Reviews by Friends of joanie-P

Jolie says "buyuggsboot.net is a scam! Ugg Boots from China that are fake." about www.buyuggsboot.net

Jolie — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:22:46 GMT

Background on Buyuggsboot.net

A friend of mine at Viewpoints recently passed along a site called www.buyuggsboot.net. She found it online. www.buyuggsboot.net is a web site that sells all styles of Ugg Boots at discounted prices.

We werent certain if www.buyuggsboot.net were the real or not. But after a thorough review of the site, we thought it was legit. Buyuggsboot.net looks like a reasonable reseller of Ugg Boots. The page is designed well, the pictures look authentic and they make claim to having the real deal. They also consistently site throughout the web site having customer satisfaction commitments.

To add to the thought it was authentic, the pricing seemed good but not amazing. As you probably know a typical pair of Ugg Boots cost about $110. On Buyuggsboot.net the cost was $89.00- approximately a $20 savings. Seemed like a good deal, but they werent so cheap that I thought it could be scam. As an aside, last year Nordstrom had a similiar sale on Ugg boots so the pricing seemed...

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rsilva says "Three tales from the Zen tradition." about Zen Shorts

rsilva — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:40:19 GMT

Comic book artist and fantasy illustrator Jon J. Muth goes for something a bit different here with a childrens picture book of stories based on Zen Buddhism.

The framing story involves three siblings who wake up one morning to discover a talking panda named Stillwater in their back yard. Stillwater, who the author based on the 19th century zen teacher Sengai Gibbon, teaches valuable lessons to each of the children in the form of stories.

Addy learns about the value of beauty and the transience of possessions in the story of "Uncle Ry and the Moon".

Karl shows up at Stillwater's home angry about his older brother always bossing him around. Stillwater's story of "A Heavy Load" teaches him a lesson about what can happen when one holds onto bad feelings.

And Michael learns about how luck is in the eye of the beholder through the story of "The Farmer's Luck", which is a traditional story from the Taoist tradition.

The scenes involving Stillwater and the children are gorgeously illustrated in...

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rsilva says "Creepy tales with memorable characters and great descriptions." about Setting Suns

rsilva — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:56:28 GMT

This collection of horror and SF short stories opens with a bang: "Sisyphus" is a time travel story that manages to be horrifying and brilliantly clever at the same time. It delivers a Twilight-Zone style punch that grabs the reader immediately, and it's a nice lead-in to the claustrophobia of "Deep Breathing" and the suburban creepiness of "Silent" and "Jesus Loves Me".

Elizabeth Donald delivers very strong characters and realistic situations, and plays to a wide range of fears from the moment-by-moment terror of a campus sniper attack to the global apocalypse of the stories from her alien-invasion series, "Sanctuary".

There are three Sanctuary stories here. "Our Turn" is a twist on Shirley Jackson's classic "The Lottery" involving a rather nasty arrangement that one village has made with the alien conquerors. "Gauntlet" is basically a running gunbattle and brawl that's good old-fashioned fun to read. My favorite of these, though, was "Memoir", which features a fascinating AI character...

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rsilva says "Beautiful maps and photos." about Eyewitness Travel Guides: China

rsilva — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:12:41 GMT

The Eyewitness series started out with brightly-illustrated children's books on science, nature, technology, and history, and expanded to include a variety of nonfiction books including their travel series.

Full disclosure: I didn't read this book cover-to-cover. That is not the intended use, and I doubt many readers approach a travel guide that way.

I did, however, use the book in its intended manner: to prepare for and take with me on a three-week trip to China . As such, I read the introductory chapter on the history and culture of China , as well as the "Traveler's Needs" and "Survival Guide" sections at the end of the book. From there, I read the chapters on the provinces that I would be visiting, as well as the sections on some areas that were not on my itinerary, but were relevant to the trip. My wife and I were traveling to China to adopt our son, and we were not able to visit his home town on this trip, so I was definitely in reading about that city and the major nearby cities,...

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