The author of the "Joshua Bates" line does not exhibit much ability to write above the third grade level herself. It is a horrible book to expose young readers to, both for a poor story line and for terrible grammatical errors in the text. It is best avoided and has been removed from our curriculums allowed reading list.

Both of my children gobbled up this delightful 1993 sequel to The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates in the second or third grade. There's great appeal in the realistic characters and dialogue. They fell in love with Joshua.

Joshua was entering the fifth grade. As the school year opened, however, the class (and school) bully, Tommy Wilhelm announced plans for a new "Nerds Out" club. Still sensitive to his failure to make fourth grade on time, Joshua at first refused to stand up to the gang.

That made things worse for him. They put the whole school on the defensive, but Joshua got the brunt of their nastiness--until, that is, they decided to pick on a new kid in the class who had no friends and liked Joshua. Worse, Joshua's mother told him to be nice to the new boy.

The N.O.s plotted and planned and pulled a very nasty prank, which worried the entire class, and all the teachers. It was up to Joshua to set things straight. And this he did, managing to put the class bully and his clique in their place. How, I can't say.

Parents, take note. This book is "just right" for kids moving on from early chapter readers. It's challenging but not too hard, and the charmer story line keeps them turning the pages. Alyssa A. Lappen

Another frustrated children's author must have written the last review, because this sequel to the sweet and hilarious The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates is every bit as wonderful as the first book. Susan Shreve is one of our best young adult writers.

If you can get past all the Marketing-speak in this book about how the Passport is 1) the greatest invention since sliced bread, and 2) light years ahead of anything that any other manufacturer has even thought of (let alone released), I suppose it's OK as a very introductory guide to what layer-3 switching brings to the table relative to layer-2 switching and layer-3 routing.

But that's about all I can imagine it being good for. As someone already familiar with layer-3 switching but new to Nortel's routing/switching product line, it was for the most part useless to me. Nortel's website is a better source of information on this topic -- the information is more detailed and current (the book is almost 3 years old).

So, to summarize, I don't think that anyone reasonably familiar with networking technologies will get much out of this book. And for those who aren't, there are much better books available on networking that don't sound like they were written by a Marketing department.

This book is a nice index of the different Nortel Routers and their features are. The book is also a great reference as an overview of Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching in relation to the specific Nortel hardware (i.e. Passport, Accelar). The book is indispensible if you own and manage a Nortel switching solution.

Whether you are a novice in the Internetworking industry or a seasoned professional this book is a must have!! Layer 3 switching is a new and exciting technology adopted by many Fortune (XXX) companies. The co-author Zeecil Kimmel has worked on projects and troubleshot some of the most complex networks using this technology for some of the largest customers Nortel Networks currently supports. Her ability to explain this complicated technology in an easy to understand fashion is exemplory. Her examples and scenarios are "real life" scenarios and examples that she has either personally resolved herself or has had provided invaluable input in resolving.

Most technical manuals or publications are boring and hard to read, but this one is "down to earth" and does not waste your time with unecessary theories or opinions. It a must have book for those who are involved in troubleshooting or designing internetworks using Nortel Networks Layer 3 switches.

Fascinating book on the history and lore of Atlantic salmon fishing and flies. The salmon fishing stories are wonderful. However, for a book that was up-dated in 1995, the chapter on "The New Look in Salmon Tackle" was very out-of-date -- graphite rods aren't even mentioned.

On the other hand, I found the sections on how salmon take flies, and wet-fly and dry-fly fishing methods useful.

The writing on salmon flies and their history is fascinating.

This is my first book on the topic so I can't say how it compares with others.

Atlantic Salmon Flies and Fishing is brimming over with information for anyone interested in the history of fishing for salmon, tying Atlantic Salmon flies and in all the related "arts" of fishing for Salmon. The color plates of flies are vivid and clear and the lighthearted yet informative text is easy and enjoyable to read.

This book started great like the first two of the series. However, midway through the book the plot just got horribly convoluted and made no sense whatsoever. Or maybe it wasn't the plot but the author's rather haphazard way of writing. It seems as though the author took his time the first third of the book, but the rest was just written with no thought as to explaining things so the reader could follow what was going on and why the characters were doing what they were doing. Very, very dissapointing, especially since the first two books were so good. Let's hope things pick up with book 4.

First of all, I am not a Clan fan; vampire politics just isn't my cup of tea. However, someone pressed me to give the Dark Ages series, particularly the Cappadocian novel, a try. I am familiar with this author's previous work and did enjoy his Year of the Scarab trilogy very much, so I gave the old fogey vampires a chance.

Anyone familiar with the World of Darkness knows how intricate and, well, downright dry vampire politics can be-the angling for a better position for one's clan, the kowtowing for fear of retribution, the lengthy verbal quests for information and/or favors, etc. Andrew Bates has a way of not wasting words, and the words he does end up using are carefully chosen; this clean and terse style brings fresh air to the musty wheelings and dealings of the undead. Bates draws a picture and adds shading, but doesn't beat you over the head with cloying details. The story he weaves involves several vampire characters (Markus Giovanni the scholar, the cryptic priestess Constancia, the mad Alexia) that are all out on parallel quests, which intersect at a single goal-possession of the Sargon Codex, a mysteriously divine artifact that may make or break the Dream that is the reign of vampires. One of the most attractive parts of this book is how that intersection of quests is handled ... without giving away any juicy bits, the climax is skillfully prolonged such that the conclusion is quite satisfying, a true page-turner, and at the end inspires natural feeling to the oft-repeated but never-tired question, "So what happens next?"

Like any skilled storyteller, Andrew Bates relies on sidekick characters to add intriguing texture to "Cappadocian." And what kick-(...) sidekicks they are! My favorite by far is the ghoul pair consisting of Beltramose and Falsinar, servants of Markus Giovanni. Their easy friendship and wisecracking dialogue kept me immersed until the end as much as the travels, battles, and the elusive Sargon Codex did.

"Cappadocian" is a great example of how simultaneously elegant and adventurous the combination of blood, madness and mysticism can be. Vampire stories are cool ...who knew?

I have to say that I thought this book would have more review questions in each chapter. Once you get passed chapter 1, you may get 15 to 20 review questions. I had hope to see more questions. The author failed to give an explanation to the questions and answers. Each chapter starts off with review questions. I would have expected to have read about the subjects before seeing the review questions.

In the instructions for students the author says "Pay attention to the key words and objectives". Well I was certainly dispointed because I did not see any key words and objectives.

The book contains unlabeled images and illustrations for every chapter but it failed to identify and describe the parts of the anatomy in the image. They leave up to you to figure out the parts of the image.

I am certainly disappointed.

MCP

THIS BOOK TAKES YOU THROUGH A STEP-BY-STEP PROTOCOL FOR EVERY REGION OF ABDOMINAL SCANNING, IT IS TRULEY A GREAT BOOK TO LEARN BY AND, ONE TO KEEP TO GO BACK TO IN THE FUTURE AS I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A SONOGRAPHER.

I haven't heard the tapes, but I've read the book. I couldn't find a listing for the book, so I'm putting my review here.

I can just imagine those fine actors, Alan Bates and Dianna Quick giving these characters voice - Bates, especially, is perfect casting.

Henry is in his 60s, without financial means, and caretaking a small houseboat on one of England's canals. He sees himself as handsome, charming and sexually gifted - a real ladies man. He thinks he knows what women want and does his best to give it to them, but on the wrong side of 60 and with little money, his opportunities are limited. Without a partner, and burnt by experiences from lonely hearts columns, he refuses to give up, and sets his requirements down on paper. However, on a walk to the village for provisions, he notices a local cottage has been bought by a reasonably attractive woman of mature years with, most importantly, obvious signs of money. Successfully offering his services as a gardener, then caretaker of the cottage when Daisy's work takes her to America for some months, he immediately begins planning a strategy to make Daisy's money his. He rearranges his life story in a way that he thinks will make Daisy sympathetic to him, and slowly, relentlessly inveigles her into his web of deceit and lies.

Written in alternate chapters from both Henry's and Daisy's viewpoint, we read of him setting his bait, then her unknowingly taking it, then his derision of her neediness. We find out about Henry's past, or rather, the past he prefers to remember. We find out about Daisy, her two failed marriages, her estrangement from her daughter and her unexpected success as a playwright.

Despite being badly let down by two husbands, Daisy allows herself to be drawn in by what she sees as his selflessness, caring, admiration, and sexual prowess, not realising that it's all a calculated act. But fortunately for her, she's not without friends, and even though Henry eventually has her in his thrall, they are not so easily deceived.

I almost put this book down several times. I had a sour taste in my mouth most of the time I was reading - I felt something nasty was going to happen and I wasn't sure I wanted to know about it. It didn't quite happen that way, due to the intervention of people who really loved Daisy, but this could so easily be the story of many people looking for love. Beware of con-men with good stories, listen to your friends, and trust your initial instincts - all advice Daisy could have used.

The previous reviewer,judithb,has written a perfect precis of the story so I won't bother repeating the story.It's the old(unfortunately) story of a lonely,vulnerable woman of sixty,still attractive and with a good,solid writing career,meeting an attractive,sexy(even at 65) man who knows a good thing when he sees it and promptly decides to make the moves on her.A con man with considerable charm,he lulls and woos her into a state of submission,and if it were not for her canny friends and daughter,would have undoubtedly destroyed her life. I became uneasy with him right from the word go and this spoiled my reading of the book as I was just waiting for the inevitable to happen.One hopes that all women will have good friends to give them a good shake if they're unfortunate enough to succumb to late life"love affairs" and rescue them before too much damage is done.

As parents we all require occasional assistance when it comes to parenting. We seek advice from friends, family members, doctors, and other "experts," and if you're like me, you reach for a book. My five-year-old is delightful in most ways, but I'm concerned that he should take more initiative and accomplish additional simple tasks on with limited guidance. In fact, it seems he has been conditioned to wait for my wife and me to perform simple tasks for him and, therefore, he has been "taught" to be helpless in many situations. For this reason, I sought a book to give me a few ideas on everyday responsibilities that five-year-olds ought to be accomplishing on their own.

I bought "Your Five-Year-Old" by Louise Bates Ames after it was recommended to me by an expert in positive discipline.

The book is very short, at 111 pages, and is divided into ten chapters:

1.Characteristics of Age Five
2.The Child and Others
3.Routines, Health, and Tensional Outlets
4.Discipline
5.Accomplishments and Abilities
6.The Child's Mind
7.School
8.The Five-Year-Old Party
9.Individuality
10.Stories from Real Life

It also includes appendixes on good toys and books for five-year-olds and also books for parents of five-year-olds.

Because I have more reasons to dislike the book than to find it appealing, I'll begin by sharing my complaints. My first criticism is that the book is dated, having been written in 1979. The time period of when the book was authored leaves the contents with many outdated notions, many of which I would have overlooked had they not been so irritating. Firstly, the father-child relationship is referred to only a few times, and primarily in a stereotypical manner. Conversely, the mother-child relationship is referenced in much detail throughout the text. Secondly, there is a disparaging reference to Indians, albeit as shared by a little girl from a nightmare. Thirdly, the book recommends that a five-year-old ought to be able to walk alone two blocks to a store. Not that crime against children is any worse now than in the late Seventies, but what parent in his or her right mind would let a child of this age do this? (Am I wrong?) Fourthly, and perhaps trivially, when it comes to common activities for five-year-olds, many are dated, such as listening to records.

My second criticism of the book is that it gave me no new ideas on how to have my son initiate and complete more simple tasks on his own, which was my purpose for buying the book.

On the positive side, the book can be read in a few hours. Secondly, it contains several enchanting pictures of smiling five-year-olds. The "Accomplishments and Abilities" chapter does give the reader some indication as to whether your five-year-old is on track, but the substance is primarily common sense.

All said, I doubt this book will provide much enlightenment to parents looking for suggestions such as I sought.

I enjoyed reading the book especially the sections on school readiness and how a 5 year old child's mind works. This is a good book for parents to read in light of the tendency to push children academically and socially before they are ready developmentally.

When you know what behaviors are "normal" for your child's age you can relax, stop the worry, and focus on appropriate solutions. This whole series of books accurately defines the ages and stages of children. These books keep your expectations realistic and allow you to avoid anger caused by a lack of understanding of your child's developmental stages.

Plain Brown Wrapper is well-written, the characters are well developed and it has a good premise (a murder at an NABJ convention) but --- I think the book works better as a primer on fine hotels, cuisine and the French language than as a mystery. You can read entire chapters and forget that you're reading a mystery actually, but I did like the book and the Alex Powell character. Thank God for a black female character that's not a typical "sistagirl" reciting all of the Gucci and Versace and her closet. Bates wisely describes clothes and shoes without copping out and letting a designer name suffice for description.

Overall, it's well done. A far better portrayal of upper middle class, educated blacks than what is typically available.

"Plain Brown Wrapper" is not your average mystery novel, and I mean that in both good and bad ways. Let's do the bad ways first: author Karen Grigsby Bates spends much more time and energy than necessary detailing the expensive restaurants, posh hotels, designers clothes, Ivy League educations and top notch career posts that seem oh-so-necessary for novice detective(and journalist)Alex Powell and her circle of friends and colleagues. It's certainly not a world one can write about without firsthand knowledge and Ms. Bates seems to be letting the reader know, through her story, that this is her real-life world. I was reminded of the "Negro Geography" I first learned of in Benilde Little's book "Good Hair".

Now for the good ways: Ms. Bates has a keen ear for snappy dialogue,which moves the pace of the book along nicely and avoids those sometimes plodding moments in mystery novels when not much is happening. Through Alex Powell's sluething, the reader gets a clear sense of the victim - a well-known publishing magnate and ladies man - as a person and not just a chalk outline. The author also managed to throw in just enough red herrings to keep me changing my mind from one chapter to another on the indentity of the murderer.

Overall, a good beach read. It was fun, a little frivolous, and entertaining.

Karen Grigsby Bates first offering turned out to be entertaining and enjoyable. The character of Alex Powell was well written as well as were the supporting cast. From beginning to end I enjoyed the book and look forward to more Alex Powell offerings from Ms. Bates. This character definitely has a future!

The author is highly imaginative and tells a lot about her own life in this mish mash. We never learn much about Daisy Bates. the author writes " her body shudders like a dying rabbit and her new husband wakes and stares at his new wife..." But the author is really describing her own childhood dream of an old man with his legs wrapped around her neck!!! Blackburn's "very personal interpretation" of the life of Daisy Bates seems to include Blackburn trying to overcome some of her own childhood traumas and problems with men. If little is known about Daisy Bates' feelings towards her husband, I'd rather have that than a lot of silly conjecture and fantasy. The prose is very good, very flowery and high flown, but it doesn't help tell the story of Daisy Bates. Like other reviewers, I will have to research Daisy, yes even after reading her "biog". It didn't feel balanced at all.

Daisy Bates appears to be delusional at times in recounting her adventures with the Aboriginese but this is still one of the most fascinating reads I've had in a long time! If you were to separate her tales from the fact that she lived on her own among the indigenous peoples of Australia during a time when it was shocking for a woman to do so, there would still be an incredible story of courage and perserverance. This is an account worth reading!

Daisy Bates, a controversial woman who has attained almost mythical status in Australia, was an inveterate liar, constitutionally incapable of seeing herself in the world as it really was. Instead, she created a better world in her own mind and assumed that everyone else recognized her world as real. As Julia Blackburn reconstructs what she believes to have been Daisy's life in Australia's western desert, and her seemingly futile efforts to protect and preserve the aborigines and their culture, she presents a plausible personality with whom the reader can, to a great extent, identify.

Blackburn is successful in making Daisy's dream world seem like an understandable response to the privations and hardships she faced in her early life alone. In Part I, Blackburn describes what Daisy has said about her life, and follows it with what Blackburn has discovered to be the truth as a result of her documented research. In Part II, she allows Daisy, as she understands her, to speak to the reader herself, and we "live" with her in the desert for many years, watching as her original dedication becomes a mission and then a mania, and her insecurity grows into delusion and eventually paranoia. A woman who seems to have accomplished nothing of lasting significance, Daisy might have achieved some of her goals if she had only bent a little. Part III tells of Daisy's life after she leaves the desert.

Blackburn brings Daisy's Australian desert camp to life--the blinding sun, the heat of day and cold of night, the ghostly arrivals and departures of the shy aborigines, the birds and animals who were often Daisy's only company, and the changes wrought by the railroads, settlement, missionaries, and unfeeling governmental bureaucrats. Though she presents Daisy sympathetically, she is not Daisy's apologist, offering no defense, other than Daisy's own personality, for her extreme and solitary viewpoint. Unlike other readers, I found this a very poignant story of a woman who, at the end of a life of the utmost privation and dedication to saving a culture, realizes with sadness that it has all been for naught. Clearly, she never had a clue that most of her failure was her own fault.

Although Jonathan Bate was right on track in "Shakespeare and Ovid"(1993),he lost his way in trying to defend the Stratford man as the author in his latest book. He devotes almost a third of "The Genius of Shakespeare" to an attack on the evidence for Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of Shakespeare. In doing so, however, he makes eight significant errors of fact and 25 gross misinterpretations. For example, he says that no major actor has ever been attracted to anti-Stratfordianism(67), whereas Gielgud, Jacobi, Rylance,York, Chaplin and the director Tyrone Guthrie are all on record as rejecting the Stratford man as the author. And all but Rylance (so far) have voted for Oxford. One more example: He says that contrary to the Oxfordians letters from the Stratford man do survive and then cites the dedications signed William Shakespeare in editions of "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece." (73) These, of course, are not correspondence; and it is well-known that no letters written or received by the Stratford man have ever been found. When Bate becomes better informed about the Shakespeare authorship controversy and takes into account the views of academics ranging from Columbia University (Kristin Linklater) to English professors at Concordia University (site of the 6th annual Edward de Vere Studies Conference next April), he will no doubt see the merit in the evidence for Oxford. Meanwhile, his readers should beware the pot holes, rickety barricades and misguided detours in his ill-fated attempt to steer his readers away from the clearly sign-posted evidentiary route to Oxford's authorship of Shakespeare's works under that pseudonym.

Trying out a moderate position that lets him have his conservative genius Shakespeare in quotes and so eat it too, Bate has written a lifeless, boring account of Shakespeare. The prose is wooden. The book is so tedious I confess I didn't get through much of it.

Jonathan Bate's THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE takes issue with cultural conservatives and with politically correct radicals to explain how a dramatist of humble orgins became the best known author in history. In what is described as "a new kind of biography", Bate offers a two-part history of Shakespeare's talent and reputation. Instead of the usual life story or play-by-play account, Bate begins part one by discussing the anecdotes that were told about Shakespeare during his life, looking at how his contemporaries saw him. Then he moves on to dissect the sonnets showing the various ways they have been used to provide a biographical key to their author's life. Wielding Occam's razor, Bate attacks the tendency of the "life and works" approach to over-interpret the poems to illuminate the dark corners of the life.

Bate's willingness to admit that much will never be known is refreshing. His suggestion about the Dark Lady's identity is delightfully mischievous: she could have been the wife of John Florio, Italian secretary to the Earl of Southampton. Given the sources, this is as credible as most other interpretations, even though Bate is attempting to convict the poet Samuel Daniel's sister of multiple adultery on circumstantial evidence that would not have persuaded Othello. More daring is Bate's solution to the conclusion of "Master W H", the unknown "begetter" of the sonnets. This, he argues, is just a printer's error for "W S" (William Shakespeare).

When addressing the authorship question, Bate uses knockabout tactics to demolish alternative candidates - from Francis Bacon to sundry lords - but he does so in a more profound question: why should anyone doubt that Shakespeare wrote the plays? As so often, the answer concerns class. Cultural conservatives could not bear the idea that a mere grammer-school boy and butcher's son was as talented as university-trained wits.

In part two, Bate deals with the gradual growth of Shakespeare's reputation after his death. Since the Bard's plays broke the rules of classical decorum, his eighteenth-century admirers were forced to "invent" a new category of "native genius" to account for his talent. Shakespeare's apparent weakness, his lack of a university education, turned out to be his greatest strength. Aided by sundry Romantics, Britain's national poet was defined a "natural" genius.

Other emerging nations also adopted Shakespeare as a cultural icon, but usually in opposition to the classical culture of oppressive rulers. In Germany, for example, the Bard was reinvented as a symbol of anti-Gallic, pro-Teutonic identity. As a large part of Shakespeare's rise to universal deification was his ability to inspire other artists, Bate considers the reworking of his plays by artists such as Hector Berlioz, Giuseppe Verdi and Henry Fuseli.

Although everyone knows that Shakespeare has been used for conservative propaganda, Bate is at his best when he reminds us that the Bard was once also the people's playwright. The use of Shakespeare by Quakers, Chartists and other nonconformists as a counter-tradition - "one nurtured in the dissenting academies in which those excluded from the old universities found an educational community" - powerfully suggests that Shakespeare's genius was rooted in the ability to represent so many different aspects of life that all social groups could find cofirmation of their world-view in his books.

Bate goes further. Rather than being a reactionary Dead White European Male, Shakespeare was also an inspiration to black writers such as George Lamming and Aime Cesaire, who used THE TEMPEST as a critique of colonialism and as "the voice of the recovered black identity". Examples such as these seem to prove Bate's assertion, following Jorge Luis Borges, that Shakespeare can be "everything and nothing".

Perhaps the most polemical passages are those in which Bate revisits the arguments between the conservative "vigilantes", who use the Bard to police educational standards, and the politically correct "new iconoclasts", who use him for their own ideological ends by arguing that Shakespeare was less a genius than a product of historical forces. At its most extreme, this view denies that his works have any meaning: it is we who give meaning to them.

Between the stubborn assertiveness of the conservatives and the absurd reductionism of the radicals, Bate occupies a middle ground - Shakespeare, he insists, became an icon of genius because he was a better playwright than his contempories. His reputation has become universal because his plays really do contain a rich store of images, ambiguities and the juxtaposition of different viewpoints convincingly imagined.

Bate ends his book by arguing that Shakespeare's dramatic techniques - he toned down, for example, the stark motivations of characters he found in his sources - have only been fully appreciated in the twentieth-century. After modern science and philosophy propagated new ideas about relativism, uncertainty and the coexistence of opposites, the way was open for William Empson to lead the appreciation of ambiguity in Shakespeare's work.

THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE is aimed squarely at the general reader. Cultural materialists are sure to be exasperated as conservatives and other Shakespeare specialists may cringe at the boldness of his assertions and the ambition of his scope. Like many popular accounts, this well written book excites and provokes while risking accusations of over simplication. It is manifestly counter-productive, for example, to conclude an engagingly fervent book about the unique irreplaceability of Shakespeare's genius with the claim that had history been a little different Lope de Vega would have done just as well.

Despite such quibbles, Bate succeeds in conveying a powerful image of practical genius. Instead of bardolotry, we get a vivid portrait of a man who "invented the profession of dramatist", a quick-witted outsider who broke all the rules, a creative collaborator who gloried in playing games with what was possible on stage. Not only does THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE say a great deal about the making of a literary reputation, it is also a fascinating account of how plays are lifeless unless they are performed.