Average customer rating:
- Buy this book!
- Hysterical Motivational!
- Tthe nonrunners marathon guide for women
- i can't stop laughing... and then i run!
- Very good book, my wife loved it!
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The Nonrunner's Marathon Guide for Women: Get Off Your Butt and On with Your Training
Dawn Dais
Manufacturer: Seal Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Running & Jogging
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General
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Running & Jogging
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ASIN: 1580052053 |
Book Description
Dawn Dais hated running. And it didn't like her much, either. Her fitness routine consisted of avoiding the stairs in her own house, because who really has the energy to climb stairs? It was with this exercise philosophy firmly in place that she set off to complete a marathon.
The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women is a fun training manual for women who don't believe that running is their biological destiny but who dream of crossing the finish line nonetheless. It opens with a realistic training schedule and is chock-full of how-to's, quizzes, and funny observations, which Dais felt were lacking in the guides she had consulted.
The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women also integrates entries from Dias' journal, sharing everything would-be marathoners need to know about the gear, the blisters, the early morning workouts, the late-night carb binges, and — most important of all — the amazing rewards.
Anyone can do a marathon. This book just makes the experience a little more bearable and a lot more fun.
Customer Reviews:
Buy this book!.......2007-09-16
If you've ever thought about running, but didn't think you could do it--this is the book for you! Dawn's sense of humor punctuated with the truth motivates you to get off your butt.
Hysterical Motivational!.......2007-08-19
Motivational and hysterical. Dawn Dais does an excellent job of cronicaling a first time runner's adventure with the marathon. If you need extra motivation and a good chuckle, this is a great resource to help pry you out of your recliner and keep you working towards race day.
Tthe nonrunners marathon guide for women.......2007-08-18
Love the book. i run for enjoyment and exercise. now iam going to try to trian for a marathon. right now iam up to 5 6 miles and i keep trying to do more.
i can't stop laughing... and then i run!.......2007-08-01
I'm the epitome of a "Non-runner." That's why this book grabbed my eye.
But seriously, I couldn't stop laughing when I read this book. Dais' sarcastic, dry sense of humor has motivated me to run the half-marathon. I think I've gotten a jump-start on my ab muscles from all the laughter!
This book is a great reference guide for all of your running questions - and with a little chuckle! You gotta love it - especially since you've decided to do something as crazy as running a marathon!
Buy it!
Very good book, my wife loved it!.......2007-07-22
I bought this book as a gift for my wife who's starting now to train for her 1st marathon and she literally read it in one weekend! It is ironic, but also full of interesting comments for beginners.
Book Description
Finally, a book for single women who, unsatisfied with living a worldly lifestyle, want to give their lives a new and godly direction. Author Dawn Eden, a Jewish-born rock journalist turned salty Christian blog queen, gives these readers the positive and uplifting message that they've been wanting to hear-that spiritual healing and a renewed outlook await them. Using her own experiences in the New York City singles jungle, she shows women how they too can go from insecurity to purity, and from forlorn to reborn. She tells women who have been around the block how to find their way home.
Among inspirational books for single women,
The Thrill of the Chaste is a pair of hip Ray-Bans in a field of rose-colored glasses. This isn't a book for dainty damsels in lacy white dresses patiently awaiting their handsome prince. This is for real women who need strong, motivational, and deeply moral messages to counter the ones they receive from a superficial, sex-obsessed world.
Customer Reviews:
I needed this book when I was a teen-ager..I'm 79 now........2007-08-23
I cannot believe how dumb I was as a teen-ager. I'm 79 now and after buying and reading one copy, I bought 5 (five) more to give to relatives and friends and clergy who have daughters.
(There was one sentence in the book that I felt was disturbingly graphic, but probably only to males like myself.)
The simple yet haunting question Ms. Eden raises is, "Do you (men) treat females as 'objects' or as real human beings?"
looking for something completely different?.......2007-07-14
This book gives the proper view and definition of chastity. It is written from the perspective of a 30-something woman who was looking for something more satisfying than the Sex in the City lifestyle and found it. It is an encouraging sign, a lampost in the dark world of the "anythng goes" modern hedonistic propaganda. I think this is part of the backlash to the so-called Sexual Revolution of the 1960's we are beginning to see take root. I hope 20-somethings will read it and see the lighted path Ms. Eden shows them.
Coming Clean .......2007-06-08
I read a review of 'The Thrill of the Chaste' in Gilbert magazine some months ago. I didn't immediately buy a copy, but I kept wondering what Dawn Eden had written. When I saw her on the list of speakers at the upcoming Chesterton conference in St. Paul (June 2007), I decided I had to order one and read the book to see what makes this woman tick.
I'm sure I am not in the target demographic - young women - for this book. However, I have things in my past that I also regret. There are two things in life I have found to be painful, renewing, and most definitely worth the price: confession and forgiveness. I mean that in the sense both of confessing one's sins and forgiving others. There is a real sense of restoration, of honest humility, of being cleansed. Reading Thrill of the Chaste was much like that sort of cleansing. I kept thinking that her path, while different from mine, involved the same history of painful mistakes, redemption, and restoration.
As others have said, Dawn Eden manages to be almost excruciatingly honest without wallowing in any sort of sick attention seeking. I've said I find confession cleansing, but I am uncomfortable with publicly proclaimed confession in many cases, especially when it seems intended to draw a crowd. Ms. Eden is of course a very fine writer. The reason her book is excruciating at times is because it is so easy to see that her mistakes have been so much like ours. Sexual temptation of one kind or another seems to be almost universal. Isn't it a bracing blast of fresh air to find an author who does not worship at the altar of political correctness? Doesn't it make us stronger to refuse to buy any longer into the mass media con job that promiscuity is the meaning of life? Dawn's description of hating the obligitory shared breakfast after a one-night stand starkly contrasts the lie with a dose of reality.
I found the book terribly interesting, an excellent read.
Good material to share..........2007-06-01
I picked this book up at the suggestion of a leader in my church and found it to be an interesting read. Recently divorced and tired of dating that goes nowhere, I saw a lot of parallels between my own choices and the writer's. Living chastely is sometimes a tough and lonely road, but the rewards will be great and the writer does a good job in pointing this out. This may very well be a book I give my daughter to read in a few years, to help her understand the different sides of the coin when she is faced with making a chaste decision. I think this is a good book for anyone considering a chaste lifestyle and have already recommended it to a couple of my girlfriends.
A must-read for young women.......2007-03-25
In The Thrill of the Chaste, Dawn Eden provides a much-needed argument against today's "Sex and the City"-centric culture. Drawing upon her own experiences, both good and bad, Eden not only illustrates the hidden dangers of casual sex, she also provides an inspirational take on living a chaste lifestyle and how doing so will benefit oneself and one's relationships. As a 20-something female New Yorker, I found Eden's perspective relevant, refreshing, and extremely valuable.
Eden engages the reader right away with her hip yet eloquent writing. A former player in the casual sex arena that today's society so vehemently promotes, Eden is not shy about revealing her past, nor does she scold those who engage in the behavior that she has since turned from. Rather, she writes in a simple, honest manner that will immediately hit home with female readers who, having tried the "Sex and the City" approach to love and sex, are unsatisfied with the state of their own relationships and are looking for something more.
Eden's witty, often quite funny writing is grounded in her own examples, and her references to pop culture (including, of course, various "Sex and the City" episodes) make her work light and easy to relate to. She shares details about her own sexual past and the relationships that she eventually realized were so damaging, yet she does so tastefully, revealing the truth about her behavior rather than sensationalizing it. She shows first-hand how casual sex is often used in an effort to obtain a committed relationship but almost always winds up doing quite the opposite, preventing meaningful, loving relationships from being established. She clearly demonstrates the harmful effects of such cavalier attitudes toward sex, especially on women, for whom she explains that sex is by nature an intimate act meant to establish an emotional bond.
But Eden does not just limit her discussion of chastity to the pitfalls of premarital sex and the benefits of waiting. She explains how living chastely translates to every aspect of one's life, including one's dress and social activities, and how a chaste lifestyle is beneficial to both singles and married couples, successfully debunking the stereotype that chastity is only practiced by religious fanatics and those with an aversion to sexual activity.
Although Eden is never preachy or accusatory, her Christian (and predominantly Catholic) views and frequent references to Scripture may be hard to swallow for those with no religious beliefs or no desire to question the cult of casual sex. And, while men can certainly benefit from Eden's wisdom, the book's stylishly girly cover and Eden's focus on a female audience may be a turnoff to guys. However, Eden's insights on the dating world, which include an analysis of the online dating scene and valuable tips on how to branch out and meet potential mates, will be appreciated even by those who have not yet been convinced of the chaste way of life - both male and female.
Overall, Eden's book is an enlightening, inspirational read that will hopefully help to make a more conservative, respectful approach to sex and relationships popular once again. I highly recommend this book to women in their 20s and 30s who are looking for more complete and fulfilling relationships. Read The Thrill of the Chaste and share it with your friends, your sisters, and - one day - your daughters. You'll be thrilled you did.
Eden fans may also enjoy Morse's essay, Love Is Justice: An Exploration into Mankind's Fundamental Nature
Book Description
From the bestselling author of
The Elegant Gathering of White Snows comes a poignant, outrageous, refreshingly liberating story about one woman whose life takes an unexpected turn....
Meg Fratano has just witnessed the unthinkable: her husband of twenty—seven years making love to another woman. In her bed. And all Meg wanted to do was watch. Quietly, secretly, watch. Then she realized her life would never be the same.
Meg isn’t sure what she wants, but she knows it’s not what she had. After almost three decades of marriage and two children, she has finally awakened to how unhappy she is.
Now, with the help of friends old and new, and even her teenage daughter—a former brat who has blossomed into a startlingly wise young woman—Meg just might break through the chains of everyone’s expectations for her and find the strength to take the first step on her own path. To strip away a lifetime of inhibitions. To dance naked at the edge of dawn...
Download Description
From the bestselling author of The Elegant Gathering of White Snows comes a poignant, outrageous, refreshingly liberating story about one woman whose life takes an unexpected turn…
Meg Fratano has just witnessed the unthinkable: her husband of twenty-seven years making love to another woman. In her bed. And all Meg wanted to do was watch. Quietly, secretly, watch. Then she realized her life would never be the same.
Meg isn’t sure what she wants, but she knows it’s not what she had. After almost three decades of marriage and two children, she has finally awakened to how unhappy she is.
Now, with the help of friends old and new, and even her teenage daughter—a former brat who has blossomed into a startlingly wise young woman—Meg just might break through the chains of everyone’s expectations for her and find the strength to take the first step on her own path. To strip away a lifetime of inhibitions. To dance naked at the edge of dawn…
Customer Reviews:
Truly a Delight.......2007-09-05
My first introduction to Kris Radish's writing was Sunday List of Dreams, which inspired me to check out her earlier writings. What more can I say than "Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn" was truly a delight! And inspired me to read her other books!!
Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn.......2007-08-13
This book was a joy to read......hope Kris Radish will always find the time to write.....and entertain us.
And Everyone Lived Happily Ever After...........2007-07-16
What I first accepted as gradual spiritual awakening became, after a few chapters, somewhat cloying. By the end, it had moved firmly into a fairy tale, while still trying to be literature. My, my, what a perfect self-actualizing world is out there--just beyond our fingertips.
Chic Book.......2007-06-20
Had to read this horror for my book club. An annoying convoluted story. Unrealistic in every aspect. If you love the "I'm a victim" mentality, BUY this book. If you are emotionally well balanced AVOID it like the plague!
Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn.......2007-01-16
Excellent book, as are all Kris Radish's! This is a book every women should read. Ms Radish has an incredible knack to put into words our innermost thoughts & emotions. Some of it will make you giggle, laugh out loud, gasp in awe & shed tears you've forgotten how to shed! Please gals get out there and buy this book, you won't regreat a second of it!
Book Description
A practical, up-to-date, multidisciplinary source of information on the care of women in a primary care setting. More than sixty contributors provide clinically relevant information on diseases and disorders unique to women. The book addresses general topics affecting women’s health such as prevention, health care access, communication styles, and cultural and racial issues. Following the popular Lange CURRENT format, this comprehensive text features superbly organized rapidly accessible information.
Book Description
A young woman with a mysterious past and a deep need to belong. An assassin with unusual methods and great professional pride. One woman’s secrets unleash an entire town’s pursuit, and the truth proves as elusive as the killer in their midst.
Customer Reviews:
A Great Beginning To A Great Series.......2007-09-18
Brandilyn Collins has proven once again that she is a writer of immense talent in this inventive and exhilarating new series. Violet Dawn introduces readers to the mystery and intrigue that surrounds the citizens of quiet and peaceful Kanner Lake, Idaho. Paige Williams has recently moved to Kanner Lake to escape a troubled past. When a body is mysteriously left for her to find she is faced with a dilemma she wants know part of. Going to the police is the obvious right choice, but doing so will no doubt resurrect her dark past. Kanner Lake will never be the same as the town is drawn into a frightening search for truth about a strange new resident and an unidentified killer.
Brandilyn Collin's Kanner Lake Series is hands down her best work. The fictional town of Kanner Lake is a delightful creation, full of cleverly crafted characters that are quirky, loveable, and memorable. From the twisting and turning plots to the shocking revelations, Collins proves she is a master of the suspense genre. Each story in the series is vastly different and yet all are equally entertaining and riveting. Embedded in the suspenseful storylines we find nuggets of hope and faith that are both insightful and encouraging. This series is highly recommended for fans of suspense thrillers and mystery. (Originally reviewed as a series for Christian Library Journal)
Great, but a little slow.......2007-07-20
I really am giving this book four and a half stars. I love the elements of faith Ms. Collins sprinkled into the story, and the plot was fairly compelling, but it had a few parts that just seemed to stand still. I felt there could have been more action, but it was definitely worth reading. I'd recommend it!
Collins includes some nice crime details for her suspense readers.......2007-06-06
Brandilyn Collins kicks off her Kanner Lake series with VIOLET DAWN, the story of a woman with a secret past who stumbles into a murder.
Paige Williams, the story's protagonist, is 25 years old and a newcomer to Kanner Lake (a fictional small town in the Idaho Panhandle). Orphaned and alone, Paige longs for roots and a family. Her past is full of darkness, and she has made a dangerous enemy. Kanner Lake seems like a good place to hide and to start over. But by the end of the first chapter, we find that she's already in hot water --- literally. As she takes a late night dip in her hot tub, she bumps into a corpse. And Paige knows she's in trouble. (For those readers who think I'm giving away the plot here, this information is on the back jacket). Fearful that she will be accused, Paige makes a series of bad decisions. As the investigation escalates, she's the main suspect.
As most authors do in their first installments of a series, Collins spends some alternating chapters introducing us to other residents of her fictional small town. Presumably, they will play bigger roles in upcoming books. Chief police officer Vince Edwards and his wife Nancy are mourning the death of their son, Tim, and their marriage is rapidly deteriorating because of it. (Vince's grief over his son might have been more powerful if it was more subtle instead of sprinkled so heavily throughout the story.) Frank West is a young officer trying to look competent and professional. Although Paige is the main suspect in the murder case, he can't help but feel a flicker of attraction for her. Leslie Brymes is a small-town newspaper reporter looking for her first big break. She sees the murder --- and the ensuing mayhem it causes in the national press --- as her ticket to bigger and better things.
Bailey Truitt runs the colorful Java Joint, a coffee shop hangout for a rag-tag group of locals. Since her husband John's head injury and disability, money has been tight, so she blogs about the town, hoping to bring in more business. Bailey's shop is peopled with interesting regulars, from S-Man (a sci-fi writer who lives in his own fictional world called Sauria) to the kind pastor Hank Detcher. At the Simple Pleasures boutique nearby, the goodhearted Sarah Wray wonders and worries about her new employee, Paige.
In other chapters, the reader meets a young, abused girl with serious problems who comes to adulthood as the book unfolds. Most readers will figure out which Kanner Lake character this young girl will become before too many pages are turned.
Collins includes some nice crime details for her suspense readers. In one scene, as the murder victim's housekeeper is interviewed by Vince, we read, "he watched her body language, her eye movements, for any sign of deception....lying eyes tended to pull toward the dominant side. Francesca was clearly right-handed, but a number of times she glanced left when thinking."
Some descriptions of scenes become overly long (especially when Paige disposes of the body) and a few are odd ("An oily ball of wax rolled through her stomach."). However, these are minor points for most suspense readers. Those who enjoyed Collins's other suspense novels will be eager to see what she is up to in this new series.
--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby
Finely honed suspense writing.......2007-05-29
Paige Williams finds herself in a terrifying situation and faces a horrible decision. She knows that any choice she makes will force worse circumstances upon her, but she has no idea of the danger in which she will entangle herself as her clumsy attempts to influence her future place her on a collision course with death.
The newest thriller series by Brandilyn Collins starts with a shock, and Collins deftly weaves a tight plot that takes place within a twenty-four hour timeframe. While her earlier suspense novels evidence good writing and story lines, Violet Dawn showcases the author's finely honed skills in suspense writing, especially in the area of characterization. At the moment readers wonder about characters' skills or motives, Collins supplies the answers, showing great planning and forethought on her part. With the Kanner Lake Series, Collins launches into the realm of great inspirational suspense writing. I look forward to reading Coral Moon, the second in the Kanner Lake Series, which is already garnering rave reviews.
couldn't put it down.......2007-04-06
Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down! I read it in one sitting. and I can't wait for book two, it's almost here!
Book Description
Young feminists today are becoming activists on behalf of many causes beyond the classic—and indispensable--feminist ones of reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work. In
The Fire This Time, Dawn Martin, one of four founders of The Third Wave Foundation--a multiracial, multi-issue, and multicultural activist organization--and Vivien Labaton, its first executive director, offer an exciting cross section of feminist voices that express new directions in activism, identity, and thought. Ayana Bird dissects the role of black women in hip-hop; Joshua Breitbart and Ana Noguiera demonstrate how Indimedia can break the hold of the corporate media over the news; and Jennifer Bleyer reviews the exhilarating power unleashed by the GirlZine movement. Anna Kirkland’s analysis of transsexual and transgendered people and the law is deeply thoughtful, and Shireen Lee's piece on women, technology, and feminism envisions empowering prospects for women..
Ranging from media and culture to politics and globalization,
The Fire This Time is a call to new frontiers of activism, and helps reinvent feminism for a new generation.
Customer Reviews:
I guess I'm a Feminist . . . I didn't know, but - .......2006-05-28
I guess I'm a Feminist . . . I didn't know, but - after reading and the re-reading the essays and prose written and in 'The Fire This Time', I found myself reflecting on what it is to be a feminist, and, to review and think about a new definition of what feminism is as oppossed to perhaps the coined phrase 'women's empowerment'. Nevertheless, I am glad this book was written. As a somewhat traditional man - most but not all sterotypes apply, I found after reading various portions of this book a great need to look at myself, my attitudes, and perhaps my vision a bit more carefully. As a writer myself, I think it is the intent of most writers to make an impact on society's participants: well this book has on me. So, girls and boys of all callings, reading this book might just do you a little good. Well done.
Rockin' good book about young feminisms/Third Wave.......2004-10-31
The Fire This Time is the book that we've been waiting for to counter the misrepresentation of young feminists as apolitical and hapless. Labaton and Lundy have put together a thoughtful anthology that covers all the usual and important topics; however, this anthology reads more authentic than many others.
This book is written for a general audience, but will be incredibly useful in the university classroom. I can't say enough positive things about this anthology. This is definitely a stronger book than Catching a Wave. CAW is also a great book, tho.
Average customer rating:
- Dawn Powell at her best
- The Highest Art is Life
- Simply gorgeous.
- An unforgettable read
- Excellent Book
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Come Back to Sorrento
Dawn Powell
Manufacturer: Zoland Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
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Literary
| General
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Powell, Dawn
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| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
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20th Century
| United States
| World Literature
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The Wicked Pavilion
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A Time to Be Born
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ASIN: 1883642264
Release Date: 1998-06-01 |
Book Description
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED as The Tenth Moon, Come Back to Sorrento is the second of Powell’s "Ohio novels" to be re-issued in paperback. Here Powell turns her attention to those certain rare souls who have the secret of finding their lives glamorous and themselves magnificent under the most humble conditions. Connie Benjamin, the village shoemaker’s wife, always wanted an operatic career. Blaine Decker, the new high school music teacher, once spent time abroad studying piano. The two are drawn together into a powerful friendship of dependence, each sustaining the other and translating the surface monotony of their lives into drama richer than reality.
Customer Reviews:
Dawn Powell at her best.......2003-01-14
Dawn Powell's "Come Back to Sorrento", was published in 1932 under the title "The Tenth Moon" to little notice from critics or from the public. But this poignant, mostly understated novel set in a drab midwestern town called Dell River is a gem.
The two main characters in the book are Connie Benjamin and Blaine Decker. When we meet Connie as a housewife in her mid-thirties, she is leading a life she finds sterile and barren with her husband Gus, a cobbler, and her two adolescent daughters. As a young woman, Connie had visions of a career as an opera singer, even though this ambition seemed to be based on little more than a commendation of her voice by a famous teacher. Connie also has a past in which she ran off with a young man named Tony who did acrobatics with a circus. Tony aboandoned her, and Connie lives with dreams of a singing career that perhaps could have been and with faded memories of Tony.
Blaine Decker comes to Dell River as the high school music teacher. He rents a small apartment above Gus Decker's shoe repair shop. Decker is a pianist by training (with small hands) who likewise has never had the artistic success of which he dreams. He spent his early years in Europe during which time he was a friend of a writer, Starr Donnell, who had written, as far as Decker knows, one novel. Powell hints throughout the novel at Decker's repressed homosexuality.
The novel explores the relationship that develops between Connie and Blaine. With their shared love of music and their broken, and probably illusory dreams, they feel stifled by the small town of Dell River. They share confidences with each other and at the same time quarrel severely with each other over their respective failures to pursue their dreams. The relationship is at bottom frustrating and unconsummated. It never becomes sexual.
There are wonderful pictures in this book of music and its capacity to bring meaning to life. The seriousness with which Powell discusses the pursuit of classical music in this work contrasts markedly with her picture of frivolous people and activities in her subsequent satirical New York novels. Powell also shows how music can be a means by which people evade their own selves and their own reality. There are also good depictions in the book of life in a small town, particularly those people who teach in High Schools, and of many secondary characters.
As do Powell's latter works, this book contrasts life in a small town with life in the cosmopolitian city, here represented by Paris more than by New York. But there is a certain inward focus to this book which is not shared by her latter satirical pictures of New York. The characters here are limited by Dell River and its environs, but their problems and discontents lie within themselves, in their lack of self-knowledge, and in their failed dreams. The book lacks the sharp cynicism of the latter novels but features instead reflectiveness and sadness.
Powell's writing style in this novel is rather flatter than in her subsequent works but it fits the atmosphere of Dell River that she conveys. There are several moments in the novel or lyricism and intensity.
This probably is not a novel that will ever enjoy wide readership. But it is rare and a treasure.
The Highest Art is Life.......2002-05-23
What a haiku evokes beyond the language, a few words summon a large panorama, Dawn Powell did in this novella. With artful simplicity, the author relates a somewhat comic and somewhat cosmic fable of two lost souls that blend unrealized dreams into reality. Powell writes with the sensitivity of an empath. In the bearly visible twitch, the eye that cannot contact, the unconscious hesitations belie the character's pretense so that the secret is just between Powell and her reader. In the far less precise language of psychiatry, this is termed the "as if" self. This deceptively simple story succeeds as myth for within the doubling up of solitary dreams, their souls sweep the cosmos.
Shards of memories, are picked from the realities that defeated them and together they build a palace of dignity that not only holds at bay, their individual sufferings, but becomes wide enough to bring a muted sort of redemption to others, afflicted with similar destinies.
Through music and desire, (platonic, alone) a middle aged housewife, and a odd and tattered music teacher shake off fate and taste, if briefly, what they had been denied. Woven in the tale, is the past of childhood trauma and rejection, abandonment and 'making do,' that the odd duo become nothing less than extraordinary people who choose happiness and get it. In this it is a morality tale, par excellance.
Anyone who has ever reached out of despair with a rebound of delight, who has taken an old piece of cloth and thrown it in some transforming wrap over their head, or around their waist, as Connie does, remembers that triumph, so rare, but perfect brilliant touch. Suddenly, an old dress, has color and shape, bohemians, they are beyond the ordinary in fashion and finance.
There are no authorial statements here, Powell has her own transformative power, whereby sentences do indeed show, voluminously what she composed sparingly. Her genious for showing human instincts is beyond any of her peers. Perhaps the most stunning is her instinct for understanding that ancient animal survival rule whereby we must hide our wounds and primal sufferings or risk in discovery- annihilation. There is none of the confessional self-absorption that was the legacy of the psychoanalytic fever, that was in its American childhood at the time she wrote the novel.
Anyone who has suffered and not hurt others, is rare indeed. The sublime experience between the two does not rely on inflicting pain upon others, a far more common means of elevating conditions of esteem.
The message, if I may, is in the true artistic gift that they benefitted from, but if spoken, would have broken the spell. They saw the Touilleries in an unweeded garden, the Volga in a brown shallow river, and in the unattractive, uncultured, midwestern town, they found a quaint village to delight in.
The physical conditions of life bore down upon their paradise and yet Connie and Blaine, prevailed, looking we are told through colored pains of glass, bringing the grey, unsympathetic world into prismmatic shimmering color.
It is a love poem to the artistic process that is a gift for life as much as technique with a brush or an instrument or a sentence. This contrasts effectively with her more cynical tales of the corrupted artist and the exploited audience.
A glorious book.
Simply gorgeous........1999-10-15
Only Dawn Powell could create such an intimate, sorrowful portrayal of two thwarted artists in a smug little town that doesn't recognize their intelligence. Very sad, yet gently funny as well. Dawn Powell apparently didn't think this was one of her more successful books. It always amazes me how poorly some artists judge their work for this is one of her best novels. Read it and weep.
An unforgettable read.......1999-02-02
This book has been well-summarized by the other reviewers. I can only second their recommendations and say that this book is spellbindingly written and contains two extended passages (I will leave it to other readers to find their own favorite parts)that are among the most brilliant writing I have ever encountered. Just be warned that it will break your heart. Now if only Steerforth would reissue her "Story of a Country Boy" which I just found an ancient copy of and which is just as good...
Excellent Book.......1999-01-26
This is an extremely well written book. It is the story of a housewife and the local high school Music teacher. Both of whom live in their pasts, which they have embellished to the point of unrecognition. This is what binds them together as they create their "salon". I love Dawn Powell and her real forte is creating these amazing character studies that are both hilarious and pathetic. I would highly recommend this book and any other of Dawn Powell's works
Amazon.com
Dawn Powell has often been overlooked since her death at 67 in 1965, but her brilliant novels, such as Angels On Toast, A Time to Be Born and The Wicked Pavilion are returning to print. And to accompany her rediscovery,
The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965 presents a wondrous evocation of the writing life. More than mere diaries, Powell's journals are at times a workbook presenting many fully-formed narratives. There are thoughtful pieces about why she feels compelled to write and gripes about how writers live. And scattered throughout are witty and gossipy essays about living in literary New York and socializing and working with such characters as Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, her editor Max Perkins, and the woman to whom she was often unfairly compared,Dorothy Parker.
Book Description
One of the outstanding literary finds of the last quarter century. --The New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
Candid, tough, sensitive writing........1998-08-28
Thank you, Steerforth & Tim Page (and Gore Vidal) for making the work of Dawn Powell available. Of all her books, I like the diaries the best--so candid, such a grown-up view of the world; her comments on writing, the New York literary world, and the gritty beauty and ugliness of New York are always acute. Her grasp of the complexity of relationships is amazing-her comments about her husband Joe, her sweetheart, and her child are poignant reminders that life need not be perfect to be rich. Here is the voice of a remarkable woman, one of the most clear-eyed American writers of the twentieth-century. She captures a particular New York moment as does no other writer, and that's saying something.
I am somehow reminded of another great writer, another unsentimental woman: Natalia Ginzburg. An Italian, her work and Powell's are very different, yet they share a rare candor and stoicism.
Book Description
If the levy doesn’t pass, there will be no buses for away-games, no uniforms, no teams. Tess plans to follow her own rules for soccer chicks. Soccer Chick Rule Number 3—Always support your teammates! But when real life doesn’t offer a slam-dunk ending, Tess realizes there may be something to learn from Soccer Chick Rule Number 7—Never, ever give up! Action-packed sports scenes and off-the-field drama guarantee success with girls and sports fans.
Customer Reviews:
Great cozy senior protagonist.......2007-08-23
After May Bell's success in two previous murder investigations, she signs up for a civilian ride-along program to gain more experience. In her zeal to prove her abilities, she steals and destroys the police cruiser and makes a citizen's arrest of two men fleeing after she thought she saw them holding up the convenience store. In the process she also blew out the tires of their vehicle with a shot gun. Unfortunately Office Murphy explains she arrested two innocent men.
Plus the sister of her friends, the Peach sisters, has died. She's certain there's more to it than the police believe. So she sets out to discover the truth.
In the process of investigating, she ends up in jail, has to talk to many unsavory characters, and has people after her. Can she find the killer without putting herself in any more danger?
I really enjoy May Bell's antics. She's a senior citizen with a lot of spunk and determination. She has her share of blunders, but she keeps at it.
In this book I missed the residents of the senior facility she previously lived in, but May Bell found plenty of new ways to entertain the reader without them.
I recommend this book.
lighthearted sexagenarian whodunit .......2007-03-24
When sixty-seven years old May Bell List reads in the Spokane about the death of Gerty Peach from a heart attack, she has problems accepting that the bouncy woman who ran in a race two weeks ago died from natural causes. She decides she must do something about what the police choose to ignore.
May visits the deceased's two sisters, Inez and Bertha, in the suburb of Harvest as she knows them. They seem gleeful over the death of their haughty odious sibling, who planned to shut down their business the Poochie Hooch dog grooming facility. As she continues to dig and drive the small town police over the edge with her arresting innocent people, shooting tires, and hobnobbing with hookers, May finds herself in trouble with a killer who wants the geriatric silent and there is nobody to help her because the cops believe this menace to society is the offspring of Typhoid Mary and Peter of the wolf fame.
The antics that May Bell does makes her a menace to society and herself deserving lock up as she crosses a safety line that endangers others with her shoot from the hip actions. Readers will admire this courageous sexagenarian who feels it is her civil duty to investigate a homicide while everyone else prefers the official position, but would also prefer she did it in someone else's state. May's need to do what she perceives is the right thing is commendable, but her missteps turn this into a lighthearted whodunit that clearly says leave sleuthing to the professionals.
Harriet Klausner
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