Book Description
In
Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller's provocative and funny new book, he shows readers that the greatest desire of
every person is the desire for redemption. Every person is constantly seeking redemption (or at least the feeling of it) in his or her life, believing countless gospels that promise to fix the brokenness. Typically their pursuits include the desire for fulfilling relationships, successful careers, satisfying religious systems, status, and escape. Miller reveals how the inability to find redemption leads to chaotic relationships, self-hatred, the accumulation of meaningless material possessions, and a lack of inner peace. Readers will learn to identify in themselves and within others the universal desire for redemption. They will discover that the gospel of Jesus is the only way to find meaning in life and true redemption. Mature believers as well as seekers and new Christians will find themselves identifying with the narrative journey unfolded in the book, which is simply the pursuit of redemption.
Customer Reviews:
eh..........2007-10-06
This book was soooo slow starting out. It was definitely not what I was expecting from Donald Miller after having just finished Blue Like Jazz.
a must-read.......2007-08-31
You'll find yourself putting this book down frequently so that you can just think about some of the mind-blowing content that Donald Miller is pitching. Great stuff.
Donald Miller gets it right...sometimes.......2007-08-12
It took me a while to get used to the author's cozy stye of writing, but eventually I grew to enjoy it. It's messy and all over the place - just like life and very conversational. I've been reading some heavy theological stuff lately and this was refreshing. I loved the 'lifeboat theory'. His explaination of how the 'lifeboat' relates to the fall of man was probobly one of the greatest things that I've ever read. It really makes a lot of sense. I think everyone should read that chapter.
I was able to read the Bible like I used to after reading this book. And it's been months, maybe closer to a year since I was able to do that. The text was fresh to me. I saw a few things I hadn't noticed before. Since he eluded to the fall in the book, I thought I would go back to the beginning and read those chapters for the billionth time. I wasn't really expecting to see anything new. But I did. And it was real again.
I have to say I was cringing through a good part of the book. I know Donald Miller has had bad experiences with religion or the church in general, and with conservatives and republicans. I can certainly see why he holds those views. There are enough people in all of those camps whose examples could drive him away. I get the sense that the author feels that most Christians who are conservative republicans are less than intelligent and have been brain washed. That makes me sad. I can speak personally and say that I care about people living in poverty and under oppression. I care about the environment and about peace and about healthcare. These are important issues to me. And I *still* have to go with conservative views on just about everything. To me, conservative views and economic policy just make the most sense and it's not because I care less than liberals do. I can see how people who also care about these things hold to a liberal world-view. I don't think they are crazy or demented.
I agree with saying "NO" to excess govenment funding for programs to help the poor and needy and the oppressed. How does it make things right to steal money (via excessive taxation) from other people - wealthy people who have worked for their money and success - and give it to somebody else? How do handouts solve the problems in our society? I actually think it makes things worse for everyone involved, because it encourages dependancy and laziness. BUT... just like these problems will not be solved or helped with government funding, they will also not be solved by doing nothing! There are millions of broken, needy people in this country - in the world. How can we as Christians, who are called by Christ to feed and clothe and care for others, say no to plans for government funding and then not do anything else to help these people? We need to ask ourselves - "what am I *personally* doing to help them?" It is easier to say that we believe rich people should be responsible for taking care of poor people than it is to 'get out in the trenches' and do it ourselves. The Church -Christians, liberal and conservative alike, should be the ones ministering to the broken and needy. Jesus didn't give that job to Ceasar and the people of Rome. He entrusted that responsibility to his followers. The church needs to step up and live out their faith in this way. Once they start doing that, maybe the government can back off. I might start a speaking tour at local churches to get the word out. I'm very passionate about this. :)
Okay, enough of my rant....back to the book...(my previous thoughts actually do tie in to what I am going to say next - I just don't have a clear segue).
It seems to me that the problem is not with religion or today's church or conservatives or republicans or liberals or democrats, but it is with the need to understand the scriptures BOTH from a theological point of view AND from experience.
Without theology, the experience or relational aspect of Christianity is not grounded and is even dangerous. There is no expectation of an absolute truth and so all of faith is relative. Thus God becomes not who scriptures say he is but who I want him to be. It is particularly difficult to study the scriptures this way. Theology in the form of bullet points and fomulas (i.e. creeds, the articles of religion, the catechisms and things like the five points of Calvinism) is good and necessary. These things exist to give focus and steadfast understanding to our fickle feelings and experiences. In studying these things, the worshipper can stand on the shoulders of giants instead of presuming that he alone is a giant who can figure everything out himself.
Conversly, I would say that religion without relationship is dangerous in that it misses the point. Certainly God does not desire this. Scripture makes so many references to the act of offering sacrifices versus the offering of the heart. And yet He did not do away with sacrifices in the Old Testament - He required that his people sacrifice as well as call upon Him. In the new testament when Christ came to be the final propitiation for sin, He said that He did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Clearly the law (or religion) is important but it is not fulfilled nor has meaning without Christ.
Christianity does not work in an 'either-or' mentality -either religion or relationship. It is 'BOTH-AND'. Why is it that it is so hard to find a church that embodies this 'both-and' principle? It seems that they love to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The formulas, church history, tradition, creeds, systematic theology are all important. Much more important, in fact, than Donald Miller acknowledges. But without a true, ongoing, growing relationship with Christ, theology just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think this was one of the author's main points and it is definately one I needed to hear. It is the responsibility of the worshipper to maintain an understanding of both at all times. This is such a difficult task. It seems to me that our finite minds just were not created to focus on all of that at once, but fortunately, God makes these things possible. I am constantly in this desperate struggle to remain focused on both. I have been concentrating almost exclusively on only one aspect of my faith. I needed to be reminded of the 'both-and' argument. That is why I loved reading this book.
Thank you Miller.......2007-07-11
If you liked Blue Like Jazz, you'll love the book. Thank you Mr. Miller for another great one, can't wait for the next.
Following Christ is a Relationship not a System.......2007-07-01
THANK YOU Donald Miller. This is one of the most important books you can read as a Christian. It inspired me to do an about face. That is look for the face of Jesus, not his rules, not his rewards, but ENJOY THE PRESENCE of our God. After reading this book, I actually laughed and played with Jesus. I petted the Lion's mane and He licked me back. We hugged after that.
Book Description
Influence search engine results and bring targeted traffic to your Web site with an hour a day of search engine optimization (SEO). Drawing on years of experience as successful SEO consultants, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin provide detailed, practical, and often surprisingly simple techniques for improving results. Their simple strategies include setting SEO goals, site optimization, developing and implementing a strategy that might include both free and paid efforts, and tools for monitoring trends, measuring the competition, and tracking results.
Customer Reviews:
So Much of Basics..........2007-09-17
I must appreciate the effort taken by the Cousins but its sounds too basics.
It could have had a faster pace and covered more SEO parameters.
For beginners with spare time.......2007-08-15
The writers have spent hours and months writting this book and it is hard not to admire their determination, but the result is unbalanced. The book does bring some hard facts and useful behaviours but enough to make a brochure not a full book. The first half of the book talks generalities and concepts about the web, about marketing and search engine behaviour but every time it is becoming really interesting the writers say "we'll see that point in chapter XX". It is a good trick to keep readers of thrillers on the edge, but I found it annoying and time wasting. Eventually the book gets into stats and practical actions but it feels too little too late. Most of the "do to" lists at the end of each chapter are more summaries than action points. If you are starting from scratch and have time, this book will teach you usefull things and fill your time.
Best Book Ever- really!.......2007-08-14
I've dabbled in SEO over the years mainly as an account rep (punching bag) for ad agencies. Caught in the middle of the client and the creative/techs that play each other off one another. This book really opened my eyes about how to build a SEO team with the PR, Marketing and IT dudes. And, I finally get it. You HAVE to document your SEO work for the accounting folks. There is SO MUCH junk out there and vendors promising you better SEO for $$$. In one way, I can't believe these wonderful ladies are actually sharing this "school of hard knocks" info. And, the injection of bits of humor make it such a wonderful read. They prove their thesis that SEO is really an on-going process. And, they provide the step-by-step (truely an hour a day) with downloadable FORMS to document and faciliate the journey. I've checked out a lot of SEO related stuff over the years either in books or on the web, and, nothing compares to this 300 page book. For me, and, I'm really not a techi dude (I'm in sales "a people person") --- I just want a smok'n site to get more leads --- but, this book was actually fun to read. And, understand! There wasn't a page I read that I said "huh?" Don't get me wrong, Jennifer & Gradiva know there stuff. I'm sure they could talk over my head in a heart beat. But- you know- that's the REAL sign of a professional (like a doctor with "good bedside manners" that can explain and organize things so that they can be understood. I'm looking forward to future books. - not that this book was incomplete. I read a ton of books, and, these authors have a talent. Thank you for sharing your it with us ladies!
Crystal clear.......2007-07-25
The perfect book for starters -and a good one to look for info-
Easy to read and to understand.
We earned 6159% ROI on a search directory investment - book helps to decipher which ones are worth it!.......2007-07-15
This book helped us earn a 6159% ROI on a search directory investment. We paid $120 and sold $7391 in services. And I'm sure it won't stop there. Enough said?
The book is well organized and gives great info to help you decipher which activies are best for you. I also loved the left brain/right brain sections. I'm left brain but like to hear both perspectives.
Be warned... some sections take less than an hour, some sections take a week depending on how many resources you have and where you started.
I haven't finished the book so I can't report on page ranking results yet. I'm half way through and taking my time through the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) section - a whole book could be written on this alone. But based on the search directory we found as a result of the books work, I felt that I could provide credible feedback.
However, this book gives me a new respect for Search Engine Optimization work. Anybody can do this (in fact YOU should do this as opposed to totally outsourcing); it just takes a little elbow grease.
Amazon.com
Christian lecturer and counselor John Eldredge follows up his bestselling Sacred Romance with The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We Always Dreamed Of, a book whose very title evokes hope and possibility. The first half of Journey of Desire argues that Christians have forsaken their heart's desire due to the failures and sorrows of life. This is tragic, Eldredge insists, because "absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it." A rousing call to search for the life you've only dreamed of ensues. The question naturally arises as to the "wayward" desire that lies within us, and how it is to be controlled let alone differentiated from our true desires. While the answer isn't clear, the second half of the book focuses on what Christians have to look forward to in heaven--what they are to set their hope upon. Each chapter begins with insightful literary quotes and aptly applied modern song lyrics pertaining to the upcoming text. While the contents could fuel many a theological debate, Eldredge does inspire one to consider what lies in the recesses of his heart, and for Christians hopefully it is a primarily desire for God alone. --Jill Heatherly
Book Description
Sometimes it seems we just can't get what we want. Circumstances thwart our best-laid plans. We struggle to live a heartfelt life. Worst of all, says Eldredge, the modern church mistakenly teaches its people to kill desire (calling it sin) and replace it with duty or obligation (calling it sanctification). As a result, at best Christians tend to live safe, boring lives of resignation. At worst, their desire eventually breaks out in destructive ways such as substance abuse, affairs, and pornography addictions. In
The Journey of Desire, Eldredge invites readers to rediscover God-given desire and to search again for the life they once dreamed of.
Customer Reviews:
Recommended with caveats.......2007-06-19
HIGHLY recommended. Other books of Eldredge may be more popular and interest generating. However, this is his foundational book. This book provides brilliant insight into our desires.
The caveat is that one must complete the reading of this book by reading a couple of other authors.
First, John Piper's books such as Desiring God or The Pleasures of God.
Second, Lou Giglio's book - The Air I Breathe.
These two authors complement Eldredge and corrects Eldredge's more 'man-centric' focus.
Discover Hope--the energizer of faith and love.......2007-06-04
I cannot state strongly enough how enthusiastically I recommend this book. I truly believe this message is a gift from the Lord, delivered through Eldredge. There is a reason that faith, hope, and love are the three cardinal virtues; yet Christians often seem to be tremendously lacking in hope. And for our faith and love to be what they should, they need the empowerment of hope.
The basic message of the book is this: our hearts demand Paradise; we simply cannot arrange for it in this life; it is indeed coming (for those who will receive it from the Lord).
"Journey of Desire" is a wonderful guide to growing in hope, to understanding why we're deficient in it, to illuminating the threats to it...to understanding life. This book is a compelling guide and invitation to the life that's worth living. Absolutely, positively "must" reading. Indeed, more than simply reading this book, it deserves to be studied, meditated on, digested. The message delivered in this book is one of the most important I've ever received.
p.s. I've also read "Wild at Heart", "Epic", "Waking the Dead", and "Sacred Romance". They are all excellent, all important. I believe the Lord has much to say to us through Eldredge.
Great read!.......2007-04-16
Books are highly subjective, but I have always liked John's books. Be aware of all the pompous critics out there who claim that John is 'aloof' or not quite 'in touch'. I know that God has used his writing in wonderful ways for myself, and MANY that I know. And that should be testament to itself. Always check everything that you read against or compared to the Scriptures, but read his book for yourself before deciding to take the 'advice' of the raters!
Join the Journey!.......2007-03-16
I love this book! John Eldredge takes the reader on an adventure. What a book!
Pass it forward - An abundant life is a passionate life.......2007-03-13
The author captivates his readers with his authenticity. I've read this book at least 3 times and find new nuggets every time. I have used it in coaching and mentoring and most recently I gave it to a friend to "pass it forward" (instructing the next person to do the same). Read this book with a prayerful attitude, then read "The Dream Giver" by Bruce Wilkinson. Many people travel through this life without experiencing the pleasure of passionate living. Passionate living is not based on our circumstances, it is based on relationship. Our relationship with Jesus Christ is defined by His passion for life and for us. "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living..." (Lk 20:38). Read the book and then PASS IT FORWARD!
Amazon.com
Right in time for the Grateful Dead's 40th anniversary, eccentric bass player extraordinaire Phil Lesh has delivered fans a most welcome gift: his autobiography. There are many books out there about the Dead told from the perspective of roadies, journalists, third party observers, and fans. However, with the exceptions of Jerry Garcia's ramblings in Garcia: A Signpost to New Space and Conversations With the Dead, Lesh's Searching for the Sound is the first time a founding member of America's favorite band tells their own story of what it was like inside the Grateful Dead. And what a wonderful, strange tale it is.
Phil Lesh, considered the most academic of the group due to his avant-garde classical composition training, literate mind, and passion for the arts, decided to write his story himself. Written without the crutch of a ghostwriter, Searching for the Sound might be considered disjointed in places, but overall it comes across as conversational, intimate, informative, and candid (particularly regarding topics of drug use and death). If you are familiar with the band and their extended family, their history, the sixties' musical milestones and influences and all the band's famous tales (the Garcia/ Lesh "silent" confrontation, being busted on Bourbon Street, the Wall of Sound), you may be a little disgruntled there is not much new here in the way of content. However, what is "new" and totally satisfying is Phil's warm, optimistic perspective on the many events that helped shape his life. As described by Lesh, his life's journey, much like the Dead's music, is "a [series] of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until it's ending has come and gone." For the many fans who enjoyed the fruits of his life pursuit of sonic explorations, Searching for the Sound is a welcome addition to their Dead library. --Rob Bracco
Book Description
Right in time for the Grateful Dead's 40th anniversary, eccentric bass player extraordinaire Phil Lesh has delivered fans a most welcome gift: his autobiography. There are many books out there about the Dead told from the perspective of roadies, journalists, third party observers, and fans.However, with the exceptions of Jerry Garcia's ramblings in Garcia: A Signpost to New Space and Conversations With the Dead, Lesh's Searching for the Sound is the first time a founding member of America's favorite band tells their own story of what it was like inside the Grateful Dead. And what a wonderful, strange tale it is. Phil Lesh, considered the most academic of the group due to his avant-garde classical composition training, literate mind, and passion for the arts, decided to write his story himself. Written without the crutch of a ghostwriter, Searching for the Sound might be considered disjointed in places, but overall it comes across as conversational, intimate, informative, and candid (particularly regarding topics of drug use and death). If you are familiar with the band and their extended family, their history, the sixties' musical milestones and influences and all the band's famous tales (the Garcia/ Lesh "silent" confrontation, being busted on Bourbon Street, the Wall of Sound), you may be a little disgruntled there is not much new here in the way of content. However, what is "new" and totally satisfying is Phil's warm, optimistic perspective on the many events that helped shape his life. As described by Lesh, his life's journey, much like the Dead's music, is "a [series] of recurring themes, transpositions, repetitions, unexpected developments, all converging to define form that is not necessarily apparent until it's ending has come and gone." For the many fans who enjoyed the fruits of his life pursuit of sonic explorations,Searching for the Sound isa welcome addition to their Dead library. --Rob Bracco
Customer Reviews:
Moonlight Rain.......2007-05-31
I FINALLY finished this book. It took two or three false starts (i.e., read up to page fifty and stop; wait a month or two, read up to page 50 and stop) but 6 days in the hospital (nothing life threatening) gave me ample time to finish the book. Fascinating- yes. Filled with interesting facts- yes. Reads more a history text book than the autobiography of a rock star- yes. I kept referring to a dictionary ever time (frequently) Phil used a word that I had never heard before. One cool thing is Phil refers to composers (Stockhausen, Berio, etc.) that most Deadheads would enjoy. (BTW, I've been hip to Stockhausen for several years. If you think the Grateful Dead invented "Space", you are wrong.) The same goes for references to books he has read. Basically, it's a slow read but very interesting. What I want to know is with all of the LSD he took, how he was able to remember tiny details from 1966?
Bass-ically where its at!.......2007-05-14
As a bassist myself, I relate to Lesh's writing and train of thought. He documents being a part of Grateful Dead as more of an ironic string of occurances than a drugged out trip. His book is incredibly personal while he discusses such moments as learning an instrument overnight, attending classical concerts while on tour, loosing friends, and finding the inner peace in chaos. He is funny, sad, and everything in between. Although some of the technical parts get a bit too detailed for those unfamiliar with sound technology, one can understand how dedicated he was to his craft aside from the music and lyrics. I liked how Lesh pointed no fingers, rather pushed towards the positives in everyone. I would recommend reading this book with Rock Scully's Living With the Dead because they follow the same format and share similar situations. Lesh's however comes across more intimately humorous. I strong urge readers to dig into this book!
Interesting and Illuminating.......2007-03-26
I've never been to a Dead concert, but once had a roommate in college who'd recorded about 100 of them, which he constantly played, so I've certainly heard my share of Live Dead. Everyone w/ a passing knowledge of the Dead knows that their best stuff was live, not studio. Just an observation that has nothing to do with the Lesh book. It's an interesting read and Lesh is an interesting character. Especially funny was how he got out of the army:
Army Doctor: "read the bottom line on the eye chart" Lesh: "I can't see anything" Army Doctor: "You can't see the bottom line of the chart?" Lesh: "What chart?" Army Doctor: "The chart on the wall" Lesh: "What wall?" Lesh certainly is thoughtful and observant. A good journey through the history of the Dead and sometimes quite moving.
Good 'Ol G.D........2007-01-21
My brother got this book signed by Phil himself. Another biography of the Grateful Dead. Written by One of the band members. It's good. Phils good. Check it out.
Searching for a Ghost Writer.......2006-11-23
I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Not by the writing. In fact, some of the prose is quite unnerving, such as "if Mickey had been born Native American, his name would have been `Pushing the Envelope.'" Although he did remember the concept of foreshadowing from High School English, and he makes of point of highlighting all of the ominous signs of the chaos to come. But overall I was surprised, because, unlike many musicians' autobiographies I've read (for example, Miles Davis), Phil Lesh does not come off as a brittle narcissist. He does not use this opportunity as a format for squabbling, for giving his side of the story. He actually comes off as a thoughtful, sincere guy, and someone willing to take the time to reflect on the past.
I was interested to hear his take on the disintegration of the Grateful Dead in the eighties and nineties. His take on it was not unlike my own. He takes some ownership for his role, admitting that the Grateful Dead had become too large of an organization, too much of a money-maker with too many dependents. The band had to keep up an outrageous tour schedule, despite the obvious decline in the quality of the music and the painfully obvious deterioration of Jerry Garcia.
He makes a note-worthy observation about the parallel process between the band and the audience. At first, it was a bunch of guys with different musical backgrounds, but all with open minds, all in the right place at the right time, who used drugs to expand the individual consciousness of each member as well as the group consciousness in step with the counter-cultural revolution happening around them. They pushed boundaries but they also communicated with each other through the music, with novel sounds erupting organically from their collective experiments. But the drugs that fueled their creativity would also eventually isolate each of them from each other and from themselves. As alcoholism and heroin addiction destroyed the sense of community within the band, the dead head scene would suffer as well. By the end, prior to Jerry's death, you had a band on stage pretending they were playing together, pretending to play with even a fraction of their potential. And as an audience, we pretended too. Or at least those of us who still believed we were there for the music pretended, and the frat boys just came for the party. And they continued to sell out stadiums, while shows were marred by police stings, gate crashers, riots, tear gas, and death threats.
When I was catching shows, late eighties early nineties, you would hear two different kinds of fans as you filed out of one of their 2 in 3 mediocre shows. The Pollyanna-heads would be glowing, talking about how Jerry lifted his arm at one point, or almost rocked his shoulders with the beat, "Yeah, he was really into it tonight." The more jaded heads would just be complaining, complaining about the lackluster set-list, complaining the Jerry continued to tune himself down in the mix, that he was quitting on solos, that Bobby was trying to steal the show again. Both types annoyed me. I like to tell people that I quit going to shows because I realized that the fans who supported the Dead were enablers, burying our heads in the sand. But in reality, that's a post-hoc, grandiose explanation. I quit going because I was paying $35 for tickets a mile away from the stage, to see dishearteningly bad performances, while the drunken frat boys all around me didn't even know enough to get quiet during those increasingly rare moments of musical transcendence. The breakdown was complete, and for both band and audience, going to show meant little more than participating in a ritual.
Phil spends the most time on the early years. That's a good thing. That's the most interesting part. When they were actually hippies, living like hippies, and things were just starting to happen. Woodstock and Altamont are recounted not just as events but as contrasting symbols of everything that was good about the hippie scene and everything that was wrong about it. Ultimately it is a commentary on human nature, the capacity to love and experience ecstasy versus the tendency to retreat into hostility and hatred.
Like I said, Phil owns his role in it all, admits to mistakes, and doesn't spend a lot of time defending himself or trying to bolster his reputation. The only part where it felt like he had a little bit of a self-serving agenda was when he talked about the different directions he wanted to push the band, more experimentation with exotic time signatures for example. But even then, he talks about it in terms of lessons learned. He realizes he misread the mood of the band, they were content to play their songs and didn't want Phil as martinet. I think Phil is giving an honest account here. If you listen to the post-Dead music coming from all the living members of the Dead, it is Phil and Friends who continue to be the most exploratory. Though not the most charismatic of a stage presence, he may have been the biggest "believer" of the bunch, the most devout in his quest for the divine through the psychedelic. Along those lines, it's also interesting hearing Phil weave in and out of magical thinking. He's often grounded and very down-to-Earth, but moments later can go off on a tangent about any kind of mystical spirituality that he can tie in to the moment.
It's worth a read. Not great writing but good enough, readable, and will certainly be of interest to any fan of the band. The book ends with the recent history, the fall-out from Jerry's death, some of the ugly fighting over who owns the rights to what, and ultimately Phil's hepatitis and liver transplant. He really does end up sounding like a likeable guy, the grinning musical little brother of Jerry, the classically-trained marching band nerd, and the survivor who gets a second chance at the gift of being a father.
Amazon.com
To the people who are accomplished in its use, Structured Query Language (SQL) is a highly capable, eminently flexible, even beautiful way of describing the data that you want from a database, or the changes that you want to make to a database. For the rest of us, however, SQL is a first-class nuisance that we do our best to avoid by relying on relatively user-friendly--but usually less powerful--tools. SQL Queries for Mere Mortals aims to bring SQL-phobes closer to the first camp by tutoring them carefully in what SQL can do.
The authors recognize that SQL queries usually come about as a result of questions from human beings, and so usefully spend a fair bit of time showing how to convert, say, "In what cities do our customers live?" into, "Select city from the customers table" and, finally, "SELECT city FROM customers" in SQL. They call this the "translation and clean up" process, and it's a fine approach. They don't press it too far, however, and are equally adept at presenting straight explanations of SQL syntax elements in prose. They spend a lot of energy graphically diagramming aspects of SQL syntax in a format that requires some up-front study. A particular reader might prefer text capsules to this arrow-intensive format, but other learners might like the graphical syntax diagrams. --David Wall
Topics covered: ANSI SQL/92 for people who need to use it to make queries against business databases. The authors introduce one or two syntax elements at a time--SELECT, WHERE, JOIN, UNION, and so on--and cover data extraction, data insertion, filtering, joins, calculations, and other capabilities of generic SQL.
Customer Reviews:
AWESOME BOOK.......2007-06-08
This book is very well written. It is very intuitive for both persons who want to spice up their query knowledge and/or those who need a refresher. Having been away from SQL for a while it was a good "crash" course refresher. I highly recommend it. -----
SQL Queries for Mere Mortals.......2007-04-17
SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL
I very well written and concise, easy to understand piece of work. Dont be fooled that since it was written for SQL 7 (2000) that the information is outdated and is not valid, it is definately still current infact this lays the foundation for you to understand why SQL Language is important in designing relationship databases such as Microsoft Access (all versions). I would have paid triple the pieces for this valuable information.
You Won't Be an Overnight Expert, But..........2007-01-17
...you'll be well on your way. I bought this book (and it's database design partner) about six years ago when I started dabbling in databases. It gave me all the knowledge I needed to get started and it was more than enough to pique my interest.
You can't stop your SQL learning with this book, but if you use it as a launchpad to learn more, you'll be fine. I've gotten more than a couple of jobs that required database/SQL knowledge in the years since I've read/used this book, but there was a lot of trial and error along the way. Now, SQL is just like a second language to me and it all started with this book.
Incredible.......2007-01-02
I had a year's experience with SQL queries when I purchased this book, but I am so glad that I did. It is by far one of the most useful Comp Science books that I have bought. I do not, however, recommend it to people who need to learn SQL stuff ASAP, because it contains enough information to confuse the Hell out of ya.
Absolutely outstanding book!.......2007-01-01
Hey, I loved this book! I am a 15 year veteran developer who hasn't had the need since graduate school to build very complex queries since I always had a DBA or such on my team to do the work. So, my real-life experience of queries amounted to little more than "SELECT colname FROM tablename WHERE condition".
Recently, though, while building a sophisticated report interface to an application, I had the opportunity and the need to do more than simple selects, so I went looking for a book and found this one which seemed precisely suited for my needs.
A newbie reviewer of this book complained that it didn't teach him about INSERT, UPDATE, and CREATE TABLE. Well, a chisel is not a hammer, but just as they don't look even similar to each other, you would have thought that the title of this book would have given neophyte a clue, but I guess not.
This book is absolutely great, and even fun to read! Really, I read it over my vacation and had a wonderful time. It clearly and logically takes you through the whole query structure step by step with working exercises that use the supplied tables and data. It teaches you standard SQL, and then mentions how it maps to proprietary variations found in the major RDBMS's.
I don't know how this book would work for a newbie, but if you've written enough simple queries and wanted to do more, this book just lays it all out for you. I now know how to improve the queries behind dozens of the reports in my current project, and now I can design incredibly sophisticated dashboards using BIRT for BAM and OLAP purposes. I've always wanted to do dashboards with speedometer widgets, and now I know how to get the information for them.
Really, although I am still not very experienced, I have total confidence that I can now tackle the most complex queries my current and planned projects will ever require. This book empowered me in ways that few of the literally hundreds of CS books that I have read have ever even approached.
Book Description
In most discussions and analyses of American teenage life, one major topic is curiously overlooked--religion. Yet most American teens say that religious faith is important in their lives. What is going on in the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers? What do they actually believe? What religious practices do they engage in? Do they expect to remain loyal to the faith of their parents? Or are they abandoning traditional religious institutions in search of a new, more "authentic" spirituality? Answering these and many other questions, Soul Searching tells the definitive story of the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary American teenagers.
Book Description
Lucene is a gem in the open-source world‹-a highly scalable, fast search engine. It delivers performance and is disarmingly easy to use. Lucene in Action is the authoritative guide to Lucene. It describes how to index your data, including types you definitely need to know such as MS Word, PDF, HTML, and XML. It introduces you to searching, sorting, filtering, and highlighting search results.
Lucene powers search in surprising places‹-in discussion groups at Fortune 100 companies, in commercial issue trackers, in email search from Microsoft, in the Nutch web search engine (that scales to billions of pages). It is used by diverse companies including Akamai, Overture, Technorati, HotJobs, Epiphany, FedEx, Mayo Clinic, MIT, New Scientist Magazine, and many others. Adding search to your application can be easy. With many reusable examples and good advice on best practices, Lucene in Action shows you how.
What's Inside
- How to integrate Lucene into your applications
- Ready-to-use framework for rich document handling
- Case studies including Nutch, TheServerSide, jGuru, etc.
- Lucene ports to Perl, Python, C#/.Net, and C++
- Sorting, filtering, term vectors, multiple, and remote index searching
- The new SpanQuery family, extending query parser, hit collecting
- Performance testing and tuning
- Lucene add-ons (hit highlighting, synonym lookup, and others)
Customer Reviews:
Not as useful as I hoped.......2007-09-25
Beware that this book is quite outdated by now: some of the APIs described in the book (e.g. "Field.Keyword") don't work anymore in recent versions of Lucene, lots of new stuff isn't covered, some information (such as that IndexWriter can't delete documents) is no longer true.
It's still useful as a "Getting Started" tutorial, because there's no such thing in Lucene's official documentation, but the price is a bit high for that.
Missing the big picture.......2007-08-16
This is a good technical book, it has plenty of examples and code bits. I was hoping for more examples of implementation - how to apply it to customer systems. It also had little information regarding hardware and how to scale. I think it's a good book, but I might have had other expectations.
Lucene In Action Review`.......2007-01-09
Having had to work with Lucene, this book offers a good overview of the technologies and also how it has been integrated into other solutions such as Nutch and so on. Lucene is used across the board and this is a book I would recommend for anyone interested in Search technologies. It's structured and informative and is a good place to cross-reference Lucene tools also. An example I found was a reference to Luke which is a third-party Lucene tool for analyzing the indexes. I looked up Lucene In Action and it was covered there in good detail along with other third-party tools.
To the point........2006-11-10
Using this book I had a finder window up and running in our Java application in a couple of hours. The book has great examples and you don't have to do a lot of reading to find out what you need to know.
one more okay book.......2006-02-24
This is like a cross refrence book where on each page it refers to other chapters or pages atleast three times. And i would just say it's okay. It doesnt even teach how to crawl web in a good automatic way.
Average customer rating:
- Whimsical and Humourous
- Great books for a wide range of ages
- dealing with dragons review
- decent fantasy
- 4.5, actually, for a set of cute stories
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The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons / Searching for Dragons / Calling on Dragons / Talking to Dragons
Patricia C. Wrede
Manufacturer: Magic Carpet Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Action & Adventure
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Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic
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Wrede, Patricia
| ( W )
| Authors, A-Z
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Adventure & Thrillers
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Fantasy
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Science Fiction
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Literature
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Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Similar Items:
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The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volumes 1-3: Boxed Set: Dragon's Blood, Heart's Blood, and A Sending of Dragons (Pit Dragon Chronicles)
-
Book of Enchantments
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Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
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The Grand Tour
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The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After
ASIN: 0152050523 |
Book Description
Collected together for the first time are Patricia C. Wrede's hilarious adventure stories about Cimorene, the princess who refuses to be proper. Every one of Cimorene's adventures is included in its paperback edition--Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons--in one handsome package that's perfect for gift giving.
Customer Reviews:
Whimsical and Humourous.......2007-09-12
these stories are wonderful. i laughed through half of the books, and then i had some of my elementary age cousins read the series as well. they were able to comprehend them easily, as well as finding them enchanting.
Great books for a wide range of ages.......2007-08-03
This is a great collection of books with a strong heroine and a good sense of humor. They are an excellent choice to read out loud due to the fun characters and the whimsical nature of the writing, and the recurrent message of non-conformity is carried out well without feeling too didactic.
Other reviewers have given capsule summaries, but I would recommend against reading them if you can resist. Part of what was delightful about reading these books for me was seeing the story and Patricia Wrede's pattern unfold.
That being said, I will immediately contradict myself, and note that the third book is, in my opinion, the weakest of lot. I think this is because when I read the books, I was reading out loud. The third book has more fractured conversations and irritating voices popping up all over the place, and the pattern gets in the way of the narrative. Additionally, compared to the other books, the ending is unsatisfying, merely setting up the action for the fourth book. For what it's worth, my wife (who also loved this series) recommends skipping the third book altogether and allowing the story of the fourth to slowly fill you in on what happened in the third.
One other note that I will add is that the vocabulary used in these books is advanced enough to make them a better pick for 10+ year olds, in my opinion. I mistakenly recommended them to the 8 year old daughter of a friend and she struggled to read the first couple paragraphs. The first couple of pages use: philosophers, fashionable, periodic, prosperous, etiquette, etc. Nothing unheard of, obviously, but these are probably better read out loud to early readers. These younger kids will still love the story and the characters, though I guess they may miss some of the humor.
With the discounted Amazon price, this box set is a lot of story for the dollar. I highly recommend it.
dealing with dragons review.......2007-04-19
I like this book because of the adventure. it was interesting, the dragons are cool.if you like dragons and olden time books then this is the book for you. I liked when the wizard made the parts of the clif disipear . I liked the partwhere cimorene ment the dragon.
decent fantasy.......2007-03-09
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles is a decent fantasy novel that turns everything upside down, and wrongside up, and will more than once make you laugh out loud. A good read for any dragon and wizard fan.
4.5, actually, for a set of cute stories.......2007-02-16
I originally bought each of these books individually, and it was quite a pain finding all of them. This is a convenient way to purchase these very cute, very fun fantasy stories.
The first book, "Dealing with Dragons", is a very witty, very cute book about the improper princess who decides to live with dragons rather than get married to someone she doesn't even like. Cimorene becomes the dragon Kazul's "princess", doing her chores for her, cleaning out her library, and cooking for her. The story has a lot to do with the relationships between wizards and dragons and in a sense, everything mocks the "real" view. Throughout this book, Wrede is practically laughing at every fairy tale ever written, and it is hilarious.
Book two, "Searching for Dragons", introduces a new character. Mendanbar, King of the Enchanted Forest, needs to go talk to the dragon king (and there's a new one from the last book!). Unfortunately, the dragon king has been kidnapped, so he and Cimorene go looking for her. It's more action filled than its predecessor and has a lot more magic going on.
"Calling on Dragons" is clearly the weakest book in the bunch, though it's. It's least memorable of them all, its new characters are the most boring, and the plot is more of a preview for the final book, "Talking to Dragons".
And speaking of, "Talking to Dragons" once again brings us the fun and excitement the first two books brought. While each of the other books had a gap of time that stretch across a year or so, the gap between COD and TTD is much bigger... Sixteen years! We've got a whole new generation of characters, whether its the cats, the fiery girls, or our (!) narrarator! Yes, TTD is written in first person, which is a first in this series. We truly get into Daystar's head, which is fun and enjoyable. In a sense, TTD continues where COD left off, but obviously much later, and many things have changed.
So if you like rather mocking fantasy stories that are both fun and cute, you'll love this. If you love witches, evil wizards, cool dragons, and awesome characters, than this is a great set to pick up. Just remember that COD is more of a transition book and all will be well.
So go join Cimorene, Mendanbar, Kazul, Daystar, Morwen, the cats, those evil wizards, and the lot by buying this great set!
Book Description
How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity. Written by Peter Morville, author of the groundbreaking Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the book defines our current age as a state of unlimited findability. In other words, anyone can find anything at any time. Complete navigability.
Morville discusses the Internet, GIS, and other network technologies that are coming together to make unlimited findability possible. He explores how the melding of these innovations impacts society, since Web access is now a standard requirement for successful people and businesses. But before he does that, Morville looks back at the history of wayfinding and human evolution, suggesting that our fear of being lost has driven us to create maps, charts, and now, the mobile Internet.
The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order. Hand in hand with that is the contention that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future. Morville's book is highlighted with full color illustrations and rich examples that bring his prose to life.
Ambient Findability doesn't preach or pretend to know all the answers. Instead, it presents research, stories, and examples in support of its novel ideas. Are we truly at a critical point in our evolution where the quality of our digital networks will dictate how we behave as a species? Is findability indeed the primary key to a successful global marketplace in the 21st century and beyond. Peter Morville takes you on a thought-provoking tour of these memes and more -- ideas that will not only fascinate but will stir your creativity in practical ways that you can apply to your work immediately.
"A lively, enjoyable and informative tour of a topic that's only going to become more important."
--David Weinberger, Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and The Cluetrain Manifesto
"I envy the young scholar who finds this inventive book, by whatever strange means are necessary. The future isn't just unwritten--it's unsearched."
--Bruce Sterling, Writer, Futurist, and Co-Founder, The Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Search engine marketing is the hottest thing in Internet business, and deservedly so. Ambient Findability puts SEM into a broader context and provides deeper insights into human behavior. This book will help you grow your online business in a world where being found is not at all certain."
--Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., Author, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
"Information that's hard to find will remain information that's hardly found--from one of the fathers of the discipline of information architecture, and one of its most experienced practitioners, come penetrating observations on why findability is elusive and how the act of seeking changes us."
--Steve Papa, Founder and Chairman, Endeca
"Whether it's a fact or a figure, a person or a place, Peter Morville knows how to make it findable. Morville explores the possibilities of a world where everything can always be found--and the challenges in getting there--in this wide-ranging, thought-provoking book."
--Jesse James Garrett, Author, The Elements of User Experience
"It is easy to assume that current searching of the World Wide Web is the last word in finding and using information. Peter Morville shows us that search engines are just the beginning. Skillfully weaving together information science research with his own extensive experience, he develops for the reader a feeling for the near future when information is truly findable all around us. There are immense implications, and Morville's lively and humorous writing brings them home."
--Marcia J. Bates, Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles
"I've always known that Peter Morville was smart. After reading Ambient Findability, I now know he's (as we say in Boston) wicked smart. This is a timely book that will have lasting effects on how we create our future.
--Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
"In Ambient Findability, Peter Morville has put his mind and keyboard on the pulse of the electronic noosphere. With tangible examples and lively writing, he lays out the challenges and wonders of finding our way in cyberspace, and explains the mutually dependent evolution of our changing world and selves. This is a must read for everyone and a practical guide for designers."
--Gary Marchionini, Ph.D., University of North Carolina
"Find this book! Anyone interested in making information easier to find, or understanding how finding and being found is changing, will find this thoroughly researched, engagingly written, literate, insightful and very, very cool book well worth their time. Myriad examples from rich and varied domains and a valuable idea on nearly every page. Fun to read, too!
--Joseph Janes, Ph.D., Founder, Internet Public Library
Customer Reviews:
Well, THAT was weird..........2007-06-22
This book is an interesting follow-up to Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by the same author. This time, instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of IA, the author spoke about the nature of findability itself.
Morville shares research and anecdotes from business, history, library science, anthropology, and neurobiology in his quest for the perfect system where everything in the world is instinctively easy to locate. Can we ever achieve ambient findability? And what would the world look like in such a place? What are the social and political ramifications of findability? Will it be big brother, or will the very concept of unquestionable authority wither and die?
Recent manifestations such as Google, Wikipedia, and blogger watchdogs suggest the latter is more likely...
Ironically, the more information we have, the less likely anybody is to use it. Obtaining information is very painful, even if the data is easy to find. The relatively unknown Mooers law states:
"An information retrieval system will tend to NOT be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." -- Calvin Mooers
Meaning, if I have a problem, I can either look up the answer, or ask somebody for help. If I ask somebody, then they might do all my work for me, which is good for me. However, if I look up the answer online, then I have to read it, understand it, and implement the solution myself. Not only must I confront my own ignorance, but its a lot more work.
Stupid Google.
Along the same lines, it's insufficient for information merely to be available and findable... it must also be believable, useful, and tailored to the audience so its easy to absorb. That's the top-to-bottom challenge, and very few people understand it. This book doesn't give much practical advice about absorbability, but it covers findability needs and existing technology quite well. The rest is up to you.
Another Rambling Book from O'Reilly.......2007-06-17
Like most O'Reilly books, the credentials of the author are impeccable, and the concept is current and relavant.
However, like most techincal publishing houses, O'Reilly does not have enough editors fluent in enough technical areas of expertise to impose order on its authors. The result is that they produce excellent texts for those already familiar with the subject, and dreadful experiences for those hoping for something other than a "Dummies" book.
"Ambient Findability" is no different. The subject is broad, the concepts are deep, and the order is completely lacking. O'Reilly seemed to have exercised no editorial restraint in the publishing of this book - it is andectoal, rambling and repetitive in parts, and generally jumps around (much like the subject of the book), without any common touch points.
The main point of the book is that information is grouped in structured and not so structured ways on the web, and being able to "find" information is predicated on how it is percieved by other parts of the web. This already is a vast ocean of space to cover. 180 pages with a lot of graphics is bound to be light, but add on rambling discourse, and you can only swallow 20-30 pages at a time, before bed.
I really believe the author is a great mind on this subject. He could do much better w/ a well disciplined editor.
A philosophy book, not a how-to book . . ........2007-06-08
. . . . But what a great philosophy book it is!
This may be the only O'Reilly book I have ever read that changed some of my basic notions about things I thought I understood, not at a "how to code this or that" level but at a "how the world works" level.
The book presents itself as a thoughtful ramble through some issues around finding and retrieving content that a person might wish to have. And it does a very good job of laying out the landscape, identifying pitfalls, and pointing out unpredictable successes (and failures).
But the real beauty of this book is its own internal organization. The author starts with tangible physical location and navigation, and then moves onto to fluently-written descriptions of virtual location and navigation. The book is thought-provoking and fairly balanced in presenting the perspectives of people who feel strongly about these issues while disagreeing vehemently with one another.
This volume offers no easy solutions, but it illuminates a landscape that needs desperately to be better understood by more people, and it does so in a readable, accessible way. I learned some things, I unlearned some things, and I had a heck of a good time doing so. Will it make me a better information architect? I hope so, but it certainly made me a more thoughtful one.
I am very interested in this kind of topic, BUT could not get into this.......2007-04-19
This felt like a long college senior thesis. Rambling, unfocused and without real-world applicability.
A good survey, timely..........2007-02-16
I find the book most useful as a survey of technologies and ideas suitably themed "ambient findability". I agree with the idea that the future of search will be more than cyberspace. The ability to search the physical world with a search engine will be extremely useful and how to make (physical world) objects findable (even at different levels of granularity) an interesting challenge (RFID tagging is one way but perhaps there are others). The combination of cyberspace and physicalspace and how to bridge between them (from augmented reality, ambient objects, to ambient sensing) is interesting. The book provides a convenient overview, in one place, of where much of computing is heading.
Book Description
This is the leading selling college-level book for Internet research courses. Examples have been chosen to appeal to a broad spectrum of students and researchers across academic disciplines. It is much more than a catalog of search engines and their features. Both the free and fee-based (hidden) Internet is explored. The focus is on formulating search strategies, understanding how to form search expressions, evaluating information, and citing resources. Librarians, prospective and in-service K-12 teachers, and majors in business, math, or the sciences will benefit from it.
Customer Reviews:
Alright.......2007-01-09
The book is ok... but the only reason I even had it was for a class.... It is not for people who are veterans of the internet
I wouldn't purchase for any other reason........2007-01-07
This book did not really explain the necessary info, but since I needed it for a course I bought it.
Excellent buying.......2006-03-19
the shipping was quick and the new book is too cheap compare to my school bookstore.
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Books Index
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Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
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Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Cover Image May Vary)
