On-the-tape

Her book is great, her workshop is great, and now, Janet's new CD is great!

Each track is full of positive, uplifting and inspiring messages...so beautifully done, from soothing relaxation exercises to rousing and empowering pep talks.

I particularly appreciate the emphasis on connecting with one's own deep inner strength and positive resources. Doing this repeatedly helps
to build a firm foundation for meeting life's challenges with
increasing competence, success, and even enjoyment.

Janet 's voice is gentle and calming, yet full of conviction, and Diane's is like honey.

What a wonderful collaboration between two talented and sensitive women. Highly recommended!

Janet and Diane have created the most beautiful and effective CD for helping people build self appreciation and calm fears about performing, that I have ever heard. After listening to the CD I felt that a deeply therapeutic experience had taken place.I was so comforted to know that by owning this CD I could listen to Janet's and Diane's beautiful voices whenever I wanted to. What a comfort to know that their wise words could be listened to at times that I needed help envisioning a stronger, braver, or more appreciative self. This CD is an invaluable resource.

I have never done exercises that were as effective as Janet's and Diane's at helping me to feel whole, and showing me the right words to use in talking to myself in ways that would allow me to let go of negative memories and beliefs. Step by step, with beautiful, comforting, loving, and believing voices, the authors show you the path to dissolving the negative and disempowering, and building strength and self trust.

This CD is fantastic. Very therapeutic and healing. You will listen to it frequently--not just for speaking and performing, but for building self esteem.

Having attended an In the Spotlight seminar and having read her book, I can personally attest to the fact that Janet Esposito is a savior. Now, she has provided us with an CD to help us along in our journey toward a better life. She has a first hand knowledge of the issues surrounding "stage fright" and how to deal with them. I have written her numerous e-mails thanking her for being the person that she is and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her again for providing yet another wonderful resource. If performance anxiety is a problem in your life, don't waste another moment in anxious misery. Buy her book, purchase the CD and, most definitely, attend one of her seminars.

I've read the book and listened to the audio cassette, and it's hard for me to pick which one I like more. The book has more stories, it's true, but the cassette has Donald's lovely Southern drawl. He has an infectious manner of telling that makes car trips--no matter how long or short--out and out fun. I've never laughed or cried so hard as at Listening for the Crack of Dawn. The last story, "A Different Drummer," is by far my favorite, since it makes me do both. Donald Davis is truly one of America's best storytellers, for kids, teenagers, and adults. Buy this title, in whatever format, and you won't be sorry!

Donald Davis is a wonderful writer and story teller. My children love to hear his stories as well as I. It makes a long trip in the car much more fun.

I don't think anyone can listen to Donald Davis tell his Different Drummer story and not be touched by it. Just it alone is worth the price of the set of cassettes. You also get to hear LSMFT (yes, that's the title of the story), which has a nearly perfect ending. Each is a story so good that you wish you could forget it, so that you'd have the pleasure of listening to it again for the first time.

I am a clinical psychologist and am loathe to recommend self-help books as most of them are just ways for the author to make money by tapping into the reader's anxieties about themselves. Most offer superficial and simplistic solutions that offer little more than false hope but will keep the reader "coming back for more" from the self-help industry. NOT SO THIS LITTLE GEM! It is one of the two most solidly written and thought through books on personal growth I know of (the other is The Road Less Travelled, by Scot Peck). It's the kind of book you will need to read slowly and meditatively, perhaps even only a page at a sitting. It's also the kind of book you can expect to benefit from reading through again after a year or two on your shelf.

I resonated with this book more that any other. It is exactly what the title says, a no nonsense concise description of what makes up a mature healthy adult psyche. I found it easy to dismiss other less precise, more preachy/cheesy self help books. But when I read this book it just resonated as "truth" and those less functional parts of my psyche had to admit that they had been found out. It's similar to the feeling one gets when reading the Feynman Lecture Series about physics -- they are both masterful distillations.

I have read many books on relationships and I have been disappointed many times. This book, however, is not one of those. It helps us put not only our relationships but also our lives in perspective and provides us with extremely useful advice about life and relationships. I think I can honestly say that I am a more mature person after working with this book. If you are interested in this topic, you will also like "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato because it is a very fascinating theoretical book on human development and relationships! It provides us with a map of where we are and where we are going in our development and our evolution as living beings. Both of these books are just excellent!

Victoria Holt truly lived up to her reputation as the queen of romantic suspense. This story combines nicely a romance with political intrigues and murders. What i like about a VH book is that the setting is always done so well i can even feel the real world in the book.
Some complaints about the story, though.(1) Conrad professes to love Philippa, yet never shows any hint of trust in her in the matter of her sister's marriage. (2)Only after seducing her does he let her know he can only keep her as his mistress and never even ask how she feels about it. That looks like cheating to me.(3)The story gets very redundant and repetitive halfway through. Whenever they meet, Conrad is forever whining that he loves Philippa, that he can't live without her; and Philippa is always busy thinking of how she is affected by him and whether she should stay with him or not.
Despite those problems, overall this book is still very enjoyable.

"Lord of the Far Island" is deffinatly the most suscpencful novel by Victoria Holt. She doesn't give away the ending at all. Just when you think you have the mystery solved, she'll prove you wrong. This is a must read book!

Victoria Holt is my Favorite Author. This book is my favorite. I have read all her and philippa Carrs books! Philippa Ewell's siter runs away with a Baron to his land. Phillipa gets 2 letters and then they stop. SHe finds an old new-paper clipping from the year before talking about the Baron and her sister. They had been murdered. She goes off to find the truth about her sisters death and falls in love, almost gets killed and finds the truth.

I am a latecomer to the novels of Ciji Ware, but very impressed with her ability to richly depict characters and places. I have personally visited the Island of the Swans, and thoroughly hiked in the area in which her book is set. Ms. Ware has a historian's love of accuracy, and her descriptions of Struy, Loch an Eilean, the River Spey, Culloden House (where I have sojourned many times), etc. are absolutely perfect. I was transported, once again to that delightful corner of the world.

I adored this book up until the ending. Like other reviewer's comments there was no real closure. This did not bother me because the factual history of the Duke and Duchess is rather disappointing and not at all in harmony with the potential for love this author has imbued in her telling. Knowing the history of Jane Maxwell and Alex Gordon and still spinning a beautiful fantasy of the posibilities in that relationship takes unparralelled imagination and a true romantic heart.

It's a very emotional tale of being torn betwen duty and love and settling for what you can have or reaching for what you really want. The conflict was very realistic and I may be the only person who understood Alex's complex feelings of love and jealousy and insecurity. But he was truly unlikable at the end and this disappointed me.

This book made me laugh and cry and stay up all night to finish it. My only wish is that the ending where either more conclusive or the very opposite of what it was. I had a soft spot for Alex. But Ms. Ware's ending is hamronious with the history as I understand it.

It's a great journey even though the ending sort of halts abruptly and leaves you wishing for more.

Great storytelling; I wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is romantic fiction. Still, it was fun reading. There are some "sexy" parts", so dont read if you mind explicit descriptions of sex. Too bad she didnt make a sequel.

I believe this is one of the top 5 battletech books I've read and I've read alot. A great book with an equally amazing sequel although the name escapes me.

First off, major kudos to the reader of this series. He does a great job of changing his voice to separate the characters and keeping the mood of the series. The sound effects were decent as well. They did a pretty good job with the abridgment, unfortunately they cut out many of the little things that made the originals great instead of just good. Anyone new to the series wont notice a thing and us veterans can add the missing paragraphs and ocasional chapter ourselves. With 2 more voice actors, a little better sound effects and the full text this would have been a great buy... As it is, it's still a good series that you can spend a long time listening to.

What can I say. This is the best battletech book I ever read. This book gives deep insight into the most honored of clan ritutals. To The biggest battle in btech universe the battle of tukkyiad. This books sets up all of the following books :)

This is the first in a series of a six novel series. Having already read them all, I'm going back to start again. Howatch does a remarkable job of illustrating how insidious and how damaging to the human soul living behind a "glittering image" can be...the tendency to offer a mask for the rest of the world to see that simply doesn't match the true inner self. For me, this book got *really* interesting at the midway point! Great read!

Just as Howatch's family sagas were written in a multi-person first-person narrator format, so was the Starbridge series, but this time each narrator gets a whole book instead of only a section of one.
Glittering Images is the first book in the series. I had already read all five of the family sagas before I had the courage to start on Starbridge; I was afraid that a whole series of books set in the Church of England could not help but be stuffy and priggish. But this of course is Susan Howatch, a master storyteller. And these books are considered by many to be an enormous development fromthe sagas.
In fact, I found the depth of character found in all the Starbridge even more impressive than in the sagas. She shows not only an extraordinarily deep understanding of the human condition, she also shows great compassion and warmth for all her characters so that even if they have weaknesses and make mistakes, we can nevertheless forgive and love them.
IN the first trilogy of books, set in the 1930's and 1940's, each of the three narrators is stripped down and turned inside out, so that the reader knows all there is to know about them.
In this first book we first meet Charles Ashworth, who will be a major player in the series. Charles has conservative leanings and a Middle Way churchmanship. As ever, Howatch succeeds in giving us an in-depth portrait of a very likeable and sincere man, and sets him in the middle of a story that simply pulls you through, unravelling secret after secret. A wonderful book, which made me immediately want to start on the next one in the series - Glamorous Powers!

This bookmade me look at the behavior we all have in common.We hide the truth from others but more so we hide the truth from ourselves. Charles Ashworth the main charactor's journey of truth enthralled me I could'nt put the book down.Ms. Howatches charactors are vivid and human.I wait with great anticipation for each new book in this series.

Traces the evolution of the European-influenced home from medieval times to our present age. Rybczynski describes how the home evolved from an uncomfortable, group dwelling-place into a private, comfortable, abode for family. As a professional designer it helped me gain a deeper appreciation for the social innovations that are necessary in order for design solutions to be accepted and incorporated into our daily lives.

Each chapter features a painting or photograph to which Rybczynski makes reference within the chapter's text. This approach is highly informative, but leads to my only two complaints about the book (rationale for only 4 stars);
1) Mediocre quality of the images.
2) Only a single image per chapter. The text would have benefited from additional visual references to illustrate the chapter points.

I read "Home: A Short History of an Idea" when it first came out and I'm re-reading it again with great pleasure. So many of the day-to-day aspects of how we function in our environment are taken for granted . . . as though they just happened spontaneously ! This book would be very worthwhile for anyone interested in a multi-discipline approach to studying our culture, history, furnishings and art. I recommend it highly!

I found Home by accident three years ago. Since then I've become a Rybczyski fan. This man knows how to write and has lots of thought provoking things to say about the relationship between people and their buildings. I recommend all his books. Witold is on my list of the top ten people I'd like to meet at a soiree.

Anybody who still thinks fairy tales are mere bedtime stories for kids has to check out Amanda Craig's new In a Dark Wood, which uses their mythic, roadmap qualities to illuminate a life and in the process create a fascinating, intelligent, page-turner of a novel. Grounded in a fictional fairy tale created by the protagonist's author-illustrator mother, In a Dark Wood takes off, in a smartly multi-layered way, into explorations of family history, failure, loss, survival and breakdown. Amazingly Craig (whose work is finally crossing the ocean from England to North America, thank heavens,) manages this with a miraculous dark wit - a kind of authorial magic flashing through her dark wood.

Although the words "a real page-turner...couldn't put it down" are as over-used in reviews as an ATM in Vegas, no other words more accurately describe this book. From page one, Craig carries the reader through a delightful roller-coaster ride of emotions. Combining our hero's search for the truth (about his deceased mother) with the fairy tales (his Mother wrote) he can not escape, IN A DARK WOOD makes for an intriguing novel, sure to be on every critics "ten best" list come December. Please, more from Amanda Craig (she has a number of novels available in England, but not America)- and soon!

Benedick Hunter is having what at first appears to be a middle-aged crisis. He's an actor who hasn't had any steady work recently. His wife is divorcing him and he bickers constantly with his pompous father. He finds little joy from taking care of his imaginative, but demanding young children. Benedick lives off from the small amount of royalties from his mother's children's books. After rediscovering one of these collection of fairy tales he begins reading the stories for deeper personal meanings. He's compelled to follow a trail of his mother's old friends who are scattered over Britain and America like a trail of breadcrumbs. The mysteries contained in her subversive fables lead him to his mother's childhood home and the truth about his family that has been hidden from him. Gradually he learns that his alienation from society and erratic behaviour has its roots in a mental illness. But he has to descend into the darkest psychological depths in order to learn how to live with this disorder.

In this beautiful and moving novel, Craig manages to write very convincingly about a man's perspective of the world. Benedick's personal aspirations are clouded by despair in a way that prevents him from also appreciating all the loving people he has in his life. Unfortunately, he has also inherited a lot of pain and bitterness from his mother's life, many of the facts of which have been hidden from him. We are also given many funny details about the cultural differences between America and England. What the author also does so extraordinarily well is show a blend of light and dark in this central character's psychology. He does a number of detestable things. Yet we are given insight into them and understand they are acts of desperation brought about through a mental illness he can't control. Craig pays tribute to the important and complex work of Angela Carter who was dubbed the Fairy Godmother of British fiction. She does this by insisting that fairy tales have a much deeper meaning than what appears on the surface. The raucous emotions and terrible violence they depict just may be a greater reflection of reality than we care to admit. The psychological demons which hound many people are indeed more terrifying than the creatures who lurk in the dark woods of fairy tales. By blending the story of Benedick's travels with a number of creative fairy tales, Craig gives us a lot of insight into this while producing an enthralling story.

Having never read anything about Arthurian legend, I was hesitant to pick my first introduction to it. I feel that I chose wisely in Mary Stewart's trilogy. Her writing will draw you into the story, and each book assumes you have little to no knowledge from the previous books (which was great for me, it helped to hear some of it again). I just found myself wishing afterwards there could have been a little more romance! However, I guess these books were more about Merlin, not Arthur or Guinevere. Another confusing aspect is that some of the more familiar names have been changed, and some are repeated. Having no base knowlege of the legend this was slightly confusing for me. Anyway, these books are highly enjoyable and I would definitely recomend them.

The Story: "The Last Enchantment" is Book Three of Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, and focuses on how Merlin meets, trains, and falls in love with Nimue, while helping Arthur solidify his kingdom and deal with the follies of Guinevere and other members of Court. Merlin and Arthur have to decide what to do about Arthur's sister, Morgan, and half-sister, Morgause, who separately plot against Arthur, and as well deciding upon the disposition of Morgause's five sons, one of whom is Mordred, illegitimate son of Arthur.

Technical: The writing of Mary Stewart is highly detailed and takes patience, but nothing is extraneous or irrelevant. Ms. Stewart's writing style reminds me of Sir Walter Scott's writing style in "Ivanhoe".

Overall: A great epic continues, but the reader must be patient and up to the challenge of a long, intricate, and detailed saga. When I first read this trilogy, the fourth book did not yet exist. Because the fourth book, "The Wicked Day", focusing on Mordred, exists, I'm more satisfied with the ending of "The Last Enchantment".

This book embodies all that is wonderful about Arthurian literature and fiction in general: fancy, treachery, romance, and friendship. A great sequel to the Crystal Cave.