1 comments about Flying Colors.

1. Very nicely narrated by Grover Gardner, Flying Colors is a passionate and unabridged audiobook CD presenting a true story regarding the power and creative expression of art. Author Tim Lefens is also the founder of A.R.T. (Artistic Realization Techniques) and helped to create breakthrough techniques to help physically challenged students express and improve themselves. Filled with heart-touching anecdotes of inner strength and rising to exceed expectations, Flying Colors is an enthusiastically recommended addition to personal and community library audiobook CD collections (7 hours, 6 compact discs, 7 hours)

No comments about Juliette Low (Young Patriots) (Young Patriots Series).

5 comments about Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole (Nova Audio Books).

1. The book was worth every penny and it was sent in a timely manner.



2. This book is the story of Dr. Nielsen's time working at the south pole. It is full of anecdotes of everyday events that gave me a feeling for what life must be like in such a remote place.
   
   It reminded me a lot of science fiction and especially Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Robinson has another book on Antarctica that is said to be very similar to Red Mars. It's uncanny how similar Dr. Nielsen's account is to science fiction stories about space colonization.
   
   Maybe the idea of life on the frontier brings out these themes. The difficulty of life makes people work together and abandon some of the petty problems from home. That gives people a new perspective on the culture of their home.
   
   This story also made me consider how psychologically hard cancer must be. Dr. Nielsen says being in Antarctica in some ways made it easier because she didn't have to deal with daily ups and downs as the results of many tests came back. They only had the most basic diagnostic equipment in Antarctica.
   
   Nielsen is honest about her fear of her illness and the pain of being alienated from her kids. Although it's unlikely because of her history of cancer, I hope the powers that be approve her for more work in remote locations.



3. This book provides the "behind the scenes" details of the experience of Jerri Nielsen who was diagnosed with and forced to treat her own breast cancer using non-medical personnel while she was the only doctor stationed at the South Pole during polar winter. Much of the book is about her experience of life at the pole and her relationships with her fellow "Polies".
   
   As someone who began reading this with very little knowledge of the South Pole station, I most enjoyed the information about what life is like there for the brave and crazy folks who opt to winter-over at the coldest place on earth. They are unreachable by even the most advanced aviation because jet fuel turns to Jell-o in the horrifically cold weather they experience. It was interesting to hear description of what they wore, where they slept, how they kept warm, how they entertained themselves and how they remained connected to the outside world. At the time of Dr. Nielsen's employment (1999), they only had a satellite available for a few hours a day to exchange emails and contact with their friends and family. One interesting tidbit of information, while then-President Clinton visited New Zealand all usage of the satellite was reserved for him. I know so much about this because the book includes many emails. These are edited for length but otherwise replicated in their entirety. It becomes tiresome to read other people's email including To, From, Subject etc., but in some ways provides the only true insight the book offers into the experience.
   
   My personal response to this book is that I just don't feel that Dr. Nielsen is a reliable narrator about her personal or interior life. Whether this is her fault or that of her co-author, I cannot say. I felt that she chose to take a stance as both victim and hero as opposed to just a regular old person in a horrible situation. Her descriptions of her relationships with her estranged children and ex-husband strike me as disproportionately favorable to her as do the descriptions of her childhood, parents etc. It may not be true that she considers herself either a victim or hero, but that is what I felt the "voice" used in the book implied. It feels somehow like she is being less than honest about her internal experience of the events described or rather that her level of honesty and experience has somehow been retarded so that she is having the emotional experiences that someone would normally have much earlier in their life than at 47 years old. When compared to a memoir written by someone like Mary Karr or Jeannette Walls or even Roseanne Barr, there is a noticeable lack of honest reflection and self-awareness that should have been addressed by an editor or the co-author who, one assumes, is a professional writer. There was a great deal of telling in a narrative that should have been laden with insight, feeling and action. This absence is particularly noticeable when reading the emails from Dr. Nielsen's oncologist, Dr. Kathy Miller, which are filled with empathy, decency and passion. They give her a distinct "self" that no other person in the book has including Dr. Nielsen herself.
   
   I can only recommend this book as an introduction to life at the South Pole. I intend to find other, better books to increase my knowledge of that fascinating place and the people who work there.



4. Jerri Nielsen's Ice Bound came highly recommended to me. While it initially began well, it soon became obvious that the author had a lot of growing up to do. Unfortunately, the South Pole experience didn't seem to speed up the process. She is so caught up in her interpretation of events that she fails to understand or see what others are telling or showing her. I wonder if this is at the core of her family problems. The final straw for me was after reading her doctor's email assuring her that her chances for longevity were still very possible, and she immediately writes to her own family and tells them just the opposite. The fact that she had the nerve to continue scaring her family and misrepresent the doctor's analysis made me lose any sympathy I might have had for her. Jerri's mom, however, must be quite a lady, as evident by her remarks comparing her daughter's perspective on her ice family to cult. Now, I'd like to read a book about her mom, but forget the daughter!



5. I was prepared to love this, but ended up disliking it for several reasons.
   
   Her voice is gruff and sounded good at first, but the pacing and reading started grating on my nerves by the end of the second CD. Like most cases, it would have been better to hire a professional reader.
   
   More importantly, I felt Dr. Nielson is an extremely emotionally immature person. She rails against her ungrateful children who "abandoned" her and her sociopathic ex-husband (who supposedly stranged a dog in front of her, and used to drive against traffic to intimidate her). At the same time, she paints herself as an innocent, noting only briefly she had an affair because she basically emotionally had to....of course, this sounds a bit crazy. Even assuming what she says about her husband is true, any time someone is hooked up with psychos for decades, something is a little wrong with them, too. I felt her complaints about her ex and children made her look worse and made me question her own emotional stability.
   
   At the same time, she describes her adventures at the Pole the same way I think a teenager would. She struck me as self absorbed, narcissistic and dramatic. There appears to be an enormous amount of socializing there, with all sorts of stupid parties all the time, movie nights, coffee clatches, etc. Also, I kid you not when I say that every single person and almost every single room, city, area, and numerous objects, etc. at the Pole has an annoying nickname. Another example? She develops an overt crush on someone married and doesn't hide it.
   
   Finally, I had thought she actually did the lumpectomy herself. All she does is a needle biopsy!!! I have experienced a breast needle biopsy and while I certainly had the benefit of a topical anesthetic (which I don't think she did), it was not a big deal. After that, she is air dropped chemo, and then does IVs of chemo, with assistance via satellite each time, and a friend to help do it. Then, she is airlifted out.
   
   Frankly, the pilots who air dropped the chemo and then airlifted her out (at the earliest, coldest time the pole had ever been flown to) are the real heroes here.
   
   If you want to read about self medical procedures, I would suggest the kid who cut his right arm off while hiking in Utah. I haven't read it but I saw the Tom Brokaw special about it, and it was very solid. It's interesting how the parents ultimately found the kid....

No comments about Gazza.

1 comments about Two Lives, One Russia.

1. Keep in mind, that I am a complete Russophile. I studied Russian for two years, spent months in Russia in the 90s. So this book touches me in ways that are personal. I read this book every few years, and I'm starting to think my original copy is wearing thin.
   
   This book is divided into two storylines that weave a united theme. The first part is an a account of the author's own detention and interrogation under the time of Gorbachev leadership. Nicholas Daniloff was the Soviet reporter for US News & World Report in the 1980's. He was one day grabbed of the street and what follows is an account with as much intrigue as a Robert Ludlum novel. It hits hard, those who lived during the Cold War of the 80's.
   
   The second story line is that of the author's investigating and eventually unraveling of the story of his Great-great-great grandfather who was a minor member in the Decembrist revolt in 1825. Daniloff's investigation of the history of his ancestor shows the warm nature of Russians and the power of History that survived through communist Russia. When Daniloff, tells the account of his Great-great-great grandfather, it brings up images of Tolstoy.
   
   All in all, this book brings an amazing account of the Russian people in two periods of oppression. The warm nature of Russians has always been from within, and this book shows that.
   
   Give this book a try, if you love great non-fiction stories, this one should be at the top of your list.
   
   Note: I contacted Nicholas Daniloff via email a few years ago, to tell him how much I loved this book. He actually replied and took to heart the fact that his and his ancestor's story meant so much to someone.

No comments about Interview With Ann Beattie.

No comments about In The Shadow Of Fame - A Memoir By the Daughter of Erik H. Erikson.

No comments about J.Kingston Platt (BBC Radio Collection).

5 comments about Where There's a Will.

1. I am afraid I was quite disappointed in this book. The review in the Times that I had read made it sound like a much more profound and important book - one I would like to own rather than just take out of the library. I had previously enjoyed other books by John Mortimer, but this book was just a collection of random musings which did not hold together at all.



2. These are the random musings of an old man contemplating his mortality. After a writing career in which he had twenty novels published, in addition to fourteen stories featuring the fictional barrister, Horace Rumpole, and twelve plays as listed in this small book of ramblings about his life, I learned that he was actually a barrister himself at the Old Bailey. He was born five years after the end of the 1914-18 war, he says, and enjoyed and endured a 'public school' education where one of his school mates was Lord Byron. He calls Byron's DON JUAN one of the great masterpieces of European literature.
   
   Sir John Mortimer (knighted in 1998) led a privileged life from the very beginning. Now, at age 81, he looks round at his children and grandchildren whose ages range from 53 to twelve, he contemplates: "Their words will echo out into the future, with their children and their children's children." What to leave them as his paternal legacy? That is what he ponders as he tells about life as it was for him at the various stages.
   
   He wonders what to pass on to the next generation. So, he gives some ancient history concerning the birthplace of out civilization, in olden times called Mesopotamia in the Persian Empire. He talks about the times he spent enjoying one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens. Then he goes on to tell about the city of peace (back then) in the time of Charlemagne, in the Ottoman Empire. "When Turkey was defeated in the 1914-18 war, the Allies carved up its possessions with quite arbitrary boundaries and placed an arbitrary king, Feisal, on the throne of Iraq. These kings ruled until a revolution led by the Baath party finally produced Saddam Hussein who was, of course, backed by America. Algebra was invented there at the center of civilization which conquered the whole of Spain."
   
   His opinions on lots of things included this remark about democracy: "I suppose democracy was most nearly achieved in ancient Greece, when everyone except women and slaves took part in the government. The result was usually disastrous and led to the death of Socrates just as the introduction of democracy in England was started." Utopia, information technology as the cause of deterioration and decline of the English language "at least as its's spoken by the governing classes", family values and vulgarity, telling lies (the bigger, the better), Shakespeare, and old movies are just some of the topics he knows so much about. This is his postscript (P.S.) to his autobiographies, as he reflects on his good and prosperous life.



3. Sir John Mortimer is an extremely literate and honestly open-minded person who writes with a flowing exquisiteness of the English language. This small book of his thoughts on a good life is a reminiscence of the life he has led and is still leading. He mentions a lot of classical literary authors and their characters that would further enrich a person's knowledge. Also, the various types of people he met working at the Old Bailey has surely enhanced his art of observing and putting their perspectives onto paper. Together with wild imaginations of his, no wonder his many writings are keenly absorbed by the public. The last ten chapters are my favorite but in each I find something to laugh out loud about. This is his own story and the way he tells it is invigorating. In not so many words in each section, he still succeeds in relaying his message that is predominantly deliberate.



4. I should first confess my bias--I have often been tickled and sometimes awed by Mortimer's way with English prose for 20 years. So, in picking up this book I had the high expectations one might have before meeting an old friend or beloved teacher. No disappointment. Even if some of these essays are slightly less effervescent than others, all are at least wonderful, and several are both brilliant and touching.
   
   Mortimer has given us a collection of short essays, conversational and often wryly funny, which he intends as a kind of spiritual bequeathal to his family and other heirs. The chapters range across a broad range of subjects, some perhaps outwardly frivolous, like the cooking of eggs. But in the main, Mortimer touches on matters of great substance--the nature of beauty, how to be happy, surprising ways in which our world has managed to be unjust, places and times for sex, how to dine sociably, the love of children, faith and reason, the terrors of the writer facing blank paper, and many more. I found these essays to be wise and absolutely delicious. I suspect that readers who have enjoyed Rumpole, or Mortimer's other biographical essays like Summer of a Doormouse, or Clinging to the Wreckage, will be quite pleased with these sketches.
   
   Mortimer may, sadly, be nearing the end of his life, but at present he seems to be on a literary tear. I, for one, wish him many more prolific years.



5. Mortimer writes Rumpole, who is a delight. This is the third (I think) in Mortimer's memoirs, and I missed its predecessors so this review may do Mr. Mortimer a disservice. There is a big of bragging, some interesting notes, but it a fairly forgettable series of life lessons, barely disguised as things of leave behind one that do not fit in a Will. It is a sad truth that there are a number of writers whose characters are more interesting, and charming, than their authors.

4 comments about Extra Virgin.

1. This book was one of those novels that makes you wish you were: A) courageous enough to drop everything and move to a foreign country, B) arrogant enough to think that, just maybe, you'll manage to learn all of the ancient farming techniques that have been passed down for generations, and C) intelligent enought to enjoy every minute of the work-to-the-bone lifestyle you've just chosen. That being said, I am none of these things, yet. Reading this book takes that pressure off, though, and lets you into a world you may never experience otherwise. This isn't the glamourous riviera of the movies, and this isn't an over-glorified triumph of the earth either, its just a lovely novel that you will want to devour as if it were a fresh piece of foccacia dripping with... of course... ligurian olive oil.



2. Annie Hawes writes in a slow, laid-back style that is evocative of the Ligurian lifestyle that she lives. It took me a while to settle down and read this book, but when I did, I found myself escaping to the author's descriptions of pruning olive trees, dancing at village fiestas, and her encounters with eccentric locals. I'll definitely read this again.



3. A great read. Witty, engrossing account of Annie & sister's unplanned purchase of a rundown farmhouse in Liguria on the Italian Riviera, and their (mis)adventures and interactions with the locals. Very funny, affectionately sly observations of human nature and the idiosyncrasies and highlights of Italian village life, olives and the love of good food. And interesting information about local olive farming and wine making and food. I just loved it!



4. I haven't even finished the last 50 or so pages of this book and I'm already on Amazon ordering the next two by Annie Hawes.
   
   Her powers of description are incredible, leading me to look up all the locales she writes about on the internet and plan trips in my head. Ms. Hawes' description of the mundane - from gourmet Italian meals to weeding her garden - never cease to interest me.
   
   A truly enjoyable read, with or without knowledge of Italy.