Abbey Books

I would have given this 5 stars. However, it's missing SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, which is either the second or third most popular Austen novel (competing with EMMA).

So I recommend The Modern Libary's THE COMPLETE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN (1992) Volumes 1 & 2.

Laer Carroll

Of greater interest to the reader with knowledge of Bermuda and sailing than to one who values subtle writing. The plot and characters are disappointingly transparent.

Series Review:

Out of all Enid Blyton's many mystery series, "The Famous Five" (made up of Julian, George, Dick, Anne and Timmy the dog) are certainly the most well-known, whereas "The Five Find-Outers" are virtually unknown. However, there are some interesting similarities and differences between the two groups, and though there are certainly some faults to "The Five Find-Outers" series, they should not be discounted completely. The name "The Five Find-Outers" is rather silly, but children themselves think it is too (Bets thought it up in the first book, and though they mocked the name, it stuck) and as always there is an element of sexism in the novels (if there is exciting night-time activities to be done, the girls are invariably left at home), but the mysteries themselves are interesting without being too simplistic or too difficult. A mystery is established, clues are carefully considered, suspects are drawn up and discarded through a process of elimination and quick-minded young readers will enjoy the logical process of uncovering the mystery - and perhaps get the thrill of figuring out the solution before the characters do. I well remember feeling exhilaration at guessing the location of the diamonds, or the identity of the criminal, or the whereabouts of the hideaway, or whatever the McGuffin of the particular book was before its completion.

"The Famous Five" all had separate personalities, all contributing something different to the group: Julian was the leader, George was the vivacious tomboy, Anne was the little housekeeper, and Dick was...well, perhaps Dick was a little bland. But on the whole, the children could be enjoyed as individuals and worked together as a team. The same cannot be said of "The Five Find-Outers", which perhaps was part of the reason this series were neither as distinctive nor as popular as "The Famous Five". Instead, the Find-Outers revolved around one core character, Frederick "Fatty" Trotteville, who was more intelligent, more interesting and more colourful than the other four children put together. Indeed the characters of Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets are hardly relevant, they exist simply as sounding-boards to Fatty's genius and one could argue that the books could have easily been written with the other four children removed entirely from the picture.

Yet at the same time, the lack of character interest in the other children is practically made up for in the figure of Fatty. As robust as his nickname would suggest, Fatty is every child's dream. He can disguise himself into any individual he pleases, is fluent in French, gifted at ventriloquism and storytelling, can spout verses off the top of his head, always has plenty of money and impeccable manners, and has a mind worthy of a young Sherlock Holmes. As one friend says of him; he is accidentally good at most things. In short, he is a fantastic character, and one can only wish that we were like him in some way. The fact that he is not some chiselled boy-model makes him even more extraordinary. When faced with a new mystery (which conveniently pops up in every book), he takes charge of the other children much like a police officer organises his troops in order to solve the crime logically, intelligently and efficiently.

This is of particular note since one reoccurring conceit in all the books is the presence of the local policeman Mr Goon, an aptly-named bullish oaf who despises Fatty and is forever attempting to thwart his attempts at solving the various mysteries they come up against. Given the resources he has at hand Goon certainly has the upper hand, but most of the appeal of the books comes from the fact that Fatty always comes up trumps, embarrassing Goon in the process. The rivalry between them is constantly amusing (though to an older reader, perhaps repetitive) as is Fatty's beloved Scottie-dog Buster's loathing of Goon. By the time Police-Inspector Jenks turns up at the end of every book, any young reader will be anticipating the denouncement of the mystery by a triumphant Fatty and a humiliated Goon.

Book Review:

"The Mystery of the Hidden House" is not the best in the series if you're looking for a mystery tale; instead Blyton introduces the character of Mr Goon's nephew Ern and the Five's reaction to his presence. Ern has heard of Fatty's reputation and (disliking his uncle immensely) is eager to prove his worth to the other children. Being a little dense and pompous, he is the perfect victim for the Five's mischief as well as a welcome diversion from the fact that they have been banned from involving themselves in any mysteries over the holidays (courtesy of Goon's influence over their parents). And so the Five have a wonderful time creating a mystery for Ern's benefit, and the gullible boy easily swallows their stories: two rival gangs of robbers and kidnappers, lights flashing on Christmas Hill, clues strewn across the countryside and the existence of loot stored in the old mill - all of which are carefully choreographed by the Five. Unbeknownst to them, Goon also gets caught up in the story, believing it to be true, which gives added humour to the proceedings.

And yet, when a prank with Ern goes awry he ends up overhearing an odd conversation deep in the countryside. Fatty's interest is piqued, and he finds himself uncovering a secret in Bourne Woods... As this mystery goes, there really isn't much of one, it is simply the children discovering a criminal location, topped off with a case of mistaken identity and kidnapping (a plot development which is pretty much the norm in all the books in this series!) Most of the book is devoted to humorous episodes concerning the stringing along of Ern (and Goon); still it's entertaining enough for the young reader.

This book gathers together some half-dozen plays presented by Ireland's Abbey Theatre in the early 90s. The title is somewhat misleading, as all of the plays were presented at the Peacock, the Abbey's new writing stage. Its main purpose is to make the plays available to readers and potential producers, and in this it succeeds admirably, although there are a couple of notable plays from the period that didn't get included, presumably because they were already available elsewhere. (This makes the volume somewhat unrepresentative.) The plays themselves are of varying quality. Michael Harding's "Hubert Murray's Widow" is an interesting, darkly funny tragicomedy (or comitragedy) about a dead gunman and the events surrounding, and after, his death; Donal O'Kelly's "Asylum! Asylum!" is a characteristically angry piece about the treatment of an African refugee, written some time before the number of refugees in Ireland skyrocketed, and thus anticipating a major current social issue. Tom MacIntyre's "Sheep's Milk on the Boil" is an impenetrable scrap of whimsy, and Niall Williams' "A Little Like Paradise" is a sentimental mood piece about the West, the kind of play that has since been stamped into a bloody pulp by the erratic genius of Martin McDonagh. Neil Donnelly's "The Duty Master" is dull but worthy, a portrait of an Irishman teaching in an English public school, and about as exciting as it sounds. There are some excellent production shots, but one is not told which actor played which role and thus identifying what scene is being depicted is not easy. Plus, the American editor suffers from a too-misty-eyed appreciation of Irish drama and the respective qualities of the plays, and tries to hard to fit them into the familiar canon. But a useful book, especially for those that want to put the plays on.

This work is o.k., especially for 1984, but he listened to some of my criticisms AND included my work in his latest book, essentially an updated and expanded version of this tome. If you are a collector, get this...if not, get Melanson's "The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency" instead.
Vince Palamara
Secret Service expert, History Channel, author of 2 books, in over 32 other author's books, etc.

Sanctuary is a 1982 board game based upon the anthology series Thieves World. The production values are rather low and the rules horribly written. If you take the time to really, really sift through the rules you can enjoy this game.
The neat thing is that the game comes in many forms. You can play it solitaire. Your goal is to clean up crime in Sanctuary. Or you can play the basic design for two to five players or an advanced version of the same game. Finally, you can try a six player version (just so you don't leave anyone out. I found the advanced game the most satisfying.
You goal is to commit thefts so that you gain and secure 300 silver pieces. Along the way you may luck into 10 or 20 silver pieces here or there. Of course you will lose money as you get thrown in the dungeon, mugged by other players, have bad luck, or choose to buy weapons, thugs, or magic to assist you.
In a neat convention, players move their characters and the guards during their turn. Two six sided dice and one ten sided die are rolled and the player uses two to move his/her character with the remaining die used to move the guard. In this way players can choose to move the guards away from them, toward their competiton, or hopefully both. After moving to the designated area players burgle, mug, or pick pocket their way to wealth and retirement. Fortune smiles on the players in the liberal mecca of Sanctuary as even the worst of thefts results in only a temporary setback - no death or dismemberment here.
Overall this is a decent game, but it will take you awhile to find this out. Readers of the books will enjoy the game for nostagic reasons.

John Hall has now published seven Holmes-Watson pastiches, counting this one, and all have been entirely enjoyable, with the possible exception of the very first, THE TRAVELS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, about which I "ha' me doots." He has also been "guilty of several monographs" of Holmesian scholarship, again seven. And he has written mysteries set in modern times.

He gets Watson's style and personality down quite well, and is enough of a Holmes scholar to have some real fun with byways of the Canon. In this novel it is 1903, Holmes and Watson don't see much of one another, and there are nasty doings at the little-known but ultra-prestigious Abbey School, where the most powerful men of the British Empire send their sons. A wealthy student has been expelled for a petty theft he obviously did not commit, and his expulsion is immediately followed by the mysterious death of a schoolmaster who has been previously overheard, by students, muttering about a "shocking situation." When Holmes is asked to take the case, the faculty stonewall him totally, so he is forced to send Watson in disguise to fill in temporarily for the dead teacher of english, and to cast about for clues and information.

There are some deliberate echoes of "The Priory School," a case said to have taken place just a few years earlier. The goals of the three revealed villains sound plausible to me, as deduced by Holmes, but they conveniently come to nasty ends before any confession, leaving certain plot points unresolved.

As usual in Breese books, misprints are very few. In fact, I noticed only one. On p. 19 the character named Watson Minor is called Watson Major. [There is a Major, but he is not in that scene.]

Here are 160 pages of Holmes and Watson that won't insult your intelligence, your literary standards, or your love of the characters. [Take particular note of the new career Watson is contemplating on pages 25!] Recommended.

In Book 8 there is a lot of wrapping up going on. Many threads regarding Roxane and Jihan are closed (or are they?). Tempus returns to Sanctuary and is reunited with Niko as his partner.

The Thieves World books are always at their best when they are slowly building to a climax using the small stories of the Maze and palace that the various writers do so well. The relay format does not work as well at crafting a single climax point. The result is not bad, exactly, but it reads like a more typical fantasy series installment. One of the nice thing about Thieves World at its best is that it does not read like that at all. There were also some very nice plot points opened up in Book 7 that are completely ignored here-- a little bit of continuity with some of those elements would have been nice.

Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris and C.J. Cherryh were the writers in book 8. As you can imagine, begin at the beginning and not here if you have not read any of the books before.

Although it is valid to group these two novels together, I feel that someone should mention that Northanger Abbey is a parody of gothic novels, particularly those of Mrs. Radcliffe. Those expecting a horror story will be disappointed.

I read the reviews posted above, and was discouraged, but I needed an Oracle reference right away and this was the only book available at the library. Just as one person said, the first 2 chapters aren't wholly necessary and promote Oracle a lot. On the other hand, the book is printed by the Oracle Press. Chap. 3 provides details on Oracle's implementation of a DB, and Chap. 4 is where it *really* begins.

It is a lot at once for a true novice. I'm not so bad -- I had a pretty good crash course on relational DB ideas and SQL in 2 lectures of a web programming class once, for use with mySQL. This book is good enough to explain the Oracle side of things. And the writing isn't all that bad, i.e. it's more than just a copy of the manuals, IMO. It suits me well enough as an intro to the Oracle syntax and way of doing things.

Being new to oracle databases this book basically highlighted the new features of oracle 9i while attempting to provide a beginners overview of the Oracle database.

The book also does not provide a download of the databases used in the code examples. As a true beginner, i would have liked to follow the code examples in the book, and try out SQL commands. This would have provided me a better understanding of what the author was explaining, as well as 'try out' the code examples.

However, if you are seekeing OCP certification and have a fundamental understanding of SQL and databases this book may assist you with converting to the Oracle structure. I've read the whole book without any Oracle or database experience, and was able to gain a better grasp of the architecture during OCP training courses.



As with all manuals i read there's always useful information contained within them, so i would not completely dismiss this book.

I am truly a beginner in Oracle; I have experience as a computer programmer and with SQL Server 2000, but never really have played around with Oracle. So I was looking for a beginner's guide to get me started. Sadly, I picked this one because I thought since it's from Oracle, it would have the best resources at hand.

Almost immediately, I was disappointed: Chapter 1 is a tribute to how amazing Oracle is and how godlike Larry Ellison is and it's filled with pages and pages of revenues and sales. What a waste of paper. Then Chapter 2 tells me how to use newsgroups and Google: more wasted paper. I come to Chapter 3 and I think I finally get into learning something. Then I notice they concentrate on Sun Solaris as the operating system which isn't very helpful to a person trying to learn this on his own at home. What follows is a list of files and processes: very dry and certainly over the head of a beginner trying to start using Oracle. Then on page 84 I read, "In earlier releases of the Beginner's Guide, we walked you through the Oracle server installation. With Oracle 8i and now 9i, it's too big a topic to cover in a book this size." That's how they start out their step-by-step walkthrough of setting up your first Oracle database. Oh, the last step reads, "12. Read the rest of this book." To me, the book wasted 80 pages then tells me installation would take too long. Very disappointing.

At this point, the small jokes the authors throw in are just insulting as the book slips into unreadability.

Perhaps this book is good for someone sitting at an already-configured database terminal at their work running on Solaris. And I would also think you'd have to have some experience running some previous version of Oracle. This book is certainly NOT for beginners. I hope I didn't waste my money so that after I read a REAL beginner's guide, I can come back to this one and learn something.

Technical computer books are pricey enough that I normally browse a book pretty carefully before deciding to buy it. 'Oracle 9i: A Beginner's Guide', on the other hand, was an impulsive purchase that I regretted immediately. Time spent trying to get some use out of it has only hardened my opinion.

As an experienced Sybase DBA trying then to set up Oracle at home on Linux, I wanted three things primarily: Clear and complete installation and configuration instructions to supplement Oracle's disorganized and hit-or-miss instructions; Clear explanations of Oracle's architecture and unique features; and a good introduction to Oracle PL/SQL.

This book scored only one out of three. The two chapters on PL/SQL I found pretty useful. However, the material on architecture and features is confusing, largely because the writing is not well structured into main topics and subtopics. It also fails to provide good illustrations or to relate the architecture to concerns of installation and configuration. For instance, we are told about the function of redo logs, rollback segments, and undo tablespaces in vague and general terms, whereas a DBA needs to know precisely what they do. Rollback segments and undo tablespaces appear to serve basically the same purpose, according to my reading of the book. Should both be used, else what are the criteria for choosing one over the other? The text never gets there.

The installation instructions deserve a paragraph of their own. The index does not even list "installation", which probably is appropriate since the material covering installation was removed from this edition of the book, albeit incompletely. The 1 1/2 pages (!) beginning on page 84 bear the heading "So, You're the New Oracle 9i Database", perhaps the silliest of the book's many typographical errors. Then the first paragraph tantalizes "We are going to do a high-level, step-by-step walkthrough of putting up your first Oracle 9i database. Get yourself a cup of coffee and a comfortable chair; for those of you in business class, raise the footrestbeforehand...here we go:"...and then...the flight suddenly is over while the coffee is still warm. A note in italics advises the reader that "In earlier releases of the Beginner's Guide, we walked you through the Oracle server installation. With Oracle8i and now Oracle 9i, it's just too big a topic to cover in a book this size."

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that they should have just made the book bigger, and cut out all the gimpy, insulting attampts at humor, and the long-winded first chapter in praise of Oracle, Inc. Not every book from Oracle Press is this bad. I have browsed 'Oracle 9i DBA Handbook' by Kevin Loney and Marlene Theriault, and it is far better written, concise, organized, and informative (As always, take a look and make sure it covers the material you need). See also O'Reilly's 'Oracle 9i Essentials', or better yet the new edition for 10g.

Wow, there is a lot of unfair bashing on this book.

This book covered exactly what its cover title said...

"...A Beginner's Guide. Learn the essentials of Oracle..."

Learn the essentials of Oracle was described very well. You get the feel of how the internals of Oracle go. If you are in a job interview and the interviewer asks some basics like the SGA, cursor or what is net8? You'll be laughed at for not having this simple yet broad database knowledge. Very few books describes the Oracle internals and general memory structure of all databases. It sure beats reading the white papers and manuals on the Oracle website. Anyway, this was the section that I thought was highly significant and it distingueshed itself from other books. I think some of the bad reviews below were not expecting what the book's title asys. "Learn the essentials of Oracle." If you want to buy a book on how-to write SQL and learn nothing else, then there are some SQL books targeted solely for only SQL writing.