Great Barrier Reef (Reader's Digest Travel Guide)

Customer Reviews:

Classic guide book!.......2001-06-12

This book contains loads of beautiful and accurate photos of the various fish, coral and plant life in and around Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I was first lent this book by an experienced diver who had already been to the Great Barrier Reef. There was also a copy on the dive boat I was on when diving the reef. I found it enormously helpful in filling out my dive logs because the photos look so much like the wildlife I just encountered on my dive. I was able to use the book when I couldn't remember the names of various fish and animals I wanted to note in my log. It's very accurate; stunning photography. If you want to know what the reef looks like or want to refresh your memory this is the source! I'm also surprised about the limited availability of this book considering the huge amount of divers the reef attracts.

Reader's Digest Book of the Great Barrier Reef

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Reader's Digest Book of the Great Barrier Reef
Frank Talbot
Manufacturer: Readers Digest Services
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000L9XPXE

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Reader's Digest Book of the Great Barrier Reef
Reader's Digest
Manufacturer: Reader's Digest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K19GFY

Book Description

Climbers from New York to Maine rejoice: The region's best climbs are gathered together for the first time in one book.

· 100 rock, alpine, and ice routes rated by appeal
· New entry in the Selected Climbs series from The Mountaineers Books
· Routes selected and presented by professional guides based in the region

In the past, climbers have been forced to buy many guidebooks to specific regions in the Northeast and sift through them on their own, hoping to spot the gems. But now two mountain guides who have climbed extensively in the region share their A-list picks with us. There's not a route in this book that won't thrill you by the quality of the climb, the aesthetic experience, and its historical significance.

Coverage includes rock, alpine, and ice routes from the Gunks to Acadia: New York—Shawangunks, Catskills, Adirondacks; Connecticut—Ragged Mountain; Vermont—Smuggler's Notch, Lake Willoughby; New Hampshire—Franconia Notch, Cathedral Ledge, Mount Washington, Frankenstein Cliff, Whitehorse Ledge, Mount Webster and Mount Willard, and White's Ledge; Maine— Acadia National Park and Mount Katahdin.

Book Description

Alternately heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this teenager's brutal story of escape and desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp.

I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids.

Steve Nugent is in a facility called Burnstone Grove. It's a place for kids who are addicts, like Shannon Lynch, who can stick $1.87 in change up his nose, or for kids who have tried to commit suicide, like Silent Starla, whom Steve is getting a crush on. But Steve doesn't really fit in either group. He used to go to a gifted school. So why is he being held at Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, in which he recalls his confused and violent past, Steve is left to figure out who he is by examining who he was.

Customer Reviews:

Adam Rapp is an amazing writer.......2007-03-02

This book is written perfectly. I love all of Adam Rapp's novels and this is deffinately one of his best works. I recommend to it to anyone who is looking for a unique style of writing and beautifully unfolding plot.

..........2007-01-03

Usually, I hate it when people compare books to Catcher in the Rye, but here it's obviously deserved--not only because you can see the parallels between Holden and Steve's journeys with your eyes closed, but because, like Catcher, this book is amazing. It's a trainwreck that's great because it's so painful and real (and sometimes funny), and by the end I really didn't care that it was a Catcher ripoff, because it's just so good.

That's All There Is To It.......2006-05-26

Ignore the fact that others have already mentioned this, and let me be the first to compare Adam Rapp's novel UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG to J.D. Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE. Of course, their characters Steve Nugent and Holden Caulfield are different, but they're alike in the way HoHo's know they're related to Ding Dongs.

Critics have called Steve names like "marginalized" and "outcast," but if that's Steve, then that's Holden as well. Which it's not. I'd like to see those critics try to deal with the death of their mother, finally watching cancer finish its job in her upstairs bedroom. I want to see them overcome a group of delinquent friends trying to deal drugs and rob the Piggly Wiggly market. I want to see them discover their brother hanging by a necktie down in the basement. How would they handle it and would that make them "marginalized"?

Here's the thing -- Steve is just a Gray Grouper at Burnstone Grove filling his journal with the past to hopefully make sense of the present. He's in love with Silent Starla, a Blue Grouper who isn't silent like everyone says. He's just a sixteen year old trying to recover from a life where "you have to deal with stuff on your own and that's all there is to it." It's this search that leads him to contemplate the universe and drugs, religion and the purpose of life, and "that particular part of the morning `between the wolf and the dog' when the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can't tell what's what."

That's where Steve is. It's the reason he's at Burnstone Grove instead of the Gifted School he ran away from. And it's the reason the unique voice in his mind will howl in your brain, bringing you to laughter, and God help you, tears.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Under The Wolf.......2006-04-04

This book is just amazing and beautiful. There's really nothing else more to say. Reading it is the equivalant of an out of body experience. It leaves you thinking.

Terrible.......2006-03-18

One of the worst books I've ever read. There was really no plot, just some really messed up and retarded kid writing in a journal, rambling about his horrible life. He does alot of dumb things but never learns from his mistakes. It then ends suddenly, before we learn whether he ever gets out of rehab or makes up with his father. It's a terrible book with no depth or focus to it.

Book Description

In this fascinating new book, Nick Davies describes the natural histories of these brood parasites and examines many of the exciting questions they raise about the evolution of cheating and the arms race between parasites and their prey. Brood parasites fill their armory with adaptations including exquisite egg mimicry, rapid laying, ejection of host eggs, murder of host young, chick mimicry and manipulative begging behavior: ploys shown by recent research to have evolved in response to host defense behavior or through competition among the parasites themselves. While many host species appear defenseless, accepting parasite eggs quite unlike their own, many are more discriminating against odd-looking eggs and some have evolved the ability to discriminate against odd-looking chicks as well. How is this arms race conducted? Will defenseless hosts develop defenses in time, or are there constraints which limit the evolution and perfection of host defenses? And why are so few species obliged only to lay eggs in host nests? Have host defenses limited the success of brood parasitism, or is it in fact much more common than we suspect, but occurring mainly when birds parasitize the nest of their own kind? All of these puzzles are examined in descriptions of the natural history of each of the groups of parasites in turn.

Here is a book with wide appeal, both to amateur naturalists fascinated by this most singular and macabre of behaviors and by ornithologists and ecologists interested in the evolution of ecology and behavior. The story takes us from the classic field work earlier this century by pioneer ornithologists such as Edgar Chance, Stuart Baker, Herbert Friedmann and others, through to the recent experimental field work and molecular techniques of today's leading scientists. We visit brood parasites in Europe, Asia, Japan, Africa, Australasia, and North and South America, to look at some of the worlds most interesting birds and some of biology's most interesting questions, many of which still beg answers from ornithologists in the future.

Brilliant illustrations by David Quinn illuminate the species discussed, showing many behaviors never before illustrated and conveying the thrill of watching these astonishing birds in the wild.

Book Description

"Presents the structure of algebras appearing in representation theory of groups and algebras with general ring theoretic methods related to representation theory. Covers affine algebraic sets and the nullstellensatz, polynomial and rational functions, projective algebraic sets. Groebner basis, dimension of algebraic sets, local theory, curves and elliptic curves, and more."

Amazon.com

The refrain of Jamaica Kincaid's clear-sighted, poetic novel Mr. Potter is that reading and writing are incomparable prizes: it is literacy that separates us--not without pain--from the natural world. Kincaid's title character, a chauffeur, spends his life in the bright, unchanging sun of Antigua. Each day his father fruitlessly lowers his fishing pots and his net into the waters of the surrounding ocean, finally cursing God for his bad luck. These are ordinary men, as trapped and elevated by circumstance as any of us, except that without the split in consciousness that reading gives, they cannot see any context for what happens to them. Only the writer--and in this case the narrator, Mr. Potter's grown daughter, a true lover of words--can provide context for such characters, dipping back into history, stepping close to read the men's thoughts, drawing further away to take in politics and social movements. Kincaid's looping, deceptively simple style draws on the work of female modernists like Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein to stitch together the story of Mr. Potter. After a few stiff paragraphs at the opening, the effect is spellbinding. Readers familiar with Kincaid will recognize her preoccupation with family (as seen in My Brother) and her unsentimental assertion that in a world dominated by practical concerns, blood connections matter, even if love does not always follow the bloodline. --Regina Marler

Book Description

The story of an ordinary man, his century, and his home: “Kincaid’s most poetic and affecting novel to date” (Robert Antoni, The Washington Post Book World)

Jamaica Kincaid’s first obssession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur who makes his living along the roads that pass through the only towns he has ever seen and the graveyard where he will be buried. The sun shines squarely overhead, the ocean lies on every side, and suppressed passion fills the air.
Ignoring the legacy of his father, a poor fisherman, and his mother, who committed suicide, Mr. Potter struggles to live at ease amid his surroundings: to purchase a car, to have girlfriends, and to shake off the encumbrance of his daughters—one of whom will return to Antigua after he dies and tell his story with equal measures of distance and sympathy.

In Mr. Potter, Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any other in contemporary fiction, an individual consciousness emerging gloriously out of an unexamined life.

Download Description

Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any in contemporary fiction in a story which captures the slow, unsullied pace of life in Antigua.

Customer Reviews:

One of the few books I gave up reading mid-way.......2007-09-07

The story description on the back cover sounded intriguing (the untold story of a man of no importance in a poor Caribbean country), the book was on sale. I bought it. Then I read half through it, and finally gave up. I found the "creative style" of this short novel way too annoying not to give up after a short while. Everything is repeated once, twice, thrice, and then again after some pages. No one talks, writes or think this way. What do I mean? Here is an example:

"In Mr. Shoul's garage there were three cars and these cars all belonged to Mr. Shoul, but Mr. Shoul himself was not in the garage with his cars. Mr. Shoul was upstairs in his own house above the garage where the three cars were, and Mr. Shoul by then, that is by the time Mr. Potter arrived in the garage where there were the three cars, [...]"

And here is another:

"And that day, the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, and it shone in its usual way so harshly bright, making even the shadows pale, making even the shadows seek shelter; that day the sun was in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky, but Mr. Potter did not note this, so accustomed was he to this, the sun in its usual place, up above and in the middle of the sky; if the sun had not been in its usual place, that would have made a great big change in Mr. Potter's day, it would have meant rain, however briefly such a thing, rain, might fall, but it would have changed Mr. Potter's day, so used was he to the sun in its usual place, way up above and in the middle of the sky."

So, if you like this sort of style, by all means do buy this book, but if you find it awkward and uninteresting as I did, be warned because the whole book is consistently written this way.

Soporific.......2005-09-23

This is a book readers are either going to love or hate. If you've read and enjoyed any of Kincaid's previous quasi-autobiographical fiction, such as "My Brother" or "Autobiography of My Mother", you will probably like this one too. If you like dreamy, hazy, stream-of-conciousness style introspective writing, you may well like this too. I, on the other hand, had never read anything by Kincaid and was simply interested in reading a novel set in Antigua that might provide some kind of window upon the island. Something like Jean Buffong's "Snowflakes in the Sun", which revolves around an elderly couple in Grenada and is chock full of stories and local color. Alas, contrary to the book jacket writer's claims, Antigua most definitely does not come alive under the gaze of Mr. Potter. Indeed, the entire book does not contain Mr. Potter's gaze at all, but rather that of one of his adult daughters, who is writing the "story". The narrator is Kincaid, who has constructed this book based on the few details she knew about her own absent father. These few details and those additional ones she invents total maybe ten pages worth of prose (Mr. Potter's father is a fisherman, mother commits suicide, he is raised in quasi-servitude in a kind of orphanage, he grows up to be an illiterate taxi driver, he fathers many daughters with different women and fails to acknowledge any of them, he eventually has his own car hire business, he dies), however Kincaid spins this out to almost 200 pages.

She does so in the service of attempting to show the course of an unexamined life. The idea that Mr. Potter is unwittingly trapped in his limited existence by the circumstance of his own upbringing and illiteracy ("And because Mr. Potter could neither read nor write, he could not understand himself"). However, again, this could have been accomplished in a few pages, and one gets the feeling that the book is more a personal therapeutic project (the narrator hovers between anger at abandonment and understanding) than anything else. Some will find her hyper-stylized prose, which employs heavy doses of repetition, doubling back and forth, restatements, paraphrases, and so on, highly lyrical, poetic, and in the words of one reviewer "spellbinding". I, on the other hand, found it to be insufferably calculated, mannered, and ultimately, soporific. Of course, this boils down to a matter of personal preference, but I would highly recommend that one reads an extract before purchasing the book -- had I done that, I certainly would not have gotten it. On the other hand, if you like sentences that run on for an entire page, this is the book for you! A complete disappointment, the most unengaging book I've read this year.

Parodic of Kincaid's own style.......2002-10-06

I am an admirer of Kincaid's work, especially "The Autobiography of My Mother" and "My Brother." However, my high hopes for this book were dashed as I turned page after page. In "Mr. Potter," Kincaid unintentionally parodies the very prose style that made the above works so powerful.

In close to 200 pages, what is incantatory in her earlier work is tediously and self-importantly repetitous in this one. The details of her father's life -- his ancestry, his abandonment of mother and daughters, his later livelihood -- are several dozen pages worth of narrative that is ridiculously stretched out in endlessly repeated phrases; and when those phrases are exhausted, we get paraphrases of those phrases.

Instead of creating a solid portrait of her father the way she did with her mother and brother, we get a novel in which parodic repetition is the main character, in which the author's voice defeats forward-moving narrative. One gets the feeling that the style has become just filler, that Kincaid knew few enough facts of her father's life in order to fill entire book.

Absolutely Brilliant.......2002-09-30

Kincaid's writing style is entirely unique and distinctive. This book is not just trying to tell a story, it is assigning an identity to people who otherwise would not have one. The point of this book is to explore and interpret the influence that the past has on the present, both globally and individually. Every literary device Kincaid incorporates into this book is used for a reason, from her repetition of certain phrases to her two page long sentences--it all adds and supports the depth and breadth of the subject she is writing about. With this book Kincaid not only challenges the way we view our lives, history and environment, but the way we view the lives,history and environments of people who are wholly unlike us. "Mr. Potter" is a striking piece of literature.

Nice writing style!.......2002-07-07

I enjoyed this novel. It's very realistic, and flows smoothly. Great summer read. Other summer reads recommended are: In-Law Drama and Sunset in St. Tropez. Happy reading!

Call it accident;: A Mr. Potter mystery novel, (Red badge detective)

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Call it accident;: A Mr. Potter mystery novel, (Red badge detective)
Rae Foley
Manufacturer: Dodd, Mead
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007E29N0

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A pleasant modernized version of "Pride & Prejudice" - which a twist :)
Not Loyal to pride an Prejudice
I was bored
This is no Bridget Jones.
Huge Disappointment

Me and Mr. Darcy: A Novel
Alexandra Potter
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 034550254X
Release Date: 2007-06-12

Book Description

Dreams come true in this hilarious, feel-good fairy tale about life, love, and dating literature’s most eligible bachelor!

After a string of disastrous dates, Emily Albright decides she’s had it with modern-day love and would much rather curl up with Pride and Prejudice and spend her time with Mr. Darcy, the dashing, honorable, and passionate hero of Jane Austen’s classic. So when her best friend suggests a wild week of margaritas and men in Mexico with the girls, Emily abruptly flees to England on a guided tour of Jane Austen country instead. Far from inspiring romance, the company aboard the bus consists of a gaggle of little old ladies and one single man, Spike Hargreaves, a foul-tempered journalist writing an article on why the fictional Mr. Darcy has earned the title of Man Most Women Would Love to Date.

The last thing Emily expects to find on her excursion is a broodingly handsome man striding across a field, his damp shirt clinging to his chest. But that’s exactly what happens when she comes face-to-face with none other than Mr. Darcy himself. Suddenly, every woman’s fantasy becomes one woman’s reality. . . .

Praise for Me and Mr. Darcy:

“…Unexpectedly charming. . . Me and Mr. Darcy offers a Pride and Prejudice - appropriate surprise. . . it turns out to be one of the wittier of this summer's offerings, not to mention sharp and sad in its observations about what spinsterhood, identity and aging look like for women in 2007.” — Salon

“[Me and Mr. Darcy] takes the reader on an extended daydream with an appropriately pleasant ending. “ — The Indianapolis Star

“Alexandra Potter’s clever comedy, an affectionate celebration of books and readers — and bookstores — might lead you to start browsing those travel websites yourself.”
— The Times- Picayune

“Pure candy for the imagination. . . Ms. Potter has worked literary magic with the creation of Me and Mr. Darcy.” — CoffeeTimeRomance.com

“…Refreshing…” — Publishers Weekly

Customer Reviews:

A pleasant modernized version of "Pride & Prejudice" - which a twist :).......2007-09-27

I found this novel to be well-written and entertaining. I've read some reviews on her concerning the fact that this novel is "no Jane Austen piece." Of course it's not! Jane Austen is a remarkable and wonderful writer, my favorite by far. But I did not pick up this book here thinking I would be picking up the futuristic work of Jane Austen herself. "Me and Mr. Darcy" is a well-written, great pick for the Austen enthusiast looking for something a little off the beaten path. Austen perfectionists will probably not enjoy this novel unless they can differentiate between an original Austen novel and a novel strictly using Austen's personalities and characteristics in a modern story. I enjoyed every bit of this book, and would recommend it to many. It's a fun read, with little need of dictionary accompaniment. Beware the language though, this book can go off! :) Fun, delightful, funny, witty, and full of great characters, pick up this novel if you are in need of a good laugh.

Not Loyal to pride an Prejudice.......2007-09-21

This version i have to say took me totally surprise, it was not true to the original, and some parts really did not flow well.
The audience i think this version would appeal to is young very outgoing college students, just because of some of the content.
If you are a true fan of the original, don't spoil it.

I was bored.......2007-09-12

Ugh,I found myself thinking of other things while reading this book to the point that I could not remember what I had just read.I was hoping for something romantic and silly and fun,instead this was just drivel.

This is no Bridget Jones........2007-09-11

I started out this book really enjoying it, but then about 10 chapters in it was like reading a completly different book. I went into it with an open mind and was fully acceptable to the idea of a novel character coming to life. What I wasn't prepared for was a poor and lack lustre rip off of pride and prejudice. Where Bridget Jones' was funny and enchanting this book was predictable and stale. I didn't find Emily very likeable and even Mr Darcy was dull (I think the author got him completely wrong).
I think the idea was a good one but she got lost along the way.
To the books credit it does have some funny bits, however this is a book you should borrow from somebody and save your money. Your not missing a great deal if you don't read it.

Huge Disappointment.......2007-09-11

Even though I hadn't heard of this book before, I found it in a bookstore display of Jane Austen-inspired novels. As I've read some charming novels in this particular genre, I thought that I'd take a chance. Once I was around 50 pages into this book, I regretted my decision. First of all, the character were, for the most part, unlikeable and, more importantly, uninteresting and two-dimensional. As for the plot, even with the requisite suspension of disbelief, I found the plot to be too far-fetched, for reasons already cited by some of the other reviewers. While there are some clever and fun takes on "Pride and Prejudice", I'd pass on "Me and Mr. Darcy".

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Mr. Potter of Texas, A Novel
Archibald Clavering Gunter
Manufacturer: Hurst & Co, NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000P1RY44

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Mr. Potter Of Texas: A Novel
Archibald Clavering Gunter
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0548394229

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