Worst in Ages
	This book is atrocious.  It is THE worst book I have read in the last decade.  A 10 year old could have done better. The plot gets more ridiculous as the book progresses, the characters act unbelievably and it is amazing that someone can actually get paid to write such garbage.  The only plus was that I got it out of the library and didn't pay for it


I just don't understand
	Why are there so many insanely positive reviews for this book?  Honestly, what has this author contributed to the world with this book?  Was it the characters?  No, they've all been used and reused and used some more in practically every other work of fiction in the last fifty years (i.e. cocky and handsome FBI agent, beautiful but dangerous killer with a past, take-no-sh#t FBI boss, etc.).  Was it the deep insight into the characters themselves?  A laugh out loud, "No!".  There was nothing coming close to character development.  Was there some new and clever writing style?  Unless you count having two page chapters revolutionary (I call it a way to have a two hundred page novella turned into a four hundred page novel).  How about the plot?  Was that something worth my time?  Not unless you haven't ever watched suspence movie in your life.

So honestly, what the hell makes this book worth anyone's time?  All I can find in this book are two dimensional characters, needless sub-plots, ludicris dialogue, and empty promises (we're lied to about the main character's fate in the beginning and we're lied to about this being a thriller in the vein of Hitchcock).

As a person who has turned to the world of novels to escape Hollywood's onslaught of needless, pointless, and time wasting strategy of churning out movie after movie of pure garbage I can trully say that this is the type of book that will doom us all into a market of hurried and horribly bad novels to take our hard earned money.

This man does not deserve our money and certainly does not deserve to write anything other than an apology letter to the world for dumbing us down into thinking that this type of writing is anything other than trash


I'm throwing this book out
	My friend's and I will pass books back and forth to each other to read if they are good. My friend was going to throw this one out instead of passing it along, but since I have a dog, I thought it would be interesting, but it wasn't, so I had the honor of throwing it out myself.

Typically, I would donate the book or give it to charity, but I don't think anyone would enjoy it. It's just this author's drivel. It doesn't focus on the president's and their pets at all like the title suggests.

I could see where another author could have created a really fun book about presidents and their dogs.


Unbiblical and bad writing make for one star
	This book is so flawed in every which way, it is hard to know where to begin. First of all, we are living in the end times, and when Jesus comes, that's all she wrote, folks. There's no seven years, no Christians being zapped up, etc. This is our Second Chance on Earth. No tribulation. This book takes figurative visions and tries to apply it literally, and does it poorly. Reading this book made me think that if this was true, then what's the point of trying to be a Christian. Why not just live your life the way you want to, and then when people zap out of thin air, change your life. It's ridiculous and sends the wrong message. Plus, the writing is for second graders with no redeeming characteristics to it. But I really don't think the author's care at this point (seeing how many millions they've made printing lies). My recommendation is to read the bible instead of this series; then you'll get truth and the bible is probably shorter (and much better writing). Man, not even Kirk Cameron could save this train wreck.


It's exciting, it will sell, but it's just not happening
	#65279;Millennials Rising is the latest book in the generational series by the authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, focusing this time on the generation born after X.

For those not already familiar with the authors' theory, Strauss and Howe are two authors who began writing about generations in 1991. They wrote the book Generations, which introduced a theory that generations fall into four re-cycling types, and each type comes of age during a different kind of era, or "turning". The Silent Generation is of the "adaptive" type, for instance, passive, gentle, and in tune with their emotions, and came of age during the Golden Age of postwar America. The Baby Boomers, remembered for their "Awakening" in the 1960s, are of the "idealist" type, concerned with God and spirituality and impassioned about what they believe in, but inclined to change during life (from hippie to the current "Just say no" control freak). Generation X, which they named the Thirteenth Generation, is of the "reactive" type, being alienated, street-smart and materialistic, without a feeling of need to be "loyal" to anything, coming of age during the 1980s and 1990s. They then first identified everyone born since 1982 as the "Millennial Generation", and predicted back in 1991 that it would be grow up to be optimistic, hard-working and clean-cut, just like the G.I. Generation that fought World War II, going back to the "civic" type generation before the Silent Generation. In 1993 they published the book Thirteenth Gen, which specialized in Generation X and why they are the way they are. In their third book, The Fourth Turning, they went back to the whole theory and writing about all the generations. They also changed the archetype names from adaptive, idealist, reactive and civic to Artist, Prophet, Nomad and Hero. Strauss and Howe wrote in this book about an upcoming era of epic battle and mass destruction, much like the one in which the G.I. Generation came of age. They then predicted the Millennial Generation would form the role of Heroes during the coming crisis, and they would lower teen pregnancy rates, stop using drugs, serve the United States, in uniform even, and desist with using profanity.

So then in 2000 they put out this book, Millennials Rising. In this one the authors try to explain the Millennial Generation (my generation). Millennials Rising attempts to identify who we, the most ethnically diverse generation in American history as they note, are. In Millennials Rising they write about this generation's Boomer parents and their influence on the Millennial Generation, as well as the kind of world in which this generation is growing up (which S H think of as hundreds of television channels, SUV lifestyles, rappers who swear, and people who smack each other on TV). The book states that Millennials want to work together in teams, believe the people in authority know more about right and wrong than they do, are enthusiastic about learning and going to school, are loved and protected by their parents, achieve great things in school and will achieve great things in the future, and lest we forget, always want to exude that "positive peer pressure" on their fellow Millennials.

The obviously leads to the question, then, is the generation really optimistic, hard-working and clean-cut just as they say? Consider this: Only 28% of high school seniors say that the work they get assigned at school is "meaningful", only 21% describe their courses as "interesting" and still barely over a third, 39%, believe that what they do in school will have any relation to their success later in life. The generation was supposed to be enthusiastic about learning. The Millennial Generation also rapidly increased drug use, especially pot, from the level at which Generation X was using them in its teens, as even the authors themselves note.

S H portray the world of edgy entertainment, such as television shows, movies and music, as a Zoroastrian battle. In popular music, for instance, artists are described by extremes that either represent the alleged Millennial values or go actively against them -- on one side, artists like Eminem, Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson, on the other, boy bands and Britney Spears and her imitators, along with such second-tier bands as the S Club 7. They do not deal with the Millennial interest in bands that lie somewhere in between the two. For instance, Blink-182 is just about the biggest band around now, and yet Millennials Rising does not mention Blink-182 and the many young fans who make the band a success. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut is the authors' idea of where popular culture is today. Millennials Rising heralds boy bands as what music will increasingly be like as the current decade unfolds, and blasts the "edgy" bands as groups that will be washed away, but could the authors have predicted bands like Good Charlotte or artists like Avril Lavigne?

This leads to the bigger question of whether the book and the theory will be able to predict anything. S H write about "rebelling by being better" during the present decade. Apparently, their idea of rebellion is not listening to Limp Bizkit, blasting censorship, or doing illegal drugs, but wearing preppy clothes, waiting until marriage to have sex, and trusting their government. According to them, we should expect to see Millennials petitioning for policies that will punish their own peers. S H write that we will accept the draft and join the military in great numbers when the crisis presents us with a war, and even do National Service. Frankly, can anyone imagine any more than 20% of today's high school students doing their duty and risking their life in war in the name of America? Also, our generation has done nothing to make a commitment to following Bush as leader during the Iraq War, while S H predict Millennials serving their president. How suited to a Hero generation is that? The G.I. Generation followed FDR so blindly they had to print his campaign materials in Braille. When it comes to rallying around their president and leading the direction of the nation during a crisis, Millennials have surely disappointed those who expected them to do just as the authors said we would. This, of course, does not have to be a bad thing, but it does make you wonder about the limitations of the predictive abilities of the theory.

Some parts of it make for very interesting reading, but all the talk about how they are to be the "next great" generation gets to you sometimes. S H seem to believe you can never think too big about those Millennials. Millennials Rising presents an image of youth that is set to amaze you and will attract readers, but sometimes what the book describes just isn't happening


Get the whole picture elsewhere
	It certainly is no surprise with the development of technology and expansion of capitalism that knowledge-based workers are the future in American Society. It seems to me that Drucker spent too much time attempting to criticize Marx, which was a complete failure. Drucker didn't even fully analyze Globalization in its entirety.

The only credit that should be given to this book is his analyzation of the American worker. Nonetheless, he offers a limited viewpoint on all aspects of society. Look elsewhere if you want to get a better understanding of where our world is headed and what state we are in. Drucker neglects the whole and simply accepts what backs his own perspective


Convoluted and totally confusing....
	Mr. O'Nan should have taken a refresher course in basic writing.  His skipping and skimming and throwing to and fro people, events, etc., is downright frustrating and confuses the project.  Unlike superior literary treatments (see Walter Lord's TITANIC), this book leave you with more questions than anything else and the urge to take a long, hot shower.


Trivial, Tiresome  and Tedious
	This fourth installment of Becky's trying tribulations is the worst. The qualty has plummeted from passable fun to total embarrassment. I don't understand how Kinsella's editor didn't draw the line (and the red pencil) at the litany of shopping expeditions. And her endless, excrutitating 'inner' reflections. Becky's exploits aren't amusing anymore. Her purchases on her honeymoon aren't wacky. They're bewildering. For a shopaholic with supposedly good taste, Becky buys the ugliest sounding things on her travels and then flogs them all on Ebay once home in England. And oh yes, then she discovers a long lost sister. That situation is about as believable as three designer wedding dresses and two weddings from the previous book. And then Bex and her sister wind up on a rock rescued by Tarquin in his personal helicopter. I am not making this up. It's all there in the book. And none of it is even remotely entertaining. And now God help us, Becky is pregnant. AARRGGGH!


Sociology, more of the same
	This is a revolutionary book. It introduces the stage metaphor into sociology; all of social interaction is a performance on a stage. It's questionable how novel this metaphor is, but this is certianly its first explicit statement. The language used to present the ideas of the author is, like most sociological writing, unecessarily complicated. There are some problems with clarity and structure; the book just doesnt have a holistic feel for me. No sociological background is presupposed, there is extensive quoting from other sociological sources, many footnotes, and various other ways to enter sociological literature throught the book. So if you are interested in reading sociology, this is probably a good place to start (again, the language is unecessicarily thick and this may be it's bane as an introduction).

However, the book is misguided. The idea of viewing social interaction as a performance on a stage is unecessary. The authors motives for saying this will make my position clearer.

(The following is a charicature of the author's argument). There is certianly a large amount of social behavior which is directed towards other people (the audience) in order for the audience to build an impression of the actor. Well, if it can happen here we can draw a parallel with other situations, infact all situations and therfore all of social interaction is like a performance on a stage, "All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isnt are hard to specify" (p 72). The performances can either be with individuals, or groups of people, and they can be performing conciously or unconciously. (end of charicature)

There are other arguments, obviously, and the statement "we can draw a parallel with other situations" is most of the content of the book, which i dont like to gloss over with a sentence. But the real question here is, is the view worthwhile? My answer: No. Social interaction is a complex phenomena that cant possibly be summed up with a signle metaphor. Yes, some social interaction is like a performance, where indivudals are intentionally making impressions on one another. Yes, some social behavior can arise from unconcious beliefs. However, most social interaction is exactly the way we see it, conciously controlled, meaningful, purposeful interaction with individuals; it is not some kind of performance with the purpose of creating a "reality".

I hope my view of the book is clear so that the biases on the final part of my review can be sorted out: the book is a waste of time. Where the author is right, the statement is little more than common sense. Where the author goes outside of common sense, he's wrong, sometimes plainly so. This book is part of the tradition in sociology of thinking that society pulls the wool over each individuals eyes, that reality is a social construct with no purpose other than social control (here the wool is the performance, and the control has to do with impressions ... but this quickly degenerates into an obscure mess of assertions). There is no real empirical support given for most of the claims. Where "evidence" is given, the evididence is so heavily intepreted that it fails to correspond to facts in the world but rather to facts about the views of the reporter. Where there is no correspondence to the world there is no truth. Various sources of sociology are cited, but this is more like intellectual bullying. Saying that some author, which also didnt have any empirical support for his claims, agrees with you is just to bully your reader into acepting your claims. The claims in the book have no practical application in the world, but only serve to intepret situations differently, and in personal opinion, less correctly. Nothing said here will lead to better predictions about social behavior or a better understanding of psychology. In short, this isnt a scientific study at all.

My final qualm with the book deserves its own paragraph, the use of language. The best example is the definitions given at the end of the introduction "A performance may be defined as all of the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants" (15). This is a curios definition. Me breathing while i work is a performance, it changes the percentages of O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere near my co-workers. Me staring into space is a performance, other people see me stare into space and are therefore influenced. Infact, me simply existing is a performance, since my existance causes a gravitational effect on the other participants, as well as influencing them to create beliefs about me existing. Its as if Goffman created a definition for performance which included all possible actions taken by any person, and then wrote a book about how all possible actions taken by any person fall under the category of performance. He didnt. He used a word that we associate with controlled behavior (performance) and defined it in a way no one is used to. Then he used alot of word play to show that behavior has no substance, its all for the purpose of maintaining social reality. I hope this very limited example shows the terrible use of language that is endemic to Goffman and sociology more generally.

So an ode to sociology is in order ... actually no it isnt. Why wont this subject go away? This book is an integral part of sociology, and it espouses the methods and style of sociological researchers and writers by being an archetypical work within the tradition. The methods are questionable; the style is obscure. Like it or hate it, sociology is a part of modern thought. Read the book to be an educated person and keep in mind its intellectual failings


A truely biased Bio. an epic waste of time and money.
	I was at first rather impressed by the epic size of the book thinking it must contain something new about the comedian. Well, I was wrong. It was long, tedious and nasty. Granted, Chaplin was not perfect, but the author's preoccupation with his imperfections borders on sickening. A better title for this book would be 'Trash, what I think of Charlie'. Joyce Milton would do well writing for tabloids..


P L E A S E . . . buy something else
	Many reviewers on this site read TLGPE in the 70's, when we were young and impressionable. (I happened to be 13 when I read it.) If one could be sued for intellectual forgery, Lindsey would certainly be found at fault.

Most of us, thankfully, have gotten past our fears that plagued our teenage years. After all, when we read TLGPE, we were young. We were searching and seeking. We didn't have all of the facts. There were wolves who knew this, and they preyed upon us. Many people who were older, yet still intellectually undeveloped, read this book and were moved to 'believing'.

For most of us, our minds matured. We began to see the vast chinks in Lindsey's pompous Christian armor. We began to realize that fear is a weapon brandished by madmen, by people who use a subtle, gentle cloth of manipulation to control others.

This is beyond dangerous. It is beyond extreme, as most of us have now found out.

I love a good horror novel. I love a good 'true crime' thriller. But the fact that people read Lindsey's books and take them at face value is, perhaps, one of the scariest notions I have ever imagined.

That, dear reader, is beyond horrific . . . and far more terrifying than anything you'll find in the bible or any of Lindeys 'books'. The only thing scarier is that Mr. Lindsey is still receiving royalties from an outdated, silly, contradictory and completely barbaric book penned over thirty years ago. Please don't be the next sucker. Please don't add this one to your cart.


Completely Incomprehensible
	I am a bright student and have a GPA of 3.86. This book is completely useless for class. I reread the chapters and it simply does not make sense.  I found the internet to contain more useful information.  This book should not be used in any Introduction to Philosophy classes. It is much too complex. If you are attending classes at WIU, I would skip the purchase of this book and rely on the internet for your assignments


The title for this book is highly inaccurate
	This should be retitled "The Leftist, Israel-Hating, Politically Correct Revisionist Guide to the Middle East."       That would be far more accurate.     For a textbook, the author freelances just a tad bit too much, a lot of what is in here is presented as fact but is mostly opinion in disguise.    The author fails in presenting a clear and unbiased view of the Middle East and instead allows his personal politics to get in the way.

    My professor dumped this book as the course textbook 1/4 of the way through the semester due to the never-ending left-leaning political commentary.    This is no serious review of the Middle East, just a socialist-based fantasy on how THINGS SHOULD BE.   The author himself proclaims that accuracy isn't always important, its the idea that matters.

      This book is a joke, I looked for something serious, unbiased to aid me in learning more about the Middle East but this book doesn't present anything new and its political leanings are just to the left of Stalin.

     If you want to learn what an extreme left liberal thinks of the Middle East, buy this book, otherwise stick to encyclopedias and hopefully, less biased college textbooks.


No match for a great city.
	If you're going to write about the city that is Paris, you'd better be up to the task.  Gopnik may have the writing and observation skills that would have served this assignment well, but this collection of essays generally falls flat.  For someone who resided in the City of Light for 5 whole years, Gopnik gives us a surprisingly myopic picture constrained by his own self-absorption.  Those who are interested in Paris and its natives will be sorely disappointed in the smug chronicles of a New Yorker who regards himself and his son to be the most interesting elements of this city.  I have zero interest in My-Toddler-Does-Paris stories and Gopnik's relentless insertion of his look-how-cute-my-kid-is accounts should have been saved for a family re-union instead of wasting precious space that could have been used for more interesting topics.

For a better book on Paris cuisine and culture, check out the collection of Gourmet essays from the last 60 years titled 'Remembrance of Things Paris'.  It provides a wider variety of perspectives and a more expansive and interesting view of Paris -- and it's blessedly free of all that baby's-scrapbook stuff.


Seemed like he was in a hurry...
	The book isn't good at all. I'm sorry. I loved I am Legend and seeing the list of books this guy has written which had been developed into classic horror movies (Hell House included) I was really excited to read this. I have heard many complaints about the book from calling it "soft porn" to "sick soft porn" and then even being offended by the sacrilege present in the tale. Sacrilege in a book called...Hell House is probably something you need to come to terms with before picking it up. Attacking the author because of the content is really something that is not necessary. I doubt these were Mathis' "sexual fantasies" in the book but more likely his idea of melding something pleasurable together with something terrifying. It is an effective way to convey horror to a reader. Similar to enacting horrible violence on children, or worse, babies in cinema (try watching the Hills Have Eyes without being on the edge of your seat while the villains in the movie dangle the fate of an infant in your face). Mathis should not be condemned for content.

Here is what he did right. He took the idea of a haunted house and brought it into the world of science. Much like I am Legend used science to define its vampires, Hell House uses science to define hauntings and it is very well researched and believable within the framework of the story.

The bad parts may be more numerous. His characterization is horrid. There are four characters really and their personalities do not define them. You will remember Barrett by his limp, Fishcer by his fear, Florence by her religious beliefs, and Edith...well because there is no one else. They are paper thin and have no real motivations. The pacing seems poor too. A lot of moments are left on revelations in the point of view characters mind which that character has not fully processed because the chapter ends before they can relay it and all of its profound meaning to you, the reader. As a matter of fact the revelations themselves, when all is said and done, are really pretty dull. There is also a habit characters have, when going into great lengths of exposition that goes on for pages, to cup their hands around a coffee cup. It seems too much like a commercial for me! Anyway, the book hardly slows down for characterization or details and we get very few vivid descriptions in the book. Sometimes I wanted to know what things looked like, I wanted imagery not just exposition for pages. What was it about the atmosphere that, say Fischer found so scary? We needed the scenes to be better developed. By the end I was so tired of lines like:

"God do you know what this means?"
"What?"
"I can't tell you now but it's freakin' awesome!"

That exchange is not in the book but you will find many similar moments throughout. Just tell us already! The fear should come through our attachment to the characters not the mystery of the house because the mystery of the house is kind of weak. This book is not worth it, unfortunately. I hate to say it because I Am Legend is really good (though it did suffer from some of the same things I pointed out above, though on a smaller level). It's the classic "show don't tell" advice


Avoid the book and movie
	No thrills and a pointless plot marr what could have been a pretty decent story.

The whole thing is based on who wants to kill Darby and why. And that is where it falls apart. The FBI or CIA could have easily investigated faster and easier then she could, and what is the point of trying to kill her?

To bury what is already out in the open? The FBI, CIA and White House all had a copy. What are they trying to silence? Nothing at all. Perhaps if it were just for revenge the plot might not have collapsed on itself


Rehashed, Recycled. Nothing new here.
	This book is more of the same rehashed, recycled, repurposed content from the authors. Much of this material is available in any basic marketing text. In fact, this book reads strikingly similar to just about any training manual on the basics of branding. If you've worked at any of the big agencies: McCann, JWT, Y R, you learn the contents of this book on your first day in about a hour. All the cases cited in this book are stale and extremely weak. The "editorial reviews" listed above are shill quotes from clients who are cited as "cases" in the book.
Remember this before you buy: the author, and the firm for whom he works, use this book as nothing more than a lead-generation tool--it's called "thought leadership", a nebulous term used by company to propagate its own way of thinking. Save your money. Don't become a victim of Prophet's propoganda. Buy something with substance like Jean Noel Kapferer.


Garbled and Overrated
	"A Dirty Job" was my first Christopher Moore novel, and will probably be my last.  I was captivated by the story line as I read the dust jacket, but found that the writing was not nearly as interesting.  I thought the author spent way too many pages with humdrum matters of no real interest, and very little addressing the actual theme of the book.  Although wanting to relate sympathetically to the book's hero, I just wasn't drawn in enough to care about him.  The action began in the final quarter of the book, and you had better suspend reality before reading it.  I actually couldn't wait for the book to end so I could move on to something more interesting


Where's the editor?
	The word Atlas is misleading as there is alot of text accompanying the various maps. Some pages are nothing but text. I expect an Atlas to use maps to explain more rather than words. The maps that are in the book are good, but numerous sections do not have one.

The book is split into sections/topics written by individual persons. However, in many sections the text ends in mid-sentence, as if several pages were forgotten about in each section or as if there was some arbitrary cutoff on the # of words per section.

of this approx 200 page book, sentence cutoffs appear on these pages. Each page also represents the end of a section.

p.37,55,63,82,89,96,115,141,149,163, and 175

clearly, not just a simple oversight.

Also, the table of contents is inadequate, as it primarily denotes the major sections - which is by ocean, but not the individual topics.

I give this 2 stars (Rather than 1) as the idea is good, and the content that is in the book - looks good. Execution is another story. Frankly, I would be a embarassed by the editing and quality control oversights


Liberal Bias?  Complete Nonsense...
	Wow..What lies.  I NEVER hear any kind of news channel favor the left...NEVER.  The media, especially FOX News, has a right wing bias..its 100% FACT, proven beyond any reasonable doubt.  The republican right wing NUT JOB Wackos INVENTED the concept of a liberal bias in the media for political advantage, and its simply not true.

Republicans are the worst thing that could ever happen to this country, all they know how to do is lie, cheat, steal, and profit off of the suffering of others.  Oh yeah, and these religious wing nuts are delusional bigots who think some guy waved a magic wand and invented the universe.  Give me a break.

This book is 100% lies.  I actually burned the book after I read it...(Notice the lack of credible sources).

Good job republicans...Continue to make up news...the people are catching on!


Description is misleading
	The Amazon description says Vol. 1-3, boxed set, hardcover.  That is all true.  What they don't tell you is that there are actually six volumes.  The box in which it comes is clearly marked, "Volumes 1-3 (of six)."  That would have been a much better description for Amazon to have used.  If you have volumes 4-6 and you are looking to complete the set, this book is for you.  If you are looking for the complete set, look elsewhere


See the WONDERFUL (very different) 1937 movie instead ...
	Sadly, this thrilling sea-yarn from 1897 is nearly unreadable today.  Between the seafaring jargon - which must have delighted boys of yore - and the unfathomable dialects, it can take ages to puzzle out a page.  Some of the anecdotes related by the good seamen of the schooner "We're Here," which has picked up over-privileged Harvey Cheyne when he was washed overboard from a luxury liner, I could not grasp the point or moral of.  My husband has read all the Patrick O'Brian series, so I asked him to puzzle out a representative story, that of Counahan the Navigator, and after spending 15 minutes reading me a few pages aloud and filling me in on the few terms he understood, he said, "Honey, I see what you mean."   One can get the general gist, but it's best to read through fast, then go back and see if any of it makes any more sense.

	For example, when educated Harvey says, "Why can't we always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?" his pal Dan answers, "Allus can, till we begin to dress daown.  Efter thet, the heads and offals, 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy.  Boat-fishin' ain't reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows.  Guess we'll run aout aour trawl to-night.  Harder on the back, this, than frum the dory, ain't it?"

	I got my B.A. in English, and I would rather tackle Joyce's "Ulysses" than an unannotated version of this book.

	So why did I bother?  A few days ago, a friend showed us the DVD of the 1937 movie, starring Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore, on his big screen home theater, and it was thrilling and very moving.  The movie is quite different from the book, though, but it may give some incentive to check out for oneself how Kipling crafted the story, as it did for me.  But dear teachers, PLEASE, do not subject students to this particular title unless you are going to spend the semester on it and are willing to turn them off classic literature forever!  (Let them read "Cannery Row" instead!)


Disappointing Story
	I would not personally recommend this book to horror/thriller fans.  I would definitely not recommend this book for anyone under 18!  If you like soap operas, you may enjoy this book a lot.  If you are searching for the secrets of Rose Red or a good ghost story, this is not your book.

I read the story before the author was made known.  I thought it might be Stephen King or Tabitha King.  The writing style was far below Stephen King's style and it was very erotic, which I suspected Tabitha King to be the author.  However, the accounts of Ellen were obviously written by a man, as the erotic episodes were definitely not from the viewpoint of a woman.  So, it was no surprise when the author was neither Stephen nor Tabitha, but a male author I have never heard of.

The book reveals almost nothing new about Rose Red and it's secrets.  I would dare say that 90% of the diary goes on and on about Ellen and John's wealth and extremely dysfunctional marriage.  On and on about John's extramarital affairs, Ellen's withholding of sexual favors, more affairs, more withholding of favors, more affairs, more favors withheld.  The story is a vicious circle regarding this.  It's almost like she gets burned, but yet continues to play with fire.  Very frustrating and almost boring, as you read the same scenarios redundantly.  By the third time, you know exactly what he's doing and how she will retaliate.  Silly.

I mentioned above that the Diary of Ellem Rimbauer revealed no new secrets of the house.  In fact, as the diary progresses, it skips four occurrences (it made mention of the four, like "by the way, four disappearances happened since last time I wrote, but I won't tell you about them").  And this I found obnoxious - ***SPOILER ALERT***  Ellen waits some three or so years for a  from a master uber-psychic.  Three long years.  But after the , nothing is revealed!   The book is riddled with episodes like this.  Some big secret is coming.  When it finally is revealed, it's no secret at all.  It's something dumb, like "yes, there are spirits in the house".  What spirits?  Why?  Who?  Nothing is ever satisfactorily explained.

I would have given it one star, however it seemed to have a single quality.  At the start of the diary, Ellen was an ordinary 19 year old to John.  Soon, she is corrupted by John, wealth, maybe corrupted by her African best friend (jury is still out), and hatred.  She prays to God, but also to "her other god" (the dark one).  At first, you suppose she is playing with fire.  Right on.  She gets consumed by darkness, revenge, and hatred and falls into self destruction.

Overall, I personally thought it read like fan fiction.  I would bet the author whipped up this short story just for giggles, but somehow it got published.  I was disappointed, hoping for a good ghost story.  But I ended up reading a soft-porn, soap opera style plot.

Hope I don't offend those who loved the book :


Creates more questions than it answers
	The book's appearance and story line are both lighthearted and gentle with the underlying message that acceptance is the highest of all virtues. This approach will probably work for a typical 5 year old child in a Lesbian led household - especially a girl child. If the child is a boy and/or approachng 8 or 9 years old, the hard questions start coming and this book pretends these questions will never be asked.
Doesn't everyone have a father, somewhere? Who is my father? What is he like? Where is he? Does he know about me? Does he care about me? Why don't I know? Why don't you know, Mommy?
Mommy, when you grew up you lived with your Daddy, why don't I?
When I grow up, should I live with a man or a woman? Why? How/when will I know? Does it matter? Is our family really a complete family if my father is unknown?
I want to be a father some day. How do I learn what good fathers do?
I love my friends and my dog;Does that make us a family?

Think about it.


Simplistic At Best
	If you want a VERY simple will or a VERY simple living will or power of attorney for health care, this program will work for you. However, it offers only a very narrow range of options for personalizing the generic forms included in the package. I disliked this program so much that I threw the whole package in the trash.


P.O.S.
	Tipler says many times "as I have proved".  Huh? What the f is he talking about?  There is no proof in this stinking pile of filth.  He's got an abundance of physics in the back of the book-I'd like to hear from a physicist if any of that crap makes any sense, but I don't think it should matter.  I am intelligent enough to understand basic physics concepts, and Tipler just doesn't make any sense.  His writing is so bad that anyone who reads this entire thing will have wasted a colossal ammount of time.  The more books you read, the sooner you know when to stop reading, put the book down, and read a work of fiction instead, which can play with such ideas without boring you to death


Not one of his best
	I enjoy the Hillerman Navajo mysteries because the characters are well developed. Not so in this book. I found the first half really boring and hard to get through. The characters were not people you could care about, an important issue for me


lots of fill...little thrill
	As a piece of entertainment, this book falls flat. Way flat.  There is a story here, but mundane sub-plots (including the love story) are thrown in in an attempt to fill the pages to make it a book.  I found myself skipping pages - lots of them - to get to the point.  Overall, very disappointing.


Lengthy tedious thriller
	Amazingly tedious for a thriller.  Reacher is a good character, believable in his expertise, but a bit cold blooded in his use of violence. The book takes too long to tell everything (and I mean everything) - it seems every minute of the week long plot is chronicled as is every thought Reacher has (many repeated over and over). I hope Child fixed these flaws in later books.


Dark Watch:A Dud
	As I read this book it was easy to tell that it was not written by Mr. Cussler, the story was slow and the plot was transparent.

This book just didn't have the "zing" of the older Cussler stories.

If you are just laying around with nothing else to do it will give you something to read


Does D.S. know any other law schools besides, Harvard and Yale...I am so tired of her books...this is it.
	Does D.S. know any other law schools besides, Harvard and Yale for her characters to have attended. I am so tired of her books...this is it for me.  Its the usual suspects for her...rich and white....quite boring.  I used to love her and would read anything from her, but those days are over.....Maybe she should retire


Negligent
	The very first thing you read in this book is a mistake.  The Prologue begins with a photo of German POWs at the end of WWI.  The photo caption states that the German Army at the end of WWI was "unbroken" and implies that Germany capitulated because of a loss of will on the part of its political leadership.  This is doubly misleading.  The German Army was soundly defeated on Western Front in 1918 and then began to disintegrate.  In 1918, Germany was essentially a military dictatorship run by Ludendorff and Hindenberg.  The political leaders who lost will were the German High Command.  Defeat on the battlefield and despair on the part of senior commanders hardly meets the description of an unbroken army.  Keegan is essentially repeating the pernicious "stab in the back" myth used by the German military and right wing propagandists to undermine the Weimar republic.  Its astonishing to see this published decades later by someone who is supposed to be an expert on such matters.
This type of error recurs throughout this book.  My favorite relatively minor error is Keegan moving the Ploesti oilfields, a major strategic resource, from Romania to Hungary.  See prior reader reviews for documentation of a number of factual errors of varying magnitude.  Just as important and in some cases even more important are Keegan's failures to discuss crucial aspects of WWII.  He makes little effort, for example, to discuss the origins of the war.  Indeed, his paragraphs on this topic suggest that he finds it too confusing to discuss.  Leaving aside his shirking of his obligation to discuss this crucial topic, there are excellent overviews of 20s and 30s that are good guides to this admittedly formidable topic.  Instead of an effort to discuss the origins of the war, we get a superficial and somewhat misleading discussion of how industrialization transformed military technology and organization.  Instead of a discussion of the sad history of the Weimar Republic, crucial for understanding the ascent of the Nazis, we get another misleading discussion of the Freikorps phenomenon.  Among other significant omissions are his failure to grapple with the possible strategic significance of the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, a issue analyzed insightfully by Richard Overy in 2 of his excellent books.  Keegan's discussion of the Holocaust in both inadequate and implicitly misleading.  Partly because he doesn't discuss the origins of the war and the role played by Nazi ideology in starting the war he fails to show that in crucial respects the Holocaust was the point of German aggression.  The Nazis went to war not just to overturn the Versailles settlement or even to conquer Eastern Europe, but to impose their bizarre notions of racial conflict on the rest of Europe.  Without this background, its impossible to understand the outbreak and the specific nature of WWII.  Among other things, Nazi racism prevented them from rationally exploiting the resources of the western Soviet Union, a factor in their eventual defeat.  As pointed out by other reviewers, Keegan devotes a disproportionate amount of the book to activities of the Western allies when the Eastern front was really the crucial theatre.
To be fair to Keegan, writing a concise 1 volume book like this is very difficult.  The best 1 volume work on WWII is Gerhard Weinberg's book, which is about 1000 pages of text in a fairly small font.  Some of the individual sections of this book are quite good and Keegan has a nice, sometimes actually elegant, writing style.  None of these positive features, however, can overcome his neglect of basic features of WWII and the lack of attention to basic facts.  This is not just error, this is actual negligence.


Acupressure Techniques: A Self Help Guide
	This book is almost useless for helping someone understand how to use acupressure to alleviate physical symptoms. As a licensed massage therapist who already knows quite a bit about acupressure, I am always willing to learn  more about any kind of bodywork. I had hoped to be able to pass on some ideas to my clients for self help but this book was definitely not it. The book gives some accupoints for specific problems, some of these are "golden points" able to stand alone in use, but others are not. The book gives no order to use these in and furthermore does not specify if all or any of the points are to be used together in sequence, or not. Also,it does't tell where the points are EXACTLY. There are really too many flaws to go into here. Acupressure is very complex, this book tries to simplify it to the point that it looks like some goofy folklore advocating some bad mojo


This software is unusable on mac's and unix systems.
	I bought this software hoping that it would help me to find required mathematical formulas faster. At home on my powermac (OSX.1, OS9.2) I only see messed up windows. Furthermore, the formulas are unreadable, using an archaic font. Trying to save the day, I went to my linux machine at work reading  quot;Your operating system, Linux 2.2.19-7.0.1, is not supported by this software. It appears that the software is only suitable for some SUN and SGI machines. It only appears to run properly on a windows machine. From an editor, who I remember, is one of the few persons finding errors in Knuth's TeX system, I expected much better


A quick read and a quicker write
	The number of books written in our society is huge and getting huger. Everyone recognizes that far more books are being written and published than can be read. Why are people so anxious to be authors in such a market? One reason, apparently embraced by the Goldstones, is that it is so EASY to write a book! All you have to do is write down some reminiscences of your experiences. They don't have to be particularly interesting experiences. You don't have to do any research into your subject. If you describe what all the people you encounter are wearing, if you go into details of how you found a babysitter for each trip you took, if you quote verbatim phone calls from relatives and shop keepers (even if they are not interesting or witty), and if you describe the hotel rooms you stayed in, you can finish the book in a couple of weekends! And readers can finish the book in a couple of hours with little harm done.

The book does accurately represent the travails of beginning book collectors, and I recognized some of my own experiences in the stories the authors tell. However, the book does not take the effort to educate readers so that they can skip over common early errors, nor does it attempt to answer many of the questions that the authors themselves raised when they first began collecting. What determines the price of old books? Why are first editions important? Why should Tarzan books cost more than great works of literature? These are good questions that anyone might think of when getting into book collecting, and you will find the questions but not the answers here.

The book is written in a breezy style that is easy to get through, and if you have two hours at an airport to kill, you could do worse than to read it. But by the time you arrive at your destination, you will have likely forgotten most of what you just read, because so much of it is ephemeral details of the authors' own lives, transportation problems, and experiences. If you are really interested in book collecting, it would be wise to read one of the many books that describe what one should look for, how prices are determined, different styles of book collecting, and so on. Fragments of this knowledge are transmitted in this book, but they will leave you with more questions than answers.

To be sure, not every book about book collecting needs to be a font of wisdom. But the entertainment value of the authors' experiences was weak, and did not make up for the absence of useful content


Oh puhleeze
	What exactly is it that Ms Wearstler does? This book is filled with "glam" pictures of recycled design ideas by Billy Haines,Dorothy Draper and Billy Baldwin,mostly of the "Hollywood Regency" style. Ms Wearstler,whose home it is, appears in the photos dressed to the nines and seems to want us to think that she dreamed up this nifty new look.
Take a look at the new Billy Haines book and the just released book on Dorothy Draper and you'll see real designers at work AND whose work and style this really is.


LOST fans, don't bother.  Choose "Watership Down" or other
	Fans of the ABC-TV show "LOST" will probably be buying "Our Mutual Friend" in droves after having seen Desmond keeping it to be the "last book [I] ever [read]".  Since I did not have to buy it, having purchased a full set of Dickens years ago, I immediately set out to read it.

What a disappointment it was!  Dickens wrote it on an installment basis publishing it in a magazine over a 19 month period.  One cannot avoid a sneaking suspicion while reading it that it is, just a bit, perhaps, 'padded'.  Any good editor could have tightened it up at least 200 pages.

Dickens' work is melodrama, but some of it is just more overwrought than is compatible with good art.  As Oscar Wilde said of 'The Old Curiosity Shop', "I simply cannot read of the death of Little Nell without laughing."  'OMF' goes quickly down to this level of bathos and remains there to the last sentence.

Even worse is the ending.  Some endings just can't help but feel contrived; and Dickens, having gotten a large number of his characters into drastic positions, pulls so many strange- colored rabbits out of his hat that the reader simply feels cheated.

All of this may seem rather harsh from someone who was willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for "The Complete Oxford Illustrated Dickens" but I assure you that my only concern is for you, gentle reader.  Unless you are possessed of adequate time to read the whole of Dickens' oeuvre or are required to read "Our Mutual Friend", I would, instead, direct you to Dickens' far superior works:  'David Copperfield', 'Oliver Twist', 'Pickwick Papers'.

If you are looking for 'LOST' reading material, I would refer you to 'Watership Down' (Excellent), 'The Stand' (by Stephen King, entertainment, not literature), 'The Dark Tower' series (by Stephen King, entertainment, not literature, and similar to 'Our Mutual Friend' possessed of a fatally flawed ending) or a review of philosophy like 'Locke, Rousseau and Hume'.

Namaste and Good Luck,
AKA Redemption Isle on TheFuselage.co


Sad Disappointment
	The title is a misrepresentation.  This is not a handbook for driving a Porsche quickly or professionally.  I bought this book because in 2 months I am going to drive my rear engined 993 on a F1 circuit.  I have no circuit experience, and cannot get any coaching or any circuit experience in the country I live in.  Since this is a rear engined car which I have little experience with I was particularly wanting some tips particular to rear engined cars.  There is nothing in the whole book which is particular to driving Porsches or rear engined cars.  The only reason I will not throw this book out is because it has some interesting 1960's and early 19970's Porsche racing pictures (poor quality black and white though).  Also to be fair there are some good racing stories. He is undoubtedly a very impressive driver having been successful at the highest levels in rallying and sports prototype endurance racing.  A better title would be "My Porsche Racing History".  If you want a book on fast driving I would highly recommend Ross Bentley's "Speed Secrets" in place of this book


A dissapointment
	When I picked up this book I had high expectations,seeing that it had received good reviews.It opened quite spectacularly as well, on a rather surreal note.But as I read on, I couldn't help wondering what the point was in this rather incoherent, rambling tale.The book seemed like a sloppy, haphazard collection of incidents that didn't make much sense or assist character development. The central character herself was unbelievable and I found it impossible to identify with her or understand her actions or even sympathise with her plights.It seems to me that the writer had tried too hard to create a hip,cutting edge story and the end product was strained and gimmicky. Some incidents were quite mirth-provoking, however,that's why I gave it two stars


Get to the point!
	This was another Pinker book I couldn't finish. If he was a taxi-driver he would take you from Brooklyn to New York via San Francisco. Sometimes even his asides have asides! Perhaps like pulp fiction writers he gets paid by the word


don't  waste your money!!
	While I very much enjoyed Miss Wearstler's first book, I found Domicilium Decoratus to be borderline obnoxious. Rather than show great decorating, the book focused mainly on close up shots of objects in her house that took up the whole page.In addition, I feel that as the viewer of the book I do not need to see fifteen entire  pages of Miss Wearstler dressed in ball gowns pretending to be domestic


Difficult Read
	I am an avid reader, and I will finish a book no matter how difficult it is, or how boring it is, and I couldn't finish this one. It was so dry - and I couldn't connect with any of the characters. I was really disappointed


I dont like this book
	I want to make a short comment here:
1) This book is quite confusing. It mixed up the real story with the make up one.
2) Saying that Ramanujun thought Goldbach Conjecture is wrong was a huge mistake. Everyone believe that Goldbach Conjecture is true. And Ramanujun is a real genius. I cannot stand this make up part


Disappointing
	The plot is good but there are about 200 pages too many.  Why a full chapter to tell us what the protagonists are thinking about the attach case, when we already know it was not in the car and we could tell them where it is? We know where the precious document is : another useless quest. People are murdered by the half dozen, the characters are outrageous, most of the time improbable, and I felt the semi-erotic swimming episode totally stupid, not to mention the girl apologizing constantly about it.
I have read much better books than that. Sorry..


There's a sucker born every minute
	This book is an excellent example of how creationists approach science: write a book with a lot of bafflegab that sounds scientific but is actually devoid of any meaningful content, and then finish up by concluding that evolution is impossible. What a bunch of baloney.

First of all, evolution, in the sense of "common descent," is not impossible. Even ID-iot superstars Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and Jonathan Wells have admitted as much. (See a summary of their recent testimony in the Kansas biology curriculum hearings in the evolution/creationism forum at the West Virginia Gazette. (wvgazettemail) (put "/forums" after com) So any ID-iot who thinks all that bafflegab about irreducible complexity (IC) and the nonsense in this film is the death knell of evolution is simply ignorant.  Man evolved from non-human ancestors. Get over it.

Thaxton in particular ought to read that summary, since he himself was one of the witnesses and looked particularly ID-iotic.

In any case, the empirical data discussed in this book is indeed nothing but bafflegab. Talking about the allegedly empirical foundation for intelligent design makes it sound deliciously scientific, especially to poorly educated ID-iots, who generally are clueless about real science; but even if the empirical data is accurate, it's nothing but a facade, because it has nothing to do with the book's main conclusion.

For example, imagine your neighbor told you that his dog could play Beethoven concertos on the piano. Skeptical, you ask for proof. "Simple," your neighbor replies. "See, here's my dog, and there's my piano." Only a moron would accept that as "proof," and yet ID-iot Christians are more than happy to accept exactly that kind of "proof" from ID-iotic films like this.

The problem with your neighbor's "proof" is that it proves only the existence of the dog and the existence of the piano.  Neither of those issues, however, was the real cause of your skepticism, so the "proof" was entirely meaningless. The critical issue, of course, was not the mere existence of the dog and the piano, but rather the ability of the dog to play the piano, and your neighbor's "proof" was completely silent on that issue. Again, only a moron would accept evidence of mere existence as proof of piano-playing ability.

In this book, there's a lot of talk about how complex certain biological systems are.  That is nothing but meaningless bafflegab, because the mere existence of complex systems is not a disputed issue. The disputed issue is how those systems came into being, and on that issue the book's "evidence" is completely silent.

This book was designed to fool poorly educated, easily impressed ID-iots.  Judging from the five-star reviews, it seems to have succeeded.  Well, there's a sucker born every minute, and apparently a lot of them are found in evangelical churches and seminaries.  In one of the very first evolution debates, Thomas Huxley accused Bishop Wilberforce of using his intellectual and oratorical gifts to mislead and bamboozle people.  Things haven't changed much since then.

Instead of meaningful evidence, this book substitutes a God-of-the-gaps argument. "Gee, look how complex it is. It must have been created by an intelligent designer. Maybe, just maybe, it was God. Wink, wink."

God-of-the-gaps arguments are dumb. Only ignorant suckers are taken in by them. So if any of those folks who wrote five-star reviews for this book would like to buy a nice bridge in Brooklyn or a dog who can play Beethoven concertos on the piano, please give me a call.  I'll be happy to provide evidence!


Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets - Review
	An elf appearing to Harry Potter warned him not to return for a second year to the school of sorcery. The Chamber of Secrets, he said, had been opened and a  monster is lurking. Harry goes anyway and is the only one who can hear the monster, challenge it and save students who have been "petrified" by the monster. Age group interest: early teen. I wanted to see what all the rave was about. Lots of action, not much morale.

Trish New, author of The Thrill of Hope, South State Street Journal


An Example of Nativist Bigotry
	A writer for the Irish Echo said this book should have been titled "The Protocols of the Elders of Erin."  It was written around the time Al Smith was running for president and appealed to the nativist, anti-Catholic prejudices of upstate New York and America at that time.  While there really were gangs in that era, most of New York's immigrants were busy building hospitals and schools like St. Vincent's, Fordham, St. John's, Manhattan and Manhattanville.  The vast majority of the city's population including its immigrants didn't riot in 1863.  In fact New York City's 200,000 soldiers and sailors, more than half of whom were immigrants, won over 100+ Medals of Honor during America's Civil War.

It's a tribute to the persistence of prejudice that this book isn't more widely recognized as the nasty practical joke that it is


Awful
	I find it very difficult to get through half of this book. I have put it down and picked it up more times than I care to mention. It is a waste of time. Awful book..


No redeeming features
	This is a very bad book. It is poorly written, the characters are caricatures in misery, and it is almost impossible to develop any empathy for them except for the older daughter, who suffers in silence after the devastating, and, to her, mysterious, death of her mother. Her father fails in both his calling to ministry and his responsiblities to protect his daughter. He is so distant that he believes what teachers tells him about his child's behavior, which is a perfectly legitimate childhood grief response, rather than the bad behavior that others choose to label her with indifference to her deep pain and confusion. He fails in his responsibilities to his parishoners by not realizing that he himself is mired in grief and needs a break. I couldn't finish this. It is drivel


disappointing :(
	I was looking forward to reading this book, first in a series. Sadly, I gave up on it about 100 pages in. I felt there was so MUCH mundane writing and hardly any dialog between not only the two main characters but between any characters at all. It just feels completely unemotional and without any sort of feeling-there is NOTHING exciting about this book. The heroine is naive, and not in a good way. I hope the others in this series are better. 1.5 stars


Mixed Review
	This book provides a good overview of blacks (slave and free) in New York. It's a very good reference (encyclopedic) book.

My main problem with it is that Leslie M. Harris, the author, relies heavily (if not entirely) on secondary sources. The book, then, is nothing more than a patchwork of various other more scholarly works. Hence, finding the actual primary source (i.e. court decision, council minutes, etc) proves extremely difficult.

I do not recommend this book for advanced students. If, however, you're interested in an easy read and don't care about sources, this is the book for you


Thank you, but no, thanks
	quot;I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. quot; Voltaire (1755


Nothing doing
	I found stale recounting of very well-known facts about 20th century technologies and their economics, with no insights.  Since it covers the gamut from plastics to jet engines to microprocessors, and it's only 200  pages in a fairly large typeface, I wasn't expecting historical depth.  But  I was expecting at least one fresh idea.  I bought it on the strength of a  much earlier book by Nathan Rosenberg (about technology in the economy of  the 19th century).  I was disappointed.  I get the feeling the book is  intended as a brief survey for people who just came down in the last shower  -- college freshmen born in the 1980s.  I'll bet they find it kinda stodgy


One of the all-time worst books I've read..
	This book is simply horrible. Repetitive dialogue and situations. Characters that just make you groan and roll your eyes.

I've read two by this author and she's just awful. Both books used the same lines over and over again. The stories chased their tails in circles half the time. Dull, repetitive and annoying.


disappointing
	OK, i can't deny it, this book was well written. But what made me throw up is the age differance, i mean what the hell! how can Tana like someone who's 30 years older than her? that's aweful! this is what i really hate  about Dan's books, she hooks someone who's 20 with some1 who's 35. i don't  find that interesting. all i can say about full circle is that it's good  but so depressing. it made me cry( which proves that Danielle is a good  writer) don't read this book if you are not ready to get depressed


I liked her at the start, but wanted to slap Julia by the end!
	I have never actually thrown a book across the room in frustration - and I love books, so this is drastic!  Spoilers ahead - please don't read on if you haven't read the book.  I managed to (somehow) get through the first book, 'Wideacre', which I disliked - whilst I adore the rest of Gregory's novels, so this was hard for me - and grit my teeth and tried to read this book, the sequel as I'd bought it and it looked more promising.  It was 'marginally better' as one reader put it, than the first, but a very depressing and frustrating book indeed.

I was getting very angry and frustrated after the second half of the book - as many other readers have highlighted, Julia's consistent inability to stand up to Richard made it impossible for me to like her anymore.  I quite honestly wanted to slap her to wake her up from that dreamy state she was in!  Because I wanted so much for Julia to be with James - who I liked a great deal.  I was so depressed after everything went wrong and she didn't marry him... ah, because I was expecting the usually very clever Ms Gregory to surprise me and have a twist at the end and say, aha!  She does get her true love in the end and she and Ralph get rid of Richard and although it's not happily ever after she learns to grow a backbone and be the very first female heir to Wideacre.

The rape scene with Julia and Richard was very violent and far too detailed and I think it may be difficult to stomach for anyone who has ever been in an abusive situation like that, in fact, for anyone at all.  I don't want to get into the tricky area of abortion too much, but I really did feel strongly that Julia should have gone to Ralph for help when she concieved the child with Richard.  This was a child of incest and rape - and she knew in her heart there should be no heir for Wideacre - they were all simply too inbred and it needed to end somewhere for nothing was going right.  Clean slate, so to speak.  Yet she gives the child away - then in her final letter asks James to find the child?!  What?!  And I was expecting perhaps a deformed child, after all this inbreeding (I mean this child is the product of parents who are brother and sister AND grandparents who are brother and sister!!!) but she was perfect and beautiful.  I was hoping the gypsies would keep her and she'd never be found again.. but alas, the Lacey madness will live on...

The perfect end to this book would have been a nice twist.  Gregory could have made her very good point about inheritance rights and the lack of power women of Beatrice and Julia's era had by Richard being killed by Ralph, then Julia inheriting the land - baby Sarah is adopted out to the gypsies and never seen again and Julia either lives as a widow and runs the land or (this would have been lovely - I bet all the girls have sighed over James a little, didn't you?  he was a little like the handsome romantic leads in Austen's books) James forgave her - for they had both made mistakes and Julia's was not intentional nor her fault (I was practically screaming at her that it wasn't her fault - and she gets it in the end, when it's too late!) and they marry and have 'normal' children - or perhaps none, they just learn from their mistakes and respect each other, and make a fresh start for Wideacre.

There were so many allies that Julia had - she was a sweet girl and I liked her - I wish that I could have shaken her though, I got so mad.  So many people in the village offered their help - this trap she was caught in with Richard could have been avoided - ahhh... SO frustrating.  I will not be reading the third book in the series.  I shall go back to reading Gregory's more historic novels (A Constant Princess is one I haven't read yet and it sounds excellent).  I wouldn't recommend this one


Coma This Is Not
	Chromosome 6 has a great premise: what happens if medical technology accelerates to the point that scientists can create genetic doubles for people; doubles who serve as living organ reservoirs for possible future organ transplant needs-a sort of biological insurance policy? How much would people pay for this service? How far would they go to protect it? What are the moral implications?

Robin Cook comes full circle, returning to the themes of his 1970s novel, Coma. Coma is the novel that first made us aware of the dangers of corporate medicine and greed; of the subtle but relentless destruction of the long-standing relationships patients had with doctors, and the dignity those relationship once preserved. Now, a quarter century later, Robin Cook is shown to have been eerily prescient as technology has caught up to his nightmare.

Chromosome 6 is a very believable scenario of a technology designed with the best of intentions being corrupted for the sake of profit. In this novel, there is mystery and murder; medical sleuthing and exotic, international sets. There are a host of characters whose paths will intersect at some point-the set up is brilliant and we read with eager anticipation-but...this novel is so poorly written that I cannot believe it has Robin Cook's name on it. Though not high literature, Robin Cook's novels have always been tight and suspenseful, with believable characters and settings that seemed real. The characters in Chromosome 6 are as flat as road kill, the action as watered down as a glass of coke left in the sun until all of the ice has melted. Turn a page and the story just ends...what? That's it? Are you kidding? Did Robin Cook really write this? I don't think so.


lousy book with a wishful thinking
	after get shorty, e.l. might just wish shamelessly that his next book with those same chili palmer characters might hit the goldmine and pay dirt and being bought up by the dumb hollywood producers and made into another movie again, with this single-minded purpose focused, e.l. wrote this totally unnecessary sequel to get shorty. and he was right again, it was bought and made into a movie again, but pathetically, a horrible one compared to get shorty. the novel itself was also a complete failure with so many obvious evidences that e.l. indeed wrote it in a way for another movie in mind. i simply failed to find there's any interest in reading this going nowhere story. it just like reading a double imaged e.l. personified in chili palmer and lobbying so hard to make this novel into a movie, with all the bore-to-death script, dialogue readymade for hollywood to grap. how could you imagine that those winnos in los angeles, especially those who in the hiphop music biz would watch 'charlie rose' and would have known and recognized chili palmer as the producer of 'get shorty'? you think those people would faithfully turned on their tv and channel surfed to pbs to watch 'charlie rose'? and at every corner of los angeles, every table in any restaurant, almost everyone would recognize 'chili palmer'? and you have to ask yourself: since when people would recognize a behind-the-screen movie producer, even a director in person? even they stand in front of you and claim themselves they are? yeah, maybe elmore leonard would watch 'charlie rose' regularly? and you think that charlie rose would interview a notorious shylock in his show? give me a break! this book, from the 1st page to the last was an absolutely no-brainer, so shallow and so superficious! just a total unnecessary and unwanted cash-in


Dreaming Water
	Gail's writing is again wonderful in this in book, but I found the book disappointing due to a lack of closure. I felt the book led you up to a particular point in the life of the character's and then left you wondering in the end what the message was meant to be. I almost felt as if the writer wasn't brave enough enough to tell you the ending to a tragic, yet hopeful story. I can only compare this book to the Samurai's Garden since I haven't read a third book by this author yet, and I loved the Samari's Garden! So I was surprised that this book lacked closure at the end. I am not sorry that I read this book due to the fact that I enjoy the author's style of writing


An historical account
	I would not neccessarily call this book "Christian".  It is more of an historical account, Bible as literature type of book.   It does make you think about different aspects of Jesus life, but most of that is speculation or perception.    Yancey leaves the reader hopeless at the end.


good plot but bad details
	This book started out good but went downhill quickly because of poor research and virtually NO understanding of computer systems by the author. I don't mind authors skipping over technical details of computer systems to keep the plot moving, but if the author decides to provide detailed technical descriptions of encrytion codes, firewalls and hacking techniques, those details must be fairly correct. In this case, the technical details were so wildly implausible that I finally had to stop reading. The part where hackers were gradually forcing their way through a firewall to access NSA data were particularly difficult to read without becoming distracted by the absurd details. The NSA almost certainly doesn't have computers with highly classified data connected to the internet (through any combination of firewalls) but if they did, they could simply disconnect the internet connection if they were being hacked.
Besides all that that, the characters were cliched and not well developed.
This is all too bad, because the plot was interesting and I would have kept reading if the technical details were either accurate or just avoide


Germaine  Greer  -  Elitist Poppycock
	This is one of the worst books ever, don't buy it


Very disappointing!
	I am a huge Clyde Edgerton fan, and I'm sorry to say I was VERY disappointed with this book.  It just never seemed to get off the ground.  I was expecting the type of story that I fell in love with in *Raney* and *Walking Across Egypt* (both of which left me in tears, I laughed so hard). If you're looking for Listre, you're not going to find it in this book  Oh well, I guess I'll wait on his next one..


Please, Stop Putting Me To Sleep!
	I had to read this book for a diversity class. Sennett uses language and sentence construction that is overly ostentatious and difficult to understand. Inside this fat book is a very thin book trying to get out. He needed a good editor.


copying David and Jonathan`s example
	I have sent away for a book called "Lord Given Lovers:the Holy Union of David   Jonathan" as I find the subject very interesting in this day of same sex marriages, now that David has been used in this subject as married to Jonathan, in the days when the Scibes who wrote the law against such things, I would like to know why David and Jonathan were not stoned to death according to that same law, and if David did such a thing, I would believe that all the Jews then would have did so to, copying David and Jonathan`s example


Flew has rejected these arguments himself.
	It has been said time and again that experience is the best teacher.  Antony Flew, the world's number one atheist (at least with respect to the rare ability to argue his point without using ad hominem arguments) has recanted his atheism.

Philosophically, Flew was a rationalist.  Having accepted the empirical evidence of intelligent design in nature, he was able to liberate himself from the tunnel vision of rationalism and hence from the shackles of irrational atheism.

Flew himself would give this book one star.  So, I don't think it ungracious to do the same


Not for everyone
	If you are going to Walt Disney World Resort for the first time and want to keep some mystery until you actually ride the attractions, then this book may not be for you.  Some of the descriptions for the various attractions go step-by-step through them, including plot points in 3D movies and so on. The book also leaves a lot out in other areas, such as dining (little coverage), getting around Walt Disney World, and off-site hotels and dining.

For me, the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (by Bob Sehlinger) was much better at giving me the info I needed without giving away any details as to the surprises on the rides. That is, it told me what might frighten a youngster, what might bore an adult, and so on, but it didn't say specifically what would happen at every stage of any of the attractions. Just generalizations about the ride, then specific warnings for different types of people.

The only things Birnbaum offers that the Unofficial Guide doesn't are pictures and info on some of the ancillary activities such as parasailing. If you have an Internet connection, you don't need the pictures.  And as for the ancillary activities as well as nice maps, you can't beat the Passporter book on Disney World.

So, for me, the Unofficial Guide plus the Passporter yields the best trip planning library for Walt Disney World.  If you like, you can also pick up the EZ-Guide, as it also has some interesting maps and info.

As for Birnbaum's, it really doesn't have anything to offer.  I wouldn't recommend against buying it, though, except for the "let me tell you the plot and ending to the movie before you go" mentality. I hate spoilers, and wish someone had warned me before I started reading this book


Hardcore Jargon on Intersectional Group
	For decades, African-American studies scholars have left issues facing non-heterosexuals to the side.  For years, "queer" scholars have left concerns of people of color to the side.  This anthology tries to address that void.  It goes a long way in proving that black, gay academics can be just a rigorous and hardcore as white gay ones or straight black ones.  The anthology has representative numbers of men and women.  In some ways, it's a Who's Who of Black Gay Academia, including works from Cathy Cohen, Dwight McBride, and Jewelle Gomez.

Still, there is much about this book that frustrated me.  A few years ago, a study was done of black LGBTs and most respondents said they hated the term "queer," yet the academics here champion it.  Really, if "queer" is supposed to represent the four groups equally, then this book was quite lacking in its coverage of bisexuals and the transgendered.  This is surprising given famous black bisexual writers such as Alice Walker, Stuart Hall, and June Jordan.  Often "people of color" is used when only blacks are brought up; Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans barely come up in this book at all.

James Baldwin is brought up often here.  I understand that.  His writings were rigorous and often dealt with racial and sexual issues simultaneously.  Still, I kept thinking about how bell hooks once wrote that Toni Morrison gets a lot of attention when publishers won't print the works of black women that are equally as sophisticated.  James Baldwin deserves his crown in black, gay letters, but I'm concerned about him being the only one to get to wear a crown.  Several books have been printed about the many non-hetero members of the Harlem Renaissance, yet that group hardly comes up here.  James is getting a bit played out and the authors here are not helping change that tendency.

Finally, I had beef with many of the essays.  Charles Nero has great points but his essay is really two works glued together.  Can anyone really say the whiteness of New Orleans' "gay ghetto" is due to "Chasing Amy" or "Six Feet Under"?  One author could have written quickly about how he supported a gay, feminine student when that student was condemned by a masculine, heterosexual one.  Instead, he went on and on in unnecessary jargon and babble.  Kara Keeling's essay was 90% theory and 10% a discussion of Dunye's "Watermelon Woman."  Why bother to bring up the film if you're barely going to discuss it?

I wasn't really feelin' this text, but that's not to say it didn't have great aims


Good research or ...
	The Case for Marriage makes arguments supportive of Pres. Bush's policies on marriage. However, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post (1/26/5) reports that Maggie Gallagher was paid over $40,000 by the Bush Administration to write columns and a "private" report supporting its $300 million HHS marriage initiative.

Mr. Kurtz reports that Ms. Gallagher filed a column apologizing to her readers, writing "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it." She also states she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded. It must be vaguely hard to remember being paid $40,000. Bad memory, vagueness, national column: what will we say to the children?

I wonder who paid Ms. Gallagher to write this book


The Incredible So-Whatness of Being
	I was lured into reading Under the Volcano after seeing its inclusion on the Modern Library's One Hundred Best of the 20th Century and after reading a reviewer compare it to James Joyce (I am an amateur Joycean who tries to read Ulysess, Portrait of the Artist, and Dubliners at least annually).  Lowry has nothing that likens him to Joyce.  This book is leaden and tedious.  I forced myself to finish it because I hate to start a  book and not finish it.  But it was no labor of love.  It was simply a labor.


This is what happens when someone reaches beyond their capacity
	I think the Linda Howard who wrote White Lies, Sarah's Child, Duncan's Bride, MacKenzies Mountain, Diamond Bay,etc. is one of the most talented current romance writers.
 Unfortunately, when she gave up the genre romances and turned to the "big Time", her writing started to decline. She is clearly in over her head now.  What a shame she couldn't stick to a format in which she excelled and warmed the hearts of millions of readers.
  This just goes to show that one should figure out where one excels and stick to it. This is pure "Peter Principle" in action.
Too bad


This is disturbing..
	That so many people gave this book five stars really concerns me. Luckily, I bought this book used, otherwise I might be kicking myself for paying full price. Between her utterly uninspired "devotional dances" to things such as sex, wisdom, and the "Sticky One" (a term she made up for the astral body), and her constant blabber about masturbation and rubbing your juices all over everything to "anoint" it, I was unimpressed, to say the least. However, driving on a trip a friend and I got a lot of laughs out of flipping through this book. It's very, very amusing if you don't take it seriously. The thing that makes me sad is that she's just using her sexuality to sell a feel good waste of paper with absolutely no depth. There's nothing evolutionary about it, unless you consider being a wanton, idiotic freak "evolutionary". If this is what humanity is evolving into, I am frightend


Hopefully This Series Will Improve!
	Unlike Cussler's other series, I found this first story of the "Oregon Files" slow going at first and rather confusing. There are just too many things going on (no problem, I suppose, for multi-taskers!) and way too many characters to keep track of. Also, there's little to no character development even of "Mr. Chairman", Juan Cabrillo. The fact that he and his companions are mercenaries (with a penchant for good deeds that pay well) doesn't compare favorably with the NUMA heroes. However, the plots were intriguing and getting the golden budda out of the country was exciting and more like the roller coaster rides I expect from Mr. Cussler and co-writers. I look forward to the subsequent Oregon Files with high hopes.


I think contracts are not very strong tool
	I read this book and I think presented material is not practical in commercial applications. In my opinion better solution is writting tests and using aspects to integrate applications. I know this is something different from contracts, by I think contracts are to complex, hard to maintain and lacks of support for multithreaded problems.

For me another problem with contracts is problem in describing complex constraint that exists in problem domain. For example how to describe that objects must be cloned, not passed by reference or how to check that objects holded by readonly list not change their state during operations on list?

Regards,
Marci


Worst book in the series, including the prequels.
	Some may disagree, and in fact, many have asked me why I disliked this one so much; so, here is why:

- scratch 'plotting'... by this point in the story, 'plodding' is more accurate.

- caracatures over characters. A staple of the series, 2d characters; but by this point, when new characters keep getting introduced this late in the story, it becomes an annoyance, a drag and overkill.

- virtually zero gain.
the entire first half of the book is a rescue mission for a minor character and the mission, once accomplished (or not) is forgotten by the end of the book. The third fourth of the book finally starts to swing thigns back to the original LB premise of end times doom and gloom thanks to the horrific judgments; sadly, it's very boring and slow. However...

-... the book doesn't get good until the last fourth.
And that, my friends, is not good for the overall quality of this entry in the series.

By this point, it's obvious that the authors were REALLY stretching it. However, as I said, things got really good in the last few chapters and led into 'Armageddon', one of the best books in the series. How ironic.

Thumbs way down for Left Behind: The Remnant. It's sad when the best part of the book is a scene involving the antichrist sunbathing on a rooftop.


entirely inaccurate ...
	... and the maps are worthless.

Two examples of the many glaring inaccuracies contained in this book:
1) Rick claims you can pick up a bus map in any tourist information kiosk.  The following is an actual transcript of our conversation with the tourist info lady:
us: buon giorno.  do you speak english?
info lady: of course.
us: we'd like to go to Vatican city.  may we have a bus map please?
info lady: a bus map? for Roma?
us: um, yes.
info lady: no such thing exists.

2) Rick claims you can see everything you want to see in the Vatican in one morning: St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel - everything. Um, Rick? Have you ever BEEN there? Did you notice the 40,000 other people there all trying to get in to the same things? Did you notice the priceless and beautiful works of art on practically every surface?  Did it occur to you that people might, perhaps, want to stop and admire a large number of them? Light a candle? Say a prayer? Some of us, also, have to behind a crowd of 35 elderly Germans to look at Michaelangelo's Pieta, and everything else.

Methinks ol' Rick either spends an average of 15 minutes apiece on the most astonishing and pleasurable spots in Rome, or is comfortable elbowing foreign senior citizens in the ribs


Don't waste your money
	This book is not very helpful and confusing to use. A lot of the information it provides is information you can read on the food labels IF you buy those brands.


Capable but strange
	Gives many examples of Weapons, most of which are useful.
Gives no/few examples of Rings/Armours/Rods/Staffs/Shields

Doesn't really think out a lot of the bonuses, also I question a lot of the penalties one has to take to use a Legacy weapon. About the only table worth taking is 4-1, or 4-2. Sure its a minus three to your saves, and a minus 2 to your attack power, and a whole SLEW of HP. The rest of them are so painful they aren't worth taking.

Also all the caster "Tables" the ones your suppost to use if your a caster but losing caster levels and spell slots left and right doesn't make any sense. No matter what feats and wizardry skills its not worth it. Those could have been more thought out.

Also I question the fact that in some cases the lowest tables, A, D, and G. Seem to be a lot better than the B, E and H tables just from the way they interact with things. I do fully agree that the top end capability you can add to your Legacy item is quite powerful, the I table is filled with many useful things the you wish you could have picked two of them. What I wish/want was if they're was some way to trade lower level slots to get you the capacity to get two I table skills. Also some way to get either more or less slots if you take a less dangerous or more dangerous tables of the legacy grid.

The rules for weapons and fighters/barbarians/paladins/rangers. Are very well thought out and are very powerful. Yet for anyone other class they need heavy modification to be workable. In a Caster heavy campaign like the one I run and participate in its a very low value book


The only book I've wanted to throw away
	It's not that the actual story is nonsense but they guy has included so much 'fluff' that you get board waiting on a paragraph with real content.  This book was so frustrating, I really wish I had saved myself the bother of reading it


Surprisingly hyped
	This book is mostly hype. The writing is not that great. Japan must be really dying out if the country of some of the world's great literary giants can award such a prize for such weak work. However the book has erotic energy and is fresh in that way. If you are a serious reader skip this book.


its over guys
	This is a kids book. First few had my attention but since then its getting worse with each book.


Not that funny
	I keep reading and listening to his books because everyone says how good they are, but I have never found this to be so.  He always strikes me as someone who potters around never really interacting with people who then goes home and writes about it.  He seems more at home studying statistics (which he includes everywhere) and drawing his own facile conclusions from these statistics.  I always imagine him stuck in his room reading his newspaper, surfing the net and smugly summing up his brief interactions with people in the real world.  All his travel books are equally awful as he never really interacts with anyone - just comments on them later.  Still lots of people think he is grea


Disappointing
	Sorry guys, I looked forward to working on recipes from this cookbook due to the very enthusiastic reception it received from the media.  The graphics of the book are truly beautiful.  The recipes however, hmmm,  try again.  I followed a simple recipe for Apple Crisp and got a bad result.  I now go to respected standard cookbooks for my Apple Crisp recipe and the old family favorite always turns out great.  Really people, the recipes are NOT the stuff of greatness.  Graphics? Great. Photography? Great?  Recipes? You have got to be kidding


Escaping the Massive Yawn
	Imagine, just as I was getting bored with this book, through an odd act of  contingence its binding literally fell apart in my hands.  A  Loki-Eshu-hermetic encounter?  What a thankful rescue.  Rambling and  indulgent, such repetition would be better kept to a long essay rather than  a full book.  A trickster's story, indeed


The Old Feint and Switch
	So you pick up this book and read on the back cover the exciting quote about Hemingway's ghost and you're ready to drop some cash, right?  Guess what--there's zero information about the Hemingway haunting in this book!  In addition, old Ataulfo of Madrid has less words wasted on him than an asthmatic's version of Handel's Halleluja Chorus.  Instead, what's offered here is a rehash of old stories (and old theories about what ghosts could be) with insipid, comic book illustrations.  Why this is called a  quot;field guide quot; with its connotation of an exhaustive reference to every kind of manifestation of a particular phenomenon--be it birds, plants, or mushrooms--is yet another part of the mystery of why this book exists.  If you're a serious researcher of this subject, then pass this book up and seek Hem's fetch elsewhere


Filth, Rot, and Decay
	Creepiest book ever.

How can I describe it? It's like waking from fevered dreams to find yourself in a bathtub filled with molasses and blood, and flies crawling in and out of your eyes, your nose, the corners of your mouth. It is unpleasant.

I don't know, I hate to be the philistine, and I suppose it's a good thing that these books exist, for other people, but for me? I don't want to live in such ugliness


Not age appropriate
	Leaving the racism issue aside, this is not a book for small children. Even if everything turns out OK in the end, I'm not prepared to expose my children to issues of capital punishment and the drowning death of a small boy. Small children forget the ending and focus on the scary parts in between. Perhaps I'm a softie, but let's allow them to be children and not worry about being wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to death by beheading. Just because it's a classic doesn't make it appropriate reading.


Forget the racism argument....what about the drownings, executions, burnings at the stake, suffocations.....
	Racism is not the problem with this book - sure...5 Chinese brothers look alike -maybe they look alike because they are brothers, not because they are Chinese.  I bought this book because generally I love the books written in earlier times - they have a quaintness about their stories and illustrations that can transport you and your child to another time.  This book does have engaging illustrations.  What I find disturbing is the fact that this is a book for children yet:

(1)	a little boy drowns, never to be seen again
(2)	one brother is tried, arrested and sentenced to have his head cut off
(3)	the people of the village assemble in the village to witness the execution where the "executioner took his sword and struck a mighty blow"
(4)	the next brother was sentenced to be drowned and was thrown overboard from a boat
(5)	the next brother is sentenced to be burned alive - he was tied up to a stake and set fire
(6)	the next brother is sentenced to be suffocated - he's shovelled into an oven

This is no more appropriate for a child (or adult for that matter) in 1936 than it is in 2005.  Now, a lot of you are probably thinking I'm one of those mothers who just needs to get a sense of humour and lighten up.  I'm not...I love the Giving Tree, and can put naughty Eloise (and the smoking nanny) in context, as I can many other books that polarise readers.  I really wanted to like this book but trust me....if you buy it, you will have lots of uncomfortable explaining to do to a young child.  An eight year old may be able to put it in context, but there is no way you should read this to a four year old.   If you want a great book written in the 1930s, buy Ferdinand the Bull instead.  It's a fantastic book.


Disappointing
	Unfotrunately Shantaram did not grab my imagination at all.  Nor did I find it emotionally satisfying.  I realize Shataram is meant to be a kind of Bollywood story - over the top, flowery, cliched etc. but the Bollywood movies I've seen have been engaging and strangely satisfying, despite their soppyness etc.  Shantaram was not engaging because the poor writing and shallow characters spoil the story.


YAWN..........
	First I have to admit, I only read 150 pages of this book.  That was all I could possibly stand.  Life is just too short to waste on a book you don't enjoy reading.

Ballas, our main character, is a drunk and a scoundrel.  One is not sure whether they should root for or against him.  He is a vagrant, thief, and all around not so nice guy.  He steals a mysteriously beautiful gemstone, which sets into motion something........I got too bored to stick around and find out what.

  The first 150 pages are filled with Ballas being beaten within an inch of his life, coming to, healing enough to move on, only to be beaten within an inch of his life again.   ok, we get it, let's get on with the story.  I just got too bored to stay with this one folks.  Maybe it got better, but to me, if an author can't write well enough to grab and maintain my attention, their book isn't worth my time.  There are too many great books out there.  Read this one at your own risk, if you can stay awake through it, that is


Some merit, but overall flawed
	By arguing that human rights comes from some vague concept of "dignity" and "familiarity" rather than sentience and feeling, Fukuyama brings to mind the European colonists who considered Africans no more than "common beasts." His philosophy, although argued in a tone that seems reasonable, is at turns startingly narrow-minded and genetically-racist. Not reccomended: readers should look otherwheres for a more balanced and less judgemental review of biotechnology and ethics


The Elegant Gathering of White Snows
	Don't waste your money on this book. I will finish the book because it is our book club choice. The characters are shallow and  self centered. The writing is middle school quality. Kris Radish seems to have an agenda she is pushing and she was going to get it all into this book come hell or high water. No poetry and no beauty, I could care less about the women in this book. Who could possibly think life's problems could be solved by walking away from them while drinking lots of wine? I treasure my sisters and women friends but I wouldn't want to be a friend to any of these women. I would give it no stars if I could


The Power of Your Subconscious Mind - Abridged CD
	The book is AMAZING!  The CD is HORRIBLE!  Stick to reading the book yourself.  I have over 45 audio books...and this was like listen to a bad commercial.  I had to turn it off. There is no connection between the narrator and the words he is reading.  They don't even state who the narrator is!

I recommend the book to anyone.  The content is life changing


The Celts in Ireland
	Mr. Cahills book offers an interesting and controversial take on history. He is an excellent and compelling writer, but his differentiation between pre and post diaspora Israelites when discussing the Celts in several of his books is not always clear.

It was only the post-Babylonian diaspora Southern Kingdom Israelites who came to be known as Jews, around 500 BC.

It was the post-Assyrian diaspora (721 BC) of the larger ten-tribed Northern Kingdom Israelites who became what we today call the Celts. It is they who are both the Island Celts who populated Ireland, Scotland, Wales, etc., and their cousins, the Continental Celts who sacked the Roman Empire under many Celtic tribal names and who make up most of northwest Europe today.

The author could perhaps clarify this part of his presentations on European history by reviewing losttribes.net or any other modern Celtic site based on contemporary archeology.


Narcissistic Twaddle
	All I could think was, "Damn, if I had so many friends at my beck and call to talk me down off the ledge, I'd never be depressed." I don't know quite how to explain it, but I felt no empathy for him. I only ended up feeling more depressed. As a history of depression, the level of research was quite impressive.

If you read Prozac Nation and wanted to punch her out, steer clear of this one as well


Simple, Elegant and Wrong
	Roberts' little fable pits a wholly benign free-trade against absolute protectionism and guess which one looks better.  Based on the theories of David Ricardo, the fable assumes that every worker in the world is always treated fairly and every boss is kind and responsible.  In The Choice there are no sweat shops and no corrupt CEOs.  Fables like The Choice (or the "free-market economy" for that matter) are easy to believe because we want the world to be that simple.  That's why the book is dangerous.  The Choice has almost nothing to do with the real world, but it sounds good.  The argument is so seamless that it appears almost unassailable.  If you buy Roberts' version of Ricardo, however, you must accept Wal-Mart as the epitome of business virtue.

Roberts may be a great guy, and he certainly writes well.  Unfortunately, his book begins with a series of fallacious premises and works its way toward a conclusion that is simple, elegant, and horribly wrong


Not quite what I expected
	This book turned out to be a disappointing resource.  Although the book includes 20,001 names, many are unlikely and outlandish (Klotild, Edwige, Ghislain, Ethelbert, Birtle), making it arduous to sift through to find the  names more worthy of consideration