Most important to me is that an author provide realistic and complete information about the real drawbacks of the plants. Glowing, idealized descriptions are available for free in catalogs, where all the plants are spectacular, completely adaptable to various difficult situations, and trouble-free. It irks me no end to purchase a book that does not include information like susceptibility to pests and disease, reaction to less than ideal conditions, tendency to sprawl or spread ... you know what I mean. Nobody is perfect, and that goes for plants as well as people. A good gardening book delves into the flaws, not just the merits, of each perennial it covers. Also, the photos should NOT be close-ups of the flowers, they should show what the plants actually look like. This kind of picture probably does not sell books, at least not as well as lovely, artistic flower photos do, but that's what gardeners are interested in. Thanks for asking, and good luck with the book.

Ceph- Thanks, but that's not the book, although I did read it years ago and it was very useful. The book I am thinking about has to do with letting go of anger. I am almost beginning to feel like Thurman because I am getting irritated w/oldest SD and I don't want to feel like that toward her. If I should be irritated w/anyone, it should be DH for not addressing some things and I am, but he doesn't want confrontation and truly she is old enough to not need to be told how to behave. This is so very gross, a health hazard and it's my biggest complaint. SD (24) hasn't cleaned out her ferrets' cage in at least four weeks . The stench of ammonia from the urine is unbelievable (not to mention there's also the feces). I have been trying to get over an upper respiratory bacterial infection and cough for several weeks. For some reason, whenever I am home and exposed to the stench, I seem to start coughing a lot more - hmmmm. I went to the doctor Thursday and we discussed the ammonia exposure. I came home asked DH to ask her to PLEASE clean the cage. He said he'd speak w/her Monday because he happened to speak w/her earlier that day about her reaction to our wedding and she was upset and cried. Of course, it also inhumane and she literally sleeps in the cesspool, so she may be the next one with a cough. We have a towel blocking the crack of her door, but the odor is so strong that it still creeps into the rest of the house. There is also the issue of her putting spoonfuls of peanutbutter into her dog's toy as a treat and letting him have his treat on our 3 month old carpet. I don't how many times she has been asked not to do that by DH, but she just does as she pleases because there is never any follow through on his part. She obviously has no respect for us and our property. Again, more his fault, but at 24 I think she shouldn't need to be told more than once. Thanks for letting me vent and please don't let me turn into a Thurman. geri

Eureka!! I found the information! From an obit. in the Washington Post June 4, 2011 "Harry Bernstein, memoirist who wrote of childhood of deprivation, dies at 101 Harry Bernstein, who caused a literary sensation when he emerged from anonymity in his 90s to write two devastating memoirs that explored his childhood of squalor, abuse and anti-Semitism, died June 3 at his daughter's home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 101. The cause of death was not reported. "The Invisible Wall" drew favorable comparisons to Frank McCourt�s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angela�s Ashes," about that author's hardscrabble upbringing in Ireland. Reviewing "The Invisible Wall" in the New York Times, William Grimes called it "a world of pain and prejudice, evoked in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds." In "The Dream," Mr. Bernstein's follow-up memoir, he traced his family's move to Chicago in 1922. In reviews, critics described Mr. Bernstein as a storyteller of quiet, heartbreaking power. Author Juliet Wittman, writing in The Washington Post, said of "The Dream" that "beneath the poignant descriptions of places and times past, beneath the rising and falling patterns of these characters' lives, we hear at Wordsworth called "the still sad music of humanity." For much of his life, Mr. Bernstein's writing career was steady but unremarkable. He critiqued and summarized manuscripts for film studios in the 1930s and 1940s once giving thumbs down to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as "just another historical romance." Later, he edited trade magazines and continued to publish articles and short stories. In 1981, he wrote a novel, "The Smile," about a fashion model. It received little attention, although he joked that he knew it sold at least one copy because of a letter he received from a reader. When his memoirs were published, Mr. Bernstein faced some skepticism from critics who said he could not possibly recall entire conversations from his childhood. He insisted he did, as they had been seared into his brain with photographic clarity. As much as he tried to forget the past, Mr. Bernstein did not extinguish the burning hatred he said that he felt for his father, who made his mother's harsh life even worse. She died at 65 of malnutrition in an unheated tenement in the Bronx, N.Y. After her funeral, he never saw his father again. "He wept when she died. That's the only good thing I can say about him," Mr. Bernstein told USA Today. He dedicated "The Invisible Wall" to his mother, "who gave us so much and received so little. Can this book make up for it? Can anything?" � The Washington Post Company

Kathy, I'm not sure anyone is on Susan Hill's wavelength, but I do like her Serrailler books. Of her others that I have read, and I haven't read many, I only liked Mrs. deWinter and Howard's End Is on the Landing. She is too dark for me. My daughter and I saw the London stage production of Woman in Black, and she gave a little squeak and grabbed my arm at one point.