A very useful prompt collection
599381
The author makes the claim that these prompts will be "thorough and creative" and he's not wrong. The prompts are enough to get you going without being overly detailed--they aren't so in-depth as to stifle your creativity. Nor are they short or generic. They are good ideas, good beginnings, that offer a starting point for writers. We can all go in very different directions with them. I'm trying to work my way through them chronologically (in the order they appear) but I have skimmed ahead and they all seem interesting. I look forward to getting to write for them all.
2588425
Like the other reviewers I found this to be one of the best collections of brainteasers I've come across, both for the variety of puzzles & the author's very good choice of them. It is roughly similar, in the nature of the puzzles & level of difficulty, to e.g. Martin Gardner's "Entertaining Mathematical Puzzles", but this is a much larger collection, & it contains many puzzles of types that Gardner's volume doesn't. There are 355 puzzles in all. The selection criteria are spelled out in a preface, & I can't disagree with them, e.g. he has avoided trick questions; he has excluded puzzles like magic squares & anagrams where finding the solution tends to be "mechanical" or trial-and-error; he tends to avoid puzzles that involve "tedious reliance on algebraic questions". As promised the puzzles are very entertaining & satisfying.

The book is, sensibly, divided up among different types of puzzles. Geometry-type puzzles (not my favorite ...) make up puzzle numbers 1~55. "Physics" puzzles are 56~85.  (Example:  Taking account of gravitation attraction, if all space were full of water except for just two air bubbles, would the bubbles move apart, towards each other, or not at all?) "Strange Situations", puzzle numbers 99~133, are of the lateral thinking variety. (E.g. a man and son are in a car crash, the man dies, his son survives, they take him to the hospital, but the surgeon says "I can't operate, he's my son"--how to explain this.)  "General Puzzles" is the largest group, numbers 134~320, & maybe a few examples will give a sense of them:  "Is the number of people in the world who have shaken hands with an odd number of people odd or even?" "How is it possible for Jim to stand behind George and George to stand behind Jim at the same time?" "If there are more trees than there are leaves on any one tree, then there exist at least two trees with the same number of leaves--True or false?" "What is unique about the number 8,549,176,320?" "How far from the center of the Earth would you have to be to see 1/3 of the planet's surface?" There is also section of harder puzzles requiring proofs, 337~355--"not for the faint-hearted" (these ones remind me of Stephen Barr's dang hard brainteasers). In between are some of the family relations-type puzzles (e.g. is it possible for your grandfather to be younger than your father?), a few chess problems, & some other types.

So far I've worked at around 120 or 130 of the puzzles (solved some ....). Only a few of them have been too easy, and most have been quite interesting and challenging, and some impossible. I confess I'm not crazy about some of the numerical ones (e.g. ones involving relative speeds), but if you're into brainteasers at all you're bound to find a lot of great stuff here. The solutions are explained in the back of the book, and the presentation of the puzzles and solutions is lucid throughout. I appreciate the fact that Brecher doesn't try to embellish the puzzles but states them simply & concisely. The only other collection I've seen to compare this to, in scope and variety, would be the Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Puzzles, by David Wells, which I also like a lot. The Penguin book has 568 puzzles, of which I've tried maybe 100, & for me they had about the "miss" rate (somewhat too easy, or some other disappointing aspect) as the ones I've tried in Brecher's book, but it's a low miss rate and I treasure both these books.
4868594
The writing prompts are creative and useful. There is definitely a spiritual slant in the suggested writing prompts. What is helpful is also the unpretentious self-revelation and stories from other quarters. Looking for spiritual direction? You can learn a thing or two from this book. Good stuff.
2905095
Great book with lots of prompts for writing down items that will be important for those that I leave behind.
1005428
A fun collection of crossword puzzles that have clever schemes in each that need to be ciphered along with the finding the write words.  Plenty of double meaning require a sharp mind with ability to free-associate meanings.  Questions marks USUALLY appear when there is a trick interpretation of a clue.  I took off a star since some of the answers were slightly ill-suited for the clue.  Also, some of the answers are dated which is why they need to include the date of publication since when asking for people's names, past and present tense makes a difference as to whether they are living or dead.  Definitely worth the time  to solve and book cost.
2844515
I taught English for nearly eight years before I found this book. Now, I use it regularly for a community ESL class I teach in my spare time. The lists of words and writing prompts are useful for students to remember the words they already know and learn a few other words that they haven't been exposed to yet. My students like the question writing prompts because they are very useful for starting great discussions.
This book can be used in many more ways too. I am going to use some to the lists in this book in my college-level English class for journal/free writing prompts. Often my students complaint that they don't know where to start on writing assignments, so the list of words and questions can prime the pump and get the sentences flowing onto the page.
This book and the others in the Book of Lists series are excellent resources for any teacher's personal library. They are great go-to staples for ideas on regularly covered topics.
2079742
Excellent variety, presents an assortment of reading topics from notable and famous writers.  Perfect for a quick reading and variaty.  Although I read this book in a course, I wish there would have been a kindle version for future reading.  A majority of the essays and stories are worthy of re-reading several times over.
2915738
There are about 100 riddles in this collection, and they represent a very nice range of styles and challenges.

  There are classics like the umbrella riddle, but there are also logic puzzles, misdirection puzzles, wordplay puzzles, and "gotcha" puzzles, (e.g. how many pennies can you put in an empty quart bottle? just one; after that it isn't empty anymore.)

  None of the puzzles are too obscure; some are a bit groan-worthy; most are fair and very clever. This is certainly a nice way to play around with words and puzzles when you and your little reader are in the right mood, and this does seem to be a solid introduction to word play for a young reader.

  This book, at least on my Kindle Touch, has an active Table of Contents so you can go right to a favorite riddle or just skim around. The book is no frills; there's no introduction and no illustrations, but that's fine since the puzzles are set out neatly and conveniently. Just a nice addition to the kids' Kindle library.

  Please note that I found this book while browsing Amazon Kindle freebies. I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.
1580982
Although some of my favourites are not included, this is a terrific collection of transcripts. A real challenge!
4497450
This is a pleasurable collection of short stories, some of which have been published by the author separately.  I won't go into the content of any of the them, since this page has an excellent synopsis of each one at the top of the page ("Read More").

The book is 132 pages long, and there are six stories, so each is about 22 pages long.  Each story is told in the traditional three act format with a crisis happening before the middle of the story and a satisfactory resolution one or two pages from the end. There are no story endings that leave you hanging.

The characters (virtually all boys, I can think of only one female character) are in high school, most sixteen years old.  The actions of the characters seem to ring true for that age group.

If you're looking for any sex scenes, forget it.  All the stories are pretty much PG, where the main activity seems to be kissing, lots of kissing, and in some cases -- gasp -- kissing with tongue (so maybe that would make it PG-13).  The word penis (or any of its slang synonyms) doesn't appear anywhere in the 132 pages.

The book was well edited, I did not notice any mistakes as I often do with self-published books.
643553
I agree with previous reviewers that this is a great selection.  The introduction is perceptive and helpful.  The text is almost error-free.  One editing change would have made this a superb Kindle purchase:  put the notes at the end of each tale.  I'm half-way through the collection, and by the time I get to the end, I will not care what the notes mean.  Maybe I'm missing a technological short-cut, would love to know.
3636441
A good volume for your library and also for beginners or to remind more experts if they get a little "rusty"
2451023
I downloaded this book to my Kindle for free via Story Cartel and I'm glad I did. I have been creating writing prompts on my own over the past couple of years, but I have discovered that using them is a bit like trying to tickle myself, the brain short circuits to familiar pathways.
Bryan Cohen's collection of writing prompts gives me a new source for inspiration in a well laid out format. I can forge new paths easily. I never lack for inspiration, and his short essay about creating the habit of daily writing is spot on.
670650
300 things to help you start the writing process. A wonderful collection of process starters for writers of scifi, horror, and fantasy. I found many useful and I look forward to using it many times more. Good stuff.
4556550
This is really a well-compiled book full of interesting writing prompts. For anyone who seeks that initial push towards their new stories or wants to practice the craft of writing, I recommend purchasing this book. The author is really talented and has come up with a good list of prompts
1559626
Really enjoyed this collection.

Because the very limited preview at least currently won't even show the Table of Contents, I am including it here, for people who might be looking for a specific poem, as I so often am:

Contents
A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal 3

I
Fishing on the Susquehanna in July 7
To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds
of Years from Now 9
I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakeys Version
of Three Blind Mice 10
Afternoon with Irish Cows 12
Marginalia 14
What I Learned Today 17
Journal 20
Some Days 22
Silence 23
Picnic, Lightning 24

II
In the Room of a Thousand Miles 29
Morning 31
Bonsai 32
Splitting Wood 34
Shoveling Snow with Buddha 37
I Go Back to the House for a Book 39
After the Storm 41
Snow 44
Moon 46
Looking West 48
This Much I Do Remember 49
Japan 51

III
Victorias Secret 55
Muse dea Beaux Art Revisited 59
Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from
Tintern Abbey 61
Paradelle for Susan 64
Duck/Rabbit 65
Egypt 66
Home Again 68
Lines Lost Among Trees 70
The Many Faces of Jazz 72
Taking Off Emily Dickinsons Clothes 74 IV
The Night House 79
The Death of the Hat 81
The List of Ancient Pastimes 83
Passengers 85
Serpentine 87
Reincarnation and You 89
Jazz and Nature 91
And His Sextet 94
Where I Live 96
My Life 98
Aristotle 100

Acknowledgements 103
741527
I love collections like this. I might never use most of the formulae, but I love having them around. I even have a couple of shirt pocket sized compendiums of construction and computer data, such as the DIP switch settings for thousands of now-obsolete hard disk drives. Of course, these days nearly all this information can be found on the web using a search engine.

 This collection is dedicated to marketing metrics. There are 113 formulas divided into 11 sections. Some of them are dead simple, such as "Revenue is the total income from sales of products and services". Some are a bit dodgy or doubtful, such as Consumer Franchise, which purports to show how sales are derived from committed and uncommitted buyers.

 The author has updated the book to include online media metrics, such as cost per click.

 A short explanation accompanies each metric.

 No marketer will fail because they don't have this book, but many marketers will be more effective because they have easy access to the formulae contained in this book.

Jerry