Entertaining, but it's all about "the mistakes..."
927131
I recently received this book about the noted LSU broadcaster as a gift from a friend, and just finished reading it.  It was pretty entertaining; essentially an autobiography and a rather interesting story of Jim Hawthorne's life and progression to become "the Voice of the Tigers".  But the theme I noticed after reading the book is that it's all about the mistakes.

First of all, there are the NUMEROUS terrible spelling, typographical and factual mistakes in the book. Spelling examples:  Nearly every time the word "quiet" is used, it is spelled as "quite", as when Hawthorne talks about how he liked to just go out by the pool and enjoy the "quite" evening. His wife Carol describes how on earlier caving trips she "repelled" (rappeled) down cave walls... The former Green Bay coach is named Vince "Lombardy" (Lombardi)... there are noticeable typographical and/or printing errors ("kf" where it was obviously meant to be "of" is among many glaring examples).  And there are factual errors-- such as when Hawthorne talks about playing Michigan State in the Independence Bowl, he describes them as the 'Trojans'.  Most sports fans (and all sports announcers, for sure) should know that the MSU team is the SPARTANS... But then again, this is Jim Hawthorne, who was chided for calling the name of the wrong player as catching the ball during the "Bluegrass Miracle" play... Hopefully, the next edition will have a better proof reader and editor.

But on the better side of the ledger, the story is about the personal mistakes we make in our lifetime, and how we get through them and get past them to become better people.  Jim and Carol's story is an interesting and amazing one, a story of childhood sweethearts, apart for about twenty years coming back together.  The two of them (and some of Jim's progeny, as well) seem to have made mistakes and taken wrong turns here and there in their lives. The story involves out-of-wedlock children, adoptions, broken marriages and heartache. But in the end, it all turns out for the best, and as Jim puts it, 'the circle becomes complete'.

Although I was very interested in the story, and was glad to hear Carol's viewpoint as well as Jim's as the story progressed, the sequencing was a little jarring. The points of view of the children, I felt, were unnecessary.  And the recap of LSU sporting events since 1986 and Jim's involvement in them seems "thrown in" at the back of a book that more or less runs in chronological order.

All in all then, I enjoyed the STORY, but the BOOK needs a little more 'polish'.
2425810
This was an entertaining, sometimes funny / sometimes trying too hard to be funny book that will turn you on to many obscure underground treasures. The only problem I had with it were the large amount of spoilers that ruin key scenes and finales for many of the movies. It wouldn't take much to keep from ruining surprises and scenes of suspense in future reviews so I hope the author reads this and considers my point. As I said his reviews are fun to read but the copious spoilers also take some of the fun out of watching the movies. As a result, reading this turned out to be a bitter-sweet experience.
488564
The good.
I read this book in three hours, and didn't put it down despite constantly thinking, "Was this character dropped on her head or what?"  The dialog and the story zips along, and I enjoyed the personalities and the relationship that develops between the protagonist and her "mate," the dark prince.  The story was effective enough I did not put the book down despite finding many problems with it.

The problems.
Flaws were numerous.  Lack of background info, little scene setting, incomprehensible descriptions of dancing scenes, and a zillion "as you know, Bob" dialog instances where info dumps were placed to give readers some background info.  In fact, I'd say a significant percentage of dialog was like this.  However, it moved well enough it didn't generally bug me much.

But, worst of all, there was how the author used the main character like a robot, having her completely ignore the obvious: that her new guy was her old friend from twenty years ago.  I mean, come on; this is too much of a manipulation to make the book feel real! The guy's got the same first name, nearly the same last name, keeps seeming familiar, etc.  She never even considers it!  The gal is as observant as a bag of rocks.

Yet, as I keep saying, I still rather liked it.  Too flawed to recommend buying new; but if you can check it out of the library, you might like it.
2839734
All in all the book was a humorous, entertaining read.  Not really a book that I would typcially read but I enjoyed it from cover to cover.  The only real problem that I had with the book was the horrifically poor editing and/or proof reading that went in to this book before being published; (and I'm not really that picky when it comes to stuff like this - everyone makes mistakes or misses something here or there).  But there were just too many errors to over look in this book.  I mean when I have to go back and reread a sentence several times to figure out that a mispelled word is what caused the confusion - oops - then someone missed something critical.  Numerous times sentences were repeated back to back, words were left out or mispelled, and they were obvious errors - so for that I take issue with the publication.  But the story, the author - excellent, enjoyable, entertaining read all the way through.  So read it for the story and you will not regret it.
4633944
The story was entertaining enough for me to read the entire thing. However, part of the entertainment was the editing errors. This read as someone having done their own editing (never do that).  I knew early on that this was a young author.  Give him 10 years and 2 or 3 more novels and he has the potential to write a really good one (using a professional editor).
126680
As usual for this series, the book is a page turner, entertaining, informative about life in 11th century England, and the characters are interesting. This particular book, regardless of who is at fault contained numerous errors, usually the name of a character. One reads that Gervase says something, but the dialogue is out of character for Gervase, but rather something Ralph would say. Other characters are confused also, and it is not always so easy to be sure exactly to whom the author is referring. I persisted in reading through all these errors to finish the book, and, as I say, it's a good story, but a less sloppy presentation would have made it more enjoyable. Without all the typos, I'd have given this book 5 stars.
2154524
I enjoyed the camaraderie between the two sisters and the description of family life in a small town and the mystery surrounding the "black woods." The abrupt ending left me disappointed, though.

I'm a good writer, but of non-fiction only. I admire writers who can put together an entertaining tale. However, I can't understand how a writer can know so little about language and punctuation. (Either that, or it is caused by the digital editing???) Just a few examples in this book alone:

*Maybe we are getting to old for this crap? (Should be TOO old.)

*As I get in the shower, my mind wonders... (Should be WANDERS.)

*Not sure yet I was hoping someone might have a new area for us. (Needs a comma or semi-colon after "yet.")

*A brown smudgy smear streaked the white sock laying on top." (What was the sock "laying" - eggs? Should be "lying." This is a common error I see in many, many books.)

*Its eye's were bright blue. ("Eye's" is possessive.)

*It's ears were too small.... ("It's is the contraction for "it is." - It is ears were too small...)

*he still worries he may have went too far. (Should be "have gone.")

*Him and Greg laugh. (Should be "he and Greg laugh.)

*...as a lightening bolt stroke it. (STRUCK it.)

There were other errors, such as "I seen" - not "I saw" - but I considered these to be a purposeful representation of the speech of these small-town characters.

Just a few examples. There were many punctuation errors also. I apologize to the author if these errors were caused by digital editing. If not, I suggest she study the little book "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.
143803
A sort of cross between Halloween and Saw. It's apretty good movie, and delivers thrills, but it is flawed.

The several mistakes I noticed were with continutity. At the beginning we hear Liv Tyler making a phone call where she goes into detail with the emergency operator "there's blood all over the wall", but no where in the film does she get to actually speak to anyone for more than a few seconds and doesn't say much more than "can you hear me".
The next is the blood pool. Someone is shot in the head, and as they lay on the floor, a huge pool runs out onto the floor, but it later shots the pool is either nonexistent or remarkably smaller. At one point Liv is dragged by the body and down the hall, clearly showing her head dragging on the floor and not leaving a trail, but later there is a blood trail from her hair on the floor.
The male lead has blood on his hand an wipes it on his white shirt, for the next 20 minutes, the stain changes shape and location on his shirt.
Liv hides in a closet and is attacked through the slats and a number of slats are damaged. In fact the door is nearly destroyed, but when Liv emerges from the closet, only two slats are gone.

I think the whole movie could have been scarier if the murderers had remained more in the shadows like in the beginning when you could barely see the bagged head murderer standing behind Liv. And the goofs weren't so obvious.
1252756
I liked this story, even through I found it slightly predictable. Man who resents his estranged sister-in-law, graciously invites her back into his life because his child is ill. Nevertheless, it was entertaining, and I enjoyed it, mostly.
Sadly, I proofread and/or copy-editor on the side and, probably for me alone, there were glaring discrepancies, and an abysmal overuse of apostrophes. Not every word that ends as a plural needs an apostrophe. Other than that, okay.
1916411
Entertaining story. However, I have to say that while I did basically enjoy the story, I find that I do have to agree with some of the other reviewers. I did not honestly find April that annoying, but she employed that old double standard: it was not ok for her husband to have an affair, but it was perfectly ok for her. She had a hard time forgiving and understanding other's reasons for their actions and it took her a long time to finally understand and come to terms with her family and her own marriage. I also felt that she laughed at inappropriate moments. As far as Luc was concerned, I simply did not understand all that smirking. There were many references to his being handsome, and yet, April herself mentions the mop-top hairdo and the crooked teeth. Marthe de Florian, around whom the story revolves, was nothing more than a courtesan who thought that when she was starving, would go out and simply find another "sugar daddy" to support her and her daughter. The story does make some allowance for what she did on poor health but it did not excuse some of the shenanigans that she pulled.
I thought that it would be more about that period of history in Paris which would have been extremely interesting. It centered a little too much on April's problems and her "provenance." The book was light and entertaining, had  a good premise, but could have been a little bit more developed and without all of the smirking.
4721905
The story arc is entertaining. Characters are actually pretty well developed. However, the jumpiness in the language and many mistakes are taking a lot away from this series. A few of the things that irked me the most are jumping between characters, locations and events every 3 sentences, wrong character's name being used out of the blue (Sasha->Petal) making you wonder if this was an example of the aforementioned jumpiness in the writing style and some unnatural flows. When something happens to a limited amount of characters where they acquire new information, characters that weren't present for it shouldn't have knowledge of the said information in the next paragraph and talk about it. Some of this "throwing code" at things is also a bit unimaginative.
790359
Overall, I found Furious George to be, for the most part, a fun read, and I think you would  too...provided  you're the type of fan who would enjoy reading about a highly touted, highly successful NBA coach devoting much of his book to ranting and "going off" on the owners, GMs, and, of course, on several well-known, All-Star players he coached throughout his long career.

Karl does a decent job on keeping the book moving at a fast, fun pace for the reader, and he deserves credit for this. However, as much as I liked the one-sided (mostly negative) perspectives Karl provides, his perspectives after a while started to  read more like rants than insights; which, in turn, tended to weaken the book's entertainment value for me.

All in all, I found Furious George to be entertaining while reading it, but quickly forgettable shortly after finishing it.
268376
A fun read, and well worth the $2.99, but there were a lot of little glitches in the story that a careful editor should have caught, and that distract from the reading. A character tries to use a cell phone on an iceberg 50 miles out at sea? The book is set in Canada, but a number of times references are made to the U.S. government (like references to reporting a Canadian pilot to the FAA, who probably couldn't care less what happens north of the border).  A character files a claim with a "judge" of the "United States Supreme Court" to ensure excavation rights on an iceberg off the Canadian coast? (I can't begin to list the things wrong with that sentence.) And the science, while not critical, isn't well articulated -- the author should read up on what "species" and "genus" mean, since the terms are consistently misused.

None of this takes away too much from the enjoyment, but each little disconnect like this is distracting and pulls you out of the story.  I'll buy Thaw 2; hopefully, it'll be edited a bit more carefully.
1985579
The author knows how to grab and keep your attention with an interesting plot. However, some of the musings were a little too long, which, eventually, made me skip /"speed read" those paragraphs. At the same time there were quite a lot of sloppy grammar and spelling mistakes: "...her had frame disappeared..."  (?), "...the hardwood flaw...", " Jason had broke his arm...", "... he'd never felt ... than he had..." , "Gone was the long flowing locks...". etc. etc. This cost at least one star.
1159185
The book is okay, certainly entertaining, but exceedingly poorly edited. Consider this sentence: "P. 5. To choose vJrong = riorst nightwiare?" In several points in the book, fairly long passages go south like that. Consistently there was no space between a semicolon and the next word. Probably the author typed it that way, never went back and corrected himself, and the editor, if any, was asleep. The name "Dave Matthews" was  misspelled in several places. With a common name like that, a simple spell check would have spotted the problem.
874288
This books does a nice job covering the life of John Wayne, but as the his 1st family did not cooperate, plus others in his inner circle also did not join in, it leaves many things out.  However, he has picked through the pieces and come up with a entertaining book.  Where I had problems is that it is filled with errors.  Most errors are trivial, like correct cities of movie shoots, characters, etc.  I guess that is why I was left with an unsatisfied feeling and can't give it more than 3 stars.  Plus the author spends too much time on unnecessary matters like the creation of 'corn doggers' for True Grit--who cares.  A lot has happen since he wrote this book, death of his children, ex-wife and lovers.  Bottom line, a good read.
1848447
Very entertaining read, and an honest, accurate portrayal of life in the minor leagues.  Terrible editing, however, as there are numerous errors throughout the book.  Words that are wrong, or missing altogether, commas in the wrong place, etc.  Let's hope the author, publisher, or editor takes the time to do the work before the next edition so the reader doesn't have to figure out what was meant as he goes.