Although this book is called "masterclass," it's not just about how to build model cars. Instead, you'll find some wonderful historical information about the various model companies and their products. In addition, Mat covers a wide variety of subjects including aftermarket parts, conversions, and obscure products you may not have seen before. The photography is first rate, ranging from shots of factory production floors to great set-up photos of dozens of different models and kits. This is really one of those "must-have" additions for your modeling library.

I recently purchased the hard cover version of Mat Irvine's Auto Modelling Masterclass from Amazon.com, and was bowled over by the history, and photography I found within it's pages. Old box art from days gone by, the process of creating a model kit from start to finish, and culminating with some helpful how-to tips. It was none other than Terry Jessee of Scale Auto Enthusiast who clued me in on this book, A tip of the hat to another fine writer. Chock full of color photos, and insights from people within the industry, if you have the slightest interest in model cars, this book is for you.

If you want to collect Royal Doulton series ware, I consider all four volumes in this series a "must have." I like this book because of the detailed photos -- the author goes way beyond just giving you a taste of Royal Doulton. If you only have one or two pieces of series ware, this book will help you identify them and let you see the whole spectrum of items that would complete your collection. While a terrific reference, this book is not a price guide and no prices are included. The only thing I wish this book had was more color photos. The china is so beautiful it deserves more color. That is the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars. Louise Irvine really knows her Royal Doulton - this book looks like a labor of love to me.

Being new to the world of Royal Doulton, I am so pleased to have found this series in the Central Library in Wellington, New Zealand. However I was unable to purchase in this country and after some attempts in the UK, went exploring on the internet. I am now the proud owner of the 3 of the volumes - albeit missing Volume II (Vol.2).

Being a new collector of Doulton ware, I didn't want endless information about the product(s), just enough to have a good understanding of dates, times, periods, production,design and marks. All of this is available in these easy to read, easy to handle books. I am really thrilled with them and know that I will enjoy them for life.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I sincerely hope that you enjoy this series as much I do.

Jo-Anne
Wellington

After the blockbuster Trainspotting and the equally brilliant but unrecognized Marabou Stork Nightmares, comes this novel Filth. One thing is for certain - Welsh writes brilliantly in the scottish slang vernacular and he has an ability to deliver one powerful ending after another. He is a deranged O'Henry. 3/4 of the novel is shocking, disgusting, revolting, hilarious, and all the other adjectives used when describing Welsh's talents and his prose style. The tapeworm and its philosophical musings is hilarious, irrelevent, and original. The actual ending is shocking but the events leading up to the final scene get away from Mr. Welsh. Yes, his relations with his wife are absolutely jaw-dropping(Can't go into detail, just read and you will see) but I just didn't feel like Bruce's past from the coal mines should have been told by the tapeworm. He left out information vital to the story and had the tapeworm fill the reader in. Pretty weak narrative device. But i am an admirer of Welsh and his original voice so I still enjoyed the novel. It is just flawed, that's all. Just don't ever let your guard down when reading this book. He will surprise you with a few scenes here and the ending is true to the title Filth.

The entire first chapter is about a fart, I think. I had to try to read it over and over so many times because of the incomprehensible scottish slang. They replace words with rhymes, if that makes any sense. If you can get past the language, go for chapter 2.

Welsh has put the 'T' back into trash with Filth. But the fact of the matter is that he has to be one of the most talented authors I have ever read. The book is written in Scottish dialect which gives the reader a much more realistic perspective when reading the novel. Another very interesting technique used by Welsh is the use of a dash instead of quotation marks to show dialogue.The main character is very complex, although Welsh passes him off as a degenerate. The novel is filled with profanity, but don't be offended, it is mainly just Scottish slang and is not always used to offend anyone. Probably my favorite thing about Filth, is the frame story using a tapeworm living in the main characters gut as the narrator. Filled with heaving drug use and debauchery that is oh so very necessary, Filth is a humorous novel and will definetly teach any reader how NOT to treat people. And to those of you who want to send their mothers into shock, give them Filth as a gift...

I'm afraid I have to disagree with other reviewers of this book. The writing is often awkward and grammatically challenged (to use a current euphemism). And Sandy Irvine comes across as a rather ordinary young man, self centered, good at sports, and good with his hands, but lacking in any sort of intellectual sophistication. It was this very sophisitcation and intellectualism that made Mallory the interesting figure he remains. Had Mallory been a mere hearty, he would have far less interesting. In contrast to Mallory, Irvine strikes one as eactly what this biography tries to convince one he was not, i.e., a follower who had little idea of what Mallory was leading him into.

Because of Irvine's commoness and the bad writing (Where oh where was an editor!?), this is hardly worth the time, and certainly not worth the money.

Fearless On Everest: The Quest For Sandy Irvine is an intensely personal, candid, and informative account of the life of a young man who died at the age of 22 while on an expedition to climb Mt. Everest. Written with a narrative smoothness that completely engages the reader's attention, biographer and Irvine family member Julie Summers includes newly discovered letters and photographs and specifically addresses a long-debated question in mountaineering circles: Why did George Leigh Mallory choose the young, less-experienced Andrew Irvine as his partner on so hazardous an enterprise? Also very highly recommended for mountaineering enthusiasts are three related titles from Mountaineers Books addresses the doomed Mallory-Irvine expedition: Ghosts Of Everest: The Search For Mallory & Irvine (699-5, $.....); The Mystery Of Mallory & Irvine: Fully Revised Edition (726-6, $.....); The Wildest Dream: The Biography Of George Mallory (741-X, $......).

This is a very well-written and researched book. It provides an introspective and analytical look into the man of mystery on the expedition...Sandy Irvine. The photos, family anecdotes, and treasure trove of memorabilia recently discovered provided a full and satisfying read. You can't know all about the 1924 expedition until you know about what made Sandy Irvine tick.

There are two reasons to pick up John Hodge's screenplay for "Trainspotting," based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. The first is because you have trouble understand English spoken with strong Scottish brogues and you cannot figure out how to use closed captioning. Admittedly, this is the minor reason. The second and major reason is to appreciate how well Hodge transformed Welsh's novel into a solid screenplay. After all, the novel was a collection of loosely related short stories about several different characters that neither aspires to nor reaches a complete narrative form. Also, the key to the characters comes as much from their internal monologues as it does from anything they say or do. Of course the solution was to focus on one character and make him the "narrator" of the film. This becomes Mark Renton, the unrepentant drug abuser who does not seem to be as hell-bent on self-destruction as the rest of his mates.

This volume includes an introduction by Hodge, who explains how he came to be coerced into writing the screenplay. The screenplay is indeed the screenplay, and not a transcript of the film, so there are plenty of changes in dialogue and editing if you actually do sit down and follow along while watching Danny Boyle's film. Notations tell you want scenes or bits of dialogue were cut from the film and there are plenty of black & white photographs of the various scenes (but just Ewen McGregor coming OUT of the toilet...). The Afterword consists of a brief interview with author Irvine Welsh, conducted during the penultimate week of the shooting of the film (Welsh was doing a cameo performance as the drug dealer Mikey Forrester). Welsh speaks candidly about the transformation of his novel into a film and how the drug scene in Scotland has changed since the book's original publication. However, for those who have actually tracked down and read the novel, reading the screenplay soon afterwards will give you a greater appreciation of how excellent a job Hodges did with this adaptation.

I didn't buy the Screenplay for a need to understand the movie persay, however it was a definate treat. Sometimes you just don't want to read the entire book but you want to visualize the movie in your head. The screenplay is perfect for this. I recommend it for any Trainspotting fan.

Trainspotting the movie was full of great details and funny dialogue that has to be tasted and thought about which like good wine gets better with age.

The companion interview with Irvine Welsh is a real treat. The man is articulate, funny, and has a lot to say. It is seldom one can get inside the author and his feelings on a movie that is made.

There is also a preface written by John Hodge himself that details his process of from writing Shallow Grave and how that movie got made and then how the others convinced him to make trainspotting although he was terrible reluctant. That in itself was an amazing story.

I loved his note to the readers about how he was sorry he didn't put our favourite bits of the book in the movie and how he didn't get to put his own favorites bits himself. He also comments about the liberty he took with the text, and explained some of them. As an Irvine Welsh fan I felt placated and had a new respect for Hodge.

As for the screen play itself. You can read about Sick Boy's ideas about Sean Connery, personal thoughts of renton, his relationship with Diane, in detail. Everything in the movie is amplified. A small detail and a big scene takes the same importance on the page.

I love picking it up and reading my favourite bits. As an avid Irvine Welsh fan I could really take the time to see what John Hodge added to the film and apreciate it.

Watching the movie again takes about two hours of your time, and replaying your favorite bits is never the same. This screen play allow you to do just that without much effort. It is short and easy to read, and hey to be honest, I didn't hear what was said in the film because of the accents. Here I can read exactly what was said. If you love the book and/or the movie god this is a great companion to go with it.

Always Coming Home, by Ursula LeGuin, is a striking and highly readable Utopian novel with feminist themes. LeGuin wrote this work in 1985, and became so wrapped up in the World she created that she published the book with tapes of songs and ceremonies from its supposed inhabitants. This did not help sales, and the book, although very well reviewed at the time and much beloved by its fans, is no longer in print. In the distant future California is inhabited by a people with a culture similar to American Indians, current U.S. culture having polluted itself to death and fallen into the sea just as everyone predicted. These Napa Valley people have profited from Silicon Valley and combine modern computer skills with a simplicity of life close to nature. There is, however, a troublesome, warmaking, male-dominated, city-building culture to the north where Oregon and Washington are now, and this is where the culture clashes come from that allow feminist issues to be developed. The gentle Californians have e-mail, and a group safely far away from the community that is suffering raids and town burnings from the Arab-like northern people keep writing our community that fighting back is wrong, and that they should sit down with these people and discuss things and settle it all by peaceful talking; in a memorable line, someone in the embattled community flames back, "You come here and do that!" Our protagonist, North Owl, is captured by the Arab-like culture as a teenage girl. When she finds her way back after much oppression and many adventures, she takes the second of three names women take to mark major life themes, Woman Coming Home.

This book is a marvelous collection of "an anthropology of the future." LeGuin excavates stories, songs, beliefs, myths, traditions, and more of the people who "will be might have been" someday living in what is now Northern California. At once Utopian and Dystopian, the culture that LeGuin shares with us is beautiful and complex.

I read this book when it was first published in paperback in the mid-80's. It planted and nurtured in me a seed of hope that humans are capable of someday living in community in different ways than we do now. It opened in my imagination doors that I had never before noticed. Here is an example of a new narrative structure, or anti-structure. Here, too, is an example of a new-old social structure, a post-modern tribalism that has returned to "traditional" values such as living in harmony with oneself and one's environment, and recognizing the strength and beauty in ritual and tradition.

Though others (including she) may disagree, I personally have always considered this work Mrs. LeGuin's crowning achievement. As Tolkien did in his Middle Earth stories, LeGuin in "Always Coming Home" creates a new-old world that is unfamiliar yet recognizable, someplace we want to go back to again and again. We are lucky indeed that this book is now back in print!

Ursula K. LeGuin's novel Always Coming Home, published in 1985, is a story of our own earth in the distant future. Ms. le Guin has set her novel in what is today the small community of Rutherford , in the western Napa Valley of Northern California. Nothing remains of twentieth-century civilization except an occasional piece of rubble and some areas poisoned by residual pesticide. Much of our present-day land is under water, including California's Central Valley and some of the coastal region, and the human population is sparse.

However, the tone of the book is neither cautionary nor obtrusively alien; the topography, plants and animals of Northern California are easily recognizable, and the human culture--the people are the Kesh, or "Valley People"--although different from our own, is not jarringly so.

The book is the story of one woman's life, from childhood to old age. North Owl is born in Sinshan, one of the nine small communities in the Valley of the Na (our Napa River

Cult fave Irvine Welsh returns to his roots (so to speak) with this new novel featuring the characters from TRAINSPOTTING and his previous book GLUE. However, in PORNO the focus is on Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson, a decade on; failed in every career path he has trod- honest or dishonest. But Sick Boy comes across a new opportunity to establish himself in the world. By making a porn film.
He enlists student Nikki Fuller-Smith to be his starlet and then sets out to rebuild bridges with his old pal Mark Renton- now clean and sober and "Juice" Terry Lawson.
PORNO is an entertaining but deep read, by turns funny and disturbing with an interesting new array of characters and several narratives running through the book giving the characters unique point of view. Keep your fingers crossed for Danny Boyle and John Hodge to option this one. I suppose the filmed result could be a hybrid of TRAINSPOTTING meets IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES meets BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR.

Before you read this book, you definitely must first read Welsh's first novel Trainspotting, and you should probably also read his last one, Glue. Porno is a direct sequel to Trainspotting, bringing back virtually all the characters some ten years later, and it's a semi-sequel to Glue, adding some of that book's characters into the mix, most notably "Juice" Terry Lawton and Rab Birrell. Porno will lack a great deal of depth and resonance for readers not familiar with those earlier books and their characters and settings.

And therein lies both Porno's attraction and minor disappointments. If you loved Trainspotting, reading Porno is very much like the experience of having seen a great band in a tiny club when they were just starting, and then seeing the same band ten years later in a large venue when they are more popular. They may still be amazing and play your favorite songs, but inevitably they've mellowed a touch, the intensity is isn't the same, and you get a little wistful. And to a certain extent, that's exactly what the book is about, aging, maturing, and getting over one's past. It's totally unfair to expect another Trainspotting from Welsh, an author can only write that passionate and electric a book once, and it's usually the first book they write. In any event, readers have had ten years to get used to reading Scots dialect and it's hard to conceive of what Welsh could write about that would be equally shocking as his heroin underworld.

In any event, Porno is a carefully plotted and constructed story, told in alternating first-person chapters by Sick Boy, his new lady Nikki Fuller-Smith, Spud, Begbie, and Renton. The central character is Sick Boy, who's seeking to reinvent himself as post-millenium entrepreneur, starting by making a porn film with his circle of acquaintances. Eventually this intertwines with the reappearance of Renton and the question of what went down in London ten years ago when he cheated Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud on a heroin deal and skipped town. Cynics will no doubt say that Welsh is looking to ride the sequel bus to potloads of money, which is, again, unfair. Clearly the Trainspotting crew were the characters closest to his heart, so of course he's going to want to revisit them and it seems churlish to suggest that an author who uses characters twice is a sellout.

Foe most part the characters are exactly as they were in the earlier books, although to varying degrees, most realize they're getting older and need to change. In this regard, Spud's story is the most poignant and affecting of the lot. And of course Renton's attempt to settle the past and lead a normal life is hard not to empathize with, which is why mad-dog Begbie is such a menacing presence throughout the book. Ultimately however, this is a comedy, lacking the darkness of Trainspotting, or Welsh's severely underrated Filth. It's a wonderful sentimental adventure full or wacky hi-jinks, and comuppances aplenty.

Welsh managed to create a great book with a well fitting Title. The cover alone will embarrass you while riding on the train to work, but at the same time grip you with its intensity and that of its characters.

Viewing the story from the perspective of all main characters in turn, the reader gets sucked into their heads, learns what makes them tick, shares their dreams and ambitions. Despite their disgusting immorality, abuse of people surrounding them the readers still learns to develop sympathies even for the worst kind of characters like "Begbie", the foul mouthed, brutish, paranoid thug terrorizing the Leith neighbourhood after a brief spell in prison.

The nymphomatic, cool & intelligent Nikki and her escapades as a student of film & media and Scottish literature certainly eclipses most readers experience at university. She will painfully experience exploitation, but eventually gain a sweet revenge.

Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and the other colourful characters certainly bring some smiles on your face, whith their exploits when they are "pished", high or sexually intoxicated.

I particular enjoyed the cunning and successful scam played on Ranger supporters. It could work!

But readers be warned! The foul language and explicit scenes, combined with Scottish spelling may pose a great challenge to people not used to it!

In the final analysis I think it was an excellent read. Not pleasant, but hugely enjoyable. Don't wait for it to come out on film - it is to explicit and I cannot imagine Obi-wan Genobi to star as an Amsterdam Rave organiser!

I'm really going up and down about this series. I found the first book lukewarm, while reading the second book interested me enough to run out immediately and buy the third. However, now that I've read the third I'm feeling a little bit let down.

The two main characters, Llian and Karan, spend most of the book stressing out about whether they trust each other. Somehow, this point is more important than the lives of their friends or the fate of the world. I have to say that I still find Karan one of the more remarkably unlikeable female leads in recent fantasy. I sincerely hope that in the 4th book, they get a therapist offline and the rest of the book can continue without further whining.

That said, the adventure *does* continue and other of the characters become more interesting. I like very much the direction Rulke is taking and I'm curious to see more about him.
Not a terrible read, just not a great one.

This is the third book in The View from the Mirror tetralogy (after A Shadow on the Glass and The Tower on the Rift, and before The Way Between the Worlds).

Dark Is the Moon starts in the tower of Katazza, where Tensor has just opened a gate to the Nightland. In the process, Rulke the Charon has managed to escape from his imprisonment of a thousand years, while Karan and Llian have been sucked throught the gate. Mendark, Malien, Tallia and Yggur have to overcome their differences and ally against their common enemy and try to use the power of the Rift to seal the Nightland. Karan and Llian's lives are at stake.

And so in the Nightland, Karan and Llian have no choice but to team with Rulke, or they'll be trapped forever. But in the battle, the new alliance draws to much power from the Rift and Katazza collapses over them. Thanks to that diversion, Karan manages to escape throught the gate and lands in the rubble of the destroyed citadel. However, Llian is still stuck with Rulke, who compels him to tell the Histories but finally lets him go five days later. When with Karan they catch up with Yggur, Mendark, Shand and the others, everyone suspects he's become Rulke's spy.

After crossing the Dry Sea again, the group realizes that their only chance to beat Rulke is to make a replica of the golden Flute, a legendary artifact that is said to have the power to open the Way between the Worlds. But for this they need Aachan red gold, which is extremely rare, and information on how to use the instrument.

In this thrid volume, all roads diverge, to converge again at the end for another confrontation: Mendark sets off to Havissard in search of the gold, Yggur goes back to Thurkad where his army is at war, Tallia and Shand go look for young Lilis's father, and Karan wants to go back to her estate in Gothryme to see how her people are faring. Llian accompanies her, and on the way they stop in Chanthed, where lies the College of the Histories, and where he thinks he might gather new information for his Great Tale.

In the meantime Faellamor, with the help of her always faithful Maigraith, is searching for a way to break the Forbidding and tries to link with fher far away kin, the Faellem, and ask them for help. They manage to open a gate to Havissard.

Dark is the Moon is of the same quality as the previous books in the series, that is, full of entertaining adventures and well written, but nothing outstanding, although the characters have started to grow in depth, and me to consider reading Ian Irvine's next series, The Well of Echoes. But on to the fourth and final volume first.

Alot of the criticisms of this series are due to the fact that since the story was so long, they split it up into 4 parts! I applaud the publisher for at least allowing him to tell his story the way he wants! That said, this book will appeal to people interested in what makes a person or society work more than the action/adventure. Here is where all the various characters really "get going" with their agendas. (And believe me- ALMOST EVERYBODY has one) I hadn't liked Maigraith at all, but you're in for a surprise here! I enjoy not having a character's sainthood or villainy spelled out for me. This author is NOT casual simply-entertainment reading. If you read his bio, you'll see that his point of view stems from his conservationist work.

One of at least six books that have been published since Mallory's body was found. The book is poorly produced with disappointing photos (largely extracted from archive footage and film stills - one deduces an unedifying row between climbing and camera teams) all with the feel of a token volume to accompany the BBC programme. The author spends 162 pages out of 203 retelling the history of the early Everest expeditions - all good stuff, but his text shows more than a passing resemblance to other, better, secondary sources (in particular David Robertson's 'George Mallory', Walt Unwsorth's 'Everest', and Peter Hopkirk's 'Trespassers on the Roof of the World'). Rows between camera crews and climbers are not new; they have beset expeditions since John Noel underwrote the 1924 expedition with speculative funds based on what he thought the footage might make. But it justifies a raw, cynical view about the BBC for trying to muffle the climbing team from telling their own stories (and thereby losing their first choice of high altitude cameraman and prejudicing a much better book and film) and the American for cashing in once they had found a film crew prepared to back them.

Peter Firstbrook presents, essentially, a two-part text. The initial (and, overwhelming) content of the book deals factually and thoroughly with the history of the various climbing expeditions with the emphasis appropriately placed on Mallory's involvement in the whole process. The detail and insight offered by Mr. Firstbrook seems to have been genuinely and thoughtfully researched, although, I found it strange that more wasn't mentioned about Mallory's apparent disregard for his young family. Romantic letters aside, Mallory's actions clearly placed his wife and children a distant third behind his own ambition and the "chaps" with whom he fraternized. Evidence of this inconsistency in the book is liberally found whenever Mr. Firstbrook describes, in great detail, the trists that developed among Mallory and his fellow alpinist cognoscente. I suspect the omission of detail regarding Mallory's relationship with his family was a choice of the author rather than a lack of available material on the subject...

The book takes a turn towards the superficial, however, when Mr. Firstbrook suddenly transitions the reader along with the expedition which found Mallory's body in 1999. Given the level of detail he was able to provide about the early expeditions, I was amazed at how little was provided about the 1999 expedition, its team members, the discovery of the body and actual clues provided by Mallory's remains. How did the team members go about the excavation of the body, for example. And, certainly, some of the dialogue among the climbers back at base camp was worth publishing, wasn't it?

Similarly, the paucity of the (only) black and white photos of the 1999 expedition left me wondering why Mr. Firstbrook bothered to include them at. I suppose one can speculate that he either didn't have rights to the photos, or, omitted them out of respect for the families, or, that he was (somehow) bound by contract to Eric Simonson? Again, no explanation was offered.

It appears, unfortunately, that Mr. Firstbrook was under presure to complete the work before the next guy(s) did; that may account for the (somewhat) flimsy detail and discussion provided in the last couple of chapters of the book. Doesn't the title of this book suggest an emphasis on what the search team was able to ascertain in 1999? Hell, I learned almost as much about this subject matter by watching the damn NOVA presentation!

Peter Firstbrook, the author of this book thinks that it's possible. Ironically however, if they did make it, it might have helped cause their deaths. By the time they would have got there it would have been early evening at the earliest. Then tiredness, exhaustion, dehydration combined might have caused Mallory's fall to his death. The irony being that they were at that point quite close, less than 200 ft, from Camp VI, from where they set off that morning. This book is divided into two parts. Part one is a biography of George Mallory, and a brief history of Himalayan mountanerring expeditions up till the 1920s, the second is an account of the expedition that found Mallory's body earlier this year. Worth reading, if only to look at the possible scenearios and evidence

I read Trainspotting (first) and Ecstasy (second) while travelling through Ireland and Scotland this summer. I was intrigued by the endorsement of Trainspotting which claimed it to be "The best book ever written by any man or woman -- deserves to sell more copies than the Bible." I figured I'd give it a try. I'm glad I did. Trainspotting was one of the best books I've read this year. A truly stomach-turning trip through the world of heroin addiction. Ecstasy, on the other hand, seems like a re-hash of a topic Mr. Welsh has visited too often (even though this is only his fourth book.) Ecstasy squeezes 3 stories into less than 275 pages (at least in the UK version.) That leaves you with under- developed characters and some who are too far-fetched to believe. The stories just seem to start and not really go anywhere -- and then just end. What's more, Ecstasy's descriptions of the effects of drugs fall short of Trainspotting's heroin ride. Irvine Welsh is a talented writer, but it doesn't show as much in this book.

If you're a Welsh fan and have just came from one of his previous books I believe you'll enjoy this one. It's got 3 witty short stories that include great characters and even better situations. However, since this is my first book to have read from Welsh I found it extremely difficult to follow along with the strong dialect. In turn the book took me forever to get through.

Although the book was well rounded with characters and a great story line, I don't believe I'll come back to Welsh.

I waited to read this book for 2 years, and when i finally got this book, I started to read it right away. My favourite short story was "The Undefeated", in which raver Lloyd falls for a yuppie Heather. The book contains 3 short stories. "Lorraine Goes to Livingston" is a great tale of revenge and love found and lost. "Fortune's Always Hiding" is a total Welsh-ian story of "love" and corporate greed. I love this book, the language, the humour, and the sheer simplicity of the overall stories. These tales make a reader want to read more and more.