Morning and Evening Talk [Paperback] Review

(A star rating is not appropriate for this "novel," which is really not a novel in the traditional sense.)Written in 1987, this last entry in the Cairo series by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz has no beginning, middle, and end, and no real plot.There are no standard chronology and no strong individual characters who develop fully during the action.Modeled on traditional Arab biographical dictionaries, which recorded the lives of influential citizens in single-paragraph entries, this is Mahfouz's most experimental novel.Here he arranges sixty-seven character sketches according to the Arab alphabetical order of the characters' first names, creating a series of short personal anecdotes which reveal lives and convey the history of three Cairo families from the Napoleonic wars through the death of Anwar Sadat.

The book begins with the death of a child, an episode which is recalled near the end of the book, and as the child's family is recreated, in random order by alphabet, the novel ripples out, incorporating different eras and other families, over four or five generations.Showing the progression of Egyptian political change, Mahfouz moves (non-chronologically) from the entrance of Napoleon into Cairo in 1798to the British Occupation from 1882 - 1952;the 1919 Revolution against the British occupation;the Free Officer's movement, founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading to the July Revolution of 1952;the Tripartite Aggression (the Suez Crisis) of 1956, in which Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt for nationalizing the Suez canal; the Six Day Warof 1967, in which Israel attacked Egypt;the War of Attrition from 1967 - 70 between Egypt and Israel; and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which Egypt and Syria attempted to recapture land lost to Israel in the Six Day War.

As much as the book may be about political change, however, it is at least, if not more, about marriage and its importance in the culture. Throughout these generations, members of the same family intermarry to protect inheritance and wealth, but other marriages are also arranged among other "appropriate" families.The women are educated, at least at the level of literacy, and as time moves toward the present, the wives are often educated professionals--lawyers or physicians--who move easily between Egyptian and European cultures.A few of the individual family members move to other parts of the world--Germany, the United States, France, and Saudi Arabia, returning often to Cairo, despite their absences for significant periods of time.And while some of the characters may be passionately committed to some of the political movements of the day (and others may oppose them just as passionately), none of them are religious extremists.

Readers new to Mahfouz will probably want to start elsewhere for their introduction, perhaps with the more traditional The Cairo Trilogy or even Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth, written just two years before this novel.Written when Mahfouz was an old man reflecting on history and the meaning of being Egyptian, this novel can be tedious and sometimes frustrating.The characters' names are often very similar, making it difficult to remember who is who, and the lives of many characters resemble those of other characters and do not add significant new information.Still, likean impressionistic or pointillist painting, the individualbiographies provide color and interest, which, taken together, give a picture of a broad cross section of Egyptian society dealing, over time, with the winds of change. n Mary Whipple

Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy), Book 1
Palace of Desire (Cairo Trilogy), Book 2
Sugar Street (The Cairo Trilogy), Book 3
Children of the Alley: A Novel
Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War (Everyman's Library)



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Product Description:
This unusual epic from the Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz portrays five generations of one sprawling family against the upheavals of two centuries of modern Egyptian history.

Set in Cairo, Morning and Evening Talk traces three related families from the arrival of Napoleon to the 1980s, through short character sketches arranged in alphabetical order. This highly experimental device produces a kind of biographical dictionary, whose individual entries come together to paint a vivid portrait of life in Cairo from a range of perspectives. The characters include representatives of every class and human type and as the intricate family saga unfolds, a powerful picture of a society in transition emerges. This is a tale of change and continuity, of the death of a traditional way of life and the road to independence and beyond, seen through the eyes of Egypt's citizens. Naguib Mahfouz's last chronicle of Cairo is both an elegy to a bygone era and a tribute to the Egyptian spirit.

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Come Morning (Mass Market Paperback) Review

Two broken souls find each other and start to heal on the rocky shores of Nantucket Island. Wonderful heart wrenching story of Brianna, a photographer who loses her seven year old son to a stray bullet. Brianna flees to her grandfathers Nantucket cliffhouse to be alone and try to heal her broken heart and maybe pick up a camera again for the first time since Bobby's killing. Then there's Slade, a Southern California firefighter who loses a young victim in a housefire. The mother of the child killed blames Slade for the childs death. Unable to cope with the guilt he leaves the fire department and California to seek out the reclusive home of his late father to try to learn a little about the man who left him and his mother when Slade was only 10. The journey Brianna & Slade make together is trully an unforgetable life touching experience. I felt a part of their lives, their feelings, their sorrow and finally, their love. A definate page turner and tear jerker. I strongly recommend this book to all who believe in the power of love.

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Product Description:
After an accident takes the life of her young son, lovely photographer Brianna Morgan retreats to Nantucket to grieve. In the next house, handsome fireman Jeremy Slade is drowning his sorrows in liquor after blaming himself for the death of a young mother. When a brutal hurricane ravages the island and helps them come to terms with their pasts, Brianna and Jeremy must decide whether they can create a beautiful new future together. Ads in "Romantic Times". .

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Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning (Hardcover) Review

Charan's credentials include co-authoring the bestseller "Execution". His writing is very much down-to-earth, no-nonsense, and straightforward. So when he says 10 tools for Monday morning, believe him! Here they are:

1. MAKE REVENUE GROWTH EVERYONE'S BUSINESS. Just like a cost reduction agenda may be a permanent theme in daily conversations and meetings in all departments, so should revenue growth be. And it's not just for the management, it's for all employees to think in this direction (just like we try with the cost reduction agenda).

2. HIT MANY SINGLES AND DOUBLES, NOT JUST HOME RUNS. While home runs provide the opportunity for a quantum leap, they are unpredictable and don't happen all the time. Singles and doubles, however, can happen every day of the year. This piece of advice may sound somewhat trivial. But for what it's worth, my experience from especially larger firms is that it may turn out to be the most important tool. Many big corporations tend to devote too much thinking into finding the big home run - and may give too little attention to the many small growth areas that short-term perhaps do not make an important contribution, but often keep the organization full of life and energy - and well-prepared for take-off...if the elusive home run should materialise.

3. SEEK GOOD GROWTH AND AVOID BAD GROWTH. Good growth not only increases revenues but improves profits, is sustainable over time, and does not use unacceptable levels of capital. It is also primarily organic (internally generated) and based on differentiated products and services that fill new or unmet needs, creating value for customers. Charan constantly challenges leaders that seek acquisitions as primary driver for revenue growth ... instead of organic growth.

4. DISPEL THE MYTHS THAT INHIBIT BOTH PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS FROM GROWING. Confront excuses such as: "We are in a no-growth industry, and no one is growing"; "Customers are buying only on price"; or "The distributors are the ones in direct contact with retailers, and there's not much I can do."

5. TURN THE IDEA OF PRODUCTIVITY ON ITS HEAD BY INCREASING REVENUE PRODUCTIVITY. The old saw says, "We have to do more with less." The problem, though, is that the focus is usually on the "less" and the "more" rarely happens. Revenue productivity is a tool for getting that elusive "more" by actively and creatively searching for ideas for revenue growth without using a disproportionate amount of resources.

6. DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT A GROWTH BUDGET. All companies have a budget. It is, however, astonishing how little detail about revenue and sources of revenue growth you can find there. Almost all of the lines in the budget are cost-related. Few, if any, identify resources explicitly earmarked for growth. The growth budget provides a foundation that will allow a company to increase revenues instead of just talking about it.

7. BEEF UP STRATEGIC MARKETING. One of the key missing links for generating revenue growth at most firms is strategic marketing. Most people visualize marketing as tactical tools such as advertising, promotion, and brand-building. Strategic marketing, on the other hand, takes place at a much earlier stage by identifying and precisely defining which customer segments to focus on. It analyzes how the end-user uses the product or service and what competitive advantage will be required to win the customer and at what price points. Charan is using the term "upstream marketing". But I find it a weird way of describing strategic marketing. So I changed it.

8. UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO EFFECTIVE CROSS-SELLING (or value/solutions selling). Cross-selling can be a significant source of revenue growth, but most companies approach it from exactly the wrong perspective. They start by saying, "What else can we sell to our existing customer base?" Instead of looking inside-out your organization, you need to look outside-in. Successful cross-selling starts by selecting a segment of customers and then working backward to define precisely the mix of products and services they need and creatively shaping a value proposition unique to them.

9. CREATE A SOCIAL ENGINE TO ACCELERATE REVENUE GROWTH. Every organization is a social system, the center of which is a way of thinking and acting that sets both day-to-day actions and the long-term agenda. When an organization has an explicit growth agenda understood by everyone, growth becomes a central focus--a social engine--during formal meetings as well as informal discussions. This tool is closely linked to tool no. 1.

10. OPERATIONALIZE INNOVATION BY CONVERTING IDEAS INTO REVENUE GROWTH. Innovation is not the private property of lone geniuses working apart from the mainstream of the business. In any company of reasonable size, innovation is a social process that requires collaboration and communication for idea generation, selecting those ideas for revenue growth that are to be funded, and shaping those ideas into product prototypes and launching them into the marketplace.

Those were the 10 tools. I find the conclusion to be that revenue growth must supplement a cost reduction agenda (though you may want to wait 6-9 months after the efficiency programme have been initiated before embarking on the growth theme). Too many firms focus narrowly on cost cuttings, but to survive long-term we need to have the growth engine to be running as well (singles and doubles are just fine!). Charan explains how to make it work in practice.

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

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Product Description:
The coauthor of the international bestseller Execution has created the how-to guide for solving today's toughest business challenge: creating profitable growth that is organic, differentiated, and sustainable.

For many, growth is about "home runs" - the big bold idea, the next new thing, the product that will revolutionize the marketplace. While obviously attractive and lucrative, home runs don't happen every day and frequently come in cycles.

Products like Kevlar, Teflon, and the Dell business model for selling personal computers may be once-in-a-decade phenomena.A surer and more consistent path to profitable revenue growth is through "singles and doubles"-small day-to-day wins and adaptation to changes in the marketplace that build the foundation for substantially increasing revenues. The impact of singles and doubles can be huge. They are not only the basis for sustained revenue growth but, in fact, the foundation for home runs. Singles and doubles provide the discipline of execution, an absolute necessity for successfully bringing a breakthrough technology to market or implementing a new business model.

Inherent in this way of thinking is the revolutionary idea that growth is everyone's business-not solely the concern of the sales force or top management. Just as everyone participates in cost reduction, so must everyone be engaged in the growth agenda of the business. Every contact of each employee with a customer is an opportunity for revenue growth. That includes everyone from the people working in a company's call center handling customer inquiries and complaints to the CEO.

In this trailblazing book, Ram Charan provides the building blocks and tools that can put a business on the path to sustained, profitable growth. For more than twenty-five years, Ram Charan has been working day in and day out with companies around the world. The ideas he has developed for solving the profitable revenue growth dilemma facing many businesses are based on personally seeing what works in real time. These are ideas that have been tested across industries and that deliver results, and they can be put to use starting Monday morning.

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A Morning Cup of Strengthening (Includes Audio CD) [Spiral-bound] Review

I have some osteoarthritis and this is perfect for me.It has great exercises for strengthening wrists and shoulders as well as the rest of your body.It also has some smaller routines for people with back problems and shoulder problems.I don't recommend this for people who are looking for advanced strength training.

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Product Description:
A 15-minute strengthening routine that can stand alone or be used in combination with any exercise program. Step-by-step instructions, colorful illustrations, along with an audio CD provide the reader with details of each position and movement. In the spirit of the ?Morning Cup? series, A Morning Cup of Strengthening is designed for standing and chair use, so it is ideal for senior citizens or the disabled, but is beneficial to anyone seeking to improve their wellbeing. In one easy routine, author and certified physical therapist Beth Pierpoint shows readers how to build muscle and bone as well as body tone through simple weight-resistance exercises, using either common household objects or lightweight dumbbells.--This text refers to an alternate Spiral-bound edition.

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Morning is a Long Time Coming (Paperback) Review

I definately consider "summer of my german soldier" to be one of my top 3 favorite books of all time, so of course I was anxious to read the sequel. After reading some disappointing reviews, I was skeptical, but decided I had to read it to find out what ends up happening in Patty's life. Actually, the first half of the book is pretty good, although her relationship with Ruth is not what I pictured it would be, the first half of the book ends well with Patty getting ready to leave for Europe. Through the first part, she goes on about how she misses Anton and what her life has been like over the past 6 yrs. Then come the second part, and let me tell you...almost anyone could have written a better conclusion. It starts out with Patty on aboat to Paris, where she meets a fairly nice guy named Michael, who likes her. They are in love for a while, and there is even the chance of them getting married. Then he makes a joke about her "reeling in a doctor" (he's an american med student at switzerland) and she gets mad at him saying this and all of a sudden realizes that she dosent want him and he is somehow just like her father(although I never understand her point on this.) Soon she is in Paris, and meets another guy named Roger, who is the biggest jerk, and who most resembles everything that is bad about her father. Somehow, she still thinks hes good looking, so she has sex with him less than a day after she meets him! He even asks if it hurt when he entered into her, so this is definately NOT a childrens book!When she finally gets the courage to tell him she's going to Germany (months after she arrived in Paris) he goes wacko and tells her he considers her dead, and dosen't blame her father for disowning her because she is ungrateful to him, etc. Basically, Roger is a younger version of her father.When Patty gets to Germany, thats when she really goes off the wall. She thinks that everybody is a Nazi, and although everyone is really nice to her, she seems to hate them all of a sudden. She goes to the home of Anton, and his father welcomes her in and is really great to her, but once she learns that Mrs.Reiker is dead, she goes without asking him about Anton. That is when Patty really goes anti-German andeven gets thrown in jail for making a big scene back at her hotel. She goes back to Paris after calming herself, and realizes that Paris and Roger and the right things for her life, and she is sooo sorry she casued Roger so much pain and she'll never think of Anton again. (At this point, I was about ready to throw up)

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Product Description:
Patty is now eighteen, and a high school graduate--but she cannot face her future until she comes to terms with her past. She decides to go to Germany in search of Anton's mother, desperate for a connection to the man she loved and lost. En route, she stops in Paris, where she meets Roger. And now she must think twice about her plan--not only because of what she might find, but because of what she must leave behind...

"A compelling first-person narrative about love and human relationships." --Booklist, starred review

* A Puffin Novel
* 272 pages
* Ages 14 up

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The Sweet Smell of ASH in the Morning: The Pocket Edition (Volume 2) [Paperback] Review

John Crippen begins his book by describing the take down. When a patient becomes violent the staff must restrain him/her to prevent injury. It takes several people to perform this procedure. Crippen humorously describes the dangers, these include: a worker with extremely bad breath, a patient capable of passing gas upon will, and a patient capable of projectile.

The section titled Survival Guide 101 is hilarious. My favorite one had to do with a laser pointer.

He tells us about a kid that thought he was raised by hippos and trained by Bruce Lee. There was a patient that rolled up little balls of feces and placed them on the window sill. There are a lot of stories about urine and feces.

The author of this book worked in the Atascadero State Hospital in California for of 13 years. In The Smell of Sweet Ash In The Morning he shares some of his experiences of working with the mentally ill. He warns readers that many of his tales are sarcastic. Those working in the mental health profession face bizarre situations each day. They face the angry and belligerent each day. Like the author if they did not find a way to laugh about it, they too would end of in the facility.

Because I've had just a little experience with someone who is mentally ill I can relate to much of this book. Readers will laugh at his stories. At 52 pages it is a short humorous read. Some people may find it offensive, I didn't.

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Product Description:
Welcome to the bizarre world of being a Psychiatric Technician in one of the largest, most notorious forensic mental Institutions in the world. All as toldby a burnt out Psych-Tech. The same twisted stories as the 1st edition, only this one fits in your pocket! Humor NOT recommended for kids.

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Morning in the Burned House [Paperback] Review

This book is very aptly titled.The poems feel like waking up in a pile of cinders that used to be a house.Not sad really.Just sort of empty.As if everything has been reduced to stark facts with a few flowerssprouting here and there out of the ashes.There is something profoundlytouching about these poems.They do an amazing job of conveying the spentfeeling after the huge emotional turmoil of losing a parent.One line fromthe book that runs through my head sometimes:"After a pause, shesays--he hears her say--'I love you like salt.'"

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