Game Studies Books

This "Young Magicians" series is fantastic! They make wonderful gifts for children. This book teaches kids the fundamentals of card tricks, from how to hold and shuffle a deck, to performing basic "pick a card" tricks and more. Great for kids, and interesting for parents, too!

This is a real fun book with which you can learn basic vocabulary (clothes, animals,countryside, home, parts of the body, around town, useful expressions).

It contains games and puzzles like matching games, find the hidden objects, search a word, label the picture, etc. and tear-out flashcards to memorize the words. In the beginning, it has a pronunciation guide describing the sounds of French and of course it contains the answer key to check your progress.

Vocabulary doesn't need to be a pain anymore with this book! (What a pity that they haven't published something similar for intermediate vocabulary!)

This book is a must buy for all you future Youth Ministers. This book introduces many new ways of teaching verse to younger teens (13-15). By applying each verse and lesson to a students day to day life almost any one can feel comfortable teaching these pre-planned lessons. This guide has eighty-ready to use studies providing the group with many diverse topics to discuss. A recommended version of the bible to study from is the youth new revised version. This book will aide everyone in their walk with Christ. Peace and God Bless!

This is an extraordinary book written by an author who understands kids. The activities are exciting and are certain to spark the creative yearnings of kids of all ages. As a school media specialist I know the kinds of books that entice kids. This one is a winner!!

Just after reading the intro i was smitten by the book. I have hardly ever laughed so hard while reading anything. I find myself thinking back at events that went bad or good, and realizing now why it did.

This is a great book for any boy or men from 15 and up.
If you can't handle the content of the book then you can't handle real life.
This books is straight forward and shows how much you can accomplish with a little self esteem and confidence.
So Buy it, read it, and have a great time with the humorous mind pictures that Neil Strauss is painting.

If you need a guide to pick up women, than try David DeAngelo instead.
Learn some NLP, Palm reading, cold reading, and a little magic never hurts anyone.

This book demonstrates what's possible for any guy. Also recommend "Secrets of the A Game" by Logan Edwards and "Mystery Method" by Mystery.

Similar to Cougars, Poptarts & One Night Stands by Billy Conroy. I thought both books cared little about women's feelings. The guys simply want short-term relationships.

When I got this book the look of it was fantastic. After I got about 3 quarters of the way through, honestly I had trouble to keep reading. I got onto this book from a friend from my hypnotist group, he said to have a look how they are using waking hypnosis. THAT PART FANTASTIC. It is just the author lost me after a while.

Good book though.

P.S. From some of the reviews I have read on this book, I don't know why but people are regarding this as a self help book. This is a not a self help book. It is a story of how people have used Hypnosis and Hybrid Hypnosis (NLP and others) to win the opposite sex. For those people who think this is a self help book, get a life! Rebuild a confidence pattern in your head and move on.

It's well written, funny and highly entertaining. It's not a 'how to' manual on picking up chicks, it's the author's experience on journey going from an Average Frustrated Chump (AFC) to Pick Up Guru (PUG). Highly recommended.

I do enjoy Laurie Notaro's brand of humor. This is a lovely beach read.

I'm a fan of Notaro's memoirs, and my favorite is her chapter on bathroom etiquette for the workplace. :)

Enough said.

"I don't pay attention to funny noises [on my car]. I just turn the radio up louder and pretend it's someone else's car."

Laurie Notaro's first book of her collected adventures (dating, jury duty, living in an apartment, parents on the internet, dealing with the exterminator, grandparents on exercise equipment) that are all too familiar, but told in such hilarious hyperbole and witty style that I was chuckling to myself all day at the beach. This is chick lit for girls with tattoos. Wonderful, though not as strong as her later works. Grade: A.

Laurie Notaro has become my favorite author. She talks about her life with such honesty and humor. Sometimes you laugh and sometimes you shake your head thinking "been there, done that". I would love to have coffee with her sometime and just chat!! A must read.

This author tries WAY TO HARD to be funny! I did not laugh out loud once. I guess I was too busy rolling my eyes! Not impressed.

I started playing chess less than a year ago and I bought couple of chess books. But none of them taught me this much!! This book is amazing, the way of explaining each game and its variations are incredible. I bought this book three months ago and I finished reading it yesterday. I learned that each move on the chess board has a meaning, and also how to play these moves more strategically. This book tells how to open the games and how to think more logically, the result is that the person who reads this book will see the chess board more clearly and make more brilliant moves. In the 33 games of this book I loved the queen pawn opening, especially the Colle system and I practiced this system with other players and I quickly demolished the king side of the opponent. Selected games are very nice games especially those games from Capablanca and Tarrasch. The diagrams are of high quality and the language is very nice to read!
May be one or two minor point I would like to mention.
Sicilian opening is one of the most popular opening nowadays, only one game explained in this book. I think she should have added little more opening traps in every opening. May be the author did not want to confuse the readers too much with variations!! But these are very minor things. Overall, this is a must for beginners, highly recommended. I give five stars!

My 9 y.o. niece recently developed an interest in chess, and she was quick to learn the figurine notation--from Chess Informant, no less. But she had the unfortunate problem of being in an after school program for chess that was neither kid-friendly or (by the description) not doing a very good job either. Since I live a bit far I needed something educational, and after reading some reviews & visiting some bookstores to flip through, I eventually chose what I used from back in 1970s (I was a Fischer Boom kid then), and so I went back to what taught me the basics of play. There's a lot of others out there now but I went with what I knew, eventually I went on to get a Master rating in correspondence chess.

This is a good book to explain why--that's the key concept--certain moves are played, and the themes, strategies & principles behind those moves. It's important to learn the Fischer observation: to get squares, you got to give squares. The ideas of attack & defense, and taking control of squares, ranks, files & diagonals, and learning to tell, at least at a rudimentary level, which are considered more important than others in selected situations. My niece still has to learn what 'fianchetto' means, and she's not ready for hypermodernism vs. classical theory or systematic study of openings or even examining game collections of the greats (something I strongly advocate for players beyond this stage); she has to crawl before she walks. That's what I want from a book that's more a primer. Later there are excellent tomes on short exercises & pattern recognition for identifying situations for tactical play, and to set up traps, and to avoid stepping in one. But those require some ability to 'think logically' ahead of the move; this explains why & now, and the basis for 'ahead'. It's concrete learning for the concrete player.

In looking at other reviews I note that in some that 'theory is out of date'. So should I subject my niece to the shifting sands of the Sicilian Najdorf? The mind-boggling complications from the QGD: Semi-Slav ('let's look at some Alexei Shirov games'). How about the French Defence-Winawer variation with 7. Qg4? Or Alekhine's Defense where likelihood of dropping a piece are astronomical? In a word, no. The classic defenses like the Ruy Lopez or Giocco Piano are fine--one less likely to lose quickly in playing these, either by dropping material or getting pushed off the board. Or the Queen's gambit--the variations have since multiplied but the basic concepts on playing it in the early stages are still valid. Also, a beginner can play the Colle System without learning a lot of theory--it can be set up & played against just about every major defence. I could do without the King's Gambit, I can only think of Boris Spassky, the 11th World Champion, who would roll that out on occasion, and essentially retired from active chess since the 1980s.

Other comments are about 'wrong analysis & errors'. True enough, but I like prose that identifies the purpose & some opinions about alternatives(if one wants a good collection of games of top level grandmaster play that easy to read & clear on concepts, read anything by the great Estonian GM Paul Keres). Also, GM Bent Larsen's retort "Long Analysis, wrong analysis," even as short as some are. What I don't like in "Logical Chess" are the occasional vague phrases like 'doesn't look appealing' without giving a concrete reason why. But that's common to any annotations.

Short games: does anyone know what the attention span of a pre-teen is? I taught elementary school chess for a short time. I like short games--clear concepts, fast finish; it's a little early for endgames--scholastic chess games don't last too long.

One has to learn the rules & principles of chess strategy before becoming an iconoclast. And for that I recommend to the intermediate-advanced player John Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy."

I recently worked through my copy of this book. I must say it was very enjoyable to play through the games and read Chernev's explanations of the moves and the reasons behind them. I think Chernev did a superb job, and this book is a great game collection for anyone interested in chess. Newer players will certainly learn a lot.

Why "unfortunately"? Because Chernev put a lot of hard work into this book. He DOES explain every move--even if he has to go back to obscure 1820s books to say something new about 1. d4 when we see it for the 10th time. What's more, he does this without, for the most part, repeating the old libels about the "crazy" Steinitz or the "sadistic" Alekhine, etc., used by some authors to make reading about chess "exciting" without real work. Also, Chernev's love of the subtle move and the brilliant combination come through in the book, making us all remember why we like chess in the first place.

Unfortunately, the book's analysis is simply bad. It is hard to blame Chernev for trying to simplify what is going on in complex positions--the book is, after all, aimed at beginners--but his simplification completely distorts the situation. Of the 30+ games in the book, almost *all*, apart from five or six, are symetrical open games (1. d4 d5 or 1. e4 e5) many of them using obscure openings few play nowadays (Colle system, King's gambit). Some of this is due to fashion. But a lot of it has to do with something Chernev constantly ignores or mistates, but is of cardinal importance--the *plans* of the two sides.

Putting things very crudely, The King Indian's Defense and other asymmetrical openings allow black to concentrate on other plans--"building a solid position" for example--instead of that of immediate control of the center and rapid development. Why? Because, as Botvinnik noted, with such "asymmterical" plans white's first-move advantage is less prnounced. Conversely, the King's gambit is now unpopular since the main plan for white--attack on the black monarch--had been shown to lead to no more than a draw against accurate play.

Not much of this gets into Chernev's book. For him, the only opening plans are "develop your pieces" and "control the center". For example, he says that the reason people play 1. ... Nf6 in reply to 1. d4 is "to not allow white to dominate the center with 2. e4". Similarly, he condemns 1. ... e6 is "less agressive" (in controlling central space) than 1. ... e5 in reply to 1. e4, but at least it "opens lines to two pieces", does not allow White to play the King's gambit, and is useful against "over-agressive players".

Talk about oversimplification! Chernev's analysis is, I suppose, helpful to absolute beginners, showing them what is wrong with 1. h4 intending 2. Rh3, or with 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 intending 2. Qxe5+ (which, after the "thematic" 1. ... g6, leads to 3. QxR, 4. QxN, 5. Qx anything she can get her hands on), though they too are left wondering why anybody ever plays "inferior" moves such as 1. c4 or 1. ... Nf6. For all others, Nunn's "Understanding Chess Move by Move" is so superior in every respect comparing the two would be pitiful. It's like, to quote Edward Winter, comparing a Rolce-Royce with a rattle-trap.

This book is must reading for any novice! I will never again see a chess board in the same way! Many people, books and films state that principles of martial arts or samurai philosophy apply to everyday life, so much so that they constitute a guiding philosophy. In Japan and China people apply principles from war and strategy books such as The Art of War and The Five Rings to the world of business, and to great effect. Now, many films have also tried to do this with chess, but usually fall short. They usually end up making some blah statement, such as, "We are all pawns," etc. This book contains many fascinating quotes and principles handed down from the masters. As I read them one thing that struck me was that many of these principles apply equally to real life. For instance, Chernev's main lessen in this book is that the right move is determined by the requirements of you position. You assess the situation at hand, you have a goal, and there are only certain actions that will bring that goal about. Thus, the action you take is determined by what circumstance required.

Excellent book

This excellent book is a manual of animation.
Everything about animation you can find on it.

Anyone who loves Disney animation and anyone who is learning the process of animation needs to get their hands on this book. It is long, it is detailed, but it is well worth it. This book mainly covers the essential Principles of Animation such as Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Follow Through, etc. Go get it!

This is a really inspirational book! It takes you through the history of Disney animation and how the founding animators discovered their secrets and modeled their craft. You will learn all about the fundamentals of great animation and how to apply proven techniques to form your skill. It is easy to read and is full of great imagery and references. Highly recommended!

Wow!..First of all, the presentation of the book is amazing. The cover, the paper, everything. And wen you open the book, is simply what you need for start to see animation as an art...no, in my case, an "excuse" for use a software (I sarting to go to 3d animation). Buy this book!

The love produces animation! That book exhibition that! That amazes of book! That fantastic thing is the friendship and the production of those two geniuses of the animation! The life and the those two men's art is a thing that contemplates in all us, impassioned by animation. They are my life examples, and one day I would like cannot at least to arrive close to what did. That book, and the dvd about the life of the two, is obligatory things in any school, or shelf peculiar of any person that has feelings and sensibility to understand the beautiful things of the life. Wonderful? Spectacular? Grandiose? I don't have as defining that book. He is more than any definition that somebody can create. It is the love transformed in cartoons overflowing for the pages of that wonderful book. I will buy more a, to be in the shelf without nobody opens it, and my descendants only can you make it for they know a time and such some brilliant people and magics as these highlighted in that spectacular book.

This sequel to A Gangster's Girl was a very good and fast paced read,it was way better than the first book. I wasnt to upset with how it ended because I know there is a 3rd and upcoming 4th installment to this series. so now Im about to go read The Naked Truth and i also look forward to reading Return of a Gangster's Girl which drops at the end of this month!!!I hope those get even better!!

I read a wide variety of books, but this was very amateurish. No real character development. I'm about half way through and contemplating not finishing it. Urban fiction, when done right, can be very good. Read something by Leo Sullivan or Tracy Brown to understand what I'm saying. They have skills!

After reading "A Gangster's Girl", I couldn't wait to read, "Married to the Game". I finished this book in one day. It's definitely a page turner. This book made me want to cry and cuss, lol! There are some parts in this book that will definitely make you cry. Duke was my favorite character. He was just off the hook. I didn't like the ending, but the book was hot!

the first book was off the chain i could not put the book down i read it in one day , but this second book was not that good it dragged on and was alittle to the left for me

i LOVED THE BOOK AND I MUST SAY CEAZIA NEVA SEEMS TO AMAZE ME ITS LIKE SHE DOES ONE WILD THING FROM DA NEXT BUT I REALLY LIKE DA BOOK AND ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS GO N BUY IT

This is the absolutely perfect spanish/english reference dictionary. It is compact, easy to use & access.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R30GE5FXG5K9ZE Watch my video review and I will tell you what's good about this dictionary and what's bad about it.

Great little pocket dictionary for those who don't want to carry around a heavier full-sized eng/span diction. It's not 'quite' as complete, but it's about 99% there. It's going to have all of the important words

Great little pocket dictionary for those who don't want to carry around a heavier full-sized eng/span diction. It's not 'quite' as complete, but it's about 99% there. It's going to have all of the important words

I use this dictionary quite a bit as it is small enough to be light and easy to carry and big enough to contain most everyday words. I think that the content is good but I compared to my other (larger) dictionary by Harper Collins the paper is somewhat gray and the words don't stand out as well. Also the ink is not the most permanent so if you are not careful you can end up with gray stains on your fingertips. I would recommend spending slightly more to get something with a higher quality of paper and printing.