Oliver Books

This book isn't quite as good as Love Story. However the main character, Oliver, is still incredibly likeable and it makes for a good quick read.

Its a nice book, cant give it 5 because its a sequel to the greatest book ever written... Love Story!!

I liked this just a little better than "Love Story" because I thought the characters, especially Oliver, were more fleshed out. When Oliver starts to see a psychiatrist to help him deal with Jenny's death, we're able to get into his head and understand his motiviations much better. I found the ending quite sad and maybe a bit overly pessimistic, but it felt real nonetheless.

I read Love Story over and over and over as a young teen. I still read it often today. For years though I sat with my mother's original version- lime green hardback- never knowing there was a sequel until I stumbled on it at a flea market with my mom and aunt. They were shocked to find that I did not know about it- knowing how much I loved "Love Story". My aunt prepared me for disappointment....but she was wrong.
Oliver's story is a gut-wrenching story about the pain and the empty life we often lead after a loved one leaves us too soon. Oliver's Story has no pretense of a happily ever after, and does not leave you with the rain clouds departing. Oliver lives the life we all might lead, absent the glowing Hollywood ending. He struggles a lot in this book, and although you are tragically sad for him, you know the ending is right.

I bought this book because I am a big fan of the Love Story. However, I was quite disappointed after reading the book. Oliver started another relationship with Marcie two years after Jenny¡¦s death. That was too soon. If you ever truly love someone in your life, two years only means 5 minutes. I was glad to see Oliver and his father made peace with each other. The last few pages of the book make it well worth reading. You can skip some paragraphs in some chapters, but you have to read it over and over again in the last few pages. It were very well written.

Another things draw my interest to read this book were the economic development and comparative advantages between the US and Asia thirty years ago. (I majored International Econ in grad school.) The sweatshop conditions are common in developing economies. A lot of labor-intensive industries were forced to shut down in the last two decades and moved to Asia. This book was more focus on one side of the story. A lot of jobs moved to Asia because the US was moving from one advantage to another advantage. From labor-intensive products to technology-driven merchandises. When you look at those hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley, you know what I mean.

The major reason makes me interest in this book was my Dad. The movie "Love Story"
was shot before I was born. When I was a little girl, I saw Dad watching this movie every time when it was shown on TV. My Dad is kinds of the action movie type. I was surprised why he loved watching this movie. So, when I was in the video store one day, I decided to rent the DVD to see what made my Dad to watch a love drama. Just like my father. I am totally devoted to the movie. I bought both "Oliver's Story" and "Love Story" and finished reading in one afternoon. For me, I like the Love Story more than Oliver's Story. The 3/4 part of the Love Story was a pleasant story. Both of them loved each other very much and would like to sacrifice for each other. For Oliver's story, it's all sad and how Oliver couldn't forget Jenny.

This shortish book is composed of the transcripts of Forster's 1927 series of talks about the novel, and is divided into chapters on story, characters, plot, and pattern & rhythm. In my opinion the two chapters on fantasy and prophecy are less successful, but if you are considering this book then you should definitely read it. It's filled with wonderful lines and terrific criticism (both positive and negative) of contemporary novels by Austen, Wells, Scott, Dostoevsky, Proust, James and others, and it was this latter aspect that I found most enjoyable. There is also an index so you can find these references when you want to. Forster discusses the sense of time and space in literature, round and flat characters, food, sex, love, POV, story vs. plot and causality. I've been reading novels for several decades and have read a fair number of books about writing, and I still gained insight from this lively little book.

I've tried for the fourth time to read this book. For the fourth time, I had to give up half-way. This book is just too dense for my simple mind.

I am sure that it contains more substance than most books on writing (hence, the generous two stars), but the packaging and, maybe, relevance compelled me, once more, to use the time I would on it to some other book more suitable for my Philistine tastes.

I will read this again and again. It's loaded, packed, stuffed with fabulous writerly advice.

Sandra Glahn, Lethal Harvest

This book is an enjoyable monograph about fiction writing. While entertaining, it doesn't contain practical advice nor does the author take much time to describe his work or writing process. I believe this book will appeal mostly to academics or those who would take pleasure in whiling away an afternoon with an affable writer.

One insight I found very helpful was a suggestion for interpreting the work of Gertrude Stein. Forster describes the process by which she attempted to destroy time in a novel. I had never understood Stein's writing and this theory seems to provide an effective window through which to view her work.

Sometimes one reads a book and it opens up the brain and heart in such a way that one views the world differently thereafter. This is such a book. You will never again read a novel and think about the book in front of you or how it was written in quite the same way. There is nothing else like it.

Delving into this book was part of a quest over the past year to read books on writing by writers. The books did not address HOW to write a novel other than tangentially. Although there are a plethora of dubious choices along those lines, I stayed away from them. The books that I searched out were books on the process of writing, the very lonely experience of the writer in creating fiction.

Several of the books were fogettable. A surprising number of them were memorable, including Mystery & Manners by Flannery O'Connor, On Writing by Stephen King, and anything by Margaret Atwood.

Of all of the books that I read, this one was the best by far. It covered not only the process of writing but also provided a structure for discussing and understanding the novel art form.

As a result, I highly recommend this book for book clubs. When presenting this book recently to my book club of 14+ years as my pick, there was a collective groan. Upon finishing the book, we all thought that it was one of the best of the 125+ books that we had read. It gave us a missing structure and tools for moving discussions and disagreements forward. Several times over the years, one or more of us have disagreed over some book selection or an aspect of it, but the discussion would stall for lack of a way to bridge the various viewpoints. For the first time, we were able to go back through those arguments in a new light using the tools presented in the book. It was very enlightening.

The books's title tacitly promises dry intellectual discourse, but the text reads off the page as fresh as it certainly did when it was originally presented by Forster as a series of guest lectures at Cambridge.

Highly recommended reading.

Thank You Oliver for writing this wonderful, spiritual, soul touching book! I enjoyed so much of it, but specially all your references to the Light, because I am intently focused on "Being the Light" to my family, friends and all whom I meet. I Love your meditation chapter and the suggestions for meditation....very beautiful and powerful! Thank You again for your time, dedication and commitment to yourself, your journey and creating this remarkable book!

Maria Lewis brown, A reviewer, 10/13/2006
Among one of the best spiritual books I have read
I read this powerful book it took me much longer than I had thought to complete. It is not a book to be rushed but to be absorbed. It has opened many feelings, some I never knew I had and some that I never knew I could feel by reading expressions from the inner being of an enlightened soul. My thirst has been quenched to many searching questions I have had about God. I know I will be reading this book many times over. Thank you Amazon for making this book available and thanks to the author for sharing his truth. This book has rekindled my urge to search for inner peace. Marie Lewis-Brown, Kingston, Jamaica

I found myself time and again, pondering the greater questions of life, love and the God consciousness that all humankind yearns and struggles towards. Thought provoking and relevant. Kudos, Mr. Jobson may your pen never be still.

This is a pretty good book for anyone on a search for inner-knowing. Up to a point. If you want to take a couple of big steps read 'A Course in Miacles', if you want to take a GIANT leap read 'Seth Speaks' by Jane Roberts.

A book for our time. If you ever questioned anything beyond our traditional teachings, this is awesome information. Written from experience not theory, you will expand your thinking on every aspect of life. Jobson has shared with us first hand knowledge that no one else has. I highly recommend his book.

go and buy it NOW...!

waiting for a ND7 version -

I'm surprised at the rave reviews that everyone is giving this book. I have this book and I've been reading through it and it starts off fine as it has you build a simple application in the beginning. I found that promising because I've never used Lotus Notes before so I thought this would be an excellent book. The only problem is that once you're finished with that chapter, it goes from good to really bad. The book then becomes a reference manual for the different aspects of Lotus Notes. It provides no tutorials whatsoever as one astute reviewer on here points out. If I wanted this kind of reference I could have read the help documentation for Lotus Notes. This book is only useful for people who have mastered many aspects of Lotus Notes and even then its explanations of aspects like commands are dry and not put into context.

By far and away the best (and almost the only) book around for Lotus Notes and Domino 6 application development. A lot of technical books (especially for Lotus Notes) seem to re-hash the same old stuff, often glossing over or completely ignoring complex topics. However this book has it all and it an absolute must for Lotus Notes and Domino developers.

Before I go any further, I have to disclose up front that I personally and professionally know all three authors who contributed to Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible (Brian Benz and Rocky Oliver, 2003, John Wiley And Sons, 1032 Pages, ISBN 0764526111). And Rocky, Brian and Richard will all tell you that I would still be the first one to call it like I see it, regardless of relationships. So with that in mind, to every person who works with Lotus Notes and Domino, regardless of version, and to every person who has ever posted to the Lotus developerWorks forum asking about good reference material for development: buy this book and put it on your bookshelf. I may approach coding somewhat differently than the authors, but that is the nature of all application developers. But this book does something often overlooked in too many technical books: it not only talks about how things work in Notes/Domino, it also puts out best practices and explanations for these best practices based on the authors vast depth and breadth of experience.

Make no mistake about it, this book is a tome. You are not going to read it like a novel. You are going to pick and choose the pieces you need based on your experience levels and problems you are trying to solve. The publisher wisely categorizes this book as a "beginner to advanced" level, a point I think one early reviewer of this book missed. In a systematic format, the authors walk the reader from the very beginning of Lotus Notes as a product to the point where even the most advanced developers can benefit from the content.

Lotus Notes and Domino is all about design items and objects, stored as 'notes'. So the authors make no assumption of the reader's experience level. They start at the very beginning by laying the framework for a simple application. They then explain the notes storage model, which is often a hard concept for may people to grasp, especially outside auditors and non-Notes people. As a reader you are then given a detailed thorough explanation of the Notes//Domino integrated development environment, and then even more detail on each design element that makes up an application. For the advanced readers, there is detail coverage of data integration with Lotus Enterprise Integrator (LEI), Java and XML.

As I said earlier in this review, this book will be of value regardless of what version of Notes/Domino you are running because of the coverage of the underlying concepts surrounding development on this platform. Sure it will not help you with the introduction of DB2 as an optional back-end data store, but that is not fundamental to the platform (yet).

There is one, to me, glaring weakness in the book and I discussed this with Rocky. The book is huge and is packed full of great content. But the layout of the book by the publisher makes it hard for tips, notes, and new feature highlights to really jump out of the page and grab you. This is not the fault of the author's, but is something the publisher should look at down the road.

A Tip for Readers of this Book

This is a book that will get used a lot and as such, will fall out of the binding because of its size. The first thing I like to do with a book like this is beat the binding to the punch. I will remove the pages from the binding and put them in a three ring binder or binders. This will make it much easier to handle and give it a much longer shelf life.

Who Should Own and Read This Book?

This book should be on the desk of every Lotus Notes and Domino developer that cares about their work. It should also be in the possession of every internal and/or external auditor charged with auditing Lotus Notes and Domino applications, so that they understand what they are auditing.

The Scorecard

Double Eagle on a long par 5 playing into the wind.

As with any book, it's only useful if it has what you want. Like many of the Bible series, it is rated for "Beginning", but it is really for experienced techs to add Lotus Notes to their skill set. The book assumes that you are familiar with scripting languages. If you aren't, don't expect this book to help you much. There are no reference materials for any of the functions or commands, no syntax helps, and no tutorials for the programming at all. Yet most of the chapters rely on programming extensively.

Featuring exquisite interpretations and vivid details of the life of a high roller, this outstanding author allows the average reader and gambler to accompany him along the journeys and perils of being a high roller Card Counter. This is a book for all age groups (that are able to gamble) to enjoy and appreciate. Its themes are universal and his opinions are both realistic and comforting.

Thank GOD you wrote this book. I've been waiting for a book like this to come out for a long time now. Without giving too much away let me just say, that not only did this book save me money but it also kept the good times rollin... Mr. Galang you truly are a master at the art of gambling!!!

A tragic tale conveyed by a poetic genius. Although short, the story is gripping and refuses to let you go. The chapter titled "Strippers" is my personal favorite, exposing the many pleasures of becoming gambling elite.

This book had a tremendous impact on me. The author has an eloquent way of telling his life story while teaching the reader the fundamentals on how to count cards. I'm not even a gambler and reading this book makes me want to try some of the tactics he teaches! With the release of that new movie "21" I'm even more interested now to play against some of my friends for money.

I was hoping the raves of this guy's "wealth" of experience would give me some insights into the world of card counting and blackjack. Come to find out this guy can't even fill up twenty full pages of the book that is already paper-thin. Seriously read the excerpt and that is pretty much the format for the entire book. Not to mention all of his statistics... oh wait yeah he didn't have any. All you have to go on is his word, which doesn't seem to be worth much. Just save your money....

Aaron Elkins' Skeleton detective is a wonderful series and this book is particularly fascinating because it deals with a secret and hidden culture. His romantic relationship is also developed and she works with him to solve the puzzle of the murders. An excellent read.

Okay, NOW Mr. Elkins' series gets going! I wasn't impressed with the first installment, but had this one on the table already so picked it up. I'm glad I did! It was so much more interesting and anthropologically intriguing than its predecessor. I was enthralled with the piecing together of native american history.
The hero, Gideon Oliver, is still an overly horny devil, and that's a bit much, but when he's in "professor" mode, he's quite a likeable character. I'll skip the sex parts, as they're not up to par with some awesome romances I've read. What can I expect from a male author?

I've been buying copies of this book for friends for years. It's my favorite of Aaron Elkins' Gideon Oliver mysteries, combining the characteristic mix of forensic science and atmospherics .. in this case the primeval Pacific Northwest setting that represents Oliver's home turf. It also is a fetching romance with a light touch and has a plot that's a good combination of surprise and poignancy.

After being missing for years in the rain forests of Washington State, the skeleton of a hiker is found with a spear point lodged in his vertebra. Gideon is called in by the FBI to examine the remains and concludes that only a throw of superhuman strength could have caused the mortal wound. Was is Bigfoot? a long, lost band of primitive Indians? It's up to the famous Skeleton Detective to discover the truth.

The Dark Place should truly be the first book in the Gideon Oliver series. Here Elkins finds Gideon's true voice. The story also pertains directly to Gideon's expertise as an Anthropologist. Along for the ride is his good friend, FBI agent John Lau and the chief park ranger Julie Tendler. The burgeoning romance between Gideon and Julie is playful and well written. It's real chemistry that brings these two characters together. All in all, this Gideon Oliver story is my idea of a great cozy. Like so many other Gideon Oliver mysteries, it's a fast read, with insightful facts about anthropology, a great sense of humor, a bit of romance, and at the heart of it all-- a fascinatingly bizarre mystery.

From reading this book I think Elkins is an outstanding writer. I have read only a couple books in my life, but reading this book was very interesting, knowing that the book took place around here where I live on the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington.

The part that interested me the most was when Gideon Oliver, a bone detective, got called to look at some bones from a murder that had happened years ago. Gideon and Julie Tendler, a park ranger, go on a six- mile hike in the Olympic National Park where a man named Louis Zander found a spear which they thought could've been the murder weapon. That chapter interested me because it had lots of action in it.

In a way this book is a love story, too, because Gideon falls in love with Julie. That's the main reason he stayed and took the case.

Some parts of the book were confusing because of some of the words the characters used, but overall I thought the book was very well-detailed. I think it was an outstanding book, and I hope Elkins comes out with another book about the Olympic National Park.

This is an excellent book, even though like a lot of folks, I bought it for the wrong reason. This book isn't really specific to the title, it's actually about the subtitle. Bash and Zsh are major characters, but this book is about using and mastering the command line, in either UNIX or Linux.

I don't know why the authors would target a book at me personally, so I assume there are many others out there who were once masters of the DOS and UNIX command lines when their companies made the decision (sometimes regretfully) to move "up" to Windows and Windows NT. Now here I am, over a decade later fondly recalling the power and well, frankly the fun, of being able to control my computer and the OS that runs it with commands customized specifically to my needs.

If you miss DOS batch files and UNIX scripts, being able to automate functions that take dozens of repetitive steps in a GUI like Windows or CDE, then this book was written for you as well. The free, powerful open source UNIX-based Operating Systems like Solaris and FreeBSD or the many Linux versions have given the command line it's well-deserved comeback. The authors of "BASH to Z Shell, Conquering the Command Line," make the assumption that the reader has more than basic computer skills, but just in case, starts with the premise that we may have even forgotten why the command line is even desirable.

Each of the early chapters on the basics warns the reader of the level of coverage and explains where to go to find the in depth version. I remembered pipes and redirection, but read the early stuff anyway and was rewarded with the fun reminder of just how powerful the command line can be. How about one command that can list every program on your system, sort it alphabetically, trim off any text and blank spaces you don't want and print it all in nice neat columns either onscreen or to a file? Ok, so nobody really needs such a list, but ya gotta admit it's pretty cool to be able to do all that with a single command. Then they launch into a discussion of for and foreach loops -- that's the basic stuff at the beginning mind you.

This is a book that's destined to be dog-eared. The spine will be wrinkled from sitting on the desk next to my keyboard as I construct a list of aliases that will simplify my life and then build a menu so I can remember them all. If you're just getting back into UNIX or have newly discovered Linux, this could be an invaluable tool for the journey.

I work on multiple Unix platforms all day long. I had never really taken the time to learn about the shells, but I had picked up the basics over time. I knew how to run commands, string them together with pipes, and redirect their output into files. So when I tell you that I started learning new things in the first chapter of From Bash to Z Shell, you will know the coverage is in depth. If you are a casual shell user, or even less experienced, this book has a lot to offer you.

From Bash to Z Shell is organized into three parts. Part one is an introduction to shell basics. It focuses on typical interactions with a shell including all of the things I mentioned knowing before reading this book. There is surprisingly good depth even here though and I doubt that anyone short of a power user could make it through this section without picking up a new trick or two. I learned multiple things from each chapter in this section.

In part two, each chapter takes a single aspect of the shells and really focuses in on just that. You will find chapters about the startup files each shell invokes as well as shell command histories. This is comprehensive coverage that really gets you to understand how things work as well as how to tune them to your personal tastes. You are even less likely to not pickup great tips in here.

The third and final part of the book turns to shell programming. While I suspect that plenty of users interact with a shell regularly without getting much into scripting them, there are still useful tidbits in here for them too. For example, after reading this section, I added some code to my startup file to customize my shell's completion functionality. I can now tab-complete the server names used by my workplace and even file system paths on those servers. This section also has a very good chapter on variables that will definitely help in day to day usage. A couple of the final chapters in here are heavily slanted towards or exclusively about the Z Shell though, so those chapters don't hold much for users of other shells.

As the title suggests, the book extensively covers both the Bash shell, which seems to be the standard default on many Unix systems now, and the feature-rich Z Shell that power users seem to favor. Surprisingly though, the book does talk about many other shells. In the first part especially, features tend to be described for more than just the two shells with top billing. This falls off in the later parts to some extent though. Also, the authors clearly aren't fans of the C Shell or its derivative the T C-Shell, so fans of those will want to look elsewhere. Windows receives some screen time, but only from the angle of running Unix-like environments and shells on it. You won't find coverage of the native Windows shells in these pages.

The book is quite good at covering the similarities of the shells. They frequently tell you when some command will work unchanged in both Bash and the Z Shell and they always do their best to give two equivalent commands when there are differences. This makes the shell knowledge you pick up from reading quite portable. It's also nice for those who don't know much about the differences between the shells and thus are trying to learn enough to pick the right one for them. It helped me choose a favorite. The only downside of this is that the transitions seem to become less smooth late in the book and I found myself wondering if we were still talking about Bash or had moved on to Z Shell a few times. This is a minor complaint though.

Beyond covering the shells well, the book can also help you better understand the design of the Unix operating system. It has some great asides on things like process forking and child process inheritance, special files and devices, and terminal drivers. Seeing these items through their interactions with a shell can make them significantly easier to grasp.

The writing style of this book is very natural. That's important since it distills so much information into every page, you could easily begin to feel overwhelmed. Luckily, that wasn't the case at all for me. I found the material to be presented so naturally that I absorbed it with ease. The book also has abundant cross references and a strong index which will make it great to reference later.

The final measure of a book like this turns out to be how much it changed your daily work habits. I've already noticed dramatic differences. I'm using shell loops at the command-line now to process many files at once; I actually understand shell quoting and when to use which types of quotes and escapes to get the desired effect; I can easily strip off a file extension or get a directory name from a full path when I need one; I make constant use of the command history now whether I'm searching for a past command, correcting a typo, or just pulling a single argument out of a previous command for reuse in a new command; and I've written a few shell functions to provide shortcuts to my common tasks. I just naturally began doing these things too, I didn't have to work at it a lot. From Bash to Z Shell just raised my understanding that much. To me, that's a big selling point.

I've just finished reading From Bash to Z Shell from APress Publishing. It's taught this Linux NetAdmin several new tricks, and should be an addition to any Admin's bookshelf. It'll fit nicely next to your O'Reilly's.

I initially bought the book to lean the Z Shell (zsh), but decided that I'll stick with good 'ole Bash for a little longer. The tricks I've learned through this book about Bash quenches my needs for the moment. This book teaches you about essential techniques such as CDPATH, History options, key bindings, editing modes, and tons more. I've only read it only once, but I have already dog-eared 20 pages. My ~/.bashrc, and ~/.inputrc are in full swing with many new shortcuts! I highly recommend this book!!

I bought this book for two reasons: To get a quick view of the Z shell, which was excellent, and to complement the many books on Bash that I have. This is where it really shone. I found information here, and quickly, that I could not find elsewhere. I would recommend it for all Bash programmers. This comes from a Korn shell bigot, too.

This book is a must for any sysadmin or power user. It is definitely not for the novice. It's writing structure is almost akin to what it would be like if you could read pthreads! I am so happy with this book.

My 6 year loves this book and thought it was silly that the boy ate them. He said he must have a bad stomach ache.

What a fun book! Jeffers' art is complex and whimsical, perfectly matching the delightfully absurd story.

Book Eating Boy is funny and cute in some ways. As a read-aloud to a group it was very fun. However, be sure to have a talk about the bad behavior of the main character before reading and explain why this behavior is unacceptable.

This is such a charming book! As so many reviewers have mentioned, the visual details are amazing. Yes, the story is simple, and I think that allows us to enjoy all the extras Jeffers gives us on every page. The plot is predictable to adults, but my son was quite engaged and even a bit worried when we read "This is the worst bit." My 4-year-old loves it and my 2-year-old repeated "monumental" multiple times while we were reading it for the first time. I really enjoyed finding a book with an obvious message, agenda even, that doesn't overdo it.

I bought this for my 7 year old nephew's birthday. He absolutely LOVES this book. His brothers, ages 5 and 3, ask him to read it to them all the time. I bought it one month ago and they are still reading it every day.

I enjoy Elkin's Gideon Oliver books, and wasn't disappointed with this one. The beginning was intriguing. It had just the right touches of mystery and humor, and well-drawn characterization. The jungle setting, the heat, the atmosphere all seemed very real. Somehow, it made me want to take a trip down the Amazon.

It was the cover that drew me to this mystery. I was about to put it down and then I read the flaps. I was sold and I soon found myself deeply immersed in the novel. If I had to put it down, say, to work or sleep, I couldn't wait to pick it back up it, it was that good.

Apparently, Little Tiny Teeth is the fourteenth Gideon Oliver novel from Aaron Elkins but it was the first I have read. Gideon Oliver, the "Skeleton Doctor," has an affinity for studying old bones. He is asked by one of his friends, Phil, a tour guide for On the Cheap, an economy travel company, to take a week long cruise on the Amazon River. To the mix, Gideon is able to bring another friend, John, a Special Agent with the FBI. But they won't be the only ones on the cruise - a leading ethnobiologist from the University of Iowa is chartering the cruise for a week long study group. He brings some very prominent scientists with him to study the local flora and fauna, meet with some shamans to discuss the medicinal properties of local plants, and gather some Amazonian insects. Not long in to the cruise, the scientific leader, Arden Scofield, is nearly killed by a spear with a shrunken head attached to it. Then there is a giant spider. And fire ants. And some Columbian drug dealers. Gideon and his friends find themselves, thousands of miles from home, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest with more than they anticipated. Not only does the heat and humidity make then uncomfortable, but their surroundings aren't helping.

Elkins has spun an amazing mystery. He takes his time setting up the story, slowly introducing the reader to all of the characters and the Amazon itself. But when they all come on board the cruise ship, the story really takes off. I found myself staying up later than usual to "finish a chapter," but actually reading several more. Elkins has more than one possible culprit in the story, and it was a joy to figure out who was behind all of the strange coincidences as Gideon, Phil, and John were working out the particulars. This was a very satisfying novel and I am glad that I am late to the Gideon Oliver series, as the previous 13 books present me with another excellent character and author.

Now, if only I could carve out more time to read. :-)

i am a fan of this author anyway but this is his best work yet

This is a very enjoyable read, ideal for vacation time, particularly while floating down a tropical river somewhere. It is very good at describing tropical heat and enervating humidity, the languid pace of river voyages, and the endless forest of the Peruvian Amazon, in its subtle variety. Prof. Gideon Oliver, and his trusty FBI friend, John Lau, have joined a botanical "fishing" expedition in the selva. Elkins does a wonderful job differentiating the scientists and sending them off together with contentious differences you just know have to result in violence. Oh, so many motives targeted on their arrogant leader. But people just sorta...vanish, from the old steamer boat. Serious modern crises form the distant backdrop to this story, never directly confronted: drugs good and bad, nature, logging, eco-disaster and -tourism, tribal survival. Perhaps the most exciting moment in any Oliver adventure is here. Prodded into the trackless jungle toward undoubted death, all Gideon can think of is the amazingly splayed toes of his tree-dwelling captors. Only a Gideon Oliver fan will understand how hilarious that is.

Oh right, what's the mystery? This is more of a shaggy suspense story. Surely there's a murder? Only if people don't vanish for other reasons. But there has to be more about bones, besides hallux varus, no? After all, this is about "The Skeleton Detective." Well, barely. Mainly this is a well-told tourists-over-their-heads-in-the-tropics adventure story. Elkins has it down, even to the ubiquitous jars of Nescafé powdered instant coffee. He does forget to make much of the biting bugs that would plague you at every stop, something else the glossy tour brochures don't tell you about. Get this book, sit back, and enjoy this story on your cruise. Douse yourself with repellent and turn up the heat, just for atmosphere.

Aaron Elkins delivers one of the best mystery series around, with one of the most interesting and charming amateur detectives. Gideon Oliver, a forensic anthropologist who is dubbed "the skeleton detective," ends up on every vacation he takes and at every conference he attends--always in an exotic locale, described in vivid detail--having to reconstruct from a recently discovered skeleton (or pieces of bone)a crime that has baffled local police. Elkins' knowledge of anatomy is encyclopedic, but Oliver's explanations are never preachy or boring. We learn fascinating facts about how our bodies function and age and how our bones reveal more about us than we ever thought--not only sex and age at death, but our professions and our hobbies. In his latest book, Gideon Oliver takes a trip down the Amazon with his amiable sidekick, a Hawaiian FBI agent, to help out a friend who organizes cheap (no luxury hotels or restaurants) tours. Mysterious natives, cocaine smuggling, piranhas, obnoxious professors--and a glimpse into a world little known to armchair travelers and amateur detectives. Elkins started this series long before forensic pathology became popular in books and on TV. His books are smart and not in the least gory. Highly recommended.

oliver button is a very charming, candid, outspoken boy of about seven....he does not possess the usual desires of small american lads; instead he prefers walking in woods,playing w dolls and costuming himself. papa and the kids call him a sissy.Read this delightful tale to see how olivers tauntings change remarkably....And tomie de paolas drawings are the best...

I identified with this book so much as a kid, and i still do now as I read it to my own children.

My mother was always scared to read it to me because she knew I was a little "different" and didn't want to encourage it, but i took a solace in it.... and Oliver Button was my hero.

I wanted to be his friend, Because, through this simple book, he was my friend.

This is an excellent story for pre-k-2nd graders. It is a step beyond the simplicity of Todd Parr, but they play in the same field.

It is real and lives in a real world where the out of the ordinary people don't always fit, and strange looks ensue.

Please buy this and read it to your children, they will thank you for it.

This book describes how Oliver is happy, not playing sports like all the other boys, but taking dance lessons. His parent support him, but at school, he is called a sissy. After a community talent show, which Oliver does not win, his schoolmates realize he is a winner. Oliver stuck with his dreams and desires, against the odds. To me, this story is great for kids, as it illustrates how to stick with something if it is what you desire. It has a great message for children as well as care-givers. The illustrations are wonderful, too.

I bought this book because Oliver Button is very much like I was at his age. He is more interested in playing with girls and doing activities that are not usually done by boys. I also thought it would be a good way to teach children that they don't have to conform to gender roles. However, having worked with elementary school children in various settings for years, I found the story to be very unrealistic.
The beginning is good. We are presented with a feel for Oliver's dificulties. Everyone wants him to be more like other boys. His father wants him to play sports, but he wants to dance instead. His mother enrolls him in a dance school, and he learns how to dance. He perseveres despite the fact that his peers are pestering him for being a "sissy"; they even write "Oliver Button Is A Sissy" on the wall (hence the title). The girls defend him by giving the bullies a talking-to. The bullies stop beating him up, which is a bit unrealistic; boys who are bullies hate girls as much as they hate boys like Oliver.
I was disappointed by the ending. Near the end, Oliver signs up for a talent show. His act involves tap dancing. The other children in his class, at the teacher's suggestion, go to see him perform. If you think this seems unrealistic (why would children who hate Oliver go to see him perform?), you will be even more disappointed by the last page, when Oliver goes to school after the talent show (which he didn't win) and finds that the wall no longer reads "Oliver Button Is A Sissy" because the word "sissy" has been crossed out and replaced with "star." Just because he does a performance doesn't mean those who formerly hated him will like him. I know this because I tried it myself at his age!
Though I like the ideals the author was trying to communicate, such a tacked-on happy ending is very misleading. You want a book about teasing, read Chrysanthemum. You want a book about prejudice, read Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches. You want a book about children who become successful, read Ibi Lepscky's Famous People series. You want a book about gender roles, read William's Doll. Anything but this book!

Tomie dePaola states in the liner notes that Oliver's story is partly autobiographical. "I could spend hours drawing, and nobody ever asked me to play on their ball teams because I was so bad at it."

Oliver's pursuits are less than gender-appropriate in the eyes of his male peers. He enjoys dancing, dressing up, acting, reading, and drawing. His father doesn't approve, either, but his mother and his female peers come to his aid. This help, however, works to Oliver's detriment: "Gotta have help from girls," the boys say teasingly. In the end Oliver, however, Oliver succeeds on his own terms.

This testimony to being oneself was written in 1979, and includes dePaola's signature drawings using a limited color palette. Though it isn't as charming as the Strega Nona books, it effectively delivers its message.