Gregory Hines and Joel Gray present horrible readings of two of Poe's best poems. Gregory Hines sounds like a used car salesman when reading "Annabel Lee," and Joel Gray sounds like a spastic nut when reading "The Bells." Did they ever listen to themselves? Christopher Cazenove represents the best reader and the savior of this otherwise fiasco. Although he left out the last stanza, his reading of "Ulalume-A Ballad" is by far the best reading I've heard of this powerful poem. Michael York's reading of "The Raven" is ok, but he lacks correct interpretation with the "wispered word, 'Lenore?'" The only other reader to read this phrase like a question is Edward Blake. For some reason many of the poems have background music. Did the producers of this collection really think that these poems lacked something? Perhaps this collection going out of print was an act of mercy.

Like the first reviewer, I thought Gregory Hines absolutely ruined "Annabel Lee" for me, which is--or now, was--also one of MY favorite Poe poems. What's next, "Gregory Hines Tapdances 'A Cask of Amontillado'"? Stick to you day-job, Greg! Michael York and David Warner are much beter readers than Hines, though when York reads "I shrieked..." it hardly sounds like a shriek. Their readings are good, but not great. By far the two less-famous (to me, anyway) readers on the tape, Roger Rees and Christopher Cazenove, are giants compatred to the other three. Rees' reading of "The Conqueror Worm" alone is worth the price of this tape. Obviously Rees and Cazenove are experienced Shakespeare-trained actors who love--and know how to utilize to startling results--the English language. I would pay almost anything for a new version of this tape read by Rees and Cazenove alone, or possibly by them and other accomplished Shakepearean actors (Patrick Stewart? Ralph Fiennes? Simon Russell Beale?). It's just not enough, to effectively read aloud poems or prose written by a master, to be famous (Hines) or even British and famous (York and Warner); you have to be GOOD! Anyway, overall this tape's worth buying.

If "Annabel Lee" is your favorite Poe poem, be warned that it is read by Gregory Hines, and the AudioFile review is being generous when it says that his readings lack drama and force. Though it is one of my favorite poems, or, more precisely, because it is one of my favorite poems, I fast forward through it everytime I listen to the tape, lest his reading impare my ability to enjoy the poem in the future.

This is somewhat compensated for by Michael York's exellent rendering of "The Raven" and David Warner's various readings which wonderfully capture Poe's mood and spirit.

Overall, still worth the price. I don't regret having purchased it and I'm still enjoying it a month later. If only "Annabel Lee" had been assigned to Mr. York or Mr. Warner!

I am always wary of books that begin with the accolade of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide' as it suggests that those who buy such books, are, indeed complete idiots.

Not believing myself to be in this category but being in search of ways to boost morale and productivity and teamwork I bought this book after having flicked through and found the contents to be short and well illustrated with anecdotes, humour and other such features to make this appealing to even the most reluctant readers.

This book certainly has all of those things and at a basic level it does a useful job in highlighting a number of features which help in enhancing self-esteem. The book is clearly well meaning but misses it's target by a long way.

My understanding of what this book is meant to be is as a self-study workbook. To some extent it is but really does not go far enough to help those who suffer from lack of self-esteem. Let me give one very crucial example. The author cites S.W.O.T. analysis, the first being Strengths, the second being weakness. The reader is asked to list his or her greatest strengths and serious weaknesses. However, there is no guidance given as to how someone should determine those, and, given that those who lack self-esteem do not feel good about themselves to begin with, they will find it hard to list strengths and will feel that they have more than three weaknesses.

The book does serve as an introduction to the problem and does point the way to some exercises that can be done to assist in enhancing self-esteem. For anyone serious about tackling this problem this is not the book for them.

...or of course I could just be a complete idiot and have missed the point of this book alltogether. Hmmm

I found this book pretty much useless for boosting my self esteem. The advice given in the book was poor with silly, little quotes and poems. I felt that it was lacking good, hard research on low self esteem and how to improve one's self esteem. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I took away from the book to help me with that.

Dr. Warner has done an incredible job in this book of making sense out of self-esteem. He uses humor, compassion, and creativity to give the reader numerous tools for developing their own self-esteem, and for contributing to the esteem of others. This book is a great gift -- to yourself, or to someone you love.

This is a joke, they include learning to live in the list of tune, yet pull me under is listed instead. List the most meat and potatoes tune they do over one of the most texturally interesting ones. Very professional goofing the listing. I agree with the notion that score books should be made for every album of Dream Theater. Especially when you have tunes like Metropolis part one, or Learning to live. Oh well, if you dig the tunes in it, otherwise, go ahead.

Besides not having Learning to Live I have found numerous errors in this book. The drum interlude part in Under the Glass Moon is EMBARRASSINGLY wrong. And for something that was supposedly reviewed by the band, it's very disappointing. It's a good book, but there's lots of improvements to be made.

I only bought this book for "Learning to live" that was listed in the description of its contents. Unfortunately this song has never been part of the book! I discovered that absence after buying it. Despite the book's interesting content I am disappointed from this purchase (I would have rated the book with 5 stars, but 2 stars were removed because of the misleading description).

Since I'm totally new with Flash and its manual isn't helpful. I thought buying this book would help me get through with Flash. But my first tutorial with it was a disaster. The software command was listed wrong, instructions were completely confusing as hell. I felt like an idiot for buying this book. My advice to you is not to waste your money.

I personally didn't find it useful. However, when I let a friend borrow it who was just starting to play around with Flash, he said it was great. So if you know the basics of Flash, then forget about this book. But if the interface weirds you out and you need some handholding then this is the book to get

To be fair to the Authors I think the book was well researched, although compared to more complex multimedia educational books such as Macromedia Press' Director 6 and Lingo Authorized, this book could have been better structured with each lesson. Plus the files in the companion CD had their fair share of problems, its either they were missing or that the program simply could not open them. Either way this book is worth buying.

Oh, wow! A turtle shell! So cool! I can't believe it! Oh, Peter, sharks! Far out! Did WE get attacked by sharks? Of course not. (At least, I don't think we did. I was asleep and don't really remember.) We just heard a story about somebody who did a long time ago, and that was cool enough. WOW! A talking bird! (If you want to see one up close, just go to a pet shop. Don't bother getting stranded on a deserted island. It's not very safe out there.) Of course, we found Peter's mother and father. Basic Plot 101: Always end happy. Well, that's about all we can remember about this really cool mystery-- and what was the mystery again? We forgot. ~~~~written by the Boring Children--I mean, Boxcar Children~~~~ P.S. Madeline, thanks for refreshing our memories about this mystery! Oops, sorry, I keep using that word by mistake: "mystery." Anyway, now we don't have to re-read our own book. That's always a pain.

This book was a longer boxcar, and fun to read. But it got kind of boring after a while, and one day I just read two pages of it because I just thought it was so borring. But then it got good, and I finished it. At first you might think about just not reading it beacuse it's kind of boring in the first part, but after a little more reading it gets really good.

I used to read this and think it would be so fun to go to a tropical island with Lars and the Boxcar Children and live on sea biscuits.

I still find it a very good book. I'm not sure what the other reviewers mean about its being slow at the beginning - every story has to have a beginning. You can't jump into the action without a bit of setting or you fall flat. Anyway. I didn't find it slow.

I recommend it greatly, especially if you like stories of survival on remote islands.

Flimsy evidence, not to mention half of the cases mentioned in this book are already solved. Waste of time, sorry.

If you want a real difinitive study of the whole UFO phenomenon, look elsewhere. This is merely a collection of first, second, and third-hand accounts of sightings and such. Unfortunately, these kinds of books churn out every 6 months or so, and we all buy it thinking that we will catch a unique glimpse of some inner understanding into the UFO field. But, unfortunately, we are only left with a sad paperback that has gotten us no closer to the truth, yet has cost us $8 for a book we will never read again. If you like the kind of books that Brad Steiger puts out, then this should be right up your alley.

This book is divided into ten chapters, each addressing a different aspect of the alien phenomena. All of the best-known cases from the past 25 years or so are here, from the Gulf Breeze UFO sitings to the Rendlesham Forest incident in Great Britian to alien abductions. As another reviewer mentioned, the authors do rely largely on second-hand and anecdotal information--for example, they frequently refer to well-known books by other authors. But the purpose of this book is not to offer a lot of technical and scientific evidence; rather, it is to provide a broad overview for readers with a beginning interest in ufology. Assuming that this book sustains your interest and raises your curiousity--as it did for me--you may then want to move on to reading some of the more research-based, detailed works which are available, but this book remains an excellent introduction to ufology.

This is for the novice gardener. I was disappointed because I wanted to use it to notebook and journal about plants (both indoors and out) that I have and additions I purchase. Unfortunately, if the plant you have is not in the database, you will not be able to add it to your notebook. Flexibility is nill. Also, it wants you to use 256 colors.

I have not tested the print function, because it is pretty worthless to me at this point. If anyone wants to purchase it from me, don't hesitate to write me.

As a proffessional gardener I was very disappointed by the interactive version of the book which I use many times a day. I purchased the software so that i could use the search function based on the zone system. However, if I for example select zone one as a parameter I still get hundreds of results that fit in other zones. When I contacted the company they told me some story about these plants being useful indoors. Essentially the disk is a computer book with a virtually useless zone based search feature. If they ever improve on the software it will be the best one out there.

I have this CD-ROM and it definitely has comprehensive plant/plant culture information. Please note however, the software was written to run on Win 3.1. If you are using anything more recent such as Windows 95 or 98, you may experience problems printing from the Garden Notebook. Unfortunately at this time, Sunset does not have any plans to update or provide a fix for this problem. Bottom line: the search/browse features on the CD-ROM are great, however you may have problems printing a hard copy to take with you to the nursery when you go shopping.

There are so many party books available, and I have quite a few. This is my least favorite of the ones I've seen or own. It's very confusing and has to refer to the other chapters too many times.

This book lacked things like putting the page number so can quickly find the party theme. So you page through until you find it. Once I got there it had the basic things you or I would come up with. Then they go on to says invitations, decorations, games, activities, food and favors but again then you have to search in other places to find each topic. No pictures!

However once you get to Invites there are 8 different ideas. Same goes for decorations, games, activities, food and favors.

Within each section there are some really cute ideas, recipes on how-to.

Over all the book is helpful and cute ideas and themes, just not put together well.

This book was a fabulous book, I was looking for some ideas for an upcomming birthday and have been inspired!! This book has the basics of how to plan a great party, invitations, games, food, favors, it has it all. Outstanding!!!

Any book which purports to use information having been supplied by the well known liar Sir Edmund Backhouse, is just the same old rehash of lying and deceit that so called "China scholars" have used for far too long. There is nothing new here to shed new light to an old mistake. Tzu Hsi was not the trerrible ogre that both Western and Eastern scholars to have been. Do we really need to keep up with the relentless stream of Tzu Shi bashing? If you want the same ill informed nonsense please read this book but if you want to learn something new you would do well to look elsewhere.

I was doing my report my Tz'u Hsi and this book has a lot of information, probably more information than people need. Half of the time, it tells about war and China's situation at the time instead of Tz'u Hsi herself. For me I'm very interested in Chinese history and this book really satiated my thirst for it. This book can be a bit boring at times, but for the most part, it's interesting. It gives people an insight about chinese traditions and of course, the empress dowager herself. I recommend reading it!

The best-written and most accurate biography of the Empress-dowager Tz'u-hsi. Although Marina Warner never studied Chinese, her account almost always tallies with the vernacular sources. She offers a shrewd, plausible and perceptive analysis of Tz'u-hsi's character. Her appraisal of the period has more insight and balance than Sterling Seagrave's jaundiced politically correct approach. An excellent introduction to the late Ch'ing dynasty.

I bought this book and read it right after I got my first router and table for making picture frames. When I finished the book I found I didn't know much more about routers, bits and techniques than before I read it. And the author uses useless terminology where a clear description would be much more helpful. For example, writing about the router I bought he says, "There is about 1 3/4 in. of motor travel once all four pins in the base casting engage both ground helixes in the motor pack." What? I had to look at my router to determine that he was talking about the distance the motor rotates in its base. The book is also very negative; you'll hear more about what routers and bits can't do rather than what they can and how to do it.

I picked the book up again after I had been using my router for about 6 months, figuring now that I knew what I was doing I would get more out of it. I was wrong - there's just really not much useful information, unless you want to see the impressive jigs the author has made. All around, a pretty disappointing book.

I should have done more research before I bought this, but the book is exactly what it says it is; a book about routers.

The 2 main points against it are

- as someone else said, very little technique. As I mentioned, it's about routERS and not routING, which is my fault for not researching thoroughly

- it has a lot of information about specific models, which is likely to be outdated and useless quite quickly.

This is basically a good book with some strenghts, but also some significant weaknesses:
Strengths
- Good intro to equipment
- Very good safety info
- Very good descriptions of when routers, tables, etc. are not the right tool/approach

Weaknesses
- Virtually no description of technique
- Virtually no useful into on jigs (essential to robust router use)

Overall, this book is useful for someone who has never picked up a router. Nevertheless, both beginners and more experienced users will also need to buy another book for the substantial material this one lacks.

The author clearly has real expertise on the topic and writes well, but this is just far too thin on content to be a one stop guide for even a novice.