Benedict Books

I didn't expect much from this product and didn't find it particularly valuable. As I thought, it was an extract from largely government data with numbers in somewhat interesting areas.

From the back cover:

Faced with the loss of her family's plantation, Jude Latour's only hope of staving off financial ruin is by finding her adoptive father, who's been missing since the end of the Civil War. Desperate, she turns to bounty hunter Tucker Boone--a man with an eye for the ladies, and a reputation for bringing in his man. What she couldn't know was that the hard-jawed gun-for-hire harbored a deadly secret. Or that when he accepted her money, he would steal her heart...

Nothing could have prepared Tucker Boone for a woman like Jude. She had insisted on following along by his side, saved his hide in an outlaw ambush, and gotten under his skin. But with every step, he was betraying her with a vow of vengeance on the man she had hired him to find. As he swept her into his arms and fought the enemies that threatened them both, he knew he had to tell her the truth...and win back the courageous beauty who taught him how to love.

And my review:

This book wasn't awful, but it wasn't very good, either. If I'd had nothing else to read, I might have finished it.

There weren't any real glaring problems with this book, just minor complaints. First, this is a historical novel that doesn't give the year the story is set in. This is a pet peeve of mine. If it's soon after the Civil war, why couldn't the author provide the year? It wouldn't have taken that much more effort.

The characters were not ones that capture your heart. They were just there. I couldn't see anything that special about either the hero or the heroine. I didn't hate them, but I wasn't cheering for them, either. A good book should have characters that you love. That wasn't the case here. I couldn't see any compelling reasons why they should fall in love with one another. It was more of a "well, we're thrown in together so much, is must be love!" Not very convincing or moving.

Some of the things the characters did didn't make much sense, either. Like in the beginning, when Jude first tracks down Tucker to hire him to track down her step-father. Why on earth does she wake Tucker up at gunpoint? There was no compelling explanation as to why she chose to do this (except, I suppose, to make the situation more tense). He wasn't dangerous, and hadn't given her any reason to believe so. How many of us real people would wake up a stranger, who's services we want to hire, at gunpoint? I kept reading to see if this would be answered, but it wasn't.

They way this book reads, I suspect it was a sequel to a previous book. The author often references the heroine's history in a way that leads me to think that she was a minor character in another novel before. This made the book feel rather disjointed, as if it couldn't stand on its own.

The plot was nothing spectacular either. I read a lot of this kind of romance, so an author has to make it fresh and orginal for it to keep me turning the pages. That didn't happen here. In the world of historical romance, this one felt rather sub-par and recycled. I don't recommend buying this.

I love the content of the book, however, it just looked like a photo copy of the original and you can get the same information in T. L. Johnsons book The FAMILY WORSHIP BOOK that has the same Catechism for Young children and the Shorter Catechism as well and other oodles more wonderful stuff in it.

I was disappointed when I recieved this version....

I had used an earlier edition of this book in one of my courses years ago and found it to be full of errors. I should have examined this 5th edition more carefully before I chose it as the text for a course this year. I looked at the early chapters, and they seemed to be okay. Since I didn't have many other options at the time and the coverage was at the right level for my undergraduate polymer chemistry course, I went with it. The problem I have found is that the book is full of errors, poorly written, and very poorly edited.

For example, the mechanisms given in section 7.16 would not pass muster in any sophomore organic chemistry course. They omit steps, leave out electron pairs, have arrows pointing in the wrong direction, and show electron pairs moving to atoms that already have a full complement of electrons.

As an example of poor editing in section 7.6, aramids are defined in one paragraph and then defined again in the very next paragraph and then still again a few paragraphs later. It's a though these paragraphs were cut and pasted from someplace, but never read together. Kevlar is also called "Kevlor" in this section.

Some other errors include calling an alkoxide ion a "carbanion", making references to data in a table when the data isn't there, referencing the wrong table in an earlier chapter, and even referencing the wrong early chapter.

I cannot recommend this book for use in a classroom. Students tend to take what is written as the gospel, or they don't have the confidence to question something that looks wrong to them. There are other books that are much better for use in an undergraduate course in polymer chemistry.

This nominally comprehensive textbook on polymer chemistry is filled with information, but appears to be carelessly edited. Since this is the fifth edition, it may be that material added throughout the editions have been tacked on to existing material without trying to integrate it into the previous material. Many times, the same information is repeated in subsequent paragraphs with different words. I have found many typo, spelling and chemical formula errors in the text.

This item was not the ISBN number that I typed at the top of the page and then ordered from the list given.
I have sent back this item and am waiting for the refund. My daughter bought it from a classmate to have when school started.

An Oblate of Saint Benedict promises to live their life in obedience to the church. Although you needn't agree, you must obey. Part of that obedience is the ability to refrain from spreading your personal disagreement in order not to draw others from church teaching.

"Benedict in the World" highlights several Oblates. Unfortunately, I found the highlights to be less than inspirational and, in one chapter, violating the promise of obedience.

Chapter five tells the story of the Crowleys. This chapter borders on ridiculing the Catholic Church and the Pope for their views on birth control. It quotes the author of "Papal Sin" and explains that the Crowleys publicly dissented to the publication of "Humanae Vitae."

I recommend that you pass this one by.

from marcos to aquino: local perspective on political transition in the philippines

Not worth the money. I guess there are only so many ways to get to one place, and not many new roads are made. This is just a marketing ploy to get you to buy the latest book, but there's no new information.

The ad was deceptive. It states 4 Volume set but you only get Volume 1. I notified Amazon and they sent me a new shipment and they only sent Volume 1 again. I sent both shipments back. I'm not paying almost $43.00 for one paperback book.

I was looking forward to reading this book, but was disappointed to find it was photocopied and many of the pages were not legible. Because of this, I returned the book.