Goes

Remarkable results from a pastor turned insurance salesman! How is it possible that a person dedicated to the parish would twist his way into commentary of such low quality. My question would be, what unresolved childhood issues reside within this mind? Is his bitterness aimed at the purported issues, or is he lashing out at his inability to coalesce with the group that he is addressing?
Despite the pithy title, this work reads little better than a bad diary.

Don't know what Norman was thinking. When a Church Goes Bad is a practical guide to discovering whether your church is a cult or just a church with fixable problems. By the way, I happen to know that the author has continued to serve as a pastor to this day. Norman, or whoever he is, obviously wants to slander this good man's name.

I found this book extremely helpful. The previous reviewer obviously missed the point of the book. (By the way, the author continues to serve as a pastor in Connecticut.) I found his insights into how churches go the wrong way to be beneficial.

This is an o.k. book, but I was a little dissapointed. The illustrations are great, but the writing could use a little work.

Alison goes for the gold is a pretty good book! Alison runs for student concil in her school. Her and her friends put up posters and stuff like that. Does Alison Win? Or is she bumed? Read Alison goes for the gold. I recomend it!

My four year old daughter loves Doctor Desoto! It is charming to think of a world of a gentle mouse dentist with his loving wife and delicate tools. She was thrilled when we discovered this sequel. But, it was hard to read, hard to follow and an overall disappointment.

This was one of the first William Steig books I read, and it's still my favorite. My children really enjoy it too! Steig's books are unusual in that the characters frequently face danger, but there's no real violence, and Steig uses 'big' words in such a way that their meaning is clear from the context. The illustrations are great, and the stories are funny and poignant. This is a book that most parents and children (of all ages) will like.

Thank goodness an effort has been made to compile a book on someone who time will identify as one of the most important composers and producers of the 20th century. If you've even looked this book up on Amazon, you recognize the brilliance of Todd Rundgren.

I'd really like to say this was a great book, but I can't. The story it tells is fascinating, but the execution, I'm sorry Billy James, is quite weak. There is no way this book was edited by someone other than James. There are sentences that are not sentences, wrong words all over the place ("there" instead of "their" kind of stuff), misspelled words, mistyped quotes, words that are used in a completely wrong way, redundant information, and very obvious questions that the text raises that are never asked and never answered. The writing style is also uncomfortable. There seem to be many instances where James wanted to use a bigger word, hit the thesaurus button on his computer, and replaced the earlier term with something that is either used inappropriately, or that comes off as being completely goofy.

The most disturbing part is when you read things that are just plain wrong. They're generally miniscule things, but just knowing that information in what's supposed to be a biography is inaccurate makes you lose some faith in the other things you read. For example, James talks about Todd's break up with his high school girlfriend, Marlene, as being the inspiration for several songs on "Something/Anything". What we have here is a misinterpretation of something James probably read somewhere. Marlene was Todd's girlfriend while he was recording "Something/Anything", not while he was in high school. At the time they were together she was only 17-years-old. See what I mean? It's a tiny little point that doesn't amount to anything, and you can see how he made the mistake, but it causes you to lose faith in the accuracy of the other things you're reading.

This is volume one of what presumably will be at least two volumes. It takes you up through "Faithful" and John Siegler's departure, so it would seem the arrival of Kasim Sultan and the release of "Ra" will kick off the next book.

Hopefully this book will spark enough interest to encourage others to write on the topic of Todd. (That's what happened with Syd Barrett. Mike Watkinson wrote a so-so book called "Syd Barrett & the Dawn of Pink Floyd: Crazy Diamond." That book was followed by a brilliant biography of Barrett by Julian Palacios called "Lost in the Woods - Syd Barrett & the Pink Floyd." Highly recommended.)

Sorry, but it's not a very good read. At the same time, though, I can't wait to buy and read Volume Two.

I'm a french TR fan and i'm just finishing the reading of the first customer review on A DREAM GOES ON...I must say i do not share his opinion at all.Yes, it's true :this book is not perfect (i did notice some redundances for example )and he may be true when he says there are also vocabulary errors (i can't have any opinion about that:my english speaking,reading and writing are very poor).BUT THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT!The main thing is the bunch of unknown informations, details, interviews,and opinions we discover .THANK YOU BILLY JAMES!

This book is beautifully illustrated, however it is RUINED by the fact that the wombat at the end calls his Mum "Mom" (it would get 5 stars otherwise, the Wombat is my favourite "native"). If you're going to write a book on an Australian native mammal, at least give it a sense of authenticity and an Australian "accent". I picked it up at a local bookshop and almost flung it out of my hands when I saw that.

This is a sweet and simple story of a young Wombat searching for his mother. I read this book to my 5 and 7 year old girls. They enjoyed learning about the different Australian animals Wombat meets on his journey. The beautiful illustrations of Australian animals and the outback seem illuminated by a dusk glow of the sun - they make this book a treasure. They were intriguing to my girls. They made the world of the Australian outback seem lifelike and exciting. What a fun way for children to learn a little more about another part of the world.

I also read the book "Who Goes Next" that tells the true stories of daring escapes from prisons and prison camps throughout history, but this is not it. I ordered this book used and was disappointed to find it to be a 1960's detective/police novel. I would like to find the prison escape book.

I read this book when I was in the 6th grade and it was by far the most popular book among my peers at the time. The book tells the true stories of daring escapes from prisons and prison camps throughout history. Truth is stranger (and more interesting) than fiction.

I read this book when I was in fifth grade - - in 1969 - - and it left an indelible impression on me. I haven't seen Who Goes Next? since '69 but the one story that has remained in my mind was the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton's rescue at the South Pole. Travelling with two others in inhuman cold, starving, dead-tired, the men insist they'd seen a fourth man. Could this be the "spirit of escape?" the author conjectures. I have never forgotten this, what's more, Shackleton read books like Who Goes Next? when he was young and they were formative for him.

A collection of movie posters for the well-remembered science
fiction films of 1950 - 1964? And sets of lobby cards to
sweeten the pot? Well, the problem is that most of the
science fiction films from this period were ultra-low budget,
which translates as to "no money for art for posters," and
"no colorizing of stills used as lobby cards." And that
translates further to, "of very little visual interest."

Not that there are not some good posters, but the good ones
are all familiar. THE THING (7) features giant letters carved
apparently out of gobbets of raw flesh! INVASION OF THE BODY
SNATCHERS (38) features tiny images of running pairs of
people on a half-red, half-yellow background with a
superimposed hand print. The beautifully painted poster for
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN is not only a fine portrait of the
sultry Allison Hayes, but depicts the largest "squirrel shot"
in the history of urban civilization! But you've seen 'em.

There is so little of real interest here that you'll find
yourself killing time by counting the number of posters that
feature monsters or robots carrying girls in a scandalous state
of undress. Having done that you may find yourself reduced
to looking for posters in which the monsters or robots carry
(or sort of brandish!) boys and adult males (all fully clothed,
I am happy to say).

If none of this sounds appealing, I suggest you save your money,
and I wish that I had.

I used this book for a slightly different use: I cut out the pictures to use for decoupaging a table. It served its purpose excellently as the pictures were just the right size. My one complaint is that there were too many instances in which the same movie had quite a few posters, each one looking just barely different.

I guess the other reviewer has no concept of art, or probably has no idea these posters are worth thousands of dollars each, at least. If you don't believe me, check out the author's background, as he used to run Christies auctions, as well as his own eBay auctions, to the tune of a lot of money since 1989. So, if you're a movie buff, have an appreciation for this art, and can afford it, then great! If not, go whine somewhere else!

After a flight in fantasy with When the Wind Blows (1998), Patterson goes to ground with another slash-and-squirm psychokiller page-turner, this one dedicated to ``the millions of Alex Cross readers, who so frequently ask, can't you write faster?'' By day, Geoffrey Shafer is a charming, 42-year-old British Embassy paper-pusher with a picture-perfect family and a shady past as an MI-6 secret agent. Come sundown, he swallows a pharmacy of psychoactive pills, gulps three black coffees loaded with sugar, and roams the streets of Washington, D.C., in a battered cab, where, disguised as a black man, he rolls dice to determine which among his black female fares he'll murder. Afterwards he dumps his naked victims in crime-infested back alleys of black- slum neighborhoods, then sends e-mails boasting of his accomplishments to three other former MI-6 agents involved in a hellish Internet role-playing game. ``I sensed I was at the start of another homicide mess,'' sighs forensic-psychologist turned homicide-detective Alex Cross. Cross yearns to catch the ``Jane Doe murderer'' but is thwarted by Det. Chief George Pittman, who assigns ... Det. Patsy Hampton to investigate Cross and come up with a reason for dismissing him. Meanwhile, Cross's fianc‚e is kidnaped during a Bermuda vacation, and an anonymous e-mail warns him to back off. He doesn't, of course, and just when it appears that Patterson is sleep-walking through his story, Cross nabs Shafer minutes after Shafer kills Det. Hampton. During the subsequent high-visibility trail, Shafer manages to make the jury believe that he's innocent and that Cross was trying to frame him. When all seems lost, a sympathetic British intelligence chief offers to help Cross bring down Shafer, and the other homicidal game-players, during a showdown on the breezy beaches of Jamaica. Kinky mayhem, a cartoonish villain, regular glimpses of the kindly Cross caring for his loved ones, and an ending that spells a sequel: Patterson's fans couldn't ask for more

The author of Cat and Mouse, Kiss the Girls, and others does it again. Our hero, Alex Cross, dynamic doctor/detective has overcome many adversaries, but this time he's confronting the Weasel!

Serial killings in a crime ridden Washington, D.C. ghetto send Alex and his partner in search of the "Jane Doe" killer. But their bigoted boss wants them to focus on the slaying of a well-to-do white man.

Patterson uses his trademark brief scenes and plot suspense to move his tale along to its proper conclusion. Able readers bring Alex to life as well as imbuing a complex villain with the proper amount of psychosis and sadism.

- Gail Cooke

I agree with all of the reviews that say this book (and this series) is very formula. But I have to cast my vote with the reviewers who like the formula. You have Alex Cross and John Sampson, which are two of the best detectives I've ever read about. The bad guys they hunt are serial killers of the worst sort. They range from the pathologically insane with severe mood swings, to brilliant criminals with a strong case of megalomania. There are even sociopathic children, professional assassins and detectives with split personalities. Yes, the dialog can be trite and difficult to swallow at times. And there's very little subtlety to the stories. The boundaries between good and evil are pretty well fixed, and there's no gray to be found anywhere.

But lets be honest. These books are fun. When you get on a rollercoaster, what do you expect? You expect lots of sharp turns and steep inclines. Same thing with this book. It's predictable like a rollercoaster is predictable. And when you open the pages of this book, like a rollercoaster, you are immediately drawn in. In this book, the opening chapter did a particularly good job of gaining my interest.

Patterson once again does a very good job of exploring the mind of a pathological killer, and builds a very solid storyline that mixes intense scenes of murder and mayhem with solid character development that you can only really appreciate if you read this book as part of the larger 'Alex Cross' series.

Alex Cross is once again the brilliant detective, in touble at work and in love once again. He is still trying to be the dutiful father, friend and lover, all the while trying to catch The Weasel. The Weasel is thought to be responsible for the Jane Doe murders, which number somewhere over 100 victims. To make the story more interesting, Alex is made to struggle with some pretty significant personal loss as he tries to catch one of the more slippery killers of his career.

In this book, you not only get a great detective story and a very interesting killer, but you get to learn more about this character named Alex Cross. And not only Alex Cross, but the whole cast of characters from the series. John Sampson is one of my favorites, as is Cross's family (son Damon, daughter Jannie, and grandmother Nana).

Lets face it, there are lots of books out there about serial killers. But there's only one series featuring Alex Cross. And it's the very likable Alex Cross that keeps me coming back to this series. Because I know he'll be there to outwit the bad guys, no matter how heinous their crimes.

So give me Alex Cross any day. No matter what criminal mastermind he faces next time, I'll be right there along for the ride.

Predictable, yes. But also fun. Just like a rollercoaster.

This book serves as a prequel and sequel to a film classic. Perhaps THE film classic of all time. Why would such a book be necessary?

****The answer relies on three things. First of all, "Casablanca" is a story that the audience fell into. A wealth of backstory exists that we only caught glimpses of. Second, the audience has an innate desire to know that Rick and Ilsa see each other again. Third, a film sequel is no longer possible with its original players (principally Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains). The book allows their irreplaceable images to remain intact while giving the characters new things to do.

****Walsh is mildly successful in not making a complete travesty of his assignment. He picks up on hints imbedded in "Casablanca." From Rick's comment to the Nazis that there are certain sections of New York they shouldn't try to invade, Walsh rumminates that Richard Blaine was originally Yitzhak Baline, a Jewish gangster and speakeasy manager in New York.

****Louis Renault's curiosity and remarks about Rick's past is also useful: "Did you abscond with the church funds? Did you run off with the Senator's wife? I like to think that you killed a man -- it's the romantic in me." In the film, Rick replies that it was a combination of all three reasons and Walsh draws on that idea as well.

****The down side to this novel involves the characters of Victor Lazlo and Ilsa. Victor carries on like a self-righteous man blinded by "the cause" and revenge. Walsh has Ilsa go undercover in an attempt to portray her as more active in the war intrigue and her destiny. However good the intent, the scenario plays out poorly.

****"As Time Goes By" does give food for the imagination -- if only how you would've written a better story. But you can easily live your life without ever reading Walsh's book. The best advice, really, is to see "Casablanca" again. The original never disappoints.

I think this book didi a good job of capturing the spirit of the movie, but fell a little short in the execution. I am glad I now know where Ilsa and Rick came from, but somehow the book just doesn't do the original story justice.

I was quite skeptical when I first saw As Time Goes By. Eventually I bought it. If you approach it with an open mind you will find it plausible and enjoyable. Contrary to other reviewers I found the dialogue and story line in keeping with that of 1940's Hollywood. I thought Walsh did an excellent job. After all the original script was not high literature. The brilliant actors are why we remember it so fondly. Overall the author's tale rings true, even Rick's past as a Jewish gangster. I could vividly imagine the original actors as I read. But surely everyone agrees that a film version would be true sacrilege. Bergman and Bogart are Ilsa and Rick and that is that. Ignore the nay sayers and enjoy the book for what it is.

The book consists of a few chapters of prose (about picking out a suit, shoes, etc) sandwiched in between numerous lists. Some of the information is good, some is decent, some is bad, some is wrong, and some is just plain out of place. For instance, there is a brief section on being single and a longer section on travelling; several of the topics seemed out of place in a book about "style". There is good information in this book but unfortunately you have to wade through a lot of chaff to get to the wheat: "10 Musts to Have in the Car -- a detailed map covering a 50-mile radius from your house." The book is also targetted at a slightly older demographic. Of the fifty things that every man must know one of them is, "That Philip Roth, and not Norman Mailer, is the conscience of his generation." Does anyone under 35 care about either of those people?

There is certainly enough useful information in this book (and it is mercifully brief) that you should spend a day or two reading it should the opportunity avail itself. Just don't spend any actual money on this book. Check it out from the library.

This book is very interesting and infromative, but the authors should take note that not everyody lives in New York. In fact, most Americans don't. You wouldn't know it though, because at least every chapter has an inside joke for New Yorkers. I don't care about the best way to JFK, a record time to Laguardia, or why I won't feel overdressed upstate, because I don't plan on going there. But I guess if you live in New York, the world revolves around New York wit.

Plenty of wit and plenty of good advice. Rubenstein assumes that you don't know too much about style and other matters. If you do, then you probably won't bother with this. If you don't, he offers some invaluable advice--everything from how to pack for a trip to which style collar is best for you. Rubenstein relies on classics rather than trends, although he's thoroughly up to date on the more relaxed styles of the 90's. Much of the book is lists, and here he can be a little frustrating. The majority of one-liners are pithy and knowledgable, but some are too esoteric for the rest of us slobs. But snobbery isn't really a problem. The prickly sarcasm is mixed with a little intentional silliness, and readers offended by the occasional snooty barb are missing Rubenstein's point. He encourages you to bend the rules to suit your own style. Style is mostly about confidence. And if you can't take a joke, the suit won't make any difference.