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This was the first Collin Wilson book I read. He has probably read a lot to write this book, but to anyone at least a little into the occult it is clear that he have no idea what he is talking about.
If you are interested in this matter (the occult knowledge) as something you would read about but never, ever try to verify if it is true or practice anything, maybe this book is ok.
But if you are serious about it and really want to know what true and what is fake, please stay away from this book. He is so wrong about even simple things that could have been verified with just a few months of practical experimentation.
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I'll reread any of Lipman's books multiple times - except this one. Boring and disappointing finish
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Obviously, from all the reviews, this book appeals to many people. I am not one of them. Perhaps it's because I don't care for science fiction. I found the writing stilted, the footnotes distracting to the point I stopped bothering with them, the story boring, and the ending (covered in the introduction) to be a Twilight Zone cliche. If, like me, you want to read the book because it has some connection to bicycles and cycling you will be disapppointed.
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Don't bother buying 'the wonder of girls,borrow it from a friend cause it will only make a turn around the office with many a snicker.I couldn't think of a girl I grew up with including myself who needed constant reassurance or had more
trouble with math than boys.I agree with the other review about we grow our own brains and make connections.Infact,research
shows if you give any child a chance at spatial tasks,the child
improves.Girls often are given dolls .,so how can a girl
develope spatial ability playing with a doll? Go fig!Gurian
doesn't tell the reader anything about experience and environment ~ instead he is vocal about fixed brain function which of course leaves a child in a narrow subgroup.Girls are all lumped into one.I wouldn't let your daughter read this book,'it might give her a bad case of low self~esteem and leave her wondering about herself as a woman.Gurian wants women in
second place at best.Teach your daughter to believe in herself not some pop psychology from a questionable author bent on messing with her success
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I had great expectations of this book but the more I read the worse it got. For a person who is supposed to be an 'Orientalist' he sure does hate his subject. Under cover of being a scholar Lewis promotes his neoconservative ideology as serious learning. This ideology is the guiding force behind the troubles in the Middle East today. Powerful people listen to Lewis and follow his advise on how to deal with the Muslim world. Unfortunately this advice comes from a person who has made it a lifelong mission to destroy and defame the very subject he claims to be an expert of
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Many of the columns were interesting . . . painting a picture of a vast right-ring conspiracy that Hillary Clinton first brought to the public discourse. But it seems that most of these pieces are obsolete, without any interest either as themselves or as a theme. Does anyone care about Texas state politics in 1989, or Phil Gramm's problems as a senator or as a presidential candidate? Someone should have gone through this and culled out what was obsolete .. except that that would probably have left less material than would make up a book. Just going through a bunch of previously written columns and passing them off as a book may be a cheap and easy way to publish something but it is an inadequate read
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When I found "Hour Game" in paperback at our local library's monthly book sale, I thought I had hit pay dirt. But I cannot believe that this author who wrote such gripping gems such as "The Winner" and "Absolute Power" could turn out such a dog. Long, boring, and confusing. I fear that Mr. Baldacci hired an "aspiring young writer" to "help" him crank out a quick book. I cannot pass this book along to my friends -- I couldn't do that to them. It will be tossed into our blue recycle bin. What a waste. What a shame.
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This is a nice small book to take along in the car but I don't think the pictures are animated enough. My 19 month old son doesn't seem too interested in the book
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First of all, Ike is doing the very thing that Tina always said he would do. Ike Turner will never admit to what he did to Tina. Tina stayed around him for so long because she promised that she would never leave him like "all the others." Ike took advantage of her. Tina her self said she cared very much for him. Cher even had seen what was going on and tried to convince Tina to leave him. Even the girls that danced with Tina on stage had whitnessed what happened.
Tina did not write her autobiography to promote her career, she herself said that she did not want to talk about what happened but the public kept asking her what had went on. So she released her autobiography in 1986, well after her come-back in 1984.
While Ike can try to deny it all he wants, the truth is he violently abused Tina! And considering the person Ike Turner is, I would expect him to do no less than to lie and make a pathetic-excusse of a come-back!!
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As a complete newbie to XML this was a good starter. As I got deeper into XML I found several mistakes/deficiencies in the book, and sometimes the author just flat out seemed to not know what he was talking about. For instance, the claim on page 86 that (#CDATA) is a valid DTD element content definition is flat out wrong. His description of Schema element declarations (pp. 114-115) teaches that using globals/refs is the only way to define complex elements, and is inappropriate for his example. He makes no mention of globals at all, leaving the reader confused. I have ceased to trust this book as a valid source of XML information
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I have read this book, Mr. Moon's "Divide and Quit", Mr. Khosla's work, "Stern Reckoning" amongst others on the subject of the Partition. Ms. Butalia's work is so saturated with her personal opinions and idealogy, that it almost ceases to be a work on history than the airing of one's thoughts and mindset. Almost a diatribe, if I may. I will agree with what john_galt_who has written. I think he has hit the nail on the head. I did not consider this book worth either the money or the time
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His fragmentary thoughts are difficult to follow. There is some wisdom here and there, but not worth the headache you'll get trying to decipher what is going on in his head. Here is an example:
"If you say your own name to yourself at such a moment, it will seem utterly alien. You will then understand the sacrament of baptism." Huh?
At first, I thought his writing may just be over my head, but after re-reading most of it, I realized it was just bad. It's like the whole book was written when he was high or something. Some very good ideas, but most can be found in other, better written books.
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This book explains very well the growing paranoia of modern parents. This is a resolute attack against parenting determinism. It is regrettable, however, that the author's references are not more "scientific" than those he reproaches to parenting determinism advocates of using. Moreover, he is not far from praising spanking, which is "proven" very bad for children
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It's hard to imagine this book being of much value even for a true and complete novice to prospecting. Written with blatant self promotion in mind for other Garrett products there is little if any substantive information on panning that could not be reduced to 4 or 5 pages with a couple of diagrams added. Would appear author may have been paid by the word given the tedious repetitions found throughout. Truly basic and nothing new here - spend your money elsewhere
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I picked this book up a couple days ago with a few others, hoping to learn about America's prison system. I think our prison system is horrible and I was hoping that this book would give me some more information on the topic. Unfortunately, in the first twenty pages of the book, Elsner claims that America imprisons 704 people per every 10,000 citizens. If you do the math, that equals 7% of our population. 7% of our population is greater than the population of the State of New York. According to this author, there are more people in prison in this country than live in the State of New York.
Before you get too worried, let me reassure you that this is not the case. America imprisons 736 people per *100,000* citizens (as of 5/06), or .736% of the population. This is the highest rate in the entire world, so there's no need to move the decimal point to make it seem more dramatic. For comparison, Stalin had .771% of his citizens imprisoned in the Gulags during the height of the Purges. Again, there's really no need to exaggerate America's rate of incarceration. What disappoints me is that this error is not simply a typo on one page, but is repeated several times. Apparently the author actually believes we imprison 7% of our population, and the editors at Prentice Hall think that makes sense as well, as do all the luminaries who glowingly endorsed this book on the back cover.
Personally, I can't take anything this author says seriously if there are errors so blatant a novice in the subject can them pick out, on the first twenty pages no less. If a subject as basic as prison population is exaggerated by a power of 10, how do we know the rest of the book isn't off by a power of 10? Elsner makes prison reform advocates look like the bunch of uninformed dreamers conservatives like to imagine. Don't buy this book
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I actually know where Trieste was before I read this book. Unfortunately I have never visited the city. I wanted to read this travel book about this famous city, but after a few chapters, I wondered where the book was going to. After the final chapter, I still do not know what the author's intentions was with this book. Perhaps I don't read too many travel books. Obviously the city means a lot to the author, but she did not express it clearly in her writing. I was scratching my head at the end, and wondering what I read.
I learned a little about the city, but not in relation to the amount of time I spent reading this short book. The city of James Joyce and Maximillian. The imperial port of the Austo-Hungarian Empire. The meeting point of Slav, German, and Latin Empires. One of the ending points of the Iron Curtain. This city breeds interest and yet the author took us on a round about journal that confuses the reader. I am sure the author's other books are good, her last one was not the greatest.
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I did not read the book but I did look it over carefully. I was hoping it would be a clear step by step guide to using IBD to apply the CANSLIM method. There is so much information in the paper that it is not easy to apply all the techniques in an efficient manner. There are almost too many choices and directions possible. This book is not a step by step guide nor is it all that clear. I did find it to be unnecessarily wordy and vague. It just seems to go over the whole paper in a long winded fashion but does not get down to the nuts and bolts of "Smart Investing" as I was hoping it would. Refer to William O'Neil's books for better guidance about how to invest. Also, if you are a subscriber, there is a large amount of useful information on the IBD website at Investors.com
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At least this author mentions the "mockery" strategy Martha/Mdiddy tried to use to "fog" the public. The "real issue" of whether Martha/Mdiddy committed the crimes, and lack of an effort to encourage an answer to the question "DID MARTHA STEWART" lie, demonstrates some complacency. Is it this complacency Martha/Mdiddy and her pr team try to encourage and promote? Is it the "greyness" of white-collar crime that Martha/Mdiddy was trying to play on? Is society the ultimate judge about a person's guilt or innocence? If so, what has Martha/Mdiddy been judged?
Be "thoughtful"
~Shaw
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This poorly executed story drags on for too long while the town waits for the return of Sister North. In the end, we really don't care if she ever returns. The ending is cliched and predictable. A waste of time
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What a complete and utter waste of time. Its obvious how these guys got dubbed the nutroots
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You can breeze through this book in under an hour -- I just did. While it makes for a suspenseful, albeit entertaining, account of what happened that infamous night, Damore relies too heavily on witnesses' accounts and police remarks (often little more than Kennedy bashing). By now, most of us can accept the facts: that EMK drank way too much and drove off a bridge, subsequently leading to tragedy. DUI accidents happen every day, chillingly often to average people. The fact that this happened to one of the greatest Senators in the history of the United States only reaffirms this. ..
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This book is typical for many of its kind, just a man-hating drivel from feminists...and otherwise good for nothing
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I am not a student. I wanted to read The Great Gatsby but I had no one with whom I could discuss the story. I decided in a momentary lapse of judgment to supplement my reading with the Cliffs Notes. Unfortunately, it was full of grammatical errors and what I found to be very superficial commentaries
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Unfortunately there are not much words to loose. Poor writing together with the fact that practically all facts were lifted from Cameron's 'Conversation with Wilder' which is highly recommended btw, make this book forgettable. Why going through the whole exercise of publishing it is quite a mystery
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Reading this book ten years after it was written made it very hard to get into it. For one thing, the author still talks about the USSR and East Germany, and those countries faded away so long ago that the whole book seems dated. It's hard to suspend disbelief and imagine this book was really written far in the future.
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This book is not about India or Indians. Shallow characters. Non existant plot. A dismal end to a not terrible beginning. Unlike one of the other reviewers, I was unlucky enough to buy this book - what a waste
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Let me say right off the bat, I am a skeptic, but still I loved author Gary Goldschneider's first two books from this series: the Secret Language of Birthdays and the SL of Relationships. But this one, THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF DESTINY is a bore.
Rather than offering two pages to each birth date, as Birthdays did, or a half of a page as Relationship did, this book gives the reader a short 1/4 page paragraph that allegedly sums up the destiny of those born in each of the 48 personology periods. This information is so general and by the way so boring that it could relate to anyone if in fact you don't fall asleep reading it.
For this reason, I do not recommend THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF DESTINY.
-- Regina McMenami
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Way too much unusable information. I kept waking up throughout the book, hoping to get to the parts about day-trading I could put into practice. (It never happened
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I bought Bead Fantasies and Bead Fantasies II at the same time after reading the positive reviews; I wish I had looked at these books before buying. There are pretty motifs that I will incorporate into my beading projects but I find the small typed directions overly simplistic and the diagrams are too small. I'm glad this isn't my first beading book or I would feel totally discouraged from trying any of these projects. I won't be buying Bead Fantasies III. The Art and Elegance of Beadweaving and Coraling Technique remain my favorite beading books.
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After reading A Fine Balance I couldn't wait to read another book by this author. I then read his third book called Family Matters which was good but I was disappointed as it by no means compared to A Fine Balance. I just finished Such A Long Journey and found it to be okay but very slow moving and downright boring in some spots. It is my least favorite of the three books by this author. It's hard to believe that someone can right a book like A Fine Balance, which was magnificant and one of the best books I have ever read, and then turn our stuff that is, at best, average.
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There were so many continuity errors and spelling problems in this book that I had to stop. Trying to follow two-dimensional characters are difficult enough. I was just looking for a good fiction book that contained gay themes, characters or both. I got the gay but not the story
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I have listened to a bunch of Dean Koontz books. While listening to the second one I saw so many similarities, which really turned me off. And this flaw continued which each book I listen to, which caused me to be reluctant to buy this book. However, most of the stories were pretty good so I stuck with him. This is not the case with this book. "Cold Fire" is absolutely horrible. I so regret purchasing this book. It is so bad that I have decided to swear off Dean for looooooooong while.
Just on a side note, "The Bad Place" is the first DK book I read and it was very entertaining.
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This is a book meant to be enjoyed by children under the age of 10. Young teens and adult readers will be disapointed. Wish I never wasted the time of day reading it. Glad it was borrowed from the library and not purchased or I'd demand my money back
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Not a great deal of new insight here. I did learn a bit more than I knew, however, about Meade's failure to pursue at Gettysburg. Mr. Boritt is the editor and author of one essay; other essays are by four historians: Stephen W. Sears, Mark E. Neely, Jr., Michael Fellman, and John Y. Simon. (Alan J. Jacob
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Cruel, horrible story with a typical Barr convoluted plot. The abuse of children, evil ranger poising as a dead ranger, freaky religious sect, dead animals on the bed, and lost children were all too disturbing and disgusting to me. I've read many Barr books, and my biggest complaint up until now has been that sometimes there are so many characters, it's hard to keep them straight. In this book, that was the last of my worries. I didn't even finish it, I was so turned off
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I can tell you first hand how Amazon makes easy money. I am a formal seller here at Amazon. Not a big seller,but an honest one with a 5 star rating and zero claims.However Amazon allows dishonest buyer's to do chargebacks months after a purchase and then has nothing in place to assist seller's in getting their merchandise back. Sounds like retail fraud to me!! I wish there was a lower rating to give to this website.They are truly at the bottom!
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After reading this book, it was apparent to me that the author was implying that Nixon was a dark and grumpy man who needed his image repackaged. McGinnis boasts of Nixon and his PR teams ability to hide the "true" Nixon and to trick the public into voting for his image. He proclaims that the real Nixon was the one that the country saw debating Kennedy on TV in 1960. Nothing could be further from the truth. First off, Nixon won the 1960 election but did not contest the results for the good of the nation. All historians admit that JFK had help from Daily in Illinois and LBJ in Texas. Furthermore, in the 1960 debates, Nixon had a high fever and was recently out of the hospitable and JFK's staff broke into the basement of the studio and turned up the heat to make him sweat! If anyone decieved the voters with his image, it was JFK using his dramatic but bubbly rhetoric and not backing it up and JFK the family man and the idealist. JFK exploited the Missile Gap, had numerous affairs, assassinated Ngo Dihn Diem, wire tapped Martin Luther King, screwed up the Bay of Pigs, and had ties to the Mafia! Now, I could be wrong, but JFK's campaign sounds like a true selling of the President. 'Selling of the President' has little credible content but infact is a good historical document that portrays Left Wing propaganda of the 1960s
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I worked with the author in the Narcotics Section of the Chicago Police Department. Please do not let the author's perception of the truth sway your opinion about the Chicago Police Department and the men and women who serve proudly. The author claims that the Narcotics Section and its policies were a leading contributor to his decline. I think not. He thrived on these practices and used them to his advantage. All we saw was a selfish and immature young man who thought of himself first. If the author thinks that only the Commander of the Narcotics Section was disgusted with his drug usage and failing his urinalysis, he is dead wrong. We all were. If you read this book, please do not indict all of us because of one person's jaded stories.
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The best thing about this book is its table of contents. In second place is the preface. And then it's all downhill. If you want to buy a list of topics in electronic communications, with brief summaries that explain absolutely nothing whatsover in any great (or even little) detail, and you really have no other use for your hard earned $100.00+ dollars, then please go ahead and buy this book.
If however, you value your cash, and would rather buy a book that rather than insulting your intelligence, at least attempts in good faith to teach you something, then please, don't fall for the marketing ploy of the title "RF Microelectronics". Because there's very little "RF" and even less "Microelctronics" in this text. Here's a taste of the marketing ploy from the very first line of the preface:
"The annual worldwide sales of cellular phones has exceeded $2.5B."
Do I see dollar signs in your eyes? I thought so. Don't fall for the trap. If you want to learn a thing or two about RF electronics theory as well as detailed explanations of what the job of each individual component (like a capacitor here or a resistor there) in a communication circuit is, then buy:
Modern Electronic Communication (9th Edition) by Gary M. Miller.
The Miller book's 9th edition is coming out soon. Even with 992 pages of text, it costs only $60.00.
I believe Razavi's book should never have been published because frankly, it's not a book at all. Why it's still in print (though stuck at first edition for nearly 10 years), is completely beyond any sane person's comprehension
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Though the concept of sharing real life problems experienced during pregnancy is a great one, the author is extremely biased toward hospital birth managed by OBs.
At one point, the author actually defends episiotomies... she seems to blindly accept every procedure her physician pushes upon her, and she looks at him as being responcible for the outcome of her birth. It was both infuriating and saddening.
If you are looking for a book to make you laugh a little, this is cute. If you are looking for a book that might actually aid or assist you in making informed choices concerning your pregnancy or birth, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!
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I have never been a fan of Danielle Steel's books and have only read a couple in my lifetime, and those many years ago. I'm not sure what motivated me to pick up Toxic Bachelors -- extreme boredom? insanity? -- but I slogged through it last night and have to say that it confirmed all my bad impressions of this writer's work. Actually, I think I was a little surprised by how awesomely bad it was. The writing was completely repetitive and superficial, and I rather felt that I was reading a treatment for a novel rather than the novel itself. It read like a poor book report: "...and then he did this, and then he did this, and after that he did this, and then he laughed." We are TOLD that the bachelors -- who struck me as commitment-phobic, a little neurotic, and fairly immature despite their (middle) age, but not necessarily toxic -- are decent, likable guys, but we never really see too much proof of that. When the "proof" does come, it's so ham-handed as to be laughable: Charlie's eyes well up with tears when he meets a young girl who was abused by her mother, and so we know that he truly does have a loving and compassionate soul and untold complexities to his character. Yeahsurerightwhatever. Most of the story is told through narration, with little bits and pieces of ho-hum dialogue. The author adopted a third-person point of view, but there's certainly nothing omniscient about it, and the reader is never sucked into the head of one of these characters. Throughout the book they remain about as interesting and dimensional as paper dolls, and their interactions with one another always struck me as being fairly unbelievable. THIS is how men behave and relate to one another? I find that hard to believe, considering that none of the men I know run around telling each other how much they love one another and how important they are to each other.
I liked the female characters of the book initially. They all seemed to be strong, capable, independent and emotionally healthy women. But my opinion of each diminished greatly toward the end of the book, as each woman seemed all too willing to disregard her personal boundaries and put up with extreme schmuckiness from her man. And the conflicts Steel generated amongst the couples seemed ridiculous: mountains out of molehills. For instance, Gray, the 50-year-old artist who has always been phobic about family, refuses to meet the ADULT children of the woman he's been with for several months and whom he claims to love. Nevermind the fact that he's known about the ADULT children since the very beginning. Nevermind the fact that the ADULT children live in England and Italy, while Gray and Sylvia are New Yorkers. Nevermind the fact that they have their own lives and are independent, self-sufficient ADULTS who maintain their relationship with their mother through frequent phone calls and less frequent face-to-face visits. Evidently Gray can't see beyond the fact that they are "kids" and therefore "family" and therefore not to be tolerated. Sorry, but whatever sympathy I'd developed for Gray by this point disappeared altogether when confronted by this monstrous display of immaturity. Dump the weenie, Sylvia. You can do better. The other two guys had similar displays of gross ridiculousness, and of course everything was wrapped up magically, with sudden capitulation, as if the men had just suddenly come to their senses.
Considering what little time and effort was spent on these characters, their conflicts and resolution, I have to wonder why Steel even bothered writing this book. And why I bothered reading i
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It's surprising to see how much the front and back cover promise only to find out how little information and substance it actually delivers. The book is very basic providing mostly very general information. The chapter on shift levers is particularly incomplete with outdated examples and few details on maintenance and repairs. The book may suffer from trying to cover both road and mountain bikes and doing a poor job with both. Certainly won't purchase another book recommended or endorsed by Bicycling Magazine
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Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is a Pulitzer award winning, autobiographical play about his family. I must admit that though Eugene O'Neill is considered by some to be the father of American Theater, I did not enjoy reading this play. The Tyrone family's insane dysfunction with their constant bickering and apologizing was very annoying and frustrating to read. I also disliked the fact that after four acts of continuous yelling and tension O'Neill offered no conclusion. The day in the life of the Tyrone family gets progressively worse until it finally peaks and the play just ends. No happy ending, no hope for the future, just despair. "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is a wholly depressing read that I really could have done without. However, after learning more about Eugene O'Neill's background, and the extent to which the play is based on his life, I began to have a greater appreciation for this play. O'Neill did lead a very hard life, therefore the frustration and despair I felt while reading this play demonstrates O'Neill's talent to engage his audience and to convey the emotions of the characters in a very real manner. While O'Neill's depressing end did not satisfy my craving for a happy ending, it was appropriate for the play as Eugene's own family never got a happy ending. I did like the clever way O'Neill showed the Tyrone family's desire but inability to forget their troubles through the dialogue. At the beginning of the play the audience is presented with a normal, loving family. The audience soon however, gets the suspicion that something isn't quite right, and that the family is tense. Slowly the family's skeletons are exposed through arguments between the family members, but the characters always feel regretful for bringing the subject up. Thus showing that no matter how hard the Tyrone family tries to pretend that all is well, their skeletons are always with them and resurface to continually remind them of the truth. Although I still believe "Long Day's Journey Into Night" to be thoroughly disheartening to read, the reader's emotional response to this play leaves no doubt to O'Neill's exceptional writing.
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It was a mistake to buy it. Only few pages were interestin
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Apparently the difference between a criminal act (theft) and moral redistribution of income is 1) who you steal from (stealing from the wealthy, of course, is moral -- according to Rawls and Bolsheviks), and 2) who receives the loot (the non-wealthy makes it moral), and 3) who commits the act (the state/society, of course also makes theft moral; example - taxation), and 4) your intentions (redistribution of income). To look at this another way, if your neighbor breaks into your house and steals your money, that's a crime (unless your neighbor is poor -- which would then be moral and Justice, according to Rawls' formula). If the community comes into your house and steals from you, it's legal and moral Justice, again, according to Rawls. Because, according to Rawls, if, before you were born, you were to vote with everyone on how physical world society should be structured, you'd vote to have the state guarantee that everyone was equal, or they would be compensated somehow for being born (unjustly) less-equal. How? By compensating those with less by stealing from those with more. So those with more would be like oh, say ... a milk-cow who gets milked to serve those with less. So those with more would become a resource, or state-owned slaves to those with less ... because "society" (the Robin Hoods and Rawls of the world) deemed this as moral Justice. Rawls does not take into account those who are willing to take on risk, entrepreneurs, students of life who work to earn an "A" vs. students who earn an "F". He points out that many people are born into difficult situations through no fault of their own. True. But that does not implicate those within society who are born into better situations as the cause, nor are those who are born into better situations responsible for making up the difference. Forcing the "wealthier" ones to be accountable for the unfairness within life and pay the bill isn't Justice or moral. It would simply be an unjust law. Some people see Rawls' theory as a blueprint for a future generation utopia (like the Bolsheviks envisioned Marxism). I see it as an insane blueprint for slavery, and a powerful dis-incentive for earning personal reward and merit. In a sense, this book is an argument against the individual. It sees the world through a blurred lense where the author only recognizes masses of people -- he doesn't recognize any individuals (unless they were born as victims). Curious. How do you experience life ... as a group-mind (an oxymoron if there ever was one), a collective? Or as a unique, isolated, independent, individual? There should be societal incentives to help each other. Okay. But when it is forced (theft of property always implies force), it is no longer an issue of morality or justice -- it's simply a law. Without personal choice being involved there is no morality as an issue, by definition. Transforming advantaged individuals into mules forced to carry the burdens of the world is a definition of justice for whom?
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I have read other books by Alesia Holliday and enjoyed them so I looked forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, I could not get any farther than the first 25 pages. I even tried diving in further into the book to see if it got better and I still could not read more than 5 pages without turning away. The best I can do to pin down why I dislike it so much is to say that it tries too hard. No character seems to even approach reality. They are all, including the main character and her love interest, over the top
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This book is for readers with little or no knowledge of recent debates on energy security, global warming, etc. as well as related technological advances in fields such as hydrogen and fuel cells. The author contributes little to previous books on the subject, such as Rikin's book on hydrogen which is much better researched and just as accesible to the general public. If anything, the book's original contribution is to discuss how energy and environmental issues can be addressed using market mechanisms. In doing so, the author comes up with some interesting case studies, but it's quite obvious he is biased toward the same tired free-market ideology that is endlessly promoted in the pages of The Economist, which happens to be the author's employer. Moreover, there was little effort in integrating the various chapters. Overall, a very disapointing book. The author should stick to journalism
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Children love to follow instructions, step by step, and this book has an over abundance of unnecessary and inefficient steps that can make a simple recipe that would normally take 20 minutes to prep, drag on for hours. Any adult, who cooks like this doesn't cook often, cooks professionally or spends most of their waking hours in a kitchen.
For example, who in a modern home kitchen cuts a stick of butter, melts it in a pan then pours it into a (plastic, microwave safe) mixing bowl? Great, now there's a pan, a knife and a cutting board to wash! It is a children's cookbook, so why not cut down on time spent with knives, stovetop flames and inevitable messes by just melting the uncut butter in the plastic mixing bowl with the microwave?
Nice pictures, large font, recipes are great, but (in my opinion) obviously written by someone working in a fully staffed professional kitchen, not a home.
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What is remarkable about this onetime best-selling book -- which could well be described as a coming-of-age-without-coming-of-age novel -- is not that Fitzgerald produced it when he was all of 24. Nope, the amazing thing here is that the same writer produced "The Great Gatsby" a mere five years later.
"This Side of Paradise" is a mess: it is as uneven, affected, feebly pretentious and relentlessly immature as its hero, the tiresomely self-conscious young Minnesotan-gone-to-Princeton Amory Blaine. (One suspects, in fact, that had Fitzgerald abandoned his muddled third-person narrative altogether and rendered the work instead as Amory's diary the result would have been considerably more readable -- or the book's structural and methodological flaws considerably more forgivable, at least.)
That the novel was a roaring success upon publication in 1920 -- it was to prove the most popular book, in terms of sales, ever produced by its author -- presumably speaks to the public's recognition of something new and revealing in it. Okay, Amory Blaine may well have been the original Jazz Age prototype; and the drinking and shameless smooching (etc.) that he and his prep school and Princeton friends indulge in at various points in the novel were probably, one can accept, a revelation to see in print (and likely a titillating one) for an American audience raised on McGuffy's Readers -- and ready for some sort of Great Departure after the Great War. Welp, here it comes:
"On the Triangle trip Amory had come into constant contact with that great current American phenomenon, the `petting party.'
None of the Victorian mothers-and most of the mothers were Victorian-had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed."
To the reader at a remove of some 80-plus years this is, of course, very small beer. What was alarming frankness in 1920 tends to read now, in the best cases of the Paradise narrative, as unalarming quaintness. While this is not exactly Fitzgerald's "fault", so to speak, it is also true that the use of "shocking revelations" of this type -- scandals specific to a place and time -- represents a risk a writer takes: the march of history may or may not reveal something lasting and/or universal in such episodes. In any event, the price the reader pays here, in slogging through the meandering narrative which surrounds Amory's adventures in quaintness during the nascent Roaring Twenties, is very, very high for payoffs of such modest proportions. I mean, come on:
"For years afterward when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he also lost the power of regretting it. Eleanor was, say, the last time evil crept close to Amory under the mask of beauty, the last weird mystery that held him with wild fascination and pounded his soul to flakes."
Yikes. I don't care what New Generation you're talking about, can a flake-pounded soul really represent much of an innovation to anybody? (Can it represent ANYTHING to anybody?)
There are things to like, even admire, here and there in Paradise. Fitzgerald gets off a few of the wonderfully epigrammatic lines that were to become a trademark (e.g., "They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered." "Sometimes I wish I'd been an Englishman; American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy." "It's better to leave the blustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so much better.") And the political incorrectness of some of the narrator's observations is, in its now-curious way, refreshingly, bracingly funny:
"Slowly and inevitably, yet with a sudden surge at the last, while Amory talked and dreamed [which is about all Amory ever does-MHT], war rolled swiftly up the beach and washed the sands where Princeton played. Every night the gymnasium echoed as platoon after platoon swept over the floor and shuffled out the basketball markings. When Amory went to Washington the next weekend, he caught some of the spirit of crisis which changed to repulsion in the Pullman car coming back, for the berths across from him were occupied by stinking aliens-Greeks, he guessed, or Russians."
Nothing like a little wretched refuse to remind you there's a war on, I always say.
Anyway, most of the novel consists of young Amory's elaborate ponderings -- romantic, philosophical and egotistical -- which are as forgivable as they are forgettable. I've forgotten them already. At some level, in any case, Fitzgerald himself had to recognize the ridiculousness of this pompous character -- who was, of course, a not-very-disguised version of himself. For how else, if not as commendably self-deprecating irony, are we to take this observation?
"Amory was in full stride, confident, nervous, and jubilant. Scurrying back to Minneapolis to see a girl he had known as a child seemed the interesting and romantic thing to do, so without compunction he wired his mother not to expect him, and sat in the train and thought about himself for thirty-six hours."
In the end, in any event, one comes back to the initial Fitzgerald vs. Fitzgerald comparison with something like gaping wonder. In Paradise almost nothing works: form, content, narrative stance, dialogue, character development, pacing -- you name it, it's a problem. Yet in Gatsby, five years later, everything works -- everything. If there is to be a Great American Novel, it will have to supplant Gatsby for the honor. While it is hard to see how Fitzgerald got from point A to point B, the fact is that he did -- and without point A the journey could not have begun. So while "This Side of Paradise" hardly deserves a place in the national literary canon, it surely deserves our respect, and indeed our gratitude, for what it led to.
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While it's certainly true that there will always be a gulf between reality and words, communication between reader and writer is nonetheless very real and potentially profound, thanks in no small part to empathy and the imagination. Deconstructionism, by denying presence and instead proposing unlimited differences between signs, dismisses any connection between readers and writers and turns language into a hermetic system separated from the outside world which is, of course, inhabited by people who read and people who write. This is exactly what makes deconstructionism so empty and hypocritical: It rejects traditional metaphysics while adopting a pseudo-mystical position which regards language as some unstable and solipsistic alien creature independent of everything and everyone
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If you are a Christian, this book isn't for you. It is full of blashphemy, concluding that we must "... forgive God" and that we must love God "... even if He isnt perfect". Kusher even has the will to say that "...God would not be God..." without our love for Him. At one point he reduces God to an aminal saying that in the garden of Eden, when God said "...let US make man in OUR image" he was speking to animals and creation. Kusher explains that God created the world, and in the next paragraph that we came by evolution.
Since when was God in need of forgiveness? Isnt it that "... God so loved the world" and it wasnt us that loved God? I have no words in describing this book. It is full of error, because it does not base it self on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All this book does is frees you from the thought that you are a sinner, and that it isnt your fault, and that actully you are a good person. Why do bad things happen to good people? Wrong question. There are no good people in the world in the first place. " for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God..." The world is in sin. The world DOES NOT HAVE GOOD PEOPLE!! Only by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ you are made righteous. I beg you in the name of Jesus Christ to stay away from this book. It hasnt helped 4 million people, but it lied to them. Kusher, please turn from your ways and come to Jesus, then will you understand the life question "WHY"
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I read this book after watching the brilliant movie version of "The Hours." If that's your motivation, don't waste your time. My English teachers will cringe when I say it, but this book, well, sucks. It may well be great literature, but the characters are not engaging, and if it was Woolf's motive to out-do James Joyce in chronicling a day-in-the-life and in writing a stream of conscious narrative, she doesn't pull it off. Again, the characters and the internal mental life simply don't have the power that "Ulysses" has. Reading Woolf is necessary for a good eduction. I recommend, however, that you read "To the Lighthouse". I may still be motivated to read the book version of "The Hours" given how great the movie was. But my taste for Woolf is all done now.
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Unfortunately, this book is the sign of what passes for humour these days. Even though it may have been remotely funny (sometimes the author comes close to being bearable), the book never actually tries to be.
Humour is supposed to be smart. However, this book gives us the worst case of dumb
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When I discovered the existence of this novel, I was enthusiastic and intrigued. Unfortunately, my hopes were more or less dashed as I trundled my way through the 382 pages. KLEOPATRA focuses on the famous queen's early years - a period of time of which we have no record - and the intrigues that haunted and led to the demise of any semblance of a family (something she may have compensated for in adulthood). What I liked: 1). The spelling of Kleopatra/ Cleopatra with a "K"- it really does emphasize that Hellenistic connection; 2) Kleopatra's strength of character- Essex's general characterization is appropriate and it's easy to see what Kleopatra will become.
Although the novel is a noble attempt by Karen Essex, it just didn't work for me. The character of Berenike as an Amazon seemed a bit far-fetched. And although I loved Kleopatra's love interest (I won't give away his name!), I felt it was a bit far-fetched as well, almost as if Essex was pressured into a love story from the publisher or something. Kleopatra's Dionysian rites were also a little hard to believe, as was Mohama. There were also scenes of random sex that were a bit... unnecessary. Overall, although Kleopatra was a strong, believable character, she was in the minority. The novel as a sort of back-story to the Queen of Egypt didn't work as it was weighed down by the elements of fiction! At least the sequel is better. For fiction that works, check out The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George.
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I haven't done this in awhile, but I don't think I could review this piece any better than the other reviews I've read about it. It's pretty average, however filled with nice bits of knowledge. They didn't seem well-researched in some areas. Here are the interesting parts of reviews from the other "critics" that I agree with...
"they go into lengthy history lessons about the origins of the characters when two sentences...would be enough." - John Gallant
"Biased against superheros(sic)" - Christopher Ritter
"I found this book to be tedious, lacking in charm, badly researched and wildy inaccurate in some areas." - C.P. Halliday
"I picked up this book." - Lawrance M. Bernabo
"Their belief seems to be that Donald Duck was the best comic book ever..." - M.G. Bloedorn
"Pretty boring." - BernardZ
"...a black hole is hypothesized, lending a faint respectability to the premise behind Green Lantern's abilities." - Peter Vinton Jr.
"...this book will not satisfy full on fans..." - James N. Simpson <---gave it five stars.
"a chance to laugh about the heroes I still love and that mean so much to me." - Reviewer
"Man, there's a whole 200 pages of this pooh-poohing, cranky-old-maid kind of stuff!" - Mark Alfred
"They were even putting words into C. Darwin's mouth." - Aaron Spriggs
"Mildly entertaining but not great" - Reviewer
"When the man (Dean Koontz in this case) writing the introduction says he doesn't read comics, I began to get worried." - Ivan A. Wolfe
"I agree with an earlier poster." - Reviewer
"Almost every chapter tells you why the superhero is impossible." Plastic Larry
"the authors give us a more plausible (given what we know now) origin for the Hulk, involving steroids and fluorescent gene modification." - J. Draper Carlson
"this book is not mean spirited or nasty." Reviewer
"Superman's powers break the laws of science. Ooh. Stop the presses." - [...]
"interesting." - Rick Hunter
"The Science of Superheroes," - Reviewer
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Boring, tasteless and unoriginal. Photographer has an obvious fixation...which has kept him from paying attention in many cases to contrast, tone, and line. One star for the big you know what, the real model here. I'm sure book has its merits, but they aren't artistic. Putting my copy up for sale
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I couldn't finish this book after readng "Fairytale." Misfit insecure Caucasian male falls for Asian stripper/prostitute after she listens to him talk about the odor of his sweat in the outdoor markets. I thought possibly this story reveals a lot about Olen Butler. He wrote about this relationship with such relish, he sounds to me like a P.C. Caucasian who is drawn in patronizing fashion to the "otherness" of Asian people and doesn't see them for what they are, just wants them to appreciate big strong white man. I thought it interesting that in the story the woman never mentions to the man that she already has a young son living with her mother. So she was not honest with him. But Olen Butler wrote about her as if this stripper/pros. was wonderful, the kind of wife any man would want. I shook my head and thought, "You have issues." Probably if she were Caucasian he would not want to get near her for fear of catching something. After this the other stories just did not appeal to me
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It starts out like Laura Bush's Rules for Driving, but skydives after the opening pages, in which the then 17-year-old Laura kills a young man with her car, who just coincidentally happens to be her boyfriend!
My interest in the book sharply dove after that, as it appears that coincidental killing is the most appealing thing about Laura Bush
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There are no doubt a few nuggets of wisdom in this book, but they are buried too deeply in bureaucratic gibberish to be worth digging up. This book has no bibliography, no index, mediocre footnotes, no serious useful conclusions or strategic summary, and a disturbing combination of American-centrism (on page 71: "In the Asian continent....(t)he first driver will be the future U.S. role in Asia.") with a lack of intelligent presentation. There are exactly three figures and seven tables in this 336 page book, when there should have been at least 30 tables and figures illustrating specific sources of conflict in relation to specific countries. The World Conflict and Human Rights Map (8 pages of graphics and 8 pages of fine print) out of Leiden University does vastly more to inform than does this book. This book should never, ever have been published in its present form--I venture to say that if it were condensed to 150 pages and properly edited, with graphics and good synthesis, it might be worthy of a second look. Time is the most precious commodity in the world--RAND managers and editors need to get serious about how they present possibly useful information to experts who want to know what RAND thinks, but cannot spare the time to get past cumbersome undisiplined--even lazy--preparations. The topic of this book is extremely important--those who would invest their scarce time and money in doing research in this area deserve better from those who put together this book
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Many words - few practical tips! This book did not give much more (-valuable-) information than I already had found out by reading the manual delivered with my pocket computer.
After reading the book I still had to search for web communities, where some of my questions could be answered.
My expectations when buying the book were mainly focused on the need for practical hints concerning how to manage tasks, contacts and appointments. Unfortunately, in my view, these important and basic issues were treated too superficially.
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This novel could not hold my interest. I am an Anne Perry fan, but could not get into this book. I couldn't really bond with any of the characters and the plot was uninteresting. I'm really disappointed, because I was looking forward to a new series by her. Joseph and Matthew lost their parents to murder and Joseph lost two close friends to murder, yet there didn't seem to be much emotion. Maybe Ms. Perry tried to tell too many stories within one story. In reviewing the book, it's hard to pin point exactly why I didn't like this book. I would skip this series and read the Pitt series.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the author's earlier work on how the Irish saved civilization. But this book was a disappointing compendium of Greek myths, legends and history that never reveals a plan behind the book. Taken in its subparts, many sections are engagingly informative in an elegant if sometimes pretentious prose. Yet the author ambles from here to there in a disjointed narrative with interesting nuggets but little insight. Where's the big picture? The author attempts to wrap it up at the end with a sentence about the Greeks' "variety of human response, lightening quick transmutations, resourcefulness, and inexhaustible creativity."
A subtitle like "A Greek Treasury of Personal Vignettes" might have been more descriptive and merited another star. But it falls short as a "hinge of history" with impoverished and even maladaptive connections (FDR as Solon - really?) to the modern world. I am sorry to not recommend it.
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I really love to get these for my wife, surprises are best when I give them to her, and she enjoys all of them from this great author, but she and I were not happy when I thought I found another of this super special Portal Series :-(. Having a new cover is nice but its a new publisher with nothing more than marketing in their minds, really hated to say this but we all know her books are super great, just know this is a reprint before you guy and like others, get a little ticked its not new after you fork over the cash and get your hopes up!
Peace everyone :-)
Jeff
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I have written software for development projects for 30 years and I have managed several projects. Martin Fowler has extraordinary insight, and I enjoy reading his papers for the gems of thought I find.
The main lesson I pick up from this book is: Break your large project into projects sufficiently small that you can sensibly abandon Refactoring for each of the small projects.
Refactoring works well in some cases, I suppose. Refactoring works well for some people, I suppose. I'm skeptical, though. Fowler filled the book with page after page of the detailed Refactoring method applied to a problem he acknowledged as too simple for application of Refactoring. He assures us that Refactoring may overload small projects with methodology, making it unsuitable for them, and it works really well for larger projects. I suspect, however, that the burden it imposes enlarges as the job enlarges. Fowler gives me no good reason to think otherwise. If I'm to risk this methodology on a large project, I want to see it perform well on a smaller project first.
Fowler conceives methodologies that attract zealous disciples. In the case of Refactoring, the methodology may succeed for its attractiveness rather than for its practical utility
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Other reviews have homed in on the frequent nit-picking and general vindictiveness of this book. I agree with these criticisms, but I'm not going to revisit them here. The deeper problem lies with the Ayn Rand Institute, which only gives scholarly access to persons guaranteed to toe ARI's party line. As long as the Ayn Rand Institute refuses full, unconditional scholarly access to Miss Rand's papers, any biographical efforts produced under their aegis will not be taken seriously by anyone who respects proper academic practice. Nor should they be.
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The author has her narrator("Cinnamon") spend most of her time comparing herself to the fascinating Scarlett,in a game of wish-fulfillment one-upmanship. Even though she's calling the shots,as it's her book, Scarlett still comes out miles ahead. Perhaps it was only that way for a certain strata of society,but there WAS once a beautiful world of chivalry and gallantry and bravery and even some idealism-even if misplaced-just as there has been throughout the ages in other societies,such as "Ivanhoe" presents.The story may have been one-sided,but it's the side MM chose to tell,and there's kernel of truth in the "myth" of the Old South,as in all myths.
Margaret Mitchell has nothing to fear from this silly so-called "parody",which is really a subconscious-or not so subconscious,in fact-effort to knock from her pedestal,that epitome of heroines-Katie Scarlett O'Hara and the wonderful Melanie Wilkes.As if Rhett would ever give any other woman a serious thought-he was obsessed with Scarlett.That's why he turned to women like Belle Watling.And to imagine Mammy killing the male babies,when she had been devoted to Ellen O'Hara from Ellen's childhood.Thank goodness this book isn't a pimple on the fanny of the classic GWTW,because what it is a a travesty-and not even a well-written or engaging one at that.GWTW will still be read and loved for all time,like the classic it is,when this book is selling for a quarter at garage sales.I didn't even pay that,thank goodness-the woman gave it to me,and I read it and burned it with the rest of the trash.I'd give it a negative star if there was such a rating.Ludicrous and laughable-try again,Ms Randall,and try to get over the jealousy of Scarlett and Co. Again,Margaret Mitchell need not fear,LOL
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Do you know how clever Alan Trachtenberg is? I mean, do you really, really know?! Because if not, this book is for you. Trachtenberg's book is only superficially about Indians or Americans, it is about the obscure conections he can draw between unrelated things--because he is very clever, you know. In so far as this book has a thesis, that it is it
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First off: I'd like it better if we had 1/2-star options. Judas Unchained really doesn't deserve a 2, more a 2-1/2 or 2-3/4.
I have a love/hate relationship with Peter Hamilton's books. He's very adept at introducing interesting technology and making a faster-than-light society plausible but, as with a lot of these hard-science, libertarian SF authors, he badly needs an editor. I was skipping over multiple pages of irrelevance in both this book and its prequel, Pandora's Star. He also has far too many "main characters" who (despite 800+ pages) never seem to come alive. They all speak with essentially the same voice. And when he tries to individualize someone they come off as badly stereotyped '60s era hippies -- come on, does anyone seriously say "dude" in the real world much less the imagined future of the 24th century?
And why is Hamilton so obsessed with sex with young (or rejuvenated) women?
Hamilton's treatment of virtual immortality is hit and miss at best. On the one hand, the innate conservatism of an immortal civilization is well developed, represented and believable. On the other hand, the dynamics of the relationship between "old timers" and "first lifers" is unsatisfactory. In four centuries, for example, NO ONE has even attempted to unseat Nigel Sheldon from his position as head of the Sheldon dynasty? Perhaps the Commonwealth's continual expansion is the safety valve but even here, the government (controlled the eternal heads of these dynasties) controls it. Another point that is brought up briefly is why would anyone want to live forever if their life didn't change -- I mean the characters of a novel (almost by definition) are dynamic, go-get-'em types but most people just plod through their lives and then die. Why would anyone want to do that for lifetime after lifetime?
The aliens are OK. The problem with them (and this is true of nearly every SF story) is that they tend to be one dimensional -- they're all of a singular type and all too often they really do just act like human beings with weird make up. (This is a problem in fantasy stories, too.) On the plus side, I do tip my hat to Hamilton for not allowing the humans to save themselves with an alien "deus ex machina." Ozzie's adventures in "Wonderland" (i.e., the silfen paths) do bring him to the adult silfen and he does find out the origins of the Dyson barriers but the knowledge doesn't really help anyone defeat the Primes.
Overall, if you started with Pandora's Star, you probably should finish the journey with Judas Unchained. If you haven't started down this "silfen path," I recommend Alistair Reynolds, Tony Daniel or Iain Banks. They write similarly grand space opera but are better at it than Hamilton has proven himself to be to date
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A serious snooze fest. Of course, if you are a huge Kim Newman fan, you'll be pleased; literally every other story in the book is one. If you must read this book, check it out from the library; at least that way you won't be wasting your money
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This book was very boring. Details in a book make it interesting but the extended details in this book made it nausiating. This book had a very interesting plot and many good ideas but the way it was writen didnt appeal to most of the students in my school that read it. A poll was taken and about 73% of the students in the school liked this book. What does that show about the book?
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I am reading this for a college course called "History of the American City". This book is a typical 'college texbook' in that it is FILLED with numbers, dates, percentages, figures, numbers, oh did I say numbers, dates, figures, and years, oh and plenty of numbers... The brilliant,dilligent,honored, and esteemed scolar of a woman that wrote it sure knows her numbers, facts, years, etc... I, on the other hand, am absolutley hating it and foolishly I have allowed the drop date to pass, so I have to read the book or fail the class. I am getting nothing from the book regarding any kind of understanding of any of these cities , unless I am willing to spend years interpreting the multitude of data the book heaps upon me. Needless to say, from (attempting)reading it I am getting a headache and don't really even have the time to write this review. I say that if even one person is deterred from reading this expose' of numbers, names, dates, figures, facts, percentages, orders, years, dates and more numbers, dates, facts, figures (are you getting my drift yet?), it will be time well served though.--- AVOID--- THIS--- BOOK.
please -- Find another book. Maybe if people told the truth about THIS BRAND OF WRITING,more professors might have to teach and people like Ms. Abu-Lughod wouldn't continue to make money off of writing books such as this, and folks like her might have to write to COMMUNICATE!!!!, like the rest of us.Thank you for taking the time to read this.
OK, I have to say it: This sucks.
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Richard Fawkes' writing is stilted, his phrases repetitive, and he doesn't convince me at all that he knows anything about the military. Don't waste your time or money
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Amazing how a writer can attempt to make an immoral organization, the corporation, look moral. Only someone like Al Capone could sympathize with this group on the Oregon. How can anyone justify having the sort of firepower as is on the Oregon. The US apparently is willing to finance the group, but the US also financed Sadam, Noriega, ... Unfortunately, in this sense it is too much like real American policy, which absolutely disgusts me (the ends justify the ends no matter how many bodies are left behind, as long as they are not righteous Americans). The characters are clich�, there is no suspense since everything goes as planned, and anyone in the crew can just about do anything, including being a successful rock band. It makes me look back on the Dirk Pitt books and wonder about Dirk's morality
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Unless you are interested in reading one chapter after another plugging Bear Spray, don't waste your time. The stories are all re-hashed versions of nearly identical situations; Man goes into the wilderness-Man sees bear-Man uses UDAP Bear Spray on bear-bear retreats. This book is one long advertisement for UDAP!! My book was actually misprinted, missing 50 pages right in the middle. Initially I wanted to return my book for a complete one but, after reading the rest of 223 pages, I didn't want to waste any more of my time with this ONE story
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I am Vietnamese and I grew up in New Orleans during the 80's and 90's when the first waves were settling down there. I hate to tell this to everyone on this site but this book is the worst piece of fiction ever written. Like many books written by someone who does not belong to the culture that he writes about, the book takes great liberties with the imagination and presents the stories from the viewpoint of the writer and not the actual people. The Vietnamese characters in the book are portrayed as backwards, uneducated, and simple. Further, the stories are depressing and very few of the characters seem to have any success. If you actually grew up in New Orleans during the time that the Vietnamese Americans were setting root during the 80's and 90's, you would know that by and large, the community pulled itself from nothing to become quite successful. No real Vietnamese American thinks or acts like the characters portrayed in this book. I repeat - no Vietnamese American thinks or acts like the characters portrayed in this book. The book repeats many of the fallacies that I have noticed in other books written by predominantly caucasian male authors about East Asian Culture. There always seems to be 1) an asian prostitute 2) caucasian guy with asian bride 3) asian male in an emasculated role 4) asian people as backwards and simple. Quite sad. This book reminds me quite a bit of Memoirs of a Geisha, though that portrayed Japanese culture in a better light. By the way, the lady on which "Memoirs of a Geisha" is based and written about was quite upset at the author of Memoirs of a Geisha and did not feel that it portrayed her life or her thoughts in any way at all. Regardless, if you really want to find out about the Vietnamese American experience you should really read a book written by a Vietnamese American
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just awful
save your money, this book is not worth it. The pictures are dull and lifeless, boring composition. Mann hasn't captured anything here but a bunch of worthless photos. Any 10th rate amateur photographer could have done better.
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"...minus several million for good thinking..."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
The above quote (and the score I've assigned to this book) aren't in reference to the text or the author, but to the publishers. Why anyone with the brains of a sea urchin would cross Professor Hawking as they seem to have done is beyond me.
Briefly, save your money and buy THE ILLUSTRATED BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME instead of THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, even if you're a compulsive Hawking completist. Alert readers should notice that Hawking doesn't hold the copyright for THEORY OF EVERYTHING, and attempted to block its publication. It was originally titled THE CAMBRIDGE LECTURES: LIFE WORKS, and appears to have been drawn from some recordings of lectures given by the professor years ago. (See the professor's web site for details.)
The "vanilla" (i.e., not the ILLUSTRATED) THEORY OF EVERYTHING consists of an introduction, seven lectures, and an index, without *any* illustrations or diagrams. Out of curiosity, I compared a library copy of it with THE ILLUSTRATED BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME.
Unless otherwise noted, each of the 7 lectures corresponds to a chapter of the same name in BRIEF HISTORY, in some segments only with slightly different paragraphing and punctuation (and occasionally the kind of spelling errors that creep in when one transcribes audio narration to text, if I may speculate as to the cause).
I don't understand why anyone would prefer the less polished text of THEORY OF EVERYTHING to THE ILLUSTRATED BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, which not only has updates for new areas of research, but has been revised and rearranged to explain things more gently to the layperson.
"Ideas About the Universe" is essentially an extract from "Our Picture of the Universe", the first chapter of BRIEF HISTORY, with about one sentence's worth of drift per paragraph.
BRIEF HISTORY's version of "The Expanding Universe" has a more gradual introduction to the methods of measuring distances to nearby stars, and explains technical terms that may be unfamiliar to the non-scientist, such as luminosity.
THEORY OF EVERYTHING really shows its age in "Black Holes" when compared to BRIEF HISTORY, as Hawking has not been idle in that area over the years. The illustrated edition of BRIEF HISTORY has had a fair bit of interesting material added to "Black Holes", especially regarding cosmic censorship and naked singularities (Hawking having made a few *more* bets on the subject with Preskill and Thorne, although he paid off the Cygnus X-1 wager).
"Black Holes Ain't So Black" lacks major blocks of clarification/explanation added by Hawking to the version in BRIEF HISTORY.
BRIEF HISTORY's version of "The Origin and Fate of the Universe" goes into more detail: about the kinds of particles that are predicted to have come out of the big bang, and what sort of results we'd expect to see today if the predictions hold, and the scientists who first put forward these theories. BRIEF HISTORY also contains a much longer version of the "open questions" section, leading more gradually up to the discussion of Guth's development of the inflationary model.
"The Direction of Time" corresponds to BRIEF HISTORY's "The Arrow of Time" (which is worth picking up just for the picture of the keeper of the U.S. cesium clock). BRIEF HISTORY goes into more detailed examples to explain what Hawking means by the psychological arrow of time, with the simplest kind of "computer": an abacus.
"The Theory of Everything" mainly corresponds to BRIEF HISTORY's more modestly titled "The Unification of Physics", which is much more up to date (string theories are still covered, but a lot more work has been done in that area over the years). The tail end of the lecture corresponds to the ending of BRIEF HISTORY's "Conclusion".
--
In summary, this is interesting stuff, but THE ILLUSTRATED BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME does it better
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As many have stated before me the book starts off with great promise for people who like historical fiction, however midway it turns into a romance novel. I give it 3 stars for holding my attention. A good beach read that can get you thinking (a little) about a time past. The one star is a mistake and I cannot seem to change it. 3 *** stars
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This book has major shortcomings; Stein's obsession with character over plot, for one (Martin Amis said, "I used to sneer at plot until I wrote a novel that had one, titled NIGHT TRAIN. It was HARD and I used stay awake at night hoping I wasn't leaving any holes."), another being his obsession with "show don't tell" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA is probably the greatest novel of the 1980's and it's almost entirely "tell" and very little "show.") And the passages Stein includes from his own novels as examples of good writing were actually examples of terrible writing! (A taxi "disengorging" its passengers is categorically bad writing.) And Stein admits he rejected Frederick Forythe's THE DAY OF THE JACKAL. I wouldn't read a book by Dick Rowe about how to make it in the music business (Rowe famously rejected the Beatles from Decca Records). Stein excuses himself that he was going by only an outline, but then Rowe was going by just a demo tape. Better writing books are out there
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How can a best-selling author like Simon Winchester take an event as exciting as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and turn it into a tedious snooze-fest? One answer: write as if you had just discovered an adjective mine and were free to throw in extra descripitive terms on every line until listeners scream for an end to florid phrases. Another: strive to break the record for most clich?s in a single paragraph. Finally: write about events in 1906 as if no one but Simon Winchester had ever before thought about their consequences -- thus, everything in this tedious narrative becomes about Simon. Simon and the raccoons; Simon on the failing American economy; Simon attempting to reproduce American accents. This is a CD set for avoiding
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This was the only Bertrice Small book I could find in the gift shop of an airport. That should have been warning enough not to buy it.
Rosamund was an unlikeable character. She left her 3 young daughters so she could "make love" constantly and then was oh-so-superior with her maid when Annie did the same! I guess being a rich, snotty noblewoman means you're not held to the same standards of behavior as the mere household help.
I found the love at first sight meeting to be flimsy and contrived. Small's readers are smarter than most, so I'm surprised she expected us to swallow it. Like some other reviewers here, I thought it was more lust than love. It was clearly a mid-life crisis hook up for Patrick. And if Rosamund truly loved Patrick, she never would have left him when he was ill, memory loss or not!
Not planning to read either "Rosamund" or "Phillipa", the other books in this series. It was hard enough getting through this book, let alone another one with her uppity daughter.
The good stuff? Getting to meet Patrick Leslie again. But it was heartbreaking to witness his grief over losing his daughter Janet decades ago. If you've read "The Kadin", you know that Janet eventually returns to her home, but only after Patrick has died
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"The Burning" was a big letdown after reading Bentley Little's masterful book, "Dispatch". I seriously considered that this book might be written by someone else while Bentley was ill and couldn't write. Who knows. I love this guy and can't tell you how disappointed I was. While one of the top 5 horror writers working today, Bentley Little seems to be hit or miss with his stories. I simply just did not enjoy reading this new release. It seemed that he was throwing way too much random horror at the reader and hoping some of it would stick. And, with everything he was trying to do, none of it - not one moment - was scary! Shadow creatures performing random oral sex, creeping fungus, talking voices in the microwave, deformed goblins peering in windows, skeletons climbing out of mud pits, tunnels filled with moving corpses, and a runaway ghost train crashing into the White House was just too silly. It reminded me of his previous work, "The Return", another disappointment containing silly, bizarre, and unrealistic situations.
The scenes of horror during the first third of the book were described during the daytime hours and lost its scare value, suspense, and atmospheric quality. The book had many problems that pulled me out of the story. One of those problems was how ridiculous it was that the police would allow a field trip to a tunnel of bodies that had just been discovered earlier that same day. Bentley needs to do what he does best, which is to come up with a gimmick, focus everything on that single idea, and continue to build suspense around it using his original and obsessed style of storytelling. It worked with "The Store", "The Association", "The Policy", and "Dispatch", just to name a few. Let's hope he gets back on track with his next book.
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This is the worst textbook I have ever bought for any class! It is a huge waste of money and super frustrating to read. This book is horribly written. The explanations are boring, drawn out, and unclear. The early chapters draaaag on forever. The later chapters get a little better, but they state a lot of obvious or useless information. I have spent hours and weeks studying from this text and learned very little.
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i would like to know what kind of a wuss needs to use a stradegy guide for a FIRST PERSON SHOOTER!? i mean, they're pretty straightfoward - walk forward and kill all the bad guys you see! how hard is that!? Halo is an awesome game but it's REALLY not hard to figure out what to do! i mean you'd have to be a complete MORON not to know what to do or where to go. it tells you more than once what to do during the game - you got that extrememly annoying Cortana yacking in your ear pretty much non-stop, tellin' ya what to do. but anyway i'm done ranting at you wusses
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For years, I had heard the Akashic Records being touted as the unwritten spiritual book of life, that included every event, every living soul who had ever taken a breath from the beginning of time through eternity. The subject was beyond fascinating, as my limited mortal mind could not grasp the enormity of such a body of knowledge "existing".
However, I took it on absolute faith that this was so and recently endeavored to find the quintessential book on the subject. Knowing of Mr. Cayce's tremendous psychic following, I assumed this book would enlighten me and others. I excitedly bought a new copy for myself and sent another to a friend.
After trudging through the first 68 pages, I felt lost and befuddled. The writing and text are difficult to follow and not at all in "layperson's" language.
Perhaps this book is meant for an experienced psychic mind and intellect, one who understands the language and is willing to muddle through the long-winded case histories to discover meaning and relevance.
My friend confessed she had read a mere chapter or two, then set it aside.
Pie Dumas
Author & Life Coach
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Had long looked forward to finally reading this "acclaimed" novel.
There are brilliant and imaginative highlights in the book, although finding those bits is like looking for light in a black hole , a lot of work for very little result. I truly believe this is a book that would be more interesting if one increased their medication level way past the recommended daily dosage.
Mark
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i did a fast skimming through this book and noticed that for an Essential Monster Movie Guide, it certainly doesn't praise or hype the genre that well. this book comes across like it was written by an elitist who's too good for horror. nearly every movie/special gets a low rating and i can't understand why a book like this that could've been a good companion to the horror fan would be so anti-horror as a whole. horror fans, in general, want to be be entertained and or scared...i for one don't want logical stories and things that make sense IF it detracts from the entertainment factor because typically what makes sense and uses logic in horror is BORING. it gets 2 stars from me because it offers a diverse selection of films and includes mini biographies of horror legends like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, etc. But for a horror movie book, the writers certainly didn't help their genre by bad-mouthing it so much in this book
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I tried reading this book but found it so turgid and poorly written that I put it down in frustration. It reads like a translation from another language by an academic bureacrat. The theme is interesting, the execution poor. Cannot recommend
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The book starts off ok with a good introduction of the various API's and is ok reading up untill chapter 6 "Programming Linux Audio". This is where the book fails terribly. None of the audio samples will compile and the information about OpenAL is just plain wrong. First the function used to open a WAV file is no the corerct function to use for linux. The author uses the win32 version. This is just the start of the openAL errors. Minus one star!
Second the book's two websites (one of which no longer exists (Loki) ) contains no errata and no way to contact the author. The only information is avalible is a zip file of the books sample files (which do not compile of course). Minus two stars!
Ohter things about the book that did not work for me was the fact that the author uses C instead of C++. While C is still used for game development , most programmers are attempting to migrate to C++ and OOD. Books released about 1950 should reflect that!
Second the author uses Tcl as a game scripting engine. While I can agree to a point (based on the fact of the easy of implementation) the author should have used a common scripting engine such as Lua. (although the author does mention at the end of the book that Tcl was proably a bad idea.
Third the author should have introduced Autoconf very early in the book instead of waiting untill Chapter 10.
The main thing that I liked about the book was the good intro to programming with Linux in general. The topics of linux debugging and Makefiles I thought was good (assuming you have experince in these areas on other platfoms).
Also the coverage of SDL was a pretty good intro.
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I was expecting this book to be a great story, but very disappointed. I cannot believe the publisher allowed the author to publish this book as it is. The book is insipid and dull, has no flow, no story, or no plot. Let me present an example. I have read many insightful Newsweek articles by a writer Allan Sloan. For example, Sloan describes a Sprint merger event in this way, "If talk is getting cheaper, why did MCI WorldCom pay $115 billion to buy Sprint? The once staid phone companies have launched a merger blitzkrieg in an effort to emerge at the center of the wired world. Can regulators handle the complex new order....." It has a clear logical axis, and has a force to attract readers into it.
But Jeter describes it like this, "The merger announcement of WorldCom and Sprint spurred building activity around Worldcom headquarters as real estate developers readied for economic prosperity. The real estate inventory swelled with new planned unit....." It always presents off-center, trivial detail which makes a reader bored. 70% of books are consumed to described a dry and dull fact, like "the merger of company A & B raised the stock to $X" etc. There is no insight here.
But unfortunately, unlike Enron scandal, there is no other book that centered on the Worldcom scandal. You would get much better comprehension by collecting articles in Newsweek or Business Week, if you have LexisNexis or EBISCOhost.
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Probability and Random Processes can be easily approached with grace and elegance so long as the professor and/or writer possess such talents. All too often Albert Leon-Garcia comes across as a total wacko in the possession neither
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I have a hard time understanding what it is that I dislike about the novel. I dislike it almost as much as the movie.
I have been a loyal follower of Smiley and some more after that. Once the Cold War was over, JlC had to look for a new realm. I tried to follow him, but gave up with the Kaukasian troubles, forgot the name of the book.
Maybe it is this: JlC's trade mark, his USP, is the evilness of the other side. With the KGB & Co., that worked perfectly. His readers were willing to stay with him and believe him.
Now he is transferring the KGB style to all sorts of other badies. I think it does not work any more.
It is not that I trust the pharmaceutical companies enough to not be like here insinuated. I do not.
What I do not like, I guess, is the artificial mood of intellectual suffering from the evilness of all kind of conspiracies. Tess in this story seems to be the normal do-gooder who falls foul with the baddies. That is more ok in the book than in the movie. (There, for my eyes, Rachel Weisz does herself discredit.)
What is absolutely not ok is the surrender of command by the narrator mid way. JlC gives up on trying to keep a believable storyline and declines into darkest conspiracy allegations
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I have a hard time believing that the author has ever seen an episode of TNG. I had to force myself to finish this book it was so bad. By far the worst Star Trek book I have ever read. If you want a good one read 'Federation' and stay as far away from this one as you can
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If this man took a the time to know the history of U.S. involvment in Panama he would know that it was the U.S. that put Noriega in power in the first place.it was also the U.S. that killed the previouse leader of Panama,Omar TorriJos.Who apposed U.S. control of his county.
The united states has used Panama for its own gains without regard for the freedom or rights of the Panamanian people since the take over of the country by President Roosevelt in 1903.
One of many good books about the truth of Panamanian History is by John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
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This book, up to the very end was very good. With out a doubt a three star book maybe three and a half. The end is what ruins the entire thing. Don't worry I'm not going to spoil anything. I'll just say the ending stinks out loud!
This story is not really horror, its SiFi. A adventure/drama/SiFi. It really should have been about 100 to 200 pages longer. Everything in it was really cool and fun to read but it just seemed rushed. And somethings were not really dove into thoroughly enough. The writting was dead on as always and character development was good. This book just needed another couple hundred pages to go from a barley average book to a great book
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The plot in Final Analysis is trite and overused and the characters are flat and stock. Tedious and painful to read
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One tiresome, heavy-handed simile after another; agonizing, descriptive detail that unnecessarily prolongs action; simplistic, trite phrasing and dialogue -- characters constantly express vague but contradictory emotions in the same sentence, an obvious effort by the author to provoke interest or conflict which falls flat; routine characterization; a sentence or two slipped in during a scene or an unexpected circumstance placed at the end of a chapter meant to build plot and suspense read as forced and predictable; proofreading errors; fragmented, poor sentence structure -- this book is amateurish writing all the way around. I cannot fathom the reasoning for the quality of the professional reviews which this work received. I cannot understand the lack of proper editing. I am an avid reader and approached this book with much enthusiasm, so imagine my disappointment when I was ready to put the book down a couple of pages into the Prologue! In fairness to the author (and with a hopeful attitude), I forced myself through the first 70 or so pages, however with each turning page I found myself reading along just for sport, my mind constantly drifting and more and more incredulous (and annoyed) with this juvenile effort. What could have been a fascinating read due to the intriguing premise is instead a colossal waste of time.
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If you are looking for a book that does a cover to cover job of bashing western civilization with complete and obvious bias, this is it.
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I was really looking forward to both the book and the movie. Unfortunately I think both are very much overrated. Character development is non-existent. We're supposed to believe that the haunted, passive, timid character Dave was an all-star shortstop in high school? The book had a great premise and good beginning, but went nowhere interesting. The handling of Dave's character relies on cliche and we never really get insight into the book's most intriguing character.
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I had heard of the importance, and significance of "The Education of Henry Adams" for a long time. I finally determined I needed to read it.
I acutally read it twice, and found less in it the second time than the first.
I am sorry I missed the greatness of this book. I am sure there was something wrong with me, but I found it to be incredibly unimpressive.
Perhaps this came from the fact that Henry Adams was not a likeable man. He was famous for holding court in his home near the White House, and making caustic and negative comments about every President who lived there.
Granted, he lived in Washington at a time when there were plenty of second-rate occupants of the White House. But the thought of people wasting their time trying to please a blue-blooded snob like Adams depresses me. Why did anyone bother? He lived in an atmosphere of snobbery, sharp-tongues, clever remarks, and brilliant conversation. The world went on without him, truth be told, and he contributed less than the people who walked by his house each day.
He was a very good historian in his time. But who reads his books now? Not very many. In short, his own work was not as long-lasting as he would have wanted it to be. Maybe the influence of some of the Presidents he mocked lasted longer than the published and purchased work of Henry Adams.
"The Education of Henry Adams" does not have much real information. He got education in one place, none in others. Surely, the suicide of his wife provided some very painful education for Henry--but he wrote nothing about it in his book.
When Eric Sevareid wrote "Not So Wild a Dream," it was compared to "The Education of Henry Adams." That was meant as a compliment. Oddly, I think Sevareid's book is much, much better. Sevareid wrote of America, the common man, the war, and what it all meant to him. Adams needed to get out more. He did not see America--not the America built by the common citizen who put it all together, and defended it. I gained a trememdous amount from Sevareid. I cannot say the same for the work of Henry Adams.
Again, a lot of this might be me. Perhaps I read the book at a bad time. Maybe I needed to read it a third time. I do not know. I do know I do not think this is a great American classic. Forgive, please, my ignorance.
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Subsets and Splits