Entertainment Books

Highly recommend this book, the author will make you feel like you right next to Bob, and also give you an overview as if you're 'following' along, looking over or riding, right on Bob's shoulders. It has definetly made me understand Bob and humanity better... highly recommend this book

The book came lightening fast and was in brand new condition. I would recommend this seller and would definitely purchase from them again.

Okay, I read all of the book and learned a lot more about Bob than had preciously known, but I was disappointed by the lack of details on the making of the music. I was hoping for more details about the inspiration for a lot of Bob's music and this book did not have it.

I am currently reading "Exodous the Making & Meaning of Bob Marley & The Wailer's Album of the Century." This book goes into a lot more detail if you want to learn more about the music. I would recommend it over this book.

Still "Catch a Fire" is a good read if you want all the details of Bob's life.

I was very disappointed with this book. After reading it, I have a pretty good idea of what Marley's childhood was like, a hazy picture of his adult life but no understanding at all of how a poor man from a third-world country was able to popularize a genre of music that was almost universally disdained, or considered a novelty, in the world outside of Jamaica in 1973.

I would have expected more discussion of his music; specifically how he and Chris Blackwell adjusted the arrangement of Marley's reggae songs to appeal to a broader audience, as well as how Marley's music evolved over time. I know from watching VH1's "Classic Albums", that process was critical to Marley's success but I don't even get an inkling of that in this book.

Instead the book has way too much on Marley's childhood (140 pages into it, we have only followed Marley up to the age of 14!). This book also has too many vague, cryptic references to conspiracy theories about the CIA, Ronald Reagan, the Jamaican government, etc.

On the bright side, the book does a good job of describing the superstititious world of poor Jamaica, full of demons and ghosts, etc., which helps explain the popularity of Rastafarianism.

The book title is also the name of the 1973 debut album on Island records for Bob Marley and The Wailers that brought the lyrics and sounds of reggae to an international audience.

Originally published two years after Marley's death from cancer, the biography remains a great read due to the exhaustive research by author Timothy White.

White had interviewed Marley from 1975-1981 and projects the development & growth musically, spirtually and politically in his life. White also interviewed musicians, friends, family members, music industry executives and poltical leaders, along with the typical research - newspaper articles and other media outlets - and not-so-typical - CIA documents concerning Marley.

There are also sections on Jamaican history & politics, the history of reggae & Rastafarianism and how White did his research.

Marley projected a militant spiritualism in his music that will remain timeless. Catch a Fire gives the reader an understanding and appreciation on why Marley's message means as much today as it did so many years ago.

What else can be said about John Wayne? The quotes in this book are wonderful. They really reflect the genuine hero that Wayne was. If you listen really hard while you enjoy these bits of his wisdom, you can almost hear the magical voice of The Duke. If you are a fan, you must have this book!

With all the John Wayne had to say in his movies and real life, this book was somewhat of a disapointment. It has some, but not all inclusvie, and not even some of his best one-liners.

Great book full of common sense and insight into the man. Proof that when you look up American in the dictionary, it says 'see John Wayne'. Why didn't we ever make this man President?

I've been a fan of "Duke" for over 30 years and I've read a lot about him, and I can say that "The Quotable John Wayne - The Grit And Wisdom Of An American Icon" by Carol Lea Mueller is one of the finest. Not simply another boring biography like many other books, this book succinctly gets to the 'True Grit'...the spirit behind the legend of the man. Chock full of interesting anecdotes,memorable quotes and tasty tidbits regarding Duke's attitudes about God, America & family values, it's all here. Good job Ms. Mueller!

The John Wayne fanatic in our family (who, by the way, has nearly everything John Wayne) was excited to receive this as a gift.

I am on the road a lot and it benefits me greatly to listen to the New Testament while driving. The soothing voice reading and the background of classical Christian hymns uplifts my spirit and keeps my mind on what is really important, so I do not get angry at other drivers. That is a good thing!!

I bought this to listen to while driving. I have enjoyed it. However,there was one problem. I received two copies of CD #11 and no CD#12. James Earl Jones does a great job, but I could have done without some of the music.

I am on the road a lot and sometimes miss my Bible Reading, this really is a wonderful way to stay connected to the Lord.

So well presented with James Earl Jones magnificent voice and soft music in the background. The Word of God is so pwerful.

I like it. I grew up w/ the King James Version. There is music in the background. They are hymns done very quietly and are not obtrusive, but there are only about 10-15 of them. If you like all the hymns you'd be fine w/ it. I was not expecting the music and thought at first I would not like it, but the hymns seem to have been selected for specific texts so I am now glad they are included. I have only found 2 'voiceos' (similar to 'typos'). Out of the whole New Testament, I guess we can allow him 2 wrong words.

I fell in love with this movie the first time I saw it and was therefore thrilled to get the book. As I am a bookworm by nature, I actually feel that this novelization, in many ways, is better than the movie (not that the movie isn't better in its ways). Yet Wesley, when writing this, wasn't limited by movie magic, and was able to make alterations and insights into character that do not necessarily appear in the movie--and the result is wonderful. For those unfamiliar with the story, this is at first glance little more than a wonderful play on fairy tales that manages a surprising and touching dig into the very emotions that make fairy tales work. And it all occurs through the adventures of a prince-turned-dog who comes to New York City to get the assistance of a beautiful waitress and her bumbling father. Add in an entire cast of fairy tale characters, and this instantly becomes more than an ordinary fairy tale. It's passionate, clever, and well-told.

This is a lovely adaptation of the miniseries The 10th Kingdom, mostly sticking to it quite well, and beyond that giving an excellent insight into why the characters did things a certain way. For example: when watching the miniseries, I was annoyed that Wolf took time off from chasing Wendell to eat in the restaurant. The book fleshed that out, telling how he had been denied meat for his entire stay in the prison (which I believe was fairly lengthy), and so the idea of a good dinner was just too much temptation to stand.

However, the book is apparently a collaboration between two authors, and it does occasionally show. In the beginning of the book, the Queen describes how Snow White had been long dead when she arrived at the castle (when Wendell was an infant), yet in the end Wendell gives Virginia a dried rose Snow White gave him when she left and he was seven years old. His mother was dead by that point, I believe. I did get a wee bit tangled in the narrative, and I believe the narrative got tangled in itself. However, for a fast, lighthearted read, I do recommend it.

Has a lot more description of each character's past that wasn't shown in the series, so you have more understanding of why they are like the way they are.

Based on the mini series in 2000, this book pretty much stays along the path of the movie, but with a few added scenes. Basically a NY daughter in her 20's with her father get sucked into a fairytale land where things are not always happily ever after. Leading them is a man named wolf, who has a wolf side. (Big surprise) He falls in love with Virgina, the daughter, and she's reluctant. But there are major problems in the fairytale land and it is Virgina's destiny along with her father, wolf, and faithful dog that's actually a prince, to save the 9 kingdoms. (The 10th Kingdom is NY, in case you wondered about the title)

I love this movie I rember watching it on tv.
But it is way better on DVD. I want to read
the book alot. If you liked this series you
would probably like the Protecter of the Small
series to.

It is impossible to change the address when you first have placed the purchase. It makes it difficult when you the moment you buy the book discover that you made an error (wrong address), and then it is already to late to change the address. What can you do? Probably nothing, other than accept that you lost your money, and buy the book elsewhere.

This book was written for people who have heard about online "synthetic" (the author avoids using the over-hyped term "virtual") online worlds such as "World of Warcraft" or "Second Life", and are curious, but assume it's just some nerds in basements, not tens of millions of "ordinary" people engaged in near-billion dollar economies.

If you already have a rough idea of what's going on (you don't need to be an active "citizen" in any of these worlds for that), then the book doesn't have all that much to offer, though there is a great chapter on economics that discusses strategies for avoiding inflation ("MUDflation"), and the chapter on politics may stimulate some thoughts.

The book could have been more interesting if the author had been able to go into more detail and compare different online economies, and get an insider's perspective on why it is that things are the way the are (incl. failed experiments etc). I'd also have liked to see a less shallow discussion of the psychology behind all of this -- is the reason people kill each other online when they can just because that's the nature of humans, and is the reason South Koreans are way ahead online simply down to bandwidth rather than cultural differences?

The book is also (inevitably) a bit outdated. The author frequently mentions how virtual items are traded on Ebay; Ebay prohibited sales of items from World of Warcraft and EverQuest beginning of 2007. There is no mention of the "farming" phenomenon. And I was surprised that the book didn't mention Second Life (which I'd imagine should be more interesting than most fantasy worlds from an economist's point of view) much except in passing.

Best book discussing online worlds that I've read.

The author's background in economics makes for an interesting perspective. He goes to great lengths to point out where and how virtual worlds cross over into the "real" world.

He doesn't, however, take things quite as far as I expected. For instance, he doesn't suggest that any interaction, social or otherwise, if conducted online might well be considered as having occurred in a virtual world. And he doesn't spend any effort exploring online to offline gestural equivalence.

But I don't think he can be faulted. There's enough material in this area to fill several volumes. What he does cover, he makes accessible, interesting, and relevant.

[...]

Were this book explicitly a marketing tool for virtual worlds, I would say job well done. But as a work of scholarship, it is downright embarrassing. The only thing I have to say for it is that the economic analysis in part II does not seem patently ridiculous, but the same cannot be said about the political analysis, and both are predicated on the validity of part I's predictions of the growth and impact of virtual worlds. His logic explaining this predicted growth can only be referred to as spurious.

Published in 2006, this book is already dated, and in ways relevant to the author's predictions. His prediction that passive TV watching will decline in favor of virtual worlds is only half-true: instead, we have a flourishing YouTube where people interact with passive media by creating more passive media. The niche of on-line communication medium has been filled by social networking sites. The author predicts that people who grow up with technology will be drawn to virtual worlds, but this has not been the case. The adoption rate of virtual worlds among teenagers pales in comparison to the use of text messaging, social network sites, and other available technologies. This comes as a surprise given how inherently compelling he portrays these virtual worlds.

Castronova does not seem to take into consideration the reality of differing preferences. He claims the "natural" place for getting together is cyberspace, and there's no reason to type when you can talk. This kind of thinking permeates his discussion of the future growth of synthetic worlds. Because they can offer, for a certain value of "offer", interaction with a potentially more pleasant world, this does not mean that everyone down on their luck will flock to them-- regardless of how realistic the worlds may get. I think it would be difficult to argue that even enough of a critical mass for the phenomena he describes in part II has the right kind of inclinations to "live" completely in virtual worlds.

Castronova frequently employs the rhetorical device of referring to these worlds and everything about them as "real". Certainly, they are "real" in the sense that they are something that people occupy their actual time with, but this does not make them "real" in the sense of an equal alternative to actual life. Throughout the book he uses terminology to blur the line between the two meanings of "real", presumably with the goal of validating his claims about the importance of virtual worlds. He talks about it as a "way of life", about the players as "migrants", and that they have the "potential to become permanent homes for the conscious self" (p. 238). He claims game makers should allow avatars to have all the same human rights in-game as their players do in the real world. It's an argument that only makes sense if you accept that there's no fundamental difference between virtual worlds and the real worlds, and that's a claim that has a much higher burden of proof than his tricky rhetoric can meet.

Virtual worlds are a hot topic, and the buzz surrounding them has allowed a scholar to put out absolute crap, assured that the audience will call it "stimulating", "important" and "insightful". If you're going to read this book, cut through the hype and read with an eye towards the logic of his argument. But other than as a first-hand view of the type of faulty reasoning used to convince people that virtual worlds are the Next Big Thing, it's not worth the read.

To be honest I was expecting more on this book.It didnt tell all the info I wanted to know and the author focus too much on 2D games like Everquest and not so much in 3D games like Second Life.In most of the book the author is a little superficial in his analysis,he could go deeper.However the book is good for people who wanna have a general idea about on line games,specially Everquest,World of Warcraft and Star Wars.

First, some of you may be interested in how this new expanded edition compares to the previous edition. I don't have the previous edition, but in this new expanded edition, there are viii + 346 pages, including the 8-page index. The principal new portion is Part Five: "Additional No-Limit Hold'em Concepts" which runs from page 214 to page 282. The rear cover flatly states that this edition "contains over 100 pages of updated material."

Having read about 1/3 of the text so far, my conclusion is that this book will be helpful to those who are beginner-to-intermediate tournament players, but who are already familiar with the basics of No-Limit Hold'Em (NLHE). This volume contains many useful hand examples, but it is not loaded down with irrelevant mathematics of the "if you have this and he has that or that or that, and he then does this X% of the time, then you should bet Y% of the pot" etc. In other words, this book focuses more on effective strategies at different parts of the tournament rather than on the supercilious "I'm a math genius and you're not" writing that characterizes the NLHE: Theory and Practice volume, also by Sklanksy and Miller.

There is advice on what to do if you want to maximize your expected gain, or what to do if you want to maximize your chance of winning outright with expected gain be darned. Several alternative suggestions are presented on how to play certain hands depending on stack size, stage of the tournament, etc. The advice strikes a balance between being specific and general in nature.

Part Four: "Hand Quizzes" runs from page 156 to page 211. Unfortunately, only 11 out of the 50 hand quizzes are specifically concerned with No-Limit Hold'Em, although maybe another 9 or 10 questions concern Limit Hold'Em. The rest concern Omaha and Hi-Low and Stud and other uninteresting forms of poker.

There are a few typos and inadvertent grammatical errors, but not enough to be too annoying.

If you are already an experienced NLHE tournament player, then you probably don't need this volume.

This is a great dance game for the family! The ages of everyone playing are 8, 13, and 35. We listen to Christian Rock a lot so we knew most of the songs on the game. I was thrilled that there were a few songs of Toby Mac's; we're big fans of his! I can't wait to purchase some of the expansion packs for more family fun!

I was very disappointed with the performance - or I should say NONperformance of this item. Even worse was the fact that my 11 year old granddaughter purchased it with her own money & she was really disappointed that it would not work on our computer. I went so far as to take the game to the computer shop and the owner loaded it onto a Mac with far more capability and it still did not work properly.

I feel very strongly that companies which manufacture these so-called dual function games should make sure they do, in fact work correctly on both pc's and Macs. I assure you that I will never buy another such game! The only reason we did not return it is that my granddaughter can take the dance pad to her cousin's house and they can play the game there. (on a pc)

That still does not make it right. The whole idea of buying it was to play it at home. And I certainly cannot buy a new computer just for that purpose!

I just got this game from Amazon less than a month ago to use for exercise and to stay out of the Texas heat. It is great! You get to choose your song, the level of difficulty, and mode of dance you want to do. There are songs by Jeremy Camp, Toby Mac, Pillar, Day of Fire, Superchick, Zoegirl, Red, Relient K and more... all recent songs, with a great beat. I've played it almost every day since it arrived and I always work up a sweat and yet it is so much fun I want to keep playing. The pad moves around quite a bit on carpet so you have to re-adjust it between songs. It comes with sticky pads if you want to put it on a hard surface to keep it from slipping but they don't work on the carpet. I installed it on my iMac with the 10.5 Leopard operating system. It doesn't say it is compatible with this but I made it work anyways. Here is what you need to do if you get it and have trouble with the install. When I put in the disc to install it said I didn't have the previous game version and that it would create a folder for me. It put the folder called "Dance Praise" on my desktop. It then said I could install the game, but it kept giving me an error message. So I dragged the "Dance Praise" folder from my desktop to my applications folder and then tried to install it and it loaded right away. I haven't tried it on a PC but it only says it is compatible with XP not Vista so keep that in mind.

they need to make this game for the consoles! (PS2, PS3, XBox, Wii, etc etc) Who the heck wants to dance to their tiny computer screen? It is great fun, I would so much rather my kids play this than Disney Dance Revolution (much better songs with a much better message), but I do not like having to hook it up to the computer. They are missing a huge opportunity, let's hope they get on the ball!

I ordered this for my daughter's 13th birthday. She enjoys the Dance Dance Revolution game at the video arcade, and I hoped this would be close to being as much fun for her. It is! I'm so delighted that the pad works well with the arrows and is sensitive enough to register her dance moves. She has already enjoyed many hours of dancing. I don't count it towards her "computer time" since it's such terrific exercise. What I love about this game is the terrific Christian music. Many of her favorite artists sing the background music, and there's no lyrics that make me wince. (Unlike Dance Dance Revolution songs!) My 9 year old son is also enjoying the Beginner level. The levels seem appropriately difficult, when compared to how my children do on the Dance Dance Revolution game at the arcade. I'm a bit astonished that this game works as well as it does, for such a reasonable price. What a bargain!

I was actually looking for the autobiography of Bill W. but stumbled upon this in the search. I am pleasantly surprised. It gives a thorough chronological sequence that shaped Bill W.into the man he became and his never ending battle with the bottle. Ms. Cheever also gives good detail to the emotional struggles of those touched by alcolholism. It truly gave me an even deeper appreciation for all that Bill W. went through and accomplished. At times, the characters got a little confusing (so many of them) that I had to go back and reread a bit, but I think that you will find it well with your while.

how this squirrel made it to the top god only knows, the miracle is aa works for a few of us, too bad the rest of you drunks are screwedStarbucks Assortment

I just finished reading this biography. I am so grateful for Bill and Bob and for me - they are a constant reminder that there is a Higher Power looking out for us.

So what if Bill was less than perfect? Yeah, I was a little surprised at some of the content of the book - but again I ask so what? Bill always said that Dr. Bob was the more "spiritual" of the two of them. He never claimed to be the saint that so many people in program seem to need to make him in order to ?????

Bill was an ordinary man with ordinary human issues - and he did his best with what he had. I believe that Bill would be amazed at the sainthood that seems to have been given to him since his death.

Personally, it makes me feel safe to know that throughout all of Bill's experiences he managed to keep sober AND to share this so important message. This book clearly tells us that while Bill was at times struggling with his demons, he cared about other people (drunks) anyway.

So, he had affairs? Who am I to judge? Step 4 - asks me to make a fearless inventory of MY affairs - not of other people's -

Reading this well researched and written book only makes me appreciate Bill and Bob MORE - wow! they were actual ordinary guys who gave the world the most magical of gifts and for that I am grateful.

I read this book and I was disappointed beyond words. If you really want a great book about Bill W. I Suggest the book by Rober Thomsen, who
knew Bill Wilson personally (The title is Bill W.)

While Susan Cheever makes a valiant effort to use imagery and some carefully styled first person musings of Emily and Bill Wilson, her efforts fall somewaht flat. On the balance, this is essentially a retelling of "Pass It On." There are a few details at the end regarding Bill W.'s sexual compulsions that are common AA lore, and have appeared elsewhere.

For those interested in the history of AA, this won't offer much in the way of insight into the early days of AA and how the program worked. Entertaining at points, but difficult to read attenteively if you have already read other accounts of Bill Wilson's life.

Cheever's artistic touches didn't do much for me. I would rather she had put additional effort into her research, and brought a fresh telling with some new facts or insights.

A completist must have. For the rest...optional.