if the country were run like this, we’d be free instead of enslaved.

This book is just old enough to be really interesting to read. The things he does predict right on and the things he misses entirely. He gets the rise in oil dead on, but missed entirely the housing collapse. In fact, he says the housing collapse can’t happen because it would collapse everything. Well, it probably has.

I also don’t think much of his “investment” advice, mostly because I think we should invest in what we do, in our families and communities, in being productive in our lives, not in trying to live off the efforts of someone else. But very little of the book is that.

Anyway, it is definitely worth reading, but don’t expect really good writing or really useful advice, just some good points to add to your own thoughts on the world situation.

My basic take on this book—new age blather couched in pseudo scientific talk based on photographs of water crystals that you can’t replicate.

Here’s the thing: I believe in the new age blather. We are all connected. Water does need our respect far more than it needs “purification”. Our intentions do change things.

But I absolutely hate pseudo scientific stuff. Science is good for what science does but I do not need non-scientific stuff to pretend to be scientific. And science is pretty much always based on being replicable, not interpretive. So when Emoto says, “This crystal looks like this symphony,” well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. It is like saying what blue smells like. And why is there only one photograph of each crystal and not more—I’m quite sure they don’t all look alike. And he does not detail how to make your own photographs to find out for yourself.

So I suppose you could call me less than impressed although I do not disagree with a thing that he says.

God dies and falls into the ocean. That’s the beginning. Every character is well drawn, and well used in the story line. It has been awhile since I read a book with a real plot and it was so much fun to read with urgency to see what is going to happen. And believe me, I couldn’t anticipate it!

It was just absolutely the best damn book. A little heavy on the moral of the story floated at the end, but then, that moral is only one possibility. I didn’t quite buy it. But I loved the story, loved the lines of thought it opened up, loved turning the pages, loved the characters.

Janisse is a very good writer . . . when she is writing memoirs. Less so on the chapters that I suppose she sees as straight ecology. And also less so when she makes some forced concluding comment at the end of the memoir chapters. Oh well. The concluding statement of the book was good.

Still, this book is well worth reading for her vivid, sensitive portrayal of her life growing up in what many would see as deprivation but which obviously isn’t what deprivation is about. It is also a great companion to A Handmade Wilderness, also about the longleaf pine region.

Ok, it took me FOREVER to finish reading this book. I have an old paperback copy that has really teensy tiny print and it is faded and the paper darkened and I guess maybe my eyes aren’t what they used to be and one of the bulbs was out in my light fixture in the bedroom where I usually read . . . Ah, but we actually got a reading light for me and all is well.

I truly and purely enjoyed this book. He experiences his landscape in a way we could all experience our landscapes except few of us do. Thus, he inspires me. And he tickles me. And his prescience astounds me.

And did you know he specified that corn on the cob be served at his party to be held after he died. You just have to totally respect that.

Still as good a book as ever. For these longest time these were the only books I read. And every so often I have to go back and re-read my faves—this one, the Island Stallion, the Mystery of the Black Stallion. I’m still Alec and I’m nearing 50 and a girl.

actually, I’m not finished with this book (like many of Deepak’s that I always seem to be reading parts and pieces of) but I did turn it back into the library this time. Although I’ll get it out again soon. Actually, I think the idea has been as important as the actual techniques in the book.

Whatever this book is about, it isn’t about walking the AT. Bryson (despite his protestations at the conclusion) did not walk the AT. The really sad part is that the only worthwhile parts of this book are about he and Katz WALKING the AT. Which they did a LITTLE of. They walked from Springer to Clingman’s, then rented a car to Shenandoah and walked a LITTLE there, then they dropped out of the 100 Mile Wilderness after a day.

And when he writes about walking, he has something to say. Otherwise he gives miniature and mostly wildly inaccurate lectures about murders on the trail, forest pests, Stonewall Jackson, and the like.

On top of that, at first I thought he just was a regular Yankee bigot and didn’t like Southerners but turns out he doesn’t like anyone, at least not from the way he characterizes everyone else as miscreants.

Despite all the reasons I didn’t like this book, it still gets an “it’s ok” rating because he really would be a good writer, and he is when he has something to say.

but she is not a writer. She regurgitates names who were at parties but she never really tells a story. She never captures the essence of any moment except maybe doing acid in San Francisco when she says, wow or something similarly inane. And in the end, she whines and whines about how little money she has while she’s telling of her trips around the world. And she claims, of course, that it was really her that both these men really always loved, which I’m thinking, you know, probably not.