This book is a must for parents of ADHD children and the teachers who teach them. As a parent and a teacher, this book is a valuable resource.
Chris Dendy is a great person as well.

We Americans have only been discovering Are You Being Served? in the U.S. for about the past ten or so years, but this series has long since been off the air in Britain. Considered by most modern Brits to be dated and terribly broad, AYBS? is not on the top of their favorites list. However, it is on mine.
This book, which was produced only after America started its love affair with the series, is a great supplement for those who can’t get enough of Grace Bros.’ staff.

You get introduction to each of the characters and the actors who portrayed them. You are privy to information that you may often have wondered about. You also can try your hand at some trivia. The best for me was the Episode Guide. I have a few personal favorites, but the pinnacle is when Mrs. Slocumb is all trussed up in a gold lame dress for a commercial shoot and the remote microphone gets lost in her cleavage. Hilarious!

This might as well be Round About Everything You Wanted To Know About Are You Being Served?. Why write about a TV series? With the exception of soap operas, a TV series that goes on for the good part of a decade isn’t something to brush aside lightly, especially in the UK, with its limited, government-subsidized budgets given to the BBC. Are You Being Served? began with a pilot episode in 1972, then as a series in itself, lasting from 1973 to 1985. 12 years and 10 seasons wasn’t that bad for a British TV series–look at Doctor Who and ‘Allo ‘Allo.
The inspiration is the most important thing–without it, there wouldn’t have been a show. Leave it to Jeremy Lloyd, one of the co-creators, to work two years at Simpson’s department store and get canned for selling drinks on the floor on a hot day! Two years and he came up with this much output? I’ve been working four years in the same place; what can I come up with?

For each regular character, there is a description, followed by a short bio of the actor who played said character. Naturally, there is a lot more print on the two most popular characters–John Inman (Mr. Humphries) and Molly Sugden (Ms. Slocombe). The book says that Mr. Humphries was camp, not gay, but doesn’t explain the difference. Camp basically means openly flamboyant and more relaxed in extroverted emotion without the sexual orientation issue. I liked all the characters, though Mr. Humphries and Mr. Lucas were on the top of my list.

Things I didn’t know that raised my eyebrows was Mike Berry’s past career as a singer, as a contemporary of the Beatles.

There is also a season by season guide, with a synopsis to the stories, guest cast, original date of transmission, and ratings from * to ****. Going through this part, I realized that with the exception of the first and fourth seasons (1973, 1976), no season was completely pristine–there were bound to be some substandard stories. I agree with most of the ratings, and yes, the overall ratings were a bit uneven during the last three, when each season was every other year instead of every year. The book also includes the episodes of Grace and Favour, titled Are You Being Served Again? for the US, as well as the Australian series never aired here, and the various spinoffs.

There’s also glossary of British slang in the back of the book as well as in the margins, which is as nice as ninepence for the uninitiated.

At the end of the day, anyone trying to get behind the scenes of this hit series will get a rattling good time. So read on to the top of your bent.

To be sure, this is no seminal effort on the foundations of British comedy. But it is a fun, bathroom-reading kinda book that would make an excellent, thoughtful stocking stuffer for the anglophile in your life.

“Enabling Communication in Children with Autism” is a very practical book which helps teachers ,parents and others working with Autistic childen to provide an environment which will optimise the opportunities for communication to take place. I found the book easy to read in clear “bite sized” chapters with a good mix of case studies and practical examples. As a teacher I found I could apply it well to my own setting.
It does not require expensive resources, or staff to completely re-organise classroom settings. Rather, it emphasises how crucial it is for adults to examine their own communication strategies with childen, and how this can be vital in extending children’s own communicative acts.

Two of the main stategies are the use of minimal speech and proximal communication. In applying these approaches described I felt very comfortable, and I have observed positve changes as a result over a period of a few weeks. These ,and other strategies are clearly and easily explained with practical examples. The approaches described fit well with other techniques for teaching children with Autism, eg PECs and TEACCH.

What a life. What a personality. I have enjoyed this book enormously: You get the feeling that this is James Brown telling you his extraordinary story in a long and fascinating conversation. He talks about his music, his personal life and troubles, his philosophy, and, what I think is most thrilling, show business and stage performance.

My main goal in reading this book was resolving a personal doubt: Was he the genius behind his records, or was it Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley or his producers? After reading the book and listening to his records with lots of new insights, I have little doubt that the main driving force (although not the only one) in his records was himself. What Brown says about his music, where it came from, how it was made, what he intended to say, really made me discover many things in his records! For instance, if you have ‘Live At The Apollo (1963)’ (one of Brown’s best albums) or have listened to it, DON’T MISS what he has to say about it -and play the LP again. I couldn’t stop laughing for almost a quarter of an hour.

On another hand, I was also wondering: Is he a ruthless, egotistic and authoritarian character, as he is sometimes portrayed? In the book, JB openly and candidly talks about the discipline in his band, prison, guns, Black Power, and politics; and, paradoxically, in the end I finished with the impression of having received a lesson in confidence in man, tolerance, faith and spirituality. Soulful singers like him or BB King really have something to say about life-not only in their records.

On a last note, I think the (co-)writer Bruce Tucker has structured the book very well, hooking you from the beginning until the last page. As usual, it is better to avoid beginning with the prefaces and forewords, and leave them for the end. Only a little information about musicians in the sessions would have been welcome -although it is true that it’s not the scope of the book.

Definitely worth reading it if you are a James Brown fan, and also very commendable if you are interested in music in general.

Brown manages to give a voice to Anna, and provides plenty of chemistry between her leads, but the story is told in excruciating detail; she could easily peel away 100pages and it still would be far too long. Carl is one of her more menacing and unredeemable characters. He is evil incarnate, and not above proving it from chapter to chapter. “Unspeakable” is a pretty average novel (and a little disappointing for fans of Browns later novels); recommended only for true Brown fans that want to read her full library of offerings.

I skipped to the end, because I did have some curiosity about what finally happened, so I guess Brown had me hooked on some level. But not enough to keep me going.