Multimedia Books

This book has been invaluable to me, and although I have my gripes against the tedium of some of this book, overall it's become a permanent member of my web design shelf. Having this book on hand has allowed me to dive into the dark realms of PHP message boards and wikis and come out with my own server-based applications.

DuBois book is quite a well written book for Mysql beginners. Highly recommended!!

As a guide to MySQL it seems to be fairly complete, although the index is not very good or helpful. Basically you have to begin from the beginning of the book and read it to the end to make sense out of it - it isn't much of a reference work because it is very difficult to navigate, and difficult to find things in the midst of Paul DuBois's endless waffle.

The worst thing about this book, though, is that not only is it very thick and heavy, but it is also exceptionally verbose and contains very much pointless waffling. The book's length could have been reduced by about two hundred pages if Paul DuBois had employed a competent editor to remove the fluff.

Because of the grind involved in tackling Paul DuBois's verbose, tedious and distracting writing style, I give this book three stars.

I have purchased each version of this book and this is by far the best version yet. It was totally reorganized from the previous versions, and adds a great deal of new content covering the new features triggers, stored procedures etc. if you only buy one book on MySQL this is it.

This book will not teach you how to work with MySQL. It is, however, a terrific reference manual on the ins and outs of just about every feature (Although I wish coverage of stored procedures and triggers had been more complete). I've worn one out entirely and had to buy a second.

In this book, Isabel Allende downplays her first two traumatic experiences. The central focus is her third trauma, her daughter's illness.

The first trauma is a predator who's incomplete seduction is enough to scar a child; moreover, she sees the man's death. The second trauma is that of her uncle forced from office in an air bombardment and dies (perhaps at his own hand) along with many supporters, precipitating a military coup in which thousands die, flee and/or are tortured. She is not numbed by these, but she is by her third trauma, her daughter's coma.

It took about 100 pages for me to get into it. I almost put it down. After about 100 pages, the breezy language and cryptic metaphors seemed to stop and Allende opened up. She became frank about about her married and extramarital life, but continued to restrain the prose relating the first two traumas. For instance, the childhood predator story is told like it was someone else's. Her uncle is like a stranger, and if how she is related to him is mentioned, I don't remember it. There is some discussion of family members who oppose the uncle, but nothing about their actually knowing him.

There is some of the language of magical realism present in her novels. This book is worth reading for it's description of letting go. There are some vague descriptions (admittedly not the focus of the book) of life in Chile after the coup and life as an exile. I think there is a bigger memoir inside of Isabel Allende yet to be written.

This story is so inspiring. It is so amazing how Isabel Allende shows the love to her daughter in this autobiographic story. We gave the graduating palliative care fellows this book as a gift. It demostrated very well all that there is to life that goes beyond death.

I like this book very much, but it is sad... The way Paula dies is just terrible, and Isabel Allende suffered so much!!

When Isabel Allende's daughter suffered a calamatous illness, Allende did what came naturally. She wrote a story. On its most basic level, this book is about a mother who is losing her child. She goes through the stages of grieving, sometimes even arguing with herself on the pages about what might come next. It goes much deeper, though. There is a point in the book when it seems she has discovered she is no longer writing the book for her daughter. A seer told Allende that her daughter would be known throughout the world. At some point in the writing, Allende discovered it would be through her own efforts, not her daughter's.
Allende has so many fascinating pieces in the story of her life, not the least of which is the fact that she is an extremely famous author. She is also a historical figure, being the niece of the Chilean president ousted by a military coup. She witnessed this and talks about it in the book. She was also raised by a man in the Foreign Service of Chile. She has traveled around the world and experienced what it is like to be accepted and what it is like to be rejected. She has been an exile as well. She wonders in the book whether her life has been very interesting. To her, it seemed normal and boring.
This is really one of the best books I have read. The vulnerability with which Allende writes is devastatingly beautiful. In her sorrow, she chooses to share her story and the story of her daughter with us. I feel honored.

I am a big fan of Isabel Allende's work in general, but this book, based on her daughter Paula's illness, is certainly one of her best. The story is haunting as Allende works through and chronicles her grief and tells us some of her own life story. It is certainly not a light hearted read or full of the adventure and mystery that fill her fiction, but it is equally or even more moving than her other work and is, as always with Allende, written in exquisite prose. However, if you have never read Allende before, you may want to start with "House of Spirits", which I think is her best fiction, or "Daughter of Fortune", a close second.

I have had college classes in photoshop. I could say that I have forgotten more about photoshop than most people know. Unfortunatly this means I have forgotten almost all that I knew. I found myself a beginning student at a new version of photoshop. This is a good book to sit down and go through the exercises. Good combination of video lectures and workbook exercises. I have just finished chapter six out of twelve this morning. You can not work your way through this book without coming away with a solid base in photoshop. After making it half way through this book, I am able to do things that I had no clue were even possible.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One (One-On-One) This is not a book for any digital photographer who wants to increase his or her understanding and proficiency in essential "finishing" techniques of digital images. It barely addresses or doesn't address at all the necessary skills of adjustment levels, working with curves, and so on. He recommends too using auto fixes and variations which ruin the integrity of a digital image, and concentrates instead on creating slick finished products. It reminds me in a way of a class I took that was supposed to educate a student in approaching an image with CS2, but instead dealt with all the whacky things you could do to a picture with distortion filters and so. You come away thinking you can torture an image any number of ways without effecting the integrity of the pixels. The parts of the DVD I was able to watch were sketchy and too brief. I would recommend instead anything by Scott Kelby, Bruce Fraser, and David Blatner.

Bought this for my son, who found it helpful while taking classes for his graphic design classes.

Third photoshop book (slow learner) I have purchased and is as good or better than others. Easy to follow if you follow the precise directions. Video on disc that comes with it really helps as it previews the lessons in the book.

I am a newby here. I ordered different books to learn CS2, and this book is amazing. I don't have anything original to add to all the excellent comments people already wrote, I just felt compelled to give it its five starts. The book is clear, well organized, easy to follow, and gives you a pretty good understanding of every single topic. It's not just do this and this, like a recipe. This was the book I was looking for!

This one should be one of the best instructional books ever written. Of course now is a little outdated (some of the Actionscript commands are now deprecated) but I remember how much I enjoyed it and how I discovered the FOED books. The Foundation series RULES!

This book was ok in the fact that it spent the entire book building on one real project. However, I thought the book was a tougher read than the Teach yourself Flash 5 in 24 hrs book. I guess it's really a matter of preference. I found this book to be adaquate, but not anything close to the other book. Teach yourself had a unique way of teaching you that really hammered the techniques home. I guess I didn't feel this one accomplished that.

First of all the authors of this book and the series of books they have written are brilliant, they have a great way of making even the most complex subjects very simplistic.

This book starts off slow and in the very basics of flash and gets quite extensive towards the end, I believe they stop right at actionscripting for which there is a whole other book (quite needed!)

I am (was) actually a Flash instructor at a college here in OC, the college provided or recommended their own book but I never used it and I told my students that purchasing that book was not necessary. I actually tought out of this book! And on the first day I told everyone they didn't have to buy it but if they did they would find it very helpful throughout the couse and later on, it's also definately a good reference book to go back to if you don't use Flash all the time and happen to forget.

Anyway needless to say every class I tought loved this book and loved learning flash. I even took some example/exercises out of the book. Everyone learned the full contents of the class and found it very fun. The illustrations and sample projects help a lot, if you are learning on your own I recommend you do them. Anyway I've had this book for years now and as a user and instructor I would say there's no other book I would turn to.

This book is not a reference to flash 5.

This book goes through step by step how to make flash movies from the ground up. It assumes nothing; which is great for most beginners.

I was definitly not a beginner when i bought the book. (i got it at the time of release because it was hyped up quite a bit).

At the time i understood, and fast tracked through it to get at the good stuff to find out that it never really got any "great" stuff. Some of the examples are done very well, and are great in the tutorial sense, but i was disapointed that i didn't learn anything new. (or little).

This is flash 5. You could learn flash just as well with tutorials online at any of the bigger flash websites. If you're new to flash: this is a great start. But if you have the least bit of flash knowledge then i can see someone getting bored with this qucikly.

Bottom line:
Great place to start. Not a reference by any means. Remember its flash 5. Flash MX is out, and much more fun than flash 5.

I've been working through this book for almost a week and I love it! The writing is clear and the concepts are explained very well. The authors include hands-on tutorials for each concept, and their step-by-step instructions walk you through your first try at each new skill.

They are also very good about teaching you the keyboard shortcuts for common actions as you go along (and reminding you to use them!) Knowing the shortcuts for adding a keyframe, breaking apart a graphic, converting a graphic to a symbol etc. makes your project work go quickly and really builds your sense of competence.

At the end of each chapter you practice what you learned in that chapter by using the new skills to add on to your ongoing "case study" website.

This is one of the best tutorials on a program that I have come across and one of the few technical books I have ever read cover to cover. I have many technical books and usually end up using them for reference instead of actually working through them. If you want to gain competence in Flash in a week or two, get "Foundation Flash 5" and work your way through it. It's easy!

When I need to explain an document OO concepts in a C# perspective, this book is a great help in most situations. If you need in deepth knowledge of the code DOM etc. you are stock.
Still it is the only generel C# book that has survived as a part of my .NET book collection.

As others have mentioned, this book is not aimed at new developers. However, if you are an intermediate or advanced developers, this is a great book for learning C# in depth. One thing I found very useful is that it often refers to C++ or Java to point out differences. This is very important in areas where C# works differently, like calling virtual functions from constructors.

The book shows lots of MSIL for the examples. Although there's a table of the MSIL commands in the back, there's not enough information in this book for these to be comletely understandable. You'll need to learn more about the CLR and MSIL elsewhere for these to really be helpful.

A wide range of topics are covered, including some advanced topics like COM interop. There is also a chapter on security, although I felt it lumped too many topics together there without going into enough depth on them.

The biggest problem I had with the book was the huge number of typos and misprints. I noticed another reviewer said that many of the examples didn't compile. This could have been one of the reasons. I was amazed at how many errors I saw in the code, most of which looked like simple typos.

I purchased this book after reading Mr. Archer's Visual C++.NET Bible and am extremely happy with it. I have quite a few C# books and can say without hesitation that this book, Jesse Liberty's and Petzold's SECOND C# book are the only C# books worth owning. You buy those three and you'll be set. I personally use them as follows:

* Jesse Liberty - Better than Archer in terms of tutorial style writing. Use this book as your first C# book
* Tom Archer - Awesome reference material and low-level details of the language. Use this book as a reference after finishing Liberty's book
* Charles Petzold - Great for learning how to write Windows apps with C# - once you've learned the language with Archer & Liberty.

This is actually an introduction to C#, good for beginners, but not for people who already have a lot of experience on other languages like C++. Title is misleading.

For C# developers this book should be required reading. It will teach you to think in C#, to see the answers to problems without writing a line of code.

Archer writes in a very straightforward and easy style. I found the book hard to put down. The explanations are clear and concise.

The examples are extremely well-done. I learned as much from them as from the book itself. You'll want to work through every one of these - you'll learn tons from them.

Overall, this program is a great tool for those wishing to learn spoken French. Whether you are a total beginner or you've learned French in school with little success and want a new approach, you will find this Michel Thomas' program useful. Keep in mind, this is only a basic introduction and you will learn only present tense and a little bit of future tense. To go beyond that, I would imagine you'd need to study Michel's language builder and French Advanced programs.

With this program you WILL learn basic French quickly and easily. Within minutes of starting, you will be constructing basic sentences. Michel Thomas has a unique way of introducing new concepts to you by tying them to information you already know about the French language but don't know that you know. From there, he slowly adds more and more information and it's so much fun that you don't even realize you're learning.

My only qualm about this program, and hence the four stars, is the female student. Her inability to get it after the eighteenth explanation is extremely frustrating and I found myself finally losing it and shrieking "Voulez VOUS for crying out loud!!!" at her. When you listen to CD #1 you will understand why. Her slowness and confusion wasted a lot of time and caused a lot of tension and impatience for me, the student. If both students were at an average or above intelligence level (such as the other student in the program), then this program would be a lot more fun.

Overall, highly recommended for someone who wants a quick and easy French introduction. But, realistically, if you want to become fluent and well respected by native French speakers, you will need many more programs and courses (not to mention practice, practice, practice!) in order to advance to a much higher level.

This was a gift to my wife as we are going to France in 6 months. She likes to listen to the CD's in her car. She now is speaking French. My favorite part is "Don't think Ruth, you are working too hard." This is an excellent way to learn French.

Indeed you feel like you are learning quite a lot, quite quickly, when you first start this, however there are a couple of things that make this somewhat overrated. Not much focus on pronounciation, which is so important in French. Michel sounds like an old grandpa, who mumbles his english at times, so you will not get crisp pronounciations out of this guy. I really wish there was a French speaker conversing with Michel, instead there are a couple of students sitting along side him and in my opinion they just drag the flow of these lessons. The students constantly make mistakes, which gets quite annoying (and confusing) after a while and you feel like you are starting to pick up bad habits from them. To Michel's credit, he does have a way of getting a lot of good material across and the lessons are structured well and most importantly you do learn from this, and it's reasonably priced.

I am 3 hours into this course and I felt compelled to write about the experience....As a victim of 1 years worth of high school French years ago all I will say is that I learned more in the first hour with Michel than I EVER did in school...Great fun and a real feeling of satisfaction!

I was speaking basic French in the first few days without any workbook or study guide, I just used the CD.

I warn you though, the program works for me when I can relax and fully focus on the program. A casual listen while doing other things does not work.

A good place to use the CD:
- A 30min. + car ride without any passengers

A bad pace to use the CD:
The commuter train or the Gym since saying the words out loud is part of the learning process.

This book and .NET XML Web Services Step by Step by Adam Freeman and Allen Jones have answered virtually all of my questions about building production distributed database applications using XML Web services. If you're interested, you can download a sample of my working code at www.opointe.com

My favorite. Well written, understandable, to the point and easy to read. Read sequentially or use as a reference. Covers pretty much everything you need to know.

I prefer referring to his sections on ADO.NET (200 pages) and ASP.NET (330 pages) to using other books on these topics.

A big book that will impress your peers. Can be used for bicep curls and tricep extensions in a pinch.

If this is representative of Francesco Balena's work then I recommend anything he writes.

Even if I don't use VB Net, I enjoy that book: a "just" view in comparisons between dot-Net and VB6 (not always at 100% in favor of VB.Net), and insight, intelligence, and inner working we don't even see often, if not at all, even in C# books! There are two major weak points: Windows Forms (I recommend Chris Sells' book) and database (I suspect Francesco didn't entirely wrote these chapters, as the style is a little bit different in those chapters than the other parts of the book, anyhow, my impression), again too superficial ( I somehow recommend the MS Press book ADO.NET by Sceppa). Even if I use C#, I often found that Francesco Balena did a much better job than what I find in other of my C# and Managed C++ reference books. NOW, my copy, of the first edition, has indeed a printed page number 1576. So why Amazon annonces 800 pages, I don't know.

I would have give only four stars, but since I find very hard to find a book of my liking about dot-Net in general, I cannot than praise that book for an extra star.

When compared to other books on the subject, even those in the same MSPress series, this book is unmatched. The depth and quality of information is astounding.

Many programming books spend 500+ pages on basic concepts, fail to establish a foundation of knowledge and leave you in a position that prevents you from exploiting the technology. In many cases, you have read 500+ pages and have learned how to make a clock or a simple card game. Not so with this book.

It is obvious that the author is well versed with every nuance of .NET, as he goes deeper than any other source, while keeping his explanations clear and understandable. Every explanation is concise and useful.

Though the author clearly warns that this book is not for beginners, I have chosen to use it to start from the ground up. Surprisingly, his style has allowed me to understand nearly every concept, and will likely allow me to accelerate my proficiency well beyond my experience.

The author claims that the scope and size of this book could have been separated into several books. I could not agree more. This speaks to the dedication of the author to provide more than a text of useless fillers. Each one of the 1,400+ pages provides useful information. A comment in the Forward suggests that this massive book be read from beginning to end. Though I scoffed at such a challenge, I have found myself doing just that.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Visual Basic .NET.

This book easily ranks #1 on my all-time favorites list.

This is the most through book on VB.Net I've ever found. It's a steep read, but if there are any dark corners of VB.Net that haven't had light shed on them, then you aren't useing VB to it's fullest potential, and you haven't read this book.

The current price of this book on Amazon right now (~50.00) makes it more than a steal with the amount of information in it. Espcially compared to the avarage cost of a class in any programming language.

Though the book is written for a programmer who is at least a novice in VB6, certain versions of the book provide a CD with an eBook of the authors VB6 book (with code examples) as well as a PDF of this book. So, if you are just getting into VB.Net you'll have some place to turn when Balena starts refrencing well known VB6 syntax.

This is an excellent book to uncover the beautiful simplicity of the Toyota Production System. Although simple is always best, with complicated cars, machines and huge sums of parts, it sometimes is lost in the jungle of the manufacturing floor. This is where a company's leadership is key to the success of the lean manufacturing endeavor. Obviously, the Toyoda family had a long line of brilliant individuals that have not only kept the principles alive, but continued to drive the company to record growth and profits. This book is very good for showing the way, but there is a lot more detail requred to actually implement the system. As an introduction to the system and the philosophies, this book is excellent. If you are looking to implement lean manufacturing, you will need more than one book to accomplish the task, and you will need leadership within your organization that is willing to change and embrace a new way. Most company efforts will collapse due to managment not having the stamina it takes to fully change their plant floor, their material flow and their processes. With the Toyota Production System, you are never "done" but you continue to look for improvement forever.

The Toyota Way certainly does provide the foundation of using operational excellence as a strategic weapon. With increased competition, companies are continuously challenged to achieve operational excellence in a better way than its competitors, and use this as their strategic weapon or at least ensure that they are meeting/exceeding industry standard in this area. This book contributed many ideas to my MBA dissertation, in creating a profit for an insurance company that had been making continuous losses for a number of years. The continuous process flow mentioned in the book was adopted and resulted in significant cost savings, by eliminating certain processes and improving the quality control.

This book has also influenced me to purchase a Toyota Fortuner, moving from the Honda brand that I had driven for years.

Judith Kean, FCCA

Great for those that are on the go and would like to learn a little more about TPS and lean manufacturing.

This is a must have for any manager or business administrator. My only observation is that some of the chapters are too long in making the point accross. Otherwise, it's an excellent reference to "copy with pride" the best practices from a great company.

"I have visited hundreds of companies and taught employees from over one thousand companies. I have compared notes with many of those I have taught. I have also visted a number of the U.S plants that were fortunate to have received assistance from TSSC, which has consistently helped companies achive a level of improvement like "Lean Company X". Unfortunately, I see a persistent trend in the inability of these companies to implement TPS and lean. Over time, the lean production line TSSC sets up degrades rather than improves...There is a "lean production cell" here and a pull system there and the time it takes to changeover a press to a new product has been reduced, but there is where the resemblance to an actual Toyota lean model ends."

Why has American Automotive technology slow to adopt the Toyota Way? Three forces: political protectism, cheap resources, and well established marketing channels. However, as fuel prices continue to escalate, innovative automotive solutions will be rewarded and brand will have less loyality. Toyota claims that their line workers are among the best and brightest minds and their ideas are used to solve problems.

TPS has potential. TPS advocates continual learning through eliminating waste, remove unnecessary labor, to see for yourself and understand the situation, and making decisions slowly by consensus. A circular cycle of gathering information and thinking about the completeness of the problem. All things must be considered in the model. Respect for people: leaders a mentored in the TPS system; TPS challenges employees to develop skills, verbalize ideas and innovations, be loyal to the company, and work in small teams. TPS weakness is that they listen and choose a leader basis on reputation and not merit. A well connected and respect leader has great pull in the organization. A brillant young leader has a difficult time rising to the top without sponsership.

The TPS system is focuses on process and uses a vast number of tools to surface problems. A number of techniques help expose problems, such as, pull systems where the one product at a time is completely built and any error in the process will stop the whole factory. The immediately identification of the problems is brought to the foremost attention of everyone in the plant. TPS process assists external processes, for example after one of the earthquakes, a major parts supplier was offline and Toyota used this supplier exclusive, for parts. Toyota sent 300 engineers to help get the company online.

TPS levels out workload, reduces overtime, and promotes happier employees through empowerment. Tasks are standardized for continueous improvement.

Visual controls are used so problems do not hide, inventory build up, and waste go unnoticed. TPS uses reliable and tested technology. Japan uses four times as many robots as the US. The automated factory has been both a cost saver and a production gainer for Japanese companies. TPS works to establish long term goals. One weakness of TPS long term goal planning is that the consumer never know about it.

In TPS information can use internal and external information given by the consumer; more consumer participation and involvement in the company is encouraged. The phrase "Oh what a feeling, Toyota" should mean the consumer is content with the long term goals and planning provided by Toyota and the consumer plans on support the future by investing in Toyota through purchases.

"Operational efficiency by itself canbe dangerous. Think of the Swiss companies that were so efficient in making mechanical watches yet are now out of business."

"Kaizen teaches individuals skills for working effectively in small groups, solving problems, documenting and improving processes, colling and analyzing data, and self-managing within a peer group. It pushes the decision making down to th workers and requires open discussion and group consensus before implementing a decision." Kaizen takes a strong commitment by senior management, so that individuals can participate effectively without fear. TPS creates "a new way in manufacturing or service delivery - a new way of seeing, understanding, and intrepreting what is happening in a production process, that could propel them beyond the mass production." Lean production focused on speed in the supply chain by "shortening the lead time by eliminating waste in each step of a process leads to best quality and lowest cost, while improving safety and morale."

The first question TPS asks is, "what does the customer want"? The question is directed at both the internal and external customer.

According to TPS there are eight types of waste: Overproduction, Waiting, Unnecessary transport or conveyance, overprocessing or incorrect processing, excess inventory, unnecessary movement, defects, and unused employee creativity. Ohno said, "Every method available for man-hour reduction must, of course, be pursued vigorously; but we must never forget that safety is the foundation of all our activities." There are times improvement will compromise safety. In that case start over and take another look at the operation. "Never be satisified with inaction". Jikodka or in-station quality allows separates the person from the machine. Now the individual is free to be creative and observe improvement. Respect for the individual improves morale and brings more ideas into materialization. Just in Time technology employees pull technology and reduces excess inventory.

Now we have White Court (oh yeah), Bram Stokers Black Court, Red Court, Ghosts, Dragons and a Kight of the Cross. What could go wrong with this book. The plot is so deed. Much more twists and turns than I expected. Perhaps to much? Depends on the reader. Another great novel by Butcher. With every succeding book, Harry's Kowledge and power goes up a notch. This series is turning out to be great

Butcher writes as well as always, and that Harry was involved more with S.I. is awesome. In the first two books, Harry and S.I. work mainly on cases together, but this time cops are victims in the investigation. Its great! I recommend to anyone interested - just read Fool Moon and Storm Front first!

This is the third novel by Jim Butcher and I noticed both good and bad things about it. Grave Peril was the first of the Dresden novels that I really found exciting. I am used to different styles of writing, and this was the first novel that I wasn't annoyed by his writing. Despite the excitement, I was somewhat disappointed by the plot. When I am reading a series, I want each novel in the series to have its own story, yet move the overall plot ahead as well. I finished this book and felt that there was a weak overall plot for the novel even though it moved the series ahead.

In this novel, some months have passed in Harry's life, and we have actually missed the battle that inspires the action. Harry took down a sorceror and Micheal took down a demon in between novels 2 and 3. When powerful spirits are killed, they have power to become ghosts and haunt things relating to their death. The haunting begins as Bianca seeks to exact her revenge on Harry. And what's the worst that could happen? A war between the White Council and Red Court? The series is really starting to heat up.

This book was very enjoyable. There are ghost, wizards, vampires, etc. Each of the "Dresden Files" is more addicting than the last one. Before I finished reading this "Grave Peril", I ordered #4, 5, 6, & 7.

Something has stirred up the ghosts in Chicago, weakened the barrier between the Nevernever and the real world, and it's up to practicing wizard Harry Dresden (he's in the book) to stop it.

He gets help from his pal Lieutenant Murphy of Special Investigations, and Bob the Skull. Grave Peril also marks the introduction of two major characters: Michael Carpenter, a Knight of the Cross, and Thomas Raith, scion of the vampire white court.

And since this is the audiobook, that means it's read by James Marsters, whose voice and acting talents are a perfect match for Jim Butcher's words. Even after the (regrettably short-lived) television series, I'm much more likely to hear Marsters's voice for the characters when I'm reading than I am the actors from the show, particularly for Bob the skull.

At the beginning of the audiobook, there's a short welcome from Jim Butcher, in which he calls Grave Peril a milestone in the series. I'm not exactly sure what he means, but maybe it's the layers. There's not just one straightforward plot in Grave Peril--the Ghostbusters one--there's also a vampire ball, which Harry's obliged to attend as a representative of the White Council of wizards, and which his girlfriend Susan, reporter for the Arcane, is determined to attend, regardless of the dangers. Harry's fairy godmother (literally, as it happens) shows up. Michael's wife Charity gives birth to a baby whose survival chances are slim. And there's a lot of emotional impact between Harry and Susan, and Harry and Michael, and Michael and Charity.

It's a very complete and satisfying story, and illustrates perfectly why I love Jim's work so much--humor that makes me laugh aloud, exciting and clearly-written action (I can't rave about that too much--most action scenes are just confusing blurs to me--it's the lack of a Y chromosome, no doubt), edge-of-my-seat suspense that keeps me turning pages way past my bedtime, an emotional kick that puts tears in my eyes or a lump in my throat, and a wonderful little intellectual buzz that comes from knowing that the clues are all there to figure out what's going on behind the scenes. Oh, and the thoroughly realistic fantasy world.

Summer Knight is by far the best novel of the Dresden Files. Not only does it continue the overall plot of the series, but it has a fascinating and interesting plot within the novel. The war between the two fairy realms is interesting. I think this is the most creative work I have read by Jim Butcher. Gone are the hard to believe, out of nowhere scenarios. In this novel the actions are believable within the concepts of the novel. Bravo! I really enjoyed this novel. If you are a fan of the first three novels then I encourage you to read Summer Knight.

There has been a murder and a transfer of power is at hand. Whether the Winter or Summer fairies emerge victorious will determine if there is endless winter or endless summer on earth. It is my favorite novel of the series.

This book was full of suspense & humorous as well - very hard to put down. This is a modern fantasy for adults with knights, wizards, fairies, trolls, etc.

With the Dresden Files, Jim Butcher is doing the impossible--writing a series that gets more entertaining with every book. Easily the best fantasy series on the market today, I'd even go so far as to say that the Dresden Files novels are as good as, if not better than another series of books with a guy name Harry in them.

The fourth book in the series "Summer Knight" is one that will not disappoint readers. Picking up a few months after the events of "Grave Peril" in which Harry lost a girlfriend, made a deal with his faerie godmother to save himself and his friend and precipiated a war between the White Council and the Red Council, Harry starts the novel in a bad place. He's obsessed with finding a cure for his lost love Susan, he's barely been in the office in months, he's aliennating his friends and he's got a price on his head by the Red Council. And that's even before he finds out that his faerie godmother sold the favors he owed her to another and the White Council is coming to town.

The story unfolds at a natural but rewarding pace. Butcher has a natural ability to have events build on each other and he pays off hints from previous novels as well as dropping in hints of things to come. And this book feels like just a snapshot of a few of the big events in Harry's life over the course of a couple of days from the grander scheme of things. The strength in these stories is they're rewarding to read just as stand-alone novels, but taken within the greater context of the series, they add even greater layers. And while I will recommend reading them in order, Butcher does enough to bring in new readers that you can drop in on Harry at this point and not feel hopelessly lost. All the while, he doesn't aliennate long-term readers with pages of recap.

A great series of books that only gets better. This is the best I've read in the series and I can't wait to start the next one.

Oh one word of warning: Don't start any of the Dresden books if you've got things to do like sleep, go to work, spend time with the family. These are the types of books that will consume you, demanding your attention to savor every page and anticipating what will come on the next.

These books are great! If you love science fiction you will love these books. The author is funny, witty and holds your interest from cover to cover. I ordered the complete set and read through it in a week! I hope they bring the television series back to SciFi. It is more entertaining a series that SciFi brought back, Dr. Who, or as I call it "the doctor's non habit forming sleep remedy"! I'm going to reread them soon since I enjoyed them so much! I'm sure there were things I missed on the first go around. I'm also looking forward to the next book in the series.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel,Mr Butcher keeps you engrossed through the entire experience. I would like to thank him for a well written book.