Open

This is a novel about Cape Cod, a narrow peninsula that projects into the Atlantic from southeastern Massachusetts. Cape Cod residents depend on a freshwater aquifer that is constantly threatened by pressure from the surrounding saltwater. There is a mysterious quality about this water that makes the locals have sex frequently and in all sorts of combinations, and it is always very good. This unusual phenomenon is irresistibly appealing to a recent graduate who wants to apply the formulas learned in the creative writing seminar at Cape Cod Community College. The exercise has all the depth of an expanded version of a TV guide synopsis of the daytime soaps. One character appears to be developed with some complexity, but her problem is dismissed casually and accurately by another character as the result of menopausal depression.

This book by Marge Piercy is one her better outings. I enjoy her work but her feminist agenda sometimes overides her work. Summer People revolves around the friends, family and lovers of three Cape Cod artists. Susan, Willie and Dinah have been involved in menage a trois that is terminated as the book's action begins. This is partly because of Susan's relationship with a rich summer resident Tyrone has veered into an unhealthy obsession that is ultimately her downfall. Ironically it is this change that allows the other characters to move forward with their lives. Peircy is a good writer and the book is full of juicy observations on the characters and and their interactions. Tyrone is a wonderfully drawn, and it is interesting how Susan never sees the true nature of the man,a selfserving and manipulative user under a polished exterior. However Susan's son Jimmy reveals a dark character as well. This is one part of the book that is very perceptive.I have personally seen the children of parents who depend on the largesse of others grow up to have an expectation things can be "bought" using yourself to pay. In all a really good read.

I really enjoyed this book when I read it several years ago, and it comes back to me from time to time. I like her take on what is sustainable and wholesome in life. I enjoyed watching the progress of their characters through the particular journeys we see them take. I loved her Pesach dinner. And the honesty with which she holds her characters. Low-key delight.

Most of this book gives a fair and healthy picture of the advantages to open adoption. The target audience seems to be social workers in the field of adoption and NOT perspective adoptive parents. This book IS clinical in form and often long winded. But the author ends the text (chapters 14 & 15 in particular) by ranting about the evils of adoptions that are not completely open. By reading these chapters, it seemed as if the author wanted me to feel guilty for wanting to parent a child what was not my biological child. This leaves the feeling that the author is biases against choosing an adoption plan over parenting a biological child. We actually learned tonight that our agency (dedicated to the counsel and caring of birth parents) has pulled this book from it's recommended reading list. My wife and I are dedicated to being parents, and ministering to birth parents by raising their child in an open adoption. The negative tone of Gritter's book almost made us reconsider this option. If you are a perspective adoptive parent read Field's "Should You Adopt" and Silber & Speedlin's "Dear Birthmother," but do not read Ritter.

If you like intellectual musings and lofty philosophical principles about adoption, read this book. I could only take a couple chapters of Gritter. My wife read more and felt discouraged about adopting. An adoptive parent we know couldn't get through the first chapter. "Too dry", she said.

It puzzled me why the author, with many years of adoption counseling experience under his belt, wouldn't use real life stories and examples to illustrate his ideas. There's almost none. Instead he pontificates and lectures; I felt talked down to.

Fortunately, our experience with Open Adoption and Family Services in Portland, Oregon was far more positive and down to earth.

This book is required reading by our adoption agency. While I applaud Mr. Gritter's committment to his subject I have to say that it's a hard read. I think a little editing would have gone a long way as he tends to make his points over and over and over. Plus he feels so strongly about his opinions that he comes off a little heavy handed. On the plus side, many of the chapters (particularly the one about pain) were valuable as was the chapter on commercialization which confirmed our feeling that advertising for a baby through independent adoption wasn't right for us. Maybe the most valuable thing was that reading the book helped us understand what our agency's values were and helped us feel that we'd made the right choice for our situation. I would highly recommend another book suggested by the agency, The Open Adoption Experience. It was a wonderful and non-judgemental book written for adoptive and birth families. It covered not just the adoption itself but raising the child and other issues. It had tons of examples and really helped me think through a lot of things I hadn't considered before.

I found this book carelessly composed and edited, fairly useless in terms of helping to understand the issues. In addition, it features one proprietary technology (obviously developed by the author ??) which leaves a bad feeling for a reader who is interested in objective information.

It seems to me that this is another book hastily scribbled together around a few buzzwords.

This book starts off with a useless introduction to the web followed by code generated by Symantec Cafe. None of which did I find useful. The book doesn't cover SET (secure electronic transactions) OR JECF (Java electronic commerce framework). These are essential technologies for doing web commerce and should have had coverage

This book covers the basics of internet commerce, then goes on to describe the advantages and disadvantages of each of the popular methods of selling your items or services on the Web. An in-depth look at using the CGI approach, on to using Java to do the work, replacing CGI scripts. If you are looking at using a credit card verification system, there are many examples and even a fully functioning shop with verification interfaces built right in. If you want to set up an internet shop and want to know how, then this is the book for you

This book has some useful information, though it suffers from lack of editing. I thought that a draft copy accidently went to press when I started reading this. Many of the errors in this book are typos, but some of the errors have more to do with presentation and may confuse the reader about the topic.

Open Source XML Database Toolkit does have useful information. Its strength is that it is geared to help readers understand how XML, DBMSs, and all the middleware fit together.

XML and other computer markup and languages use esoteric symbols and naming devices; it is crucial that technical books about these topics get them right consistently. This book doesn't do that, which is why I have given it 2/5 stars. Informative (thus far in my reading), but -3 for poor editing.

This book is not an application development guide. But it mentions about some *open source* tools and covers some API available in Perl, Java and C towards the end of the book. And the rest of the book is filled with descriptions of other open source tools, not completely irrelevant, but probably you were not looking for and distracting.

If you are just looking for some description of tools or guide to use tools available, I suggest just you spend the time the web and you get lot more useful information than presented in this book.

Even when the author talked about XML Databases, he is mostly interested in Document Management not the data. He did not do justice to the data that can be presented/stored in XML/Database.

The book doesn't claim to be an application development guide, nor is it a database API reference. The world of open source software is changing very rapidly, too, so rather than write about items that would soon be out of date, I tried to focus on techniques and strategies. It's a very broad field, and this is an interdisciplinary book, talking about document management as well as about delivering relational information as XML. It doesn't cover XSLT, nor libxml, but in 432 pages I couldn't have done justice to XSLT, and there have been two released of libxml since publication. So instead, you'll find out about using SAX from C and Perl, and learn enough XML, SQL and network programming to get by, and maybe have some fun along the way.

I ordered this thinking it was a book about the Dixie Chicks. It isn't. It's the book of sheet music from the CD, Wide Open Spaces. Great if that's what you're looking for, but if you want a book to read, this ain't it!!!

The Dixie Chicks are one of the most popular country musicians of all time. What country music fan hasn't heard of the album "Wide Open Spaces?" It's one of the greatest albums of all time. The Dixie Chicks are well known for mixing bluegrass, a little pop, and rock into their songs. Many of the songs are fun to play as well. The best is the honky tonk-ish "Tonight the Heartache's on Me." Great songs that sound excellent on any piano include the ballads "Loving Arms, You were Mine, and Once you Loved Somebody." The majority of the songs contain many flats and sharps, so this book may be a little advanced for the begining piano player. This book also features the guitar chords, but I wouldn't reccomend using them. If they were offered in a tabluature book that would be better. This book is best used for keyboard/piano players and vocalists. For those musicians and singers this book is well worth the money.

It's an interesting subject, but I found the book to be quite confusing. It skips around chronologically and often fails to explain fully the events that are mentioned. In addition, the translation is quite awkward in places. I would presume that the translator was attempting to preserve the flavor of the original, but she does so in a way that interferes with comprehension.

This book is a documentary on the life of Frida Kahlo. It is interesting because it doesn't focus soley on her art, but more directly emphasizes her emotional strength as a woman. A large portion of the book is exerpts from private conversations with Frida, as well as diary entries, medical records, and personal letters. Her life is filled with tragedy, but the book shows the incredible spirit of Kahlo as she faces near death and struggles as a female artist in a male dominated world. This book also gives the reader insight into the famed relationship of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Frida Kahlo: An Open Life, is written by Raquel Tibol who befriended Rivera in the 1950's and subsequently met and lived with Kahlo a year before her death. This book provides an unique perspective on the personal life of the very strong willed Kahlo.

I ordered this book expecting to hear a happy story about open adoption...instead what I received was a rambling account of a semi-open adoption. Somehow Ann has the mistaken, self-serving notion that only the birth mother benefits from visiting the child so her & her husband cut off visits after the 1st year. This is NOT open adoption!!! It's just another account of one mother who experiences joy while thinking, "Oh how cute, he smiles like his birth mom."...while another mother has nothing on her mind but how she will survive the next 18 years until the child reaches some "magical" age where it's okay for her to see him and his parents(who used to be her friends.) Ann was afraid her children would be "confused" to have his birth parents in their lives. What a lame argument! A child has many aunts, uncles, and grandparents that he loves....but NEVER does he doubt who his mommy is! Too bad the author doesn't have the courage to face her insecurities and enter into a true open adoption...because you will not find a word about real open adoption in this book!

My husband and I are in the process of adopting 2 newborns. The birthmothers are sisters and their babies are due 2 months apart. This book gave us the strength to involve ourselves with these girls, and allowed us to take the risk of having them move in with us for the period of their pregnancies. I really want to thank Ann for her book.

If you want to find quickly how to perform a task in unix or if you DON'T LOVE unix, this IS NOT the book for you. The author loves unix and thinks anyone who doesn't is stupid. Good if you are trying to understand unix's folks mind.

Hahn has managed to take something that is usually mind-numbingly boring (computer books in general) and add a little interest to it through a somewhat sarcastic sense of humor. Hahn is clearly on favored and familiar ground here, providing clear and readable explanations to the most common tasks in Unix. He does a good job presenting the information in a way that is understandable the neophyte Unix user and manages to avoid the Unix "Holy War" feeling that permeates some books on the subject.

If you are looking for a quick reference guide to common tasks, there are other works available which are probably more suitable to your needs. If your interests or career are taking you in a direction such that Unix is going to figure in your landscape for some time, this book provides an excellent intro the subject, offering a good grounding in the mechanics and philosophy of the OS that will serve as a solid foundation going forward.

I have traveled throughout Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico) and am definately an adventure traveler. I just returned from a two week vacation touring Belize, and this book makes one think the author never visited Belize. Whoever wrote the proceeding review must be related to the publisher somehow, because three other couples I met in Belize had used the book and were equally dissatified with it (one even threw theirs away after the fourth day).

The lodging reviews look like they are taken right out of the lodge's promotional material, and the section on Best Places to Stay is entirely misleading (It recommends Maruba as the best spot - meanwhile Maruba's water is undrinkable, the shower's smell like low tide, and a 24 hour a day disco beat is played over the sound-system), often missing the best places like Francis Ford Coppola's Jungle resort.

The description of towns and places to see fail to account for any changes in the area an miss the newer places to visit, stay and eat (In Placentia there is an amazing French restaurant called Le Petit Maison which has been there for four years but is never mentioned in this book).

I have used this guide during three trips to Belize. Great true information and facts, for a traveler that wants to enjoy a wonderful, unspoiled, natural vacation setting in the rainforests or on the wonderful coastal islands (cayes). The section on "Most Memorable Places to Stay" is invaluable for the inexperienced traveler to Belize.

It is surprising that one could praise this book. Being dated is the least of its shortcomings. It is cluttered with a "parent section" as well as the main text sharing the pages. Naturally the little girl didn't like being in the hospital! It would be stupid and unrealistic to expect that she would!

It was also stupid to try to make staying in the hospital sound like it might be fun when in truth there is nothing fun about hospitals. This book is written in a rather condescending way and is generally not good. It really deserves no stars at all.

There are other books that help prepare children for surgery that are actually good, but this isn't one of them.

Although the book is a bit dated, it provides children and their parents a simple and honest look at one little girl's hospital experience (in this case, tonsillectomy). The book has a very brief story for children and guidelines for parents to help their children express and accept their fears and worries about upcoming procedures. What I like most about this book was that the little girl did not "enjoy" her stay (there is a list of all the things she does not like), but at the end, she is "fine" although the book recognizes the possibility of lasting trauma (her doll continues to have "operations"). I'm not sure just which book the other reviewer read, but my daughter and I have found this book to be very helpful in providing the space for my daughter to verbalize her fears about her upcoming surgery. And given the paucity of children's books about surgery, I wouldn't pass this one up if your child faces an operation.

With this book, my sister taught me to read at age 4. I am 22 now, and never forgot what it taught me, or how it helped me with my fear of hospitals. Within a year of completing the book (and learning to read!) I was attacked by a dog that dragged me through the yard by my face. This led me to a most dreaded place - the Hospital. A place which had terrified me to tears, even with a check-up or regular shot. I was still uneasy as well as terribly unhappy about being there.... But that book helped me realize that the people there intended to help me, not hurt me.... They work to take that pain away. I am dissapointed in the disgruntled reviews... and being that I was a child this book was read to I can speak better than anyone about how it affects a child. It sparked my compassion and concern for other people that have been hurt or handicapped, allowed me the dialogue with my mother and sister to express my fears and reservations, and the parent reading alongside the story in fine print helped my mother better explain to me the stitches on my face and head, and about the scars I would have....what the doctors would do to try and fix it like it was never there. This book is a thing I have cherished throughout my life, and I still have that very book this day - so when I have my own children I may read it with them as well. If your child has a fear of hospitals, doctors, blood, getting shots.... read this book WITH him or her. It will encourage a closer more open relationship with your child, as well as the other wonderful books in this series.... they help children understand handicaps and even death.... by opening the doors to such emotional and curious things at a young age - they will never lose the ability to confide in you, approach you, or express themselves openly and honestly with you... a trusting bond such as this can never be broken. I suggest this book to anyone, regardless if your child is expecting surgery or not, as well as the other books in the series.... the very best books to read with your children, to teach them understanding and compassion for all living things.