Epinions Recent Reviews for playchina

Ascent To Truth Succeeds in Lofty Goal

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 08:43:22 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Sunday June 13,2004 I started reading it yesterday afternoon and finished reading it this afternoon. Nope, I didn't read it non-stop but I did read it into the wee hours of the morning and then finished it early this afternoon. I am referring to...

Releasing the prisoner within

Sun, 2 May 2004 07:10:14 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - My mother tried to get me to read the original of this series, but it wasn't until years later when I was teaching in China and stumbled upon this book in our English library that I finally read a chicken soup book. As usual, mom was right. The...

God's Chinese Nut - Taiping revealed

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:35:21 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - God's Chinese Son is a very revealing book written by a man - Jonathan Spence - who I personally can relate to - since both he and I live (or have lived) in China and are married to Chinese women. This book details one of the strangest rebellions in...

Forbidden City - Make it Unforbidden on your agenda

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 11:36:12 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - The Forbidden City is the place my fiancee wanted most to see when we went to Beijing before the SAR...

Northwest - Better than the Best

Tue, 3 Dec 2002 11:09:12 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - A good airline will get you there on the time and leave on time. They will have clean restrooms and good food. The attendants will live up to their name by being attentive. The entertainment will be both qualitatively and quantitatively sufficient...

Skip the Fort

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 11:47:16 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - What is there to see in Fort Wayne? A few things I suppose.

The best spot in Fort Wayne is the Foellinger Botanical Garden right in the center of the city. This place has three rooms devoted to the world of plants. One room - and the rooms...

Holly Golightly Into My Heart

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 11:16:25 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - What do you give a beautiful girl who seems to have everything but really has nothing? How about your heart?

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a wonderful change in the Truman Capote book. It allows the story to get by the forty years ago censors...

Cutting Edge Gets the Gold

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 10:46:28 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Sometimes there is chemistry between two people in the acting profession and you can believe that they really are lovers. Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney have it in this movie.

Kelly plays a figure-skating prima donna who is pushed too hard by an...

Edward is a Cut Above the Ordinary

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 10:30:53 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Edward Scissorhands is a classic movie that works on so many levels. In it, a man from on top of a mountain is discovered by the Avon lady - and this man happens to have hands of scissors.

What happens to Edward Scissorhands, whose creation...

My Girl - Watch it WITH your Kids

Mon, 2 Dec 2002 10:14:17 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - My Girl is a story that I believe would be a bit difficult for the audience it was intended for - pre-adolescent children - to deal with.

In this story, Anna Paquin does a wonderful job in the role of Veda, the undertaker's pre-teen daughter,...

Song of Perfection

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 05:25:10 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - I am a religious movie fan, but I have to say that too many of them are guilty of over-acting and sanctimonious scripts.

Not this one. The inspiring story of Bernadette of Lourdes is well-written and well-acted by a talented cast featuring...

The Little Prince is a Big Success

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:25:43 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - The Little Prince lives alone on a planet except for a flower unlike any other in the world and some extinct volcanoes that he cleans out every day because "one can never be too sure."

This allegorical tale sees a little prince in his own tiny...

My China - Welcome to China!

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 06:12:24 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - I will do my best here to give you a taste of the China I have experienced in my seven months of living here as an American teaching English. I need a month of your time and the willingness to seek out the "real" China and you can see Beijing, Shanghai,...

Monkeys and Junie - a Barrel of Laughs

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 05:16:50 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - This is the book that introduces us to Junie's brother Ollie. The kindergarten student Junie is at her " Amelia Bedelia" best in this one - when it comes to taking figures of speech literally. And it leads to the poor girl's embarrassment at school...

Junie B. Jones Will Capture Your Heart

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 12:36:07 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - This is the first Junie B. Jones book I ever read and I never before burst out laughing so many times while reading a book!

Junie is this precious kindergarten girl who is all excited about the school carnival. But when she gets there she...

Seoul food Korean-style

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 06:36:12 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - I lived in Seoul for most of this year and part of last. I must admit that I didn't get to eat out as much as I would have liked and that Korean cuisine is not among my list of favorites.

Having said that, I still believe this is a good guide...

Citadel Inn Makati: No Thrilla in Manila

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 06:05:02 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - The Citadel Inn in Makati is not the best place to stay.

1) Cost - About fifty dollars per night - if you have a connection who is a resident of the Phillipines. Otherwise you will pay at least fifty per cent more.

2) Location -...

As Hard as Iron as Smooth as Silk

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 04:55:46 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - I was sitting in my apartment in China with this book in my hands - I had been in China less than two months on my first foreign trip when a friend recommended this book to me. I started to read it and realized that this is the book I should have read...

The Wizard of Alls

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 04:51:38 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - How can a movie one sees every year for his entire life still be fresh?

Somehow, this one can.

The Wizard of Oz is the movie that lucked into the right cast, made the right changes in L. Frank Baum's original story, and came in on...

Gulliver's Travels Inside Humanity

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 04:12:07 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Gulliver's Travels is a scathing satire written about 18th century England by the top satirist of his age.

Jonathan Swift is Gulliver - and is the one who travels the world and runs into people who symbolize specifically the British people...

Huck Finn is a Worthy Adventure in Reading

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 08:28:46 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Only Mark Twain could have one of his characters start a novel by referring to his previous book - and get away with it.

Huckleberry Finn is a teen-age boy in the South, who in the sort of prequel to this book(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), is...

A Teen Love story but not FOR teens

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 07:49:05 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - William Shakespeare's best-known work. Romeo and Juliet is the classical tale of star-crossed lovers. Shakespeare could have said after this one, " Okay, folks, this is the classic tragic love story, all the rest of you are just trying to get second...

To Sir With More Love than he Deserves

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 07:25:45 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - This is the book that inspired me to become a teacher. I have realized since that the author made himself out to be a hero in a way that turned the story into a fairy tale. It also made it into a borderline pathetic romance.

The story has...

Not Every Boo is Scary

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 06:40:34 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel of the American South. It is pre-civil rights, post-slavery, " Jim Crow" South. This novel is about a lawyer named Atticus Finch and his children Jem and his younger sister Scout.

Atticus - in one of the two...

One Hit No Eyre

Thu, 21 Nov 2002 06:13:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author playchina - Charlotte Bronte wrote a book that meant that she would always be considered one of the greatest writers ever. That book was this book.

The story of Jane Eyre is a Gothic romance. It is a classic in which symbolism plays a major part. It is...