I have bought numerous tarot books over the years. This one seemed to be one of the wrong decision.

For the explanation of Cards combo, i think it is pretty cool, but not very thorough. Sometimes,the groupings of the combo cards are not very organized.

For anyone who is a beginner for tarot or just begun to read reverse and combo cards, it is a relatively good reference. however, i got sick of reading it a few times later. This books doesn't give deeper insight into the combinations and does not offered not too many options.

I would advise looking for other books or try to learn combinations on your own, as individuals may vary in how they read their spread. For these reasons, i would give this a pass.

First off, I'm really glad that this book is in my collection, and this is not a book I'd recommend to a beginner. This book covers good ground, but does not waste time hashing over the basics. I'd recommend having a solid comfort level with interpretations of single cards before starting in on this book.

Starting with the negative side, I didn't agree with many of the card interpretations. They were generally simplistic, however it may be that the author intended it that way in order to better illustrate the concepts that she was trying to convey. Many of the combinations are also simplistic due perhaps to the same principle. The author's approach is to assign a shortlist of keywords to each card, then read them like flashcards. If 4 Staffs is "Peaceful" and 6 Cups is "Often", the two cards together mean "Peaceful Often". Although my own experience is admittedly limited, I do not personally know of anyone that reads so literally.

On the positive side, the author's oversimplification freed me up to not overcomplicate relationships between the cards. While I do feel that the specific examples are oversimplistic, I also think that was useful to break down my fear of allowing it to just be simple. I haven't found that I've directly used the lessons from this book, but it has definately had an influence on the way I link cards together.

One wonderful thing about this book is that the focus on combinations means that it can print repetitive combinations for certain sets. Such as (example is from my head, not book): Ace Wands/Two Wands, Ace Wands/Three Wands, Ace Wands/Four Wands, etc. It clearly can't cover every combination that exists, but it covers enough to allow you to exrapolate your own beyond a certain point. It also makes for easy light reading -- would be easy to read a few pages here and there when you have the time.
I feel that this book is generally most useful for those who have a good feel for what the cards mean on their own, but aren't as comfortable reading them together or in spreads.

This is not a beginner's first book, but rather second book.

Most books I know give more or less detailed description of each card, a couple of spreads, and maybe a few examples.

For a tarot beginner who does not yet have a lot of experience, a book of that type does not give enough examples of how to interpret a few cards together.

And that's where this book fits in - it gives a lot of tarot cards combinations (with both straight and reversed cards) and their meanings.

A previous reviewer wrote that only keyword meanings of cards are given and that the way the combinations meanings are not explained.

The first issue is, in my humble opinion, a minor issue *if* the book is not used as one's first tarot book.

The second is, in my opinion, a good challenge for the reader - figuring out the way the meaning was reached makes for a better studying.

Here is an author who is said to have the highest IQ ever recorded. Why, then, did she waste her time writing this book? This book is also a waste of time for the reader. If you're a good speller, it has nothing to teach you. If you're a bad speller, it won't help you any more than all the rules you were taught in school but never learned. If you want to spell correctly, consult a dictionary or a good speller.

With Joan Reilly's illustration this lively, comprehensive & useful guide for spellers of all abilities takes a look at what our spelling reveals about our intelligence & personalities.

Marilyn vos Savant reconstitutes our turbulent history in spelling this language we call English, offering us insights about the use & misuse of spell-checkers - remember, computers won't know the difference between wave & waive or their & they're & she sketches some surprising portraits of all kinds of us spellers.

If spelling interests you in the least little bit, do give this book a go - you may very well find it a delight, I did! Do visit my site for my full review & editorials on the love of reading & writing!

The Art of Spelling by Marilyn Vos Savant is a book to be read not an exercise manual. It summarizes much of the advice found in other books on spelling improvement and includes such things as a list of the most frequently misspelled words but contains no drills. As close as one gets to the usual content of a self help book on spelling is a personality questionnaire.

Nearly half of the book is devoted to the psychology of good and bad spellers so it makes sense to determine if the reader has the characteristics of either of these groups.

Unlike many books on this topic, the author has not only read the best books on the topic but has interviewed the authors.

It certainly makes sense to interview the experts but I have rarely seen this strategy used as effectively as it is in this book.

Although she interviews the Anglo-Saxon scholar who the president of the Simplified Spelling Society, she misses the opportunity to address any of the real solutions to the spelling problem.

She does identify the problem as "phonetic irregularity" -- many words are not spelled the way they are pronounced.

She follows up this insight with a misleading quote from author Edna Furness (p.119) "Research in linguistics has shown that the English language is more phonetic than we realize (approximately 85%)."

All languages are 100% phonetic. It is the writing systems that try to record meaningful sounds that go astray.

There is some statistical regularity in English spelling. Four spelling patterns for the 12 elementary vowels will account for 75% of the vowel spellings in the dictionary. [See www.unifon.org/uu-18ways.html].

Most writing systems achieve a spelling predictability rating of over 85% but not the traditional one used to transcribe English. In English, knowing how to pronounce a word will enable someone to come up with not one but a half dozen orthographically correct spellings. Since each sound in English is spelled 14 different ways, narrowing the spelling of a particular pronunciation down to 6 alternatives is an accomplishment.

There may be an 85% chance that one of these six allowable spellings is correct -- i.e., matches the dictionary.

Knowing the basic code does help narrow the field and Vos Savant lists up to five of the most common spellings for 39 of the 40 or so sounds in English speech. She also provides some useful mnemonic devices for selecting the best alternative in the group.

Other practical advice includes how to use a spelling checker without being overly dependent on it.

This is a book that anyone with an interest in spelling will enjoy reading. Marilyn Vos Savant is a seasoned writer and it shows.

I used this book and found a few great resources through it. I was disconcerted by the lack of research done by the staff, however. One Brooklyn photographer had never shot a wedding before but said she was put in the book because she had done good editorial work that one of the researchers knew about. I used an ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING videographer, Maria Quiroga, whose name I got from the book. Quiroga's prices were TOTALLY OFF in the book, however, and Quiroga had never been contacted by the authors. She was surprised to see her name listed. The book also listed the Chemist's Club, which is a pretty little place, but too small for all but the smallest weddings. Meanwhile, the Yale Club, which is near to it, larger and cheaper was left out. Emphasis is also on high end wedding vendors who are easy enough to find on own's own.

I thought this book was a complete waste of money! This book mentioned very few reception sites in each state. The reception sites that were mentioned were sites that anyone from the New York area would be aware of. If you're from the NY Metro area you probably won't benefit from this book. I did give "Everything You Need to Know to Have a Wedding in N. Y., N. J., CT" 2 stars because I'm sure it would help someone who is NOT from New York plan a New York wedding.

All marriages should be founded on a wedding by these authors. Funny, funky, to-the-point but stylish, this book is a must-have for the hippest and haughtiest couples to tie the knot in the Tri-State area. And I should know. I've been married three times in all three states! Hopefully, Number Four will be the winner, thanks to Proulx and Hamburg!

The worst book on guilt I have read so far. A salad of pseudo sience and new age bla bla.

That's what this book will feel like to you: surely you must be sitting in your favorite coffeeshop across from Joan Borysenko, bending heads over a couple of Cafe Mochas! Joan tells it like it is, but with compassion, and a relation to what happened to her. I've had suspicions about the source of guilt in my life, but Joan's stories were the push to clarity. Years of talk therapy coalesced for me with this book. I had the good fortune to meet Joan once. Her energy is so friendly; you'll swear you've known her all her life. Thank the Source for inspiring this woman to teach us!

This book is a keeper. Borysenko gently holds a mirror up for us to peek into our essence and see through our masks. We are a kaleidoscope of feelings, a symphony of thoughts drumming our consciousness, and much, much more. Joy comes with the observer, with insight into our humanity, with unraveling the heartless assumptions we have made about ourselves, and with letting go of the shame we carry. An articulate, important book.

A good beginning book but somewhat thrown together. The dialogues and explanations were good, but the exercises weren't particularly useful. It confused me when it said to not make "baba" sound like "barber". It was obviously written for British people and I often found myself reading with a posh English accent. Oxford, actually. But it was still a good book to learn dialogue and noun classes with. Good Luck : )

When coupled with a good Swahili-English dictionary, this is a great book. It teaches grammar well, and gives you a firm base that will let you travel fairly easily. Of course, there is no substitution to actually speaking the language with other people, and they will no doubt speak very fast for you at first. However, this book does give you a good foundation in Swahili grammar and a basic understanding of how the language works. Be warned that in Nairobi, most Swahili speakers completely ignore rules, so don't be surprised if they say things that are kinda weird!

This book is amazing. I've bought many Teach Yourself books, but this book makes me want to go through it.

This book isn't built for colloquial speaking in informal formal situations. It's about being a tourist, but only for the first half of the book. The writers in this books seem to have decided to make it for people who want to be tourist, and people who want to become close to fluent. The first few units detail tourist situations like going to the hotel and getting letters. The subjects move to more advanced conversation, but as Swahili isn't that complicated in most respects it isn't bad.

The most notable thing that can be noticed about the Swahili language is the use of putting nouns into different classes. This is likely the most confusing aspect of the language. This means that they need to be taught very slowly, one noun class per unit... well technically two because the plural counts as a noun class in most cases. The language is easy besides that, with probubly the easiest to understand Verb system, that a three year-old could understand with little effort and a bit of memory.

I'd strongly advise this book to anyone who has an interest in understanding an African language (It could be useful one day) or plans on taking a trip to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, or Even Southern Somalia.

Any reader of Agatha Christie would not appreciate this novel. If you have read her past works, guessing the whodunnit (which is half the reason why somebody reads a mystery novel) can be done blindfolded and by the time you have finished reading the fifth chapter. Miss Marple is good, as usual, but this book is extremely disappointing.

Strange things have been happening at Stonygates, the home of Carrie Louise Martin, an old friend of Miss Marple's. Carrie Louise's sister, Ruth Van Rydock, has asked Miss Marple to visit Carrie Louise and determine what the trouble is and to alleviate her worries about her sister.

Agatha Christie once again takes us into a family estate overrun with family members. This family is particularly complex because Carrie Louise has been married three times and there is a wide assortment of relatives including stepsons, a widowed daughter, grandchildren, and even a current husband. The husband is deeply involved with corrective training and has turned the family home into a school where first offenders come for counseling and attention. So to this already strained situation, Mrs. Christie includes psychologists and therapists and a situation ripe for murder.

Indeed, three murders occur and there is much unpleasantness before Miss Marple explains it all.

This story (also published under the title "Murder With Mirrors") was adapted for TV in 1991 with Joan Hickson in the role of Miss Marple and Jean Simmons as Carrie Louise.

This is one of Agatha Christie's finest mysteries. Although it is set in the post WWII era it is not dated like alot of mysteries of that era. One of Miss Marple's childhood friends is worried about her unworldly sister and sends her good friend Jane to find out what's wrong. The sister, Carrie, is very wealthy and has turned her estate into a type of reformatory school. It is suspected that Carrie is being poisoned, and alot of strange things are happening at the school. This is a great mystery and I recommend it highly.

From the title of this book, as a Collector's guide, I would have expected to find the current values of the cameras listed instead of the original purchase price.

It's really a useful and wonderful guide to most famous kodak cameras marketed into US. The author says that different books can help the KODAK cameras amateurs/collectors for items marketed abroad or belonging at the grat family of "HAWK-EYE" and "PREMO". These books are out of print and I really wish a reprintin of them. It would to be useful (for European collectors as I am) to have any "catalog" showing all items ONLY marketed and producted for the EUROPE. Anyway IF YOU CAN FIND A COPY don't miss this! It's the LAST

I may assume you have updated this book, as mine does not have disc cameras mentioned. Covers most topics untill you become so specialized, you need to find out your own information- sometimes very difficult. Excellent standard text for the average collector.Peter Venema

I listen to a lot of tapes about living a healthy life style. I think this one is the most disapointing. She rambles on & on providing only a few usable insights. It wouldn't be so bad if the path she took was inspirational to the average person. Most people can't aford personal trainers, health spas, & expensive fittness centers for the affluent. Those things aren't bad, & they are what helped her. I do a lot of counceling on fittness & nutrition, & the average person that I work with wouldn't relate to making those type of expenditures to live healthy lifestyle. The few things that are applicable to the average person are few & far inbetween.

I have always been a fan of Joan Lunden, but this tape is nothing more than narcissistic musing of her path to growth supported by The Golden Gate Spa and a high dollar fitness club in New York

The tape contributed no new or practical knowledge which one could make use of on their own path to growth.

I have always admired Joan Lunden and followed her on GMA since the birth of her first child. She seemed to be pregnant everytime I was. First my daughter than son than another daughter were born around the same time as her children. I was going through a very low point in my life when I picked up her book in the library. I finished it in a day. I felt so uplifted and have been trying for a long time to make changes in my life also. I am just 50 and it's so hard to find the courage to do things different. My life has been in turmoil for about 5 years now and I have just started to get into inspirational readings and tapes. This book hit such a nerve and I am going to as a result of this read her other books. One of my things was getting back in shape and loosing 20 lbs that has been bothering me for years. I have confirmed my feelings of her being now my hero. I will not climb the titans but I sure will reach my goal of just feeling better about my self. Thank you Joan I have given birth with you, cried with you, laughed with you and this book makes me feel so good about my self again. Barbara

This book gave me the knowledge required to understand the syntax of MPEG1 sytem and video streams as well as understand the compression algorithms utilized.
As a Digital Video Specialist, I still refer to this book four years after buying it.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found this book to be a great resource! The MPEG-1 codec is covered in some depth, including syntax. Other topics like MPEG-2 and rate control are also touched on. What this book (and most others on the topic) is missing, is an in-depth discussion on motion estimation techniques. The Kluwer book on motion estimation by Borko Furht will fill in some of the blanks, but is too expensive for what you get. All in all, I think this book is suited for someone wanting to impliment or understand an implimentation of the codec. It is not so much for the person looking for theory on video compression. The book, "Video Compression", by Peter Symes is a great one for that !

This is a great book to learn the mpeg1 format from. With its help you can confidently write a mpeg1 decoder. I have not read the official spec, but I found the descriptions given in the book quite lucid, in spite of the fact that I started to read this book without any video compression background. However, this is not a book on video compression in general. Surely a book on THAT topic would not have a title bearing the words "mpeg" and "standard". I have some experience in reading file format standards, and I only wish every file format standard would have such a nice book to explain it!

The book even covers fundamentals like DCT and Huffman coding (as much as is needed in this book). It has entire chapters on motion estimation and motion compensation. I like the way the book starts off with a general informative overview, rather than as a typical "standards manual" starting with a list of notations and fonts to be used.

The pseudo codes given in the book are taken from the original spec (with due references). These are explained with flowcharts.

If you are trying to learn video compression in general, then this is not the book for you. There are plenty of books on that topic. This book serves a much more esoteric purpose of elucidating the gory details of one of the most important video file formats, and it fulfils this purpose with complete applomb!

Talk about restating the obvious! The author reminds you that when you're about to hire somebody it would be a good idea to interview them rather than rely on their resume. Under the subtitle "goals" of the organization we are told that goals are the intended outcomes of what you intend to do. Gosh, that's a pithy insight! I should have known not to buy a book by an academic, as opposed to somebody who actually ran a non-profit in the real world!

This book was extremely helpful. However, it was not as good as the book by Ted Nicholas. The information contained in this book is a valuable resource tool and should be an addition to your professional library-compliments the book by Nicholas extremely well.

I thought this was a great book for introducing the basic steps involved in starting a non-profit organization. It clarified some simple issues for me. I have ZERO experience in starting a non-profit organization and wanted to get an idea of what it takes to do so, and this book was a great starting point, although you will clearly want to move on to more "meaty" books if you actually get your organization off the ground. After a few hours, I had solid drafts of my mission statement, articles of incorporation, and bylaws, and I knew what I needed to do next. It might be too simplistic for large organizations, but it was perfect for my itty bitty dream!