MC

A motivational book which makes you realize the true meaning of running. Worth reading for any person looking to find a deeper meaning to your next running experience!

Magical Running: A Unique Path To Running Fulfilment focuses on the psychology and mind-set of running, not the physical training of the body. Author and running coach Bobby McGee draws upon his years of coaching an Olympic marathon gold medallist, world record holders, world champions, and other runners to provide unique and invaluable guide about the mental preparation, the "how to", of a runner's motivation. With a text replete with anecdotes in support of his concepts and exercises, Bobby McGee documents and illustrates that running success is as much a function of attitude and the mind, as it is of leg muscles and breath control. Highly recommended reading for all aspiring runners regardless of whether they are sprinters or long-distance, novice or experienced, amateur or professional.

It's a non-technical look (well, as non-technical as you can get on a topic as complicated as restoring films) at the world of film preservation and restoration, tracing its short history (films weren't always deemed important enough to save), focusing on some of the key personalities, key films and key organizations. Film buff's will love it.

There are some very interesting and surprising anecdotes concerning the restoration of some of our favorite films: the restoration of the "snails and oysters" scene in SPARTACUS, needed to be re-recorded since the original dialogue track was lost. Tony Curtis recorded his lines in Los Angeles, while Anthony Hopkins recorded the late Lawrence Olivier's lines in London! Stanley Kubrick re-directed the scene by fax! The actions that had to be taken to restore the soundtrack of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA are even more fascinating.

A perfect book for those fascinated with both archaeology and film!

Our Movie Heritage is one of the best books I've ever read and I can't say enough good things about it. If you have any intrest in movies, this book is a must. Our Movie Heritage contains many beautiful pictures and is very well written. It was so wonderful and informative, I couldn't put it down. The facts about preservation are so alarming and worrying, it makes you feel like you should give all your money to the cause. If the authors read this sort of thing, I just want to say thank you. You have changed my life. I'm in high school and after reading this book, I know what career I'm going into, film preservation. So thank you, and everyone needs to buy this book, its worth the price and much much more.

I think this is one well rounded books in Performance tuning. It treats all the details you need to know as a system administrator relating to tunning both for new installation and continuous performance monitoring of existing application. I'm not surprise Adrian Cockcroft is one the best in Performance Tuning. This is a must get for any application administrator and UNIX system Administrator...

This book provides in-depth coverage of resource management that can be applied to not only Solaris (or other UNIX systems), but to any system. It accomplishes this by tying resource management to service level management, and does so with one of the best discussions of service level management in print.

Service level management, covered in chapter 2, clearly shows the service delivery cycle by exposing interactions among and between vendors, system managers and the systems being managed, and business users. I especially like the resource management control loop discussion, which places the rest of the book into the context of support and service. Another innovation that is introduced in this book is the concept of viewpoints as they relate to performance and capacity: These viewpoints can be system-, cluster-, network-, application- storage- or database-centric. The viewpoints are not mutually exclusive. The authors show how to integrate any and all of them into a coherent and consolidated approach.

The approach is based on policies and controls,and workload management and measurement. The discussion remains focused on service level management throughout the book. The examples for achieving the approach's objectives are, of course, based on Solaris for the most part. If you're using a different variant of UNIX you should be able to easily re-map the facilities and utilities cited in the book to those that are available in your own environment. This also applies to non-UNIX environments. The concepts and approach apply to NT/W2K/XP, IBM midrange systems and mainframes. I was surprised to find that IBM's Workload Manager for OS/390 was included in the book. I came from this environment, so the discussion provided me with familiar territory that caused me to clearly see just how applicable this book is to any environment.

If you work with Solaris this book is essential. If you work with other operating systems still buy this outstanding book for the concepts and approach.

Quite simply, 'War and an Irish Town' is probably the finest narative of the Irish Troubles. The Author Eamonn McCann was one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and his book charts the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement to the armed resistance of the I.R.A. What gives this book the advantage over the others is that the narative is overlapped with a very sharp and readable analysis of the conflict. It gives interesting and often funny insights into the characters and actions that made Derry a European, and indeed World symbol of resistance in 1969.

Another crucial difference that puts McCann's book above the rest is that when you finish the book, you really feel that you have learnt something. The book doesn't stop there. When we look at conflicts around the world from Rwanda to Angola, often the question begged is why, and why are these people doing this? Eamonn with the skill and craft of a skilled journalist leaves you in no doubt that the violence of the last thirty years was neither inevitable nor simply the result of two headless communities at each others throat so often espoused by the media

If you are interested in the politics and history of contemporary Ireland then this book is an absolute must.

McCann's book is a brilliant look at the Troubles and the impact on his home town of Derry. Far too often, all we see of the troubles is stone throwing youths or bombs going off in Britain, with no explaination of how it got to this point. McCann shows brilliantly the historical context from which the troubles were spawned, and in doing so demolishes completely the myth of two tribes with no common ground. Essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the politics of Northern Ireland.

Yes, the artwork is really great in this book, but while the book does have an editor listed, I am not sure anything more than a spell check was performed.

There are TONS of instances where typos got by the spell check because they resulted in real words that were inappropriate to the current context. Maybe it's just me, but typos like this detract from the professionalism of a book.

Unfortunately this seems to be par-for-the-course for TSR lately.

The Monstrous Compendium Annuals are basically digests of all the best creatures in that year's adventures and magazines. In this way, the appendices can be seen as expansions for the MM, unless you plan to buy every single adventure TSR produces. One of the largest problems with the appendices is the fact that they frequently re-release creatures from books that are still in print, but with revised statistics, causing major havoc and confusion. Also, it appears that these books were not proofread at all, as the text in several places resorts to a jumble of senseless words stringed together with no punctuation, making hard it under- reading you stand what are.

Below are the separate ratings for each volume of the appendices:

1st - published in 1994, contains creatures of 1993. The only appendix with a white cover,also the largest. This little guy contains monsters in the very same format as the Monsteous Manual, which is very relaxing. Most of the monsters are interesting and a large part are actually useful in day-to-day campaigning. Highlights include the new Linnorm dragons and the low-level outerplanar creatures. Five stars.

2nd - Released in 1995, contains 1994 materials. in this volume the creatures aren't framed but sprawl around the pages in a variety of places and positions. Although this could cause some wprd-wrap problems like in the Planescape MC's, it doesn't seem to do it too much. Nevertheless, a change from the routine is not all too bad. Most of the monsters are vibrant and colorful, but lighter than the ones in #1 ( perhaps because Tony DiTerlizzi is not the artist, but does that make such a big difference! ). I enjoyed the Chronolily, but the centaur sub-species are rip-offs. Four stars.

3rd - released either in 1996 or 1997, contains monsters of '95, '96 ( or at least I think so). I don't own this one, so I can't tell you too much. It seems though, that TSR skipped a year somewhere.

4th - TSR is cleaning up its case. Released in 1998, contains 1997 materials. Many old creatures making a comeback. Art is extremely beautiful, and the fact that it is done by a variety of artists only swwetens the candy. Finally TSR agreed to publish the sources of the creatures in the book. This is the last one in print.

Basically, this is where you turn for creatures after you exhausted the MM. If you think you can bypass the spelling and the syntax problems, you will enjoy these.

As far as I am concerned, this is one of the best "monster books" in existense in the AD&D game. The art is fresh and vibrant ( unlike the washed-out art of Planescape appendixes), the creatures are creative and each and every one of them is capable of having an entire adventure centered on it and it alone. A few things - the spelling is horrible; the binding is simple glue spread - the book falls apart easily with time; also, the text isn't as enchanting as it used to be...

This is one of the best, and I consider it a near must-have.

Larry McMurtry is one of the finest American authors because he knows a simple rule to writing. KISS...Keep it simple, stupid. This story works because he didn't try and fill it with zany plot twists or artifical characters. Their isn't a false passage in the book and their isn't an instant of when the characters don't act like simple human beings. Anyone who has read this should see the 1971 film version by Peter Bogdanovich. It works the same way the book does thanks in no small part to Bogdanovich and McMurtry's screenplay. (They co-wrote it together.)

Every year at Christmastime I've been buying myself a McMurtry novel to put in my own stocking...it used to be a guilty pleasure of mine, because I've never cared much for Westerns. For years I'd heard the hype about Lonesome Dove and finally started reading a paperback someone left at my house. I've been hooked ever since. McMurtry breaks all the rules for a great novelist: the plot is nonexistent in places, he adds details that aren't necessary to the story, and character is ultimately what's most important to the structure of the novel. His writing works because character is truly the only thing we have; the only thing that other people remember when we're gone. The Last Picture Show should be required reading for high-school students (though I'm sure the sex would disqualify it for most tight-lipped school boards). It's one of the few truthful growing-up stories I've ever read--cruel, exhilirating, honest, and touching. My only complaint about the novel is that it seemed clipped in places, as if sections had been removed by an editor with a mission to curb the length of the book. I'm sure that McMurtry's publishing clout has increased over the years and I'd love to see him rerelease an unabridged version of the novel. It's a classic.

I have read the book and also seen the movie several times.
True life events in a small Texas town of about 30 years or so ago. I was a young person in just such a town and the events and the characters all ring true. Things happen in small towns just as in big cities and there is a poignant mood throughout this interesting story of teens and adults and all their shared and not so shared human experiences. A worthwhile read.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three

Killashandra, Crystal Singer, returns for a third novel in the Crystal Series. I recommend you read these in order as the events in the first two lead up to this novel.

Killashandra is now a mature Crystal Singer. She enjoys the benefits of life on Ballybran as one of the rare and valuable miners of Crystal. The career of a Singer brings wealth, long life and a certain cachet in the Galaxy. But it comes at a heavy price; loss of memory and thus an inability to maintain any meaningful relationships. Singers are encouraged to document their lives with a recorded journal so they can pick up the pieces of their personality and not become shallow and venal.

Killashandra and Lars Dahl, her new-found love from the previous novel, face new challenges for the Heptite Guild. But their relationship is threatened by forces behind the scenes. Is Lars working for or against Killashandra?

This is a fine conclusion to the two previous novels and one of my favorite series.

I read McCaffrey when I want to be comforted by the presence of basically decent people. The plots don't matter to me much and the attempts at true sci-fi technology are something to skipped over as quickly as possible (eg. the workings of a Hive ship.) For that reason, I have also enjoyed McCaffrey's non-Sci-fi books, in particular "A Stitch in Snow".

The Crystal Singer series is my favorite sci-fi trilogy and Crystal Line is my favorite of the three books. In Crystal Singer, we have the usual angry and mis-treated teenager who strikes out on her own and is attracted to the domineering macho types. In Killashandra, we have a woman who has matured enough to change her taste in men. But in Crystal Line we have one of the very few "middle-aged" (I know she's actually several hundred years old according to the plot) heroines in sci-fi. Her decisions about what she will do with her life, and who she will do it with, are long over. But she still has decisions to make about how she will deal with both the choices that she has made and the things that life has done to her.

Killasandra and the love of her life, Lars, have both become experienced crystal singers. They enjoy all the perks of the job, lots of credit and long life, but they also suffer the draw backs, loss of memory. But, while Lars wants to remember the past, Killasandra doesn't care. This will eventually come between them.

This book is a fine end to the serise, even though we do see, or atleast realise, that many of the origanl minor characters have died. It also finaly confermes the hints we got in the other to books that the series is set in te same universe as the brainship serise (eg Helva)

The end part of the book made me cry because Killasandra forgets Lars and just when she remembers what they had it looks like she has lost him forever.

This book is a must!

I liked this book. For a first offering by this writer, it was well put together, with good characters and an excellent story line. The fly cover mentions that this is the first of a trilogy, so I look forward to having the central characters fleshed out further.
The story starts out in Roman time Wales, and concludes in Iraq - I don't want to spoil another reader's enjoyment of the story but, I have to say the ending was very topical. I am pleased to have added it to my collection

On a recent trip to costa rica, I had two guide books, and this one was lacking in comparison. I purchased this book, but then later ended up buying the new addition of Lonely Planet as well, as the rough guide simply did not have as much information. For most towns, they did not have as many accomodation listings as LP, and there were many smaller towns rough guide did not cover at all. I also found their maps not as easy to use. Overall, I would say this book is adequate, but that LP gives you a lot more info.

The book is okay-one of three that I brought with me on my travels and by far the least detailed. I didn't not any factual mistakes but many things left to vague to actually GUIDE you anywhere. In my mind a great book to look at if you are CONSIDERING a trip down south but if to bring down with you, why not splurge on a fatter book with some more details? Costa Rica is great- the book's not bad just not overly detailed

The 2002 edition of rough guide is a definite improvement over the previous edition of the rough guide. It is a solid guide to the sounds and sights of Costa Rica that has lots of information for the budget traveller. It has good maps and gives good descriptions of most tourist sites. I would say that this would be one of the 4 best guides for the budget traveller right now for Costa Rica--the other three would be the Lonely Planet, Footprint and New Key guides.

Looking and reading like a romance novel, I found Crisis at Doona a dissapointment. Being a long time fan of Ms. McCaffrey's I was dismayed at what I read. Instead of the usual well developed characters and stories, cardboard cutouts moved around on a wooden stage. Ms. McCraffrey wrote several romance novels and now apparently has become enamored of the style, sadly enough. Like late period Heinlein, go back and read the earlier works, leave the rest to the rabid fans.

It's just that this sci-fi/mystery book has very poor elements of mystery in it. Many facts in the book are contradictory (not on face). I shouldn't tell any element of the book so I won't reveal the errors.

However, I did manage to get through this sacharrine and very typical book of the style of Anne and Mercades and Andre. It's O.K. despite my disappointment with it. To the point, this book is the lightest of light reading for people who want to pass time. There is no way it deserves five stars in my opinion.

Here we find that Todd and Hrriss, two characters who became best friends as children in "Decision at Doona", are still best friends 25 years later and have become role model citizens. But suddenly they are accused of some serious crimes just as the agreement between the Humans and the Hrrubans is up for renewal, and as a result the continued existence of their shared colony world is in jeopardy. No one who knows the two very well believes for a minute that they've committed the acts they're accused of, but the body of evidence against them that will be used to hold them in judgement seems to be mounting up. A riveting tale of mystery and suspense.