Cameron Books

The advice in this book is stellar. If you are a real artist, you will recognize your own voice, doubts and desires.

another distillation of the salient points of julia cameron's The Artist's Way, this is a good book for anyone who's not going to read any of the others. a primer of sorts, this rilke rip off is inspirational in it's "teachy" way...julia is still julia, and the poetry and accidental wisdom of the rilke "letters to a young poet" is far superior. still, they are two different things, books, texts and neither benefits from any confusing comparison.

cameron continues, predictably, to hold up the morning pages, artist's date and weekly walk as tenants of her faith. she continues to offer insight from her personal and professional experience. there is not much that is new here--but there is plenty of support in this book for her original teaching, which continues to be supportive of artists of all kinds in a kinds in her companionable way.

she supposes an actual correspondence with a penitent male artist--handling in her letters to him the issues of relationships vs. art, sex vs. art, talking about art vs. art, high art vs. making art, addiction vs. art, sobriety vs. art, slow and steady vs. indulgent moods and art making, etc. in her answers, which are all we, as readers, are privy too, she encapsulates the artist's way with a practiced expertise.

as i read all things cameron, i felt a bit of a let down for the lack of new revelations. i was annoyed with the whiny artist correspondent, and found him predictably arrogant, angry, indulgent and useless. i wished she had supposed a woman art maker--or a colleague or peer. but that is where the new possibilities lie, i suppose.

while tempted by the brilliance of rilke's original text, cameron strives to re-iterate her how-to knowledge in a form that disappoints. it seems a rote response to the questions one knows she's been asked a million times. it seems a surface diagnosis. it seems a skimming of the cliches of artmaking.

still, i love her. i read her every word. i collect each new encapsulation of the franchise and recommend her heartily.

This little book is wonderful. It's tone isn't especially coddling (though if you are familiar with the Author's work, that should be no surprise), though it is plenty gentle, and actually quite replete with encouragement. It is the perfect summarization of what Cameron has presented us with over the years, and an excellent reminder that our climb up one hill inevitably brings us to the foot of another, that the reward for living our truth is indeed in the journey itself. A fantastic treat.

This writer (I'd never even heard of her) belittles and demoralizes her imaginary correspondant to the point that any useful or inspiring energy is lost (if it's there at all, it's hard to tell). I pray no actual student of writing or art ever has this woman as a teacher. Cameron is interested in Cameron, asserting her aggressive will, shoving her hideous personality down the reader's throat. She sounds like one of these barking dogs from a cable news debate.

I can hardly see the author (or her letter-writing character), perched on so high a post, talking down to the lowly young artist. "Letters to a Young Artist" may serve well to discourage if not batter the fledgling artist before he or she has even had a chance to find their own voice and style. Those less fledgling may simply toss it with some degree of disgust at the arrogance and cliche treatment of the artistic process. It's not so much that there isn't the occasional grain of truth in the advice given, as that the occasional grain is lost in its tone and cavalier treatment.

This collection of letters is too obviously constructed for a book and is not an authentic exchange with an authentic questioner. Indeed, author Julia Cameron makes it clear these letters are a hodge podge of those she says she receives from fans, a conglomerate of questions and wonderings, seeking guidance and inspiration.

"Dear X" is the salutation heading up this collection of fabricated letters. That alone rather puts one off as lacking in authenticity (or semblence of), abundant only in added chill. How much better to give a letter writer a name, a voice, a persona that would come alive for the book reader. More often than not, the letters begin with a weakly disguised "you write that..." as segue for the missing letter in the exchange. It would have been far more fascinating to have been able to read both sides to this conversation.

Cameron's style (she takes on the voice of an elderly male writer, which in itself lacks authenticity and leaves me wondering - why?) is brash and bullying. Her advice, what there is of it, is so obvious that it offers little value. Mostly, it reads like one long brag perhaps constructed only of hot air (only the dissatisfied are bullies?). Here and there, inexplicably interspersed with literary advice, is advice for the lovelorn. Again, why?

This effort pales in comparison to similar efforts to offer beginning writers a hand up, done brilliantly, and I suggest those searching for such will find much more satisfaction, advice, and encouragement in Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life," Rainer Marie Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," Joyce Carol Oates' "The Faith of a Writer," Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," Stephen King's "On Writing," or a long list of others.

Still reading but almost done. I like the fact that Penny and Patty are featuring in a few of the stories and the girls are travelling back to help. But the theme of the stories are the same but different demons different vanquihing spell. Not much about them being women which is what i thought Charmed stories are about. still entertaining though.

THIS WAS ONE OF THE BEST SHOWS ON TV GOT ALL THE SHOWS NOW WORKING ON THE BOOKS

I truly believe the book could have been written better. THe title "The Warren Witches" stirs up thoughts of stories with other ancestors, not just the main characters, Piper, phoebe and paige.

The only story WITHOUT mention of the power of 3 at all, was Patty's Awakening, by Greg Elliott. I enjoyed that story, but I found it a bit draggy, with nothing to keep you in suspense about.

The stories by Laura J.Burns, Old Friend and Family History, were good, as the stories were original and something different, rather than the usual demon-vanquishing tales. As for "Old friend", I liked it, it was an unique start to the beginning of a exciting story (that's what I thought), but the fact that Wyatt ORBED into the past w/out a spell of potion??? That's ridiculously impossible. Was Laura in a rush when she wrote than story? And the ending for it? Emily's history was changed!!! It was pretty abrupt.. As for "Family history" the fact that P.Russell was supposed to be killed by her cousins, P.Bowen and Baxter... My question is, how could P.Russell have woken Astarte up, when there was no mention of Astarte at all in the Charmed series? If P.Russell DID wake Astarte up in her regular timeline, why should she be killed by her cousins and not by Astarte, which will leave the timeline to be NOT messed up?

Micol Ostow's story, The Crucible, was a horrible story. Such a lame, confusing plot, suspense which leads to something which people might say, "That's it? I thought there was more to this!!" I read this story ONCE and that is it, as reading it a few more times can make me puke at how badly written this story was.

Something old, something new, was also quite cockamamy-ish, in the sense that the 3 witches went into the past to make Prudence Warren to realise how much her powers are to be needed or magic would have left the entire family, and became a story which was passed down for generations.... Confusing, not to mention silly, but the plot was a-okay when it came to suspense...

Witch Trap, like Old Friend, was also unique, but didnt quite make sense that much, though I was happy to read that Melinda Warren appeared to the girls when they were in the dire times.

Old family recipe had an interesting story line about Piper unknowingly tainted the apple pie, by a recipe written by Russell. But my only gripe about the story was its abrupt ending to the obsessions of Paige, Phoebe, Leo, Darryl, etc..

Preconceived was not bad... I enjoyed it, and was amazed at the girls' determination to save their mother's life and not mention anything about themselves to Grams..

If you ask me, 90% of the stories had abrupt endings which made you think a few times over what it meant... I expected more from this short-story collection though..

This book just didn't have the show's signature sparkle. It was SUPPOSE to be about the Warren family, before the sisters!

PROS:

The few things that I liked about this book were the fact that Paige was able to meet Melinda Warren, in fact, Melinda's inclusion in and of itself was a major plus! I loved the episode, "The Witch Is Back," and I only wish that the show could've had more appearances by Melinda.

A bit of Paige's history was a nice thing to have, especially the part about her obsession with Twizzlers. If anyone remembers, Prue also had a love for Twizzlers (Andy said this in Season 1), and I thought that was another nice connection between Paige and Prue.

I really liked the inclusion of P. Russell and P. Baxter and her (P. Baxter's) use of her powers to slow down time. (In the world of the fans, whether Piper was able to actually freeze or just slow things down in her past life has always been a huge debate.)

The story that revolved around Penny and Patty was fabulous! I loved the detail, as well as Patty's struggle with being a witch. It was very believable and probably one of, if not the, best story in the entire book.

CONS:

There were just too many things that didn't add up and the consistent time travel throughout the book got old around the third time The Charmed Ones went back to the past. As well as Wyatt's display of magic in the past. Every fan of the show knows that without a spell or potion, you cannot possess magic when you haven't been born. So Wyatt using his powers in the past, let alone ORBING into the past, was completely unacceptable.

But I believe what bothered me most about this book was the fact that there was absolutely NO Prue! Prue was one of the hugest parts of the Halliwell line, the oldest of the Power of Three, the sister who died which allowed Paige to come in and finally allowed them to vanquish The Source because they had the ENTIRE family! I understand that the sisters couldn't summon Prue from the dead, but they could've had flashbacks of Prue. They refused to show Little Prue in Patty's visions, but they allowed Little Piper and Little Phoebe to be shown. Hell, we didn't even get to see P. Bowen (Prue's past life)! She was barely mentioned in the book! This is the biggest reason why I've given this book such a low score. The absence of the eldest Halliwell sister in any form, without so much as even an attempt at a reason, is completely unacceptable!

Any avid fan of the show could write a better book and not have such easily avoidable errors, inconsistent plots, and they could bring continuity to the storyline!

If the producers ever want to see a good book about "Charmed," I believe they'll need to hire one of us loyal fans who love to write about the show.

Sincerely,
~Camille May, A Fan For Life~

This short story collection was given the wrong title. For a title "The Warren Witches", it should be about various ancestor witches, from Melinda Warren to The Charmed Ones, not just stories about the 3 main characters. And there are too many stories which involved time-travel. At least, there was mention of the girls' main ancestors - their mother, Grams, the 1920s cousins, Melinda, Prudence and Charlotte Warren, and Aunt Brianna - all of them should be familiar with Charmed fans. What about the other Warren Witches? Please. Do let us know more about Prudence's daughter Cassandra Warren-Wentworth. Everyone knows Aunt Brianna as she was famous for defeating Lord Gabriel. As mentioned in "Family History", she said that she has 1 sister, who has gone to America. That sister happens to be Astrid Warren-Wentworth. Both Brianna and Astrid are the daughters of Cassandra. What about letting Charmed fans know more about these witches? And Astrid's three daughters - Laura, Helena and Grace Wentworth? Tell us about any magical disaster they faced, their lives as witches, and how they overcame evil. The Wentworth sisters, each had a daughter and they became the well-known 1920s cousins, P.Bowen, P.Baxter and P.Russell. And from then, you know how the Warren Line goes. Stories that have been passed down through generations, stories on each ancestor and most importantly, their fight against evil and protecting the innocents.

That is how the book should have been. Not time-travel stories about Piper, Phoebe and Paige. Although the only story with NO mention of the Charmed Ones was "Patty's Awakening", which in my opinion, the best story in the book.

Could have been better.

You know, I'm all for the occassional fun, easy read where you need not think much. And in that area, this book does a decent job. I will say, some of it just comes off as entirely unbelievable and not all that clever. But I'm willing to overlook that and the fact that this Sex & The City knock-off didn't even have four original careers for the characters. My major grievance with it is the ceaseless product placement. There are so many better ways of describing a pair of shoes, a suit, or a wrist watch than the brand name. All that name dropping as an alternative to actual description is just lazy writing. If no one has told John Jeffrey this, someone ought to. I considered counting each mention of a designer, but even at ~200 pages, that's just too much work in this case. I'd be more upset about paying for the book if I hadn't gotten it half price at a used book store.

This book is a very long commercial advertisement. People say "pop-culture references"? Try to swallow this line: "Carson's Motorola Timeport two-way smart pager beeped." As a writer myself this is an insult to everything I hold dear, and at least for this gay man, "everything I hold dear" does not mean the latest pair of Prada shoes.

I usually like dumb and fun gay novels, but this one was too dumb for me. Several of the main subplots make twists near the end that are cliche and yet completely inconsistent with the character development in the first half of the book, which made it difficult for me to finish this book. The pop culture references also seemed gratuitous, as in "any gay person reading this book would be impressed by meeting the lead member of N-Sync."

I really can't imagine a more enjoyable read. Of course it's not great literature and in another couple of years it will be very dated, but it is FUN and in many places funny enough that I laughed out loud. Enjoy!

I would agree with another reviewer that this has a sort of a "Sex and the City" feel to it, with gay guys as the central theme. It is an amusing romp that attempts to be a deeper story. Relationships are at the core of the plot, and Carson's affair with a married man is probably the best element of suspense.

I just wish there had been a little more depth. These characters were a little lightweight, with a seemingly-obligatory mix of races and gay-stereotyped personalities. However, don't let this stop you if you want a fun read, as they say, for the "beach or plane." It certainly is escapist and fills the bill that way. But I wouldn't buy a sequel.

By the way, the main character Carson's experiences working for a magazine are right out of dreamland. He seems to be able to do anything he wants whenever he wants with however much money he wants. It's all fun, powerful and enriching in this book. Don't be fooled. I've worked on major NY magazines--there are no Helen Gurley Brown's anymore! Magazine editors are idealistic, underpaid and overworked people.

Important are not explained in depth enough. ex; attack objects, Deep inspection. It spends more time explain how to setup a certain thing than why this needs to be done or under what circumstance this need to be done.

I thought Juniper own documentation sometimes provide more useful concept than the book.

If you wish to employ a Juniper/Netscreen Firewall out of the box tyhen this is the book to buy. Together with Junipers own documentation it will form a good basis for studying for certification. I can't quite understand what Mr Uphill Gardener found wrong with this book as it does do what it sets out to do and achieves its aims. His review seems as substantial as the rest of his reviews (?) check them out.

This book provides in-depth explanation of firewall fundamentals, principles, concepts and instruction. Comparable to a $3,000 instruction class. It speaks to the novice and advanced reader. Money well spent.

I read a lot of books, and while I don't review all of them, I am often compelled to write a review when a book stands out, either for it's clear leadership and technical distinction in the marketplace, or for it's extreme lack thereof. In this case, I was compelled to write the review based on the latter.

Seeing as this is the only Netscreen book on the market, I had high expectations for it. When one looks at the credentials of the numerous authors, it reads like a veritable list of leaders in the Security industry. As such, I was rather excited when I picked up this book. As I began reading this book, I quickly realized that it was not going to meet my expectations. Clearly this book was rushed to market, another sign that the primary concern of many publishers is not in producing quality, but rather quantity. This book suffers from many of the same problems I see with other books on the market with multiple contributing authors, which is that the voice isn't consistent throughout the book. Some chapters have diagrams, screen shots, or CLI commands outlining various procedural steps, whereas these details are noticeably absent in others.

In addition, this book is littered with many errors throughout, both typographical as well as technical. In some cases, as other reviewers point out, sentences simply stop abruptly mid-sentence. The text often refers to diagrams which don't even exist. There are numerous references to find additional information in other chapters which are non-existent.

With regards to technical content, the authors certainly could have added more detail, especially considering the number of authors who contributed to this text. For example, the chapter on Routing does a good job of telling the reader how to enable BGP, but provides no details on how to actually configure a BGP neighbor. Another example is URL filtering which is discussed in the chapter on Attack Detection and Defense. While the authors do a good job of describing the various modes to support URL filtering (redirect vs. integrated), there is no explanation of how redirection actually takes place and no diagrams to provide for comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

I can't blame the authors entirely for the many flaws in this book, as any decent technical editor should have been able to spot many of these errors prior to publication. One wonders whether the technical editors even read the book as many of the errors are so blatant that it's inconceivable that so many managed to slip through. I'm disappointed in Syngress for publishing a book with so many errors, and this has definitely led me to believe that Syngress does not want to maintain a leadership position of publishing technical content of the highest magnitude, but rather they are only concerned with being the first to market with a particular product.

I will give this book 2 stars in that it is indeed a noble attempt at covering a wide array of topics, as well as for being the only book in the industry which covers this subject matter. I suggest that the authors should examine the possibility of releasing a second edition which may fix these blatant errors, as well as hiring some decent technical editors.

This book has several serious shortcomings. There are numerous spelling and grammatical errors, and sentences sometimes just end abruptly right in mid-sentence. The typography is uneven with run-together letters and spaces breaking words into pieces. The writing style is often choppy and hard to follow. In short, this book has the appearance of a first draft that has not had the benefit of editing. The editors were really asleep on the job to let this one slip through.

Aside from all of the issues mentioned above, the real problem with this book is that it doesn't have any examples. Sure, it has examples for each configuration command, but so does the vendor documentation, and this just appears to be a rehash of that information. What are completely missing are detailed examples describing how to configure a Netscreen firewall in a real-world environment. I would like to have seen comprehensive examples of configurations for remote office, small office, and enterprise environments that include setting up VPNs, DMZs, and other complex tasks.

Bottom line: this book is riddled with mistakes that should never have gotten past the editors and falls far short of the mark when it comes to providing real-world configuration examples. It's no better than a poorly done rehash of the vendor documentation available free on Juniper's website.

I read this book because of The Artists Way but was very surprised where it led me. I found it hard to put down. This book made me realize my husband's unhealthy fixation with pornography. Through the story and the characters, I came face to face with validation that my husband had major problems he was not facing. And so did I by staying in this marriage. Soon after, I began divorce proceedings. This book gave me clarity to realize my instincts were right about my initial feelingsabout his fixation with porn. It gave me the courage to reclaim my life. And I just thought it was a simple detective story!

OK, I warily approached reading The Dark Room when I got it for Christmas. It was a big, crime story that was well, dark. I trudged through the first chapter...then I COULD NOT PUT THE BOOK DOWN. It is riveting, with no slow spots. I can't remember the last time I read a book that I could not wait to get home to, that I would sneak to read on my lunch hour, that woke me up an hour before work, summoning me to read. Hell, even Morning Pages couldn't do that! I want to send this book to everyone who wants to rediscover the thrill of reading fiction again. I sure did. READ THIS BOOK!

I don't know the author's nonfiction, but this book is laughable, in places reading more like a parody of New Age attitudes than a thriller.

First, the cliches just pile up. Tough-but-sensitive hero, tough-and-traumatized blonde "suspect", molested little son, the absurd "lookalike" plot device, the trendy cult/kiddie porn stuff. Then everybody is mysteriously connected with everything and everybody else - very small town, Chicago. The hero sleepwalks through this scenario, agonizing, studying his own inner life, depending on visions, hunches and mumbo-jumbo and usually doing nothing - this would be a much shorter book if he just did his job. The author's idea of police work is as hilarious as her "masculine" writing. And there is something quite unpleasant about those long, frequent, detailed, oh-so outraged descriptions of porn and kinkyness.

Julia Cameron wants this book to be made into a screenplay so bad!! I can even see Bruce Willis in the leading role. Actually, it reads more like a screenplay that's been turned into a book.

This novel has every Hollywood-detective cliche: Irish cop in Chicago with marital problems; beautiful and sexy doctor who's also a suspect (and whom cop can't keep his mind off of); a suspicious partner who the cop hates; a sordid sex/Satanic cult that is linked to the cop and everyone he knows. And when the cult goes after the cops son (like you knew they would), things get really personal!

Another thing that bothered me: everyone, I mean everyone, knows everyone in this story and everything about them. From the doctor on the top of the social ladder to the scum at the bottom, they all know each other intimately. In a city the size of Chicago I find that hard to believe!

I bought this book because Cameron's The Artist's Way changed my life majorly for the better--but I hope she sticks with non-fiction. I'm so disappointed--the effort in this one seems obvious. The word choice is repetitious--and half way through I found I didn't really care who the villain was. Maybe a super editor could have tightened it up a lot -- but that didn't happen.

The title was ever so promising. But when I finally got to use this book,my disappointment was limitless.I found myself having to be on the lookout for errors of all sorts instead of learning from the book.While the book is in the 600s in the number of pages,it is rather thin on content on the topics that it covers. Take Chapter 4, "Dividing C++ Programs into Multiple Threads" for instance.The authors do a lot of hand waving explaining what is essentially threads in C (behind some little C++ syntax),and just when you are hoping to learn about threads in the presence of composition (as you might need with nested parallelism) or inheritance, you are met with section 4.11.5 "Creating Multi threaded Objects" that is only one and half pages long and tells you nothing you did not know already. The authors then proceed to add more than hundred pages in the form of appendix B on material that you can get off the internet.I've since decided to use Intel TBB (and bought Intel Threading Building Blocks by Reinders) for my project. With POSIX threads here to stay and parallel programming becoming mainstream,the authors ought to use subsequent editions as opportunity for great improvement.

I think that the book is quite good. However, do not look architecture level concepts, neither mathematics, neither an explanation of distributed and parallel concepts (well, there is something...). The title shoudl be something like "C++ tools for distributed and parallel programming"

However, this is the only book I know that introduces the biggest amount of tools in other to implement distributed applications in C++ (in case you do not want to start from sctach). Of course, there are missing thinks like web services, sockets, peer2peer middlewares, etc. However, the explained packages are the most used in the market.

This book is a collection of many topics about MPI, PVM, Pthread, UML, CORBA, etc. None of them explains thoroughly. All the parts don't have coherence and don't have a complete example about parallel and distributed application. Readers would be better off just Google these topics and will find free documents which are far better than this book. It wastes your money to buy this book.

Even the bad reviews here are too kind. What can I say about this book? Let us start with Chapter 7, which is about exceptions and error handling -- as applied to parallel programming you'd think. But there is nothing about parallel programming and nothing good about exceptions in this chapter, which reads like a blog written by a C++ programming beginner who has just stumbled upon exceptions and thought, hey this is cool, nothing of the sort in Fortran, let me write about it.

Section 9.2 talks about using template functions for parallel programming. Their examples are of the sort: (if rank is 0, let us call the multiplies() fn that is templated on int; if rank is 1, let us call the multiplies() fn that is templated on double). What were these people smoking?

Section 9.3 overloads stream operators (<<,>>) to do MPI send/recv. This is bad design because the rank of the other process (for one) is an input to the MPI functions, so there is a stream class per other process - which is more messy than convenient. A better design would be to make a communicator class with send(), recv() fns taking the other rank as input. This would also support collective (gather, scatter) communication. Not to mention *unbuffered* MPI send/recv calls can be terribly slow, so there should be some buffering support.

This brings to my basic gripe about this book: it is incredibly shallow. Of course it is garbage to an expert, but even to the dullest of beginners it can be of little use. Just about anything that you can find on parallel programming or C++ is better than this.

I gave it 3 stars only because there are few books on the subject; it deserves only 2.

The main problem I see with this book is that it tries to cover too much ground, even with subjects that it should not touch upon: there are whole chapters (7 and 9, for example) that are more about C++ than parallel or distributed programming, and one chapter (10) is about UML. Although it is interesting to see C++ and UML techniques applied to parallel and distributed programming, this leaves little space left for the coverage of MPI, for example. PVM and pthreads are given somewhat more attention, but still not nearly enough.

Another problem is that the examples are mostly incomplete code fragments. There are few complete, running examples. I hoped to see bigger examples in the last chapters (they seem like case studies), but again they are made of too much "talk" and no code.

The chapters are mostly independent of one another; it can be good if all you need is a quick first read on one of the subjects, but it gets annoying if you try to read it sequentially. Exercise for the reader: count how many times the PRAM model is cited AND explained.

To say something good about it, the book has some nice general musings about the nature and fundamental problems of concurrent systems. But it is not a coherent whole and is not particularly good at explaining any of the myriad subjects it touches upon.

Bottomline: It's neither an applied book about specific technologies, nor a general treatment. I would not buy this book unless it were very cheap. Take a look at it at the bookstore or borrow from a library, but don't spend your money.

To people wanting a general treatment about concurrency, it's principles, problems and solution space, I recommend "Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming" by Peter van Roy and Seif Haridi. It's thoroughly educational, and half of it is about concurrency (but no specific treatment of pthreads, PVM or MPI).

Porcella and Burns do an amazing job on describing CA Fourteeners. I don't think I've ever seen a climbing guide of this caliber within the last 10 years. Very insightful historical information and great descriptions. A Must-Buy!

Simply an incredible book. I will never look at California's fourteeners the same way again. The daring ascents, so beautifully mapped and photographed, make for a rock-climber's delight. The lush mountain photography is only one bettered by the incisive and informative route descriptions. Having lived in California for many years, I thought that I knew these peaks well. Not so in the wake of this small gem. I recommend this book for novice and expert alike.

After moving to CA from CO, and having used Colorado 14er guidebooks by Dawson and Roach, I was disappointed by this book. While there are many fine photographs, wonderful climbing history of the peaks, a slew of routes, and many routes superimposed on photographs, there were many elements that I find essential, that were missing. Topographic maps of the areas in question (with routes drawn on them), round trip distance information, elevation gain, and an estimated (conservative) completion time are essential pieces of information when planning a trip, and are not included here. While the difficulties of the various routes are described well, these other descriptors would make the book twice as good as it is now. Dawson's format, at the beginning of each route description, listing the aforementioned deficiencies (with the exception of the maps) is excellent. From the guidebooks I've looked at though, this is the best available.

Steve Porcella and Cameron Burns spent at least two summers collecting information from historical figures while putting up new
routes to all fifteen of the >14K foot peaks in California. This book is chockfull of history gathered directly from some of the early
climbers of these Sierra peaks. Many of the approaches to these peaks are arrived at by hiking (which is half the fun when in the
Sierras). As both authors are world class climbers and besides supplying detailed maps and routes traced onto photos of the peaks,
they have included many B&W photos of such points of interest as approach scenery, actual routes, historical contributors, as well
as many photos of themselves climbing the routes. Thoroughly enjoyable, this book is as interesting for the armchair climber as
for individuals wishing to expand their climbing horizons by exploring these magnificent mountains in California.

Porcella and Burn's book is really the only book about climbing California 14'ers. It's a great starting point for climbing in the state with extensive historical sections and nearly every available route up each of the 14'ers in the state. In other words, it will get you pointed in the right direction and to the trailhead to do the climb.

Unfortunately, the book is sorely lacking in route description details. The authors say to use both the pictures and descriptions of the routes to make your way up the mountain, but there are cases of descriptions without pictures. The book is most dangerous for beginning to intermediate climbers for its lack of approximate times to each location degree of difficulty, and lack of attention to detail on the "lesser" routes.

Take Mt. Tyndall's Northwest Ridge. It takes a strong hiker about 8 hours just to reach the base. The description describes the route as "easy" and up a twisting rocky trail. In fact, the trail doesn't exist and most of the climb up this ridge requires negotiating large, unstable boulders. The authors do admit the summit ridge is exposed, but do not mention there are some class 3 moves at this point. Without approximate times to the summit there is no way of knowing how long or how difficult the climb is. Furthermore, there is only a description of the climb and not a clear picture of the route. I actually told friends that climbing Mt. Illimani (6400 meters), which required some technical ice climbing, and 4 days of climbing was easier than climbing Mt. Tyndall (approximately 18 hours).

Lack of details are also evident in their poor description of the West Face route of Mt. Williamson. There is no mention of good spots to camp after reaching Shepherds pass. Williamson bowl requires fairly strenuous hiking since it is largely boulder field between several moraines. Porcella and co., describe crossing this as "entering the Williamson bowl from the north," which, judging from the topo quad and this description, makes it sound like an easy walk. The description fails to describe the route correctly, with the description sounding like you continue up the mountain when the picture shows a turn to the south. Finally the authors chose to take a picture of the climb from an angle that most climbers would not see from the southern approach.

Porcella and Burn's rating system often seems haphazard. One climb on Mt. Shasta was rated as Class 3-4, but I found this climb to be far easier than the Class 2 climbing on Mt. Tyndall.

There is a lot to cover here, but the easier routes certainly could use more description and approximate times. Yes mountaineering is dangerous, difficult, and strenuous, but lack of detail is not an excuse for the "c'est la vie" attitude Porcella and Burns use for their descriptions. In fact more description would help climbers be more prepared for the routes they choose.

It is what is it is; It's a pocket guide. It's not exceptionally informative, but it provides baseline guidance for some of Emacs' many features.
If you're already a user of emacs, chances are you'll get a little something out of this book that you didn't know existed before (I'm using Emacs diary and calendar now...) but it's mostly good to throw at subusers while yelling at them to RTFM because they're always complaining to you that they don't know how to use Emacs...

This books is totally useless for a serious C programmer used to an editor like vi and switching to emacs. It just doesn't cover enough "progamming" type features. You'll need a full length book.

This is not a book to teach you how to use Emacs as some other reviewers think. This book is a reference and a reference only. It gives you a listing of common emacs commands. If you won't be going into the nitty gritty details of Emacs, use this. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and get Learning Emacs. This books is good at accomplishing its purpose...a secondary reference for Learning Emacs.

Yes, emacs is the most powerful editor and this book is only a little pocket reference! The book is unnecessary after 2 days (if you did not know emacs before). It is good only for a short introduction in the commands of emacs. After two days you must buy Learning Gnu Emacs, which is really a book to learn emacs!

Do not expect to much from a litte reference!

Virgilio Krumbacher

I've tried to used this to look stuff up while learning Emacs, and it is not useful to me. I have two main objections: 1. It is not organized in a way that makes it easy to look things up. There have been times when I knew the information was in the book (since I had seen it before), but had to just flip through every page to actually find it. 2. It's very incomplete. I cannot find a command in this book that takes me to a given line in a file. I suspect the book fails because he tries to cover everything. I do not expect a pocket reference to cover some nonstandard HTML mode, or how to use Emacs as my mail reader. I want a reference on how to use it to edit text and code. I probably won't open this book again; I'll just bookmark the online manual.

I read this book for my book club, and we all really enjoyed it. It didn't give us a ton to discuss, but it's definitely a fun read. I had a hard time putting it down!

While I respect the author's scholarly credentials, this novel did seem a very cleaned-up version of the times it meant to represent. Well, nothing wrong with an occasional light read, but there could have been more intrigue.

I received this book as a Christmas gift, and I was anxious to read it because I usually really enjoy historical fiction. Unfortunately I felt like this book was more romance than history. I mostly enjoyed the romance, and at times the book really was a page turner. But in the end the novel felt a little flat. The characters were quite flat, and there was little of the historical element that I had been expecting. The author writes well, so I hope if there is another novel it has more of a historical slant.

It was on p. 89 ("Lord Petre liked the way Charlotte Bromleigh bit his shoulder when she had an orgasm") that I finally decided that I did not care in the least for the people in this novel or their various schemes, passions, machinations and ambitions. Basically, all these things seem to be exactly the right ingredients for a a good read, but the author somehow managed to assemble from them a tiresome plot revolving around more or less lifeless puppets and told in a prose devoid of flavour, zest and spirit. 18th century settings usually cast an easy spell on my imagination, but there was no narrative magic for me in these pages crammed with wooden phrasing, and when it became a matter of plodding through paragraph after paragraph, I saw no point in continuing the exercise.

Mind you, I read only about a third of the book, and it might just be that beyond my point of exhaustion the 18th century dazzlingly and suggestively unfolds in all its seductive glitter and diverting squalor. The book might also be much fun for the cognoscenti who can rattle off 'The Rape of the Lock' and take delight in erudite allusions, but people like me, who are neither particulary patient nor particularly well acquainted with Pope's verses, might like to look out for other scandals.

In 18th century London, an aspiring young poet, Alexander Pope follows his childhood friends, sisters Martha and Teresa Blount to London for the "season", where he hopes to gain entree to the inner circles of society. The "in" people converse in what they think to be a witty and flirtatious style,in brief, sometimes acerbic sentences which allude to a person's background and breeding. One of the current leading lights of Society is Lord Petre who hails from an old Catholic family and whose financial support is being sought by a group of Jacobites who are planning to restore James Stuart to the throne after assassinating Queen Anne. At first I didn't find it easy to keep up with the story until I began to look at it as a dance, with the main characters tripping delicately around, using academically clever sentences while never saying exactly what they mean, with elegant phrases and then firing a shock into the reader with unexpectedly raunchy statements. In his now famous poem, The Rape of the Lock, Pope wrote the story of Lord Petre's romance with the beautiful Arabella (named Belinda in the poem), joining the romance with broad hints of a Jacobite plot, and eventually became the wealthiest satirist of his day.

Yes it can. I am not going to go into detail, I see that has already been done. I really enjoyed this book. Its not a classic romance, but for a contemporary read it was well done. The story was unique and moving and I thought the characters were believable, and together they heated up the pages. Overall I would recommend this book if you are not looking for a classic romance. I will be reading this book again.

First, I'd like to say, I'm a big fan of Stella Cameron, as a rule. Next, I'd like to say, SHEER PLEASURES was an okay story, (not great), I've read better. Even so, it is still a book that I found mildly entertaining. You might too. Might want to buy it used or perhaps check and see if your local library might have a copy.

I was going to trash this book, but really, if everyone wrote the same way what would be the point? I truly hated this book..well Phoenix. It started off well, but she was written as an idiot in a totally implausible setting. Since I am moving I am gladly giving the book away so it may find a home with someone who may enjoy it.

This was my first Stella Cameron and I really enjoyed it. As romantic suspense novels go, this is right up there with All the King's Men by Linda Howard and Fat Tuesday by Sandra Brown. I loved the eccentricities of the characters in the town of Past Peak and I thought the storyline of Roman and Phoenix trying to get to the bottom of April Clark's disappearance was excellent. I couldn't put the book down once I started reading it!! At times I thought Roman was a little overdone in the sappy department but I just skimmed over the parts that were too cheesy. :) I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a fast-paced, racy romance novel with a twist of suspense. I can't wait to read Nasty Ferrito's story!

Sheer Pleasures is vintage Stella Cameron - good writing, lots of action, hideously evil villains, and a hunk of a hero handsome enough to make any good woman do bad things. What Sheer Pleasures doesn't have is a lot of romance, and hard-core romance fans will be disappointed. Action fans will be delighted, however, since Sheer Pleasures is chock full of good guys, bad guys, mystery, mayhem and murder. There's even a car chase. In truth, Sheer Pleasures is really more of a mystery/action novel, with a romance thrown in almost as an afterthought.

The heroine is Wilhelmina Phoenix, a down-on-her-luck lawyer searching for a long-lost friend. Phoenix, as she calls herself, is not having a good life. She loses her job a defense attorney when she rats on her own client - a child molester.

As a heroine, Phoenix has many good points. She's brave, she's tough, she's loyal and she's compassionate. Unfortunately, Phoenix does a lot idiotic things in this book. At one point, when several attempts have been made on her life and people are getting killed all around her, she makes what can only be described as truly stupid decisions. "Come on Phoenix, use a little common sense, please."

Anyway, in her quest to find her friend April, Phoenix ends up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, at the mysterious club where her friend was last employed. Forget golf and tennis, 'cause this ain't your ordinary country club by any stretch of the imagination. This place discreetly caters to the more perverse interests and tastes of its wealthy clientele, who can take their pick of whatever sexual act or illegal narcotic they care to imbibe. The club counts movie stars, politicians and other public figures among its clientele.

It is at the club she meets one of its owners, Roman Wilde, former Navy Seal and all-around gorgeous hunk. Unbeknownst to Phoenix, he's on the same mission she is -- except that he knows April is dead. He has his own very personal reasons for wanting to find the killer. And once Phoenix and Roman realize that they're working toward the same goal of finding the murderer, sex, romance and love follow. The sex scenes are steamy, although I had a hard time believing that 30-year old Phoenix was still a virgin, for goodness sakes. Somehow this woman managed to go all the way through college and law school without ever going past first base? Give us a break. Virginity in romance novels is highly overrated.

At its best, this book is exciting, suspenseful and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing. There are holes in the plot and they can be distracting, if you let them. The journey gets bumpy in parts, but ultimately Sheer Pleasures gets you where you want to go and gives you a few good thrills along the way.