4 comments about New Tastes in Green Tea: A Novel Flavor for Familiar Drinks, Dishes, and Desserts.

1. Enthusiastically recommended for gourmet kitchen cookbook collections, New Tastes In Green Tea: A Novel Flavor For Familiar Drinks, Dishes, And Desserts by renowned Japanese food stylist Mutsuko Tokunaga (who is also the Vice President of the World Green Tea Association) covers all the basics in the course of introducing the reader to the most popular types of traditional tea, the fine art of brewing tea, as well as tea lore and the history of tea. Tokunage then goes on provide this full range cookbook with a culinary wealth of new recipes for drinks, savory and sweet dishes, and complete tea menus. From Green Tea Gnocchi; Green Tea Croquettes; and Matcha Seafood with Mushroom Gratin; to Salmon and Sencha Pie; Matcha Chiffon Cake; and Matcha Tiramisu, New Tastes In Green Tea is a unique compilation that will be deeply and enduringly appreciated by gourmets with an appreciation for culinary elegance, as well as family kitchen cooks with an interest in providing the beneficial properties of green tea to their loved ones.



2. This book will answer a lot of questions regarding green tea and its properties. The recipes included in the book are extremely easy and appetizing. We use this book as reference in our Tea Boutique all the time; it's a great addition to your tea library.



3. I learned a lot about green tea from this book. It is a pleasant read and good reference.



4. If you are crazy about green tea, especially matcha, you will be pleased with this.

5 comments about Parenting After Divorce: A Guide to Resolving Conflicts and Meeting Your Children's Needs (Rebuilding Books) (Rebuilding Books; For Divorce and Beyond).

1. This book is a very practical guide and an easy read for all parents who are separated or divorced. It's non-judgemental and gives real life examples with statements by children that are poignant and descriptive.



2. Dr. Stahl presents compelling information for divorcing parents which ultimately helps the true victims of a separating family - the children.



3. Dr. Stahl presents practical, easy to understand advice for divorced parents. He takes complicated terms and makes them easy to understand. He gently helps parents take a look at what they are doing to create problems so they do not just blame the other parent. Most importantly, he tells parents how to gain control of their life for their children's sake.In addition, he presents the child's perspective so parents can re-direct their focus to truly meet their children's needs.



4. As a child custody evaluator and parent educator, I keep a list of books that are helpful to parents in these tough times. I just re-did my list and moved this book to the #1 spot! It is clearly written and dispenses practical, wise advice in a way that is easy to read and digest. A must buy!



5. Dr. Phillip Stahl's Parenting After Divorce: A Guide to Resolving Conflicts and Meeting Your Children's Needs contains great wisdom about managing the difficult task of co-parenting after divorce. Dr. Stahl offers practical advice, sensitively communicated. Drawing on his own extensive experience counseling patients and his mastery of the literature of child development and the impact of divorce on children, Dr. Stahl's book provides an accessible road map to the millions of Moms and Dads who strive to provide the best parenting for their children after divorce.

5 comments about The Workshop Book: A Craftsman's Guide to Making the Most of any Work Space (Craftsman's Guide to).

1. This book is split into comprehensive chapters on layout, machinery, etc. Covers topics such as ergonomics, workflow, special applications, etc. A practical and useful guide, much better than the workbench book by the same author which basically amounts to a coffee table book with pretty pictures.



2. I have bought many woodworking books but this one is a rarity-I read it from cover to cover. It has many useful tips for designing a shop but the most interesting part was his focus on the owners of the shops. It describes the wonderful variety of woodworkers as well as their shops and interests.



3. I found this book disappointing, but perhaps I was looking for the wrong things in it. I was hoping for some guidance and information on setting up a home workshop, but that's not what I found.

   The book is a sort-of survey, sort-of essay on workshops of various kinds, including historical shops dating back hundreds of years. There's a lot of discussion of how various workers have set up their shops, but the descriptions are overviews lacking in much detail. And many of the shops described are atypical in one way or another. For example, the author returns over and over to the couple who turned their entire two-story house into a guitar-making shop, with separate rooms for shaping, finishing, wood storage and the like. Interesting, but not very helpful to me.

   If you're looking for a portrayal of, and a lot of discussion about, workshops in all their variety, then you may very well love this book. But if you're looking for something that will help you decide how to set up your own shop, you won't find much here.




4. I did, and decided I didn't need it. There is good advice here - lots of input on space requirements and lighting, but page after page, I was just left wanting something more. The shops don't look "real" to me - they are obviously tremendously expensive and usually look sterile and impersonal. The men in them don't seem to particularly enjoy their work. They all look like a bunch of New York attorneys working in their hobby shops at their Connecticut hobby farms. I know that's not a fair characterization, and was certainly not the intent, but it was my persistent gut reaction. Too many of them looked like Norm Abram's infamous shop where there was a power tool for every purpose. None of them had the warm, inviting glow of Roy Underhill's shop, which draws you in for a cup of tea and joke by the woodstove.
   
   "The Workbench Book" and "The Toolbox Book" were both joyful and gorgeous and pulled me along, but this one just made me feel like I needed to tear my shop down and start over, although that was not what the author was hoping to achieve. But look at it for yourself, at the library, and see what you think, before you buy it.



5. I've had this book for a few years and I still peek at it occasionally. Scott Landis tells about starting his own woodshop long ago and I can relate pretty well. I actually started without a place, working outside, in space borrowed in basements, off the tailgate of my truck and for a while in a barn,,,well, actually, a tool shed open on one side(I had to move a tractor out every day,put it back every night). This book gives examples of shops similar to those and large fully equipped facillities. The COOLEST part of this book to me is the space saving designs and features in some of the shops. This alone has been a help to me in the development of the 900 sq.ft. LOCKABLE shop I have now. The illustrations include floorplans and equipment layouts from daily use shops. Just seeing other peoples workspaces and what works for them and how thier shops grew and developed, can sometimes bring about great revelation for your own work space. Two of the shops are in closets or laundry rooms!!!! I like nosing around and looking at other shops and found this book entertaining as well as informative. Thanks Scott.

1 comments about The Art and Craft of Stonescaping: Setting and Stacking Stone.

1. Book as described. Good instructions and nice photography. Overall, it delivers what it promised. Recommend.

No comments about Bud's Instruction Manual: Learn More then the Basics about Janitorial, Floor Maintenance, Carpet Cleaning, Office Cleaning and More.

5 comments about Dorm Room Feng Shui: Find Your Gua > Free Your Chi ;-).

1. This is something fresh and new - there's very little out there to recommend the best way to decorate and arrange dorm rooms, and this book fills that void. Written with a breezy, light touch, it's chock full of helpful ideas and tips on how best to maximize that tricky living space of a dorm room. There's plenty of charts and illustrations to help you grasp the concepts, which is great for those visual learners out there. It also emphasizes the role of choice and intention in our lives, and that's an important thing for any college student to consider.
   
   I believe this book can be used as a helpful guide for any living space, and I'm incorporating the ideas into my own shared living space - a soon to be husband! This would be a great gift for your favorite graduate or friend.



2. This refreshing new look at Feng Shui is both easy to understand and fun to read. With plenty of diagrams for simple reference and Easy 1,2,3 Fixes, it is easy to pick up this book and flip to the section in which you need the most help. The book is great for recent graduates from high school or college because it doesn't require a lot a reading on top of schoolwork. The simple strategies are perfect for two (or more!) roommates just beginning to live together. Highly recommended to all!



3. Dorm Room Feng Shui a breezy and extremely readable book about feng shui for college students living in dorm rooms, and I wish I'd had a copy when I was in college, although to be fair, I'm a bit skeptical of the whole feng shui thing, or at least skeptical of the extremes to which I've heard some people enthuse about it. Regardless, a great deal of it seems to be common sense, and since there's a sad lack of that these days, I'm all for anything that genuinely helps people better themselves and their space. While I was reading it, I found myself thinking a few things. One: that I seemed to have been already intuitively incorporating a great deal of balance in my surroundings, according to the basic principles of feng shui. Two: that I wanted to know more and find out how the elements described in the book for small one-room living situations apply to large sprawling ranch-style houses like ours. Then I stopped halfway through and scribbled a list of things I wanted to improve and do during the next 2 weeks. This morning, I picked the book up again before I got out of bed and finished reading it, and then I jumped up, energized, and CLEANED THE WHOLE DARN HOUSE.



4. My niece loved this book! A great book for anyone wanting a little guidance in making the dorm into a homey space. You don't even have to believe in Feng Shui, just think of it as helping transform sterile into spiritual.



5. College life is filled with challenges, from handling a sloppy or partying roommate to being broke; so how can the simple art of re-arranging one's dorm room evoke positive spiritual forces? DORM ROOM FENG SHUI tells students how to maximize good energy through proper placement, taking control of clutter and using feng shui principles to improve 'dorm chi'. Appealing cartoon-like visuals and color pages keep DORM ROOM FENG SHUI bright and entertaining as well as informative.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch

5 comments about The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace.

1. A Rumford fireplace is a design artifact of functional beauty: maximizing radiant heat, while minimizing smoke.
   
   The Rumford achieves the first, with a tall, wide, shallow firebox with widely splayed covings.
   
   The second by laminar flow through the throat. Laminar flow is a non-turbulent, streamlined flow. In the Rumford fireplace the front flow layer is cool air, the rear flow layer is hot. The two key features of Rumford's design which produce laminar flow are 1) the rounded breast (the "breast" is the front of the throat. The "throat" is where the firebox meets the chimney.) and 2) the flat back.
   
   Somehow, Vrest Orton misunderstood Rumford's original design, and propagated this misunderstanding. One can look at the original Rumford text from THE COLLECTED WORKS OF COUNT RUMFORD, Harvard Press, vol 2, for clarification.
   
   Maybe Vrest had a modified Rumford (with a flat breast and angled back). In any case, his book would be improved by correcting this (significant) error.
   
   Additional reference: [...]A comprehensive accumulation of knowledge with respect to Rumford fireplaces.
   
   [...]



2. The fireplace design is very simple. However the author spent much of the book lamenting the fact that history has almost forgotten Benjamin Thomas (Count Rumford)yet fondly remembers Benjamin Franklin. The former being a King Henry III loyalist. I don't think history should forget him or his design, I just don't know if this book is the best place to remember Count Rumford. At least not to the degree of detail set in this book. Otherwise it is a short read and informational.



3. I was looking forward to reading about exactly how to build a Count Rumsford fireplace, long acknowledged to be the most efficient in terms of heat produced and wood used. There were some scattered practical descriptions and a couple of diagrams, but most of the book was an indictment of the 'liberal' politics of Rumsford's contemporaries and today's liberals, that kept the famous Tory - who was a Royalist who went to Britain during the American Revolution - from getting all the credit he deserved for his design. Had he stayed in the Colonies as we became the United States, perhaps he would be well known to Americans today, but he choose otherwise. It was the design I was interested in, and what little information there was, was not sufficient to be able to build the fireplace. I can only hope I meet a mason who is familiar with the historical design and who can duplicate it.



4. I had hoped for something a bit thicker than the credit card I ordered it with. Don't expect a book with much in it. Look elsewhere for detailed plans. This only has a few conceptual sketchs that could be shown on a single page.



5. Thank you Mr. Orton for this much needed book. It has what we need to know about building a good fireplace and how the other designs fall short. This book has helped drive a movement toward the construction of this type of fireplace.
   There are 2 houses owned by my relatives that had Rumford style fireplaces built in the 2nd quarter of the 1800's. One of them had the livingroom fireplace rebuilt in the 1940's and later replaced by a room intruding wood stove, neither change ever worked to anyone's satisfaction. The other house's parlor fireplace proved to be so efficient that when in use with just a small amount of wood the room radiator had to be shut off. Three cheers for this book. It demystifies the principles, genius and construction of a truly efficient fireplace without the loss of the contemplative aspect of an open fire. Benjamin Thompson is man we should all know about.

No comments about Living Retro.

1 comments about 50 Ways to Paint a Wall: Easy Techniques, Decorative Finishes, and New Looks.

1. Not necessarily a bad book, but a faux painting instruction book definitely for a beginner. Simplistic finishes that are far from a professional look.

No comments about New Apartments.