This Book Is A Huge Disappointment
928237
I bought this book with great excitement as I have great interest in OBE's and dream states.  I am an explorer of life and love great stories rich with consciousness.  This book was so poorly written that I couldn't get past the first few chapters.  His teacher seems lacking in higher consciousness and the dialogue was terrible.  I wanted so much to learn some new ideas but in this poor form I couldn't trust that any true wisdom is being shared.  I even thought about sending the book back to the publisher and asking them how they could publish this book.

I am sorry for the writer because I understand how challenging writing is.  I suggest a writing coach or hiring a good writer to share this information which the author must have a passion for.  This was a missed opportunity for both the author and for me the reader.

Joseph
3493745
I bought this book based on the very good reviews here at Amazon, and for the first time since using Amazon reviews, I'm greatly disappointed.  I thought the book was boring and repetitive.  In the beginning, Con is obnoxiously pushy by touching Tim and getting into his space.  Tim is an unlikeable character who pushes people away because he has repressed his hurt and anger over losing his parents when he was young.  The author tells us countless times what is wrong with Tim to the point of ad nauseam.  The sex scenes revolve around Con trying to get Tim to relax because Tim hates to lose control and be vulnerable.  This book will go directly into my trash bin.
2646078
I had high hopes for this book, but it has been a big disappointment.  Its subtitle is "A History of mAncient Rome," but it is not a history.  Rather, it is a string of disconnected miniature essays on Roman subjects.  Quite a few of the essays are interesting, but I would rather have had a conventional history.  Moreover, the book has many errors in grammar and diction.  They resemble the errors that I used to correct when I taught Freshman English.  The author and the editor have insufficient knowledge of the English language.

  a reader
699285
This book is terrible!  I am completely regretful of buying this title
4509141
I've been an avid reader of Carl Hiaasen's novels forever, but this book is a major disappointment. I bought two copies to give to a college grad and a grad school grad. After reading the first two pages I packed the books up and sent them back. I was expecting his usual jaundiced but amusing approach to the world, but was greeted by profanity and such a deep sense of cynicism I couldn't imagine giving it to anyone, let alone a person just getting started in the world. A great idea that went off the rails from the start. It's too bad.
3844033
Pardon the language, but this is a gigantic piece of s***. Not only is there really nothing of substance in this "book", it's actually infuriating to read, or attempt to read. The book feels like it's daring me to say "I can't do this anymore" and throw it away. This book HAD no editor, and it feels like it was on purpose, Run on sentences, missing words, the constant use of > instead of apostrophes. Want an example? "Isn't" is spelled "isn>t" constantly. The writer even tried (remember, book about business) to use the word til instead of spelling out the word until. But if only to take it a step further in pissing you off, it was written as "till".

This is not a cash register...so don't spend your money on this GIGANTIC WASTE OF TIME, MONEY, AND FOSSIL FUELS in getting it to my door.

Personal note to the "author"...learn the Oxford comma and avoid run on sentences.
130232
This book was a huge disappointment to read. Talk about hitting rock bottom! I can't even keep this book in my house because of all the negativity emitting from it. The language is terrible and the sexual scenes are offensive to say the least.  Why Mr. Braver had to take such an obnoxious approach to descirbe the emotional conditions of the times is beyond me.  I can't believe he would dedicate the book to his grandfather.  This is NOT a book you would desire your grandparents to read.
866800
This is a stupid book and a complete waste of time and money!
2078542
I was very excited to get and read this book.  But after I started reading, it became a never ending disappointment.  I kept thinking, "maybe it will pick up in a couple of chapters and will have some actual information."  However I got to the end and I still hadn't learned anything.  In my opinion this was a terrible book for these reasons:

  There was hardly any actual information.  Mostly the book was full of stories from the author's experiences or just made up stories to try to illustrate the evils of money laundering.  Even when the author would talk about something interesting, he would cut off, nearly mid-sentence, and basically say that he can't tell you about that.  I understand not wanting to educate the world about the most current forms of money laundering, but being introduced to something and then denied (repeatedly) was very annoying.  The author could have wrote about money laundering of the 1960's to 1990's where those techniques don't work anymore, but he just didn't really talk about anything at all.  Since he wrote a book titled: "Crime School: Money Laundering: True Crime Meets the World of Business and Finance" I expected him to actually say something about money laundering.  He might as well have titled it, "Crime School: How to grow carrots, skydive, and become an astrophysicist" and the title would have been almost as accurate.

  The book was poorly written.  The table of contents doesn't even match up with the pages in the book.  Also, the chapter titles had absolutely nothing to do with what was in those chapters.  The best example is in "Bankruptcy of Murder Inc."  This chapter doesn't talk about "bankruptcy" or of the infamous "Murder Inc" that contracted out assassinations for the mob.

  Five minutes on the internet with your favorite search engine yields more information than reading the entire book!  Throughout the entire book the author doesn't even talk about the three stages of money laundering: Placement, Layering, and Integration.  Some have praised this book, saying that it is a must read for people in the banking industry to keep from unknowingly helping in money laundering.  I also disagree with this because all the author really ever says in the book about this topic is to hire someone else to check your bank to see if you are laundering money.  So overall this book was worthless to everyone on every level.  I bought this book used for just a couple bucks and I still wish I could get my money back.
1052028
I was greatly disappointed by this book.  Most of the language is in fairly technical chemical terms that very few general readers will be able to follow -- or will be interested in *trying* to follow.  I guess that there is some general pattern to the various chapters, since several of them refer to earlier chapters, but mostly it's a mishmash of items.  Also, I expected each chapter to have at least one super-duper recipe to illustrate the point of that chapter.  Many of them do, but a number of them don't.

And the recipes themselves were a major disappointment.  Some of them are clearly beyond the reach of the average amateur cook, either because of the techniques needed or the chemicals.  The ones that are doable in the average kitchen seem banal and lacking much detail -- the only one I might try is for the crispy chicken thighs (to illustrate the chapter on SONICs, I believe), but it uses no seasoning at all beyond salt and pepper.

The pizza dough chapter was more interesting than most, BUT the super-recipe that the author gives us needs something called "encapulsated bakers powder" or some such to replace the yeast. BUT he doesn't tell us what it actually is OR where to find it.  Infuriating!

The final chapter is well-written, and by a professional chef, BUT throughout the chapter he refers over and over to how he came to find a new way to make ice cream, particularly one using "brown butter" as a key flavoring ingredient.  And then he gives us NO recipe for the ice cream, NOR for the famous "brown butter" -- maybe the butter is back in Chapter 8 or somewhere, but I couldn't be bothered to go look for it.

To be fair, I think that there's also a simple recipe for battered fish, as in Fish and Chips, that might be worth trying.

But two, or possibly three, recipes out of several hundred pages of dense text isn't worth it.

I think I'm being charitable in giving it three stars -- two is probably what I should be giving it.
1800635
To say that this book is a disappointment is a huge understatement. If you're looking for information on Jaxon's condition and how it affects the Buells' lives on a daily basis, you will be sorely disappointed. I started this book thinking that it would provide a more intimate account of Jaxon's daily life - what kind of therapies he receives, what medications are helping him, abilities, possible future treatments, etc. - but none of this is covered. It almost seems like the Buells hide information for fear that they'll lose their many admirers.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but instead of being inspired, I feel as if the Buells wrote this book simply for the money and nothing more.
4212022
I rolled my eyes so many times at this book. There are no surprises in this book. There is no descriptive language, the characters are completely shallow and unlikable. John has no personality, Sarah REALLY has no personality (besides liking photography and being pretty). Their whole relationship is ridiculous. It pretty much consists of "You look so pretty", "I missed you", "Hey beautiful", and them kissing eachother. Again, me rolling my eyes at all this. Basically there is nothing in this book that will keep your interest or make you want to read more. The only character that was semi-interesting was maybe Sam. I don't know why people like this book. Actually I'm not even sure who the target audience for this book is. The writing is so poor and unemotional that I would guess it was for elementary age children if it wasn't for the swearing that Henri does. All the fight scenes at the end were repetitive and annoying and I ended up skimming a lot of it just so I could find out what happens ultimately. Although, at that point I just wanted to be done with the book and it was holding very little of my interest anymore. The part where the dog first shows up- it was obvious something was different about the dog, but the characters never even question how he can move so fast from one place to another? How dumb is John? He knows he has aliens after him, trying to kill him and yet he doesn't even notice the things around him. He is very very hard to like as a main character. Oh, and the part with the house fire? I stopped reading at that point and seriously considered giving up on the book. It was so obvious that was going to happen. Honestly, this is one of the worst books I have ever read, and I read A LOT of books.

P.S. The whole premise of the book doesn't even make sense to me. This race is planning to repopulate their ruined planet with about 10 people? How does that work? And how are they going to turn the barren wasteland of a planet into a livable place? Just not well thought out. Please avoid this book.
4583840
I'll keep it short since I have wasted already too much time on this book: I glanced over the 1 and 2 star reviews and agree with almost all of them. It's a terrible book! Hard to believe this is the same author who wrote the third book in this serie (Jokerman) which was ways better.
3047503
This book was a huge disappointment, obviously the author is out of touch with reality. Everything wrong in her life is the fault of someone else, usually her husband. It was like reading the diary of a teenager, from the fact that alcohol is way to important in her life to the relationship she got involved in while in the Midwest. The worst part of the book is where I wasted money buying it.
670593
I really expected much more from this book. The author is claiming that the book is meant for Inkscape users and webdesigners, but i really don't see anything new or really useful in here.
People that know how to use Inkscape don't need this book at all, for example i read only one full book on it before (the one written by Inkscape community) and a lot of tutorials over Internets, and there was nothing in this book (priced 40$) that i haven't seen in a free tutorial somewhere.
Also, this book is not meant for web designers either. If you already work in this area, like i do, you won't find anything useful either.  It is not supposed to be a book about webdesign, it's a book about Inkscape - but why then the author tries to teach her readers web design basics instead, and does the extremely bad job at that?

The author is writing like for a person who heard of web design practices for the first time in their life, but what she recommends is outdated at best, and very doubdtful at worst. Let's put it that way - the examples of her work made with Inkscape as part of the teaching process in this book aren't nearly the best ones in web design, not even good ones, and certainly not something you'll want to copy if you'll be working in this area.
 She states that some of the monitor resolutions include 800*600 - really? In what century anyone used that, like maybe 10 years ago? Even contemporary netbook screens are larger than that, for god's sake! She also called people who "make" websites into code by "programmers", betraying the total lack of any knowledge on the subject at all. I refuse to believe that a professional with "12 years of experience in multimedia" (like they call the author in preface) won't know a difference between a "coder" (who writes HTML) and a " programmer" (who does not). She also suggests that we should use freeware clipart in our work. I'd lose my job faster than you can spell "incompetence" if i ever did that.

If she just wrote about the program and how to use it, i would be content with that, but the author also fails to deliver any consistent knowledge on that part either. If you need to know how Inkscape tools work, this is not the book you need. It picks a few tools that are theoretically used by web designers on daily basis and tells you as much as you could learn from a blog post or free tutorial. Well, having a bunch of tutorials in one place could be nice, right, but not for the pricetag of 40$! Don't waste your money on this book.
4477496
This is a horrible book.  The main problem is that the book is utterly lacking in the key ingredient to writing a history book: RESEARCH.  The main sources upon which the author relies are a couple biographies of Hutchins and Adler, and a few articles from magazines.  That's it.  There is nothing new in this book that hasn't already been published elsewhere.  The author shows no evidence of conducting original research at the archives at the University of Chicago, or any where else.  The book is gossipy, and it reads as if it is an article is "US Weekly," or "People Magazine."  The author attempts to be cute and funny and makes up silly names for the people he describes and in doing so, he demeans his own credibility.  It is obvious from the first few pages that the author lacks an understanding of what the whole Great Books movement was all about, and this lack of understanding makes his inquiry sophomoric and petty.  The author needs to go back to "English 101" and figure out how to write a decent research paper.  I am amazed that any publisher agreed to print this book; obviously the person making that decision had a few Martini's that afternoon!  This is a failed, silly and  laughably trite waste of paper.  Don't bother buying it now: it will end up in the ".99 cents" bin at your local used bookstore soon enough.
2857115
Even though it was a summer reading book assigned for school, I was excited to read this after reading the enthralling reviews online. Now after reading it I can say that not only was it a huge disappointment, it was quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. Take "Jurassic Park" (another book by this author), shrink it down to the biological scale, and give it the most disappointing and least energetic ending possible. The book is loaded with meaningless outdated pseudo-science, flat characters and brief encounters with exciting events unrelated to the actual plot. It is in my opinion a bad turn in a book when characters start having seizures simply to add a lively turn to the monotony of the current sequence of events. Any thrill the reader may have for the solution to the problem itself will be firmly beaten down by the ending of this book. Since the events themselves are simply not exciting, the author's attempts to make them seem like action-movie material fail utterly.