Book-to-market

As a huge fan of James Bond in all his various incarnations, I was interested to find a copy of this book the other day in a sale and purchased a copy. My doubts about its' value however began almost immediately, after all how serious can you take a claim that a book is the definitive account of a subject when the authors start by rubbishing their competitors. For the record there are a number of excellent "glossy" style books with flash pictures that are just as good, if not better reference books than this one. Also the number of different accounts of the James Bond phenomenon make it impossible for anyone to claim their version of events is right and everyone else is wrong. Top that off with the fact that the authors here give new meaning to the word "nitpicking", but ironically while they mention some totally pointless trivia connected with various stories and movies, they actually managed to miss a number of other more important details. At the end of the day this is a comprehensive, though at times patronising, account of the world's greatest secret agent. But don't be fooled, there are better books around if you want, and don't be surprised if "M" puts out a 'terminate with extreme prejudice' order on these two authors !!!

This was a quick pick at an airport one day and I was amazed at all the goodies inside. If you've ever wanted to know every language that Bond ever spoke, what gadget or gizmo he used in which movie, or all the aliases he's ever used, this is the book for you. "The Bond Files" is a great book with all kinds of facts, trivia, and information for each story, comic, and movie. The authors even review the opening title sequences and have a nice synopsis of each movie. They don't miss much with this book.

One of the best books to have on James Bond.

Just what makes him tick? Read and find out!

This is the worst book that I have ever read. The author uses very few feelings and images throughout the book. The book is very boring and so predictable. There are so many better books out there to read that don't have you falling asleep while reading them. If you want a good science fiction book read anything-but this book.

I first picked up Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes during my 1997 bicycle trip from Montreal to Toronto. A local museum was having a fund raising used book street sale, and I picked this book up for [a song]. It took me until now to actually pick it up and read it.

While the book is quite fitting for early-teen readers, I might have been stretching it a bit at the age of 29, as I found the book quite predictable. On several occasions I wanted to grab hold of the characters and shake some sense in them. "What are you thinking? Are you dense or what?" Since I could not do this, I just had to suffer my way through twenty more pages before the characters caught up with the obvious.

That being said, I did not realize the end of the book from the beginning, but only through the last 3 chapters. And apart from the last chapter, which was too sweet for my dentist to approve, the conclusion was quite refreshing for a children's book.

It is the year 2154. Robots have taken over all the work. Now many new graduates are without work and are being sent to a Designated Area (DA) in a city to spend the rest of their life doing nothing, only barely living off the government for the bare necessities: food and shelter. Lisse and seven friends are in this predicament, and suffering from boredom. Then they hear about a 'game' for the unemployed. Some say it is like a treasure hunt , with a treasure if you win. Then suddenly a mysterious envelope appears in their warehouse home: it is an invitation to The Game. They soon discover that The Game is a magical world, untouche by humans or robots. It is new and unused: everyone's dream come true. The only problem is, no one really knows what The Game is. Is it just a scheme to control the unemployed? Or is it deeper than that?

The rest of the series is really awesome but since the lately its been more about Jaina/Zekk and Jason/Tenel Ka's infatuations with each other. It'd be better if they just had more of the action than the mushy falling in love stuff. It is science fiction after all.

This is the first book in a new YJK trilogy, Under Black Sun, which will conclude (and had already done so) the Young Jedi Knights books. Ah yes, all good things must come to an end. But if this is any indication, it's goin' out with bang. It starts with Han and his kids going to Ord Mantell (where Han and Leia where almost captured by a pair of bounty hunters over twenty year before.) Han is there to judge a Blockade Runner race, and on the pace lap, the Falcon is nearly blown to space dust by a minefield planted by Black Sun. Anakin takes a piece of the mines to analyze it. Enter Anja Gallandro, however, and things get hot. She takes the piece of the mine, and faces down Han, who supposedly killed her father during his adventures twenty-five years before. Zekk, Tenel Ka, and Lowie enter the Lightning Rod in the race, and the YJK are reunited. Anja challenges Han to go to her war-torn planet, Anobis, where the farmers and miners are constantly at war, blaming each other for the conflict. The kids get split between the mining camps and the farming village, but are reunited and are able to sow the seeds of peace between the warring groups. Anja returns with the YJK to Yavin 4 to see if she had any Force potential, and the book concludes. The authors leave some interesting loose ends to tie up, which are drawn into neat little bow-ties at the end, except for a couple ;-) See my Crisis on Crystal Reef if you *really* don't get it.

Part of what fascinated me about this book right from the beginning was that all the kids, while still in character, seemed way older, and supposedly only a few months had passed between The Emperor's Plague and this book. It was an extremly well written book, with a well defined, understandable plot. In it, Jacen and Jaina and Anakin all go on a short vacation with their Dad (Han of course) to go and check out a really cool race on Ord Mantell. Once they get there they meet Anja Gallandro, a girl who hates Han because she believes he murdered her father. She plays on his guilt, and somehow convinces him to go try to right a bloody civil war on her home planet. Through an interesting chain of events they meet back up with there other friends (big surpise), as well as Anja who by the way is not only working for some evil smuggler guy, but also is addicted to some kind of drug. I also find it very interesting that all through this whole series Jacen is hung up on Tenel Ka, and now the instant some other pretty girl comes into the picture, he instantly forgets she ever even existed, and I sense the same thing beginning to happen to Zekk and Jaina too. This only serves even more to convince me that these budding relationships were silly to begin with, though I must admit I always enjoyed Jacen and Tenel Ka. As for Anja herself, well, she was cool and all but I found myself not really liking her much, and I just couldn't really care about her like I could the other characters. She just seemed more like a glorified and somewhat twisted version of an early Mara Jade to me. Another thing that bothered me was that even though Anakin was with them throughout the whole book, he was practicly ignored and it seemed as if they somehow forgot about him at some points. This was somewhat irritating because Anakin has always been my favorite of the Solo children. Besides those minor details though, this was an exellent book. I also think it is cool that a Star Wars book can deal with serious issues such as drug adiction. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Star Wars, though it will probably make more sense if you have read the previous 11 first.

The books is set in modern day Ohio about two girls one white one black. The tables have change in which the black girl is the one who is well off and the white girl is very poor. The book is written from Marie's view. She met her through school where the first day she sat next to her. The book deals with a very sensitive subject about abuse which Lena's dad does to her. The abuse though is slightly touched upon.I believe the author really touched the heart with this book it was very sad but yet it's stuff that happens every day highly recommend great for book discussion for children pertaining to race relation and possible an introducion to knowing about abuse.

I really enjoyed reading this book, but wished Marie would have told someone Lena's secret. I feel that some children who read this book would get the impression that keeping secrets from adults can be a solution to the problem. Lena was sexually abused by her father and Marie kept that secret. Lena is a poor white girl and Marie is a middleclass black girl. These two girls establish a wonderful friendship and share the loss of their mothers. Lena's mother died from breast cancer and Marie's mother left the family two years ago. I feel the author did a nice job with racial relations and reaching children who have lost a parent. However, I would like to have seen her describe deeper feelings and solutions for children who experience sexual abuse. I was hoping for Marie to eventually tell the secret to an adult and Lena realizes that she was a true friend for doing so. In the end Lena finally decides to leave with her younger sister Dion so her father cannot touch either of them ever again. Marie is very upset Lena is leaving and tries to convince her to stay and tell the cops and things could be different. Lena says she cannot and will write her soon. The bond that Marie and Lena established will last forever. This book is rated for 4th grade to junior high level. Due to sexual abuse not be explained in depth, I feel fourth and fifth grade may be too young to understand the book unless the teacher does beforehand.

The book is about a young girl at the age of twelve named Marie has a friend that is in the same grade as her and how their friendship gets them closer together in a mostly an all African American school in Chauncey, Ohio. At the age of four Marie's mother left to be alone and go around the world to make her dreams come true. Every once in a while in the book she would mail Marie and her father a post card with a picture on the back that she drew of where she was at. One day at school in history class a new girl came and the teacher introduced her to the class and her name was Lena. The teacher gave her a seat over by Marie and at lunch they started to talk to each other and became friends.

I like the book because it talks about to kids getting to know each other and how both of them have no mother because something happened to them that changed their lives and once they found each other as friends. It is really sad how one mother died of cancer and one left because she wanted to go to other places in the world and become somebody in the world. If I was a judge of this book and give it a scale from one to ten on how good it was, I would give it a ten because it was really good in a way that it would make someone happy that would be interested in it.

A die hard Star Wars fan, for years I've been hard pressed to find anything not related to the series I truly enjoyed. When I ran out of Star Wars books to read, I was distraught. They just stopped coming out fast enough for me to always have something to read. In the book store one day, looking for something that would catch my eye, I spotted in the "staff recommendations" section a book that looked to match everything I was looking for in a good read. That book was First to Fight, and boy was I right. The book is extremely well written, and the character development is top notch. The action is of a caliber only people with true military experience could achieve, and Sherman and Cragg possess that. Now on book IV of the series, I find it safe to say that the series just gets better from here. Don't hesitate, buy yourself a copy of this great novel today. You won't be disappointed.

First off, I'd just like to say that, as a former military manmyself (Navy, not Marines), this book sticks pretty durn close to whatactually goes on (with the exception of the plasma weapons and chamelion suits, that is....) in the military. The comraderie, which the reader is immediately drawn into, the joking and prank-pulling, the immediate shift to serious professionalism when the situation calls for it, yup, Dave Sherman and Dan Cragg have definitely "been there, done that!"

The storyline itself is amazingly addicting. I admit I was a bit leery when buying the first book, but was hooked after the prologue. The characters are complex, but not too much so, and you really begin to find yourself sympathyzing with them as the plot unfolds. You get this intense hatred for "military intelligence" from the start, and that doesn't let up through the three books I've read so far! The authors do a superb job of explaining the relevant parts of history and technological breakthrus leading up to the present situations, cleverly disguised as mission briefs instead of a few paragraphs taken out of the general flow of the tale in order for the author to explain. I liked that. Maintains continuity.

On a down-note, there are a few places where the action seems to jump, such as a patrol heading into a combat situation, then the scene changes, and when we get back to the patrol, they're cleaning their guns and checking for survivors. In most cases, this felt like a cheezy crop-job by the editors in an effort to cut out "needless and redundant violence"...which is one of the better parts of the story! This doesn't happen often, though, so I decided not to lop off the fifth star in the rating.

Overall, an excellent series, well-worth the money and shipping time! The universe in this series is huge and complex, so I can't forsee an end to the series....thankfully! I eagerly await the next installment. END

First to Fight is the first novel in the StarFIST series. The 31st Fleet Initial Strike Team is issued a new item of equipment, a Universal Positionator Up-Down link, that will replace the radios, geo position locators, and vector computers throughout the companies. The UPUD has been field tested only at Aberdeen, but passed with flying color. When Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass questions such tests and suggests that his company take its current equipment along as backup, he is told that the company has been ordered to immediately turn in all of it. In the field, the UPUDs don't work as advertised, resulting in a number of unnecessary deaths. Back at the base, Bass thoroughly damages the company rep, Daryl George, before he is pulled off. Daryl drops charges against Charlie when told his company could be charged with criminal negligence due to his misrepresentations. Charlie, however, is convicted of conduct unbecoming a noncommissioned officer, demoted one level, and re-assigned to the 34th FIST.

In this novel, Joseph F. Dean joins the Confederation Marine Corps and is sent to the training planet, Arsenault. After many weeks in Boot Camp and Advanced Infantry Training, Dean is assigned to the 34th FIST on Thorsfinni's World, with Charlie as his platoon sergeant. His first liberty is even more exciting than the training courses. And then the 34st is sent to Elneal to provide humanitarian aid.

This novel gets off to a slow start after the initial UPUD fiasco (which most ex-service types will find familiar -- except Charlie gets in a few good licks), dwelling on the nature and peculiarities of military training, Marine style, but starts picking up the pace after Dean arrives on Thorsfinni's World. The other characters -- McNeal, Chan, Claypoole, Schultz, etc. -- are probably composite archetypes based on people the authors have known; nobody could be such a total goofball as Claypoole seems in his first appearance.

This series concentrates on the riots, raids, insurrections, and other relatively small incidents handled mostly by the Marines in our own history. Although the Marines have always been involved in the larger conflicts, the FISTs are the kind of ready deployment force that is the first to fight in most smaller actions. And, in this novel, they soon find themselves in a nasty fight.

Some reviewers have wondered why the Marines are not equipped with more futuristic weapons. First, the Navy has the planet-busters if these become necessary. Second, the Army has the tactical nukes, heavy artillery, and heavy tanks if these become necessary. Third, there are people who want to continue living on the planet after the Armed Forces leave. Thus, the Confederation sends in the Marines, light infantry capable of maneuvering in virtually any terrain and armed with weapons capable of taking out anything they face. Minimum force for maximum effect.

Recommended for Sherman & Cragg fans and anyone who enjoys small-unit combat in a SF setting.

In this book Mr. O'Shaughnessy takes four different (fictional) characters and shows them how to use his investing methods to beat the market based on his exhaustive study on what really beats the market. Basically this book takes his knowledge from What Works on Wall Street and makes up stories for these couples.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy thinks we should buy 50 stocks and rebalance those 50 stocks at the beginning of each year. In fact I am surprised that I haven't seen FolioFN giving away his books to their members since his methodology seems to be meant for those of us who have folios.

One of the major things that I didn't like about this book was in his descriptions of how these couples could retire rich he basically cut and paste each one and changed the ending result, in my opinion he made this book very boring and is a waste of paper. The only part of this book I liked was pages 139 and 140 these pages have various "doom and gloom" headlines from 1951-1997 and show that the market always has recovered.

Since now the strategies in this book are out in the public they probably won't even work right, so I would advise the majority of investors to put their money in an S&P 500 index fund since you'd be beating 80% of fund manages without having to do any research.

Reed Floren

I first read this book about 2 years ago and decided to put the Rational Runaways strategy to the test. After about three months, most of the stocks were up and the portfolio as a whole was up about 15%. Then, one by one, the majority of the stocks faded, then crashed. After a year, I was down about 15%. I decided to combine O'Shaugnessy's strategy with William O'Neill's, plus the considerable information available from Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, by Edwards and Magee. I pick stocks that meet O'Shaugnessy's criteria, that are also in solid uptrends. I sell them when they begin to trend down. Half of my stocks have gone up, half down. I've sold the losers for an average loss of 10%, the winners for an average gain of 25%. My average holding time is 3 months. I've been doing a bit better than 30% per year, and these are not net stocks or dot.coms. These are companies with real and growing earnings, reasonable pe ratios and low ps ratios. It's easy to mistake a bull market for genius, but so far, I believe I've found a strategy that will do well in any market environment.

A must read for anyone who cares about their financial future. The cloud of confusion that shrouds Wall Street has been blown away. Finally, a simple, easy to understand investment guide that gives actionable advice. Forget about the 5,000 mutual funds that consistently underperform the market. Forget about this year's genius or this year's hot fund. Follow a discipline and stick to it through thick or thin. Thanks, O'Shaughnessy. This book summarizes everything I've learned about investing over the years, but, of course, not yet acted upon. That will change. ----Three things to count in life: death, taxes, and dismal stock market returns without an invesment strategy!----

I personally did not enjoy So Much To Tell You as much as Marsden's previous works, because it lacked that descriptive quality one loved about him. However, unlike 'Letters from the Inside,' (which was also in written form), I found the book somewhat... evolved.
To a certain extent, the emotions and the curiosity about her father and their estranged relationship was quite powerful, though one may not notice at the time, yet certainly not to the extent that I could not put the book down.

Because the book was small, it was a fairly light read and left one with a feeling of, I guess, contentment, and even though So Much To Tell You ended as so many books have in the past, (rather cliché), the relationship with Marina's mother was still sour and unresolved, and one got the feeling that just Marina and her father completed a family, and it made the reader feel it's alright to live like that. This is an important issue for an author, more so one as respected and loved as children's author John Marsden, to address. There are many families, especially in this day and age, with similar problems, with children who feel incomplete because one member of their family, specifically a care-giver, does not live with them.

So, I guess, to sum it up, So Much To Tell You was a light-hearted, yet still quite deep in some aspects, novel about a young teenage girl resorting to the only thing she felt comfortable with; silence. But as the tale began to unfold, and she began to realize how much she needed to communicate and care for those around her, she began to realize that silence was not such a comfortable thing anymore, and though the process was long, it was the familiarity and day-to-day aspects that she had taken for granted that brought her back, and onto the road of self-discovery.

A fascinating journal of a teenager's troubling life. Marina's father and mother had a fight resolving in an accident. Now Marina is traumatised, her father was sentensed to jail, she rarely see's her parents and is in a strange new world at Warrington Boarding School. Learning to cope with the changes, new life and surroundings is upsetting and strange, but eventually Marina beging to open up and adjust to the people around her. Read this book-and exciting and heart touching tale of a girl as she learns to cope with life.

This is the only book by John Marsden that I've read yet, and I think that this book will be hard to beat. It's a really touching story about a 14-year-old girl named Marina who, as you find out later in the book, got her face scarred with acid. She stopped talking completely after the incident, not even communicating with nods or shaking her head (signifiying 'yes' or 'no'), and since she wasn't making any progress at the hospital, she got sent to a boarding school. Although she is distant and unresponsive at first, she finds herself reaching out to people in her dorm, teachers, and other people. This book made me cry in some parts, but not in a bad way. It ends in a good way too. I'm not even in high school yet, but I was able to understand all of it, so it's not confusing like some people say (or maybe I'm just different). Although it's a bit short, it's better than a lot of books two or three times its length. I think it's a really good buy and a great book.

It was the most intresting book I have ever read!Very informative

This book should be on every serious writer's shelf. The CD and software are simple to use, though lack some obvious features.

The book is near-perfect. Almost every question I have ever had, about freelance magazine articles, is answered in detail.

Harry Turtledove is spitting out books at the rate of five or six a year. And they aren't short, either --- he seems to have a contractual minimum of 600 pages per novel. Anyone pumping out fiction at this pace can be expected to run hot or cold, and Turtledove is no exception.

The original World War quartet (this one is the second in a "sequel" trilogy) was fresh and consistently exciting. Unfortunately, this follow up spends too much time rehashing the plot of the original and padding the pages with endlessly repetitive prose.

Turtledove, at his best, is one heckuva skilled storyteller, but he's never an elegant writer. In this book he is just plain sloppy and long-winded. He never lets an opportunity go by to belabor the obvious: i.e., "He didn't like it. Not even a little bit he didn't." and "He thought he saw movement. But then again, maybe he didn't, too." If the plot was lively enough it might be possible to ignore this turgid, clotted prose, but since the story moves at a glacial pace, and the characters are cardboard cutouts, it gets pretty wearying.

Even though this one ends on a cliffhanger, I've let six months go by and haven't looked at volume 3. I just can't face any more sentences like "After what seemed like forever --- but really wasn't...."

I'd recommend the World War series, or the books beginning with "How Few Remain" and the "Great War" novels. But this one... well, let's put it this way: Harry needs to hire an editor. Someone who can pull out the weeds and dig the rocks out of the ground and do some verbal landscaping. A sleeker, shorter novel without endless repetition would do much better. Hey, Harry it's OK to write a 200 page book!

I enjoyed this book and the continuation of the story farther into history, but I don't think this second series has reached the level of the first. I miss some of the really fine characters and situations from the first four books. Only Sam Yeager and Mordecai Abrimowitz remain onstage for any amount of time (and the latter probably died in the defense of Poland).

I saw Mr. Turtledove interviewed at UCSD a few years ago and I remember the interviewer's amazement and appreciation of the role given to Heinrich Jager. His and Ludmilla's romance was the core of the first series on one side of the world, Just as the sad downfall of Barbara Yeager's first hubby touched all the history of the other half.

These two books have continued the chain of supposition in fascinating new ways, but the characters just aren't as good. Maybe Mr. Turtledove is trying to say that Cold wars don't produce characters as colorful as 'hot' wars. This new German astronaut, for instance, is no Jager. I wish Turtledove hadn't killed him off.

I was happy to see that the Lewis and Clark expedition is establishing an industrial base in the asteroids (the only possible way for humans to win) and that the Reich has been finished off in a particularly nasty way. Another ten years of human technology advancement while the Race stands still should just about finish them off.

I purchased the 4 books of the WorldWar series about 2 months ago and read them all through. I thought it showed a fascinating look at humanity's first contact during World War Two. I was excited to get the first book of the Colonization series, and while the story was good, it seemed to be lacking in comparison of the WorldWar series. I still had hope for Down to Earth, but it seems Turtledove is running out of steam.

Good Points: 1. The whole thing with the ginger is good. It could have strong reprocussions for the Race. 2. The characters, like Molotov and Yeager, are good. Sometimes one-dimensional, but mostly fleshed out well. 3. Drucker having to question what the Nazis are doing, once he learns his wife's heritage. 4. the introduction of Mickey and Donald, the captured Race babies.

Bad Points: 1. How long are will the Race keep complaining about the fact humans adapt quickly? Enough already! 2. Where are the moon bases or bases on Mars? If the Race is letting humans build space stations, why not bases on the Moon? 3. I'm getting tired of Kassquit. She is just too boring, trying to decide between the Race or humanity.

I hope the next book has some battles in space, more of Mickey and Donald, and more on the Japanese (they played a bigger role in the first series, and now they seem to be forgotten).

My favorite Trek writer is Diane Carey. I've read a few of her TNG books. But Dominion War Book 2 wasn't the best she's done. I didn't enjoy this novel as much as DW Book 1 and 3 by John Vornholt. Maybe it's the fact that I don't like DS9 as much as TNG, or maybe it's because it was a novelization. Novelizations are okay, but real imagination comes out in original novels.

Better luck next time, Carey!

I'm surprised by the low ratings some of the other reviewers have given Books 2 and 4. I was a skeptic about reading a novelization of the series, I thought it would be a boring rehash of events, but Carey's wonderful and imaginative writing won me over. There's plenty of new material not covered in the episodes to make these books interesting and well worth reading! Typically I prefer TNG books, but I think the DS9 Dominion War books are more informative and fun to read than the 2 TNG ones. Please don't let the negative reviews keep you from buying this book, you'll be missing out on a good read.

Books 1 and 3 should really be part 1 of the Dominion War, and books 2 and 4, part 2 (or vice-versa) since there is no overlap between the two whatsoever. So it is ok to start reading book 2 having not read book 1. I believe had I not just watched DS9 on DVD that I would have enjoyed book 2 and 4 more than I did. The episodes were among my favorite, but reading it, much of which is taken word for word from the show, hardly offered new exciting twists. I agree you get a lot deeper insight into characters, especially Sisko and Martok's plan to do something about the War. At times I questioned whether Carey was right about some of the inner thoughts of Sisko and whether the producers of DS9 had the same views, or if Carey just invented them. Either way, it works. It's also good to see more of what happens when the Defiant goes off on a mission, esp. when Dax is in command. It was also good to see Charlie Reynolds and his crew. For that, I give this book 4 stars rather than 3, and also because I believe if one hasn't seen these episodes, that the books will be quite enjoyable. Seeing O'Brien on a suicide mission was quite funny, although the Tex character seemed very odd and out-of-place. Personally I prefered TNG books (1&3) more.