I picked up this book over the week-end, and finished it in a day. Being "unauthorized" it is actually a very well put together piece of work. The author has obviously used alot of reference material (he quotes Starlog alot) but reinforces this material with his own cast and crew interviews.

Unfortunately the sections on the films that preceed "The Abyss" are relatively light reads. The section on "Aliens" does however bring in some very interesting details about the production that I have never seen in print before...it does not however go quite far enough, I put it down wanting to know more.

Overall 3 out of 5...this book could have done more with the earlier period of this directors career.

I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL DIRECTORS OF LAST 2 DECADES. JAMES CAMERSON IS AN EGO MANIAC, PERFECTIONIST, WORKAHOLIC,SLAVE DRIVER. HE IS SELF CENTERED AND AROGANT. HE HAS HAD 4 MARRIAGES AND FAILED IN EACH. HE ALSO IS A TALENTED, SELF MOTIVATED, INTELLIGENT, AND CREATIVE PERSON. HE SEEMS TO STRIVE ON STRESS, PRESSURE, AND CHAOS. THIS BOOK CONTAINS MANY INTERESTING AND AMUSING TALES OF HIS DARK SIDE (MIJ). THE TELLING OF HIM GOING DOWN IN A MINI SUB TO DO SOME FILMING OF THE WRECKAGE OF THE TITANIC HIMSELF IS IN ITSELF A GREAT STORY. THIS IS A MUST FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES TO READ ABOUT BEHIND THE SCENES ABOUT MOVIE MAKING AND LIKES TO READ ABOUT GOSSIP CONCERNING SO CALLED HOLLYWOOD STARS. THE AUTHOR HAS A REALLY GOOD READ HERE.
VERY RECOMMENDED.

This book is amazing. It explains all of James Cameron's movies, in detail. As well as the process he went through in making them, writing them, directing them, pre-production, production, and post-production. Not to mention the reviews critics gave the film, and it's popularity in the box office. And it explains his life and interest in moviemaking from the age of 10 to where he is now.

Having previously read two extraordinary - in my opinion - accounts of SAS operations, I found this book to be a disappointment and not nearly as enjoyable a read.

As interesting as the mission may have been to those involved, it seemed as though the author devoted far too much paper to describe in detail events that were, to be frank, quite boring and inconsequential. It also didn't help that what appeared to be the climax of the book occurred only half-way through, and left the last half of the book to simply fade off.

For first-time readers of this type of book, you may find it very interesting. I have already read two such books, and found this to be a rather dull in comparison.

Sabre Squadron, the first book by Cameron Spence, is a thorughly enjoyable and grittly realistic view of the SAS operations as part of 'Desert Storm'. It gets right down to the nity grity of what was going through the authors mind during battle, during night time reconasance missions and during the periods of "Down Time" when there is nothing else better to do than contemplate life and home. Spences style is that of continous flow for lack of a better word for it. It keeps you constantly interested through out and is very detailed without you even knowing it. This is a clasic example of the role of the Special Air Service and any fan or enthusiast would be mad not to get it.

This book is brilliant. I hold tremendous respect for these guys. Spence's writing is so good that you feel that you were actually there. I have read this book a couple of times and still can't put it down. Along with Andy McNab this is the best book writen about the gulf war. Again it shows that although the British force are small compared to the US. We are the best and this book proves it.

You have to admit the plot was kind of boring

It is 1867 and Elizabeth Nelson is working in a textile mill, separated from her twin brother Thomas. Her brother's ambition to be an artist has led him to seek employment with Peter Gustavson, a talented sculptor who builds strangely lifelike wax models. After a nightmare that convinces her that something terrible has happened to Thomas, Elizabeth and her friend Margaret journey to Cliff House, the home of the sculptor. The moment she arrives, she knows that something is wrong. The house is full of gruesome sculptures of death and terror and Thomas is nowhere to be seen. Soon Margaret is ill and Elizabeth begins to uncover the terrible secret of Cliff House. Determined to uncover the truth about her brother, she soon realises that to do this may result in her suffering Thomas's fate....

"Faces of Terror" is the thirteenth book in R.L.Stine's "Fear Street Sagas". The action was fast paced and actually scary in some parts, even if the plot was fairly typical and sometimes there wasn't enough explanation given. I would recommend it to fans of the series and of the author's other works. This wasn't the best of The Fear Street Sagas, but it was still pretty good. If you enjoyed "Faces of Terror", I would also suggest the Blair Witch Casefiles series, which are great for any teens who like to be scared.

~**Jenna**~

This book definitley had a formula, but it worked. The ending was somewhat predictable, but I really liked the main character and the story did scare me. It was a bit weaker than some of the others, but it was enjoyable, and I guess that's what matters.

The movie is astounding, but this book is less than great because the interviewer of cast and crew was amateurish at best. EVERYONE was asked: "What did you think of the sets?" and "What was it like working with (fill in the blank)?". Those are the type of questions one would expect of a high school journalist. Some of the interviewees, however, managed to rise above the questions and provided some interesting insights into the film and it's making. The photos are very good, but don't show much of the "behind the scenes" perspective that would have been interesting. Get the book if you loved the movie as I do, but be aware that it is more of a coffee-table book than an exhaustive making-of book.

I have seen the movie and read this book about the making of the movie. I am struck by the interviews done with the actors and the production people involved with the making of this movie. They all agree on two things: That Martin Scorsese is a genius and that they were not terribly impressed with "The Gangs of New York" by Herbert Asbury upon which this movie is based. Scorsese may be a genius but his movie is not a work of genius. It is a flawed work which never quite comes together and therefore does not satisfy. Asbury's book will live on long after the movie is forgotten.

It's a given: if you love a movie, you'll love every "The Making Of..." that comes out about it. This is no exception. I loved this film. I enjoyed reading the script, and all the interviews and photographs were delicious gravy. The story of how Scorsese and his team captured, very accurately for the most part, the way The Five Points looked is itself worth the price. If there is anything negative to be said, it's that some of the photographs are not of the best quality. But I'm nitpicking. Treat yourself to this superb book!

Emma Fielding is in England helping an acquaintance with a dig a an old abbey. One of the students is missing. A fairly modern skeleton is found on the site. There are other tensions among her friends and the general community. A coven of Wiccans is interested in the site, and there's no good coffee for miles. Emma Fielding is seriously doubting her judgement in helping her new friend Jane and her husband on this dig. When the missing student is found murdered, Jane is a suspect and Emma feels that she should help solve the crime as well as find the body of a supposed saint buried on the site.

This is a typical and entertaining Emma Fielding mystery. The characters are very real and so are their interactions and problems. The murderer is somewhat difficult to identify, but it all comes together in the end. I would have liked to have seen more of Pooter and his buddies, they were more entertaining than Emma's hosts, but maybe they'll show up in another novel.

I really enjoyed this second book in the Emma Fielding series. Emma was first introduced in Site Unseen, also by Dana Cameron. What I like about Emma is that she is real, with quirks and insecurities and she is also very cool. Dana does a great job making Emma come alive. The other characters in this story also came alive for me. This book was quick to draw me in and it kept me wondering what would happen next. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good story.

Having visited my wife-to-be in England several times while she was a student there, I found the depiction of student life and "pub"-life wonderful and very accurate. I found the characters fascinating and funny and the answer to the mystery was shocking and original...definitely recommended!

This would be a good tale if the author could try to avoid bad poetics. "...I hung up, gently this time, totally intoxicated with emotion, but thirsting for more, dying to drink from her well forever, to gulp quenching heartfuls of her." I read that and was seized with an urge to gulp quenching mouthfuls of alcohol, but I decided to finish the book anyway. I had invested enough time in it already. I probably missed some of the story line as I tried to skim over similar cloying sentiments, however, if I were the author next time I wouldn't try to create a romance-action novel hybrid. It's just not a good combo.

Like Indiana Jones in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, hero Reb Barnett effortlessly moves through this action-packed adventure with wit, sarcasm, skill and luck. The Medici Dagger is a fast, light, yet predictable read.

Five Hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci crafted an indestructible and super-light alloy and used it to create the Medici Dagger. According to legend, bad guys with such a weapon could do unspeakable things. However, the only way to actually find the dagger is to read Leonardo's long-lost journals and solve the encrypted message within the Circle of Truth. It is up to our hero Reb, who's day job is a daredevil Hollywood stuntman, to find journals in order to locate the Dagger and thus keep it away from the baddies and save the world from destruction. Reb is the perfect guy for the job. His father was a Leonardo scholar and also the curator of the National Gallery of Art, so Reb has been well schooled in the Great Man from an early age. But, tragically, Reb's parents both died in a mysterious house fire leaving the soon-to-be-orphaned boy to jump from the family home in a foreshadowing of his stunt-man career.

This is Cameron West's first fiction. He's the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple. West has quite a skilled literary agent - The Medici Dagger has been sold to Paramount for a movie slated to star Tom Cruise.

If a fast-paced mixture of stunts, comedy, hunts for 500-year-old artifacts, international locales, unbelievable set-ups and bad guys with black hats to make certain you know who they are appeals to you, The Medici Dagger may be just the thing for a few hours of adventurous escape.

David Meerman Scott

In 1491, Leonardo da Vinci invents a new alloy. He shapes it into a blade and places it inside a vise. He slams a mallet on the tip only to see the hammer split apart while the dagger remains whole. Knowing how his benefactors think, Leonardo believes that his creation would be used as a weapon of destruction. He hides his findings with the hope that the future will beget a world filled with peace that can use his alloy for the common good.

Five centuries later internationally recognized da Vinci expert Rollo Barnett decodes the Renaissance Man's enigmatic writing about the dagger. However, he and his wife die in a suspicious-looking fire. Two decades later, Rollo's son Reb learns that a billionaire arms dealer murdered his parents. He obsessively needs to complete his father's work on da Vinci and revenge himself on the killer though he places himself in danger from his parents' killer.

If thriller fans suspend logic for a few hours, they will enjoy an action packed tale. The story line requires the reader to accept a lot even from the start. For instance, da Vinci hides his new discovery for fear of weapon-use yet shapes it into a dagger. The arms dealer wants to make outer space smart bombs (don't ask how), but kills the prime source of locating the alloy. This consistent inconsistency is bothersome for those fans that need to believe in an "authentic" feel to the events. However, Cameron West's debut novel provides entertainment for those readers who want a simple but wild ride.

Harriet Klausner

Natural Enemies is about environmental terrorism and manipulation. Almost every character in the book is a victim of some kind. All are struggling to find a way out but none of them can succeed without leaning on others for help. There's a interesting parallel between the dependency of human lives and the lives of the elephants Cameron portrays. It is possible to read the book superficially, just for the action, but there are also profound undertones.

I read it in one go. Couldn't put it down. The character of Silvia was really well done. She has done really terrible things but you still feel sympathy for her. The elephant descriptions are very powerful. The whole book is fast moving. You never know what is coming next.

Natural Enemies provides a dramatic portrait of elephant life, behaviour and communication in the context of a fast-paced action thriller. The writing is vivid, conjuring strong images of Africa. "The wind blew across the Amboseli Pan drawing up small twisters of white dust that the Masai call "women's tempers" because they flare up out of nothing so easily..." The characters are powerfully drawn, especially the assassin Silvia and the Kikuyu detective Wangai. "Natural Enemies" won a Turner Tomorrow Award (judges included Nadine Gordimer, Wallace Stegner, William Styron, Ray Bradbury, Carlos Fuentes, Peter Mathiesson among others.) It also won the Edward Abbey Award for Eco-Fiction. I recommend it to anyone who loves elephants AND a good book.

Like many people who study religion as a vocational choice and who often get painfully serious about it, the very term "spirituality" can send shivers up my spine. It's one of those literary categories that always seems to cover too much, yet include too little of substance, or (at worst) elevates really trivial writing to places where even angels fear to tread.

So I cautiously backed into Julia Cameron's PRAYERS FROM A NONBELIEVER, wondering what liberties would be taken with the elements of faith and soul work that I hold dear as an Anglican (Episcopal) Master of Divinity student, let alone an "ordinary" Christian of any particular denomination.

As I began reading her Dear God... entries, set in the form of a 21st-century pilgrim's diary, I asked myself this question: just what does one of America's most sought-after multimedia creative artists have to offer the "every-person" spiritual seeker, the doctrine-devouring theology student, or anyone else to whom religion is more than an abstract term? After all, it would seem on the surface that someone like Julia Cameron "has it all."

Appropriately, my fundamental question wasn't answered right away. Neither is Cameron's existential plea for a bona fide sign that God is --- period. Instead, both reader and author are deeply and often jarringly self-reflected in these brief meditations about the vast and minute nuances of life.

God is indeed within the details, as Cameron shows us when she acquires something as inconsequential as a shower stall "gizmo" to hold her tumbling toiletries; the result being a few extra moments of unhampered relaxation in which she meditates on new and better ways to connect with her Creator. But God is also amid the glories of a universe too big even for the most fertile imaginations, and Cameron is just as courageous as Captain Kirk (of Star Trek fame) about going boldly into the cosmic unknown --- albeit kicking and screaming on occasion.

In such ways, PRAYERS FROM A NONBELIEVER goes many steps further than the usual spiritual self-help guide, helping us to recognize, reclaim, and celebrate the existential out-theres and intimate in-heres of our true lives as human spiritual beings. It isn't just about nurturing warm fuzzies and feel-good notions, or about tweaking the edges of fashionable simplicity and meditation. Simply put, this can be a very challenging and sweetly humbling little book (it's only 128 pages) that bears reading over and over again until a subtle, yet unmistakable, awareness of God's presence sinks in.

As Cameron comes to realize, and so eloquently shares in this richly colored mosaic of her thoughts, connecting with God for the long run is all about enlightened patience. And that places PRAYERS FROM A NONBELIEVER among the best of today's genuine devotional literature.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch

The minute I inadvertently laughed out loud in the bookstore, I knew I had to get this book. It had a wonderful conversational style that sucked me in.

I, also, am not certain of the presence of God. Set up in a series of letters to God, this book is often funny, heartbreaking, thoughtful, questioning, and inspiring... The question is, is there more to life? The letters themselves are not long, ranging from a page to several pages long.

What made the book so compelling for me is, even though the letters are to God, the author admits "God" could be anything... a force, a higher power, ourselves. He also questions when he began to lose faith, not only in God but also in himself.

It's not just about a search for God, it's also about our search for ourselves. What makes us special? Why we make the choices we do...Can we make different choices? I highly recommend this book.

Even though I've just skipped around this new book, I'm compelled to write a review . . . The few pages I've read so far, made me laugh out loud and left me wanting to read the rest of the book. I'm online to buy it, now, even though I have stacks of other great material to read. My favorite authors don't tell me what to think, rather they engage me in the journey of thinking for myself. I find that Julia's inspired and entertaining writing supports me in being the best I can be.

I loved the Mushroom Planet books but my memories of this one are entirely different. I haven't read it since I was a kid but it has probably shaped my fascination for weird fiction, of stories about what might happen in parallel to the familiar world we know about. I remember being very frightened and horrified even -- I was a timid child! -- but there was also an undeniable attraction to the "dark side," which I found unexpectedly in the familiar characters.

This book was definitely different in tone from the rest of the series. The premise is that the inhabitants of the Mushroom Planet are related to today's Welsh, and the boys and Mr. Bass are caught up in a mystery involving the hidden grave of Arthur and Guinevere and the evil forces which caused his overthrow. The final scene in Wales is utterly chilling and still sends shivers down my spine. If you can accept the rather silly premise at face value, you have a dark and thrilling read ahead of you. Very enjoyable for those who like a little mystery to deepen their light fantasy reading.

I used to hate reading and would not ever in my wildest dreams ever read a book untill i went to the library. My dad and I were looking at book titles when he came across a funny picture. He showed it to me and I to his suprise and my own asked if i could get it out. He was thrilled that i would want to read the book. after I read the first book I wanted to read more. and when I ran out of books and the sequence was over and there were no more books I became enraged and wanted more and now for two years I have waited to buy the series the whole time my parents doubting that I would ever find it but here it is at Amazon. com right in front of my eyes. you should read it as well and you will be surpised at how interesting it is!

Ok, it's a nice book. But it lacks in code examples, (i.e., lots of methods and properties, but not codes). It really shows you the new features of the .Net Framework, but sometimes the book is boring... Instead of teaching you what things are used for, it just shows you other informations, in a deep manner, but not the code by itself.
Anyways, it's on my reference library, but if you want to learn .Net by other ways, like practicing with codes, I suggest you to look for other books.

This book, although it doesn't include enough code, is the best VB .NET book I've come across so far. Well written, easy to understand, and concise. Enough said.

I've read 4 VB.net books now and this is the best so far. Lacks in some areas but has lots of good examples and is well written.