Perhaps you remember the Infocom game, its delightful humor, its mystery-filled world. If you happen to see this book at a used bookstore, your fond memories of the game may deceive you into picking it up.

Please, save yourself from pain and suffering.

As to humor, there is none. As to juvenile and crude references, there are plenty. If this sort of thing is your cup of tea, save yourself the money and hang out on an elementary school playground during recess. This book has the distinction of being one of the two books I've actually stopped reading before the end, and I've suffered through a lot of horrid literature.

At that used bookstore, I might advise you to run and run fast, but on consideration perhaps it might be best to hide it between the bookshelf and the wall to help your fellow man.

For a book based on a computer game, this is actually a decent book. But, it is not what I was hoping for. When I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I found a terrific and unexpected escape from reality. And this book touted itself as the Next Hitchhiker's Guide. It was far from that. Instead, it was a rather self-conscious immitation of Douglas Adams. It was rather flat, with few actual belly-laughs, and just one or two giggles throughout.

Still, it is a light, quick read, and it is a good book for a rainy, lazy Saturday when you have nothing else to do.

But read Douglas Adams first.

A collection of four short stories of varying lengths which seem to reflect the author's desire for Holmes and Watson to investigate cases in the north of England, presumably not too far from the author's current and/or childhood home.

While readable, I found these stories not particularly enjoyable and I was easily distracted from them. I was annoyed by the names that are employed to conceal the "identities" of the people involved - the Rt. Hon. Treasure Fortune M.P. indeed! Krihc House near the village of Chirk. And why the strangely named Inspector Indigo Strap insists on calling Captain Rufus Carrick "Capting" is not plain to me.

Underlying this are four stories which, while not bad, are sub-Conan Doyle in their content. Not a book I could recommend.

The book consists of questions and answers. They are divided into chapters by topic. This format makes this a reference book, but not one which you want to read cover to cover. If you are hungry for all 101 answers, you are better off with another book on the subject.
But it sits on my shelf for use as a reference.

This product is touted as being full of information, which it is. However, it's next to useless for the busy classroom teacher: no lesson plans, no tests or quizzes, and only one small section with essay topics.

Save your money. Don't buy this unless you need a souped-up version of Cliff's Notes to study for a test. This is not helpful to the teacher except for context, which is often skipped in high school due to time constraints.

This book is an overall collection of Arthur C. Clarke's theories , mathematical equations , and abstract ideas about space travel , and means of obtaining interplanetary flight. The book includeds articles from when Arthur C. Clarke first started writing and a comic book that Arthur C. Clarke used to read as a small child. My opinion of the book is one of : It accomplishes its tasks by providing Arthur C. Clarke's theories and mathematical equations on space travel , but who wants to read those things anyway. Let the rocket scientists figure those things out , let us the people dream about it through science fiction.

The whole style of this book is very dry and not usersfriendly. The book consists of long lists of objectives and therapeutic interventions each 1 or 2 lines. Sometimes more then 40. It tells you all the time WHAT to do ( exc. [*] emotional impact or educate the patient on effects of stress on symptons)but NEVER HOW .This information is not very helpfull. Everybody knows for example that walking 20 minutes a day is healthy but HOW do you get somebody to do it.That should be the focus of behavioral medicine ( it s about getting to healthy behavior, no ?)This important part: HOW to get to behavior change is not present in this book.

There are a lot of poems in here but you look far and wide for something really good. I mean, sure, there are the people we already knew were good -- C.K. Williams, Eavan Boland, Frank O'Hara and et cetera et cetera -- but with a book this big you want a few surprises, you want to find some new stuff you didn't know about before. And for me, that didn't really happen. Philip Larkin's "Aubade" is maybe the best poem here -- and maybe the best poem about death ever written -- though what it's doing in a book of AMERICAN poetry I can't figure out (I guess it was just too good to exclude). They put Seamus Heaney in, too, which makes me wonder why they left out Paul Muldoon -- he's been living in New Jersey for years now, and writes poems as good as anything in here (and better than 99% of it). Go to your local bookstore and look through this monster -- maybe you'll have better luck than me, and find something thrilling -- but don't buy it.

This travel book on the Champagne and Burgundy regions of France is certainly not what one would call "user-friendly." I found myself often bored with the tediom of the prose. Champagne-Ardennes & Burgundy took the fun away from my plans to visit the Champagne houses, and instead turned it into work.

Many authors of travel books take the time to break topics up into themes, with titles and clues to help the reader find what he is looking for. Our authors, unfortunately, have not. (Champagne for Dummies, while only devoting one chapter to traveling in the Champagne, was far more enlightening, simply because it was a pleasure to read.)

While I am sure that there is much information I will pull from this book for my trip, I will continue to look for another that I can enjoy.

This book is okay, very much like a classroom read, but he really needs to use his spellcheck. Lots and lots of errors. I am surprised at the publisher too.

The author gave many cutesy anecdotal examples of how lighting related to ordinary life in the 18th and 19th century, but his approach was so scattershot that the book became very hard to follow. e.g.(you might be reading on page 100 of the book and the author would refer back to a photo plate on page 10 and then to another photo on page 137). The writing is not structured along a logically progressive timeline as most people are used to following in modern research texts. Also the photgraphic plates yield photos of lamps and candlesticks which are quite small with difficult to determine details, due to the large number of items displyed in each plate. The plates are in black and white and the paper is not the best quality for photographic reproduction.

However, on a more positive note, the anecdotes were a refreshing change from an otherwise boring treatise. I wouldn't recommend this as your first or only choice for scholarly study of the field, but as an adjunct to other texts and for some interesting background material it is fine.