O Books

Though the other stories have much cinematic potential, my favorite of this collection has to be "Dirk Snigby's Guide To The Afterlife." Funny and snarkily irreverent, it is full of the absurdities that is the currency of organized religion. In the right hands, "Dirk" could be the next "Dr. Strangelove" -- a chilling satire on what we fear most after taking that final breath in this life as we open the door to the next. Who knows, perhaps Dirk might in fact be our Guide. Pick up a copy of this anthology for this story alone.

an excellent collection of short stories that will make wonderful movies. standouts :gone to mum's
dirk snigby
some pig
waltzing matilda.
sit back with a long cool drink and enjoy.

_The Hustler, It Happened One Night, High Noon, Minority Report_ and _All About Eve._ Quite an impressive list, but what do these movies all have in common? Give up? They all started as a short story.

Next Stop Hollywood is the brainchild of Steve Cohen and Jonathan Davis. Each year they partner with St. Martin's Press to publish original short stories that are judged by a panel of Hollywood insiders via an international contest, with winning entries compiled into the anthology. Their criteria? Finding stories that would make a great movie or TV project. More than 600 entries were submitted and narrowed down to a mere 15.

Using the same judging criteria, I chose three stories from Next Stop Hollywood to highlight.

Perry Glasser's "An Age of Marvels and Wonders," tells the story of a lonely old man slowly going blind and the young woman who comes into his life. Raylene is a walking hard luck story--with two kids, no money and an abusive ex-husband. Is it any wonder she's skeptical of an offer of help? Bob may slowly be going blind, but he sees far more than mere eyesight allows.

"Gone to Mum's" by Barry Simiana is a richly detailed and poignant story of missed chances, stolen moments, heartbreak and redemption. Simiana's narrator takes readers along on his journey of self-discovery amid the rugged backdrop of Australia. The author paints emotion on his canvas, stunning the reader with the simplicity and honesty of his prose.

"The Good Kid" by Brian Richmond, is a clever tale of deception. Marty is a bank robber on the run with nowhere to go. The kid is more than willing to help. But is he helping himself or Marty? O. Henry would have approved.

With Hollywood scrambling for fresh ideas, it's nice to know that the art of the short story is not completely forgotten.

Armchair Interviews says: Kudos to Cohen and Davis for their part in reviving an endangered genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed these short stories, especially "Dirk Snigby's Guide to the Afterlife". Dirk and the devil would be a hit on the silver screen!

Perry Glasser is a wonderful writer and an inspiration in my own writing. His forthright yet crafty style will leave you complete. You won't be disappointed!

What a wonderful book of unique poetry!!!!! I work with troubled youth in Detroit and have shared this book with them. They find it inspirational and it has given them hope for their future, when they feel they have none. I am excited to see what this author writes in the future.

It is so refreshing to have an african american male write in a positive venue, in that, revealing self. So many are taught to keep their feelings in because they are males, but this writing exemplifies that it is okay. I look forward to reading more of the author's work.

This is a great peace of work of words stirred from the heart. It is an inspiration of a mind-state that evovled into a great spirit. A great book of poems that envokes hope, wisdom, love, and respect for life. A great gift for troubled teens or just for a poetry lover. I look forward to reading more from this writer. This is a great buy for a nice price. I love it.

An O.G. Like Me, captures the thoughts and feelings through poetry of a man who overcame hurdles in life to become a mentor and inspiration to the youth of our country and inner cities. Inner thoughts from an urban mind is highly recommended for anyone working with at risk youth or for your own reading pleasure. The writing is sincere and from the heart of a man who has grown into a deep, thoughtful and empathetic soul. A true work of art! Bravo! can't wait to read more from this new and upcoming author!

Fernandez

I found "An O.G. Like Me" to be extremely powerful. I really appreciated the clarity and the intensity of the poems. One of my favorite poems is "Hater Free" which looks at the larger societal issues that need to be addressed, while another favorite, "My Pops", focuses on individual feelings of love towards family and those close at heart. Alexander Lucas has suceeded in publishing a heartfelt first book. I look forward to purchasing subsequent books by this author.

Don't fall victim of your own success. This book reveals the paradox of success, and how to avoid downfall.

This is a very good, perhaps great [?], book masquerading as a "how to succeed in business" tome. It is in reality a powerful handbook for those of us in the 4th period of life to try to make some sense of all we have done, all we have left undone, & what is the purpose of it all. I'm 65; I found this a clever combination of Jung, Jung's theory of the 'shadow', & strong suggestions for living with inner tranquility & financial success; O'Neil is a gifted & insightful writer; I doubt that many under the age of 50 would find this book worthwhile - my opinion. A minor criticism: O'Neil cites 6 - 8 - 10 authorities in this field who have written books; he provides an index; but no bibliography? Why? A very minor criticism. Extremely well done. Easy to read.

It is an amazing journey through our deepest fears and questions about life whether personal or professional. The first part goes through those questions all of us have or have had combined with real life examples and a second part where the author shares his insight as to what to do with all those questions and answers we start to get by reading the book.

I have read this book once before back in 1995. Since then I have learned a lot about shadows. I am aware of my shadows and this book is helping me to be a better person.
I have a friend who is intellegent and smart. However, after reading this book second time I am beginning to know his hubris and. I do not know how to relate with this person.
Knowing my own shadows I am now less critical of others. We all have multi-selves.
The book should be read by any adult who wants to have a balanced perspectives of life and deal with others appropriately.

I first read this book when it came out, at the time the O. J. Simpson story was just breaking. It was PERFECT timing - offering insights into how otherwise highly-successful people can have darker sides show up in their lives unless they periodically renew themselves and take stock - what might be called taking an "internal audit" of oneself. I've often thought the title for this book could have been "The Shadow Side of Success."

I highly recommend this book for anyone who's in a position of influence, power and responsibility (or who WANTS to be). The author has included a rich assortment of ways one can avoid the egoic pitfalls of success and fame - a real MASTERPIECE!

John Renesch, author, Getting to the Better Future

As described on the cover page, this book is cookbook style so I went through the programs on the CD before reading the chapters. I like this book for two reasons.

First, the book is easy to read. A bunch of equations may not always be helpful to understand a problem. What confuses readers most is how an implementation/program corresponds to those equation(s). This book explains the image processing techniques in a plain language and gives you an hand-on experience with those techniques.

Second, to practice image processing, clicking a button on windows or just calling a built-in function, e.g. process(image), will not be enough. When you go to the directory of programs on the CD, you may find out every details. Each program is relatively independent to each other. You will not be stuck by a function call, which you never know or find. Each program is well commented and can be easily modified and incorporated into your program.

This book is good for those who are new to image processing, because it helps you understand what image processing does. It is also good for an experience practicer, because you can find well-organized stuff to build your own applications. It is a must-have book for your shelf of image processing.

Searching for an easy plug & play solution for simple imaging tasks?
No time for programming & debugging things yourself?
No interest in crawling through literature to figure what & how you should program "the methods that solves all your problems"?

Here's a book that deals with most of the elementary - and most used - approaches in image enhancement and analysis. The CD offers a collection of ready-to-play-with programs, both in C source as in executables.

I appreciated the book set-up: each section describes one single task, describes the problem, gives an example, discusses a solution given in literature, and presents the input / output / options for the C code.
- If you want to know more: get the recommended references.
- If you want to modify the program: why not? (well, perhaps because the code is good enough!)
- If you don't care about the scientific background and/or programming: just plug & play!

I have found this book to be extremely useful as a reference for my class on document image analysis. The book discusses (with software which is a bonus!) a whole bunch of image processing techniques that are very useful.

Students can now find in one place- a reference for techniques such as gabor wavelet analysis, convex hulls, moments, fourier descriptors, thinning, hough transform, and chain coding. This allows me as an instructor of an advanced document recognition course to let the students self-study these image processing techniques while I can focus on the recognition topics.

The authors have done a great job of picking examples from a wide range of applications such as outdoor scenes, fingerprints, and documents. The book is "easy to read" and requires just basics of linear algebra to follow.

I already knew image processing when I bought this book, so I am not sure how it would appear to the novice seeking a textbook on the subject of image processing and analysis, but I imagine it could be somewhat confusing. I always recommend Gonzales and Wood's "Digital Image Processing" for those seeking a clear read on image processing and analysis from the ground up. Where Seul's book comes in is with clear descriptions and working code for many basic - and some not so basic - image processing and image analysis algorithms. The book is also very good at explaining the applications of the various transforms. One of the little things that the author of this book does that authors of other books similar to it don't bother to do is to realize that when you are working in image processing you likely have an image as an input and you want an image as an output. Thus the author has built his code libraries so that they work that way. You are not left with arrays of pixels that you have to figure out how to store and manage. In the end you have a nice functional toolbox of working image processing and analysis subroutines that you can chain together and make just about any type of image transform tool you could think of. I'm mainly interested in image effects, and I know this book has been useful to me. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all of the C source code for the algorithms so that you can port them to another language or tinker with them if you so desire. Highly recommended.

The title of this book corresponds to its content, the tutorial gives an excellent overview of basic key points to those readers who are unfamiliar with the subject (as I was). The book can not be used for rigorous study of even simple things but rather kicks you with essentials that are easy to understand with high-school background. This book, written for non-specialists in "image field", gives them techniques for their practical needs and concentrates exactly on image analysis, not on image processing. If you have no time to go through more complex (and deeper) books, take this one to discover basic principles in short form with no attempt to explain the fundamentals. The authors just put you into the facts, so that is why I would characterize the "Practical Algorithms" book as being "handbook". The good point is that the areas of applicability of these facts are explained, the drawback: you have to go to other books to get more details on image processing roots, e. g., to R. Gonzalez and R. Woods' "Digital Image Processing". I bought both, and use them as good annex to each other. The "Practical Algorithms" has lack of some significant areas, like snake algorithm and image binarization (thresholding) techniques but e.g., the cellular processing is quite well highlighted.
Surprisingly, the CD that comes along with this book gave me almost 80% examples that I was able to recompile instantly, and only several examples have failed, mainly due to image file format issues. The source code is not both elegant and bugless, but it is very transparent and portable and can easily fit, e.g., a 16-bit microcontroller.
Overall, this is good book for fast start. You can get real output and pick up ideas on practical side of image analysis. Just remember, the most book examples came from the medicine world, so they are quite specific and may not be implemented directly in your particular application.

Euell Gibbons was master forager, or at least among those that are also authors. His book is absolutely fascinating, and he makes the reader aware of a multitude of wild plants and animals that few have ever tasted, or even been aware of for that matter.

There are countless useful recommendations for the preparation of foraged foods, many of which would be unpalatable or even inedible without using the provided suggestions. His stories are great and he relates many tales from his days as a forager.

The problem I have with the book is that it is first and foremost a cookbook. It has drawings and descriptions of most, but not all, of the wild edibles he talks about. This is hardly a good method for identifying plants. On the back cover it even suggests you could live off the plants and animals described in the book. This is possible, but not likely, particularly if you cannot even properly identify the plants! And considering that there are numerous poisonous plants in any given locale, you had best not delve to deeply into the world of foraging without tagging along with an expert or at least having a detailed field guide.

Take the book for what it is - an excellent resource for preparing wild edibles and opening a whole new world for the outdoorsman.

Bret

I was always interested in survival and eating wild foods and I tried several (with indifferent results) during my boy scout days. Thus, it was that "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" was a revelation to me when I first encountered it as a young man. Somebody else in the world was interested in eating wild plants! Quite a few somebodies, it developed, because this book ran through a lot of printings and Euell Gibbons became a folk hero and TV star.

Gibbons identifies and discusses the culinary virtues of about 50 different wild plants and animals. Among the familiar plants he identifies are dandelions, cattails -- the "supermarket of the swamp" -- and daylilies. He tosses in a few animals worthy of pursuit and ingestion by the modern day hunter/gatherer: bluegills, turtles, frogs, and carp. One is immediately impressed that Gibbons knows what he is talking about. He tells you what you need to do with the plant or animal, gives you a recipe or two for its preparation, and adds a bit of personal experience and folklore about the plant. He even gives you menus for wild-food feasts.

There is something of the primeval in the attraction of children to gathering their own food, even if is only raspberries growing beside a road. For a few, such as Gibbons, it becomes a lifelong passion. His strength as a writer is infectious enthusiasm. I usually find nature writers to be preachy and sanctimonious. Gibbons isn't. He seems impervious to the thought that he might be considered as crazy as a loon (not one of the animals he proposes for eating). He can say with a perfectly straight face, "Let's go nutting."

"Stalking the Wild Asparagus" has found a permanent place on my bookshelf and due recognition as a nature classic.

Smallchief

Euell Gibbons (1911-1975) had an adventurous life to say the least. His first intro to wild foods was due to his family's poverty when they lived in New Mexico. At 12 years old, Gibbons went out in the surrounding country-side to forage for edibles to help feed his family and a life-long love of wild food got off to a pragmatic start. One of his first discoveries was wild asparagus, hence the book title namesake.

This book is lyrical, yet practical and covers a sizeable array of wild foods- location, preparation, uses, etc. Recipes are given all through the book as well as some medicinal use info. One of Gibbons' favorite plants was the Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). He relates how the Dandelion has been one of humanities longest known and useful wild foods and medicines and laments the assault by lawn care chemical manufacturers in trying to demonize this beautiful, helpful gift from Nature.

Gibbons traveled the world lecturing on the benefits of wild foods and was often seen on popular talk shows along with becoming a pitch-man for Post Grape Nut Cereal commercials where he treated America to hilarious daily line: "...taste like wild hickory nuts!". Gibbon's came across like a modern-day cross between Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Henry David Thoreau.

Those familiar with Thoreau's recently published last manuscript, "Wild Fruits" will see the close resemblance to "Stalking the Wild Asparagus"- both now classics and useful guides to Nature's cornucopia of wild edible gifts.

Not only is this book full of recipes for wild plant dishes, but it includes wild animals as well. I like his attitude towards the things that many people won't touch - I mean this dude ate a bobcat and had a buddy there eating it with him. Where do you find these kind of people? I don't know anyone who would eat bobcat unless money was involved.

I have known this book for over 20 years. I has been almost a bible for my foraging. I used to borrow it from the library several times a year. Then the county libraby removed it from the shelf to make room for newer books. I was very dissappointed. I had to borrow the book from a library 2 counties away. I was delighted to discover that Amazon carried Stalking the Wild Asparagus. The book is a wonderful reference tool, personable, acurate, and has detailed illustrations.

Excerpt from Fortune Article: How to build a great team by Jerry Useem, FORTUNE, June 1, 2006: 3:31 PM EDT

........ The fact is, most of what you've read about teamwork is bunk. So here's a place to start: Tear down those treacly motivational posters of rowers rowing and pipers piping. Gather every recorded instance of John Madden calling someone a "team player." Cram it all into a dumpster and light the thing on fire. Then settle in to really think about what it means to be a team.

We're certainly not against the concept of teamwork. But that's the point: All the happy-sounding twaddle obscures the actual practice of it. And teamwork is a practice. Great teamwork is an outcome; you can only create the conditions for it to flourish. Like getting rich or falling in love, you cannot simply will it to happen.

We will go further and say: Teamwork is an individual skill. That happens to be the title of a book. Christopher Avery writes, "Becoming skilled at doing more with others may be the single most important thing you can do" to increase your value - regardless of your level of authority.

As work is increasingly broken down into team-sized increments, Avery's argument goes, blaming a "bad team" for one's difficulties is, by definition, a personal failure, since the very notion of teamwork implies a shared responsibility. You can't control other people's behavior, but you can control your own. Which means that there is an "I" in team after all. (Especially in France, where they spell it Equipe.)

This book is a must for anyone who is managing an office. if your office is full of egotistical employees or employees who are not term players, this book will help you to help employess get on the right track.

Many of us charged with leading teams are expected to take the role of 'scapegoat' for team performance. While most of us agree that the team leader does contribute (critically) to the team's success, each individual member can and does impact the team's performance. This book provides a validation that individuals impact teams and goes further to explain that every team member has an obligation to provide for the success of the team. This book helps empower those that want to make a difference in their teams.

For years, I have resisted the popular notion of "there is no `I' in "teamwork" because teams are a collection of individuals working toward a common goal. Each of us brings our own values and skill sets to the table. It is our choice to work together (or not) as a team.
Christopher M. Avery has captured this idea and more in his latest book, Teamwork is an Individual Skill: Getting Work Done When Sharing Responsibility. Chris suggests that individuals take responsibility for team success versus blame others He challenges the reader to be proactive and work through team issues rather than avoid or accommodate others.
This is a perfect book for team members who have been on teams before. It will validate good team behaviors and point out areas to upgrade...in a gentle and non-threatening way. The book is easy to read with lots of stories and examples to highlight the key points.

The book entitled "Teamwork is an Individual Skill" is quite interesting. I work at a large semi-conductor manufacturer as a non-exempt fab technician on a self managed team on night shift.

I am the most experienced and capable person on my team, yet with all of my background I have come to realize how relatively little influence I often have on team performance, and on my ability to push the team in the direction I think it should go. The very first sentence in your book on page 1, "Do you share responsibility with others to get work done but don't have authority over them (and they don't have authority over you)?" absolutely floored me, 'cause that is me to the tee.

I had only gotten to page 8 of your book when I was thoroughly blown away by the directness with which the differences between flat and hierarchical structures were addressed. At my company there is no mention of this approach; even once when I mentioned the term "semi-autonomous team" to the most qualified tech (who happened to be on day shift--arguably a more hierarchical environment due to the presence of many exempt employees) he did not know what the term meant. The company has this structure in place almost as an unwritten agenda.

Your comment on page 5, "Many individuals--especially smart, high achievers--can experience great angst if asked to serve in teams." is in retrospect a great source of comfort to help me understand my angst during my three years with this company. In all of the areas I have worked in during that time I am sure that I had (at least on paper) more qualifications than any one other person (B.S. deg, two A.A.S. degs, 12+ prior years of technical experience, and a whole host of other skills that my teammates do not exhibit.) Plus add to that, that my experience has almost exclusively come from a strongly tilted hierarchical background in retrospect is why I struggled with teams, as you describe them.

Every page of your book is quite thought-provoking, causing me to pause and reflect on how your observations compare to my situation.

After I mentioned just a little bit about a couple of comments this book made about the third chapter in Genesis, I had three people wanting to borrow it. This is a serious study. I appreciate that much of the commentary relates to a direct literal study of the Hebrew (even though it has poetic interpretations in the same book). Well worth the money.

Ardent feminists will love this book. Moderate ones may think it goes too far in emphasizing the significance of women in the Torah. The commentaries and the literary entries are excellent and the format is easily accessible. I would not recommend reading this commentary alone, without a less egalitarian version at one's side. Comparisons are always valid. I especially like the non-gendered usage, which doesn't hammer the reader over the head but makes its point nicely.

I bought this for my wife, a theology major. She has been very excited about the book, finding it scholarly, well researched and a new approach to the Torah from women's point of view. There are many significant insights to be gained from this work.

Wow! This is such a beautiful commentary on Judaism's holiest text. I love the symphony of voices that flow through this book. Not only are comments meaningful and well written but the general oranization of the book is wonderful. I am man who loves Torah and all of the commentaries that it produces. This volume will sit proudly on my bookself next Rashi, Hirsch, Sforno, Ramban, etc. I am recommending this commentary to every Rabbi I know regardless of affiliation. Even if the price is a stretch for you, buy this book because you won't be sorry.

The Torah: A Women's Commentary is a compilation of the most recent Torah scholarship that also includes a woman's perspective. Introductory essays by Carol Meyers, Judith R. Baskin and Ellen Umansky are outstanding in orienting the reader to the world of Torah history and post biblical analysis. Alterative perspectives enrich this multi-dimential effort. This volume produced by the Women of Reform Judaism makes me proud to be a scholar and a Jew.

I was wondering what my wife and kids could do this summer that wouldn't break the budget. Boy am I glad I found this book. Great customer service too. Thanks for the ideas!

My granddaughter is with me during part of the summer. When the books arrived, she was almost six.
We found some interesting things to do. I monitor her tv and computer viewing. So when she got bored and it was not tv time, she would say: get the book! And we always found some fun things to do.

This book is great for days when your board. You need almost nothing to to all the activities. We use it much more than our other craft books! You must by it!

I tripped across this book at my local library and I am here looking for my own copy, as we are limited on how long we keep it. I brutally removed the kids from their TV addiction, and the transition has been difficult on the older ones especially. This book has been my salvation. The prereader like to pick out things by picture, my beginner read has no problem understanding the direction and my toddler and teen get involved too. We have used this to fill the huge void of television and to stave of the "mom I am bored..." routine. This is a small book it fits in my purse and we take it with us everywhere. Breaking the index down by activity type means I can have a Doctor's waiting room idea or a park idea up in running in 2 minutes. The materials list is in the margin for easy access and all the material are everyday every house items, half of which are in my purse any way... This book is a keeper!

This book was recommended in the book Living the Simple Life. I'm so glad I took the time to get it. It's a wonderful resource for busy families looking to spend some quality time together. So turn that TV off and buy this book. Encourages you and your child's imagination and they learn through playing with simple things around the house and the bonus is that by not watching that TV, you've spent memorable time with each other...what could be better?

The author and illustrator know lots about the backcountry and provide tons of useful information on winter skiing. Even if you've spent much time yourself skiing in the backcountry, you'll find tips here that will make you wonder why you hadn't been doing things that way all along.

This book combines some great humor and excellent line drawings with some great wilderness and backcountry wisdom. All the tips and tricks one picks up over the years are in this book and it is highly recommended reading for newcomers and those already involved.

There are two types of winter campers: those who have this book and those who need it. Perhaps if you are very very experienced you don't need it but otherwise, get it! Allen wrote a short, but information full book, that is easy and fun to read quickly and jamn packed with a mix of basic functional knowledge, extra tidbits that are good to know, and all kinds of little tricks he has discovered over the years.

it is awesome! these guys are nols instructors. one guy provides the incredibly helpful commentary while the other guy provides the humorous illustrations. you will be howling with laughter as you read this great book. my bet is that humor/laughter aids the memorization process. that is key in this case because there are some truly essential tips in this book! not to be without! can't wait to wintercamp this year. they also have a telemark tips book which is very good too...

Well, I just panned a different book and said don't waste your money so now its time to even the score.

This book is great fun. I have lots of winter camping books and do a fair amount of winter camping. Other books may have more information, but none covers all of the basics with as much humor as this one. I do alpine skiing and snowshoeing so the coverage of tele skiing wasn't of particular interest...but I still really enjoyed reading those sections, too.

It is hard to describe the authors' irreverent approach while dealing with serious (life and death) topics, but they somehow pull it off. This is really a great book to engage someone who isn't already a hard-core winter camper...so if you are, buy it for your significant other (assuming you haven't been able to get them enthused about spending a winter weekend outdoors.) If they don't enjoy this book, you may officially give up on them.

Abby's having a " HOORAY IT'S SUMMER PARTY " for the whole fifth grade, boys ,the cool girls and everthing. But as soon as she hand out the invitations, she started to worry about what people will think. Will they like the food and drinks? And this question is what Abby worried most: Will they think her bedroom was boring?
Then Abby decided it was a perfect time to give her room a makeover! Until the last minute, will she finish in time for the party?

P.S. Do people actually paint their rooms because they're worry about what people think? I wonder who.

Abbey wants to throw a big party for summer! Then Ms. Bunder asks the class to write a report about their rooms and Abbey realizes how boring her room is. So she turns her room into a Palace of Purple and throws a big party, too!

Abby Hayes is a fifth grade girl. She wants to throw a Hurray its summer party to the whole fifth grade. When she gives the invitations, she wonders if they will think that her room is not cool and then Abby Hayes decides to give her room a makeover. But what if its too late to get a makeover.
I thoght this book was funny.

I think this book is great if you are reading the Abby Hayes
series. It's a great book if your in the 4-6th grades. I really enjoy the Abby Hayes series a lot and read some of them in a day or less. I give this book a great review.

The book Amazing Days Of Abby Hayes the More the Merrier, by Anne Mazer and illustrated by Monica Gesue, is book number 8 from the Abby Hayes series. This story is fiction with hundreds of made-up characters you will love!
In the story, Amazing days of Abby Hayes, Abby is trying to plan a party for the end of the fifth grade year. During the story she struggles along the way to get thing done but at the end... well you can figure that out our self. (I don't want to spoil the surprise.)
I think that the author's writing style is very unquie and diffrent form alot of other stories. She has good word choice and interesting taste in how to do stuff.
I like the way the author, at some points, will write with purple pen. When she does write with it it means that Abby is writing in her journal. I feel when Abby is writing in her journal it is easier to relate to the character. I recommend this book to 3rd-5th grade because I started reading them at 3rd grade and I'm not sure if I will like the series in 6th grade.