is there one you'd like to recommend, or one to warn us about?

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Answers

here's some suggestions i got from the lovely and talented miss jackie collins:

Angela's Ashes - by Frank McCourt. Very funny and very very sad. All about his childhood in Ireland.

Rachel's Holiday, Watermelon, Lucy Sulllivan is Getting Married - all by Marian Keyes. If you liked Bridget Jones' Diary you'll really enjoy these - each book concerns a twenty-something Irish girl, and they are funny as a funny thing.

(sorry, my powers of description aren't up to much this morning)

My bestest recommendation is for these two books ...

Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and Human Croquet - both by Kate Atkinson. My favourite two books of all time. Behind the Scenes always makes me cry, and the two books are beautifully written, funny in parts, and just too cool for words.

Look, just trust me, OK? Read them, I promise you'll enjoy them ... or I'll eat my hat!!

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Severl months ago I read _Tomcat in Love_ by Tim O'Brien. I found it to be fantastic. Very original and with a true voice. Also, damn funny.

Oh, for you ladies, I bought into the hype surrounding _Bridget Jones' Diary_ and read it. I actually loved it. There were moments of real inspiration. Unfortunately at times, through my laughter, I could identify all too well.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants, by Katy Payne. She's an acoustic biologist who originally worked with whales on whalesongs, then she started getting interested in elephants, and went to observe them in a zoo. Around the elephants, she thought she felt an odd vibration in the air on occasion. On the plane back from a zoo, she started remembering being in church and singing in a chorus, and the vibrating rumble of the bassnotes of the organ --it was the same! Elephants communicate through infrasonic vibration, they can communicate through walls, and across miles and miles. The book also gets into teh politics of nature reserves in Africa. It's absolutely fascinating and quite well written

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Oh, you had to go to Book Territory...watch it now, I'm a book worm. Or, rather I was until I started working for the evil empire. Anyway, this is my list of books you must read:

Wacky Mystery: Anything by Carl Hiaasen. Including STRIPTEASE, ok? The book is so much funnier than that crap they called a movie. For one thing, Demi didn't strip worth a damn. She was acting like a feature when she was just one of the girls...sheesh. Ok, I got off track there...as I was saying, anything Carl Hiaasen wrote. There's "Double Whammy", "Lucky You" (a good starting point), "Tourist Season", "Native Tounge", "Skin Tight", "Stormy Weather" and a few more that he collaborated on. This guy's hilarious. He writes about whacked out evil doings in Florida, and he's really on the side of the swamps and aligators, and you can tell in his writing. He's always got the 'bad' guys who are freaks - one of his characters is a steroid user who goes off the deep end and attaches a permanent steriod IV to his arm..oh, and he's the head of security at an amusment park while he's dragging this IV stand around. All his bad guys have strange medical accidents - one guy got a dead crab stuck on his hand, and an infected eyeball that he just glued a tire patch over...wierd stuff. Carl Hiaasen is hilarious!

Time-Travel Romance/Adventure: Read the OUTLANDER series by Diana Gabaldon. It's about a woman who travels through a mini-stonehenge from the end of WW2 to 1735 Scotland, in the middle of the Second Highland Uprising. This may seem at first to be a "chick" kind of series, but it's got it all. Magic, adventure, sword/gun fights, love, humor, historicaly correct data... The original book starts out in Scotland, but then the characters move on to France, Haiti, and then to Colonial America. I love this series, and I reccomend it to everyone. There's "Outlander", "Dragonfly in Amber", "Voyager", and "The Drums of Autumn". The fifth (next to last) book is coming out in I believe early 2000.

Drama Maia, by Richard Adams, is probably my favorite book ever. It's set in a non-existant world that is 'flat'. It reminds me of medievil Europe. The residents don't mention "the world", there is only their little part of it...maybe a total land mass the size of South America. Anyway, it's about a young girl named Maia who is seduced by her stepfather and then sold into slavery by her jealous mother. She's sold as a sex slave (some really steamy scenes!!) to the head of the "CIA", a huge fat man named Sencho. Things happen (no spoilers here!) and she ends up in a sub-country that is fighting for it's independance from the big bad empire. She makes a decision to warn the empire and...more things happen. I can't really describe it anymore or I'll give away the parts that make the book great. "Maia" has a lot of mystical elements, like hypnotism, and some minor voodoo... It's fun for a girl and a boy.

Sci-Fi Anything by Robert Heinlein is great. If you want to read his adult books, go for "The Number of the Beast", "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls", "The Moon is A Harsh Mistress", "Time Enough For Love", "To Sail Beyond the Sunset", and the classic RAH book, "Stranger in A Strange Land". Heinlein is, to my mind, a much better and more entertaining writer than Asimov. One thing, he was big into math, so there are some bits in all his books where the characters go off about mathly concepts, like distances to stars and quantum physics and stuff like that...just skip over them, you won't lose anything from the book.

Whew...if I type this much, imagine how much I must TALK! MellieBee

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

"Message in a Bottle," by Nicholas Sparks. Yeah, okay, I read it because of the movie. Actually I read it on the recommendation of a couple of women I know who read it in anticipation of the movie. All of them cried and loved it; I was underwhelmed. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Anyway, the movie changed almost every detail that appears in the book, and only kept what the scriptwriter must have thought was the basic run of events: girl finds message in bottle written by heartsick boy. Girl meets boy. They fall in love, but... Well, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't read or seen it.

Like the speech of someone from North Carolina, where the heart of the story takes place, Sparks' writing is straightforward and without artifice. In fact, I think my main problem was that it was so plain that I was frequently reminded that it was all words on a page in this book I was holding in the real world, and so I wasn't really able to lose myself in the story or the characters. But if it's not art, at least it's real, and I think that's what my women friends identified with. We see inside the minds and hearts of Theresa and Garrett, and the growing love and the conflict it causes in both of them is clearly drawn. Their inner dialogues, while not particularly creative or surprising, are very much like conversations we've all had with ourselves.

I feel guilty being so critical, because I suspect I'm writing for an audience that'll like it. Bottom line, I think, is that it's not highly intellectual, but it is what it's meant to be: a touching, realistic story of love under rather adverse circumstances.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Good short story collection: _Cowboys are my Weakness_ by Pam Houston...really good stuff. A few stories fall with a clunk, but for the most part they are good. She also has a novel _Waltzing the Cat_ which is on my list to read.

Creepy-with-a-capital-C: _The Alienist_ and _the Angel of Darkness_ by Caleb Carr. Very good, but creepy as all get out. (tip:read them in order).

Drama/nonfiction: _The Perfect Storm_ by Sebastian Junger. True story of the Andrea Gail fishing boat out of Gloucester, Mass., which disappeared in a storm in 1991...really good book and accurate about fishing as a way of life. Really good.

Cod by Mark Kurlansky. Yup, that's right, the history of a fish. Not a real page turner, but has it's own interesting slant to some things. it includes recipes throughout the ages (including one from Iceland which involves burying the fish until the bones are a paste...how the heck do people think of this stuff?)

Miscellaneous: _The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book_. If you've seen the documentary "Crumb" (and if you haven't, get to the video store today), this fills in a lot of the gaps. Plus it's full of his artwork and comics (he did Mr. Natural a few other characters). It's very graphic, disturbing and sad, but at the same time it's an entertaining read.

On writing: _Telling Lies for Fun and Profit_ by Lawrence Block. I liked it and I refer to it all the time -- it's a good pep talk for writers. Some people read it and hate it. Poke through it at the library first.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

Oh, where to start ...

Anything by Gloria Naylor, but my favorite is _Mama Day_. It's a magic realist novel set in an Af-Am community on an island off the coast of Virginia. Think Toni Morrison, only less ... thick.

_Corelli's Mandolin_ by Louis de Bernieres. It's been so long since I last read it that I don't even remember the plot very well, but who cares about plot when you have all that beautiful language and characterization. I do remember that it's set on a Greek island during World War II, and chronicles the romance between one of the occupying Italian officers and a native of the island.

_Daring to be Bad_ by Alice Echols. An objective history of the radical feminist movement of the mid- to late-seventies. It's fascinating to see the groups splinter and re-splinter as ideas are taken too far, or not far enough. This book should forever end the myth that there was one coherent, all-inclusive feminist "movement". Recommended by the amazing Miss Melty (www.melty.com).

_The Crow Road_ by Iain Banks. Unfortunately, this isn't in print in America, so you'd have to special order it or find a bookstore that loves Iain Banks enough to carry all his books. It follows a young Scottish man trying to make sense of his bizarre family and solve the mystery of his vanished uncle. Again, the plot is secondary; Banks has a way with sentences that's positively criminal. He also likes to phoneticize Scottish accents, a la "Fack orf!" His _Espedair Street_ is also a fun read.

Helene

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

_Neither Here Nor There_ by Bill Bryson. Funny account of his european travels.

_The Passion_ or _Written on the Body_ by J.Winterson

_History of the world in 10 1/2 chapters_ by Julian Barnes.

_Sixteen Pleasures_ by Robert Hellenga

-- Anonymous, May 27, 1999

I didn't have time to read everyone else's recommendations or warnings because it's already 6am and I need to get ready for work instead of being here online reading squishy. But as long as I'm here...

*Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction* by Janeane Garofalo and Ben Stiller

I expected Janeane's contribution to this book to end up being the reason I bought it. But as it turns out, Ben Stiller is a really funny guy, and his parts of the book were the best.

I highly recommend this book and I give it 5 stars (*****). And watch out for the *Faster-Mations* when you read the book - they are the best part of the whole book.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

The Outlander series is very good, and I reread the entire series while lying by the pool on my honeymoon.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin was good but was fifty pages too long and had a seriously lame and cop-out ending. Louis de Bernieres' other three books - 'The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman', 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts' and 'Senor Vivo and the Coco Lord' are much better.

On a really self-help note, I found 'Don't sweat the small stuff' very good, although I don't think I can honestly say I've followed any of its advice. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

For a rollicking good read you can't beat Jilly Cooper. Complete trash, but well written and funny.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

Bastad out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison --- A very hard book to read but very worthwhile she also wrote Cavedweller (which may be out in paperback now) not as painful, but still quite good

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell --- one of the funniest books I have read in a very long time. Gerald Durrell when he was ten years old had moved with his family to Corfu Greece it had started out as a journal of the wild life on this small island and his family and all the odd people and stories associated with his family kind of took over. The book will take you a day or two to read at most and you will laugh through the whole thing.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140013997/002-6604284-7946049

and only $7.16 at Amazon

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

MellieBee! Yes, Hiaasen is great!

I have never read Gabaldon's time adventure series... I think saw one once on a paperback rack and dismissed it as being one of those Romance novel bodice-rippers... but the books and authors you commented on match my own tastes so well that I'll have to give her stuff a try.

I've never encountered Richard Adam's Maia although I have read his other books -- Watership Down is great -- Shardik is completely different but fascinating (and may be a bit like Maia) -- Girl in a Swing is fascinating but chilling -- Plague Dogs had some interesting parts but was not outstanding the way his other books were. (According to Amazon.com a lot of his stuff is out of print; I can't understand why because he is a compelling writer.)

May I suggest Neal Stephenson's books. I have just received his newest novel Cryptonomicon (yeah, from amazon.com of course) but I do not know when I will have time to read it (900+ pages!) because I don't think it is the kind of book you can read in twenty page pieces. I have read his Snow Crash -- sort of cyberpunk but well-written. He also wrote Diamond Age -- set in a cyber future parts of which have recreated a lot of Victorian era styles and social patterns, with mutiple plotlines, the coming-of-age of a young girl guided by an intelligent "book" with an amazing story-within-a-story. I think you might like him.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

Two excellent books: The Bean Trees and Pigs In Heaven, both by Barbara Kingsolver (or Kingslover, I can't remember the spelling). Highly recommended.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

Jim:

Just a quick comment - Shardik IS the same world as Maia. In Maia they mention Shardik as a god. I haven't read shardik, but I have the book. You should read Maia... MellieBee

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

Pamie, I have to disagree with your review of *Feel This Book*. Janeane's contribution was not nearly as good as it should have been, but Ben's writing and his *Faster-Mations* had me laughing out loud. I'll admit that I kinda wish I had gotten it from the library instead of buying it. But other people will be borrowing it, so it won't have been a complete waste of money. I'll keep it for the *Faster-Mations*.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 1999

I just read A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson. It's his story about being a novice and hiking the Appalachian Trail. Really funny, like most of his books and a really good read.

-- Anonymous, May 31, 1999

Try The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara or Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure, both by Jeff Shaara.

-- Anonymous, June 21, 1999

kate christensen's, in the drink was very quirky and well written. worth a purchase.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 1999

Thanks to my Lit professor, I read a great book by John Fowles. It's pretty well known, so I doubt this book is news to man of you. It's called The Collector, and I don't think I've read anything like it. There is everything from the Oedipus-complex to art snobbery in this book. Not only that, but you can't decide which character to sympathize with.

I've also been into more life-changing books. The two I've been most impressed with are Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; and Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

I recommend them to anyone who's just looking for a little enlightenment.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 1999

Check out novels by Richard Russo-- especially Straight Man and The Risk Pool. His novels are wonderfully warm and funny, with incredibly vivid characters. Risk Pool actually touched me so deeply that I wept at the end.

For outright hilarity (and a considerable amount of genre-bending), check out Christopher Moore. His novel Bloosucking Fiends- A Love Story holds a place on my all-time favorites list.

One more-- Tom Perrotta. His novel Election was made into one of the most bitingly satirical films this year. The Wishbones is also very funny.

Just a few suggestions...

-- Anonymous, July 22, 1999

Why have none of you told me about Johnny Depp's new work? He's writing a short essay in "The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats."

I can't believe I have to do my own research.

-- Anonymous, July 22, 1999

I just finished The Ex-s (Exes? - Geez, it's on my nightstand right now and I can't even remember) Anyway - written by Pagan Kennedy. Ho Hum - skip it - Interesting premise, a story about a band consisting of people who used to date each other, but boring. I never even began to care about the characters - I couldn't even work up an idea of what they looked like.

So - skip it and borrow The Tales of the City books from a friend if you're looking for a good summer read.

Christine

-- Anonymous, July 22, 1999

A Prayer for Owen Meany-- John Irving My all time fave hysterical wonderful book. You Must Remember This-- Joyce Carol Oates Haunting and erotic; kinda disturbing in some ways, but a great book. The Secret History-- Donna Tartt I usually hate mysteries, but this is an exception. A modern Greek tragedy; the characters are like no others you've read about. Microserfs-- Douglas Coupland Kinda dated now ('94) as far as geek world goes, but a really fun read. Some Girls-- Kristin McCloy Small town girl moves to New York-- with a twist. No quotes around the dialogue, so don't read it if that annoys you.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999

Ok, White Oleander by... can't remember her name-I've already lent it out but it is amazing. And ok, yeah, its on Oprah's Book Club thingy but trust me, its worth it. the premise seems to flaky to survive at first and then it just grabs you with incredible ferocity and takes off. Then I recommend The Archivist by Martha Cooley if you are at all interested in poetry and the power of words or mabey comfort of words. Its sort of a double helix betwn T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivien and the narrator and his wife. Anyway, a good read.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

Jessica! Is that you? You freak. Books, shmooks. Who reads? Kidding. Just read "Everyone was so Young" a biography of Sara and Gerald Murphy, expatriats in the 20's and inspiration for Fitzgerald's "Tender is The Night"

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

Jeff, Omigod! omigod omigod1 I've jest been spending the day surfing and i keep coming back to squishy to see if you are there. COOL. check your email honeybu

-- Anonymous, July 31, 1999

I thought Memoirs of a Geisha was over-rated. I liked In The Drink by Kate Christensen,about a ghost-writer and her misadventures in New York. Run,Catch,Kiss by Amy Sohn was all right and compulsive reading, but it really wasn't all that gre

-- Anonymous, August 11, 1999

Anything by Walter Mosley. His characters are both good and bad, and you don't necessarily feel like they should change, they're just HUMAN. Plus his style of writing keeps me laughing through the whole thing. (The movie "Devil in a Blue Dress" with Denzel Washington is from one of his books)

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut. I've been reading his books voraciously lately, and I can tell you that the best ones are Galapagos, Sirens of Titan, Player Piano, and Slapstick. His writing, although it can be a little too 'why-the-hell-are-we-here'-ish is a lot better than anything I've read since The Giver, which is really cool.

Oh, and if you haven't read The Stand by Stephen King, I'm going to have to personally bring the book over to your house and hit you with it. Sure, it may be 1100 pages, but it's f***ing awesome.

What else?

Guns of the South, for anyone who is even remotely interested in the Civil War.

Oh, and you should really read The Lost World, by Michael Chrichton. I thought it was a lot better than the movie or either the movie or book Jurassic Park.

Q-Squared is great. It's science fiction, but you don't neccessarily have to have read in that genre too much to appreciate it.

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series by Douglas Adams.

Contact by Carl Sagan. What can I say but: It was better than the movie. I suppose it would have to be, w

-- Anonymous, September 04, 1999

I plan to read Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card as soon as I finish re-reading the first four books in the series. The first one, Ender's Game is my all-time favorite. I can't remember anything that has made me analyze human nature like this.

-- Anonymous, September 10, 1999

just two suggestions, 'scuse the spelling but its 3 am and im a bit sleepy, the first is "stones from the river" it was an oprah's book selection, but damn! soo soo good, especially if your a bit of a history buff, but the story is just soooo good. the second, is "the notebook" by nicholas sparks, one comment, i cant put it down, im up at three when i have to work at ten tommorrow, reading this excellent book. sorry for those who want the author's name of the first one, i forgot, i think its ursela something or other, anyway, both are really good books

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999

Ever hear of Godel,Escher,Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid? (subtitle: a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll)

This is a life changing book. I'm serious. Very few books you will ever read will affect you as deeply. So what's it about? Umm...that's difficult to say. In fact, if you go to amazon.com, their reviewer must have skimmed the book or something, because he/she is under the impression that the book is about Godel, Escher, and Bach and what makes them geniuses. It's not.

GEB is about the nature of consciousness. Why are you conscious, whereas a rock is not? Can a machine become consciouness, and how so? The author, who won a Pulitzer for GEB, brings in analogies from Escher's pictures, Bach's music, molecular biology, Zen Buddhism, computer science, mathematics, to explain his idea of the cause of consciousness. He's an Artificial Intelligence researcher, so his primary interest is in whether we could create intelligent machines.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is a main idea of the book. This theorem states that there are true results in mathematics that can never be proved, or if you prefer, there are undecidable statements in math. The proof uses logic to prove a theorem about logic, which is pretty weird if you think about it. How can you use logic to talk about logic? If you read GEB, you will find out. Hofstadter, the author, thinks this sort of idea is the crux of consciousness: thinking about thinking about thinking....

Even if you are not mathematically oriented, you can understand the mathematical ideas sprinkled through the book. I know, because I've tested the book on English majors and such.

Another thing is that GEB is _very_ amusing. Every other chapter is serious, but in between are these dialogues between the Tortoise and Achilles. The second dialogue is actually written by Lewis Carroll while the others just imitate his style. They are very droll, in particular, the one where Achilles and the Tortoise get lost in an Escher print, just kills me.

On the back cover of my copy of GEB, a reviewer says that GEB is an entire humanistic education in one book. What makes intelligent people say things like this about a single book? Well, you'll never know unless you read it. 800 pages. Good luck, it's worth it.

But don't read this last sentence, because it doesn't mean anything.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 1999

Love: A User's Guide by Clare Naylor. You said in your books list that you like these kinds of books, I read otherwise engaged and The Girls Guide To Hunting and Fishing and I cracked up laughing with both of them.. this book get a little twisted but I think you might like it.

-- Anonymous, December 29, 1999

Does the manual to Resident Evil 3 count?:)

-- Anonymous, December 29, 1999

Just got through with the Updike Rabbit series. I have to admit by the final pages of Rabbit at Rest I kinda wanted him to die. He was just such a miserable bastard. Updike's writing hopwever is flawless. Especially in the second installment, Rabbit Redux. I want to read other stuff he has written.

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2000

Just read "Birds of America" by Lorrie Moore. It's a book of short stories. I'm stunned, it was so good. Also, "Perv: A Love Story" for those who like their love stories nihilistic. That's a recommendation, by the way. I loved it.

-- Anonymous, January 30, 2000

This book's been out for a little while, and even had a TV movie made after it, I hear, but I thought I'd mention Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom , since everyone in my life has been talking about it lately. A sister and I have been having lots of discussion about how life is, and works, thanks to this book. Check it out.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2000

Ya baby, here it is: The Awakening by Kate Chopin: It's about a woman living when all women were, in the eyes of society, was wifes and mothers. Our protagonist fights these chains to discover herself. Beautifully written.

Omnibus by Rohl Dahl: I thought he was a children's writter too, but I was wrong. It's a collection of short stories, two of which literally gave me chills (forgive me, I don't remember their names but they were about the invention of a machine that writes stories, and the birth of Hitler).

Memoirs of a Geisha was amazing.

Illusions by Richard Bach (the same man that brought us Jonathan Livingston Seagul): Very enlightening, but not really heavy like most books of it's genre. If you can read this book and not walk away questioning everything around you and wondering if you are - in fact - the messiah, then there's something wrong w/ you.

All the Pretty Horses: Sounds like a girly novel, but it's not; all I have to say, is that I really want a cowboy.

A Portrait of the Aritist as a Young Man by James Joyce: It's another anti-conformity novel, but it's written mostly in stream of conciousness, so it's kind of difficult to follow.

Blah blah, listen to me, like I'm some sort of book critic.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2000

_The Power Of One_ by Bryce Courtenay. Very good, and it's incredibly different from the movie. The sequel, _Tandia_, isn't as good, but is still interesting.

_Girlfriend in a Coma_ and _Microserfs_ by Douglas Coupland.

_Long Walk to Freedom_. This is one of Nelson Mandella's autobiographies, and it is FULL of detail. It's amazing what he remembers, and what he has been through.

_Good Omens_ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I don't usually read science fiction books, but this was hilarious! It actually made me laugh out loud quite often, and I don't normally do that while reading.

_The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish_ by Neil Gaiman, art by Dave McKeon. A kid's book, but with lots of wit. Anyone can enjoy this book. And it could make a good funny gift for a dad.

Anything by Robert Munsch. He's a Canadian children's writer..._The Paperbag Princess_ is my absolute favourite.

And sort of a book: A Canadian band, the Rheostatics, recently released an album, _The Story of Harmelodia_. It's a "kid's/anti-rock" album, featuring a story with music, and the cd comes packaged as a book, and has amazing artwork by Martin Tielli, one of the band members. I think the band members are geniuses, so I love this album/book.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2000

I know, I know, I'm already on here, but I discovered one you should know about. Places I Never Meant to Be compliments of Judy Blume It's a collection of short stories by censored authors, and each author provides a blurb on censorship. Don't check it out, buy it, b/c proceeds go to the National Coallation Against Censorship. Bonus.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2000

I have been re-reading all of my Sharon Kay Penman books. She is so great! She actually does her research before she makes any assumptions about the middle ages. If you have never read her work before, check out _Here Be Dragons_. It sheds light on medieval Wales in the shadow of the incredible power that was Britain. Really interesting, and great characters too....

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000