1 comments about Natalina.

1. This story was obviously written from the heart. The love that Louis & Natalina shared was beautiful. Everyone should be able to find someone that lights up your life as Natalina did Louis. Intimate and touching, I found myself crying and applauding at the same time. Anyone who has had experience with love or with alzheimers would enjoy this book. Easy reading and enjoyable.

3 comments about If Blind Guys Wear Sunglasses, Why Don't Deaf People Wear Ear Muffs.

1. BMD is one hell of a guy and now you too can learn what he has went through in an incredible life. This book is well worth every penny and hey...buy the book or the blind man dies! Read the book you will understand!



2. This so-called book is packed with lies and pitiful ramblings of a very sad person. Don't believe any of it. Anyone can type stuff up, but it does not make it true.



3. I wouldn't call this a book, but instead the un-substantiated rantings of a very PITIFUL person. Don't waste your time on this schlock!!!

3 comments about What Color Is a Butterfly.

1. A child without sight grows up to be a talented musician, complete homemaker, career woman and mother of three. The story of her training and over-coming visual imparement is an inspiration to everyone who reads this carefully crafted biograpy. What Color Is A Butterfly is an ispirational journey into the qualities of perception, courage and creativity. Humor softens the sadness and hope strengthens the drive to "be normal." A book that will give a lift to all who read this story.



2. "Your Mother was an admirable lady. She mastered her fate with determination, great willpower and a positive attitude and she was always aware that she was so fortunate to be born into this family, giving her so much love and understanding and support to develop her special talents. It was useful to me once to realize, what it means to be blind, because I really never thought of such a situation."



3. I found the author's lack of writing skill distracting. Many sentences were awkwardly written. At times it is confusing which character she is writing about since she assumes the identity of each character with the pronoun "I." The redundancy of information given is appalling. Information in one paragraph is repeated in another paragraph a few pages later, almost word of word. This happens several times in the book. Did anyone edit this book?

5 comments about February Light: A Love Letter to the Seasons During a Year of Cancer and Recovery.

1. While facing a deadly disease, Heather Remoff shows wonderful insight, honesty, and humor. Also, the book is the perfect length and is very readable.



2. In this brief book, Heather Remoff shows herself to be a funny, gutsy, caring and sensitive woman. She also turns out to be one tough cookie. This memoir of her new life in a remote Pennsylvania village, and of the cancer that nearly ended that life, is well worth reading just for the skill of her writing. But even more, it is a fascinating self-portrait of a whole person, fully engaged in the serious and crazily unpredictable business of life.



3. "I'm locked up for a crime I didn't commit," says Remoff, pacing hospital corridors after ovarian cancer surgery. This restless woman describes her greatest adventure, a dance with death in her 54th year. It's not surprising that she despises being cooped up. She lives on a crystal clear lake in small-town Pennsylvania. She adores the outdoors and describest it tenderly -- its changes through the months of that year. In September she pays attention to the Crows and their wisdom. "Crows break my heart in the same way September does," she discloses. In January we see her on the frozen lake to help townsfolk harvest 250-lb ice blocks to build a high and dangerous toboggan slide, a ritual since 1904. She's in chemotherapy, wearing mittens, scarves, boots. She gets too cold and must give up. Feeling guilty, she won't attend the bean feed afterward. Chemotherapy doesn't stop her from running, though, even on dark winter mornings. She's only dissappointed that she must cut her speed as she weakens. This is a strong woman, physically and mentally fit. She flirts with the mystical. A lost pendant is mysteriously found by strangers and delivered to her door. A white light surrounds her one morning in bed -- healing and supporting her immediately before her follow-up diagnosis, one that ultimately finds no trace of tumor. There's much to the body-mind connection that we have yet to learn. This is an educated woman, a researcher who questions issues of economic theories. I wondered, then, why she did not question, as I did, what allowed cancer to enter her strong and active body. Do we remember our grandmothers attending funerals of friends dying from breast or ovarian cancer in their fifties? Or forties? Or thirties? This lovely book is bereft of her probing heart in dealing with these issues with her doctors. Today, some health care professionals and their patients actually take time to track childhood exposure to DDT, toxic waste dumps, farm pesticides and polluted w! ater. I wish she had.



4. As a book about nature and going through a life threatening disease, this is a lovely portrayal.

   If one is looking for indepth personal perspective and insight into (ovarian) cancer and accompanying surgerys and treatments, it is rather weak.

   I wasn't moved, at a time when I am easily moved.




5. I read this wonderfully written and deeply felt book a few years ago, after my mother succumbed to biliary cancer and long before I triumphed over my own cancer (prostate). During my year of cancer and recovery, I often thought of Remoff's book -- a gem that created a resonance I still feel today -- of her resilience and love of life. Familiar with the setting, Eagle's Mere (a quaint, old Victorian village set atop a picturesque mountain, frequented by folks of means throughout much of the 20th century), I'd say she had ample opportunity to commune with the seasons. But the beauty of her love letter lies in its human light. We see an engaging, luminous spirit that will not yield to the dark, nefarious work of cancer, a woman deeply connected to family, friends and community. Her dog Chuckles, her running, her ruminations, her alternative healthcare approaches, her strong yet sensitive husband -- all give her reason to live. This book should be mandatory reading for anyone whose life has been affected by cancer. This book is life, fully lived, soulfully rendered, teeming with laughter and foolishness amid the fear and pain of facing one's inescapable mortality.

1 comments about On the Edge of Reality.

1. a good account of a person's struggle through mental illness. A good selection for a psych class, too!

No comments about Brittany's Accomplishments.

No comments about Shades of Blue.

No comments about On Jane's Time.

No comments about Those Are the Breaks.

5 comments about The Bear's Embrace: A Story of Survival.

1. I read the book in one sitting. I simply could not put it down no matter how many pressing/important things I needed to do. It has stayed with me long after, as well. This book was not what I expected. After chapter two which was the attack and rescue I wondered how the author could fill the rest of the book with the recovery. In moving prose, with bare honesty, she takes us on her harrowing journey. Through it all is her Homeric husband(demanding work, chronically ill/incapacitated wife, growing needy children AND building his own home - whom we come to love and admire, too). Yes, this story is an unwitting condemnation of the Canadian socialized quality of medicine, but it is ultimately the strength and perseverance of the human spirit. Please continue to write, we readers have come to care for you and your family deeply.



2. I believe that this story was a great description of a persons will and determination to survive. The book is very well explained and tells a lot about the human spirit. It is something that you would read on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a cup of hot cocoa or a hot cup of coffee whatever you prefer. A great read indeed.



3. This is a deeply moving story about surviving---not just a brutal bear attack, but the facial disfigurement, long-term pain and surgeries, and the deep depression caused by no one understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, 20 years ago. As someone who lived in Canada for 20 years, I believe that Patricia's critique of her medical care is NOT a critique of the Canadian system of health care funding, but of how little was understood back then about trauma, and how to rebuild one's life after such horror. This is a deeply spiritual book, in spite of its graphic descriptions of her facial damage, and the clumsy surgical attepts to fix it. This book should be required reading for all people in the health care and mental health fields. It might teach compassion for "difficult" patients, who have much to teach us.



4. The knee-jerk reviews that call this an 'inspirational', 'you can overcome anything' memoir are unbelievably obtuse. The unexpurgated, NC-17 truth of the matter is that the author committed suicide shortly after the publication of this book, apparently overcome by the enormity of what had happened to her and what was taken away from her by this horrible encounter with a bear. I felt that the end of the book, with its strenuous and somewhat fake-seeming efforts to find a 'silver lining' in her misfortune were perhaps the result of pressure from the editor/publisher to end the story in an upbeat way. The bottom line in the publishing biz is that downers don't sell. Sorry, all you 'smile button' types: sometimes the unvarnished truth is that you cannot turn the page, because the page weights a ton.



5. This book was written very well, I could feel the authors pain and suffering. The book mentions a documentary TV program that is about this incident--but I haven't been able to track it down.