Book Description
Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the hungry attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. And so begins the unforgettable season that deposits the noncooking, nonbiting, ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch-a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"-none of them of the textbook variety-Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse.
A paean to a vanished way of life and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it fertile, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.
Customer Reviews:
Ivan Doig at His Best.......2007-09-11
The problem with reading Ivan Doig is that I can read his books faster than he can write them. I never want the book to end because I know that my trip to the bookstore will be a let down as I decide what to read next. I've read all the other authors that are described as Doig-like: Haruf, Enger, Proulx, West, and a few others. They're all good authors in their own right, but they are not Ivan Doig. I'll admit that I'm a bit biased given the fact that I was born in Montana and have spent many vacations in my last 48 years breathing the pure air of Big Sky country. That emotional connection notwithstanding, Doig is a masterful author. His prose is meaty and strong; his phrasing is creative and memorable (though not 'cute'), and his characters are well-developed, believable, and for the most part, endearing. Particularly enjoyable characters in the book are narrator, Paul; teacher Morrie; and the lovely housekeeper, Rose.
This book is so well crafted that once finished I went back and read several passages at length that were brick work (unbeknown at the time) that eventually shaped the book into being more than merely a 'good read,' but real literature.
This is a keeper. You really can't go wrong with it. I don't know if Doig would ever allow his books to be movies, but the right director would have a smash hit motion picture with this book. It is the one book of his (I believe) that would really lend itself to a great film.
Happy reading.
Good Read - Well Written.......2007-08-31
This book was exceptionally well written and did a good job of expanding my vocabulary. It was a great story and a joy to read. It is especially good for people who like to peer into how others lived in another time. Enjoy it.
Doig Fascinates Again.......2007-08-23
Ivan Doig has written another captivating account of life on the homesteads of eastern Montana in the early 20th Century. This book is centered on one of the old one-room schoolhouses that were common in rural areas of the west through the first half of the last century. The book is a fascinating account of life in those days, with some surprising twists. A book to savor, but one that is very hard to put down. At least as good as his other early Montana stories.
A quiet beauty..............2007-08-17
I chose this book as my take-along on vacation earlier this month as we camped around western Montana, hoping to relate to it on a physical level because of its setting in the plains along the eastern edge of the Rockies. This quiet but compelling novel is the story of a family in trouble, trying to eke out a living as dryland farmers after the death of the family's mother. A housekeeper is hired through a newspaper ad, and the arrival of Rose and her brother from Minneapolis is the launching point of the story. The narrator is the all-grown-up Paul, eldest son of the family, now the Superintendent of Schools for Montana, who reflects back 50 years to this particular time in his life (1909) when the world changed dramatically for him. A couple of reviewers have complained of boredom, but this novel's strenght lies in its simplicity...family love and interconnectedness, truth and honor, strong belief in education as the path to success, etc. Although I loved all the characters, I was most struck by the Turley family, a father and son who were the bottom-feeders of this rural community....threatening bullies who were oddly sympathetic because they had so little going for them. My first Doig book, and definitely not my last!
Whistling Season.......2007-08-16
Whistling Season was my first Ivan Doig read and I consider it one of the best books I have read---and was the best of 2006. I have purchased it as gifts for many friends and family who in turn have done the same. I am now attempting to read any of Doig's books I can find.
Average customer rating:
- Sweet Story, Fun Read...
- Fun Light Hearted Book
- Wonderfully Fun Book!
- I would skip Cupid ....
- Enchanting second chance at love
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Dear Cupid
Julie Ortolon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0312978715 |
Book Description
Once upon a time, there was a redhead named Kate Bradshaw who naively thought Happily Ever After was just a heartbeat away. One kid, one divorce, and a stack of bills later, Kate isn't necessarily a candidate for Man-Haters Anonymous, but she's not winning any points with the love-struck readers of her Dear Cupid advice column either. If she's going to keep her job, she needs a man to remind her that romance can be fun. Someone attractive. Someone easy-going. Someone with whom she can polish her rusty flirting skills-and absolutely nothing more. Enter Michael Cameron....One might think a drop-dead-handsome movie animator would have no problem marrying himself off. As Kate soon discovers, one would be sorely mistaken. A little too attached to his shabby bachelor pad couch and rumpled Hawaiian shirts, Michael is counting on Kate to turn him into husband material and find him a wife. But little does Kate know that this is just Michael's plan to convince her to give love a second chance and to look for the future Mrs. Cameron in the most obvious place of all: the mirror....AUTHORBIO: Most authors say they grew up reading. But not Julie Ortolon. Born with dyslexia, she didn't even learn to read until her early twenties when she discovered that romance novels were worth the struggle. It was only with the additional discovery of computers with spell-check that she was able to turn her favorite hobby--daydreaming romantic stories--into a career. Having her first novel hit the USA Today bestseller list was a dream come true.Julie lives on the shore of Lake Travis near Austin, TX with her journalist husband, exuberant Australian Shepherd, and spoiled tabby cat.
Customer Reviews:
Sweet Story, Fun Read..........2006-09-29
Julie Ortolon is one of my favorite writers, okay, yes partially because I'm from Texas as well and I love reading about familiar places. Aside from that, it is a light hearted fun weekend read, makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when the good guy wins. I can relate a little bit with Kate towards the end of the book, I have a dream, one that I am not passionately pursuing but hope to. It is great when someone else believes in you and finally convinces you that you are good enough and you can do it with a little hard work.
I love the way Kate and Michael meet in the beginning. I thought it was very creative and believable. I have been known to flirt and then run away scared as well. Thru the story I could feel Kate's pain with the way her exhusband treated their son. I was also glad that he may have been coming around to at least see what he lost with his son and was making some effort.
Overall a good read, fun, lighthearted, strikes all emotions, well written.
Fun Light Hearted Book.......2006-08-18
This book was really fun and fast. It's a quick and easy read. Great beach book. I'm not going to do a plot summary since Amazon and several other reviewers have already did that. Loved the characters in this book and how the female lead, Kate, interacted with her son. I liked how she brought her son and her new man together and got them to like each other. It was a fun concept for a book too. I didn't like some of the man bashing but it fit with the plot of the book with her being hurt and gun shy about getting back into the dating scene. I would recommend this to anyone looking for some light hearted fun.
Wonderfully Fun Book!.......2006-06-01
Funny and witty, yet had a lot of emotion tied up in the story. Not deep emotion, but emotion all the same. The heroine certainly came with a lot of baggage, but the hero took it all in stride no matter how neurotic she got. Gotta love a man like that. All-in-all it was a pleasurable read and look forward to more reading books from Ms. Ortolon. Definitely a book that I would recommend, and an author who I will be keeping my eye on as I'm sure she's going to be a big hit among the readers, if she's not already.
I would skip Cupid ...........2006-01-16
'Dear Cupid' by Julie Ortolon was not my favorite novel that his author has written. The story concept was interesting and male character was very charming but I found myself finding the female character Kate annoying. I think I would pass of this novel and skip to Julie Ortolon `perfect series' which were very good.
Enchanting second chance at love.......2005-06-02
Bitter from a painful divorce, romance guru to the lovelorn, Kate, is threatened with the loss of her column if she cannot be more upbeat. She decides to climb back on that horse by flirting with a guy in the airport, and he is immediately smitten and seeks her out when the return to Texas thanks to her leaving behind a friends business card.
Kate is a devoted mother to her precocious asthmatic son Dylan, who wants nothing more than validation from his distant father. The last thing she needs in her life is another man she cannot count on.
Mike is a wealthy special effects creator and a computer genius. He knows that the only way to get her attention is to hire her to help him find a wife. She immediately sets into makeover mode, and first starts in on his home, not realizing that the wife he has in mind is her.
Average customer rating:
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Dear Cupid
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0739418637 |
Average customer rating:
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Dear Cupid
Julie Ortolon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTQ7D6 |
Book Description
With this book, China Galland brought increased attention to the spiritual traditions of the Black Madonna and other cross-cultural expressions of the feminine divine. The popularity of recent works by authors like Sue Monk Kidd and Kathleen Norris have only increased readers' fascination. Now with a new introduction by the author, Longing for Darkness explores Galland's spellbinding and deeply personal journey from New Mexico through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland—places where such figures as Tara, the female Buddha of the Tibetan tradition, and the Black Madonna are venerated today.
Customer Reviews:
Journey to Sobriety: Journey to God the Mother.......2007-07-15
Journey to Sobriety: Journey to God the Mother
China Galland is a writer, a mother of three, an alcoholic and a pilgrim, and "Longing for Darkness" is an account of her pilgrimage toward wholeness and healing.
This book is firstly an account of China Galland's spiritual journey toward sobriety. Secondly it is an account of her journey to and through Buddhism, of both Tibetan and Zen flavors, to the recovery of her own Catholic spiritual heritage, abandoned in the wake of patriarchal authoritarianism and misogyny, only to discover through the former's female deity, Tara, the strong, resilient, resisting feminine spirit inspiring the Black Madonnas of her own ancestry, blending the two traditions.
China Galland found a spirituality that satisfied her longing for the female face of God. "Longing For Darkness" is an absolutely compelling work, impossible to set down once one has begun the journey with the author. Her complete honesty about her inner being, her wllingness to place herself in a position of total vulnerability, to live in the moment, makes this book unique. Wherever the author journeys - whether to the Shrines of the Black Madonna in Poland, Switzerland, and southern France or to the temples of the Green and White Taras in Himalayan fastnesses or to the Temples of Kali, the Black Mother, in Delhi, she encounters people of deep faith and learns from every tradition, discovering that all of these variant images of God the Mother are but collateral descendents of a common ancestor and synthesizing her own way, a path strewn with flowers but without a name.
Though this is by no means a scholarly work on the historical derivations of the Maternal God (nor does it wish to be), it does provide a large amount of useful and interesting data, elaborating the dynamic interchanges between East and West since ancientmost times. Could Tara, Durga, Kali and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the host of Mother Gods of pre-Christian Europe all trace their ancestry to Astar/Astarte/Ishtar of ancient Persia, and could she herself be but a later manifestation of Isis, the black Mother God of the ancient Egyptians?
It is a possible, if not probable, thesis, but that is not the point of this book. Its work is not the elaboration of her Divine ancestry, but of her availability and her universality. There is a wonderful Sanskrit hymn translated in "Longing for the Darkness," which I quote here:
"Alas I do not know either the mystical word or the mystical diagram, nor do I know the songs of praise to thee, nor how to meditate upon thee nor how to welcome thee, nor how to inform thee of my distress. But this much I know, oh Mother: that to take refuge in thee is to destory all my miseries."
I have no wish to take the author to task for leaving undone something she's not undertaken to do, but I would have loved to have read something in this work dealing with the many images of the Dark Mother existing in various Afro-American traditions, particularly the treatment of Ezili Danto (or Danto, as she is more commonly known in the Voodoo/Voudoun tradition) whose ancestry is directly traceable to the Madonna of Czestochowa; indeed, the image of Danto re-presents exactly the two scratches on the face of the Polish icon left from a vandal's sword attack in 1430 and in Haiti attributed to Ezili's battles with her rival deity, Freda.
10 plus ***.......2006-04-22
china is the way i always considered mary a friend but from way back china guided me back from way back and beyond i'am very grateful .thanks great read it was hard to put down.
Along on someone else's journey.......2005-07-04
If you are looking for scholarly answers to the possible connection between the Black Madonnas of Europe and the Tibetan Tara and Indian Kali, this book will probably frustrate you. Galland's approach is to take us along for the ride as she explores both psychologically and physically the places of the Dark Mother. Not exactly travel writing, and not exactly spiritual memoir, her book combines some of both styles. Sometimes you may wish she spent less time describing the flowers on her walks and the twists and turns of her own anxieties and questioning. But she is a more or less pleasant travel companion, so if you want to cover the same ground, this is not a bad book.
What I enjoyed most was her description of an annual pilgrimage in Poland from all parts of the country to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. Who knew that a million people spend two weeks every year walking, praying, singing and camping as they return to the Madonna who represents their nation? Who remembered that Lech Walesa was inspired by this Madonna and that Solidarity banners were flown by these pilgrims in spite of being illegal. I was inspired to recall that a non-violent spiritual movement is what brought freedom to Poland.
I also took comfort in the fact that after abandoning her devout Catholicism and practicing first in the Zen tradition and then the Tibetan tradition, China Galland found herself also drawn to re-integrate her own spiritual heritage. Her experiences in Poland and Medjorge Yugoslavia are as important as her visits with the Dalai Lama and Tara initiations.
Though the book is a bit dated, most of the issues she raises continue to be relevant. I read this to help me understand The Secret Life of Bees better as a teacher, and it certainly does that. I wonder if Sue Monk Kidd may have read it too.
The True Hero(ine)'s Jouney Told in Her own Words.......2004-11-08
If you are aware that you are on a personal journey, then it will touch you that China Galland shared hers with us. This book allows the reader to accompany her on this journey that spans more than a decade through many continents and countries on a quest.
China Galland tells us the story of her recovery and reveals herself in a very human, intimate way.
I have never read anything like it. It inspired me as I struggle through some of the most difficult parts of my journey. Sometimes we find that things are the hardest right before we have a breakthrough, when we are on the verge of something. . . Like the expression, "it is always darkest before dawn".
Next, I will re-read Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist.
This is not for the faint-of-heart, cultureless, or close-minded.
Enjoy!!!
Mothering Understanding.......2004-01-16
Longing For Darkness is a beautiful, thoughtful pilgrimage to and communion with the dark, feminine facets of that which is divine. Within the pages of her book, China Galland bravely explores the depths of forgiveness, faith, devotion, loss, love and longing; a journey spanning the globe and the soul.
Book Description
Isak Dinesen and the land and people she loved are nowhere so real and compelling as in Longing for Darkness, written by Dinesen's majordomo, Kamante, and now boasting a smart new cover. Readers familiar with Out of Africa may recognize many of the enchanting stories. These celebrated tales and others are retold here from Kamante's perspective and are enhanced with his own drawings and letters, Dinesen's words and snapshots, and photographs by Peter Beard. Writes Beard, "Over a period of 12 years, as if divesting himself of his possessions, Kamante put down the extra dimensions of truth which are at the heart of Out of Africa."
Customer Reviews:
Nice pictures but ultimately boring.......2001-07-07
I love the subject and the presentation of this book, but the text, which is written in Kamante's naive and simple English, lacks substance. There is no point to his quaint observations and this kind of narrative can only appeal to the real Dinesen and Out of Africa fanatics who have to collect her every account. It's the kind of book you read once, think it looks great on the coffee table, perhaps try to give it to your young niece, was unsuccessful, and ultimately lob off at a garage sale. I returned it promptly.
The book as dream and fondest memory.......1999-08-08
I had a hardback copy of a previous edition which somehow slipped through my grasp and for which I have been searching vainly for twenty years. The combination of cultural perspectives effortlessly and simulataneously presented in a correspondent range of visual and graphical styles, telling stories of quiet appreciation and respect enchanted me like no other book, and I am grateful at least for finding a paperback edition and a thread to keep my hopes alive.
For all Karen Blixen lovers.......1998-12-29
Peter Beard has lived near Karen Blixen's farm and collected her story from many of her friends and staff in Africa. In this beautiful book he assembles excellent original photographs of Karen Blixen and enhances them with photographs of his own from Africa. The commentary is by Kamante Gatura, Karen Blixen's cook. A fascinating book, especially because Kamante's version differs from that of some of Karen Blixen's biographers. The illustrations compliment a reading of Linda Donelson's "Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa: Karen Blixen's untold story."
My most treasured possession - exquisite, magical!.......1998-03-18
Peter Beard has shown us another dimension of Isak Dinesen's (Karen Blixen) life as told in "Out of Africa". This time however,those days are described by Kamante Gatura, who, as a young boy was employed by Ms Dinesen. Kamante's memories are translated & written down...the result is an enchanting, magical book; it is the only book I would risk everything for to retrieve from a burning building...it is my most treasured possession.
Average customer rating:
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Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna; A Ten-Year Journey : An article from: Buddhist - Christian Studies
Corinne Dempsey
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B000B5FWMA
Release Date: 2005-08-12 |
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