“… To the Night. Archibald Lampman. Evening. Heat. James Russell Lowell. Midnight. …”

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 different recordings of Evening by Archibald Lampman. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of August 3rd, 2008.

Zip file of the entire book (5.1MB)

“… distinct offer to Phineas Finn of unbounded popularity during life and of immortality afterwards, if …”

Phineas Finn free audiobook 779 MB

Phineas Finn, the hero (if he can be called that), is a young Irishman who gets elected to Parliament at the age of 25 and enjoys a spectacular rise, although he lacks money, title, and social position. His assets are extreme good looks, sincerity, a modest but confident charm, and lots of luck.

The most interesting parts of the plot deal with his relationships with 4 women: little Mary Flood Jones, his childhood sweetheart back in Ireland; Lady Laura Standish Kennedy, who takes a special interest in the new MP and helps to further his career; Violet Effingham, as rich as she is beautiful; and Mme. Marie Max Goesler, a very wealthy widow, beautiful, intelligent, and very interesting (my personal favorite). Phineas proposes to 3 of these women and receives a direct proposal from the other.

The portions of the plot dealing with parliamentary business may be a bit mystifying to those who know little about the British governmental system or Victorian history, but this is a good place to add to your education. Some consider “Phineas Finn” to be the most tedious of the Palliser series; however, I found it fascinating throughout.

I think Paper Towns has the potential to be excellent. I fell in love with your first two novels. I really like your style of writing. You’re refreshingly original, and I have a feeling that this new novel won’t let me down either. Keep up the great writing John!! I aspire to write as well as you someday…

John Green I’d just like to thank you. You made me want to be a writer again. I love you, you awesome awesome man.

admire the fortitude of one of the authors, David, whom called into the largest radio show and promoted this book. He sounded a little nervous at first when he was talking to Rush Limbaugh, but he accomplished his goal. That action spoke loudly about him and his book must have the same good substance that he demonstrated with Rush. I would say that we need more youth like him, but that is too small praise…our nation needs more people of all ages like him. I bought the book for positive reinforcement.

Extending and building upon Cialdini’s classic “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, this new book, “Yes!” is immensely useful and a must-read for everyone who seeks to communicate and persuade more effectively.

A colleague recommended it to me, and I pounced upon it, ordering immediately — because I’ve long used Cialdini’s 6 core strategies in my marketing efforts to help build a business empire. Reciprocity, social proof, and other triggers are must-have tools in one’s business arsenal.

What I like best about Cialdini’s latest work is:

+ Practical case studies in business (not academic) environments, such as the hotel towel case study, and others.

+ Diverse range of experiments and conversion-boosting examples that can be applied to a much wider range of persuasive situations.

+ Clearly explained examples and techniques that are easy to translate and apply to different practical business situations immediately.

+ Packed with humor, insight and concise tactics that work.

Cialdini’s created another classic with “Yes!” and I highly recommend it to all business professionals and folks who’d like to improve their persuasive skills in a variety of situations. An “instant classic”.

To success,

Ken Calhoun

P.S. For more on business success, I also recommend all the books by Jeffrey Gitomer, Dan Kennedy, Donald Trump and Brian Tracy.

Zip file of the entire book(133MB)

I know this book is packed with theory and is intended to give the readers some insight to the Montessori-style Education Theory. Nevertheless, in spite of the aforementioned this is a great read and if some theory is delivered by the way then this is only an extra bonus.
Elizabeth Ann, who spends her first years with her ever worried aunt Frances is suddenly forced to move to the Putney family she always feared of living on the farm. This is a story of a personal growth, covering all aspects of a child’s life - the growth is both mental and physical and is as enjoyable as the “Little House in the Prairie” books or other books of the kind (I mention the “Little House” books as for me that’s the ultimate compliment).
For me the pleasure and enjoyment have to do with the portrayal of the homey life and surroundings (a good example would be the description of the main room that at first seems ugly to Betsy and then becomes the most wonderful room in the world) and especially the account of food… personally I feel this is the first thing that gives the homey feeling. Which foods are served, the way the butter is churned and how Betsy learns to sweeten the apple sauce… this is what I love. Another major matter of enjoyment is the fast process of change in Betsy’s thoughts, abilities and appearance to which the reader is a witness. Similar change happens in “The Secret Garden” where the fresh air outside coupled with hard work makes wonders.
My only problem comes when I did try to return to theory and to try and adopt some of it to my life with my children. Off course anyone I know wants this natural, closer to nature life. How are you going to achieve it in our modern urban life is a different question. I know that the book talks more about the way and the process then about actually churning butter but I would like to churn a little myself…
There is no doubt that life in the outdoor with a lot of physical activity does wonders to your body and soul, especially when small children are concerned.

“… ANNE OF GREEN GABLES Mrs Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped …”

Zip file of the entire book (313 MB)

In 1985 when I stumbled upon Kevin Sullivan’s wonderful production of “Anne of Green Gables” with Megan Follows as Anne, Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla, and Richard Farnsworth as Mathew, it was my introduction to the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s red-headed orphan. Like millions of others, I fell in love with the production and then proceeded to read this novel, the other seven books in the Anne Series, and then “The Chronicles of Avonlea,” “The Story Girl,” the “Jane of Lantern Hill” books, and every other thing written by Montgomery that I could get my hands on (and this was before all of those paperback collections of Montgomery’s short stories were published).

In 1904 Montgomery had written down an idea for a story in her notebook: “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them.” In what must be heartening for many would be authors, Montgomery’s manuscript for “Anne of Green Gables” was rejected repeated by publishers before it was finally accepted. The book was a bestseller from the moment it was published in June 1908 (I have a 19th impression printed in September 1910), although a critic in “The New York Times” complained that, “there is no real difference between the girl at the end of the story and the one at the beginning of it.” Readers of the book would quite happy with that fact, because the reason we love this story is not that the talkative, red-haired orphan girl with her big green-grey eyes changes during the story, but that Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert, the elderly sister and brother who wanted to adopt a boy and got a girl instead, have changed profoundly.

Mark Twain described Anne Shirley as “The dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice,” and nobody has been able to top that statement. Supposedly Montgomery’s description of her famous literary creation was based on a photography of Evelyn Nesbit, the notorious American beauty who was the mistress whose husband, Harry K. Thaw, shot and killed her love, Stanford White, in the first scandalous murder trial of the 20th century. I suppose there is something archetypal about stories about orphans, that allows young readers to identify with such characters and explains why generations of children have responded to such stories. But what sets Montgomery’s creation apart is her ability to provide of laughter and tears, what with her vivid imagination and her great desire to be loved. You laugh over Anne’s over wrought apology to Mrs. Rachel Lynde and how her introduction to Gilbert Blythe ends with her breaking a slate over his head. But then there are the wonderfully touching scenes when Marilla apologizes for refusing to believe Anne about her broach, when Mathew goes to town to get Anne a dress with puffed sleeves, and when the Reaper whose name is Death comes to visit Green Gables. There are just so many wonderful moments in this novel, which is the best in the series. When you read the rest of the books in the series, this is the one you will keep coming back to again and again to read once more your favorite parts (I just did).

I have two daughters and despite my best intentions I have never been able to persuade them to read “Anne of Green Gables.” But given how long it took me to get around to them they still have at least a decade to beat me to the punch in relative terms, and I have the Sullivan productions on DVD so that I can use the same hook that worked so well one me. Once they do I am sure they will be just as captivated by all of the others who love the Anne-Girl and who have traveled to Prince Edward Island to see all of the sites that Montgomery translated into the world of Anne Shirley.

My favorite memory is when we went to “Green Gables.” You go in through the front door and follow the way around the first floor and then up the stairs to the second floor. As I was at the bottom of those stairs the young woman watching the door had momentarily stopped the line entering the site. In this case that person who had to wait was a young Japanese girl, who looked to be about eight years old, and who was shivering in delight at the fact that she was standing on the threshold of Anne Shirley’s Green Gables. That is how beloved Lucy Maud Montgomery’s creation is almost a century after she was first set down on paper.

Ukraine, 2nd: The Bradt Travel Guide by Andrew Evans

I actually live and work here in Kiev and I purchased The Bradt Travel Guide to help me plan some upcoming day trips as well as to get some updates on places of interest here in Kiev. And while the guide was obviously well researched for the first edition it seems to me that the 2nd edition was a rush job or maybe just lacking in its design.

For example Bradt says that it’s possible to travel on $75 a day - okay granted one should assume that amount is closer to $100 a day with inflation in the Euro and the cheapening of the dollar. The problem at least in Kiev - a very cosmopolitan city, is that many of the restaurants mentioned will cost you between $70 and $100 for a nice meal. By the way Georgian wine is very good and is available locally for about $8 a bottle so a glass of wine in a restaurant should not cost more than about $7 - my tip for those who read this! Also the local beers are all very nice and cost next to nothing - about $1 a bottle. There was not an effort to break down restaurants by cost range as was done with the hotels - most other guides I’ve used in the past do this and I find it really helpful. I was hoping for some new restaurant finds! And any restaurant that accepts major credit cards is in this class so beware if you’re using this guide. Also, my specific need was for places to see that are close by but there was very little in that section for Kiev.

Overall, I think there are better guides although not quite as new. One very good point is the availability of apartments at reasonable prices. With public transportation very reasonable - that means cheap!, all you really need to know is what bus/tram to hoop on to get you to either the nearest Metro or somewhere central like Independence Square.

If you aren’t sure about coming to Kiev/Kyiv, I want to tell you that I highly recommend it - the city is beautiful and the people are very nice. Ukraine is a big country and also very nice - I’ve been to the Black sea and to the Carpathian mountains so far and enjoyed them both although for very different reasons.

Ukraine (Country Guide) by Sarah Johnstone

“… 15 Destination Ukraine For those of you who came in late, in 2004 …”

My wife was born and educated in Ukraine and spent many years there traveling all over the country, and we have made a number of recent trips to Ukraine. Her verdict on this Lonely Planet guidebook by Sarah Johnstone is: “A plus!” She kept looking up various interesting places that Miss Johnstone might have missed and she couldn’t find any. They are all there. Miss Johnstone includes an amazing amount of information in a small, 8×5″ paperback of 216 pages that will fit easily in a purse or bag. The book is very skillfully arranged into various headings and sections and cross references so if, for example, you’re not interested in Ukraine’s history you can easily skip over it. And it doesn’t forget anyone: the traveler who wants adventure, the traveler who wants comfort, the student with a backpack, those who want offbeat non-touristy places, to those who are on a budget. Are you a vegetarian? Well, the author hasn’t forgotten you either. There are many useful maps, all the latest Internet addresses, and a number of beautiful photographs.
I am truly impressed with Ms. Johnstone depth of knowledge and how accurate she is. I can only imagine how much work it took to put this together. I have seen all the guidebooks to Ukraine and all the guidebooks with chapters on Ukraine. This is the best. I would give it six stars if I could.

Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid

“… fertile and fatally tempting to invaders, Ukraine was split between Russia and Poland from the mid seventeenth …”

“Flat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders,” Ukraina as literally translated means “on the edge” or “borderland,” wrote author Anna Reid in the beginning of her excellent travel, political, and historical essay on Ukraine. An independent state for the first time with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been on the border of various empires for centuries, at various times being split between Russia and Poland (from the mid 1600s to the late 1700s), Russia and Austria (throughout the nineteenth century), and Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania (between the two world wars). The fact that Ukraine is literally a borderland has resulted in two main things she writes; a legacy of wars, purges, and other violence, and a “tenuous, equivocal sense of national identity.”

Reid takes the reader on a tour of Ukrainian history beginning with the medieval Kievan Rus kingdom, a civilization that gave rise to the later Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian peoples and languages (though it is still debated what the exact relationship between these groups are), civilizations that really started to widen in differences when the northern Rus fell under the sway of the Mongols and the southern Rus (the future Ukrainians) became dominated by the Lithuanians. From then on Ukraine’s history was often a bloody one; between 1914 and 1921 1.5 million died thanks to World War I, the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war (during which there were two Ukrainian independence movements, both failing); the deliberate and cruel Stalin-ordered famines of 1932-1933 killed a fifth of the entire rural population or a total of 5 million people; many thousands of Ukrainians - out of a total number in the Soviet Union of 1 million executed and 2 million dying in labor camps - perished in the 1937-1938 purges; and 5.3 million died in the Second World War, or one in six of the entire population. The Chernobyl incident, which is also explored, may yet still claim lives.

Understandably lacking a national tradition (as for centuries there was no “Ukraine” nor were there “Ukrainians,” with at various times Poles and Russians refusing to respect Ukrainian culture, history, or language or even at times acknowledging its existence), they have struggled to find historical figures to identify with. One figure Reid discusses at length is the Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky (hetman being a title), a controversial figure who has been different things to different people (to the Ukrainians he was the leader of the first Ukrainian war of independence; to the Poles he was the rebel peasant who split Poland and started the nation on its long slow decline; to the Russians he has been the man who led the Ukrainians out of Polish domination and into the arms of Muscovy). Another she explores is Taras Shevchenko, a 19th century writer that many believe single-handedly turned Ukrainian into a literary language and went a very long way - perhaps more than any other figure - into creating a sense of national identity. Another figure - though not a specific individual - Reid explores as part of the Ukrainian national conscious is the Cossack, a figure she notes that is not unlike the cowboy in the American tradition; outlaw, frontiersmen, pioneer, fighter, even ranging across the steppe in covered wagons, drawing them up in a circle against Tatar (rather than Native American) attack.

Reid tours the modern nation, showing more regionalism and variety than I knew existed in Ukraine. Far eastern Ukraine - the Donbass coal basin - is densely populated, heavily industrialized, and predominately Russian-speaking. The southern city of Odessa - on the shores of the Black Sea - is a largely unspoiled city of outdoor cafes, a city with a long multi-ethnic tradition that once attracted such persecuted minorities as Serbs, Greeks, Armenians, Mennonite Germans, and Bulgars. The far western city of Lviv is part of Galicia, a once Austrian-dominated region, home in the 19th and 20th centuries to most of Ukraine’s dissidents, intelligentsia, and demonstrators. Chernivtsi, located in the shadow of the Carpathian Alps in extreme southwestern Ukraine, was ruled at various times by the Poles, Turks, Austrians, and Romanians, finally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, is now no longer as multi-ethnic as it once was but still a beautiful region of mountains and forests, once a favored vacation destination. She visited Crimea, a Russian-dominated peninsula that has had some difficulty believing it is part of Ukraine and a land that was once a pretty much independent Tatar state loosely associated with the Ottomans until annexed by Russia in 1783.

So what does Reid believe the future hold for Ukraine? She thinks that the future is fairly bright for the country. While it had some serious problems going into independence, some of those very weaknesses were also strengths; the somewhat fuzzy sense of national identity (nowhere as near developed as it was in the Baltic states for instance) has worked in the country’s favor in dealing with the large Russian minority. Given full citizenship upon independence, despite Ukrainian being made the official state language they were not required to take language tests to vote and the state even continued to fund Russian language schools. Reid also believed that the very bloodiness of Ukraine’s history in the 20th century have lead many in the nation at a personal level to shy away from war and even politics.

Where Ukraine might falter is largely in matters economic. The mid 1990s found Ukraine beset by runaway inflation and huge budget deficits, extreme difficulties in privatizing industries, and its agriculture so inefficient that 80% of all farmland produces only 50% of the total agricultural output. Perhaps worse, near epic corruption and red tape has several hampered business and foreign investment (she gives an example, where 14 different permits were required to export a sock).

All in all though, the author feels hopeful about Ukraine’s future. Its long-suffering people have certainly earned a break if its history is any judge.

The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization by Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower

“… Chapter One- INTRODUCTION TO UKRAINE U KRAI N E On the last day of November …”

This anthology is made up of chapters written by a variety of authors/specialists on either the Holocaust or Ukraine. Some of these chapters are most likely taken straight from books that these authors have previously published (i.e. Bartov’s chapter is pretty much from his lastest book entitled “Erased”), which detail various aspects of the Holocaust in Ukraine before, during, and after the Second World War. Today, most of the attention has been focused on either the Holocaust in Poland or the Soviet Union in general, not so much on specifically Ukraine. This book aims to correct that missing page in western historiography on the Holocaust.

Being from Ukraine I found much of the information within the pages of this book engrossing to read about. Specifically, the history of Jews and Ukrainians in Galicia was very intriguing. I found it interesting that the Ukrainians in this area were affected by German/Austrian anti-Semitism which differed from that of other areas within Ukraine which was more affected by Polish and Russian anti-Semitism. There is an entire chapter which chronicles the destruction of Ukrainian Jewry village/town/city by village/town/city and year by year, an excellent reference. One of the chapters also notes how much more research is needed in regards to the role of Police Battalions, which in Ukraine actually killed more Jews than Einsatzgruppen C and D combined! Something that undoubtedly few know about. As with any book worth its salt this one raises as many questions as it answers, questions which hopefully will be answered in the near future as our knowledge and understanding of this event within the borders of Ukraine grows. Highly recommended for those with an interest in either the Holocaust or Ukrainian history during this time period.

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution by Andrew Wilson

As I write this review, Russia has invaded Georgia and is helping two breakaway regions in Georgia. This book reveals the interfering hands of Russia and President Putin in Ukraine in 2004. Not only had they the gumption of telling the world how the West and the USA were interfering in the affairs of an East European state, but they were financing and fradulently electing a stooge of their own choosing for Ukraine. It shows that Putin’s Russia is just a clone of the old Soviet state and tolerates no dissidence from countries on their own border. It also shows how the left in the West took up this fradulent story of the West interfering in Ukraine.

As the author relates, the Orange Revolution was a genuine social revolution caused by a dictatorship immitating a democracy (managed democracy). The old ruling elite were too corrupt to prevent the population from rising up and throwing them out of office. Russia and Putin supported the kleptocrats and also was shown the door. Hopefully this will happen elsewhere in the near abroad.

I think Wilson does a wonderful job of showing how this Revolution came about. This is a nice work on the progress of democracy in the former Soviet Union.