The Home Design Handbook: The Essential Planning Guide for Building, Buying, or Remodeling a Home

Average customer rating:

Great Book - Don't Plan Your Home Without It.

Mostly lists - a workbook

Excellent reference for home buyers!

thinks of everything - very personalized!

The Home Design Handbook: The Essential Planning Guide for Building, Buying, or Remodeling a Home
June Cotner , and Steve Myrvang
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Residential | Building Types & Styles | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Home Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Remodeling & Renovation | Home Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Decorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0805018336

Book Description

This uniquely practical guide will help guarantee that the home you build, buy, or renovate will perfectly suit your needs, desires, and lifestyle.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book - Don't Plan Your Home Without It........2005-06-20

This book is an excellent guide to help navigate the hundreds of practical details involved in planning a home.
Every chapter is well-written, and well- organized, with an extremely useful checklist at the end. For example, what about the selection of your vanity in the bathroom? Would you like it to be the age old standard height of 34"? Or would you prefer it to be shorter, or higher? This is a very useful question as the standard height of 34" for the bathroom vanity is not really a comfortable height for most people. My counters, both kitchen and bathrooms, are a height of 37# (I'm 5'5)which is a more comfortable height for me. The depth of my counters are 28" not the standard 24". If you notice your kitchen, once you have the toaster, blender, etc. out, there's little room left for much of anything else. So those extra 4 " in depth really give you a lot more space. Builders want everything to be standard because it's easier for them, but it's your house they are building, and better to get it the way you want it. Another useful question is "do you read in the bathtub"? I do, and that means when designing the bathroom I want a good reading light above the tub at the end where my head lays. Every chapter in this book ends with a great checklist of things you will want to take into account, and prepares you for the highly detailed process of planning a home. It's one of the best on the market, and I think one of most underated ones.

Mostly lists - a workbook.......2004-01-31

Most of the book is literally pages filled with questions about what you want in a home, with blank space to write in your answers. There are a few suggestions that all somehow end up pointing at similar designs. The filled out book would be given to an architect to start a design. Very good for someone who needs a formal structure to decide what is needed. If you've already throught seriously about what you want, this book will waste your time.

Excellent reference for home buyers!.......1999-09-26

We found The Home Design Handbook to be an excellent resource as we searched for our home. The questions and exercises helped us narrow down and prioritize what we wanted (and did not want) in our home. Even the information intended for those who plan to build or renovate a house, covered issues that we found important considerations for anyone buying an existing home. For example, we learned alot about what to watch for to ensure the house was more energy efficient, inside and out. We felt we were better educated buyers with this great book!

thinks of everything - very personalized!.......1999-08-10

This book looks at home design from a wholistic approach as well as up close and personal. It focuses on your hopes and dreams and the soul of your home to give you true satisfaction with your design. It includes such things as site, energy considerations, family's lifestyle, outdoors and indoors, and budget. With the guidance of this book you can plan to build a house from scratch or remodel an existing house to your taste and needs. Each room in the house is taken into consideration in detail, right down to the storage space, with photos and floor plans. Useful addresses and an extensive bibliography are given for your further exploration. This book is fantastic, especially because it gives you the freedom to custom design your dream house. Much of it is in the form of a workbook, with blanks to fill in. After going through all the forms, it will become clear to you what you need to do to achieve your goals.

Book Description

This is one of the very few manuals written by a recognized professional smith; in this case, one with over 50 years' experience, whose work appears in hundreds of restorations throughout the country. The book has long been unavailable and a collector's item; this eagerly awaited reprint completely reproduces the original edition. Here traditional smithing techniques are presented in clear, step-by-step text and photographs, enabling the reader to produce high-quality, hand-forged small iron work. Included are detailed descriptions of work space layout, specialized tools and techniques, whitesmithing, toolmaking, and locksmithing. Mr. Streeter demonstrates not only how things are done, but how they can best be done by others. There is special emphasis on the crafting of early high-quality, handforged kitchen utensils, fireplace tools, locks, keys, and decorative ironware: hinges, hasps, latches, bolts, hooks, springs, and more. Students and professional and semi-professional smiths will find this volume of great practical value, as will collectors of early American ironwork, owners of colonial houses, historians, preservationists and restorationists in fact, anyone interested in knowing how these early products were made. 144 pages. 257 illustrations. 81/2" x 11". Soft cover.

Customer Reviews:

It has everything a blacksmith needs to know........1999-08-19

I found it very informative about blacksmithing, because I'm a blacksmith for Milwaukee County of The Iron Workers DPW, and I thought it was very helpful.

Book Description

a rush of air
a car is there
hop, hop, hop
on the subway!

Come along for the ride as a little girl and her mother hop on the subway. From spinning turnstiles and musicians performing on the platforms to people hopping off and on and lights flashing past in the tunnels, the sights and sounds of the subway have an energy all their own. Anastasia Suen's sprightly text and Karen Katz's brightly colored patterns and lively perspectives combine for a pitch perfect celebration of an underground train ride, where the hustle and bustle is only part of the fun.

Customer Reviews:

Great city-themed book.......2006-02-21

Wonderful illustrations with lots of color and movement match a story with just enough detail and length to capture a young child's attention. This book was clearly written with a child in mind, but will hold a parent's attention as well, and although it says NYC to me, my child has been on our own city's street cars enough to relate. A great early picture book.

My daughter's favorite.......2005-06-30

My daughter is 22 months and this is now her favorite book. The pictures are delightful and the text has a simple and catchy rhyme. She "reads" along by joining in on the last two lines of every stanza.

I first bought this book before our first trip to Manhattan. I knew we'd be riding the subway and wanted to give my daugher some preparation for that event. The book worked fabulously in that sense too.

I recommend this book highly - and there's no reason to wait until your child is in the recommended reading age of 4-8. Younger children enjoy this book immensely!

Average customer rating:

CCSU Students
My Son's Favorite
Wonderful Story and Illustrations!!!

The Subway Mouse

Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Action & Adventure | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0439728274

Book Description

Nib is a subway mouse. As a young mouse, he loved to hear the stories about Tunnel's End: a beautiful yet dangerous, roofless world. One day, Nib decides to set off, away from his dirty, crowded home, to find his dream. Along the way he meets a girl mouse named Lola, who joins him. Together, they navigate the long and dangerous tunnel, until, one night, when they have almost given up hope, they hear a small chirping sound. . . it is Tunnel's End, more beautiful than Nib ever dreamed.

Customer Reviews:

CCSU Students.......2006-02-02

The illustrations in this story are unique in form and inivite the reader to turn the book's pages. The richly textured illustrations make the author's words come alive in three dimensional effect. Children will enjoy the storytelling from the mouse's point of view of life on the subway track. The plot takes the protagonist on an adventure from the security of his mouse burrow to the uncertainity of "Tunnel's End". Each character he meets along the way is portrayed realistically through vivid dialogue exchanges and accompanying images. However, the overuse of simple and choppy dialogue clouds the plot line. As you read, the question "Will he make it to "Tunnel's End?" lingers in your mind and sustains interest.

My Son's Favorite.......2005-12-15

As a New Yorker, this book hits close to home. It is beautifully illustrated and the story is both courageous and sweet.

Wonderful Story and Illustrations!!!.......2005-08-24

My mom bought me Barbara Reid books as a child, which I still have and will always cherish. All of Barbara's books are so vividly illustrated and well written. The Subway Mouse kept up her trend of wonderful children's books. It's great to see Barbara writing and illustrating more books. Keep it up Barbara! We love your work! =0)

Average customer rating:

Makes your subway ride so much fun!
Nice Pics, Great Texts
An epitome of New York today

The Subway Pictures

Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Photo Essays | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1400062845
Release Date: 2004-10-05

Book Description

In The Subway Pictures, Peter Peter shares his extraordinary images of life on the move, capturing “ordinary” New Yorkers in a remarkable give-and-take with their public surroundings. As Billy Collins writes in his Foreword, “Each of these images is a visual report from underground, the testimony of an optical Virgil bringing us news of the travelers below, momentarily stopped figures in the nonstop shuttling that goes on beneath the concrete skin of the city.”
In the wake of September 11, Peter found the heart of New York City in the subterranean world through which he rode nearly every day for the next three years. “It was like being carried along on a river of whispering signs and symbols,” he writes. “Travelers suspended in contemplation by the steady rhythm of stop-and-go seemed like speechless souls from a different dimension. The scene reshuffled at each stop and every now and then the elements would slip into a visual story.”
In the seventy-seven candid color pictures culled from the thousands Peter snapped with his basic 3 megapixel camera, the magic is everywhere. Whether we are looking at a very tall man crocheting with incredible concentration, someone flamboyantly stretching on the platform, or a Jackie Collins look-alike applying makeup, the world that comes across is vibrantly human and defiantly unself-conscious. Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of the fabled New York City subway system, The Subway Pictures is an unforgettable tribute to the individuality of all those who ride underground in New York, and to every urban American.

Customer Reviews:

Makes your subway ride so much fun!.......2005-04-17

While visiting New York City, I, too, noticed the beauty of people I saw in the subway. What I didn't have was a courage to take pictures because I was afraid that people may not feel comfortable being taken pictures by a stranger like myself. This book is something I wish I could have done, something my dream came ture. Just take a look around while riding subway. You'll be amazed at how beautiful people are.

Nice Pics, Great Texts.......2005-01-21

Nice pics about "true underground people".
If you want to know the "feeling" of NY's subway, this is the book...

An epitome of New York today.......2004-11-05

These astonishing digital photographs are witty without being condescending, intimate without being impertinent, and unsentimental without being cold. As Billy Collins writes in his introduction, "These images speak of a boldness associated with reports from the front...." Peter Peter is a Czech and his pictures belong to the photography of discovery brought to New York by such Europeans as Andreas Feininger, Andre Kertesz, Rudy Burckhardt and Robert Frank.

Underground Train (Picture Yearling Book)

Average customer rating:

Beautiful illustrations
A Virtual Subway Ride in the Nation's Capitol
My daughter and her friends LOVE this book
A great story for toddlers and young children in the city
A book young train lovers might really like

Underground Train (Picture Yearling Book)
Mary Quattlebaum
Manufacturer: Yearling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0440413257
Release Date: 1999-03-09

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful illustrations.......2006-05-03

I love this book for many reasons, but perhaps most of all for the way the watercolors capture the light inside a Metro station and the texture of the concrete. It is the finest artistic representation of Metro I have seen.

A Virtual Subway Ride in the Nation's Capitol.......2004-09-04

Mary Quattlebaum's book evokes the sights and sounds of Washington, D.C., and especially of the D.C. subway system. The writing is downright poetic and is illustrated with beautiful, charming, and accurate depictions of the city. The day I bought this book, my two-year-old wanted it read to him again and again. I didn't mind; I love it too! The book is out of print and may be hard to find, but it's worth the trouble.

My daughter and her friends LOVE this book.......2004-04-08

I bought this book for my 2 year old daughter and her playgroup friends for Christmas. Each and every child has loved this book and has read it over and over again (we just bought another copy since we've worn one out). The descriptions of DC's Metro are very accurate and the poetic text make it memorable, especially when adding in the "rrrrumm whoooosh" sounds. My daughter now loves riding on the Metro and likes to bring this book along. This book is a must for city kids -- especially DC residents.

A great story for toddlers and young children in the city.......2000-06-03

My daughter, Isabel, and I live in DC at the metro stop that Quattlebaum describes in "Underground Train," and we love this book. The language is poetic, the story easy to identify with, and the illustrations nicely fit the action. I heartily recommend "Underground Train" to families with train-riding kids everywhere.

A book young train lovers might really like.......1999-03-01

My son (age 4) has this book on his frequent reading request list! I like it too, but not as well as he does. He gets very confused by the parts of the book that are set above the ground, and I find them sort of needless---especially since on some pages there is no picture at all of the train underground. My son asks every time we are on those pages---"where's the train?". But that small flaw in our eyes is not enough to make him not like this book very much! His favorite part is the descriptive writing of how the train sounds! If you have a young train or subway lover, I would get this one!

Average customer rating:

A good book for subway lovers

Friday's Journey
Ken Rush
Manufacturer: Orchard Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0531086712

Customer Reviews:

A good book for subway lovers.......2000-01-30

My sons really like this book, mainly because it's hard to find books about subways and the kids who love them! The artist does a good job showing how it looks and feels to be on the subway. The writing is a little tough for young kids to understand, however---the message about divorce is pretty much lost on my 5 and 2 year old, but maybe this book is aimed a bit older kids.

Average customer rating:

Subway Sparrow
Leyla Torres
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0374372853

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Underground
Jesse Slade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Screenplays | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007C52U4

Book Description

Dorothy, our cute heroine, becomes a witch to live out a romantic life that every girl wishes for: turning the world into a dark hellish cauldron, making everyone bow to her, and summoning cute zombies! Her hyperactive group of crazy characters make the heroine seem like a senile old lady in comparison. First, you have Dorothy's close friend Remi who doesn't seem to understand you're only supposed to take just one Prozac a day. Then you have Lilly, the witch whose fashion sense would make Madonna and Britney Spears blush. And finally, we can't forget about Dorothy's main love interest, a cute boy who's only problem is that he's a werewolf who wants to eat her alive!

Book Description

Long considered the English Chekhov, V. S. Pritchett was described by Eudora Welty as “one of the great pleasure-givers in our language.” Here is a true literary event: the first major biography of this extraordinary writer, who for most of a century ennobled the ordinary, and the affecting story of the two tumultuous marriages that fueled his art.

He would become universally known as V.S.P., but he began life as Victor–named for Queen Victoria–in 1900. His imagination was both an inheritance from and an inoculation against his unpredictable father: a charming spendthrift who went bankrupt in a variety of businesses. For Victor, writing ultimately became a way to turn the pain of his past into security.

As a reporter in the 1920s, Pritchett was posted to some of the trouble spots of Europe, including pre-Civil War Spain, but he preferred travel to politics, honing the acute perception of common people that he used to great effect in his fiction. His youthful marriage to a better-born aspiring actress was his first crisis, leaving him in sexual misery, comforted only by the “inner riot” of his imagination.

His affair with and marriage to Dorothy Roberts, in his mid-thirties, changed his life. Passionate and forceful, she became Pritchett’s support and secretary, helping him to develop his voice in short stories, novels, literary journalism, and memoirs. His work dramatized the world of his native lower middle class, showing how “every life is interesting.” Their union produced two children and a cache of stunning erotic letters, published in part here for the first time.

But as Pritchett’s international fame as an author and critic grew, so did the couple’s separations. Already a serious drinker, Dorothy became an alcoholic. Pritchett took an American mistress while in residence at Princeton, causing a painful and prolonged domestic crisis.

Illuminating the connections between events in his life and famous works such as his novel Mr. Beluncle, dramatizing the friendships Pritchett forged with other writers, particularly Gerald Brenan, and cogently analyzing the undeserved eclipse his reputation would suffer immediately after his death, Jeremy Treglown’s V. S. Pritchett is the complete story of a popular, influential, deceptively simple author, a man to whom, he once misleadingly claimed, “nothing continues to happen.”

Customer Reviews:

No Soap.......2006-03-29

An outstanding biography, and a worthy successor to Jeremy Treglown's previous books on famous English novelists. Pritchett wasn't much of a novelist, but as a short story writer he attained the sort of sterling reputation that nearly went out with Queen Victoria. Even as he grew older and older (he died at age 96) his skills and powers grew and grew, and the books he wrote in his seventies are probably his best.

Pritchett married twice; his first marriage, to Evelyn, collapsed after years of bitterness, and later he married Dorothy, the "marvellous girl" of his fiction. Unfortunately their fifty year union was often marred by him having numerous affairs and her being a heavy drunk who, finally, turned to this newfangled thing called AA in 1957 and it really helped her. And finally when he got too old to cheat, they attained their happiness all over again. Some of their early letters have that obscene James Joyce-Nora Barnacle tone to them--very rousing.

You wouldn't believe how many women wanted to have sex with him! For he was not very attractive--a little man, round as a billiard ball, with funny teeth and a total narcissist who would, of course, being a writer, make life difficult for you afterwards by writing you cutting letters or painting horrid portraits of you in his fiction.

There's a lot of high-toned gossip passing for insight: "At the Vienna Hilton, Victor and Dorothy were kept awake by violent quarrels in the adjacent bedroom between the playwright Eugene Ionesco and his wife."

And some of the most amusing contretemps in the biography arrive from the differences in American and British usages of our common tongue. When an earnest coed at Smith College confided that she was an "English major," Pritchett did a double take, telling a friend that mentally he "decorated her with moustaches and gave her gout."

Hitchcock fans will go bananas when they learn of the extent that Pritchett changed the script of THE BIRDS, when a disgruntled Hitch asked the visiting English prose master for some revisions to Evan Hunter's script. Treglown claims that at least one major scene was written entirely by Pritchett, and any number of smaller script changes and character developments. Annie, the school teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette, given more grit to make her less "goody goody," and Melanie Daniels now makes references to a childhood with unsatisfactory parent figures in order to balance out the (possibly over-Oedipal) relationship between Rod Taylor and Jessica Tandy. In addition, Hitchcock apparently toyed with the idea of making a film version of one of Pritchett's 50s short stories, "The Wheelbarrow." Or was he just toying with Pritchett to get him to produce more pages on THE BIRDS script? Hard to say. But anyhow I've read dozens of books on Hitchcock and THE BIRDS and never once heard anything about the involvement of V.S. Pritchett so this was a real coup for Treglown if you ask me.

Elsewhere Sir Victor doesn't come off so heroically. Treglown details a trip the British Council paid for, sending Pritchett and Vladimir Nabokov to India in 1960. The awful truth is that neither great master could tolerate Indian people, their soft-spoken voices, which could so easily be mistaken by the lordly ones for obsequiousness. Nabokov shouted out in the hotel bar that "there is a Russian phrase for their [Indians'] writhing whispering manner which, translated, is 'working your finger up your arse without soap.'" Of course both VN and VSP had a vulgar streak and their trip to India brought it out of both of them in a thoroughly unpleasant way.

Treglown states that Harold Pinter learned his way of sketching out mood and character from similarly oblique strategies of Pritchett's, but gives no evidence of why he says this.

His relationship with THE NEW YORKER in the 1950s and 1960s is fairly grim, though one hand washed the other, and Pritchett became known as a British writing genius through his association with the magazine. Roger Angell, the New Yorker editor, totally censored all the sexuality out of Pritchett's stories, and the magazine's policy precluded any favorable allusion to homosexuality, so odd when you consider the parade of gay men and lesbians who worked so hard for the magazine, putting their queer shoulders to the wheel. It's a lesson in social history I suppose, but it makes for difficult reading.

The only reason I don't give this one five stars is that he never really convinces me that Pritchett is anything other than a fair to middling writer. It seems as though, since his death, Pritchett's reputation has diminished. I'll try some of the books and make up my mind myself. That much Treglown has done for his subject, aroused the curiosity of a new generation of putative readers.

Average customer rating:

V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life
V. S.] Treglown, Jeremy [Pritchett
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ND1K6C

A long and happy life.(V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life)(Book Review): An article from: New Criterion

Average customer rating:

A long and happy life.(V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life)(Book Review): An article from: New Criterion
Algis Valiunas
Manufacturer: Foundation for Cultural Review
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on May 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1141 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: A long and happy life.(V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life)(Book Review)
Author: Algis Valiunas
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2005
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 23 Issue: 9 Page: 83(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Who hasn't longed to escape to the enchanting canals and mysterious alleyways

of Venice? Globetrotting writer Paula Weideger not only dreamed the dream, she took the leap. In Venetian Dreaming, she charts the course of her love affair with one of the world's most treasured cities.

Weideger's search for a place to live eventually takes her to the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, one of the rare Venetian palaces continuously inhabited by the family that built it. She weaves the past lives of the family Donà with her own adventures as she threads her way through the labyrinthine city. Art and architecture are a constant presence. Yet even more strongly felt is the passage of time, the panorama of the seasons as reflected in special events -- Carnival, the Film Festival, September's historic regatta, midnight mass at San Marco. We follow Weideger as she explores the Ghetto, the expatriate community, and the lives of locals from noblemen to boatmen. Along the way she encounters everyone from the ghost of Peggy Guggenheim to the Merchant Ivory crowd, and experiences some high drama with the Contessa, her landlady. The resulting memoir is a wry and illuminating, intelligent and tender account of the once grand heritage and now imperiled future of Venice.

Customer Reviews:

Everyday Venice.......2006-12-28

If you are looking for a Venetian travel view thru rose-colored glasses, skip this book. If you are interested in what it would be like to live or spend significant time there, it is worthwhile to read. While I would not want to spend time with the author, and I suspect many who did have lived to regret it, she does give an inside view of Venice, Ca'Donà (the only Venetian Palace still occupied by the family that built it), and the Venetian expat community. Her description of the real-life family of Ca'Donà and the challenges they face with their inherited Venetian Palace is fascinating. You will not get this kind of info from your travel guide.

An awful snob in Venice.......2006-11-07

After a week in Venice I wanted to live there forever. Picking up this book to read on the plane home, I hoped to see the city through other eyes and put my own dream into perspective. It starts well: the reader empathises with the Venetian disease Weinbereg catches. Half way through this book turns into a nasty diatribe against some Venetians and many expatriates. The author seems to think her closing section on a car-crash in Italy and its aftermath will make up for her bile. It doesn't, it won't.

If I ever do live in Venice I fervently hope never to encounter this snobbish, garrulous and self-centered New Yorker. The book is not only a waste of money, but an offense to Venice and to readers. How on earth did this get published?

"Henry James/Edith Wharton" American Tourist in 20th Century.......2006-06-06

Read the book; it's an insightful and interesting story of a 20th century upper-middle class American woman in expatriate-tinged Venice. Please appreciate the honesty of her frustrations as well as her delight with Venice and its varied residents. To perceive the story as "mean and ugly" misses the point of the author's story. Weideger carefully notes both her own foibles and those of the many people that she encounters. She accurately captures the personalities of both the "society" expat community and the italian character of the Venetian residents and shopkeepers. Her bluntness distinguishes this book from the many frothy travel tales otherwise published.

I suspect many critics of the book have never experienced Italy and Venice, or if so, only through guided tour package. To love Venice (and Italy) is to accept the full experience.

Venetian nightmares.......2005-10-08

Venetian Dreaming started out so strong. Weidiger did an admirable job of describing her longing to live in this most enigmatic of cities, and of the many logistical and personal roadblocks she had to overcome to achieve the dream. Then, a bit less than halfway through this engaging story, the dream becomes a nightmare. The author became fixated upon not just living in Venice, but upon living in one particular apartment in one particular palazzo. No matter what. Other reviewers have covered the many flaws that spoil this book at this point. Just another few words on the ending. Talk about leaving the reader hanging! What was that all about? Hope she's OK now. Hard to believe this book got published in its present form.

Dreams of Venice.......2005-08-11

I enjoyed "Venetian Dreaming" immensely, Paula took me to Venice with her and I felt a part of this wonderful place. Paula shields us from nothing and portrays the city and the Venetians as she found them, showing them as normal people with their glories and flaws. No, they are not perfect and Venice is not always on its best behaviour but this just shows the many shadows and cracks of its vast history and the human touch that has made this city what it is.

I know some others have been disappointed, but my advice is read it and then judge and remember not to start this novel with preconceived judgements, enjoy it for what it is - one persons experience of a year in Venice. You won't be disappointed.

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