Pretty Good but Hoped for Better
924248
It doesn't keep out quite as much noise as I'd like, but it does an adequate job for lawn mowing. The fm radio reception is good, but the am reception is fairly weak. We live 30+ miles North of Columbus, Ohio and the Columbus fm stations come in quite strong. The major am station barely comes in at all. For comparison, we can often pick up the am station 15+ miles north of where we live when using our car radios. Overall, this was a good purchase, and I'm satisfied with the headphones.
1688671
I liked this book as a snippet of memoir. The author's voice is engaging and amusing. But I'd hoped, as well, for some clever cleaning tips new to me. There were a few. I'd hoped for more. Additionally, the author seems wedded to mainstream cleaning solutions, such as chlorine bleach and quat, which are harmful to the environment. I'd gotten the impression that she was young and more tuned in to the green values of her generation. Using vinegar and peroxide together disinfects very effectively, leaving only water as a residue. No chemical residue. She doesn't seem to be aware of that alternative nor able to recommend others.
601203
I was hoping for a bit more. Good book nonetheless!
3893071
I enjoyed this book but, like so many others who have reviewed this book, I too wish there was more to the story.  I was surprised to find at the end of the story an explanation by the author as to why the story was a bit choppy and areas of the lives of the main characters were cut short or left out to speed the story along.  "The story was this way to offer my readers an introduction to the my books at an affordable price." It just seems like it has so much more potential to be a deeply compelling story if all the scenes were fully developed and not hurried though.  The same goes for the characters.  The authors offers the idea of maybe a sequel someday.  Good book, good story idea just know it is written this way on purpose.
1336032
I was very hopeful for this book-- gorgeous models and an interesting concept, taking pictures and then re-painting them digitally.  And if that's what the book had contained I should have been quite happy.  But while I was hoping further details would be revealed in-print this was (mostly) not true: the shot of Lily Cole (the best in the book) on the cover was a good indicator of what was to come.  The women are stunning, world-class models and their surroundings are transformed into dreams of fabrics, their hair transformed into some digital age Botticellis, but their bodies and faces were left practically untouched.  The result is that the product feels disjointed and incomplete, as if the artists had scheduled themselves to "paint" the background, hair, then body and face and only got halfway through before they had to print.

The book is also low on content.  While I'd known from the page count it would be a thin book, I was hoping for solid content therein.  Instead there is a single picture of each model, with the left side of the page dedicated to her first name and the right side of the spread having a single picture that does not fill all the way out to the border.  Throw in a table of contents and an index and you're looking at less than one image per two pages.

The book is not without its merits, however.  The models are many of the best in the business, and the photography itself is technically well-done, if not transcendent.  The print quality is good in the limited space they give the images to breathe.  And the re-painting itself really is quite interesting.  If they were to carry the technique throughout the whole image it would be a good addition to a photography book collection.  As it is, though, there's little to recommend this book over a Victoria's Secret catalog and a Vogue subscription.
1970290
I liked the descriptive outlines of the main characters feelings and thoughts. The plot needs some weeding through to reinforce the backgrounds and surroundings so you can get a better point of view. Running from one area to another is fine but there needs to be some more consistency in flow. I have a wildly strong imagination so being able to flesh in a story isn't a problem but its somewhat disconcerting when what you're reading isn't in sync with how you imagine it, so its better if the writing fills in the blanks. Also its hard to imagine a big guy with huge wings carrying a woman from Alaska to New York in such a short time. The secondary characters were also left hanging and it felt like they deserved better treatment. I like the idea behind the story, its just not as satisfying as I expected.
4955794
Since this is a dedicated GPS navigation device, I expected it to have better features than my smart phone (Google Maps).  However, I was disappointed to see that not much has improved over the last several years. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the unit now that I fixed the issues, but I was expecting to be blown away by it and I just wasn't. Here are some issues.

- Street address look up is still slow and it doesn't find locations nearest you first (i.e., you're near Lincolnia Rd, but it's listing some from another state first or streets starting with Lincoln that are further away). It once tried to send me somewhere over 2,000 miles away.  I started driving before I realized that the 30 minute travel time was actually 30 hours!

- I could not find an address on the device, but was able to find it on Google Maps.  I used the Smartphone Link app to send it to the Garmin. I often just use the app to find what I want and then send it to the unit, since it's usually faster.

- It took a while to figure out how to set the screen brightness and not have it revert back to 20% (check the automatic checkbox on the time setting).

- Sometimes you will be a few feet away from a turn before it prompts you to turn.  Had I not know that I had to turn at that intersection, I would have missed it, because there would have been no time to slow down to turn.  You need to pay attention to any instructions it gives you ahead of time, because it may not tell you until the last second to turn.
2809832
I volunteered to review an ARC of this book.

The good: The world of this book is wonderfully creative. It has history and a complex magic system and I genuinely want to read more.
The less good: the names in this book are whimsical and remind me of steampunk novels where everything is tweet. But this book isn't twee and it makes everything feel out of place. It's harder to take people seriously with ridiculous names and it gets confusing with so many capitalized terms.

The less less good: I feel like the plot needs a lot more polish. Information is given seconds  before the characters need it. The helpful adults all feel a bit like Dumbledore winking at the kids. And I genuinely don't know that I understand how it all resolved or how the magic really works or anything. Because it wasn't explained for the reader. Which just leaves a lot of confusion especially as this book is paced at a sprint.

I do think there's a ton of promise here and is still worth a read but I think I'm disappointed because I feel it could have been so much better with a few rewrites.
1814444
Many of my favorite things were included in this book, psychics, animals, cops, mystery so I really had hopes this would be a 5-star read. Unfortunately it didn't come together as well for me as I'd hoped and I really would have rated this 3 1/2 stars if there were half-stars available.

Some of the writing was extremely intense, I liked the interaction between Brant and Sam, her working at the vet's was logical, some of the characters were great, but I found things that kept bumping me out of the book.

Sam's very severe 'symptoms' of the psychic visions had the feel of being exaggerated for the shock value, excessive. Lots of sub-plots that seemed to go nowhere, characters introduced that seemed to just walk in and out of the storyline, even the serial killer himself ended up seeming a bit 'unreal' and vague.

Some great characters I'd like to have seen more of, quite a few that I could have lived without. I'm hoping most of the issues are 'new author' issues and I will definitely try another one or two in hopes they will improve. Readable, entertaining ... but disappointing for me personally because I'd hoped for more.
2713590
I had hoped for a bit more from this one.  Hopefully the next installment will be a more interesting. I probably was hoping for more considering the protagonists.  Still, I don't regret buying, and I'll likely try another if it becomes available.
2559776
This doesn't "suck it in" as good as I hoped, but still was ok.
992087
Overall I enjoyed this book. It was entertaining and fast-reading. There were some negatives, however.  There was not much in the way of character development - and some of the characters were inconsistent in their presentation. Frankly, many of them were *very* similar except for a few cosmetic differences. Also, the author has a tendency to have the characters repeat the same catchphrases frequently which, while probably truer to how people actually talk, can get a little irritating.

There were disturbing hints of Gary Stu-ness in the main character, which leaves me a little leery of future books in this series (in my experience, once an author starts down that road it only gets worse).  Additionally, action at times came across as slightly contrived.

That being said, I will be giving the second volume a read in the near future.  I did enjoy the concept of all the gods from various religions running around causing havoc.  And there were a couple characters that showed a lot of promise - hopefully as the author gets more comfortable with them they settle a bit more and fulfill said promise.  All-in-all the book was a nice, no-thinking-required escape for a couple hours.
2745365
I know lots of folks like a booming bass response, but I'm not really one of them.

I purchased this sound bar in the hope that I would be better able to hear and understand speech when listening to TV programs.  There is clearer speech with the sound bar, but not as much as I had hoped for.

While the bass level can be reduced, and the treble increased, I wish there was control of the mid ranges as well, and that the bass level could be reduced further.

I may place the subwoofer further away from the listening area, or unplug it when the bass is especially obnoxious.
1868540
This book had great potential. I appreciate it's simplicity but was left wanting more. Four stars for the construction of the book etc but I was hoping for a more developed story line.
861919
Very well done but not as many good pictures as I'd hoped.
3051968
I'm a fan of this author's Temeraire series, so I had high hopes for this book. For the most part, Uprooted did live up to my expectations, but for a number of reasons, it didn't quite reach 5 star status for me. I like the author's writing style and I liked the basic plot. I also thought the characters had lots of potential.

However, in general, the characterizations were quite flat. In order for certain plot points to make sense, the Dragon should have had some degree of likeability. He didn't. And since he was one of the two main characters in the book, I should have known him well by the end of the book. I didn't. The other main character, in whose voice the story was written, presented a different problem - through much of the book she was stupid and totally lacking in good sense or the ability to think logically. I kept telling myself, "she's only 17, stop expecting so much," but after a while I just had no more slack to cut for her. I also thought the book dragged in the middle and the ending was too quick and easy. The Wood was portrayed as so strong, so evil, so overwhelming through most of the book that the resolution left me thinking, "What? That's all there is to it?"

Agnieszka, narrator of the story, is only 17, suggesting that Uprooted is intended to be a YA novel. Parents and YA readers should know that the book contains an almost-rape scene, an almost-sex scene, and a fairly detailed sex scene.

In summary, I thought Uprooted was a good fairy tale fantasy story. Overall I liked the book and I recommend it to all fans of the genre. For those who are considering this book based on their liking of the Temeraire series, Uprooted is an entirely different kind of book, with witches, wizards, and a big evil that can only be conquered by magic.
2870057
I expected a Very High Quality Product, first because Panasonic Phones have always been my favorite and usually get my best rating, and second because this is a fairly costly phone system. For the most part I liked all the "Bells and Whistles" of this system and have not yet discovered a distance limitation within my house (i.e. I set the system up connected in a "Central Location" and get perfect reception anywhere in my modestly large home). However, there are still a few lingering problems with this system; 1) A Persistent Echo, whenever I talk in a quiet room I hear my own echo. This is partly solved by lowering the handset volume, but then the volume is too low and I need to strain to hear my other party. 2) Low Amplitude, even at the highest amplification the handsets are a little too quiet. Forget the handset speaker phone, the speaker is on the back of the phone and unless the background ambient is completely silent, it's difficult to hear the other party clearly. There is a Voice Enhancement feature which helps but not very much. I will keep this system, but I am not completely happy with it, for the price it should be a lot better.