Gifted!

Advantages: Just brilliant in every way
Disadvantages: None

...a joy to read from start to finish, and really had me sitting and thinking as I turned the final few pages. It is really a moral story, with a bit of magic thrown in to cheer it up, but come the ending everything comes together in a quite shocking ending which really made me sit up and reread what I had just read! Ahern seems to have the ability to create a magical world on paper which you can visualise yourself so deeply that you are thrown so deeply into the story, you want to keep reading right until the end all in one go! The shiny snowflake cover allows this book to be a great Christmas gift as well as a book that is going to be great to bring out for Christmas again and again. I borrowed by copy from the library but will getting myself a copy as soon as its out in paperback. Highly recommended, I absolutely loved it - this is one book...

mummy2harry 15.11.2008 · Read review
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Review of The Gift - Cecelia Ahern

These gifts made me a very liked person this x-mas

Advantages: Prices, personalization, variety
Disadvantages: Delivery time, customers support

...tea-cup for my dad that said ?Best dad? and a little x-mas tree ornament in the shape of a golf cart with my family name ?Jonsson? written on the license-plate. I also ordered a ?wine-bottle? filled with golf balls and with a label that said ?Chateau de Bengt? (my dads name), a romper for my niece with her name as Alva-o-saurus and then a dinosaur and finally a t-shirt that also held my boyfriends name. Checking out is easy, you can change your mind if you want to add wrapping or gift cards to your items. Also checkout as a bit too many steps though. First you fill in billing address and then shipping address. You can?t choose ?same as billing? but you can add addresses to an address-book and then use that one for faster filling out your address. For US-orders there are several shipping alternatives, but for international orders there...

KarinJonsson 11.04.2005 · Read review
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Review of personalcreations.com

All I want for X-mas

Advantages: I might be a good boy for another year
Disadvantages: My wife would never see me again ...

...This is my first ever top 10 and I have decided to approach it in two sections (I suppose this makes it a top 20 but I know you?ll understand): my first 10 will be gifts that I would love to receive and may actually stand a chance of getting and the second 10 will be the pure and raw materialistic fantasy that dwells shallow inside me. I haven?t put these into any order because the prospect of trying to rank things I want but can?t have is just too demoralising. Enough of the self-pity ? Please adjust your bottom so it is comfy, straighten your back to a healthy posture, position your hand to scroll down with comfort and prepare for a sojourn into materialism and the things I want for me me me!!! The ?real world? top 10: - a Playstation / X-Box ? I?ve always wanted one and my wife won?t let me have one ? she says I?ll play it...

Chimkuyu 02.12.2004 · Read review
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Review of Top 10 Gifts I'd Like to Receive

Looking a Gift Horse...

Advantages: Good acting by Mr Reeves and Cate Blanchet
Disadvantages: Story line a bit flat

...I often wondered if I was missing something after seeing this film and having read all the reviews and heard all the exclamations of wonder that seemed to be directed at this 2002 film. It was okay, I suppose, but I felt it had been done many times before and that I was wise to everything that was going to happen. Directed by Sam Raimi, of Spiderman and Evil Dead fame, The Gift tell the story of a woman with ESP who is requested to search for a young lady who has gone missing. Annie (the lady in question), who is played well by the lovely Cate Blanchett, is one of these village fortune-tellers, loved by many and hated by others. One of these people who hate her is the wife-beating Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reaves). Mother of three, and a widow, Annie is menaced by Reaves. During her investigation and her consequent 'visions...

Borg 02.10.2001 (25.11.2007) · Read review
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Review of Gift, The

Gifts from the Kitchen

Advantages: See Review
Disadvantages: See Review

...Gifts from the Kitchen ? Ann Kleinberg: I have a thing for cookbooks, I have loads of them and I love nothing more than snuggling up on the sofa and just looking through them. This particular book was a birthday present from my Mum last January and now that Christmas is here, (woohoo), it has been getting plenty of use. Gifts from the Kitchen is a very pretty and girly hardback book from marks and Spencers. It is styled in a very kitsch way with lots of pretty pictures, pink and gingham! It is the sort of cookbook that instantly makes me want to a don a pinny and morph into a 1950s house-wife! The theme of pink and pale green flows throughout the book and teamed with the beautiful photography it works perfectly to get you into the mood to make lovely edible gifts which is, of course, the theme of the book. There are forty recipes in...

donnabroom 23.11.2009 · Read review
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Review of Gifts from the Kitchen - Parragon Book Service

Sam Raimi's The Gift

Advantages: see review
Disadvantages: see review

...If you have seen Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series of movies then you might be expecting something a little different than what The Gift has to offer you. This shows a more mature Raimi, showing that he can indeed cut it in the world of 'serious' film-making, as opposed to hilarious schlock horror. The Gift however benefits from his directorial talents but unfortunately even he can not pull it up from being a simple painting by numbers thriller. The wonderful Cate Blanchett plays Annie, a psychic in a small southern town. Her husband died a few years previously and the only money she has to survive on is the small amount she gets from his life insurance and the money she gets from offering psychic readings to the townsfolk. Amongst her clientel is Valerie Barksdale(Hilary swank), wife of abusive husband Donnie(Keanu Reeves) who frequently...

wampyrii 06.10.2001 · Read review
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Review of Gift, The

A great gift of a book

Advantages: An adventure from start to finish.
Disadvantages: Lots of description and detail.

...THE GIFT *************** The Gift is the first book in Alison Croggon's Pellinor series, which begins with The Gift and ends with The Singing. This tetralogy (or quartet, as Croggon herself refers to the books), is aimed at young adults, and is a very descriptive account of the adventures of a young girl called Maerad. The story takes place in the world of Edil-Amarandh, and the books are based on ?The Riddle of the Treesong?, or ?Naraudh Lar-Chanë? in Annaren, the language spoken in Annar, which is a region in Edil-Amarandh. THE AUTHOR ************** Alison Croggon was born in the Transvaal in South Africa, and her parents moved to England before settling down in Australia when Alison was seven years old. Alison was a poet and playwright before she became a fantasy author, publishing The Gift in 2003. On her website (see below) you...

Nienke 26.10.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Gift - Alison Croggon

Beware Romans bearing gifts

Advantages: Superb political satire, the tension between Asterix and Obelix works well
Disadvantages: Not enough is seen of the local Romans until late on, slightly old-fashioned feel to relationships

...Many fans of the famous comic books starring the indomitable Gauls, who hold out against the Roman invasion in 50BC, would hold that there are 24 "real" books in the Asterix series - which is to say, those written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, rather than the later books entirely produced by Uderzo after Goscinny's death. "Asterix and Caesar's Gift" is number 21 in the series, having been published in France in 1974 and the UK three years later. As always, the English translators were the excellent team of Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge, who deserve a huge amount of the credit for the series' success in Britain. Unusually, this particular story does not open in the familiar surroundings of the village of the Gauls. Indeed, for the first few pages we follow events only in Rome, where a group of soldiers is about to...

davidbuttery 28.01.2010 · Read review
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Review of Asterix And Caesar's Gift - Rene Goscinny

not the perfect gift

Advantages: good acting by well-known stars
Disadvantages: poor plot line that drags on a little too long

.... Although she does not have a huge part, she does bare more of her flesh than usual. There are no real twists in the film, and the ending is pretty predictable. Overall, my opinon of the film is that it is not right cracking. With all the acting ability available, it does not make the most of it. The film is boring in more parts than one and drags on alot, with little excitment. If you like exciting and tense thrillers - you should give 'The Gift' a miss. Some could call it a psychological thriller, not sure if I would agree or notIt is neither tense or exciting. The film overall is a real miss and I believe it does not live up to my expectations. Thanks for reading my op and all comments and reviews are welcome. Thanks. Rob :)...

RobStead 06.11.2002 · Read review
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Review of Gift, The

The Gift - A Gift to Watch

Advantages: acting
Disadvantages: plot is a bit 'seen before'

...- who plays Joey in Dawson's Creek) who seems to be the local…(how do I put this politely?!) ‘sexpot’ (as I read in one review) who seems to not be too serious about the prospect of marriage to the principle. The story does not follow Jessica though, it mainly follows Annie Wilson, (Cate Blanchett) a widowed mother of three young boys. Annie has this psychic gift (hence the title of the film surprisingly) which she uses to tell peoples’ fortunes. It is mainly the troubled locals that go round to her house to see Annie play with some cards, lay them out on a table and tell the future. What she sees are purely for other peoples benefit, and so she only accepts donations from them, rather than a payment. Annie’s best friend seems to be Valerie Barksdale (Oscar-winner Hilary Swank), who is repeatedly hit by...

danradders 14.04.2001 · Read review
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Review of Gift, The