Title: Guide to the Blue and John Crow Mountains
Author: Natural History Society of Jamaica
Editor: Margaret Hodges
Publishers: Ian Randle
Reviewed by: A.W. Sangster

We all know where the Blue Mountains are, but how many of us know where the John Crow Mountains are? This book will show you that the two sets of mountains are linked to each other and essentially traverse the parishes of St Andrew, St Mary, Portland and St Thomas.

The pocket-sized book of just over 200 pages is filled with either maps and magnificent photographs of the flora, fauna and the scenery as the guide takes you through the mountains.

Written by an expert

The book is obviously written by an expert and one can envisage that Dr Hodges has, probably in her long and productive life, travelled most, if not every one, of the trails that are so clearly documented. Her son Stephen has also used his camera to good advantage. The book is about the mountains and occasionally reference is made to parks. One gets the feeling that the author would like all the mountains to be a park!

Quite apart from the trails and walks in the park, the book has a number of short specialist chapters which give the reader an insight into various aspects of the territory being covered. They are all exquisitely illustrated.

But this is not a book to take up, put in your pocket and start walking. It will require careful planning and preparation for the trip. You will need a map of Jamaica to go with the guide so that you have a clear picture of where you will be, and the general direction you will be taking as you embark on the outing.

What about "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Lorax"? Are those characters metaphors for Christ? And "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" - if you'll only follow the Great Commission.

No one has ever doubted the layers of meaning in the stories of Dr. Seuss. "The Lorax" has obvious lessons about the environment. "The Butter Battle Book" took direct aim at the Cold War arms race. "Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!" was one way to demand the resignation of president Richard Nixon.

So when Horton's world of Who-ville was "saved by the Smallest of All," Robert Short saw the saviour of the Whos as a symbol for the saviour of all people. From "Green Eggs and Ham" to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", Short has reinterpreted many of Theodor Seuss Geisel's stories as subtle messages of Christian doctrine in the new book, "The Parables of Dr. Seuss."

Questions remain, however, about whether the original author intended such an interpretation or Short, a retired Presbyterian minister, is just seeing the stories through the lens of his own life.

"I was amazed at what I found when I started looking at it - all this Christian imagery was very carefully factored into his stories," Short said in an interview from his home in Little Rock, Ark.

"And that's what this book intends to do, is show how he has done this in a very carefully crafted way. It's there, and you could make an argument for it being intentionally there because it's done with such great care."

Initial sales of the highly anticipated Take-Two Interactive Software Inc game topped the $300 million for last year's "Halo 3" video game from Microsoft Corp.

Sales exceeded Hollywood's biggest blockbuster film debut, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which raked in $406 million globally in its first six days.

"Grand Theft Auto IV's first-week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date," Strauss Zelnick, chairman of Take-Two, said in a statement.

Made by Take-Two's Rockstar studio, the game is the latest in the controversial "Grand Theft Auto" series that has made headlines for hidden sex scenes and for high levels of violence.

In the latest game the player is cast as an Eastern European immigrant who runs drugs, shoots cops and knocks off rivals. Critics hailed the game as a brutal and satirical masterpiece.

A group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving has sought an adults-only rating on the game because it lets players drive after drinking virtual alcohol.

Shopping For Porcupine is an interesting book. It’s hard to put my thoughts about it into words really. The author, Seth Kantner, obviously loves his homeland, Alaska, and all it’s wildness. He loves the traditional way that people made a living there. He also seems to like a lot of the conveniences of today’s world, but he also hates them.

This conflict he feels comes across in his writing. He talks in the book about his childhood growing up, and how he learned to hunt from his father using old traditional techniques. Now in today’s world he hunts using these techniques, but also new methods like snowmobiles, binoculars and high powered rifles. And it eats him up. It’s obvious from his essays that he struggles with these decisions every day of his life. This management of old and new. This struggle to take only what he needs even though he can use our technology to take as much as he wants to take.

• There's no way Robin can predict what he'll go through in "Sunrise Over Fallujah" by Walter Dean Myers (Scholastic, 17.99, ages 13 and up).

As part of a Civil Affairs unit charged with putting a human face on the U.S. military, his job is to offer candy, solace and support to Iraqi civilians.

Besides Robin, an innocent from Harlem, his team includes Harris, a wise-talking homegirl, and Jonesy, a mellow lover of the blues.

Situations reported to be safe are anything but. The book contrasts the hell Robin goes through with his reassuring letters home. But, despite the peril of war, Myers' book is more thoughtful than action-packed.

It offers no easy answers about the war in which the United States is currently embroiled. And it humanizes the toll, making it a must for anyone considering joining the military.

• Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Miller fights a personal battle in "A Curse Dark as Gold" (Scholastic, 17.99, ages 13 and up), a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin by Elizabeth C. Bunce.

Charlotte and her younger sister, Rosie, inherit Stirwaters, the wool mill where they grew up.

Charlotte is determined to provide for her community of workers, just as the Industrial Revolution dawns. Unfortunately, Uncle Wheeler, who ostensibly moves in to protect the girls, takes advantage of them.

Breaking the code of silence, Christopher V. Flett has decided to give serious, ambitious women the scoop on how men think and behave in the business setting and how they view women in business.

 A surprisingly entertaining book, What Men Don’t Tell Women about Business is not a glory story and neither is it a list of suggestions of how women need to change. The book is a frank and revealing conversation that empowers women to find success in an environment still dominated by men.

The book is organised into three sections. The first part covers the male point of view, giving a glossary of the terminologies men use; categories men give to people in the workplace and how men view business in general. The second section focuses on tackling the common mistakes a woman makes when dealing with men. Flett ends the book with a questions and answers section that summarises his key arguments.

Despite the title, What Men Don’t Tell Women about Business would benefit male readers as much as it would to all businesswomen out there. The book teaches you how to gain and maintain the trust of male colleagues, overcome poor treatment and make sure you get credit for your work.

This book begins an overdue conversation rather than war. A genuine portrait of the proverbial feud between man and woman, What Men Don’t Tell Women about Business offers a whole new light into the other gender stating facts that we never knew or knew but never understood.

One thing that would make this book a lot better would be to integrate some theories of personality. Just like John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Flett unfortunately lumps all women into the detail-oriented (as opposed to big-picture-oriented) and feeling-oriented (as opposed to thinking-oriented) categories.

Each year, every major publisher puts out one or two issues specifically to be given away in comic book shops. This year's Free Comic Book Day will be Saturday, a day after Iron Man arrives in theaters.

"Events like that are a huge help," longtime comics writer Mark Waid said in an e-mail interview. "Anything that lets the general public know that comics are still vital and where to find them is much needed."

You'll be able to find Mr. Waid in Dallas on Free Comic Book Day. He's part of an impressive lineup of guests at the fourth annual Comics and Pop-Culture Expo, which is being held at Craddock Park near Zeus Toys & Comics on Lemmon Avenue.

"Comics are thriving right now, but they still sell predominantly to a hard-core fan base of superhero fanatics," Mr. Waid said. "We need to fix that by letting people know that superheroes don't define all of comics any more than reality shows define all of television."

That's saying something coming from Mr. Waid, who's written about almost every major superhero at DC and Marvel. But last year he became the editor-in-chief at BOOM! Studios. That company's Free Comic Book Day offering is the first issue of Salem: Queen of Thorns, a series about a witch hunter in colonial Massachusetts.

A lot of books attempt to capture the essence of that late-'70s/early-'90s golden age, to varying degrees of success. Some have focused on specific parts: the clothes, the attitude, the fallen wasted. But most try to apply the top down approach that yields the biblical recitations of Stooges-begat-Ramones-begat-Sex Pistols, etc.

Pretty Vacant: A History of UK Punk attempts to chronicle the heyday of the Sex Pistols/Clash explosion that changed British music. Punk 365 is a photographic assault on the history of punk in general, spanning from 1966-1993.

Pretty Vacant: A History of UK Punk

If you're going to start out with a title like A History of UK Punk, you've got to deliver more than a Sex Pistols setlist. Instead, this 289-page historical blowjob on Malcolm McLaren namedrops a few bands and devotes a whopping five pages to the Clash.

Too much of the book relies on author Phil Strongman's anecdotal descriptions of who-knew-who, venue lists, and Pistols gossip.

About the impact of the Pistols' fashion sense: "A boy could wear a battered pair of old, narrow Levis and be cool, a girl could, if she dared, wear a black T-shirt over stockings and suspenders and be high chic."

And there's this expansive conclusion: "...McLaren's personal magic brought the Pistols together and, crucially, kept them there long enough to spark an entire genre..."

In the two previous books in the series, Twilight and New Moon, 18-year-old Bella Swan wants to become a vampire like her vampire love Edward Cullen. She tries to convince Edward to change her into a vampire, but Edward breaks up with Bella so she’ll change her mind about wanting to become a vampire. Bella, distraught and on the rebound, befriends Jacob Black, who just happens to be a werewolf. Later Edward returns and Jacob and Bella stop dating since vampires and werewolves don’t get along.

I like that Meyer writes vampire stories that leave out the sexual tension that other teenage romance books have. She also abandons the idea that vampires can’t be in sunlight and that they live in coffins and don’t have reflections. She adds twists and turns to the old vampire tale, by creating more hardship for Edward to be with Bella.