yet not cloying or annoying. She takes us into her experiences with a subtle and skilled hand that allows us to go there right along with her. I came out of reading this book with a profound respect for the writer, as well as a new appreciation of growing up black in the days of the Atlanta child murders. I highly recommend this book and look forward to seeing what the author comes up with next.



2. The way Reid interweaves the story of tragic lost lives of children with her own sort of "lost chldhood" is brilliant, esp. from the point of view of her cop mother being so deeply involved in the cases. It's just really a fantastic read. It has stayed with me for days, especially being a mom. Heartbreaking, of course. And they never found the killer, which just tears me up. But there's much more to the book than that. She weaves that story beautifully with her own.



3. I could not put this book down. I ended up reading all of it in two settings. It is an endearing story of a girl growing up in the most challenging of situations during her tender and impressionable teen years. The "coming of age" story allows the reader to feel like they are there, reflecting back to their own childhoods, and see a very complex world with unfathomable situations through the eyes of a street smart and feisty 13 year old. There were several parts that I laughed out loud and others I was aghast at the very pointed racism that this young teen had to experience. Great book Kim, you are to be well commended for such a great first book.



4. NO PLACE SAFE details the consuming, high-pressure investigations of the 1979-1981 disappearances and murders of black boys and young men in Atlanta--investigations in which author Kim Reid's mother worked as a lead investigator. While this story alone propels this book to read like a compelling novel, Kim's powerful revelations about her schools, her community, her family, and herself make this a powerful document of life in a major Southern city during an especially tumultuous time.



5. Author Kim Reid beautifully captured the voice of an Atlanta 13-year-old who is mother to her younger sister while their single mom works as a police officer; is one of few black students who attend an all-white private school in a distant, affluent neighborhood; and who lives unnervingly close to where dozens of black boys and young men have been murdered (Atlanta Child Murders starting in 1979).
   
   Reid includes information that isn't common knowledge--at least not to me: "Until the early sixties, black officers could arrest only black citizens. In 1979, white and black patrolmen had been allowed to partner in only the last ten years, and black cops were still in a minority, which meant they stuck together outside of work. The only tie that bound black and white cops then was the fact that on the job, they were cops regardless of what they looked like. Fortunately, that was usually enough."
   
   In one instance she brilliantly summarizes her mother's character: A white police officer stopped by her house at 2:00 a.m., expecting to be accommodated. "At two in the morning?' Ma said. Cop or no cop, she sounded like she was ready to bless the man out. There weren't many things that pleased Ma as much as a good night's sleep, which I always believed was here escape from having to work extra jobs, being a cop, a single mother, and just being a black woman in general."
   
   If this book had been written as a young adult novel set in 1979-1982, I would give it five stars. Why? Because it focuses on issues that are still important to teens today. Reid's title is also good for a novel, although I'd suggest she come up with one that hasn't been used before, so it'll be more recognizable. But as a memoir, the book is thin; it should have included more information about the murders, and an more in-depth analysis of what her mother and sister also went through.

5 comments about Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess.

1. The author had done a substantial amount of research and logically connected the dots together. This book helps me to solve many of the puzzlement I had over Princess Di's behaviors as well as the motivation behind her shocking TV interview and the book by Morton. She obvious had many serious emotional, psychological-mental issues. Mental dysfunction has many levels. Although Princess Di was not a wacky psychiatric case., she was indeed a case in certain degree. She was more unbalanced person than the average people. Prince Charles was just one of the wrong man she had related. Just look at all her love affairs and the lovers she had... as well as the way she "love" them. They all went wrong for her and she had made mistakes with each of them. That's something call a track record.



2. On the positive side I couldn't put this book down. Before I read this book I had never really been interested in Diana, although I was shocked by her death. This book doesn't delve deeply into her death. Instead the detail is about everything that happened to her from 1981 until 1997.
   
   The problem with the book is that it is obvious that despite claims of objectivity, Prince Charles is more sympathetic than Diana. I can't buy Ms Smith's psychiatric diagnosis of Diana that she was a borderline personality. Clearly Diana was troubled. However she may have been in fact been victimized by the royal family during the time she was married, separated from Charles and divorced. Certainly Ms Smith makes an excellent case that Diana showed poor judgment and lived in a fantasy world as well as showing signs of extreme mental disturbance(many details Princess Diana herself was the first to expose).
   
   In any event I would recommend reading this book but judging it with a skeptical eye.



3. This is one of the most boring, tediously written books I have ever read. I am only reading it for lack of another book at the moment. If Diana based her life solely on what ever tattle magazine writes, I would be depressed and bulimic too. I am sure she had other things to worry about besides cheap gossip rags and what they wrote. At least I hope she did. Who cares about all the silly magazines? The book makes it sound like this was her mission, it is tedious and soooo bring.



4. This is perhaps the only serious piece of writing on the late Princess of Wales that I have read. While not presented as a scholarly biography (we'll need to wait years for that), the book does take several steps back from the hysteria and romanticized adulation attending Diana's years on earth and attempts to provide objective analysis rather than breathless, tabloid-style speculation. Diana fans for whom she could do no wrong may be outraged by Bedell Smith's detailed portrait and her conclusions; this is a book only for thoughtful readers who are willing to set aside their preconceptions of the subject.
   
   Although Bedell Smith is by no means the first person to suggest that Diana was suffering from a clinically-defined mental illness, Borderline Personality Disorder (called by some "Emotion Dysregulation Disorder"), her discussion of the subject helps shed some light both on her subject's behavior and the fate of her disastrous marriage. This is interesting material, and the author was brave to include it, given the manner in which Diana continues to be idolized by her admirers.
   
   Reasonably well-written and readable, meticulously-researched and documented. Especially recommended to those who take a jaundiced view of the modern cult of celebrity.



5. While you may not agree with the point of view that Smith takes in this book... it is a well written book. Easy to read and interesting.

No comments about Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach.

1 comments about Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall.

1. Caroline Healey Dall's (1822-1912) diary, written over 75 years, encompasses 45 volumes and most of the prominent people and ideas - Transcendentalism, slavery, women's rights - of the 19th century. As editor, Helen Deese has focused on the years from 1838 to 1865, distilling Caroline's output into one volume, well annotated and footnoted with a general introduction and summary prefaces to each new section.
   
   The late 1830s and 40s were heady times for a young, devout, affluent, intellectual Unitarian like Caroline. Most of Boston's elite were Unitarians and the Transcendentalist movement, with its rejection of hard-line Calvinism, was blossoming. By the age of 18 Caroline was hobnobbing with the likes of Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody (sister to Nathaniel Hawthorne's new wife) at Peabody's bookshop. She knew Emerson and Theodore Parker, the Unitarian minister whose denial of Biblical miracles and the divinity of Jesus created a furor. Always ardent, Dall was swayed by Parker and passionate in her defense of him. The Transcendental idea of finding God in everyone and every natural thing had a profound effect on her whole life.
   
   Her early years were sheltered by class and family, leaving Caroline free to pursue a life of the mind. She had a strong will and intellectual self-confidence to match, though these were frequently undercut by her demanding father, for whom her efforts were never enough, and her exasperated mother who found her domestic skills wanting. Fuller and Peabody, as well, were sometimes critical of her vocal participation in meetings of her elders. The reader will sometimes share their impatience, though her parents do seem rather cold and erratic.
   
   But when Caroline entered her 20s circumstances changed drastically. At the beginning of 1843 she looks back on a tumultuous year: "I was an heiress, somewhat a blue [stocking] - flattered and caressed and with few anxieties save - for the characters of my brothers and sisters, the sufferings of the poor - and a heavy care of my own reputation."
   
   Then her father, a merchant and speculator, went bankrupt, a younger brother died and the man she loved rejected her. Caroline became a schoolteacher in Georgetown, near Washington D.C. Unitarianism was suspect and slaves were ubiquitous. The diary takes on a deeper, more mature character over this difficult period. Although she stayed only a year, it was enough to change her laissez-faire attitude about slavery and to get her engaged to a likeminded, but weaker willed minister.
   
   From this point Caroline's diary is increasingly intense. While her father's financial affairs improved, her relations with him deteriorated over her abolitionist writing and activity, which he feared would harm him in business. Her husband was often disturbed by her forward behavior and his own politics made it difficult for him to keep a post. Caroline grieved that he could not provide her the emotional support she provided him, and poverty, pregnancy, drudgery and emotional turmoil all took their toll.
   
   Deeply ambitious, she was thwarted by gender, but was also a product of her times. "I desire to be a perfect housekeeper - but am always afraid lest in a higher love of better things, I should omit some necessary trifle. I would not add to the reproaches cast upon literary women...." Still, she read and wrote voraciously, publishing numerous articles (though she was mortified when she had to publish "for bread") on books, lectures, issues and ideas.
   
   As the years passed, her convictions became tempered with experience and her moral view - particularly on marriage - became more complex. But she remained proud of her iron will and steadfastness. Discussing Margaret Fuller's autobiography, she reflected, "Margaret says, `the lasting evil was to learn to distrust my own heart.' I could never do that. Instant is the decision of my nature in a given case, and I have never once had occasion to revoke or dismiss it." And "When my husband first knew me, he used to say that I reminded him, of two passages of Scripture, `for judgment - am I come' - and ` he shall judge the quick and the dead -` so trenchant were my decisions, and so absolute my convictions."
   
   Brilliant and rather Puritan, Caroline would not have been an easy person to live with. But her honesty and acute self-examination over the course of a difficult marriage make her absorbing and appealing. Personal passages - including a horrific birth, a long self-examination in comparison with Margaret Fuller, despair over relations with her parents and husband, wrestling with her feelings for another man - will capture the general reader.
   
   Caroline always intended her diary to survive her and be read by others, if only her children. Indeed, at the end of her life she arranged to donate them to the Massachusetts Historical Society. But except for some self-consciousness in the earliest sections, it never reads as if there's an audience in mind. Some of it is so raw and painful, in fact, it's surprising she did not rip out more pages (she did remove some). But that's part of the honesty that makes her interesting and sympathetic.
   
   Those interested in the political and social events of the time will find day-to-day mentions and interactions with most of the prominent politicians, literary and religious figures. Neither Caroline nor her editor explain much about the historical context of these interactions so those not already well-versed in 19th century history may find themselves googling some occasionally cryptic passages.
   
   But Deese's notes are extensive. She identifies everyone and every work or speech alluded to. For historians, the diary is a treasure trove. For everyone else it's a moving and fascinating portrait of a lonely, passionate, idealistic and conflicted woman who was very much of her times.
   
   --Portsmouth Herald

1 comments about Woman and Modernity: The Lifestyles of Lou Andreas-Salome.

1. This book is written in what I would call complex, long, wordy sentences that communicate poorly. It almost seems to be so intellectual that few could understand it. It certainly is not my style. I prefer Ernest Hemingway who communicates so simply, so well and in as few words as possible. This book is the opposite.

No comments about Happening.