"Emma" is Jane Austen's final gift to the world before she was claimed by her "last illness" at the age of forty. Altough serious matters are raised in the book, it remains comic and light-hearted- which tells us something about the author and her determination to look at life as if it were a big grotesque performance, where every character (especially Emma) has to be intensified to the point of absurd. Some say Jane Austen wrote for "adolescent girls." Not true. Her novels, just like Shakespeare's comedies, can be read at any age. As a literature student I greatly admire Austen's style and her unique characterization. It is certainly her best. Read and enjoy!

Though not her favorite novel, Austen's Emma shines as one of her most beloved. The character of Emma is both believable and lovable. This particular edition is a great keepsake, one you can pass down to your own daughter.

Emma is basically a darling snob. She has a kind, loving heart, and really wants to do good, but makes a tangle of everybody's lives, including her own. I'm sick of flawless, shallow, empty heroines, so Emma's faults and conquering of faults endear her. The unabridged book is slightly complicated (such as old-fashioned language) but if you savor it slowly it is well worth it. The plot is clever, sweet, funny and leaves a satisfied, warm kind of glow in the pit of your stomach. The perfect ending makes you want to cry. Don't spoil THIS novel with any trashy sequels.

TRY WATCHING the Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam "Emma."

This guide is a perfect directive to historical combat. I use this book to instruct members of the Edmonton chapter of Knights of the Wild Rose. The day the book arrived from Amazon we started working on the quarter staff routines. Unlike the historical fecthbuchs (fight books) of the middle ages English Martial Arts provides clear photos to show stances, blocks and strikes. A hearty mix of weapons are covered within these pages allowing anyone to perform medieval combat. Since we focus on authentic combat in historical armour this resource is a vital component in our repetoire.

This is a delightful book. The photos are excellent and very informative. The writing is solid and clear, giving both history and technique to the reader. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Terry Brown is able to convey a true appreiciation of the depth of Western martial arts with both his words and his images. Anyone who seriously wishes to learn about these skills should seek out this book and add it to their collection.

Terry Brown has created a masterpiece and the book is of a god like nature compared to others on the subject, he should be awarded for his work. I cant wait for a second publish when he tackles another part of western herritage which is that of English martial arts.

This book is incredible. Keith Parkinson is a master with capturing both action scenes and poses. The flow of movement and expressive faces in his art are some of the best. His images are very creative and inspiring. Anyone who loves art and fantasy should definately own one of these books.

Keith Parkinson is perhaps one of the handful of fantasy artists on par with the legendary Jeff Easley, and his art is easily the most realistic and visually enthralling of all that have been recently created by other artists. Knightsbridge does complete justice to the incredible abilities demonstrated by K. Parkinson, including his mastery with fantasy creatures that appear completely cliche in the work of others: dragons, werebeasts, elves, etc.

Any artist interested in the Fantasy genre needs to have this book in their resource library. Keith's solutions to common problems are amazing.

We enjoyed Goodnight, Dear Monster! so much by this author, we bought Lucky Puppy, Lucky Boy. We were thrilled to find the same calibre of wonderfully illustrated book, that children of all ages can understand and enjoy. Thank you Ms. Morris for a job well done!

I only first picked this up this little book as an adult, but it was fun to look through it. I've gotten copies for my nieces and keep at set at home for when they visit--they love them! It's fun to watch them "read" the book all by themselves. Get this book!

I recently purchased a copy of this book for my two nieces. My nieces are ages 4 and 7. They really enjoyed this book and they love the pictures. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that has young kids. I am sure they will enjoy reading this book.

My sister and I recently discussed how we loved this book as young teens. First read it as a Reader's Digest Condensed book. I loved it so much that I've since purchased many of Ms. Cookson's books. She feeds you some history and flavor of another culture, painlessly wrapped in an emotionally gripping tale. Another favorite from her: Feathers In The Fire.

As a huge fan of Catherine Cookson, I'd have to say The Dwelling Place is the best I have read so far...and I've read many of her books! Don't miss this story of a young girl's struggle to ovecome the odds at keeping her family together. Her selfless strength of character and integrity throughout this story, as well as the satisfying endings to this and all of her stories, are what make Catherine Cookson's books so wonderful and keep the reader coming back for more! Read The Dwelling Place ~ you won't be disappointed!

I have read this book for many years. I bring it out once a year to enjoy it. The courage that Cissy had was so unbelievable. I felt like I was right there in the cave.Catherine Cookson 's books make you feel that you are living a part of history Bravo Catherine Cookson.!

If I had to utter one complaint about this piece, it would be that it is terribly, if understandably, one-sided. The book is terrific in showcasing Gilliam's opinions and feelings on his career and films, but that's the only opinion we receive. After hearing Burgess denounce his masterpiece, "A Clockwork Orange," I've been under the impression that an artist's opinion on his own work, while priceless, is nothing more than that; an opinion. This must be especially true in the medium of film, which more than any other medium is a collaborative effort. A book including interviews with producers, actors, technicians, designers as well as the director would make for a thorough and multi-layered overview on any film. Having said that, this particular book still succeeded in offering a peak, no matter how slight, into the workings of what I humbly consider to be an unspoken genius of our times.

If you happen to be a Terry Gilliam fan, you have to read this. If you don't happen to be a Gilliam fan, but are an aspiring filmmaker, this is an invaluable source of insight. Hell, there are many pros who should read this!

Reading these interviews puts you inside the creative mind of a filmmaking genius (yes, I dare say that). There's a reason for everything that's on the screen, and one understands that Gilliam's knack for weirdness is a little more than that... there's more to his filmmaking virtuosism (wild camera angles and moves) than there is when they make it in your average Nike comercial. If you wanna know what I mean, well, read the book.

Also, I don't recommend this much to Python fans. Certainly, a good part of it talks about the Python days, but it doesn't talk about their creative process much - it's more about the making of the films and Gilliam's animations.

As someone said on the back cover (neatly stealing my idea), Gilliam on Gilliam is like something Phillip Dick might have written. It is paranoid, neurotic, nutty, and fascinating look at filmmaker Terry Gilliam.

It is, truly, Gilliam on Gilliam, with the book in total an interview with the filmmaker. Gilliam talks about the battle for Brazil, his frustrations in the early Python films (was was stigmatized as the arty image guy), and his intricate intentions in later films.

Most interesting to me, other than how it reminded me of how much of his films, sadly, I had forgotten, was how much visual work he puts into his films. That is relatively clear from screen, but even more apparent after you read through this book.

Equally interesting to the biz geek in me was reading Terry's pitched battle for budget credibility. After having budget troubles on two films (Brazil and Baron Munchausen), Gilliam had a financial scarlet letter to sport and it has been tough for him to convince the studios that he is not a risky budgetary bet. Hard to believe that such a prolific and successful filmmaker could still be auditioning, but there it is.

Anyway, an interesting and informative book. Not for those who are mildly interested, but a treat for Gilliam geeks who want the inside skinny on everything from De Niro's bizarre behavior in Brazil, to the casting of Jon Pryce, to underlying mythic chain operating in The Fisher King.

The better of Mr. Pratchett's books contain more than a jot of commentary on human nature, and a strongly ethical bent. "Guards! Guards!" covers the ground quite well, in the vein of "Catch-22" and the Retief series by Keith Laumer, and adds a dose of Machiavellian manuvering. Excellent and quite accesible!

This was the 15th Pratchett book i have read and its the bes

Pterry here has managed to be not only funny but serious. Carrot comes across a bit too stereotypically, but Vimes is the most human of the characters, indeed one of the most human of teh series. There are indeed Tolkien references, (and also Casablanca! Note the flickering sign outside Vimes's window - so traditional it's very hard to leave out, but stil . . . )

Lady Ramkin is still a tad flat (She doesn't come into her own, really, until Jingo) but her relationship with Vimes is very well done, and very . . . there. It wrenches at you. It's one of the best parts of the book. (i think that the Patrician's view on life, as explained to Vimes, is even better, but I'm a real Vetinari fan.)

If you haven't read any other Discworld books yet, START HERE. (or possily at Mort.) t's the best in the series, excepting Jingo, which builds too much on it to be a starting point. My only reget when I read this was that I had read Men at Arms and Feet of Clay before I got my hand! s on it.

The stories in this collection vary from the profound to the wistful to the grandly comic. Among the more highly mentionable are "macs", "The Player" and "First Fire", all of which will linger in the mind long after the last page has been turned. But for me, the one that reached me the most was "Not This Virginia". Anyone who has ever had to deal with an elderly parent in decline will find something in this story. It touches the soul and says no, you are not alone. Thank you, Terry.

Terry Bisson is a treasure. He writes hopeful stories about the value of childhood dreams, as in the bittersweet "There Are No Dead," where three boys find a way to literally start over. He writes subtle and depressing stories about how technology can smother modern life ("In the Upper Room," "An Office Romance," "He Loved Lucy"). His dialogue is sharp and can carry entire stories ("10:07:24," "Smoother"). And at his best he has the ability to look at our world from a slightly skewed angle that allows him to see deep and disturbing truths, as he does in the chilling "macs." These stories are lovely, funny and sad, and they will make you think. If you haven't heard of Terry Bisson, this is a good entry point into his unique point of view.

(The disclaimer): I've known Terry Bisson for 40 years and admired him all that time.The review): He is, hands down, one of our best writers and finest minds, and were it not for the ignorant bias that places "fantasy" literature in a sub-set of lower status, he would be recognized for what he is: an imaginative wizard, a technical genius, a superb stylist and one of the funniest guys around. I've never understood why John Updike or Saul Bellow's "fantasies" are treated as high-art and Terry's are consigned to small publishers, but hell I've never understood why athletes and movie actors make lots of money and teachers and the people who feed us, don't. This is a great book. Don't ever miss the opportunity of reading Bisson and remembering just how exhilerating a conversation with a fine mind can be.

This is a book of Database Modeling Strategy. It compares Object Role Modeling (ORM, >FORML), Universal Modeling Language (UML) and the more popular Entity Relationship Modeling (ER) and then shows a blended strategy appointing strengths and areas of usefullness for all three.

Fair to be sure, but fairly Academic Language. That is, this is as much a book for establishing a justification of ORM and a strategy for it's use as a basic manual. Definately, not for the Novice Data Modeler even though ORM is well suited for the Novice.

For the experienced I give it 5 Stars, but as the only published manual for ORM I give it 3 stars. If you are an Accomplished Data Modeler this is for you.

If you are a novice you may profit more by starting with the Documents that you can download for free with the VisioModeler Download. Start with the "FORML" (Formal Object Role Modeling Language) Document. Also be sure to visit the ORM site and download the answers to the odd excercise questions.

After having used ER modeling with extreme frustration, I finally decided to investigate something new. This is the bible for ORM, and ORM is just so far superior to ER for conceptual modeling, which I now realize is critical.

Conceptual modeling means modeling your data in a way that makes sense to everyone, from the business experts (who know nothing about databases) to the coders and DBA's. And ORM provides a logical, intuitive way to do this.

Once you've got a conceptual model, it's pretty straightforward to get an ER model, from which you can develop the logical databased design. In fact, MS Visio (forget which version) does this for you.

The reason ER fails is that it cannot model data in a stable way. It still has a place, but ORM is so much more powerful, scalable, and stable.

And not only will you learn about ORM (he has great exercises to help practice), but you will learn a lot about data in general.

This is the best technical/developer/software engineering book I have ever read.

This book is a masterpiece. ORM as a concept is so powerful. I have been doing Software Design for about 6 years now, and I always felt that there was a conceptual gap between writing use cases and doing software analysis and design from them. It needed an experienced designer in order to make a jump from use cases to analysis & design. (Even then the business facts would be missed out or simply be wrong, that would show up as bugs later on). I was on the lookout for "something" that helps me in real "industrial strength" software. ORM's fact oriention is a real supplement (and enhancement) to object orientation.

My nine year old son has to do an oral book report a week so I'm always looking for things that might interest him. JOHNNY AND THE DEAD fit the bill and was fun for me to read also. For americans, we had to get past the barrier of a common language (Pratchett uses British colloquialisms, not american ones - e.g., lift, Maths, etc.) but actually ended up having fun discussing the use of language. This book is absolutely not morbid and the "vertically challenged" (buried 6 feet under) are far more amusing than scary. I'd call this a book full of sweetness and gentleness and the best of the Johnny Maxwell series (3 total titles?). It's probably more suited for a slightly older reader, but 9 year olds on up will enjoy this work. Addendum: my 3 year old was listening attentively as I read a chapter or two as well!

Johnny Maxwell is just a normal twelve-year old kid, or at least he tries to be. Things just seem to happen to him that don't happen to anyone else - aliens inside a computer game surrender to him and name him their Chosen One, for example (as told in the first book of this series). Compared to that adventure, seeing dead people almost seems rather prosaic. The Trying Times Johnny has been living in have advanced past his parents' shouting and Being Sensible About Things to Phase 3, which sees him now living with his grandfather. He often takes a short cut to school through a local cemetery, and it is there that he meets the Alderman, the long dead and buried Alderman. His friends Yo-less, Bigmac, and Wobbler can't see dead people the way Johnny suddenly can, but events soon convince them that Johnny isn't just fooling around with them. Johnny meets all of the dead people in the cemetery, all of whom are quite put out when they learn that their cemetery, a place which the rules of being dead say they cannot leave, has been sold by the city (for only five pence) to a corporation planning on building office buildings there. Since Johnny is the only human who can see them (and why Johnny can see them is rather a mystery, although the Alderman thinks it is because he is too lazy not to see them), the dead look to him to save their eternal resting place. Stopping a big corporation from doing something the city has granted them the legal right to do is no easy task, especially for a twelve-year-old boy and his friends, but Johnny is wonderfully resourceful.

The ending of this book didn't have much spark to it, but overall Johnny and the Dead is an even better read than the first Johnny Maxwell novel Only You Can Save Mankind. It also rings quite distinctly at times of the type of humor showcased by the author in his Discworld novels. There is one bit early on that is just hilarious. Wobbler puts the idea in Johnny's head that dead people basically lurch around like the zombie types in Michael Jackson's Thriller video, and this indirectly leads to the Alderman trying to moonwalk in the cemetery. The dead people as a whole put a lot of life into this book, oddly enough. Among the fascinating, entertaining dead folks we meet are an ardent suffragette, an inventor who is quite proficient at manipulating electronic equipment, a brilliant man named Einstein - Solomon Einstein the taxidermist, and a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist who is quite disappointed at the way things have gone in the world since his death. The vibrant personalities of the dead men and women more often than not clash in a number of very funny ways as they all try to cope with modern life or the lack of it.

This book does stand up fairly well on its own, but the characterization of Johnny and his friends is not detailed enough for you to really get to know them without having read Only You Can Save Mankind already. This is considered juvenile fiction, but as with everything Terry Pratchett writes, men and women of all ages, providing they have at least a nascent sense of humor, will find much to enjoy and laugh about in these pages.

Johnny Maxwell and his band of quirky pals are back in "Johnny and the Dead," the sequel to the unusual SF "Only You Can Save Mankind" and the second book of this trilogy. Funny, quirky, with an ingrained lesson and snappier writing, this tops the previous book and promises more to come.

Johnny Maxwell sees dead people. (Yes, like the little boy in "Sixth Sense.") For whatever reason, he sees the dead in their graveyard -- not really ghosts, but not alive either. Among them are a crabby former soldier, a distant relative of Einstein, a sprightly suffragette who died in a freak mishap, and a staunch Communist who STILL doesn't believe in life after death. All in all, they are a fairly harmless bunch.

But a massive, mercenary, progress-obsessed corporation has just bought the graveyard for fivepence, and it will soon be razed for new construction. The only people more dismayed than the living inhabitants of Blackbury are the dead ones. So as the dead break their bonds to "uvlive," Johnny and his friends will try to save the graveyard from... a fate worse than death?

This book is not only more entertaining and humorous than "Mankind," but it is also more polished. Pratchett's style becomes more flowing and easy, and the message he puts in it is not ham-handed or badly-written. It's also extremely light and entertaining most of the time, such as when the dead Communist calls up a radio talk show host and speaks frankly about being "vertically challenged."

Johnny is thoughtful and intelligent, quiet until he has a reason to speak out. His buddies Wobbler, Yo-less and Bigmac also return, with their individual personalities even more individualized: Wobbler is a little odd (wants to see a goat sacrificed), Yo-less is intellectual and more on Johnny's level, and Bigmac loves food. Perhaps the only problem is that if you haven't read "Mankind," you won;t know who the other boys are, but that is the only area in which "Dead" is difficult.

Fans of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series will enjoy the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, full of laughs, thoughts, and weird occurrances that will have you rolling on the floor.