Overall, a very good book.

It covers all of the key areas involved with securing a Windows 2003 server.

About a third of the book covers generic security issues, and the other two-thirds cover topics specifically related to Windows server.

If you are need a guide to Windows 2003 server security, this is a good choice.

I got this book when my four-year-old daughter asked me if there were any women explorers after I told her about Columbus and Balboa. The biographies are about interesting women & they are short enough for a pre-reader's attention span and a nice length for older children to read alone. The author does a great job explaining terms & covering all the women's adventures. I wanted more anecdotes in some of the biographies, however, to make the women more memorable and colorful. Overall, this is a great book to introduce the concept of women explorers. The maps and photographs are wonderful.

Okay, I admit it - I just wasn't crazy about this book. The whole idea of a mentally-ill and controlling aunt (Amanda) ruining the life of her little niece (Ruth) after the girl's mother (Mathilda) mysteriously fell through the ice and drowned one cold winter eve just disturbed me. ...And the ending was even more disappointing, leaving me with a tremendous feeling of hopelessness!

This was Ms. Schwarz's first novel, and I did find her to be a talented writer in that her literary style was intriguing. The narrative alternates between the 3rd-person and the 1st-person. The 1st-person segments were from both Ruth and Amanda's perspective and I liked these parts best. It was this style of writing that kept me interested, despite my apathy toward the story. Because of her obvious talent, I would read a second novel by the same author if the story itself interests me.

Though it tends to interweave the main characters among themselves, Schwartz did a wonderful job keeping the thread of the story intact throughout the book. It is a delightful, quick read ~~ I read it in one day.

Ruth and Amanda are the main characters in this book. Ruth lost her mother at a young age to drowning, and Amanda is her aunt, who raised her from toddler on. This story is about their relationship and how love can be too smothering at times. There is also a mystery woven throughout the book as well, just exactly how did Ruth's mother drown ~~ when she was an agile swimmer?

This book keeps you hopping and engrossed ~~ just when you think you can't read another page, you find yourself turning the page just to see what happens next. It is a bittersweet story of a woman growing up and of a woman letting go. Out of all the Oprah's picks I've read lately, this book ranks among the top picks. It is easy to read and it still haunts you after finishing the book. I recommend this book if you're looking for a lighter Oprah read.

Chosen for Oprah's Book Club before publication, this first novel opens in 1919 and takes place in a straight-laced Wisconsin farming community where shame is a powerful motivator and secrets can blight lives.

Amanda Starkey, suffering a nervous breakdown, leaves her job as a nurse caring for wounded soldiers and returns to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake. Her parents dead, Amanda's sister Mathilde lives there with her three-year-old daughter Ruth, waiting for her soldier husband Carl to come home from a French hospital. Over the summer, the sisters move to the house Carl built on the lake island Amanda has always thought of as hers. Then, shortly before Carl's return, Mattie dies, drowns in the lake under mysterious circumstances.

The child, Ruth, remembers that she drowned too, a claim Aunt Amanda dismisses as a dream. "But Ruth maintained that she had drowned, insisted on it for years, even after she should have known better."

His leg badly wounded, Carl, bewildered and grieved, faces a difficult child who doesn't remember him and a sister-in-law who has everything well in hand and impatiently checks his questions about Mattie's drowning.

The story is told through various points of view, primarily Amanda's and Ruth's, but other characters as well, from Ruth's schoofriend to the wife of Amanda's former lover, Clement, a man the reader is unaware of until a chance meeting preceeds Amanda's second breakdown.

The details of the devastating affair emerge in bits, remembered very differently by Clement and Amanda, while Carl's memories of his marriage blur and give way to brooding suspicions and little Ruth excersizes a child's power over her world through willful stubborness.

Schwarz reveals her characters through flashback memories - Amanda and Mattie's childhood and Carl's fears of inadequacy, and through the guilt and love that shape and drive each of them. She examines the roles of shame and secrecy and the reverberations of these powerful motivators in the lives of innocents.

The innocent at the core, Ruth, exerts more control over her life as she grows and seizes a more central role in the novel. Torn between loyalty to Amanda and her own drive for independence, Ruth makes clandestine visits to the lake island where she last lived with her mother, seeking signs of her there. Moody and unsocial, she is ignored at school until one popular girl befriends her. Unwilling to return to her friendless state, Ruth endlessly entertains Imogene, who, she realizes, craves drama. "It took a lot of effort, sometimes, to have Imogene for a friend."

Amanda struggles to contain herself, to allow Ruth her own life. But she has kept so much bottled up that a spark of disobedience can blow apart her carefully constructed normalcy - the everyday aspect of a woman without secrets. When Amanda loses control it's scary and dangerous, giving rise to questions: Have the events of her life unbalanced her? Or was she so precariously poised that all she needed was a nudge? And, of course, what role did she play in the death of her beloved sister?

Schwarz' writing is deceptively plain, like her stalwart country characters. Her prose flows with easy grace, creating an atmosphere of brittle peace and brooding portents. Danger shimmers around each ordinary event as the secrets wriggle and push their way closer to the surface, moving inexorably to a cataclysmic, ambivalent, poignant climax.

With her gentle humor and detailed observations, Anne Tyler can paint a family portrait like no other author. The Davitch's -- quarrelsome, moody, and sometimes downright dislikable -- are another of her quirky creations.

Rebecca marries into this difficult family when she falls in love with Joe Davitch. She is just twenty and he is in his thirties. When he dies, she is left to care for four children, including three difficult step-daughters.

We meet Rebecca in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. She wonders how she became this jolly, sociable woman, so adept at handling and helping people. Once she was a quiet, studious girl who cared about history, philosophy, great books. Which person is the real Rebecca? What life is her real life?

The feeling of being a stranger in one's own life, of being adrift and off-course in the middle of life, is captured beautifully here. Rebecca is not the most fascinating or brilliant of Anne Tyler's characters, but she is somehow universal.

The book moves with her journey to find her real self and live her real life. It is a book that acknowledges darkness, death, loss and grief, and still affirms the wonder of everyday life.

Anne Tyler, surely one of this generation's preeminent writers, has a penchant for outre characters, exploring family relationships, and probing inner feelings. She doesn't veer from this course in her affecting 15th novel, Back When We Were Grownups.

Rebecca Davitch is a buoyant fifty-plus widow who tends to numerous relatives, including a 99-year-old great-uncle, with cheerleader vivacity and a cool head in a crisis. She is also the force behind a party/catering service, the Open Arms. "Beck," as her family calls her, is also given to introspection as she begins to wonder what chain of events has brought her to where she is and who she is today. "How on earth did I ever get like this?" she muses, remembering her rather impetuous decision to marry Joe, an attractive older man, divorced, with three daughters, and a home in Baltimore. They shared six years before he was involved in a fatal auto accident.

While attempting to revive the values of her youth, she ponders taking up the research she did not finish in college, perhaps even taking up with her now divorced college sweetheart. Or, is her life as it should be?

Rebecca does at last unearth the truth, while fortunate readers are allowed to share her quest and discovery.

I have recently become a huge Anne Tyler fan, and this is one of my favorites of hers so far. Anne Tyler writes about the things that should be written about - real people going through real dilemmas and gaining insight from them.

Here, her subject is Rebecca Davitch - a 53-year-old widow with a large, eccentric family. Recently, Rebecca has been going through a little crisis. She is unhappy with her place in the world, and she wonders if she became the wrong person. This thought sparks her search for her true self. She goes back to her roots; she begins dating her high school sweetheart and begins studying her old interests. But her search is also forced to include her family from whom she reaps great insight into how she should really lead her life.

Back When We Were Grownups is an all around wonderful novel. The characterizations are complete. You love the people and hope for them. They make you laugh and they make you think. The book is always entertaining and the final message is both family affirming and life affirming. This is a truly charming and worthwhile story, very worthy of a read by anyone.

"1632" was a great book. While the plot device is as old as alternate fantasy--see "Sideways in Time" by Murray Leinster--the characters were not only interesting in themselves but also true to type in the way they dealt with their changed circumstances. In "1633" however, they seem sadly out of their depth. Furthermore, if there is to be one book for each remaining year of the 30 Years War, this is going to be a very LONG series, which explains why there are so many unresolved plot lines in "1633" which show no hope of being resolved before several more volumes of this series have arrived. Basically, though,my dissatisfacton lies in my answer to a question posed by an earlier reviewer--are the characters of rednecks from 20th (or 21st) century West Virginia strong enough to stand up to the intrigues of 17th century politics? My answer--and I live among similar people--has got to be "No". This is, of course, a mere personal opinion and therefore not of general application suitable for a book review, but it makes the whole premise of "1633" (and "1634","1635 and "1636" when they appear) increasingly remote from what I believe is possible. As a result, I cannot get involved with or care about the protagonists any more than I could about Batman or Superman (or the characters in all the many "Star Wars" books), or about the situations they get themselves in. There are very few authors, like David Eddings, who can sustain a series over five or ten books. Even J.R.R. Tolkien stopped at three.

1633, the second in the series that began with 1632, starts to open up its world to issues that affect the whole world rather than just Grantville (the West Virginia town that popped through a hole in time and space) and the people they immediately associate with. In other words, this books opens a lot of questions that will be answered later in the series, rather than in the same book.

That being said, there is an important question that gets wrapped up in 1633. Will the culture, political know-how, ingenuity, and other traits of the rednecks from Virginia be powerful enough to take on the rest of the world not just for one or two books but for an entire series, or will the authors have to prop up their straw man with fancy footwork and gifts from heaven? I have to say the answer is the characters are strong enough! They don't need a company of Marines, some F-15s, a newly-discovered genius, or any other rescuers : they can take on the 17th century all by themselves, thank you very much.

There are three groups of protagonists in 1633 out trying to change the world. Rita, Mike's sister and a minor character in 1632, leads a small embassy to London. Rebecca, Mike's wife, leads another embassy through a stop in France and on to Holland. Mike himself, the new president of the tiny United States nestled inside Gustav's Confederated Principalities of Europe, is dealing with priorities of his own nation and the political problems of the CPE. (I am counting the aviation and naval subplots and the experiences of Julie in Scotland as background exposition on how the new U.S. is learning to deal with the world.)

Unfortunately for those who don't like things tied up neatly, two of the three subplots aren't resolved - though each continues to a point where the people involved have made progress. I wouldn't have told the authors to leave these stories out until they could be finished, though. 1633, and in fact the whole series, is a story about a nation establishing its mark on the world - and that doesn't happen without episodes that start way back when and proceed onwards past the first wrapping up.

To go into what the book does have : It has grand ideas. People working together to defend their community. Clever stratagems, and foolish mistakes. Misunderstandings, denial of reality, and people willing to admit they were wrong. Tragedy, heroism, and triumphs both heart-warming and human. Hobnobbing among the hoi polloi and getting down and dirty with the unwashed masses. And these things all happen to both the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' - in other words, it has real things, happening to realistic people, in interesting ways. I can't wait to see what comes next.

Eric Flint & David Weber have followed up on 1632 with a book that creates depth to a period of time that many Americans really have no clue about. It's fine to have action in a book, and especially in alternative history it would be so easy to just put a group of soldiers armed with modern weapons ripping into locals - see The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove for an example of this. I'm not knocking Harry - I love his work. But what Eric and Dave have done is show a real world - confused, plots afoot by literally everyone to strengthen their positions - and just how Machiavellian do you want your world than one in which Nicolai Machivelli has only been dead for 100 years? You've got Cardinal Richelieu of France and all that implies - you've got Gustav Adolphus of Sweden spared death - you've got the Thirty Years War with almost half the population of Europe dying from plague and battle - the amazing thing is that the novel wasn't twice as large. If you're going to have a character, then explain the motivation of the character - especially to an audience that isn't already familiar with the real person, and Eric and Dave did this well.

It should be mentioned, with pride, that this book was also written with the assistance of the readers of 1632, and there are more books in the works.

This book gave an interesting point of view on the life, last days, and supposed death of Amelia Earhart. The author's use of descriptive phrases really add a lot to the various settings and scenes that take place in the book. It was a little hard to get into at first because the narrator jumps around from time to time and person to person. Once I got into the book I found that it was a pretty fast as well as fascinating read. All in all, I really enjoyed it and it made me want to find out more about the life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

Having read some pretty heavy books lately, I decided to pick up some lighter reading for a break. This book came up under BookMatcher recommendations for me several months ago. BookMatcher can be pretty smart. Easy to read, yet it leaves an impact on the reader. The soaring heroine and her drunken navigator. A wonderful novel that is written almost as Earhart's diary, this is a tale of what might have been. An intriguing possible ending to a mystery we will likely never solve. Enjoyable light reading.

This is not the greatest novel ever written, nor does it ever pretend to be. However, it has been one of the very few contemporary stories that flirts with originality and exploits imagination.

I read this book on a long, long direct flight from New York to Tokyo a few months ago. Perhaps the way I read this book had alot to do with its impact on me. Had I read it on the ground I would have surely perceived it differently. I have always loved airplanes, I have always been in love with something and I have always, always (don't quite know why or how) been fascinated by the disappearance of this remarkable woman.

So take it on your next long flight. Pick a window seat and enjoy it. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in aviation, the vagueries of love and Amelia Earhart. I do not really see it as a novel, but it very well may be a profoundly eloquent, lengthy and enduring poem. One of the best in my recent memory.

ASP XML is simply not well written. I shall compare it to an EXCELLENT wrox book 'Beginning JavaScript' to explain myself.

Beginning JavaScript has a superb index, in 5-10 seconds, I have a reference to information I need at any time. ASP XML has virtually no index - it has been useful exactly 0 times. This means you have to read all 800+ pages to get good information.

ASP XML has a decent object reference, but no cross-reference to code (you have to scan the whole book to find applications), BJS has excellent code samples in the Core object technology appendix.

ASP XML has out-of-date and inaccurate information on XSL (more accuratly, it is missing info on XSLT), BJS describes differences between JavaScript versions much better.

ASP XML's chapter categories are rather convoluted, BJS's categories are very straightforward and follow the proper pattern for any description of a programming environment.

ASP XML is still a beginner/intermediate book, so it should have: Introduction, DOM, XPath, XSLT, XML and CSS, String Functions, Database Functions, and then the advanced topics. The book skipped details on XPath (trust me) and details on string functions, making my knowledge inadequate to understand the rest of it. Translation, the book felt incomplete.

It may be that all of what I needed to understand XML really is in the book, but I can't find it because it is so disorganized.

I know the authors are brilliant (Having seen some of their programs) but if I can't understand them, it doesn't matter.

Donald Derrick

The chapters are laid out properly and are easy to understand. It helped us to learn a great deal about incorporating XML into ASP.We recommend this book to anyone who wants to further expand their knowledge of XML in ASP.The authors did a really good job on explaing XML for ASP developers.The depth explainations of the case studies & examples and XML are really great and relate to real world examples.The chapter explaining about the SOAP is really good which helped us a lot personally to implement an in my current project . We personally thank Dinar Dalvi for his help and support to answer our questions and immediate feedback for our emails.

Excellent! for ones who are pro to ASP and need to intergrate XML with ASP! A must buy!

Jo Becker has a loving husband, three adult daughters and a couple of dogs - an enviable lifestyle - if perhaps not idyllic. The appearance of an acquaintance, Eli Mayhew, reawakens memories from her past with startling revelations. This is a tension-filled, easily readable book that races towards an anti-climatic conclusion.

I would have preferred a suitable explanation to Dana's murder. It just happened and then - voila - 30 years down the line, the murderer confesses. I did enjoy reading this well-written book, especially the beautiful sermon by Daniel which was so inspiring. However, I found the ending rather unsatisfactory, particularly the outcome of the murder of Dana.

Some minor flaws were evident which did not deter from my enjoyment of the book. All in all - a very good book.

This was the first of Sue Miller's books I have read, though it turns out several of her other stories had becomes movies that I've seen and enjoyed.

While I Was Gone is a beautifully written novel, filled with twists and turns and unexpected surprises. Jo, the protagonist, is living a fulfilled and comfortable life in the Maine countriside with her husband. She is a veterinarian and he, a minister. They have three grown daughters. Their lives are full, happy, contented, until the day Jo has some sort of a premonition, or as she feels, an "admonition". Sure enough, she shortly thereafter crosses paths with a man from her past, a man who was part of a group house where she lived in her early 20s. His appearance evokes memories long since forgotten by Jo, and sends her on a journey of both self-discovery and uncovering the truth about a long-kept secret.

Miller's prose is unbelievably lovely. Her descriptions, her story telling, all are remarkable. While there were a few moments where I was confused by which character was which, in the end Miller has acheived a quality all writers aspire to: weaving a compelling tale that leaves the reader satisfied, introspective and content.

When I first sat down to read this book, I had no idea what I was getting into. It started out with a description of what I would describe a typical family--a husband, wife and children. The children have all 'flown the coop', leaving Jo and Daniel alone in the house with the dogs. Jo is a veterinarian who treats a dog belonging to someone from another lifetime, when she was in her 20s. When Eli comes back into her life courtesy of his dog, Jo starts remembering when she was in her 20s. She ran away from her home and started another life because she was restless and needed a change. She met a group of people and moved in with them in Cambridge, in the 60s. From there, the story goes back and forth, from present day back to the 60s. You get the perspective of her back then and now. The book is remarkably well written. Sue Miller does not miss a beat when she describes the interactions between Jo and Daniel and Jo and her 'other' family in Cambridge. The book is incredible in the description and portrayals of every character.

While I Was Away addresses the restlessness that probably most people feel but may never act upon. It describes one woman's journey to 'find herself' in the 60s. It takes a tragedy to bring her together with the man she will eventually marry and have a family with. It also addresses Jo's need to put closure to the tragedy in the 60s.

I recommend this book highly.

After reading all the rave reviews, I found this book such a disappointment. There is very little true character development. The reader gets to know "Letty" ("best supporting" character) through her series of emails to the book's protagonist, Margaret. Margaret is a self-indulgent school teacher who has quit her job in order to become a successful novelist. We learn a lot about how precious and quirky Margaret was as a child, a result of a sophisticated, slightly bohemian, upper-middle class upbringing. (Schwartz inexplicably contradicts this depiction later in the book, when Margaret's family is described as the picture of middle-America, fixed in their lawn chairs on a little cement slab backyard.) When Margaret eventually realizes that she is unable to produce even a page of prose, much less a novel, she resorts to appropriating the first-person story her "best friend" Letty is revealing through email. Letty's is a rags-to-riches-to-rags via keeping-up-with-Beverly Hills-Joneses story. Letty & her husband live beyond their means in California, fall into great debt, suffer consequences. These events are chronicled in a series of superficial and boring emails from Letty to Margaret, obviously contrived by Schwartz expressly to push along her plot. Margaret feels guilty about betraying her friend, but cannot stop encouraging Letty to make bad decisions because the results yield interesting drama for her book. She becomes convinced that her creative larceny will result in a great novel, the proceeds of which will repay Letty's debt and redeem her standing as a true friend. I will not be a "spoiler" by revealing the conclusion, but will say that this book's "moral" is as unconvincing as its plot and characters. The descriptive passages are very self-conscious and long. There are many annoying inconsistencies, similar to the conficting presentations of Margaret's family. Margaret is an unlikeable, unsympathetic woman whose self-effacing (occasionally amusing) humor cannot redeem her as a worthwhile protagonist. And the characters of her husband, Letty, and Letty's husband are simply too undeveloped to ever take shape. This may be an okay beach read (though only for the undiscriminating beachgoer), but it is does not begin to approach the level of literary novel by even the loosest standards.

I have never had the pleasure of reading Drowning Ruth, and I never read a single review before picking this book off the shelf at the local library. I loved the story itself. I found it very intriguing. The writers block, the family problems, and poor Letty.

The part of the book that bothered me was Margaret. I would have been much happier to see the book more through Letty's eyes instead of the self-absorbed Margaret. I put the book down and STILL could not understand how it was Margaret's fault. Unless it was simply used as a big excuse to protect Margaret from realizing her own failure in writing her "Great American Novel" and just wanting to make herself feel like the victim to take some of the spotlight from Letty's troubles.

I found Margaret repulsive and found myself skimming her parts to find out what happens to Letty next. I think that in reality most people know a "Margaret" or a "Letty" type person and can identify with the behaviors of each. Personally, I don't know why Letty put up with the woman.

I would say its a good read. I agree with the other review that I find this hard to believe is a second novel from Schwarz. Unless it was rushed and pressured to come out with... and like Margaret the author decided she did it once, she could do it again with half a heart into it.

Would I pass it along for others to read... sure, would I waste my shelf space on it? No.

I have not read "Drowning Ruth." I picked up "All is Vanity" after reading a positive review in Publisher's Weekly that claimed some readers would raise petty objections to a novel that does not redeem its characters while others would appreciate its "no-exit spin on ambition and greed." I was curious to find out which category I would fall under.

I guess I fall under the former category because I did have a problem with Margaret. Not because she wasn't redeemed, but because I eventually wondered what the point of her story was.

Schwarz is a superb writer because she manages to detail excruciating moments so well I had to close the book and shudder *with* Margaret: Margaret and her husband go to a party and Margaret has to explain that she has quit her job as a teacher to write a novel. A snobbish writer is at the party and asks Margaret about her book. I will not give anymore of this scene away because it is just *too good*. It is painful and great and real.

There is another scene like this that nearly made me cry. Margaret takes a job working for a friend and meets one of her former high school students who is also working there. The scene is just humiliating. Schwarz pulls it off expertly. There are other things: when Margaret sits down to write she starts to notice how dusty the apartment is and spends the day cleaning instead. I think the most frustrating/infuriating moment is when she decides the place must be repainted. All this because she can't concentrate on writing!

Schwarz's ability to create a character who narrates such painful moments and at the same time says things that prove she is completely unaware of how *wrong* she is impressed me immensely. But Margaret is a total jerk. I tried hard to think of her as something else, but she is a complete jerk and it was difficult to spend so much time with her. It was also difficult to have sympathy for Letty and Margaret's husband. Because Margaret was clearly manipulative and selfish. I just wanted someone to put a foot down and say: "Get a job! You are not a writer!"

I struggled with my feelings for the book because Schwarz did a remarkable job, but I've decided the story just isn't strong enough to make the time I spent with Margaret worthwhile.

This book was hard to get into initially. I thought the whole opening hotel scene with Linda, and the subsequent writer's conference far too drawn out. But I kept with the book (it was my chosen vacation read) and am so glad I did.

Anita Shreve writes in ways that is if not lean, then elegant. She weaves a story that works it's way into you. I found myself inexplicably drawn back into it. The book really picked up speed in the middle section, when Thomas and Linda were in Africa. It was beautifully written. It is still vividly in my mind. I hated to see that part end.

Yes, the book was written in an unfamiliar style to me and there were times I had to backtrack to understand who said what and to figure exactly what was going on. But it was a bit of a mystery that unwound itself for me layer by intriguing layer.

Other reviewers have written that the end is a disappointing gimmick. I do not agree. Yes, I was completely, totally shocked by it, never before have I been so taken aback, never before have I sat breathless and unbelieving at the close of a book. But I immediately began formulating who and how I would impress upon to read this book. I was stunned, yes, but at the same time, I wholly understood and accepted it. What is hard for me to understand is how someone who has ever truly been in love, not identify with what Thomas did? Who of us has ever not lay in bed and entertained thoughts of what if? After such a tragic occurrence, entertaining a lifetime of What Ifs doesn't seem so implausible.

I thought this novel poignant and recommend it.

A co-worker loaned this book to me, I called and thanked her the second I was done. Starts out slow but stick with it.

I just finished The Last Time They Met a few days ago. Although I enjoyed it immensely, like the other reviewers, I found the first 50 pages or so very confusing. My revelation came when I realized it was related to The Weight of Water. I would advise anyone who reads this book to read The Weight of Water also. When I reached the end of The Last Time They Met (and actually through out the book) I had to keep rereading passages. Afterwards,I went immediately to Weight of Water to refresh my memory and confirm what actually happened in the car accident.