Entertainment Books

I am so pleased with this book. My son bought it from my wish list and it is great. Is shows what a person can do with an Ipod. Very easy to use and seems to cover everything that can be done with an Ipod. I wondered how to put pictures and video on the Ipod and this explains how to accomplish those tasks.

This is a great book for any Ipod owner, seeing how what you get with your new Ipod is very little. It shows how much more than listening to music that these little guys can do!

Are you getting the most out of your iPod? If you're not, then this book is for you. Author J D Biersdorfer, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that has easy to follow graphics, crystal-clear explanations, and guidance of the most useful things your iPod can do.

Biersdorfer, begins by showing you what lies underneath all of the menus on your iPod or iPod Nanao and what each item does. Then, the author focuses on introducing you to iTunes most basic and useful tools. Next, she shows you how to make playlists of songs you've added to iTunes. She also looks at how much you will spend in the iTunes store. The author then spotlights the video side of iTunes. Then, she shows you even more ways to use your iPod. The author continues by explaining the simple procedures for playing your iPod songs through the woofers and tweeters in your life. Then, she explains what to do if your iPod's acting weird. Finally, the author kicks it up a notch and gives you some ideas of what else you can do with iTunes and the iPod besides just watching and listening.

In this most excellent book, you'll learn how to install iTunes. Perhaps more importantly, this book will show you everything from turning your iPod on, to charging your iPod without a computer.

Great book! I never knew the iPod was so versatile. A must read.

'iPod: The Missing Manual' by Jude Biersdorfer is the perfect reference for all iPod fans, users, and geeks alike. With 200+ pages of material spread out over 11 chapters, you will learn all the ins and outs of your iPod and iTunes better than ever before!! From the basics like general usage of your iPod to learning how to use iTunes to import music and add to your library to creating playlists and working with photos and videos, this truly is a gem. Unlike other 'Missing Manual' books, this one is a smaller format and is presented in a glossy, stylish package that meshes perfectly with your 'i' collection!!

If you want to get the most out of you iPod and/or iTunes and want to have fun doing so, pick up this wonderful sidekick to your Apple world and enjoy!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

After having this cd in my player for over a month without being able to listen to much of anything else, i had to buy the book. It is great. Alot of drop d, but still pretty technical. If you like the songs, buy the book, you will not be disappointed.

This book is great for the intermediate to the advanced player. There are great sweeping patterns and blistering fast solos. I especially like this book because of the duel guitar harmonies; if you have a friend to play this book with you will get that full harmonic sound that you hear right from the album. The book is accurate and easy to read. I definitely recommend this book as you will notice a difference in your speed within a week if you stick to it. Look out for the Afterlife solo!

I got this book recently, and I thought I would be able to play at least one song all the way through after some practice. Man, was I wrong. These songs are even harder than those in City of Evil and have majorly fast solos, riffs and fills. If you are towards more the advanced side, this is really good and fun to learn and still a bit challenging. Intermediate players with enough experience and determination may get some out of this book like me, but it'll take months or even years to master the whole album. Still very fun to play, improves technique if you break down the hard parts little by little and makes anyone's jaw drop (especially the Afterlife solo it has 32nd triplets in it!). Definitely get it.

Serenity is a good example of what young girls should not be. It's very unfortunate but the story is real. There are trifling young ladies out there that will do anything for that dollar. You have got to respect yourselves young ladies and I say this with love. Keep up the good work Kashamba. I look forward to your next book.

I was privileged to meet this author at a literary event and I am glad to say I enjoyed this book.

Serenity Wells in my opinon was a girl who needed love and wasn't sure where to grasp it from. She is in love with her boyfriend/soon to be husband Kyron until he gets locked up, then gets knocked up by his boy/ turned arch enemy Tomiere and has the baby....WTF? In the midst of ALL her drama, her friends Medina and Scabby are there to pick the pieces up after every drama filled episode..... This was a good book! Kudos Kashamba!

Kashamba picked the right title for this book. Serenity and Kyron were something else. I truly enjoyed the book from the first page to the very last.

I'm slightly disappointed with Mind Games. It's not that the book was boring but of the reality that there are really triflin women out here just like Serenity Wells and to read it in black and white; is mind blowing! I thought Serenity was a silly hood rat with no goals or morals. Yes, her man cheated but she degraded herself in the process to "even" the score. She was a terrible mother that didn't have a job or higher education. It was really sad! Kashamba really showcased how women can be triflin and naive over a man. I did like the book however, it's just sad (as a young black woman) to read how bad we can make ourselves look! What's even more pathetic, is that Serenity didn't learn anything from her experiences! She was still a money and D*** chaser! To all the Serenity's out there, get yourselves together! This book should be a wake-up call to how stupid you can be! I recommend that women read this book. If not for the entertainment of it all but for the message of how NOT to be.

This book was an absolute let down. I read the reviews and thought this book would be a decent read. Oh how wrong I was. The book is about a trifeling girl name Serenity who seems to never take responsiblity for any of her actions. Please do not buy this book. I have read the authors other titles and I don't know why she wrote this book. There was no flow it jumped from one part of her life to the next. What really bother me is the way the book ended where she makes this big speech like all the hardships in her life are husband fault. She is a dirty horror and I hate this book. I will not pass it along for anyone else to read. I am willing to sell it for $1 because that is all it is worth. I just finished reading the book and had to write this review to let everyone know DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Published by the same folks who brought you Game Programming Gems (and edited by one of the more prolific AI authors in that series), AI Game Programming Wisdom provides a wealth of real knowledge by actual game programming professionals, not professional authors. As a game programming professional, the number of game programming books that sit on my shelf is fairly small. Most have nothing interesting or meaningful to offer beyond rudimentary descriptions and concepts.

AI Wisdom is definitely a cut above the rest. The topic selection is intelligent and relevant, and the articles are all of a consistent quality and polish. I've already referenced articles several times when writing production code, and several co-workers have borrowed it when they had a particularly tricky problem to solve. This is simply a must-have resource for any professional AI programmer, period. Or, if you're an amateur or hobbyist looking to see the tricks and techniques professionals use, then this is a book you absolutely can't afford to miss.

"Artificial Intelligence" means different things to different people. One useful application is the control of nonplayer characters (NPC) in video games. This is the first book to address this field. Like any collection of papers, it is uneven and does not systematically cover the subject. It should be read in conjunction with a traditional AI text, such as Murphy "Introduction to AI Robotics", Russell and Norvig "Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach", Tom Mitchell "Machine Learning" or perhaps Bruce Blumberg's forthcoming "Synthetic Characters".

I teach AI at DigiPen Institute of Technology and made this one of the required books. It is good in showing which techniques are most useful in games and what you need to consider when designing your AI. Some papers are overly general and some are too specific. That's probably unavoidable, but game programmers can pick and choose the most appropriate ideas. Unfortunately, some of the better introductory articles on A*, finite state machines, flocking and fuzzy logic are not in this book but in "Game Programming Gems".

Once you understand the basics of AI, this book can save some major headaches by helping with the selection of an appropriate architecture. The CD has source code to help you get off to a good start. Reading the appropriate articles will let you anticipate problems before they happen and design around them. Professional game programmers will likely find at least one technique that pays back the cost of the book.

It's hard to find good information about game programming and design. The trouble is that people working in the industry have an incentive to keep their techniques secret -- they don't want their competitors to learn them. The people who aren't in the industry can write about games but don't have the experience to back it up.

Game AI Programming Wisdom gives us wisdom from people who have worked on real games. Each section is a short explanation of a particular problem (like pathfinding, tactical reasoning, or pattern recognition). Since they're short and independent, you can pick the section that applies to the problem you're trying to solve and read that without having to read everything in order. However, each section is written by a different person, so if you try to read the book straight through you will be distracted by the change in writing styles and level of detail.

I'm quite glad to see this book. It's actually the first game programming/design book that I purchased. (I'm quite picky when it comes to books. I'm sure Amazon doesn't like that.) Most of the game books I see go into low level programming details. This book teaches you the principles and techniques that will be useful for more than the specific problems they cover.

Being in the game development business, I am always on the lookout for new and different tricks, techniques and strategies. When most programmers go to the lectures, panels and roundtables at the Game Developers Conference, we are looking to pick up this same sort of material... we share ideas and approaches - but rarely get the chance to get down to the code details to make it easy for us to implement those ideas into our own work. This book makes that possible.

Along the lines of the other "Gems" series of books, this collection is filled with ACTUAL techniques and code chunks that are used by some of the top professionals in the industry. Just flipping through the list of the contributors to the book is like going around the room at one of the AI roundtables at the GDC... in fact, Steve Woodcock and Neil Kirby are 2 of the "3 AI guys" that RUN those roundtables! (The 3rd being Eric Dybsand who has contributed to the "Gems" series but not this title.)

Many books on game development are informative. This one is actually USEFULL. I have personally adopted Steve Rabin's source code from the section "Implementing a State Machine Language" into my own game and it has saved me many hours of development and improved the readability and understandability of my code for the rest of the team. Just that section alone has netted at least a 1000:1 return on the cost of this book. Other sections have given me a different approach on how to handle the economic strategy layer that I could have come upon myself... but was able to implement a lot quicker than if I had done it myself. It was definately worth the price.

Are any of these sections worth the purchase price for YOU? I suppose that depends on how much you value you your time. Once you equate the cost of the book to the man hours you save, it's a no brainer!

This is the best book in my library.
Write by professionals, with usefull techniques and well explained details of almost every cool aspects of AI in the game programming world.

I have just learned to play guitar and I find this book the perfect place to start. If you desire to learn to solo, this is the book for you. It also has plenty of scales that even some of my pro friends don't know!

This is a wonderful book if you are serious about playing guitar. It's way better if you have at least some previous knowledge about music theory. If not, you'll gain knowledge anyway. However, if you're too anxious to go ahead and start skipping sections -specially those fundamentals at the beginnig (which may be a little tedious for the guitar rookie) it might become a bit senseless. Over all, this is a very good study on scales and, combined with discipline, it shall take you further on your desire to become a good musician. If you get the Book/CD + DVD deal you will save money and enjoy the experience even more.

This was an interesting insight into the world of retirement and elderly people. Rothman spends more than six months in a retirement community to get a feel for what retirement is like. The book made me feel empathetic towards the elderly, allowing me to glimpse life from a new perspective. I liked getting to know the cliques within the community as well as the individuals who formed the cliques. Rothman's writing style is casual, allowing for a personal account of the time spent in the retirement community. It was an unexpectedly good read.

This was a great light read. I really enjoyed the humor and anecdotes of life as a twenty-something struggling to find some inspiration and direction. The author is the son of a family friend, and really hit the nail on the head with his description of south florida's retirement villages.

Rodney retires at the age of 28 and moves to a 'community' in Florida. He learns about aging as well as the importance of youth.
I thought this book was at turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Rodney has an excellent comedic voice, honed while writing jokes for Letterman prior to his 'retirement.' I learned a lot while reading this book, but it didn't feel like learning. I would recommend this to anyone who reads for the same reason I do: To learn about lifestyles and events that are very different from me and my experiences. Or, you know, to anyone at all.

OK, I really meant to read 2008's Leisureville, but this was the only book in the library on retirement communities. I'm over 50, so I usually only read a book if it's free.

I wanted to scope out my options for the next decade. But even though Early Bird is non-fiction, it suffers from a dearth of information. It's really a bunch of essays about Rodney Rothman and how he is affected by the mostly Jewish mostly New York seniors around him, who treat him like a 28-year-old visiting son or grandson.

Even though well-written, his humor wore quickly. I know a book isn't worth reading when I'm just scanning the pages, trying to find something non-gratuitous to read. I found it 2/3 of the way in, with the chapter "Basherte", where he left campus to date women his own age. It was still gratuitous, but at least that chapter was really funny.

I didn't finish this memoir..I thought the idea behind the book was odd and it is just not worth my time and effort to read anymore of it.

An excellent, straightforward telling of Hitchcock's life and career.

What a remarkable life Hitchcock had. He lived to make movies and achieved commercial and (eventually) critical success - while developing his own distinctive style. Now considered by many to be the greatest film director of all time.

Hitchcock was not only a great film-maker but also a master self-publicist and a man with many hangups. If you are interested in Hitchcock, then this book will not disappoint.

This is simply one of the best biographys I have read in a long time. Incredible detail about the world of Alfred Hitchcock and his movies. The book is packed full of information and their are no lulls in the story of Hitch at all. From Blackmail, The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Rear Window, NbNW, and Frenzy you get all the information about Alfred Hitchcocks triumphs and the story behind them. A definate read for *any* fan of movies and how they are made. McGilligan has written a book that is worth at least 3 reads to absorb all the information.

This has to rank as one of the best biographies of a film maker ever written. Rich in detail, both personal as well as professional, the book is a joy to read, sending me happily back to my collection of Hitch's movies for yet another look, but with eyes opened wider than ever before. A book I shall treasure forever.

The author of this book did not forget one tiny detail. Everything you ever wanted to know about Alfred Hitchcock, personally or professionally, is in this book. It is highly recommended.

McGilligan's Alfred Hitchcock : A Life in Darkness and Light is not a "tell all the dirty secrets" biography, but rather a serious attempt to examine the man and his life, filling in the pieces through interviews, letters and published writings. That very much works in its favor. While other bios have often focused on the "dark" side of the Master of Suspense, painting a portrait of a disturbed man, McGilligan's work is more measured. We see the darkness, but we also see the light. There are some "tell all" moments that show Hitchcock's strange/dark side, but they don't come across as too gossipy.

The pacing is a bit off - the initial chapters, for instance, spend far too much time dealing with a handful of short stories he wrote for publication prior to his film career - but the writing is good, and more detail is gone into on the state of Hitchcock's life during each individual film than any other bio. It's a really strong look into his life AND his films.

For film lovers, the looks at how Hitch handled direction and his inventiveness are especially a joy to read. You get a very strong insight into how the master worked, which made me appreciate his films all the more.

This bio is very long, but also very comprehensive. Highly reocmmended.

This book is a must have for managers in theater. It covers most of the typical contractual issues managers face. This book's biggest asset is the CD. The CD allows you to download and modify virtually all the documents included in the book.
You need to have a bit more than a cursory understanding of the legal principles behind some of the language in the agreements, but if you have that knowledge you will refer to this book time and again.

"... you may have missed 'What Just Happened?' when it came out last year. Now it's in paperback. Don't make the same mistake twice." -- Susan Salter Reynolds, reviewer, Los Angeles Times Book Review Section May 2003

As one who writes and researches alcoholism and the role it plays in human misery, misbehaviors and the bizarre, this book was a huge disappointment. There is bizarre, there is misbehavior (Baldwin's little fit over his beard)--but there is no alcohol or other drug use or addiction. We can't possibly understand Hollywood without inserting alcohol and drug use in a third or so of the characters--usually the ones written about (after all, they provide the most interesting stories). In addition, there was a lack of depth from someone who was so entrenched. There should have--and easily could have been--something far better than the superficiality sprinked throughout this little book. Thus far, I rarely write reviews and wouldn't ordinarily consider panning a book. Unfortunately, this one deserves it.

I couldn't put this book down once I started it -- not such a problem, since it's pretty small. Linson aims for deliberate frankness from the very first quote to the final credits. The book is a series of conversations between Linson, the producer of such movies as Great Expectations, The Untouchables, and Fight Club, and an ousted movie studio exec, in which Linson relives all of his recent Fox Film "failures" (including GE, The Edge, Fight Club and Pushing Tin). Linson works hard to look like he's pulling no punches, and the anecdotes he does share are bizarre and funny - Alec Baldwin's beard tantrum, the stunned studio reaction to Fight Club, etc. 

Don't let the conversational style fool you, though. This isn't a documentary; it's a highlights reel, cuts from Linson's life that show the best story. The book is, if nothing else, extremely self-interested. Linson gives a sort of overview of what producers actually do in films mostly as a justification for his own job. Beyond that, the book reads a bit like a therapy session and a bit like a report Linson cooked up to show his own "blamelessness" in the four "failures" described within. 

WJH is a good, short, gossipy book for behind-the-scenes nuts, but shouldn't be regarded as much more than the popcorn version of the events behind any of these films.

Sex sells, goes the old maxim, but if the sales of gossip magazines featuring the likes of the late Princess Diana, the present Drew Barrymore et al, then gossip may well be up there with sex as a matter of titilation (no pun intended) for the masses, of which I am one. THe fact is David Mamet is a great writer, Robert De Niro a great actor and the author, Art Linson, is no slouch in the producing arena. So if any of these are of interest to you, this book is a very well written - snappy dialogue, witty observations on the status of restaurant seating, and well constructed vignettes - as well as providing yet another insider's view on the shark aquarium known as Hollywood.

What Just Happened consists of behind the scenes tales of the making of The Edge, Great Expectations, Pushing Tin, and Fight Club from film producer Art Linson.

The stories are pretty great. Bitter and specific to a degree not usually found in Hollywood books not written by Julia Phillips, these have the nasty ring of truth, and are very funny.

The only problem with this book is that it barely qualifies as one. There's barely enough text here to fill an ambitious pamphlet. Surely there was more to be written about the making of the wildly controversial Fight Club (like how it managed to get made in the first place) than just describing how the finished product power-freaked the Fox marketing department.

Also padding out the length is a bizarre framing story wherein Linson is telling these tales to a memorably creepy ex-studio head. Pitch black as these segments are, they feel both repetitive and vaguely untrue, a bit of theatricality whipped up to hammer home Linson's bitter points. The book doesn't need them, but I guess they added a few more pages.