Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Great explanations but slow to put things together

The strength of the book is that it offers truly clear and precise explanations of how to do basic coding with Perl.The drawback of the book is that it rarely takes its examples very far, not even as the book progresses. It is not really until the chapter about references (which is a great chapter) that the examples and exercises get interesting.For someone who is having trouble understanding why their script isn't doing what they thought it would, you will not find better explanations than here.