mostly reading a waste of money
588105
wish I would have sent it back, for what I use it for ,mostly reading a waste of money . This is my 3rd Kindle I like the 6" much better.
3797567
The content is generally good, but the author clearly took 2-3 pages of information and fluffed it out to be a full-fledged book.  It's extremely repetitive.  I think the book is still worth the cash, but it is VERY redundant.
728927
A terrible read, my guess is 2nd grade reading level.  The useful information contained in this book, which IS good information, could easily be condensed into 20 or 30 pages, with examples and charts.  The rest was a completely frustrating waste of time.  I started skipping the bits about him and his wife, it felt tacked on and useless.  I hope they got divorced at the end.

If you want a good story, you'll be disappointed.

If you want an efficient conveyance of useful information, you'll be disappointed.

I've never physically attacked a book before this nightmare crossed my desk.
2099821
As I got deeper into the story, the incidents of proselytizing led me to stop reading in the middle of the book.

It's bad enough to have to weed through all of the "hit you over the head" style of religious messages in what is attempted to be main stream novels, but this almost subliminal attempt at "seeing the light" is insulting.  At least the former doesn't insult one's intelligence - we can pass over it without wasting our money purchasing the latter.

A waste of my time and money.
1864321
I suspect that the vast majority of this books is a work of
"wishful thinking" and the results of reading too many "True Crime" stories while the author was in high school.  Be that as it may, if only one tenth is indeed true, then the author has some major problems, on many different levels, the lack of ability to write leading them. Most of the book consists telling us just what a bright fellow he, the author, is, and just how brutal he was/is.  The chronology of events is often completly
incorrect and the author's thoughts and deeds simply do not jive with those previously recorded.  All in all, the books comes across as being written by a seventeen year old city kid who has watched the God Father movies one too many times.  If only one tenth of the books is true, then I truely feel sorry for this kid and do wish him well.  On the other hand, at least he did make an effort to write, and if the story be truely true, then he probably needs the cash.  I am rather surprised he found a publisher though. NOTE: If the author reads this,and really takes offense,  please blow up my old pick-up, not the newer cars - they are not mine, they belong to my wife. The truck is mine, and I could use the insurance money. Please be kind enough to make sure I or my dog are not in it. Thanks.
2462101
The subject is just meditation, but you don't find this out until after many wasted hours of difficult reading. Waste of time and money, in fact I wouldn't read this thing if it was free from the library.
2563214
I heard this book discussed on NPR where it sounded worth the money. Not only was the purchase a waste of money, the greatest loss was in my time reading the book. There is no underlying message except in a side-story about securities fraud where we learn just how gullible greedy people can be.

Even with not much to say, some writers write so well that it's a pleasure to read just about anything they write. This guy can't write well at all. What he IS good at is getting people to pay his way or getting things for free.

I found this book a waste of money and an even greater waste of time.
2657046
After reading book 1 which I thought was ok, I was eager to read this one. I am sorry to say but I believe it was a waste and I am only midway through the book. Firstly, I agree with those readers who commented on the cost. To disrupt what is essentially one story to break it into novellas seems more like a means of taking more money from the readers than is due when one novel would have likely cost the same as one of these novellas.

Secondly, it appears that rather than one cohesive story line with related plot twists, the author decided to see how many unrelated obstacles (some realistic and some not) can be thrown in the couple's way. By the midpoint, I couldn't believe how many times I found myself rolling my eyes. I am disappointed.
754467
The first two chapters or so are interesting and the chapter on willpower is also somewhat useful. The remainder of the book is filled with pointless corporate stories that are only tangentially related to habits. Overall it's a waste of time and money and provides little help for anyone wanting to learn about habit formation or useful ways of breaking habits.
2092677
Despite my best efforts, I've only been able to get 1/4 of the way through this book - and I'm *so* glad I didn't actually pay to read it. (It was offered for free via Kindle.)

The characters and situations are simplistic, as if they were put together by a middle-schooler. There's no depth to anything - what I did read of it, I skimmed through as if it were an article in Entertainment Weekly. No meat to the relationships, no real sense of drama. At 1/4 of the way through, I have no interest in finding out what's going on, or who the perpetrator is. The only thumbs up I can give it is that it doesn't have the typos, spelling and punctuation errors that are so common in e-books these days.

I can't recommend that anyone give up valuable reading time on this book. Pass it by!
1588170
Do not waste your money on this book, I read half a chapter, skimmed through some more of this book and threw it in the bin. Waste of money.
3749306
I picked up this book because the blurbs and information seemed to be about frugality and following the lessons of Ben Franklin.

Just FYI this "book" is really just 6 chapters, 155 pages total of larger than normal type and a healthy dose of charts.  Piasecki talks in very vague terms but manages to say very little in droning blocks of text.

I found very little that was tangibly helpful.  The whole tome didn't seem to amount to more than some general droning about the current state of business in the author's views.  His sports analogies about "knuckleheads" ruining hockey games somehow being in business didn't make much sense to me.  I enjoyed the themes of frugality and interconnectedness, but none of this ever got fleshed out to a practical level.

Considering the amount of name dropping, references to pop culture and number of times the author self-aggrandizes about his other books (mentioned OFTEN throughout the text) I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone.  If you want to give it a try it's a quick read for most, but if you want some tips for the individual&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Money-Secrets-of-the-Amish-Finding-True-Abundance-in-Simplicity-Sharing-and-Saving/dp/B0085S2UOS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing, and Saving</a>&nbsp;is a good one, and there are scores of good management books I would recommend above this, almost anything.

Glad I only checked this out from the library instead of buying.
4115926
Although the author's love of animals, her family, and farm life infuse the text of "Farm Animals", in my honest opinion, it's not enough to make it worth reading.  This is underscored by the existence of such good alternatives.

My first complaint is the poor editing and proof-reading.  The book is poorly organized and it's a rare page that doesn't have a grammatical error or typo that really does get in the way of the reader's understanding.  The author's conversational tone often stretches what would be a short concise statement into a long and hard to understand exchange between author and reader.  A serious investment in editing followed by thorough proof-reading would go a long way to improving this book.

But I can forgive poor writing and editing if there is some useful information or entertaining stories in the text.  After all, I believe the modern small-scale farm is a worthy subject.  The problem with "Farm Animals" is that there just isn't much that is useful or entertaining here.  The book is mostly stories drawn from the author's farm, but rather than being entertaining or enlightening, many of the stories are downright horrifying.

An example is an account (the bulk of the text is made up of these stories) about Rosie, the author's sow.  The author watches while Rosie gets more and more agitated as her male piglets are castrated nearby and (at the same time) a visitor antagonizes her.  Eventually the sow turns on the author's daughter, trapping her in the shelter, and then attacks the antagonistic visitor.  This story wouldn't surprise anyone familiar with pigs... Well, it is surprising that anyone working with pigs would make such obvious mistakes and then write about them in a book about how to raise farm animals, but the fact that the saw acted as she did is far from shocking.

These stories do illustrate mistakes that the reader should try to avoid, and to the author's credit she does eventually make her point after each story's conclusion.  However, it is surprising how many mistakes the author made in caring for her animals.

The book is definitely not competitive as a reference.  Any of the Storey's Guides would be much more useful to the beginning livestock farmer or hobbyist.  Infact, much of the books factual content will seem eerily familiar to anyone who has read the relevant Storey's Guides.  There is some useful information here, it's just that the information is in no way complete.

In my opinion, this book would have been better if the author completely forgoed any intent to write an informative book.  As a collection of funny stories about what *not* to do on the farm, it could have value.  Even as a collection of stories about her farm raising experiences, it would be better, but by using stories to illustrate points about raising animals, it just doesn't work.

The book does paint a picture of a family trying to succeed at something they love.  The author obviously holds a special affection for, and a desire to write about, both her children and her animals.  A particularly important lesson that it does contain is to investing time early in an animal's life to help develope a (two-way) bond between itself and its caretaker.  This is a point made in "Farm Animals" that I haven't seen given due attention elsewhere.

For the dedicated reader of literature about modern small-farms, this book has some value.  But, in my opinion, most others should give it a pass.
2119758
Half of the book is filled with useless stories and the information is so pooly organized that it's frustrating to read.  If your reading this book for a promotional exam, get ready to be exhausted by story after story followed by personal opinions. Good luck
4548290
I only read about half of the book.  It was so stupid that I just quit reading.  I could care less how it ended.
2551670
I made a mistake not reading the negative reviews. For that mistake, I had to flip through 500 pages of noise. The book starts out quite promising, as one reviewer says. But already, amidst the interesting lead stories of Chapter 1 & 2, I detected author's strong tendency for name dropping and blatant and not-so-subtle self promotion. It was off-putting. But I marched on. The stories soon became pointless as far as the book's central aim is concerned; and the theme repetitive. I believe the author wants to show us how one can do stats badly and what the correct way is as well as the wonders and the limits of statistical analysis. A few examples should suffice. The majority of the readers of this book are not grannies, are not 3rd graders and are not Harry Potter potheads. Most of us are analytical or even scientific and experimental in nature; otherwise we wouldn't be interested in this book. Many readers probably are very patient and wade through all 500 pages. I am not. After the first 50 or so pages I read on my subway ride to and from a dinner date, I decided to check the reviews to see what others said about the book, and found agreement with the negative reviewers. This book is largely noise with a couple of gems here and there.

Books like this are very dangerous in that the readers may think they understand the issues. But the issues are presented as disconnected anecdotes. The author failed to thread a clear theme through all these stories, save for the vague notion of stats are tricky and you should use the right model (Bayesan, etc) and the objective mindset (a fox's). To understand each story, one really has to read treatises or books on that particular subject, for example, Money Ball. By thoroughly understanding one application of statistical method, e.g., Money Ball, one can apply the insights and knowledge to other fields. The book "Money Ball" is mostly signals and some noises. This book is exactly the opposite for the reasons I stated, even though each individual story is actually well written. One's simply overwhelmed. The author simply paints a lot of trees without delineating the shape of a forest and the path through it.

To understand the statistical method, a wikipedia article, a text book or any online tutorial should suffice. You can teach yourself statistical methods in less time it takes to wade through 500 pages of garbage. And you will come away with a clear understanding of a modern tool that can benefit your life and career.

I gave a "fake" 4 star so that people who are not accustomed to reading negative reviews before buying a book (or a merchandise) can be exposed to some critical assessment of the book.

Please read the negative reviews. They are more eloquent than this one.
384409
if you are buying this book you are wasting your time and your money, do not buy this book