Had a volume problem + transferring contacts right from the start! Volume was normal when listening to messages and music but when someone called volume was almost impossible to understand the caller. Transferring our contacts it took 229 contacts and duplicated them to over 2000 contacts?? Contacted support and did a Hard re-boot and it made not difference even after 3 attempts. - BUT we have friends who have Blu and they dearly love Blu phones! AMAZON gave me no problem on the return and we're probably going to go with another Blu but a littler better Model with better Reviews. Had the Volume problem been solved this would have definitely been a 5 Star experience. Let you know the outcome a little later down the road! Larry Marshall Meadows

This is a strong anthology of essays that I enjoyed overall. All the essays were short enough to be read in one sitting, which is my preferred way for reading essays. There are a few trusty big name crowd-pleasers in the mix -- Malcolm Gladwell with his cogent, well-argued piece on social status and immigration; Zadie Smith's drifting, whimsical meditation on Manhattan; David Sedaris' self-deprecating tale of enslavement to Fitbit. My personal favorite goes to Solonit's "Arrival Gates," a lyrical essay penned at the Japanese shrime Fushimi Inari-taisha. I am not a stranger to Solonit's prolific writings, many of which lyrical and travel-related, but this essay struck a particular chord with me, its peaceful reverence and acceptance had a lulling, entrancing draw, creating Solonit's own trance, lost in the the presence of time. There are others, who despite their longstanding fame, are new voices to me -- Roger Angell's hugely entertaining essay "This Old Man" has one of the most enduring, memorable opening voice that I can recall. My only complaint, which is also voiced by other readers, is that this collection is heavy on the topic of aging and mortality. This perhaps reflect the corpus of work in 2015, with the aging of the boomer population, and the noteworthy works of writers like Hitchens and Didion circling the imminent passing of life. But as a celebration of the best essays of our time, I wished for a little optimism, a little more color and diversity