Clay Books

This work of fiction tells the saga from the years 1853-54 concerning a load of Du Pont powder on its way to Fort Bridger being tracked by Watonga, Black Coyote, and his 100 horse band of Wind River Arapahoes.

The Pittsburg and Conestoga freight wagons painted blue with red wheels contain 24 full kegs of Du Pont prime powder, 600 pounds in all that Watonga and his warriors want. But both Andy Hobbs, and Morgan Bates agree with Jesse Callahan, Jim Bridger's scout and employee, that these wagons are going through to Fort Bridger. Ole Gabe will get his powder no matter what. Well, we will see!

Jesse Callahan, Tokeya Sha in the Minniconjou language, rides "Heyoka", a smoke-gray Siouxan mare who can go forever and more. All along the Medicine Road, as the Arapahoe and Lakota call the Oregon Trail, Jesse and his wagons struggle to reach Fort Bridger. Jesse has been promised a $500 bonus if he can get these few wagons safely through. Along the way a group of immigrants who have turned back toward Fort Laramie get in his way needing help.

Clouding the issue is the allegation that there is a white man working with the Arapahoes, a man who in turn takes his orders from Deseret or Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital city, while ultimately the orders come from Brigham Young himself.

This novel from Clay Fisher is very good for its time, the mid-1950's, and will give any reader a few night's reading pleasure. As will all Clay Fisher/Will Henry books a good story can be expected, and is always delivered.

Semper Fi.

I found this book very enjoyable: convincing as a work of history, vivid in detail and surprisingly light in touch given its subject matter. The book is more about the origins and development of right-wing extremism in Bavaria as a whole, rather than just Munich. But of course it is the capital that has always attracted most attention, thanks partly to its cultural pre-eminence in German life and rather more to the fact that Hitler and the Nazis started up there. What the book brings out most clearly is a) the existence of far-right attitudes and anti-Semitism many years before Hitler's arrival in Munich, and b) the way in which Bavaria's abortive Soviet revolution in 1919 turned most of the population into ultra-conservatives unable to see clearly the terrible dangers inherent in Nazism. Even today, Bavaria is the most conservative of German states, and there are still Bavarians alive who prefer to remember the war more for the Allied bombing of Munich than for the abominations committed by the Nazis and SS.

I've read this title several times to my granddaughter and we have loved pouring over the pictures. We marvel at Robert Bender's artistic technique that makes Mattie's cloak and Stephen's coat look like fleece..soft enough to touch. One of our favorite illustrations is the cover. The lights hung on the trees, the snow falling, the animals of the woods nearby, the "witch's'" small, rather inviting, brick house. How beautiful! The illustrations blend perfectly with the story of a little boy who visits a neighbors home, rather out of sorts, and returns to his own with the Christmas/Hanukkah spirit. What a treasure to have as part of our home library.

So yes, we can all agree that this book is definitely not for everyone. But my God, when the right people find it... they'll be in for one heck of a good read. It's a motley crew of characters, but all have heart -- which is why what they do doesn't matter as much as why they do it in the first place. I'd say this is an author who's going far... and it all starts here.

Mr. Chapman has written a horrifying road novel with things touching things that shouldn't and body parts in laps and on the road. Just when you think it's getting really gross there's a tap on your shoulder in the bathtub. The perfect gift for Mother's Day.

When I started this book, I was very intrigued with the personification of the Southern United States as a woman's body. I read it agressively hoping the whole book would be so poetic and captivating as the first five pages, but I was wrong. Several sections in the book dragged on too much for too long, even for a relatively short novel. My interest began to wane after half the book when I realized it was getting -quite bluntly- boring, but I held in there. Although it was written nicely with very complex character developement, there was no one central storyline or plot which sometimes makes you wonder "Where is he going with this?" The ending was abrupt and brought the book to an unsatisfying end.

I am struck by how many of the positive reviews for this book were written by people from the author's hometown. I wish I'd noticed this before forking over my dough because this bird don't fly. It's a real turkey. Less a book and more a spec script for an unproduced X-Files episode. Take a pass.

When we first heard Clay Chapman's voice, it came with a Southern Gothic accent out of the mouths of extreme characters, or characters in extreme circumstances. In his exceptional debut collection of short stories, REST AREA, he created a cast of storytellers that included, among others, a woman who held a rabid fox at arm's length for 12 hours, a man crooning to a woman's corpse like she was a mermaid; and a ventriloquist's dummy who was particularly jealous of his owner's new wife. However, his shocking content did not overshadow his stunning turn of phrase; he was obviously a writer to watch.

With his first novel, he has added to the accomplished body of his previous work-literally. MISS CORPUS features the voice of some body indeed, the voice that bookends the novel, the voice of the South: "There's a pulse beneath your feet, radiating through the rest of this country," she says. "More bodies have been buried into me than anywhere else, weighing me down with the heft of humanity." Chapman traces the stories of two men who follow that pulse, and end up at the conclusion adding their bodies into that "heft."

Will comes home from the sea to find his wife dead on the floor. He lies down next to her, pulling a map she had been using over them, so that "North Carolina covered her chest, her chin pointing toward Winston-Salem."(The author attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.) Then, he starts south on the honeymoon that she was planning, taking her along-in plastic coolers. As he sails southward, he sprinkles her body parts along the way, until he could feel her "...sprouting out from the South already, the bits of her body taking root within the people I met on our honeymoon." Along his way, he casts light on the lives of other refugees from the "real" world-the turnpike attendant who gives birth in the tollbooth; the boy who tosses live animals into the paths of passing cars, making them pull into his dad's motel; and others like them. Onward he hurtles, into the embrace of his northbound mate, Philip.

Philip has held vigil for years, waiting for his asthmatic son to return home with his van full of friends. During the wait, his marriage sank deeper than the van where the cops found it, submerged just off the road in a swamp. Chapman goes about as long as he ever has without shocking us here, but he makes up for it when Philip opens the van after it is winched out of the swamp: "Kevin's head fell forward, the neck snapping, his skull dropping. It landed directly into the cup of my hands." Philip takes off with his son on that road trip they never took, following the pulse northward.

As the two men head toward each other, Chapman turns the narrative over to MISS CORPUS. With that switch, he creates a narrative device which transforms a tale of dismembered bodies and dysfunctional lives into a story about the birth of a book, about life. In his best sustained writing, Chapman takes us into the making of the book, "Getting to the heart of what I have to say-the words circulating through my body, cover to cover. You're raising me with your imagination. Your eyes are my lifeblood, every turn of the page another pulse perusing through my body." With the collision imminent, all the elements whirl around-the incident that sparked the book, characters "...staining the bedspread with patches of paragraphs," I-95 as an umbilical cord-until out pops a "bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked tome." As the two cars collide, the coming together becomes not an end, but a beginning-the point at which this story really started. Like a literary big bang, we are back where every moment MISS CORPUS was "destined to live" has been pinpointed for her, and now, for us. Chapman actually produces a moment of exhilaration as the two men lying by the road recognize their part in the production. They smile, knowing that the reader is giving MISS CORPUS life: "When you read me, I can feel my heart beating," she says. Although not a taste for every literary palate, MISS CORPUS will satisfy those with a hankering for the unusual. Those are the people who read this and say as she does: "Sounds like a good read to me."

I am relatively new to trap shooting. This book was just a compendium of useless ideas that clutter the brain and degrade shooting. It astounded me that a subject as inherently simple as trap shooting could be so massively over-complicated in such a fashion.

Do not buy the book. It is a waste of money and time.

There are mixed reviews and this is a preliminary critique as I have not read the book entirely. I will have a look at Costas points particularly, when I do so.

We all know there is a learning curve in trap shooting as in everything else. In the interests of helping someone or one's self much advice and criticism is given by shooters better than the shooter. What really bother's me is the relying of a bird being consistent...what is it with this sport which demands that the target be predictable...is that sport?

When I watch AA's I see basic faults which poise them on the edge of failure ..and I see them miss shots and I wondered why....??

They shoot better than I do and hold cups, pots, certificates, medallions and sponsorships ..but there is something beyond that level, beyond Olympic levels ..elusive, barely touched, not comprehended.

Perhaps like show jumping where one sees for the most part a sack of potatoes with arms and legs sawing on the reins and misdirecting the horse, they are hopeless jumpers in reality which doesn't say much for the lower grades of jumpers.......or shooters if a comparison is made.

The top levels at any individual sport are not the top at all but simply the best at what is called "the correct way". Trap shooting may be the same..the top guys are the tops at a certain system....thus the variables plaguing the new chum.

Immediately I got into this Russel book I realised this is an intellectual writing. This author is not a mantra chanting expert at dummy sucking but the possessor of a mind which understands the reality, passes through the looking glass and returns intact.

I recognise the book's systems and the approaches which I have worked out through hard experience ...but much more as well but which lies ahead of me. Ridiculed for shooting full /extra full,I see this author comprehends precisely why I do.

There is much comment about the gun "it's a gun and not a rifle"...but in actual fact most hits are almost misses!!...accidental hits. One can shoot a rifle two eyes open...the trick is to have the brain know what part of what is seen is the critical point for squeezing the trigger.

To drive one's self to shoot a narrow diameter, through full/extra full choking and shoot spot on..is the absolute level which beats just "a hit". In general even champions will say ..you are an idiot...use 3/4-1/2, scores are what is important and of course they are but there is a dimension beyond scores which come from seconds and "almost missed"..in my view, rarely understood.

Imagine if you or the best were shooting a .22 at the bird...how many experts and world champions would hit it? Extrapolate that..if one can shoot a narrow pattern to powder the birds time after time after time then that person s an accurate shooter. Shooting is essentially based on foot positon when it comes to consistancy...like all base mounted guns a predictable swivel is essential.

I really cannot comprehend how top shooters expect targets to be consistent, that's robot minded stuff. A recent report on an Irish competition referred to an erratic bird causing a champion to miss. In my view an expert shooter isn't one who has memorised every which way,and hits the bird so long as it is in the approved path but the shooter who is truly free and follows the bird wherever it goes.

I look forward to having the books delivered so that I can peruse the interesting mind of the writer at my leisure. One should read a paragraph at a time then lean back, close one's eyes and digest and visualise the material. One then needs to assimilate the information in one's shooting.

Nothing is less productive that experts who don't understand human response, the effect of the unconscious on the shooter, but expect one to follow a pattern they promote....it may get top results but it isn't becoming a top shooter.

There are so many variables. The sox are too tight, the clown alongg side you sights his broken gun at your target, shoes are not comfortable, variable,sunlight has one's graded glasses going beserk, eyesight plays tricks...and so on...the author has answers, in fact he is, to repeat myself, an intellectual writer.

As breathing is a problem for me I work on that...it makes a huge difference. The author knows it. Reducing the field of vision by squinting my left eye makes a huge difference..the author knows it. Visualising the hit is not so simple as one can be distracted...so it has to happen before the concentration exclusion of thinking about it..thinking about it is "static". The author knows it.

Of course many will not understand where his head goes but that is their sad loss. Verbose??(verbage is mentioned whatever that is..!??) ...well, any teacher worth two bob knows one reinforces and then explores, reinforces, reinforces, checks the response..then explores further when the class is ready to move forward.

In my view this book and its companion "Precision Shooting" have no choice but to be good because of the writer's intellectual and thus realistic co-ordination and timing, allowing some things to be training and others to be "unconscious responses". He allows hi readers to learn to grasp the merging of the shooter with the whole field.

Like the late JD Wilton, the brilliant Australian horse trainer,the author will be misunderstood by most people, the so called "racing experts" simply because "they don't get it"...but that has nothing to do with the correctness of the method.

In part that is very understandable as there is so much inconsistency ineducation, the initial education which introduces the brain to new thoughts.Lie JD Wilton he may not become worth hhis value but his legacy will be valued in gold bars...by a few.

Any way, use a system to realise the value of this soft covered jewel.Read the book in small doses if you feel resistant to intellect and to its reality, you can then either accept of reject the report.

So much hogwash is directed at the amateur shooter that reality sounds bizarre..but people genuinely try to help a person out.!!

One day there may be better books on shooting ..I accept that...but right now, these two books, Precision Shooting and are the "ants pants", but not now..

I also accept the criticism about diagrams being at the rear of a book..truly that is a pain in the neck but better than having it one page away rather than havng the text and photos interlaced..or to have detailed "fold outs".

In general reference books are edited by moderately competent people and perhaps cost was a factor...though that is no excuse in my mind to have a reader runnng all over a book to get continuity.

On the other hand illustrations can be a distraction to continuity of written concepts. Somewhere in there the publishers ought to have the decency to have blank pages scattered among photos or two sided illustrations rather than giving the reader a seemingly eternal search for information sustinence and security concerning the subject.

It's not so very hard to merge one's self in with the author but it does require the setting aside of prejudice and ingrained thinking.If you let this book absorb you the rest will follow.

When I read the book fully I'll give a proper review....however at this early stage, I highly recommend it...cheers Tony

Nothing special in this or his other book. I have been trapshooting for a couple of years and really didnt find anything in either of the authors books that I haven't already learned just from shooting or other books that are out there. I looked on the ATA website to see the authors averages but could not find a listing for him so it kind of makes me wonder just how much actual experience the author has. To me that is important as there are a lot of opinions from the author in the book that are hopefully backed by experience and not just someones own personal theories. I would recommend spending your money getting lessons/books from an accomplished, well known shooter rather than on this book.

This book is by far the best how to book I have ever
read. It has more info on attitude that I have ever come
across. Should be read by everyone that has anything
to do with sports!

This book was over the top, I wish it had more pictures to show a shooter what it could look like and I wish it had more info about the 27 yard line shoots but I see James has put that in another book. I give this book a 6 and if the scale went to 10 I would give it a 10, a lot of shooters should read this.
Thanks James,
Bubba

Need to pass some time without too much heavy lifting- this is for you. Good action, not a lot of plausibility. A hero who seems able to do and know everything, while still being a sensitive family man,is the center of this first in a series.

Being a native of Greensboro, I was attracted to this book from the first. Harvey had the locale down pat. He really captures the flavor of the Gate City. Moreover, unlike a lot of crime novels, this one gets the guns right. It may seem like a small thing but nothing is more irritating than an author who tries to be cool with his gun lingo and doesn't know diddly squat about it. Now it is on to reading his other books!

"A Flash of Red" gives non-stop action and is impossible to put down. It never stops, and it is always mixing you up and confusing you (in a good way). I would recommend this book to anyone who likes action.

I've read all of Clancy, Cussler, Dale Brown, most of W.E.B. Griffin, Ludlum, and Stephen Hunter, and others, and I find this book refreshing with action. It is refreshing because of Clay Harvey's good sense of humor that fits naturally with the characters in this story, his development of characters who have close friendships, and his development of a realistic relationship that the main character, Tyler Vance, has with his five year old son. It is also refreshing because of Harvey's ability to describe fighting scenes, as well as his knowledge of guns (which reminds me of Stephen Hunter). Harvey knows how to tell a story and to keep the plot moving, while still spending interesting time in character development - even with the bad guys. And his descriptions of the interaction between Tyler Vance and the local police puts you right there, with some interesting - and humorous - twists.

This book is refreshing because it is not just macho action. It is not just plot driven, although the plot is good and believable. It is also character driven - some of whom you may find yourself wanting to meet. Tyler Vance has some characteristics similar to Clancy's Jack Ryan, in that Vance doesn't have a "dark side" that is so popular in many modern action heroes. Vance is just a good guy - with a real personality - period.
I enjoyed this enough to purchase and read the sequel, "A Whisper of Black", and then the delightful prequel to both, "Dwelling In The Gray".

This 1st book of tyler vance and friends was a fun and fast read. The pace was fast for the most part and the dialouge was witty. I just recently came back from a school for my job where this book took place and it was kind of like kismet that I accidently found this new author and series while browsing in the local bookstore. Now I pride myself in knowing a good action/adventure book when I read one since I've read tons of the stuff in all genres for over 30 years. My final analysis of this guy's 1st book was a fun read and a good blend of humor and decent action sequences, but not one of the best I've read. Now don't get me wrong - its a fun and easy read and I would reccomend it, if you like a slower version of a redneck-type Die Hard. I thought it good enough and the characters banter enjoyable enough that I will read the other two books in the series. I currently just started his newest book titled DWELLING IN THE GRAY, and will be reviewing that one as soon as I finish it. Thats all folks!

This is a beautiful, thoughtful, moving book -- perhaps not Potok's best, but very good nonetheless.

As the Chinese invade South Korea from the North and the civilian population evacuates ahead of the advancing forces, I Am the Clay follows one elderly couple. This childless couple stumbles across a wounded and unconscious eleven year old boy in a ditch, and much to the old man's disapproval the old woman takes the boy along with them. The story follows their harrowing escape from the invaders and the hardships and horrors of their journey, including the often at best indifferent treatment at the hands of their own defending soldiers.

It is a very moving story told in a unique prose style which keeps the reader on his toes as the thoughts of the three characters are often interwoven in the same sentences. It is very much narrative drive, with minimal dialogue certainly until towards the end, and even then there is not a lot; but through the narrative we learn the thinking and motives of the characters. The old woman, caring and very much taken with the boy; the old man torn between his fear of what the boy will cost them and the good fortune he seems to bring them; and the boy, dependant, trusting yet intelligent and resourceful, a boy with integrity. It is also through the thoughts and dreams of the characters that we learn much of their individual and very different backgrounds.

A compelling and beautifully told story, very different in style from some of Chaim Potok's novels, with three very different yet appealing characters, even the seemingly bitter old man has his redeeming points. The horror and futility of war inevitably come across, indirectly for there is no propaganda here, no hidden agenda. My only reservation is that the conclusion seems somewhat abrupt; and I would really like to know the eventual prospects for the young boy especially. It is a very good story, but perhaps not quite as good as The Chosen and its sequel, or the Asher Lev books.

'I am the Clay' is a refreshing change to Potok's readers from an intimate view of Jewish family life to an intimate portrayal of innocent people caught in war.
Set in South Korea during the Korean war of the mid 1950's, I am the Clay is centered around the journey of two elderly South Korean peasants as they struggle to save a young orphaned boy they found in a ditch, and travel north (a poor choice during the war).
The book, as with most of Chaim Potok's, is very well-written and detailed.
However, I am the Clay lacks the intimacy od Potok's other celebrated works due to the fact that Potok, despite having served for two years as a Chaplain in South Korea and Japan, is largely ignorant about Korean culture. I am the Clay has two peasants who believe animals to be spirits, and a little boy to be a magical charm. Although the characters are intended to be simple-minded, it is not a part of Korean culture to believe animals to be spirits, and human beings are not regarded as lucky charms.
for this, I am the clay is certianly one of Chaim Potok's less imporessive novels. However, he does deserve three stars for experimenting with themes outside of Orthodox Judaism.

I am amazed at how Chaim Potok wrote this book, especially since he served as a Chaplain in the Korean war. He should learn more about Asian culture before he makes a direct comment on it. For example, he said that the Japanese do not use the Chinese characters, when, in fact, they do. Isn't that a surprise?
Potok needs to get over his obsession with the human phallus in this book. He talks about it in the most annoyingly random places you could ever imagine. It often has no relevance whatsoever to do with the book.
I think he also does not give enough credit to Koreans in terms of common knowledge. A great example of this is when the main characters think that bats are mouse-shaped spirits that fly.
The storyline of the book is of the utmost simplicity, and as the first reviewer of this book said, it is often easy to feel as though Chaim Potok had not enough to say and decided to "stretch things out" a bit.
Oh, and on the back of the book, it says that the people are heading north in the Korean war. They turn back north at one point, but the Chinese came and invaded south. Why on earth would anyone ever want to run north during the war?

I am an avid reader and liked/loved every book I ever read by Chaim Potok well until now. Sorry to say that this book was dragging and there were so many repetitions throughout the book that it got underneath my skin. It's one thing to write in detail (which I do enjoy) and it's another to make the reader feel like the writer has nothing to say therefore "lets stretch this out".
This was one of the very few books that I could not even finnish reading. I read about 3/4 of it and I had to put it down.
The story line was interesting and the book would've been enjoyable only if.....

This was a pretty strange book. I felt as the other reader did who said it wasn't what he expected and hurried through it so he could give it away.. Very forgettable.

The author obviously tries TOO hard to write here. Too much icing, not enough cake. His descriptions are too redundant and become trite after three pages of the same thing. This might be his first book he has ever composed. I was sad, not about the storyline but about the authors style. I recommend you move on to other titles....

This book is James Baldwin transported to bourgeois, black LA society. It's a courageous book to write in our times and it deals with many themes that contemporary black fiction tends to avoid. You don't find too many novels whose centerpiece is an angelic male prostitute whose dazzling attractiveness overwhelms male and female characters alike in this powerful novel. Clay's novel shares James Baldwin's willingness to explore the psychological challenges of blackness in their erotic context. The unrealistic expectations and the naive perfectionism of black elite expectations guilt the main characters of this novel into destructive decisions as they wrestle with their own identity and past failures that they seek deny and suppress.

If you're thinking about buying this novel, do check out about ten to twenty pages of the prose first. I can see how many readers have a love hate relationship with this book. Some readers will be alienated by a narrative style that interweaves past and present events and the poetic prose. Others will applaud this author for taking some risks with a style that deviates from standard black contemporary fiction.

I was moved by the story and I'll recommend it, although I advise readers to consider this more a dark erotic exploration of gender and identity than the steamy novel being advertised in the book reviews on the cover.

3.5 stars

--SD

"A lust-laced hallelujah."

That's how G. B. Mann described the steamy novel, In Search of Pretty Young Black Men by award-winning filmmaker and playwright Stanley Bennett Clay. The quote, by the author of Low-Hanging Fruit, is on the back cover of the dust-jacket. I made a skeptical little sound at the magnificent, though extremely `authorly' quip-one carefully crafted to be repeated, and therefore, somewhat self-serving.

Why am I repeating it? Because after reading the book, I realize that Mr. Mann's four little words can't be bested. He hit the nail with this one ... dead center.

I took the provocatively titled tome on my birthday cruise and between peaceful moments staring at the sea, I was enraptured by this tale of Dorian Moore, "... a mysterious and seductive young man who provides comfort to the moneyed, the neglected, the lost, and the lonely in an elegant hilltop community in Southern California."

It was the title that drew me in, and I ordered it from Amazon without knowing a thing about Stanley Bennett Clay. Maybe because I've resigned myself to the fact that, in a way, my life has been a search for pretty young black men ever since I WAS one ... and also that, until the day I die, they'll have the heart-stopping ability to bring a smile to my face, a tingle to my nether-region, and make me play the biggest fool. Yeah. The good ones can.

As J and I sun-bathed and enjoyed the pleasant rocking of the ship (he was reading the hip debut by Blaire R. Poole ... Breathe), I peeked over my shades at the most pleasant sight. A real, live, pretty young black man (who'd only been old enough to drink for ten minutes, tops) sauntered by looking edible, dangerous and darkly Brazilian in his Speedo. My elbow nudged J and we both watched him set up a deck chair opposite us ... and then put on a seductive show involving languid application of oil, and a few choice stretches.

`Oh ... my ... God.' J muttered, expressing his appreciation for my heads-up.

I thought of Stanley Bennett Clay's character, Dorian Moore-who drove some residents of the exclusively rich black enclave of Baldwin Hills to lascivious and tragic distraction-and I had to admit that lust for such heavenly creatures ... can do exactly that.

Stanley Bennett Clay grabs you by the nuts, and slowly squeezes. In Search of Pretty Young Black Men made me question the objectification of the pretty young `anythings' of the world, and ponder society's ideas (and my own) about lust and morality. And reading it was kinda like being ravaged by a pretty young black man. Well ... almost.

You can see glimpses of Clay's talent in some very poetic passages - but they are too rare and far between to save this book. The sexual descriptions are graphic, but unnecessarily so. This is a man who either doesn't know women, only hangs with shallow women, or hates them. The women do not ring true and are simply pathetic. According to Clay, EVERY man is gay and/or enjoys sexual experiences with men. In this brother's world, heterosexual men do not exist, which would explain why the women are so extra'd out, stereotypical, and more like characitures of females than actual, believealbe people. The plot twists cease to be compelling after the initial shocker, which is just absurd. The whole book is rather absurd and ridiculous. Women killing themselves and a women actually finding sexual pleasure in doing so is just pathetic. My entire book club hated this book and others had seen Clay's work before so were very disappointed. If you like grahpic sex - read it. But if you also like tightly woven plots, realistic characters, sensible story progression, or deep and true exploration - DON'T read this book. The only deep character was (surprise!) a gay man who lived his life in the closet and only his relationship with his father seemed to be a good story - the rest was crap.

I was not impressed. The methods used in this book are way more difficult. Sculpting and then cutting it open to put the armature in seems a little silly to me. It is not a book to use for beginners and a practiced sculpter would find it very primative. There are a lot better books out there.

This is a great book. The directions are clear and the pictures show step by step how to sculpt a fairy in polymer clay. My faces are coming out so much better! A must have for the beginning polymer clay sculpter.

I found this book to be very helpful in making fairies. I have tried and tried, but this book makes some of the things I have had problems with much more simple. The pictures are wonderful and close-up. I also love the coupon in the back for receiving goodies at a great price. Regina did a great job on this book. Hope she puts out more.

If you are wanting to learn to sculpture fairies...this is a book well worth the cost. Shows many tools that will be needed, techniques, problem solving and even "Setting the Stage", for taking pictures of your final creation. Love the book!

After reading the positive reviews on this book, I was excited to finally purchase it. Boy was I dissapointed.

For starters, the book is incredibly skimpy considering the price. Next, the photos are terrible, small, blurry, and out of whack in the color department. Even the photo of the author is a blur! When I buy craft books, I feel that clear photos of the steps and techniques are key. This book fails in that area big time!

As someone who's done a lot of sculpting in polymer clay, I was frustrated at the instuctions, especially the face construction. Even the photos of the finished faces are unattractive.

The most dissapointing was that the book offered no instuctions, or even inspiration for variations on the fairies. The cover shows smaller "baby" fairies, and other styles of fairies, but the book never shows you how to achieve these different styles. It doesn't even have a photos gallery of the variations you could create.

Overall, I'm thinking this may be the very first book I return to Amazon in all the years I've been ordering books. If you actually want great photos and technique you can truly learn from, check out "Fairies, Gnomes & Trolls" by Maureen Carlson.

Sorry for bad review but book is not for Professional but novice users and managers.

I concur with just about every other reviewer. At a time when there's such a dearth of introductory material on jsr 168, I expected a lot from this book, but unfortunately got very little out of it, and worse yet, I have had to un-learn some of the practices I picked up from this book.

I got really excited looking over the first chapter's example portlet -- a Lucene search portlet. But there are some glaring mistakes in the code. One fundamental mistake I see a lot is their use of request.getParameter("mode") to retrieve the portlet mode, when it's much better to use request.getPortletMode(). The mode parameter is not always set and can sometimes be null; it's much safer to use the getPortletMode() method. In general, I would have liked more explanation in chapter one on jsr 168 basics. There simply aren't enough texts out there that do this well.

But I do laud the fundamental premise of the book -- using powerful, mature open-source projects (apache lucene and james) -- to build a portal. Search and mail are the foundation of any commercial portal and I think the open source alternatives compete well here; however, they haven't been tied into a framework that you can deploy out of the box, so I think the authors tried to meet a very real need.

This book helped me overcome some difficulties I had in my new portal development tasks and in understanding some of the basic concepts needed for developing portlets within/without a portal framework. This book is definitely worth a look for those interested in portal creation.

As others have noted this book is a rip off. Of the 12 Chapters 6 are completly unrelated to Portal deveelopment. Chapter 2 is Searching with Lucene, 3 - Messaging with Apache James, 4 Object to Relational Mapping with Jakarta OJB and 5 is Content Management with Jakarta Slide.

In fairness there are a couple of useful sections - but overall its quite incomplete.

Enterprise portal based on Portlet is very flexible for rapid development. A good practice is to plug-in quickly a variety of portlets as placeholders to compose a mock-up portal as the baseline for further detailed discussion with stakeholders. Of course, all the parties involved know that the mock-up presented is still a mock-up and they expect there is a production release at the end.

This book is also a mockup, though we readers did not know this until we paid this book as the final deliverable.

This book has two parts. The first part, Open Source Portals, contains 6 chapters. Chapter 1, The Java Portlet API (JSR 168), mainly lists lengthy attribute names and descriptions for CSS Style Definitions and for User Information Attributes, without much explanation. Much better material may be found online just a google away. Many pages are given to the code of a sample portlet. The explanation is as much as the comments made by poor programmer, almost none. Why do we readers have to pay in order to have the pleasure to read poorly commented coding? The sample is built upon Apache Lucene API, though it has not been introduced at this stage at all.

The remaining 5 chapters in the first part introduce several subjects that may be used to support a portal development, researching with Lucene, messaging with Apache James (for mail), object to relational mapping with Apache OJB, content management with Jakarta's Slide, portal security. The authors take these pieces of the components of their portal framework. A problem with this book is that the authors keep introduce a large amount of terminologies and software components without much insight. For instance, they never bother to explain why they use Apache OJB in their portal framework. Isn't Hibernate also a popular O-R mapping tool? I wish the authors explained to us other alternatives and at least some hints of why they choose certain open source tools instead of the others in portal development. This is particular important for using open source tools since there are often many alternatives.

The second part is titled How to Build a Portal. Again, you will discover many placeholders without much substance. For instance, under Design Pattern Consideration in Your Portal, nine standard design patterns are presented, several lines of description for each. The authors just do not bother to explain why they consider these 9 patterns are important for portal development and other are not, or they merely provides a partial list to demonstrate design patterns are still important to portal development as it is for any other development. I will give you another example here. Chapter is devoted to Effective Client-Side Development Using JavaScript. The coverage here is just common for any web development. I do not understand why the authors make this subject an entire chapter, in particular since this book covers a large amount of subjects in a moderate 400 pages, and in particular some fundamental subjects are still missing, such as the coverage of portal servers/containers.

I am not kidding. Open source portal/containers are not covered much in this book for Professional Portal development. Open source portal servers are briefly mentioned in the introductory part in about one page, each in several lines. Apache Jakarta Pluto is covered in a bonus chapter on the book's companion Web site. Apache Jakarta Jetspeed is mentioned in 7 linesJ. Liferay Enterprise Portal is introduced in 15 lines. This books give more coverage on EXo Portal. is introduced in 8 lines and it is introduced briefly again at Chapter 9, when a moderate Portlet is demonstrated.

According to the publisher, "An outstanding team of authors provides a complete tutorial and reference guide to Java Portlet API, Lucene, James, and Slide, taking you step-by-step through constructing and deploying portal applications." The book fails to deliver this promise.