I spent a while reading the reviews of other Amazon buyers and I can only add a few personal comments.
It is everything I had hoped for. I live in an area where digital radio reception is problematic and I am delighted to find that I receive strong signals on all the stations that interest me. At first I was unable to receive either of the local stations which only broadcast on FM, but after removing the telescopic aerial (according to the instructions in the manual), replacing it with the wire one provided and extending it with an extra length of wire as I did with my old set, I now have perfect reception there too.
The smooth, rich sound quality promises many hours of happy listening, although I have had to turn down the bass to -3 to suit my own taste.

This is, on the whole, a pleasing collection of traditional sea songs presented by a very accomplished group of male singers. Most of the items have their origins in the labours and sufferings of fishermen and sailors who struggled to take a bare living from the sea in past centuries, and it is very fitting that they are brought to us by the modern inheritors of that tradition.
The group is at its best, I think, in simple presentations which allow them to display their skills of harmony and expression, and I particularly enjoyed "Brightly Beams" and "Cadgwith Anthem." I was disappointed, however, to find that some of the work-songs, such as "The Mingulay Boat Song" and "Pull for the Shore", which are meant to accompany a steady rowing rhythm, are taken rather too fast. Most disappointing of all, the traditional feeling of too many songs is destroyed by the heavy percussion, which strikes me as being incongruous and distracting.
I later bought their earlier release, "Home From the Sea", and found it much more to my taste: very similar content but without the horrible, booming accompaniment.

Some reviewers are scathing in their criticism of this book because they simply do not understand the intentions of the author. It is rightly described as a fable and not a novel: that is to say, it claims to have neither historical accuracy in its detail, nor probability in the events narrated. It is a poetic reflection on genocide. The final ironic punch-line is 'Nothing like that could ever happen again... not in this day and age',and of course we know it has happened, and is continuing to happen. It happens not only to adults , but to children as well, which is what makes the story so poignant, and its ending so distressing.
Bruno's innocence and naivete is a literary device to emphasise the tragedy of children being caught up in adult hatred and evil. His perception that the two boys are like brothers since they share the same birthday is also a poetic device to bring out the concept of universal brotherhood or shared humanity in a way that any reader, young or old, should be capable of understanding. The simplicity of the language is a highly effective device for teaching us all an essential lesson about human nature.
It is a masterpiece in its own right, and will probably become a classic on a par with "Lord of the Flies", which also a fable rather than a novel.

According to the dust jacket, 'Andre Aciman tells a story of childhood innocence', but to me this was simply a series of trivial observations concerning elderly ladies and gentlemen whose lives were sheltered from the realities of their time. I abandoned it in disappointment, because I had expected a portrait of the boy, rather than of his affluent elders.

On one level, this is an entertaining read for teenagers or anybody else who is interested in the problems of confronting one's own sexuality today. It shows the courage needed for "coming out" and clearly indicates the dangers posed by those advocating suppressing gay feelings and by homophobic bullies. The heart-warming story of the friendship between Pablo and Manuel has a happy ending, of course, and parents need have no qualms because they never go further than kissing.
I am some way past my teens, however, and I bought it mainly to see how Sanchez would deal with the Church's traditional condemnation of homosexuality. He succeeds in this by pointing out that sexual orientation is innate rather than acquired or chosen, and by indicating the weakness of the popular biblical arguments. He shoots down Leviticus with ease, and points out that the Genesis 19 story about Sodom was only one attempt to account for the city's destruction; that the Sodomites' main sin was their refusal to accept God's messengers. He might have dealt more effectively with Paul's attack by pointing out that the great man was outraged more by the abuse of power in high places, by promiscuity and genereral excess, than by love between members of the same sex.
This is a book to buy, re-read and reflect upon.

This is a most remarkable record of what life was really like for a boy on a prairie farm in the mid-nineteenth century. We assume that it is a largely autobigraphical account, based on the author's memories, even though he uses different names for the characters.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the hard work they endured, the fun of their restricted schooldays, and the exuberance of their leisure activities and occasional holidays. The author has left us with a deeply satisfying account of family life before the days of modern civilization, when vast areas of land were wild and unspoilt.
My only reservation is that the ending fades away into sadness and nostalgia as the boys enter manhood. How much more satisfying it would have been to leave us with the resonance and joy of their boyhood - but those memories live on long after the last page has been turned.

What has happened to the once-healthy genre of novels about childhood?
Is it the lingering influence of "Lord of the Flies"?
Contemporary novelists, it seems, invariably portray boys' minds as beastly, delinquent, guilt-ridden or disordered.
Is this what readers really want, or simply what authors and publishers think they want?
To deal first of all with previous tags, I disagree that it can be classified as a gay novel. It certainly deals with an adolescent boy, but the focus is on his relationships with both parents. Although he feels sexually attracted towards a strangely caracaturish Catholic priest, these feelings seem to stem from the unsatisfactory relationship with his father, and I cannot see the attraction as being a major feature of the novel.
The ruined house is perhaps best seen as a symbol of his deteriorating mental condition, but to explain the reason for this would be to give away the twist in the ending.
My second criticism is in the publishers' choice of cover picture, which in no way suggests the subject material of a fourteen year-old's sick state of mind.
Although there is humour of a kind in the array of whimsical characters who are introduced, their dream-like qualities tend at times to verge on the nightmarish, and there are certain passages which strike me as being distasteful. Overall, it is not a pleasant novel to read, and I did not enjoy it as much as "At Swim".

Although Twain intended the novel mainly for young readers, it has to be admitted that his literary style and references to contemporary life will make it hard going for today's child reader.
Thousands of adults will enjoy coming back to the work, however, epecially if they have not read it since they were children themselves. What comes over most vividly is a boy's zest for life and adventure, and the freedom that boys apparently enjoyed in that era, and as another reader has pointed out, the degree of superstition among young and old. In this respect, however, one has only to read the earlier novels of Thomas Hardy to appreciate that superstition was equally rampant in England at the same time.
It is not only Twain's ability to create boyish adventure that continues to charm us; it is also his ability to smile at the nature of boys, and to make his readers smile too.

For all those who enjoy Boy Stories, this is a very worthwile addition to a bookshelf. To be honest, I felt that the narrative is a little slow in developing, but once Aldrich reaches Chapter Six, and we move into the adventures of celebrating the Fourth of July, setting out for a boat trip to a small island and firing off old cannons in the middle of the night, the reader is in for a treat. There is plenty of boyish adventure of a kind that might have inspired Mark Twain, and one wishes that Aldrich had invented more.
I was slightly disappointed by the ending, which seems something of an anti-climax, but this need not detract from the pleasures of the main sections. The publishers, however, might have made a better job of their editing, for there are numerous examples of erratic punctuation and of illustrations mentioned in the text being omitted.

Like the previous reviewers, I have only just discovered G M Brown, and I certainly expect to read more of his work in the future.

His writing is more lyrical than that of Neil Gunn, but like that great storyteller of Caithness, he succeeded admirably in capturing the atmosphere of northern Scotland, awakening a sense of its long history and opening the minds of its people.

I cannot help comparing this book with Gunn's "Morning Tide", because both works centre on the life of a young boy in the early years of this century, but the two books are different, for, while Gunn creates a convincing character and tells his story, Brown's Thorfinn somehow does not come alive in the same way. He is more of a literary device, a pivotal awareness, through whose reveries we explore the island landscape and come to meet the adult inhabitants. There is, of course, another difference. While Gunn is always conscious of his country's history and culture, the present is what matters; Brown, in this book at least, leads us constantly out of the present and into the more distant past. It is only in the concluding pages that we move into the twentieth century and Thorfinn begins to emerge as a real person.

As I began reading the book and became aware of Brown's simple language and the magical atmosphere of time-travel, I actually wondered whether it was really for children, but his simplicity of style is a means by which he represents the mind of a young child and makes the novel accessible to a very wide public. This is a work of great charm which will appeal to readers of almost any age.