Bristol Reviews

Incredible story. Incredible characters. A film could be made to join the ranks of Hollywood's greatest movies. Oscars abound. It's got it all ... a "girl" movie, a "guy" movie, sweeping story lines, incredible adventures, unbelievable events ... all set against the backdrop of the Florida Keys ... Cubans, Americans, Hispanics, African-Americans, Caucasians, ball players, fisherman, priest, robbers, cheating spouses, good brother, bad brother, meddling mother, mysterious Jewish builder, monuments on a beach, hurricane ... This BOOK has everything that would make a great movie. Life, marriage and the struggle with the two. Hollywood, take notice! Make Mary Hood a household name.

Incredible story. Incredible characters. A film could be made to join the ranks of Hollywood's greatest movies. Oscars abound. It's got it all ... a "girl" movie, a "guy" movie, sweeping story lines, incredible adventures, unbelievable events ... all set against the backdrop of the Florida Keys ... Cubans, Americans, Hispanics, African-Americans, Caucasians, ball players, fisherman, priest, robbers, cheating spouses, good brother, bad brother, meddling mother, mysterious Jewish builder, monuments on a beach, hurricane ... This BOOK has everything that would make a great movie. Life, marriage and the struggle with the two. Hollywood, take notice! Make Mary Hood a household name.

Mary Hood is a secret that needs to get out. I found out that Amy Tan listed her as among the company of Alice Munro and the great living women writers in Best American Short Stories of 1999. Familiar Heat is a novel that confronts evil, but leaves you feeling like there is much in humanity worth praise. These characters are amazing and human. Mary Hood is more than a writer; she is a wise woman who knows a point can be made just as easily through laughter as through knee-jerk tragedy.

I purchased this book after watching the show on PBS for some time. I just finished serving the World-Famous Pumpkin Rolls to guests, and from the look on their faces and the 'mmmms', I think it was a success. This is 'Cuisine Americana' with a peek at a host of cooking genre. The book is very well laid out with many mouth-watering illustrations (the photo convinced me to try the Pumpkin Rolls). What I especially like is that most of the ingredients can be obtained at the local grocery store. The instructions are broken down into very easily understood steps which will please most people, especially persons with limited cooking experience.
The Cook-Off America series has traveled to various culinary festivals across the country. The book gives the reader a delightful sampling of the best of each. It will give you an opportunity to experience the essence of American cuisine. Your family will love the gastronomic voyage!

I'm disappointed now that I was unaware of the PBS Series from which this book came. The title intrigued me, and I just had to see what kind of recipes were winners.

There is some down-right good cooking going on here in this collection, if the several I've tried are any indication.

Right off the bat I had to try the cover recipe, being a craver of Stilton, the Stilton and Toasted Walnut Burgers with Grilled Tomatoes and Spicy Leeks. It is oh so gooood! Next came my craving for cashews with the heavenly combo of "Cashew-Crusted Catfish with Tomato-Basil Cream." Only other entree attempted so far caught my attention from a favorite whitefish with cream cheese topping recipe I have which this recipe modifies for flank steak called "Flamboyant Flank Steak with Fragrant Filling" made with mascarpone and a sweet-sour style marinade. Yummy!

The Grilled Bratwurst recipe is one I've got in the wings to try as well as a delightful "Grilled Salmon in Tequilla-Lime Marinade with Tropical Fruit Salsa and Caribbean Wild Rice."

There are some great looking desserts going on in this collection, especially "Chocholate Chip Pecan Bread Pudding with Whiskey Cream Sauce."

This is a broad sweeping book of winners, with enough diverse variety to please most palates, with ingredients and techniques I'm sure most cooks will have no problems with. This is great cooking fun!

I have enjoyed watching the "Cook-off America" show on public TV and decided to order the companion book from Amazon. Why didn't anyone think of this series sooner? They traveled from one food festival to another around the country and selected some of the top winning recipes.

The book is packaged very attractively in a bright-red cover and presents a lot of background material about the different cook-offs.

I have tried 3 of the recipes. The lemon sour cream custard pie was outstanding and well worth making again in the future. The catfish stuffed with basil-olive pesto was very good, as was the fork-tender stuffed pork roast.

There are a number of other recipes I want to try. I did think some of the ingredients in some recipes were rather exotic, but I feel I got my money's worth from the book.

This is an unusual book. John Elder has written a book that blends the rhythms of life with the rhythms of nature.

Using Robert Frost's poem "Directive" as a springboard, Elder guides the reader through a series of year-long hikes that provide a rare glimpse into the writer soul, family and surroundings. His musings transport the reader from the glaciers that shaped his the plateau for the Village of Bristol, VT., the farmers who struggled and more often than not, failed to scratch a living from the rocky soil that surrounds his adopted home.

He carries us from broken china to Abenaki settlements, meditating on family relationships and deeper relationships with the land.

This is a beautiful example of nature writing, a work that draws a balance between the machinations of civilization and the beauties of wilderness. By inviting the reader to follow the last line of Frost's "Directive," to "Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.", Elder creates a sense of hope that Vermont's balance between nature and culture can speak to the rest of the nation.

I have read many of the reviews of Reading the Mountains of Home--both before and after I studied the book itself--in various magazines and newspapers, and, while many of them summarize accurately and manage to convey fairly clearly its complex and compelling structures, the musical grace of the sentences, the unique of John Elder's vision about the interlinking of language and place and time and family, of Robert Frost's "Directive" and of the concept of wilderness in America. There is a sense also in which he has taken nature writing--a broad genre forever in evolution--and brought it to new heights through this creative interweaving.

But what I notice most is the book's quiet heroism. By this I mean simply that the author exhibits the courage to put all of his deepest convictions, his most strongly held beliefs, the raw stuff of his very life in a place for all to see. One does not see this very often in books. We need more writers like John Elder. We need people like John Elder, people who have the courage to write from the deepest parts of themselves for the greater good of all of us and the larger home we call earth. If there were six stars I would give it six stars.

I learned much about New England from this fine book -- and about Robert Frost.

I was enchanted and educated by the adventures of this fascinating family.
As a member of a later generation that did not personally experience the depression, I feel I now have an understanding of what life would have been like if I had. I thoroughly enjoyed the unique way the two sisters took turn telling the story, sometimes-different take on the same event! Wonderful!

This is a wonderful book. It is very well written and a fast read. I was left wanting to know more. What happened to Aunt Irene & Uncle Grant as they aged? Who did sleep in Giovanni's room? It provides a full portrait of a particular middle class family from 1935 to 1937 as they moved from town to town in the San Joaquin Valley of California to follow their father's work. I loved the clarity of the portrayal of this less complicated culture. One passage sent chills down my spine because of the contrast it draws to our present experience: "In 1935 most children didn't have closets stuffed with clothes, shoes and games." I especially enjoyed all the details of life - food, clothing, styles, manners. The characters were well drawn & varied & left me with a deep longing for a sister of my own.

Volume 4 is a transcription of the vital records of the towns of Bristol, 1785-1854; Brookfield, 1788-1852; Brooklyn, 1786-1850; and Burlington, 1806-1852.

The cover of this book has a heart shaped shortbread cookie with a beautiful heart design. The recipes are all for melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies made from butter, flour and sugar. If you need a mold for the shortbreads, look for King Arthur Flour online. They have shortbread molds.

"The Book of Westland Aircraft", by A.H. Lukins, was one of a series of books about British aircraft companies published in the 1940s by Harborough, the same company that published the magnificent "Aircraft of the Fighting Powers" series. Like those books, the Westland book features two pages about each aircraft type, one filled with specifications and history, and the other an accurate 1/72 scale three-view drawing. (If needed, the three-view is spread over two pages, and additional photos supplied.) The books on each company have an entry for every aircraft type the company had made to that time. (The Westland book was published in 1944, so the Whirlwind is the last aircraft covered.) This format is invaluable if looking for information on obscure aircraft - the Wagtail gets as much space as the Lysander! Also covered are aircraft built by Westland under license. These books are unique; they are not as wordy as the Putnam series, but if you are a model-builder, the plans and photos are a goldmine. It is simply the best reference for early Westland aircraft ever published. I have not actually seen the Miles or Bristol books, but understand that they are similar

I loved this book. David Leavitt writes with such feeling and sensitivity that you really feel you get to know the people in his stories. His portraits of the young gay man coming out, the middle-aged closet case, and the wife who gradually grasps the fact of her husband's secret life, are done with such depth and understanding that we feel for everyone involved. Leavitt does not take a noticeable stance in favor of either side; one of his gay men is a self-involved jerk who evokes little sympathy, though one does pity him, in a way. Leavitt's novel, in short, is about human beings, with all our faults and foibles. This one will stay with you long after you finish reading it. Lovely and heart-wrenching.

When I am given the task of writing a review such a wonderful book, I have to wonder where to start. Leavitt's writing is fresh, beautiful, and goes down so smooth you don't realize you have the pages turning until you stop and look to see how much you've read. The breadth and accuracy of emotions portrayed in this book are truly extrodinary. This is truly a beautiful story that will stay with me in my heart. My heart goes out to Rose, who has to contend with so much and wonder if she gives off pheromones that turn men gay. My sympathies find their way to Owen who struggles with an issue his whole life, and only finds that he took it the wrong direction and wasted it and hurt someone that he love--but not in the way he might have originally thought he would. And I send a whole spectrum of my emotions to Philip whoes personality and feelings in many ways reflect my own; Philip's strugle is the most completely documented. The novel comes to a closing in which the reader is left to speculate where things will go from there, and I have to complain, but the complaint is mostly because by that point I never wanted the novel to end. While Edmund White proves to be the best gay writer of his generation, David Leavitt takes the tourch and makes it burn even brighter. And for that he is to be celbrated.

This was the first Leavitt novel I read, and I followed it up with his wondeful collection, Family Dancing. I am now reading Arkansas: Three Novellas. Prejudice hurts us, but the mainstream suffers more than they know for not finding and embracing a book of such beauty.

Author David Leavit writes a brillant novel that I had a hard time putting down. While Phillip is confronting his changing relationship with his lover, Elliot, his father Owen is finally, confronting his homosexuality. Highly recommended. Each character is richly developed and textured, they feel like real people that you know. While the film is good, it uses London as a backdrop rather than the book's all-to-real-modern-urban life set in New York and in the transistion looses something.

The fabulous story called "A Forgotten Poet" is worth the entire price of admission here. VN must have laughed out loud when he first got the idea, chuckled heartily as he developed it, and hummed happily to himself as he wrote it down and polished it for publication. It is superb, and superbly funny. If you haven't read it, you owe yourself the pleasure!

I would never imply that the rest of the stories in this volume can be forgotten! In fact, they all seem to be nearly as good as the one I just mentioned. Look upon this book as a box of delicious chocolates which you have not yet unwrapped.... and then unwrap and savor them at your leisure.

Highest possible recommendation!

After I first read, Lolita, I was quite eager to find more stories by this amazing author. The only other Nabokov book sold by my local bookstore was The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. I had no idea how *fantastic* each of these stories would be. He has taken a form of writing and completely made it his own. Every single one of them is superbly written. Even the less plot-driven ones stand out for their wonderful descriptions. Nabokov has a way of somehow bringing all of his subjects to life.

So, in short, this is a great book for *anyone*. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

The stories in this book (there are about 65 of them) are for the most part very short. Some of my favorite are his earliest ones, they have been translated from the Russian by Nabokov's son, Dmitri, and they are semi-autobiographical, sweet and so beautiful. Included in this book are a few chapters from Nabokov's autobiography, "Speak, Memory" which were published independently as stories. I would also recommend "Speak, Memory" without reservations. It would be a good book to read after or before this one. They are both so wonderful.

I can't imagine anyone not liking at least some of these stories, especially if you like the genre of short stories and if you are familiar with Nabokov's lucid, detailed prose. Some of them are briefer and sketchier, and some are more like small novels, some are auto-biographical, and some are like fairy-tales. All of the different kinds are good, even my least favorite stories in this vast collection have stuck in my mind. They are lovely. Everyone should own this book.