No comments about Ned Myers.

No comments about The Bevin Boy: A History of the Use of Young Boys in British Mines During Wwii (ISIS Large Print).

No comments about Country Doctor.

No comments about Daybreak Into Darkness.

5 comments about Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (G K Hall Large Print Book Series).

1. Jack Benny wrote an autobiography entitled: "I Always Had Shoes." Though complete, it was never published, and when Jack's daughter Joan found it she decided to take excerpts from it and publish it with her own reflections on growing up in the Benny household.
   
   Jack Benny's text is highlighted in bold type, while Joan's is in regular font. The average reader will no doubt very soon begin skipping Joan's writing and will read only Jack's text. Jack was apparently a surprisingly good writer.
   
   Why not just publish Jack's autobiography? I'd give it five stars in a heartbeat.



2. Don't expect some exhaustive book on Benny (like the recent mega-biography of Bing Crosby) and you won't be disappointed. This book consists of light, amusing anecdotes - show biz fluff and recollections. It is great fun for Jack Benny fans and can be consumed in one afternoon. Enjoyable.



3. Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, I have heard Joan Benny on various radio programs over the years and she truly was blessed to have Mr. Benny as a father. Unlike many of the Mommy & Daddy dearest books written by the children of celebrities this books tells of an enchanted childhood growing up in Hollywood's golden age, Many of Mr. Benny's insights on his contemporaries like Fred Allen & George Burns as well as his defense that the Rochester character was NOT explotive of African Americans are insightful. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson was one of the highest paid comedians of his generation and owned a large house with servants, numerous automobiles, & large chunks of California real estate. Eddie and Jack were great friends for many years and Eddie was very broken up at Jack's funeral. The numerous radio interviews Joan Benny did on Larry King and several other stations are usually found on Jack Benny radio show collection CDs sold on Ebay & elsewhere and make for a wonderful companion for this book.



4. I was very happy after reading this that I purchased this book. I have always enjoyed the Jack Benny Show, the radio show even more than the tv version, (even though I was not born until 1961 and the tv show is in my immediate memory---I later in life "discovered" the radio shows on old time radio show programs and cd's) To hear the story of his career through his own memories and then to have them reflected by the point of view of his daughter was indeed a treat and a fascinating view into his life. I highly recommend this book for the serious Benny fan.



5. I really enjoyed this autobiography of Jack Benny. It is based on an unfinished manuscript that his daughter Joan found when she was going through her mother's house shortly after her death. Since it was incomplete, Joan contributes roughly half of the book's contents and Jack contributes the other half. There are also a few paragraphs written here and there by other people who knew Jack, including George Burns, his lifetime friend.
   
   Jack gives quite a bit of the details of his personal life from his childhood up until the beginning of his radio career. At that point, most of his comments concentrate on his comedy, how he built his radio show, the transition to television, and various anecdotes on how people often mistook the personality they saw on TV or heard on the radio with the real Jack Benny. Jack was always a generous fellow, so there is much information about the other performers on his show and what went into making each performance.
   
   Joan's half of the book fits nicely with Jack's since she gives many personal details of what it was like being Jack Benny's daughter and talks about the goings on in the Benny household in the years that Jack basically omits from his autobiography. The only thing that is a little off-track about the book is that Joan goes into considerable detail about the problems she had with her mother. From the book it appears she never talked to her father about these problems in much detail, so it really doesn't have much to do with Jack's story.
   
   This is a very detailed portrait - not from the standpoint of retracing every step Jack took, but from the standpoint of getting a real feel for the man in his own words. He was truly one the great comedians of the twentieth century and a genuinely nice guy. Highly recommended.

3 comments about Marriage (Large Print Edition).

1. One of the charming things about this novel is the author's handling of the old scottish dialect. It is written so that anyone can just about hear the heavily accented dialect of Scotland of the time. The text is well accompanied by explanatory notes which made it easy to understand. The novel constantly attacks the ethnic prejudices held by the English against the Scots, even as it satirizes the Scots as well. The setting is divided between Scotland and England, and the author deals satire to both cultures. The focus of the novel is its young heroine Mary. Like most young heroines in novels of this age her goal is to get married. To put it simply, the novel seems to be comparing and contrasting Mary's marriage and her methods, to those of her less scrupulous mother, an English Lady who elopes with a Scottish army officer. Mary is raised in Scotland while her twin sister goes to live in England with her mother, who cannot stand to live in Scotland. Mary goes to live with her mother when she grows to marriageable age. Here, Ferrier begins to compare and contrast the two characters, Mary and her sister, to expose which one has the better upbringing. Mary's sister makes a bad marriage to an old and willful, but rich aristocrat who makes her desperately unhappy. Mary chooses her husband better. She picks a Scottish army officer, just like her mother did so many years ago. This officer is of course a better pick for Mary than Mary's own father was for her mother. I think that when it comes to comparing the countries of Scotland and England, Scotland wins out in this book, as the best and kindest characters are Scottish, while every English character is vain or vulgar, or vain and vulgar at the same time. For this reason the novel seems full of Scottish nationalistic spirit. This is a novel of manners in the tradition of Jane Austen and Frances Burney, and the first such novel I have read which compares the two cultures in question with any seriousness and depth. Not a very flattering novel if you have ever eloped.



2. I would think that anyone who loves Pride and Prejudice, etc, would also love this work written near the same time. While this author may not have the fame (or actually as good a talent) as Jane A., she still does a great job. This is a romance, of sorts. A very shallow young society woman (London) marries a Scot who, while wellbred, is a bumpkin by London standards. Twins are born, the couple separates. One twin is reared in London, the other in Scotland. One twin is shallow, the other has good sense. This is great good fun and a wonderful read. It is a shame that it is often only discovered in "History of English Literature" courses (where I got my first taste). I recommend this book highly.



3. I've seen Susan Ferrier somewhere called the "Scottish Jane Austen", which invites comparisons that would be very hard on any author. There certainly are parallels in plot and themes between "Marriage" and "Mansfield Park". (It helps if you can imagine the latter having a very long opening about the Prices' elopement and Fanny's early life in Portsmouth.) However, Ferrier's work, although published the year after Austen's death, seems quite old-fashioned in many ways. Poetic interludes, untranslated comments in French, religious moralizing, and emblematic character names (Lady Placid, Mr. Gawffaw, Mrs. Downe Wright) combine to make the novel seem more like something Jane Austen might have read in her youth than the work of a successor. Nevertheless, the story and the elements of social satire are very well done. I found "Marriage" more interesting and more entertaining than anything I've read by Burney or Edgeworth, which I intend as praise of Ferrier, not denigration of those two talented authors.

No comments about Home Country (Transaction Large Print Books).

No comments about Letters from the Fens (Reminiscence).

2 comments about Doctors War (Ulverscroft Large Print Series).

1. This book has been re-printed.
   
   New ISBN is 1903464706



2. This short autobiographical account of an Irish doctor's World War II experiences is so riveting that I stayed up way too late to finish it. Dr. MacCarthy served in Europe and was then shipped out to the Asian theatre where he endured the unthinkable. The most striking things I took away from this book is how strong human beings can be in the face of terrible events and how good can triumph within each of us. As the preface said, if you went to a movie and saw all the things portrayed which Dr. McCarthy lived through, you'd think it too far-fetched to be true.

5 comments about Charles Kuralt's American Moments.

1. Kuralt is an American treasure. His essays, word pictures ofAmerica, take on a special quality when heard on tape. All of his essays are his legacy--to remind us of the amazing nature of American society and of the need for a new crop of American writers to find the hidden jewels of Americana.



2. Great reading! As I read the pages of American Moments I can hear the voice of Charles Kuralt. I recommend it for all ages and it is very uplifting.



3. Great reading! As I read the pages of American Moments I canhear the voice of Charles Kuralt. I recommend it for all ages and it is very uplifting.



4. The editing for 90 seconds of television was too severe for the treasured scenes to work as effectively in book form. Am I just still too sad at our loss to fill in the gaps? Though disappointed I read on and on. No doubt you will too. Kuralt was a quintessential American treasure himself.



5. This book is filled with short accounts of diverse "American Moments" grouped in ten areas. This is a sampling. Each reader would do a completely different review as there is so much to choose from to make an interesting account.
   
   The Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, built in 1914, was a beautiful railroad palace through which half the soldiers of this country passed Dec. 7, the day word came of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The interior, from the insert photograph, looks a lot like the magnificent station in Washington, D.C. Back then, the idea was to create grand buildings for everyday citizens. At the street entrance, there on the sidewalk, stood a tall ornate black clock like the one which graced Knoxville's Gay Street for several decades. Ours was recently moved by the owners of a jewelry store to the new location west of town, a lavish edifice, and yet the clock has yet to be put up. They claimed it because it had stood in front of the downtown store. There is now a campaign to replace it there among the brew pubs, martini bars, and loft apartments where the downtowners hang out. Somehow, it will lack the 'dignity' of the original.
   
   There are two photos of Becky Davis of Tennessee making cotton candy at a Fair. Invented in the 1920s (Karault says by a dentist), it is sticky spun sugar in pretty colors. It takes experience to flip it just right to keep from being covered by the gooey stuff. He wonders what folks ate at fairs and carnivals before cotton candy came along. In the 1980s, funnel cakes made an appearance at the World's Fair in Knoxville. I have yet to eat my first one (not even a taste), though I was tempted at the 2004 Fair -- missed the chance as time was short and I had to run to catch a bus.
   
   The country's smallest p.o. is shown free-standing about the size of a well house in Ochopee, Florida. It may be tiny but has its own historical marker on a stand right outside on the road; a regular size postal drop box is beside the building wher it is encouraged the customers use for mailing their post cards and envelopes. Inside, of course, Naomi Lewis will be glad to sell stamps. From the photo, I see they had room by her counter for the "most wanted" criminals pictures, a staple of post offices everywhere. Our smallest here is at Knoxville Center mall in a corner beside the offices where you can get your driver's license and car tags. It even has room for packages which I usually mail there, as one of the two 'old' postal clerks told me, "here, you can be first in line." Now, that's a plus.
   
   Before that, U. S. A. had The Pony Express which began in St. Joseph, Missouri, to deliver mail overland all the way to California, 2,000 miles in ten days. At the Pony Express Museum, on the wall is an early want ad: "Wanted -- Young, Skinny, Wiry Fellows. Not Over Eighteen. Must Be Expert Rider. Willing to Risk Death Daily. Orphans Preferred." This enterprise lasted only a year and a half until the completion of the telegraph. There is a bronze statue of a young rider on a horse (in flight) there at St. Joseph where Gary Chilcote, director of the Patee House Museum, explained: "they rode through Kansas and Nebraska, dipped into Colorado, and across Wyoming, Nevada, Utan and dropped down into California.
   
   This historian tells the story of Jesse James' demise. Jesse was the first outlaw in the American West, right after the Civil War. He and his gang robbed trains and banks. There is a photo of the small house where Bob Ford, one of the gang members, shot Jesse behind the right ear as he attempted to straighten a picture on a wall on April 3, 1882. Kuralt wrote, "Die a law-abiding citizen and you will be remembered for a time. Die a desperado and you will be remembered for all time." The last of Jesse James, killed by one of his own gang, was an American Moment to Remember.
   
   It looked bigger than life in the movie version. A hatmaker he interviewed shows a bow being put on a cowboy hat for which the movies made popular. "All self-respecting cowboy hats have bows on them" (similar to those little things you see on the front of most bras). They have to or you're not a cowboy. That's as close as you can get to the meaning of this symbol in a word. A cowboy hat demands respect.
   
   My favorite cowboy, Lash LaRue, included me in his program at the East Tennessee Fair when Al Curtis brought him here (a big thing back then). Lash dressed in black and always wore a black hat. Our local cowboy, Marshal Andy Smalls, advises his t.v. fans to 'wear a white hat, so we will know the good guys.' I've always yearned for a blue one, but bought it for my little cowboy (Justin at age 4 or 5) whom the girls all liked at the library costume party.
   
   This fact-filled book, published after Charles Kuralt's death (7-4-97), was edited by Peter Freudlich, his friend and writer-producer for CBS News, where Charles worked for 37 years. He won many honors for his "on the road" journalism, and I enjoyed his features on 'CBS Sunday Morning.' In the Foreward, written by Charles Osgood, he calls Charles Kuralt, native son of North Carolina, an 'explorer' as he covered the back roads of this country to find real Americans and their unique stories.