Away

Steal Away Home is a book that I think everyone would enjoy. The book has adventure combined with mystery and teaches the reader about our country's past history. It is actually two stories combined in one. The present day story is about Dana finding out who the skeleton is in the boarded room. The past history story describes the life of the Weaver family in pre-Civil War times and its part in The Underground Railroad. The story goes back and forth in history as Dana reads the journal of Mrs. Weaver. The journal describes the comings and goings of black people on their run for freedom and pieces of the life of one of those slaves, Miss Lizbet Charles. The book makes the reader more aware of the difficult lives of runaway slaves. The story is informative and interesting. As the pieces of the mystery of the skeleton fall into place, Dana learns about her house's history and her town.

I just finished reading steal away home moments ago. It was a nail-biter to the end, with so much invested in the characters. Clem Sheutz is a street smart kid from a 50's Cincinnati neighborhood of German Immigrants. In the main story line, he is in his 20's fighting in the Cuban revolution - just because he's nothing else to do. After witnessing a brutal hanging of a woman, he loses touch with reality. He tries to grasp onto some sense of self by reconnecting with his past. Meibers effectively uses flashbacks to critical moments of Clem's life, that shed light on his unexpected reactions to those he's reunited with from his past. You see an otherwise hopeless life mature into a character that you want to see come out for the better on the other side. This maturation is frustrated by many of those who he's reunited with. An enjoyable read. Great characters and fine details that immerse the reader in story.

Steal Away Home is a richly literate first novel that grabbed me with the opening line, "the scream sounded...", pulled me deeper into the story through powerful images and tactile metaphors, and left me reeling from the smells and sounds of a great adventure with people I knew from..."somewhere". Mr. Meiber's work made me laugh, cry, scared, exhilarated. In other words, I felt as I read. This is not a man's or a woman's book, it is for everyone. Scheutz is a sort of everyman and his experiences are ours; it is the journey we all travel towards self-acceptance and identifying our place in the universe.

Bravo Richard Meibers!

If you are going to read one book by Ursula Le guin, make it this one. I read this book in school and still retain a fond memory of it though I don't remember the names of the guy and the girl anymore. I think Le Guin's genius lies in the way the story unfolds and the way in which it ends. She has been able to portray a very lifelike description of two teenagers growing up in America. At the end of the story the status of the relationship between the two characters is very tentative. They are not exactly 'boyfriend-girlfriend' but are not 'just friends' either. In other words, their relationship is very far away from any of the conventional tags one could put on a relationship. So in that sense the relationship and the lives of the two chracters, are in fact VERY FAR AWAY FROM ANYWHERE ELSE.

I have never been able to answer people who say, "You read a lot. So, what's your favorite book?" But if I had to answer, I think I would choose "Very Far Away from Anywhere Else." I found this book when I was a sophomore in high school, and I could not believe how well I understood Owen and Natalie, and how similar their lives were to mine. I still can't believe Le Guin fit so much into such a short book -- my paperback edition has only 87 pages.

The story unfolds like life, following the course of Owen and Natalie's friendship, in their senior year of high school. Owen narrates, at the end of the year, trying to figure out exactly what the year, and Natalie's friendship, meant to him.

But the story itself is not that important. Owen and Natalie themselves are the heart of the book, and are two of the most human characters I have ever encountered. Owen has never fit in with people, wants to be a scientist, and has trouble telling anyone what he really wants from life. Half of his trouble may be that he isn't quite sure what he wants. Natalie is a musician, who performs and teaches, but she is really a composer. Unlike Owen, she knows what she wants from life, and is following a careful plan to reach her goals. Of course, neither is really that simple; no real person can be summed up in two sentences, and neither can Owen and Natalie.

"Very Far Away from Anywhere Else" is a book which is easier to read than to explain, and any summary will lose the parts of the book that make it really worthwhile. If I could sum up the book for you, I doubt I would love it enough to reread it at least once a year. Let me close, then, by telling you how much I love this book. I own hundreds of books, and love at least half of them. Of all those books, this is the only one I brought to college this year. This is the one I take on all my trips. This is the one I read whenever I start to feel my life is pointless. This is the one that is dangerously close to falling apart, just because I read it so much.

Buy this. Read it. Trust me.

.... Two young teenagers searching for themselves and trying to find a path to the future revel in their friendship. It's a beautiful work. Each character gives an aspect of themselves to the reader and they draw you in so that the final conclusion is not as bitter as it seems. A quick read but one that never finishes. I've read it countless times, every time i need to search through my soul, i read this book. A must read!!!

this book is down-to-earth and fun to read. I gave it to my two daughters and they enjoyed reading it. Linda Chandler makes personal finance a snap. Her examples are easy to emulate. This book should be required reading for every girl in high school and college. Often, no one teaches them how to deal with money and the principles of managing their spending, savings and investments.

LINDA CHANDLER HAS WRITTEN THE BOOK THAT OFFERS THE BEST FINANCIAL ADVICE FOR WOMEN OF ALL SEASONS! Author/Speaker/Financial consultant Linda Chandler has penned a remarkable book that will be of immense help to all women of all ages. Get this book today . . . it will assist you in grasping the main issues of personal finance facing women in the new millenium. --A retired banker in Miami

Author Linda Chandler has done a great service to women of all generations. She has broken down financial concepts and principles in terms we can all understand. I especially liked her advice on questions to ask you attorney, accountant, banker, insurance agent, securities broker, and financial planner. Three big cheers and a big hug to Linda from this granny. Who said you can't teach old dogs?

I remember very few things about elementary school, but one of the things I do remember is my class taking a weekly trip to the library. Each student was allowed to check out a book and had to return it on the next visit. I read many other books, but the one I would come back to get over and over again was this one. I loved it and after some thinking back, I remembered why. One of the greatest children's books of all time.

This is a fast paced yet simple story about a train that ran away. Both of my sons have loved this book and know it by heart. I definately recommend this book for any small child. They will want to hear it over and over.

This was one of my son's favorite books...and now I'm buying it for my grandchildren. Besides the hope that they will enjoy it as much, and that he will enjoy sharing it with them...there is a certain delight in wondering how many thousands of times he will have to read it...and does he still have it memorized! A great story with excellent use of language.

I read this book because my 12-year-old only-child male godchild's father has a brain tumor and I wondered if this book might address any issues that he is facing. It does; in a beautiful and uplifting way that makes its dying father-character's suicide understandable and a kind of affirmation of life. It also treats with unsentimental compassion the mother's denial that the man she has held at the center of her world could be dying.

This story throws together the father and only-daughter characters in the crucible of the father's terminal illness in such a way that they finally connect and she accepts the humanness of her parents while *blossoming out of* her own perfectionism and fear to risk being human herself. Heartwarming. Moving. Courage-inspiring.

I read it straight through in one sitting. Compellingly written!

I was moved to tears toward the end, not by sadness but because I identify with the courage and vulnerability it takes to be human and to accept the limitations and recognize the oh-so-human, flawed love that we earthlings bring to our life-journeys.

This has got to be the best book I've ever read. It's really deep, and sometimes depressing. I feel for Sienna. It's one of the only books I was ever really in to. Great great great book. I love it.

I picked up this book by chance while wandering around my local library for a good book. Though I enjoy the romance genre more than others, this book touched me so much and had me crying so much from beginning to end. This book is for anyone especially for people who feel that they're parents don't love them cause as you'll read that your parents always love you they just have trouble showing sometimes as the main charcter of this book discovered. Go Pick up this book! Trust me it's amazing!

I finished reading this in one day -- that's how gripping I found it. It's literary in the way that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather are literary -- the diction and syntax are polished, the setting is captured with precise details, but the plot comes through clearly -- and it's hard to put this down once you start to read it. This is my first Dawn Powell novel, but I intend to read all of her works after this amazing introduction.

Dawn Powell (1896 -1965) wrote novels about her youth in small town Ohio at the turn of the century and about New York City, where she spent most of her adult life. In general, Powell wrote the New York City novels, such as "Turn Magic Wheel", and "The Locusts Have no King" later in her career. They tend to be sharp satires. Her earlier Ohio novels, such as "Dance Night" and "Come Back to Sorrento", are marked, I think, by a depiction of small town life which is critical and bittersweet, as well as somewhat satirical, and by a restlessness and sense of frustration, ...

Powell worked for three years on "My Home is Far Away" which was published in 1944. She had difficulty with the book, writing and rewriting the various scenes as she tried to fictionalize her biography and turn it into a novel. The book appears in the midst of her New York novels, and it is a throwback in to her earlier books with its setting in Ohio, its focus on childhood, and its bittersweet tone. Powell intended this novel as the first of a three-part trilogy, but the other two volumes never materialized.

Most of Powell's novels seem to me distinctly autobiographical in tone and "My Home is Far away" is particularly so. It tells the story of a family, focusing on three young sisters, Lena, Marcia, and Florrie, their father Harry, their mother Daisy, and, after Daisy's death, their stepmother Idah. There are basiclly three parts to the story: the period leading to the death of Daisy, and intervening period in which the three girls are raised by their father and assorted other relatives, and a the period after their father remarries and the girls are subjected to a cruel stepmother. When they find they can no longer take the abuse, they leave home and come into their own lives.

The title of the novel, "My Home is Far Away" derives from an Irish song that the girls sing with their mother. The title well captures some of the rootlesness of the family as they move from here to there. It also evokes well the longing for a home life and for a stability which the family, and Dawn Powell, never had.

One of the problems with this book is diffentiating the characters of three young girls. On the whole, this is handled effectively. The Dawn Powell character is the middle sister, Marcia, who is plain but highly precocious. The older girl, Lena, is much more sociable and outgoing.

The family moved a great deal from one small Ohio town to another and to different places within various towns. The most effective scenes in the book for me were the pictures of many dingy, run-down hotels and small town back streets during which the girls spent much of their childhood. The father, Harry, was a travelling salesman who, for most of the book, has difficulty holding a job and spending time with his family. He professes to love his family, but doesn't provide well. He spends his time and money hanging around with his friends and, apparently, with women in various towns.

One key moment in the book occurs rather early in it when the girls' mother dies. This scene is beautifully told. Then we see Harry trying to shunt the girls off to various relatives until he finally attempts to care for them himself. The marriage to Idah brings Harry some stability, but at a terrible cost. Idah is a shrewish, jealous stepmother. The two older girls both leave home to get away from her.

This book has some slow moments, but it is a wonderful coming-of-age novel and gives a good picture of the rural midwest. It is good that Dawn Powell's novels are in print and readily accessible. It is intriguing to think how she might have proceeded in the remaining two projected volumes of her autobiographical trilogy.

Dawn Powell was no whiner- and as this highly autobiographical novel attests, she had plenty of reason to complain! The story of her turn of the century Ohio childhood, is told through the viewpoint of Marcia, the gifted, plain, middle child of three motherless sisters. Despite a neglectful, absent and grandiose father, ( a child himself,) and a host of inadequate relatives, the girls are largely delighted with their world, which by modern standards is one of poverty and neglect. The book is an object lesson in attitudes and expectations that become reality.
This was an era that discouraged pity, and would have been dumbfounded by modern 'confessional' trends. The attitudes toward children, would be barbaric today. The girls remained loyal to their father, even as they grew to understand his weaknesses, and they found delight in characters that would be considered dangerous and forbidden today. Their own grandmother, refusing to attend to fire safety, managed to burn down four houses, including her own, from which weeks before the girls had just been removed. This is a story of a triumph of childhood with nothing of the tone of the adult looking back in a lament. In some ways, it is similar to "Angela's Ashes," another horrible experience of childhood, that uniquely avoids the subject of depression and rage. This even holds true for the archetypical wicked stepmother, an unrelenting, hateful woman who sadistically confiscated or forbade any object or activity of pleasure.
The most amazing part of Marcia, is this 'game' she played, when she was in the midst of an ordeal. She could reach down inside of herself and become the person who was devoid of reactions to the current stress and be completely strong and capable of enduring the trauma through to the end. It is a testimony, spoken by a child, of the human spirit, and the infinite manifestations and sources of power by which mankind survives. I will definitely read this book again, for its fresh outlook and restrained economy.

Its a big day for the jewel kingdom. The day the princesses get crowned. Demetra, Emily, and Sabrina are ready to be crowned... but not Roxanne. So Roxanne the ruby princess runs away with Twitter a palace guard. She meets Applesap, who got attacked by darklings and his wife, Marigold. Then she finds out that there is a fake ruby princess on the throne. Will she make it in time to save the kingdom? I like this book because it has adventure.

The Ruby princess is a lot like me and I love this book ! I have read seven Jewel kingdom books so far and I love the ruby princess best of all of them! In this story The ruby princess runs away before being crowned the ruby princess and some other girl takes her place! The Emerald princess I like too read her books The Emerald princess plays a trick and The Emerald princess finds a Fariy they are both great! Also the ruby princess has more storys The Ruby princess sees a ghost and The ruby princess and the baby dragon . I love these books and I hope to see the movie one day ! Gabrielle ( or the little ruby princess)

My 4 yr old loves this story and movie. recommend the series for good values and stong female characters.

Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

The cover blurbs on my old O'Connor paperbacks always refer to the "humor" of her stories. Well, if this is humor, then the reviewers have pretty sick minds.

What you get nearly every time with Flannery is a story that drags you over broken glass and down red-clay roads and introduces you to some people with severe religious issues and sado-masochistic channels for expressing them.

Much is made of Flannery's Catholicism, mostly by ignorant secular reviewers who wouldn't even notice the discrepancy of a crucifix standing behind a black Baptist choir in a Madonna video. But in her fiction, O'Connor's Christianity is a bizarre, doctrineless ooze that characters absorb or battle with, but not in a way that most writers on religion would recognize. Flannery is too clever for that, combining scary medieval flagellent self-denigration with Bible-belt paranoia.

You can't even start talking about American literature until you've read Flannery.

Move over Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Stein, Wolfe and, yes, even William Faulkner. Flannery O'connor is the greatest American literary mind that the 20th Century ever produced. Upon completing this magisterial collection of her work, superbly edited and finely bound by the American Library, the reader will no doubt fall under the spell of Flannery O'Connor just as I did when I first read "Parker's back" upon a whim after browsing listlessly through a bookstore. It took me about a 1/2 hour with a cup of coffee by my side to leaf through the story, and from that time forward I was forever captivated by everything to do with Flannery. The only other reading experience I've had that can even come close to Flannery's bludgeoning me between the eyes with her descriptive pen-hammer was when I first read "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville. And when your a writer who's style and vision lends itself to the bizarre and the grotesque, while all the while maintaining a thoroughly moral underpinning to your work, there is no better company to be in than this greatest of 19th century American writers. Read this woman! You will not go away empty-minded. After being thoroughly entertained, you will only go away much wiser and completely satisfied. I guarantee it.

I remember reading So The Wind Won't Blow it All Away for the first time. I was riding in a greyhound bus with the scent of blue hair ladies in front of me. Brautigan discussed his childhood love of cheesburgers and Superman and I couldn't stop laughing. The bus driver had to pull over and take me off the bus to ask me to shut up. Brautigan is a master of words. His visions are fresh and celebratory. I could read his work over and over. If this is your first Brautigan book you will not be let down. He hasn't written a book that will let you down. This one is no exception. Probably his finest three books in one!

With the possible exception of The Hawkline Monster, Revenge of the Lawn represents Brautigan's best work. It is a collection of wonderfully loopy stories that although they may not focus on developing a specific narrative thrust, instead hone in on capturing a real sense of time, place and experience. Each piece is certaintly idiosyncratic and individualistic only to the unique voice that was the late Brautigan. As a fellow native of the Pacific Northwest, I find his work as collected here sentimental, haunting and vividly descriptive and alive. It is also a fine example of regionalistic literature as his work, while abhereing to the old addage "only the most personal is the most universal", simply couldn't occur in any other region of the world- and that makes it live in all geographical locations. The other stories collected here, may loose some of Revenge of the Lawn's focus, they never the less reflect a sadly overlooked American writer.

every word Brautigan pens is pure beauty. I really don't know how anyone can truely live without reading at least one of his stories if not every thing you can get your hands on. Brautigan is pure and utter genius. Too bad he had to kill himself........

This book is unique among study abroad guide books because it lists 68 schools around the world that teach in English and offer American-style degrees. There is simply no other book like this one. You don't have to worry about matching the academic calendar system or the language used in the courses if you go to one of these schools.

A second excellent point about this book is that it tells you the level of academic difficulty of each institution by the SAT scores. So, you can find the schools that match you. A third excellent point: it tells you what each school is good at. Some schools focus on science and engineering, while others on humanities or business management. The fourth: this book tells you whether the faculty of a school is available for help and mentoring, or aloof and unavailable.

Other aspects described by this book are tuition rates and financial aid information, housing options, extracurricular activities, and support services, contact information and directions on how to apply, advice on staying healthy and staying safe.

I give this book four stars because I think it can be improved. For example, it would be helpful if the authors were to categorize the colleges by their level of difficulty, their similarity in academic areas, and their cost, etc. Also, I would like to see the section on the academic programs for each school be expanded provide more detail. Another suggestion is to include some feedbacks from the American students who have gone to these schools.

As for the steps and procedures to take for studying abroad, I highly recommend the book, "Study Abroad for Dummies."

I agree with all the other reviews that have been listed. It's a very good, well organised book. There's so little information out there for students who want to study abroad, but this book (thankfully!!) gives you everything that you need.

Having this book, I don't feel like I'm jumping into the unknown anymore by applying to study abroad. I'm so glad that this guide was written!

Great book. Great introduction to how to get in to a university outside the US. Everything is laid out in an easy to read and easy to understand format. So far this is the only book that I've seen which is dedicated to people who want to study outside the US for the full four years, not just as a semester abroad (but it would be helpful for those looking to do a semester abroad as well).

This book answers all the little questions that are impossible to find answers to if you are trying to research foreign schools by yourself.

There is a great variety of schools listed: from not so far off (like in Canada) to schools that are literally on the other end of the earth.

Study Away has really got everything that you need to help you get in to a foreign university.

I highly recommend it to everyone!!!