OK, my knee-jerk reaction to this book was, "Finally, some THOUGHTFUL words on worship!" But let's face it, books on evangelical worship are a dime-a-dozen these days with little new being said and a lack of thoughtfulness (not sincerity). As for books on worship and the theology of worship: the standard has been significatly raised.

Not so with this book! Dr. Carson's introductory essay alone is worth this book. But, there is a lot more that it offers: following some insightful remarks by the editor (Carson) there are three theoretical/applicable studies written by Mark Ashton (Anglican -- Cranmer), R. Kent Hughes (Free Church), and Timothy J. Keller (Reformed).

Each writes from their own tradition (as a pastor), providing a semi-apologetic and a passion for the approach. Further, each writer includes sample services to help show what each tradition "looks like" in practice.

I recommend this to:
1)those tired of reading the same old stuff on worship
2)those unfamiliar with the theology of worship (this is a good intro)
3)those unfamiliar with different doctrinal/denominational traditions
4)church elders and leaders who plan worship
5)those desiring more...

Dawna discribes in great details how and what to do for food, clothing, shelter along the way. But the story of who they did it and what they saw made me laugh all the way through the book. I'm packing up my Ford Ranger and going for myself.

Thanks Dawna for writing a great & needed book.

Fowler suggests refactoring a program to simplify the addition of new functionality. The program should also be refactored to make it easier for human readers to understand at the same time.

He also insists that each step is small and preserves functionality, and on frequent unit testing with a comprehensive test suite.

Half of the book consists of a catalogue of refactorings. He gives each refactoring a memorable name, such as "Replace Type Code with Subclasses". He illustrates the design transformation with a pair of UML class diagrams, and has a standard set of sections: Motivation, Mechanics and Example.

The Motivation is a prose section that describes and justifies the refactoring, showing the relationship to other refactorings.

The Mechanics is a sequence of steps needed to carry out the refactoring, shown as a list of bullet points He expands on some points.

The Example is where the value of this book lies. Fowler takes a fragment of Java code, and takes us step by step through the refactoring. The code is small enough that he can show it all each step of the way without overwhelming us, but is large enough to be realistic.

The code is clear enough for non-Java programmers to follow. He explains his code well enough for the book to function as a Java tutorial where the meaning of the code is not obvious. One or two of the refactorings are specific to the Java object model, and do not apply to other languages. Other languages would benefit from similar treatment, but there are very few language-specific refactorings.

The book is very much of the Design Patterns movement, with frequent references to patterns. The aim of a factoring may be to achieve a particular pattern, or it may take advantage of a particular pattern. The book can be used as a tutorial on Design Patterns.

I have a small number of complaints. Fowler advocates the use of refactoring while studying code for a code review. One needs to be very sensitive to the feelings of the programmer here, especially if he or she is a novice. The reviewer should read the code with refactoring in mind, and possible refactorings recommended, but it is for the programmer to make the changes.

Reading this book has inspired me to refactor some of my own code. My mistakes underlined the need to take small steps, and to test frequently. I spent a day building a useful Delphi testing framework from the description Fowler gives of the JUnit testing framework. The one category of code that does not seem to lend itself to this approach is some highly coupled parsing code. While I can extract small blocks of code, they remain tightly coupled with each other, and it is hard to give them meaningful names. The answer here may be to use the top down approach of recursive descent, rather than the bottom up approach of refactoring. Perhaps recursive descent can guide refactoring. Refactoring is largely a local approach. One can almost say a pinhole approach. Sometimes a global view is needed.

In summary, I would say that this very good book would be of use to Java programmers who have some understanding and much bafflement. It is very good for us older dogs who have become a little jaded and need some new ideas and motivation.

Refactoring is a book which details simple techniques of fixing your code to facilitate making changes.

The book's main feature is a large catalog of at least 50 refactoring patterns (presented in a similar way to Design Patterns) with a name, example, and motivation for using it. The patterns are described using UML. There are several other chapters of interest, including one on "Bad Smells" which lists many telltale signs of poor programming and how to fix them.

Maybe I'm just showing my lack of sophistication, but Design Patterns went over my head. I only "got" a few of the patterns. But this book is much more accessible to an intermediate programmer who wants to improve his coding style. If you've ever wondered how to write more maintainable code this is your book. One good thing about this book is it's directly applicable to almost every standard procedural or OO language, whereas Design Patterns are pretty much for OO programming only. Even if you are writing VBScript or Javascript for your web page you could use many of the techniques illustrated here.

Highly recommended. Buy this one.

There are three main reasons that I recommend this book:

1. Great Story
2. Very good Translation
3. Durable Hard Cover

Great Story

In this novel Tolstoy presents marriage and human relationships in a realistic manner. Anna Karenina details a passionate love affair and it's doleful consequences. The reader experiences this tumultuous love from the point of view of the two paramours, as well as the friends and family members whom their lives touch.

Nevertheless, a tale about a cheating wife does not great literature make.

The existential struggle for meaning in life and the nature of God figures strongly as a theme in Anna Karenina. Overshadowing, in my opinion, even the experiences of the book's namesake. Any lover of philosophy will enjoy this book immensely.

The Translation

As I mentioned before, this is a good translation. By good, I mean the following:

1. Russian words are footnoted - Some words lose their meaning and cultural context when translated to English. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky did a wonderful job leaving these terms in tact. There are notes at the back of the book that fully explain each Russian word.

For example, who knew that the "roll" that Stiva eats in my previous translation was actually a "kalatch?"

2. Names of the Characters are Preserved - Princess Darya Alexandrovna Oblonsky is also known as Darya and sometimes as Dolly. The use of names and nicknames is very important in language. I appreciate that the translator preserved the use of the patronymic and various names of each character. Too bad there is not a way to translate the Russian forms of address. Sigh.

3. Foreign Language Passages are Footnoted - Many of the members of the social sphere in which the book is set spoke multiple languages. Thankfully, when Tolstoy wrote a passage in French or German, the translators let it alone and wrote a translation at the bottom of the text.

Hardback

I tend to manhandle my books, so I like hardback. I think I've had this book for about a year. It's held up pretty well.

Unless you're the kind of person who uses bookmarks and doesn't fold pages, I recommend this edition instead of a softback book.

In conclusion, Pevear and Volokhonsky's work stands out as a stellar translation of one of literature's greatest masterpieces. I highly recommend this book!

This edition from Modern Library Classics was translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett with a revision by Leonard Kent and Nina Berberova. The prose reads very easily, in clear, accessible English for today. (But don't worry: It's not "The Good News Bible does Tolstoy.") While the book is long, and by looking at a calendar and my new paperback's rumpled cover and scuffed binding, I could tell I'd been reading it a long time, it felt as if it were passing quickly. Tolstoy's narrative moves easily from stage to stage -- there's no feeling of contrived suspense or narrative manipulation. The lives of the characters progress naturally, and what Tolstoy tells the reader, the reader believes and doesn't question (this reader didn't.)

The story focuses on just a few main characters, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina (and her husband Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin), Count Aleksey Kirilich Vronksy, Konstantin Dmitrich Levin and Kitty Scherbatskaya. These individuals propel the story, and it is their lives and relationships that we follow most closely. Supporting characters include Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky, his wife Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya and Levin's brothers, a small cast for a grand Russian novel.

On the back cover, a quote about the novel, attributed to Matthew Arnold, says that we are "not to take ANNA KARENINA as a work of art; we are to take it as a slice of life." I think it is really both.

The theme of the novel centers on relationships, and those relationships in 19th Century Russian artistocratic society of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Anna Karenina is an elite, beautiful woman married to a powerful government official, Aleksey Karenin, with whom she has a son, Seryozha. She falls in love with and has an extended affair with the rich, dapper Count Aleksey Vronksy, and has a child with him, a daughter. Their story follows her inability to ask for or later receive a divorce from her husband, and her increasing unhappiness in the relationship with Vronsky, as she is bannished by society and resents the freedom he has as a man to move in his old circles. Her jealousy and insecurity grow throughout the course of the novel, rendering her nearly mad.

The other relationship, which serves as a contrast and foil for Karenina and Vronsky, is that of Levin and Kitty Scherbatskaya. Levin is a somewhat older man than the young and beautiful Kitty, daughter of one of Moscow's many princes. He is an aristocratic farmer and cares for his family's vast agrarian holdings in the country thoughtfully and meticulously. At the beginning of the novel, he has been courting Kitty, but had returned to the country for awhile. When he returns to ask her to marry him, he sees that she is infatuated with Vronksy, whom he doesn't trust. Vronsky meets Anna Karenina at a ball and stops calling on Kitty, breaking her heart. After a long separation, Kitty and Levin meet again and she agrees to marry him, happily. Their storyline follows their marriage and the birth of their son, Dimitry.

It is definitely true that this novel is most definitely a slice out of life. The characters are incredibly realistic as is the pace and plot of the novel. But the artistry lies in Tolstoy's effective setting of one relationship against another. It's not as black and white as it might be in a lesser writer's hands. The "good couple" Levin and Kitty have difficulties in adjusting to each other and in their relationship. Levin, like Anna, is jealous, but unlike Vronsky and Anna, he is motivated by love and generosity to overcome his angry feelings for the benefit of a harmonious home. Other aspects of the two different relationships are set off by one another. A very compelling character is made of Aleksey Alexandrovich Karenin, whom Anna despises, but who undergoes a convincing and sad degeneration of self as Anna leaves him and he maintains custody of the son that she loves. (He gets caught up with a society woman who has converted to a fundamentalist, ecstatic Christianity and gives him advice, ultimately leading him to allow a French faux-mystic to decide the fate of his marriage to Anna.)

The novel has a well-known climax, which I won't reveal if you don't know it, but it has beautifully written and rich "falling action" which allows the reader to come through the shock and pain to what Levin discovers beyond the love of the family life he craved.

This is definitely a masterwork, completely readable and worth the time spent on every page.

All this being so, I was delighted to find the Puffin Classics version retold by Geraldine McCaughrean! The tales are told in an easy-to-read, flowing style that captures the bawdy humor of the originals, without being over-crass (this is a children's book, after all.) I found myself often laughing out loud, and wishing I'd found this version much sooner, because it makes Chaucer fun to read! I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to try Chaucer but feels intimidated by the scholarly-looking versions available in the "Literature and Classics" sections. You won't become expert in reading Middle English, but you WILL see why The Canterbury Tales has such a wonderful reputation!

Voltaire sends the innocent and impressionable Candide on what amounts to a world tour (or as near to it as makes no difference). The reader has to put up with outrageous coincidences and improbabilities: I felt that Voltaire was using such devices deliberately to amuse the reader. Candide experiences various adventures and meets (often more than once) a collection of exotic characters. His travails eventually cause him to question his teacher Pangloss's value system. But really, Voltaire throws various philosophical problems at the reader and invites a reaction - often this is done with a fine wit.

All in all, a pleasure - the more so because it's a surprising one.

Before reading further, let me share a word of caution. This book is filled with human atrocities of the most gruesome sort. Anything that you can imagine could occur in war, an Inquisition, or during piracy happens in this book. If you find such matters distressing (as many will, and more should), this book will be unpleasant reading. You should find another book to read.

The book begins as Candide is raised in the household of a minor noble family in Westphalia, where he is educated by Dr. Pangloss, a student of metaphysical questions. Pangloss believes that this is the best of all possible worlds and deeply ingrains that view into his pupil. Candide is buoyed by that thought as he encounters many setbacks in the course of the book as he travels through many parts of Europe, Turkey, and South America.

All is well for Candide until he falls in love with the Baron's daughter and is caught kissing her hand by the Baron. The Baron immediately kicks Candide out of the castle (literally on the backside), and Candide's wanderings begin. Think of this as being like expulsion from the Garden of Eden for Adam. Soon the penniless Candide finds himself in the Bulgarian army, and receiving lots of beatings while he learns to drill.

The story grows more far-fetched with each subsequent incident. To the casual reader, this exaggeration can seem unnecessary and annoying. It will remind you of the most extreme parts of Swift in Gulliver's Travels and Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel. But subtly, Voltaire is using the exaggeration to lure the reader into making complacent judgments about complacency itself that Voltaire wants to challenge. The result is a deliciously ironical work that undermines complacency at a more fundamental level than I have seen done elsewhere. Basically, Candide challenges any view you have about complacency that is defined in terms of the world-view of those who are complacent.

Significant changes of circumstances (good and ill) occur to all of the members of the Baron's household over the course of the story. Throughout, there is much comparing of who has had the worst luck, with much feeling sorry for oneself.

That is the surface story. Voltaire is, however, a master of misdirection. Beneath the surface, Voltaire has another purpose for the book. He also wants to expose the reader to questioning the many bad habits that people have that make matters worse for everyone. The major themes of these undercurrents are (1) competing rather than to cooperating, (2) employing inhumane means to accomplish worldly (and many spiritual) ends, (3) following expected rules of behavior to show one's superiority over others that harm and degrade others, (4) focusing on money and power rather than creating rich human relationships, (5) hypocritical behavior, and (6) pursuing ends that society approves of rather than ends that please oneself.

By the end of the story, the focus shifts again to a totally different question: How can humans achieve happiness? Then, you have to reassess what you thought about the book and what was going on in Voltaire's story. Many readers will choose to reread the book to better capture Voltaire's perspective on that final question, having been surprised by it.

Candide is one of my favorite books because it treats important philosophical questions in such an unusual way. Such unaccustomed matching of treatment and subject matters leaves an indelible impression that normal philosophical arguments can never match. Voltaire also has an amazing imagination. Few could concoct such a story (even by using illegal substances to stimulate the subconscious mind). I constantly find myself wondering what he will come up with next. The story is so absurd that it penetrates the consciousness at a very fundamental level, almost like doing improvisation. In so doing, Voltaire taps into that feeling of "what else can happen?" that overcomes us when we are at our most pessimistic. So, gradually you will find yourself identifying with the story -- even though nothing like this could ever happen to you. Like a good horror story, you are also relieved that you can read about others' troubles and can put your own into perspective. This last point is the fundamental humanity of the story. You see what a wonderful thing a kind word, a meal, or a helping hand can be. That will probably inspire you to offer those empathic actions more often.

After you have finished Candide, I suggest that you ask yourself where complacency about your life and circumstances is costing you and those you care about the potential for more health, happiness, peace, and prosperity. Then take Voltaire's solution, and look around you for those who enjoy the most of those four wonderful attributes. What do those people think and do differently from you?

"White Fang" isn't as much like "Call of The Wild" as you might think it is. "White Fang" is a classic story of a wolf who was born part dog/part wolf, but who's wild instincts (the wolf side), far outshine the dog instincts. However, life in the wild is tough and White Fang has to learn the ways of humans. Will White Fang ever grow fond of humans, or will he remain a wild creature who only knows vengeance? I recommend getting this book and reading it to find out, and trust me, it's well worth it if you like classic books that are well written.

If you like "White Fang" after you read it, I would recommend also getting "Call of The Wild." I can't really say which one of the two is my favorite because they're both GREAT books!

It is not until a man named Weedon Scott appears, and saves White Fang from certain death, that White Fang's life is changed. Scott is the opposite of all that he had come to know in life, and very, very gradually, White Fang comes to know love, for the very first time.

This story stays as one of my favorite, and the best, pieces of literature of all time, and anyone who has not read it is sincerely missing out. White Fang, is definately, Jack London at his best.