Active Books

True stories written with exciting detail and knowledgeable and logical assessment of how to avoid problems and what to do should you find yourself involved in a dangerous situation. An easy to read book with one true story as engaging as the next! No chapter is without excitement and tips. Even the Introduction is a worthwhile read, which I find unusual. I also enjoyed reading his compliation of true bear stories in Bear Attacks of the Century.

An outdoor writer and a newspaper writer team up to explore where some people get the strength to survive horrific wilderness disasters.Twenty true stories are told. A good book for a winter night.

Reading Friendship Fires was an experience for me. I usally don't read books that are about the wilderness, but this time I did and I'm glad becuase I learned that being advantures in life can bring you to discover many new oportunitys. I liked the way Sam Cook related his advantures with his family and brought them with, threw out is jorneys. This is a man of great character and I enjoyed reading his book.

I took Friendship Fires with me on a recent camping trip to read around the fire.. I am a big fan of Mr. Cook, having read many of his columns in the Duluth News Tribune. This book is a collection of his columns over a number of years. The book is composed of many short "stories" that are put together into the book in a logical fashion. The content of the book is outstanding, and will make you laugh, and will also make you stop sometimes and just contemplate the story. The book makes a great gift for anyone who enjoys the outdoors.

Getting the claim paid is truly the most difficult part of the insurance transaction. But the insurance policy is a promise, isn't it? Why do the insurance companies make it so hard to get them to keep their promises? Simple...profits. The less you know, the more they make. This book is a good guide on getting claims paid. Read it!

As an overview it is interesting. It is difficult to distill a complex subject like insurance down to just a few pages - just as it would be to reduce the law and the knowledge of an attorney down to a few hundred pages. Many claim situations are unique and require specific details to analyze properly. While you might rely on general observations from this book, it was published in 1999 and insurance policy wording does change over time.

The author is not James Walsh, as indicated. The actual book shows, "...by the Silver Lake Editors." James Walsh is shown as the publisher.

I just got this little book yesterday.....as a matter of fact, I just took my fly rod out for a test run yesterday...the first time I've ever used one of these things! The previous reviewer gets close to the point about this one. I never knew there was so much to using one of these things! It really is akin to swinging a golf club. This is a very detailed book, covering everything from how to hold your wrist to what the loop of the line should look like as it whizzes over your head on the backcast. If I don't catch any fish after reading and learning how to do this stuff then I'm going to be really disappointed. Really!

Just as with Ben Hogan's famous Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, understanding the "mechanics" does not always mean you'll shoot lower scores. (I'm a testament to that!)

And by reading this book, doesn't mean you'll catch fish. What it does do however, is give you the confidence, and style, in your cast to make fly-fishing both more enjoyable, and fun. Whether it's golf or fishing, style points count and that's what "Master the Cast" did for me. Follow the drills and cast with confidence! If you own a fly rod, you need this book

I oedered this book to complete a series that I have unfortunately this wasn't the book that matches the other 5 that I have. It would have been helpful to have a picture of it first. My series is a little bigger book and the pages are sturdier. Also my series only had 5 books this one has 8. On a positive note my little boy loves it anyways. The book arrived promptly and in good shape.

My daughter is 19 months old. We received this book from a friend who's children read this book when they were my daughter's age. I was told they loved this book. My daughter goes to this book first thing in the morning and it is the last book she puts down before she goes to bed. She can point to every object that is pictured in the book when I tell her to point to it. It is a wonderful tool to help her start recognizing objects in her world. It is wonderful. The only disheartening thing is that I am having a hard time finding a replacement. She has used and used this book to the point that I have had to tape all of the pages. I would also like to be able to purchase the other books in this series, but again, am having trouble finding them in print. Please help!! What is the use in having these wonderful learning books if you can't purchase them!!

I have read this book many times now, admitedly the weaponry section is dated, however Ricahrd Cooke wrote this book in 1992 when paintball was still young in the UK.
The tactics section is very good though and i have used many of these tactics during games to great effect.
the list of sites and suppliers is useful too, amazingly most of them are still running too 12 years on after the book was written. Great writing and would recommend to any one interested in paintballing

Paintball : The Combat Adventure Sport

This was a ok book, It didnt live up to what I thought it would be. When it had the title combat in it like a army paintball book. It is a good book for Begainers. It could of been improved and used more details.

When we were well in our way to South Carolina and Savannah for our vacation, it was too late to order the Frommer's guide to the area, so we scouted the books available in a local bookstore in Hilton Head Island (SC) and this one was the best one we could find. While it was packed with information that we found of good use, I constantly found myself missing elements that are typical in the books from the Frommer's series. Also (not that it's bad, but it wasn't just what we were after) it has a very strong focus (about half of the information) on outdoors activities. Our main interest was to make the most of the few days we had in the area, concentrating on the historical downtowns of the Low Country.

All in all, it was useful, but I'd recommend the equivalent book from the Frommer's series more.

My husband and I like to find ways to keep healthy and active during our vacations. We love to do athletic things during the day but don't always want to camp or stay in rustic places. This book is a great guide to keeping active but also having very plush accomodations and dining. All the recommendations that we tried were great.

I am a therapist and work with many children who have ADHD and/or learning challenges. My daughter is an elementary school teacher. I bought this book for both of us to use. It has simple ideas about how to help children do better in school and improve behavior. This is often overlooked. Great resource!

Melody King, L.C.S.W.

I am an occupational therapist in the schools and had hoped for practical information that I could share with teachers and parents, or use myself in the classroom. The book seemed geared toward teachers; I liked that there were descriptions of why each activity was beneficial for kids. I feel like I get the same thing from Brain Gym, though. (This does offer some other suggestions, however.) I would have liked to see more than just isolated exercises...more of a program or routine (how can we make this fun for kids, especially those who have motor planning problems or other "out-of-step" problems). As an OT I could have come up with most of these exercises myself, but teachers may find it useful and I may end up using it as a resource for them.

Ms. Hubble has lots of great travel packing tips in this book, including how to tie a sarong. The patterns are intriguing--however, the directions are very sparse, for the most part. If you are not an expert seamstress, you will need help trying to figure out some of the directions. That said, several of the projects in this book can be sewn by the beginner.

Her other books have good patterns too, but even worse directions. Look at this book first before going to the others.

I really enjoy the projects in this book. I have made many of the projects. When I made the travelling pillow that rolls out to a rest mat for my daughter and her friend I used flat sheets that I didn't have fitted shees to match any more. The girls love them. They have taken the pillows on vacation, on over nights and to summer camps. In using the flat sheets, I was able to recycle and save money. The sheets are more durable that some of the fabrics too because they are made that way. I encourage every sewer to buy and use this book. Use your imagination throughout too. The projects and gifts made from this book are originals because you make them. Many people like the personal gift and the thought and time put into it. So go and sew!

I have to disagree with the other reviewer with 5 stars. The book just didn't grab me as I hoped it would, and it was a bit of a struggle to complete. I thought about ditching it at around page 50, but continued on to see if it improved--which it did to a small extent. After reading other books about people with illnesses, I found that Tiger's Eye paled in comparison. Go for "It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong if you want a more gripping personal account of someone dealing and overcoming serious illness. Now that's a real page-turner!

Tiger's Eye is Inga Clendinnen's account of her diagnosis of a rare liver disease, her rapidly debilitating illness, finally a liver transplant and ultimate if precarious recovery. But that is like saying Moby Dick is about whaling. This historian from Australia has written a superb treatise full of hard truths on both illness and memory. After all, the truth is not always carried on angels' wings. Along the way she also has written fiction-- short stories-- and some of the history of Australia. After her diagnosis of Active Auto-Immune Hepatitis, she began writing this memoir on her laptop computer, not knowing if she would live or not. She writes searing accounts of her hospitalization: the good, the bad, the indifferent hospital personnel. The visitors who came late and leave early, to get back to their lives outside an institution.

Ms. Clendinnen writes: "What distinguishes the healthy from the ill--which is a more significant division in any society than class or gender or possibly even homelessness--is that the healthy consider feeling well to be the normal state of things." Then there is memory and all the attendant problems. For example, two children of the same parents have different recollections of their parents, but they are both right. "Being ill had taught me how much of ourselves there is in all the stories we tell about the past." Ms. Clendinnen wanted to preserve the memories of her parents, to try to discover what they were like before she was born. The portraits, "as accurate as memory allows," the author would say, of her parents are the best thing I think in this book. Her descriptions of her mother Catherine, born in Melbourne in 1897-- and her futile attempts ever really to know her mother made my eyes water. Her mother's hard life was in some part her own making. Not all her sisters, for example, were as miserable as she. About her mother's death, Ms. Clendinnen writes "how could her life be ending when it had not yet begun? Bound from childhood in a net of unsought obligations, she fought hard, but with weapons which always turned and lacerated her own flesh. In the desolation of old age, with death imminent, I think she finally knew herself to have been trapped, and defeated, from the beginning."

Ms. Clendinnen named this memoir Tiger's Eye after her favorite animal, the tiger, "because he was the only animal who did not acknowledge he was in a cage. . . I too was in a cage, with feeding times and washing times and bars at the side of my cot, and people coming to stare and prod, but the kaleidoscope of the horror of helplessness ceased to turn because I withdrew my consent from it." Like Melville's Ishmael, the now wiser writer lived to tell her tale: "Illness granted me a set of experiences otherwise unobtainable. It liberated me from the routines which would have delivered me, unchallenged and unchanged, to discreet death. Illness casts you out, but it also cuts you free. I will never take conventional expectations seriously again, and the clear prospect of death only makes living more engaging." There is so much to learn from Ms. Clendinnen's ordeal-- about illness, about courage, about getting on with our lives. A very fine book indeed.