How do you keep those leaves so healthy? How does Golden Holstein hold up in the heat? It looks great, but doesn't seem to have many petals. Saphir does indeed have great form. I appreciate bush shots; on many forums, there seems to be an obsession with the largest close-up possible.

I buy books at our Friends of the Library and picked up a really good one for 50 cents yesterday. It is GOD SLEEPS in RWANDA by Joseph Sebarenzi with Laura Ann Mullane. The little blurb on the back cover of the dust jacket says it is a passionate, heartfelt perspective about the tragedy, and personal ordeal and survival of Joseph. It also says the author writes with exceptional clarity on Rwanda's complicated past and present. I recently bought two excellent cookbooks there for less than a dollar. I love bargains and supporting our local public library.

Vee, thanks for the link to the Gallup poll. Whew! It will take me a while to assimilate it. As for "the sad state of affairs": I understand now. I tied it to the wrong paragraph. :-) Woodnymph, yeah, I realize that I'm in the minority about the film of To Kill a Mockingbird. I figure my love of the whole book makes me too critical of the adaptation, which picks out and gives emphasis to a particular part. Which reminds me: June, if you watch the Olivier/Oberon Wuthering Heights, don't expect to see the whole story -- you will only get part of it. Otherwise, it's a quite fascinating interpretation: telling, I think, of what adaptors of the 1930s thought was important and what subsequent audiences have taken in. Woodnymph, I saw The English Patient film first, and then read the book. While the "essence" of the book might have been captured in the film, the two are so different! I like the film better. Another essence capturer, I think, is The French Lieutenant's Woman. Oh gosh, yes, the Polanski-directed Tess is superb, I think, and very faithful. Actually I like nearly all of the film versions of Hardy's books, particularly Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Alan Bates will always be my Gabriel Oak. I also liked most of the Merchant-Ivory productions. I certainly like their adaptations of Forster, though I find Forster's writing insufferably Edwardian. I do like some Edwardian writing but Forster's was even more uptight than most. Knowing his bio and the times, I can understand why he wrote the way he did but the priggishness still exasperates me. Speaking of another Forster -- Margaret Forster, that is -- and Alan Bates: I adore the 1966 adaptation of Forster's Georgy Girl. I loved that book so much as a teenager that I determined I was to live in London. When this subject comes up, I always have to mention two of my favorite short story adaptations: John Huston's "The Dead" (from Joyce's Dubliners) and "Babette's Feast" (from Dinesen's Anecdotes of Destiny). June, you're right: there are so many good films that owe their genesis to a book.

I think this warning about the same/similar books under different titles is important, especially in the electronic age. Let me mention Phillips-Rix books as another example. I have their "Best Rose Guide" published in the US (Firefly Books) in 2004 which was simultaneously published in England by Macmillan as "The Ultimate Guide to Roses". I believe that both are a somewhat expanded version of their earlier book on roses (see Vaporvac's collection above) published in the Random House Guide series as "Rose". Their ISBNs are all different though they are practically identical, especially their dual editions from 2004. While these would not be the problem in the old pre-WWW days and it's not uncommon to have the same books sold under different titles on different continents, I think that it's quite different now. They can all be purchased in the same country through online sales, even from the same vendor, which can easily lead to the confusion that these might be different books if the previews are not available. On Amazon, for example, there is no notification that the two books from 2004 are identical but published under different titles for different markets.