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The characters in this story were all realistic, stupid, and funny. Marty was a normal teenager who was a great track runner. Stacy, later in the story you find out that she had gotten into drugs and sex. People thought of Stacy as little miss perfect but no one really knew her. Harper was one of Marty's friends and he was also a great track runner and showed some jealousies toward Marty because he always took first.
The author used daily language that made it sound like teenager were the ones talking. He used some bad words and big words which made the story flow and easy to read. The length of the story is about right not to short and not to long.
The story gives a lot key points to make you finish the story and find out what had happen what was going on with Stacy. The conflict seemed real.
This book was pretty good book. Its one of those books that you have to finish because you have to know what happen to Stacy. It was realistic and talked about real life situation and what can happen to in those situations. I recommend this book for teenagers that enjoy reading and like sports and mystery.
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This book kept me interested and I never wanted to put it down. Sometimes I would be reading until late at night. I love mystery stories. The main reason why I liked this specific book was because the characters work together. They devised a plan and did something about a kidnapping that happened over ten years before. It took a teen-aged boy to dig up and solve a mystery that had been forgotten for years. You get to hear Marty's thoughts and that helps you determine who did what and why they did it. You can take Marty's point of view and change it around to fit the image of your mind. The Last Goodie is an excellent mystery story.
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This lends a repetitiveness to most of the stories. The gloomy tone, revealing the hidden darkness of man, pervades throughout. For someone of his talent, Hawthorne repeats himself. I think his novels are far better than his short stories. I would recommend Scarlet Letter and House Of Seven Gables instead.
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List price: $39.50 (that's 30% off!)
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Pearl, the child of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, was born in jail, when her mother was sentenced for commiting adultury against her husband Roger Chillingworth. Due to her crime, Hester was sentenced to wearing a red scarlet letter A on her chest, and Raising an evil daughter, that refuses to follow the laws.
Pearl as well as the red scarlet letter A is a symbol of wrong doing. Pearl could be described as the scarlet letter in human form. She is a very important character in this novel, she is the person that allows the story to continue. Pearl goes through her life, everyone looking down on her for her parents' crime. The very crime that pushes her father overboard.
Arthur Dimmesdale kept the secret that he was Pearl's father. He didn't want people to know of his sin because he was supposed to be a holy man. The fact that he didn't tell the truth to people, ate him up inside. Finally Dimmesdale admitted to his sin, and thgen died. His part of the story was very real, because if someone keeps a secret for so long they can just burst.
All the events that take place in the novel relate in some manner. Which ends up linking all of the characters together. Hawthorne does a good job of making his characters feel the pain of their mistakes. Each character is trying to overcome their past. Some due to sin, others due to jealousy, and to hatred.
As a result of his jealousy against Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Hester's ex-husband, ends up having a miserable, torturous life. Chillingworth hates the thought that his wife could have had an affair with Dimmesdale. Then when Arthur Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth's life also ends, because he cannot destroy his enemy's life anymore.
In addition to Chillingworth's jealousy and hatred for Dimmesdale, there is also Pearl's hatred for her parents. Pearl hates being blamed for her parents' crime, which leads to her hating them. People looked at Pearl the same way they looked at the scarlet letter, a reminder of adultury and sin against the Puritain faith. Hawthorne was able to link all his characters together with all the events that were taking place in the story.
This novel can affect the reader's emotions and fellings. One minute leaving the reader feel bad for one of the characters, and the next hating them, because of something they did. If a reader finds suspense, romance, and emotional ups and downs interesting they should read this book. However, it might not be recommended for younger readers because, it can be a little hard to follow at sometimes, but overall it is a good book.
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I have since purchased 6 other Jim Weiss story CD's and my Girl Scouts have begun to request them when going on trips with the troop.
You won't be disappointed.
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List price: $25.00 (that's 30% off!)
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I think the authors would have better demonstrated the value of coaching (vs. managing) if they had emphasized that coaching balances the interests of both the coached employee and the employers. Where effective coaching increases the potential, self-actualization, and self esteem of coached people, enhanced performance is one of several by-products of people with increased potential and healthier self esteem. Rather the authors suggest, "Performance coaching is a series of one-on-one exchanges between you and your people. The purpose of each exchange is to help you solve problems, improve performance, or get results." This seems to sound quite similar to traditional command and control management-especially in terms of expressing little of "what's in it for me?" from employee' perspectives.
I think the authors' good ideas would be more evident if presented in a context giving credit to other positive initiatives toward human development. Instead, the authors dismiss the value of research, personality instruments, and leadership profiles and also the value of human resource development efforts. The authors may over generalize management malpractice. While there are many examples of "management malpractice," there are also many conscientious managers trying to do their best for both their companies and their employees. It seems we should be learning from the passion of these conscientious managers and working toward nurturing similar passion in our employees-instead of dismissing these conscientious managers and generalizing them as malpracticing.
While "Stop Managing, Start Coaching" expresses some valuable ideas, I think these effective ideas may be overshadowed lack of respect for and integration into other human development paradigms.
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4. Using human resource development professionals as internal consultants responsible for performance management systems. 5. Enhancing employee relations and creating an ownership attitude. 6. Using managers as performance coaches to do training. 7. Creating self-esteeming employees and teams. 8. Identifying reward strategies that motivate employees, improve their commitment, and get results. They use the "Four Phases of Performance Coaching" as a useful framework. 1. Developing a synergistic relationship with employees 2. Using the four roles of performance coaching 3. Developing self-directed and self-esteeming employees 4. Selecting rewards that build commitment and get results.
I believe the framework is useful, but the implementation will still be a challenge. The nuts and bolts "how-to" is left for the reader to figure out.
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The book is an interesting look back at history. It has the text from the GNU General Public License from February 1989 and a chapter entitled "Information Wants to be Free." It also show how very lost the computer industry was at that time with regard to computer usability.
There are some war stories here about the cryptic and often dangerous UNIX command line. There are also some rants against the computers of the time (PC MSDOS, Macintosh, etc.) made by folks who made something they thought was better but "weren't getting any respect."
After rereading it recently those few interesting stories were still there but the book's disorganized structure, lack of index, and pedantic style haven't aged well. Those interested in HCI are better advised to read anything by Donald Norman, or any of the other excellent books written recently on HCI or cognative psychology.
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Whereas "The Design of Everyday Things" has been updated and refined, this book is stuck in 1991. Many of the insights of the book are excellent, but there's a lot of material that is simply no longer relevant. I can only recommend this book to people who are willing to look past the pedantic style, occasional irrelevancies, and evaluations of decade old technology. I'd recommend Alan Cooper's book The Inmates are Running the Asylum instead, though that has its own problems.
If you can look past the obvious defects, there's a lot here for readers interested in user interface design. It's all anecdotal, but it's squares well with other quantitative works.
If you got this far in the review, there's a lot in the book to reward you for looking past the obvious defects. The primary source for Borenstein is his work on Andrew, a large Carnegie-Mellon University project, which, for various reasons, was reduced to a footnote in the history of computing.
One of the most notable observations a reader will make of the book is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Many topics are just as relevant today as they were in 1991. For instance, his discussions on standards still offer insight. Part one starts us off on the basic problems of user interface design, and the chasm between regular users and programmers. Cooper offers a similar analysis, though the tone here is a lot more constructive.
The title of part 2, "The Dark Night of the Soul: The State of the Art in UI design" is a misnomer -- its real focus is the various people involved in UI design, including the HCI folks, programmers, and "the men in suits." Those familiar with the players can skip it. Much of this ground is covered in other books. If you always wondered why you can't get the cool toys from the MIT Media Lab articles, this explains why. The analysis of programmers is similar to Cooper, but with much less inflammatory tone. You can get the analysis of the management role anywhere - though his comments on them in the next section are excellent.
Part three is the meat. Borenstein gives us the benefit of his experience, with his "10 Commandments of user interface design." These are most excellent, and worth the price of admission. There's a few that feel like he might have been grasping a bit to reach the requisite 10, but that's a minor quibble. Most of the advice here is still valid, and you can easily think of modern software that could have benefited from this commentary.
Part 4 is everything else. Mostly, it contains introductory primers on development techniques, usability study, and project planning. Oddly, there's a strong chapter on the fundamental flaws in computer science education (circa 1991) that will ring true for many educated in that period.
I would love to see an updated version of this book. Much of Borenstein's advice still holds true, and a second edition could bring this wisdom to the development community. In the meantime, use the advice of part 3, and program as if people matter.
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The book is largely an exploration of the enchanted entanglements surrounding a local deity, the notorious god Maximon. In so doing, it spans from a time when deities walked a mythological landscape, to the 1990s, when the all too real grim reapers of the Guatemalan army prowl about. Along the journey, the reader is introduced to contemporary Mayan shamans, and also to Martin Prechtel, a fascinating Euroamerican who held a high religious position in the town during one of the author's stays. (It merits note that the book offers a far more grounded version of Prechtel's tenure in Atitlan than that found in Prechtel's own published account.) Although "Scandals in the House of Birds" is written entirely by Nathaniel Tarn, he graciously cites Prechtel as a contributor of substantial information and experience.
Underlying much of the book is a 1950s "sacred crime" when Maximon's wooden head was stolen by Catholic priests, found its way to a major European museum, and eventually was returned to the town, largely through the joint efforts of Tarn and Prechtel. With that drama providing a backdrop, Tarn intersperses myths about Maximon and other regional Mayan deities, discusses the roles played by Prechtel and himself in the town, all the while tying in considerable cultural data. Of particular note is the book's innovative multivocality. Most of the book's chapters are devoted to particular historical or mythological incidents, for instance the birth of Maximon. Tarn breaks the narration into its significant episodes and then presents side by side versions of the episode narrated by such individuals as Weep Wizard, Loincloth, Prechtel, or the author himself.
As with any innovative, dare I say experimental, ethnography, "Scandals in the House of Birds" demands the reader's attention. Despite its multi-layered complexity the reader never feels overwhelmed, but instead is carried along by the book's surprises and innovations. The book should have wide appeal to students and scholars of Latin America, to anthropologists and to writers, as well as to those interested native peoples and their cultures.
Robert S. Carlsen
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As the story progresses, Marty finds out that Stacy was into drugs. He also finds out that O.C., Stacy's boyfriend, got Stacy pregnant. For more about the book, read it yourself. If you're into sports or mystery or both, I highly recommend you read this.