Holden Reviews

I am disappointed in the actual code commentary, it does NOT do a good job of explaining the code. Most of the time the commentary does nothing more than tell you what a function does - and it is obvious from the name anyway. Apache has a lot of standard programming conventions and internal libraries. I think those should have been covered first and in depth. It would make the Apache source code much more understandable. I read through the first chapter or so of Linux Core Commentary and it seems much more well written.

i bought the book to underdtand how apache worked interanlly. the book does a good job of that. however the the code commentry is pretty disjointed. the compilers have done a excellent job of putting together this. we should see more of such types.

Good job explaining the server code.

As an early-onset Parkinson's person, I read as much as I can about good nutrition. I believe Ms. Holden's title that to eat well means to live well with Parkinson's. So I was pleased to have the opportunity to learn more when I discovered Holden's book, Eat Well, Stay Well with Parkinson's Disease. I bought it. However, I was disappointed with a salad bowl of worn-out nutrition theories.

She dishes out page after page of junk food advice. Let me give just one example. Why would a nutritionist recommend recipes (p. 111) that include a quarter cup of vegetable oil, which food professionals know oxidizes into compounds that damage the cardiovascular system and promote cancer? Most vegetable oils people buy are extracted from hard seeds with heat, pressure and chemical solvents. They're dangerous, especially to Parkinson's patients.

But it gets worse. She's even got recipes that call for margarine! (pages 112 - 113) in spite of well-recognized research on the danger of trans-fatty acids.

And of the 161 pages in this book, about one-third are general references on Parkinson's: appendices which include pages of product outlets, with such helpful products as "Lighthouse" for the blind (p.141), and lists of national Parkinson's groups which anyone associated with the disease has already.

Plus there are lots of pages of blank paper for "notes". And just in case anyone has a good idea on nutrition they can send it to her on the one of the four order forms provided for more copies of her book. The final insult is the inclusion of just awful poetry, like a 28-word stinker that takes up a whole page (74).

Don't buy the book.

This book has proven a godsend for my mom (who suffers from Parkinsons) and myself. The information is sound, easy to follow, and presented with ample background. I like the writer's approach to nutrition (i.e., good flavor is essential). Her knowledge of Parkinsons is impressive. I can't begin to tell you how many questions it answers. I consider this book an essential part of my mom's medical "team."

One of the most enlightening books I've read regarding Parkinson's Disease. Focusing on nutrition and what your body is going through with PD, it is a primer for what to watch out for, how to deal with dietary challenges, and what to expect. This book will help you make a nutritional game plan, and prepare a pre-emptive strike against most of the common surprises PD throws at you. I don't suffer from PD - I'm a family member. It was great for me and great for my family PD-er. I recommend this book to everyone interested in living better with Parkinson's.

I have spent the last 3 months reading 4 dozen various mysteries and I have enjoyed every single one of them--until now. I found this book terribly confusing with the story jumping around between past and present and the assortment of characters. I thought that the character of Charlie Taft was very undeveloped and that he should develop a "passion" for the dead Imogene rather laughable. I could not understand why people had such sympathy for George Remus and was disappointed by the ending. Any book that I start, I force myself to finish. Many times I'm surprised halfway through. But I now wish I had bailed out on this book after a couple of chapters. It wasn't worth the time. I read in Holden's notes that he had two editors for this book. Perhaps that was a big part of the problem. This will certainly be my first and last Holden.

Jazz Bird takes place in the 1920's in the midst of the prohibition. The story starts of with the murder of Imogene Remus, the wife of a convicted bootlegger. Her husband, George Remus, confesses as the killer but he seems like an unlikely suspect as he's always been deeply in love with his wife...

During the trial their story unfolds a twisted and complex tale of betrayel and manipulation...until the end when you find out the truth about what happened to their relationship and the day of Imogene's murder.

The characters are colorful enough to keep you reading but the ending goes no where. Entertaining but not dazzling. I give this one 3 stars...

This is the first work by Craig Holden that I have read; it most certainly will not be the last. I am not familiar enough with the historical basis for this book, so I comment purely as a reader. "The Jazz Bird", is a wicked book, from a large cast of characters whose loyalty cannot be placed until the book's end, an immense fortune built by prohibition, and the co-star of the book Imogene.

Imogene is one of the better female players that I have read in quite some time. If the character in the book bears any resemblance to who this woman truly was, there must be additional books written already, or more will certainly follow.

The author reconstructs the 1920's with great detail, right down to noting the Rag Time Piano Music of Scott Joplin. If you recall the music, you may also remember the movie that brought it back when Paul Newman and Robert Redford gave classic performances in, "The Sting". This work is much darker than the movie I reference, but if the time period appeals to you, the book will as well. Prohibition parties where 100-dollar bills were under the plate of each guest, or perhaps dozens of new cars awaited the guests who stayed the night as gifts. Add to all of this Imogene, daughter of the privileged class who marries the largest rumrunner, systematically destroys all she was brought up to be a part of, and does it with either the greatest calculation, or the most grievous unintended consequence.

The book is a classic roaring 20's tragedy that you know is going to happen but Craig Holden brings you there through a series of brilliant characters, and the most circuitous of routes.

In "One True Love" (by Alice Holden) veterinarian Daniel Nealy is charmed by spinster Kate Hamilton. He helps her get a job as the governess of a weathly family. The poor spinster suddenly receives flattering attentions from her employer's handsome brother, Lord Percy. But gentle Daniel Nealy is also falling for her. Which man will come out on top? And whose intentions are honorable? This was a nice story, but I was disappointed by how the "other" guy turned out. For a good portion of the story, I really liked him. Why does one suitor always have to be a cad? 3 1/2 stars.

In "The Husband Hunt" (by Kate Huntington), Everard Montgomery's young brother comes home with a foreign bride, thereby jilting the fiance who has waited for him for years. Everard goes to meet Lady Linnea, now pennliess, to break the news about his brother's sudden marriage. Together, she and Everard go to London in search of another husband for the jilted Linnea. ...But perhaps Everard himself is the best candidate? This is a sweet story, filled with wit and romance. 4 stars.

In "Trusting Lady Lucy" (by Laura Paquet) Lady Lucinda is always making a fool of herself around playwright Stephen Charlton. First, he overhears her criticizing one of his plays. Then, he is witness to her not-so-delicate fall into a pond. Stephen finds himself thinking about Lucinda a lot--and he takes her criticism to heart. Perhaps she can help him write a better play? I didn't really enjoy this one. First of all, it was clogged with characters from Paquet's former novels--none of which I have read. I found it very distracting. Secondly, I didn't really like the heroine. I thought Lucinda was overly critical of Stephen. If someone made so many shameless suggestions about MY work, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. 1 1/2 stars (the extra half-star being for the sprinkling of wit)

Overall, a decent read. It's not my favorite anthology, and I probably won't remember any of the stories a year from now. Still, reading it was a pleasant pasttime.

This anthology was very enjoyable. Both Holden and Huntington deliver wonderful romantic stories, but it is Laura Paquet whose story really shines. As always, this author creates a thoroughly relatable heroine and a beta hero that's every bit as attractive as any alpha!

I enjoyed the first two novels in this series, but not this one. Her attorney protagonist became a shrill, irrational, self righteous zealot with no facts to support her breathless polemics. (All it would take is an unspecified "natural disaster" and then The Terrible Thing would happen!). The contrived "factual" rationalization for her position was as predictible as it was silly. This is a novel long on overly emotional protagonists drenched in self absorbed angst and prolix, confession prone bad guys, but short on rational plot development. It makes one long for Laconic Joe Leaphorn from Hillerman's novels. If you like the manufactured emotional trapeze of a soap opera, you will like this book.

I have bought Ms. Coel's other mysteries partly because her protagonists and mysteries are interesting, and partly because they are set in my home state. In this particular story, however, science was murdered in addition to a drunken cowboy, a tribal chairman, and odd assorted other unfortunates. Irritating careless errors certainly decreased my enjoyment of the book and detracted from the storyline. For instance, Ms. Coel has lightning flashes that follow closely after claps of thunder, "underground lakes" that are filled up with water pumped into oil wells to increase production, and "one to the minus six" being "much less" than "one in ten million"...(one to the minus six equals one). I found myself hunting for the next mistake instead of enjoying the mystery. Better luck next time, I hope.

Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden plays the Lone Ranger as she opposes the construction of a nuclear waste storage silo on the Legeau Ranch near the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Most of her tribe see the silo as an opportunity for jobs, but Vicky worries that the site will harm her people.

Her vocal opposition has stirred up the enmity of her opponents. One of them wants to quiet Vicky and all other opposition to the construction by using any means at his/her disposal. One opponent to the site is killed and Vicky nearly becomes a victim also. She turns to her one known ally, Father John O'Malley. Working as a team, the intrepid amateur sleuths begin to investigate why someone wants any opponents to the silo silenced. As they dig deeper, the pair becomes aware of their own attraction to each other. Still, they must solve the case if they plan to survive the silo construction.

Margaret Coel is rightfully being acknowledged as the female Tony Hillerman. The lead protagonists are wonderful characters and the story line is a very interesting blend of a modern problem (nuclear waste) and Native American folk lore. More novels like THE DREAM STALKER and readers will soon be calling Tony Hillerman the male Margaret Coel.

Harriet Klausner

This book covers the chapters in a very structured way. It starts with a concise description of the JSP Basics with a detailed explanation of the concepts. It explains all the concepts in a very clear and simple words supported by an equally clear Comments and examples. Any body with a little of Java experience can become very familiar with the JSP syntax and concepts by reading first few chapters. It covers all the necessary JSP syntax for building a small web application to a very large distributed Application. It also explains about the way the JSP pages are processed by different web servers. For example it explains about the various methods available to maintain a persistence session and their merits and demerits. This is the first book in JSP series that explains not only the concepts of JSP and how effectively one can use them with the help of this book. It also covers various other topics like EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, XSLT and WML in very detailed way. Overall I feel this is the greatest JSP book ever published so far. I could build a simple and robust JSP Web application by reading the first few chapters in a short period of time.

This books lives up to its title in that it provides both real-world JSP techniques (through 7 very informative case studies chapters), as well as JSP background information that serves as a quick start guide. I rank it as one of the top 2 JSP books currently available (the other one is Web Development With JavaServer Pages by Messrs. Fields and Kolb).

After the JSP fundamentals are out of the way (which I am sure any JSP newcomer will appreciate and can benefit from), the book picks up pace with discussion on JDBC connection pooling, and the best practice for data access from JSP. Then comes the chapter on custom tags. My favorite chapters are the ones on debugging JSP's and implementing the MVC design pattern in JSP/servlets.

The case studies are very comprehensive and closely correlated to the earlier chapters. In one case study the design methodology is clearly explained with UML diagrams, which are very helpful to someone who is currently architecting an enterprise Java Web application. Other case studies cover such a wide area of topics such as JSP in combination with LDAP, EJB, XSL, and WAP.

For ASP developers, this books has two enormously useful chapters to get them started on JSP right away. One is a case study showing how to port an ASP app to JSP, and the other compares and contrasts the object model and syntax between ASP and JSP.

Having said all the above, this book does suffer from certain weaknesses. One is typical of any multi-author book, i.e., repeat of the same topic in different chapters. This is the case with JDBC, which shows up in both chapters 4 and 7. Another problem is the lack of the use of a standard servlet/JSP container, which will help new users to run all samples under the same software setting (although there is an appendix on setting up Tomcat server). Finally, a few chapters seem to be out of place in term of the logic flow of concept, such as the ones on dynamic GUI's and JNDI.

Finally, this book is still thin on heavy-duty J2EE topics, such as EJB, distributed transactions, message service, and interoperability with CORBA. This is why I consider it as an intermediate level book, not an advanced one. Hopefully we will see another Wrox book in the near future that addresses some of these issues.

The most comprehensive book I've ever read about JSP! Must have for JSP developer

Book refers to non-existent files on the included CD. Without these files the explanations are fairly worthless.

The premise of this book is that you will learn by doing. The only problem is that you can't do that because the examples/ aren't on the CD. As an addtional problem, the software that is supposed to calibrate your monitor is also among the missing. Maybe the CD is for an earlier orlater edition but it makes the process very frustrating. Frustrating because the book is very well written and quite comrehensive. And you must have a book if you are to learn this very involved convuluted, if very useful, application.

I really like this book. It covers everything about Photoshop Elements 2.0, and it is really well written. I especially like the chapters on working with photos and the chapters on layers.

The disk that came with my book has all of the files too; I guess whatever problem there was before is taken care of.

It's a great book and I recommend it.

If you're in the mood to escape to the world of turn-of-the-millenium London, full of large-breasted socialites, trashy magazines, designer clothes, anorexic ex-debs, crumbling country manors, and just enough sex to keep things interesting, then you may want to check out Wendy Holden's "Simply Divine." Holden apparently drew on her own experiences working for a Brit tabloid-ish magazine; the novel features Jane, a hard-working, not-terribly-glam journalist assigned to ghost-write columns for the fabulous blonde bombshell socialite, Champagne D'Vyne (only one of the ridiculous character names in the book). The book is a quick read (though not short), full of entertaining one-liners, more puns than any writer ought to cram in a single book, and humorous scenes. Holden skewers many of the "types" found in British society, although her satire is too often heavy-handed. I found the book best consumed in small bites; otherwise, the unfailingly flip tone tends to grate.

This is Holden's first book that I have come across. Her following books weave in-and-out of characters that (to the best of my knowledge) start here. Simply Divine takes you to another world that is most likely, terribly more interesting and fashionable than yours, or mine, for that matter. If you like to read Cosmo and Glamour, chances are that you will like this book. Read it on the plane or poolside.

Jane is a writer that gets stuck writing a column for a party girl named Champagne D'Vyne. Champagne's name appears on the column, but Jane is forced to gather all the information and write the column for Champagne. Jane is living with a guy who doesn't really love her any more and treats her like [garbage] for not keeping up on all the world news. When she has a one-night stand with the upstairs neighbor her who life changes. This story takes you on an adventure that will have you wishing it were longer. The characters are excellent, fun and a blast to befriend. A great book for the beach or over a bowl of hot soup!

the author of this book came up with a pretty interesting plot idea, and some reasonably interesting science behind it, but he should have passed that idea on to an actual novelist. the writing is absolutely dreadful. there are thousands of overdone similes and metaphors, and there must not have been a single adjective left at harvard when he graduated - he took them all to use in this book. mr. scott is totally incapable of writing a noun without at least one adjective attached to it, and in most cases there are two or three just in case. consider this actual, unretouched quote from the book: "her cheekbones were colorado ski slopes, and her eyes were the color of an overchlorinated swimming pool." dear god, what did i do to deserve this?
if you like cheesy writing, this book will absolutely make you swoon. any legitimate literary critic that rated this book highly had to have been paid off by the publisher... the author simply tried way too hard, and the result is agonizing.

The Secret Service does NOT protect governors of Mass, or anywhere else. This is not important to the story, but that kind of sloppiness by a writer and editors is just inexcusable, and docks the whole book "a full letter grade" to me. The story was GOOD and I though the book was a very entertaining read overall, but I couldn't recommend it because who knows what other silly mistakes it contains? I'm not a doctor, but I hope Scott did a little bit of research in that area. The cliches about "Irishness" and the mysterious Chinese (tho of course, five ten with long legs-- make her Chinese or don't. These writers always want their cake and eat it too) are extremely tired, but lots of authors in this genre are guilty of that type of cartoonishness. Why, I don't know, they really weren't necessary to the story, which is quite good despite a rather inept telling. How about an alcoholic dad who'd NOT Irish, just once? Or a Chinese woman who's 5 nothing with stubby legs? There are about 600 million of them.

THE PREVIOUS REVIEWERS WHO GAVE THIS BOOK LESS THAN THE 4 STARS THAT IT DESERVES REALLY DIDN'T READ THIS BOOK AT ALL!!! I NORMALLY DON'T READ 'PARANORMAL' TYPE BOOKS BUT FOR SOME WEIRD REASON THIS ONE SUCKED ME IN WITH THE VERY FIRST PAGE....YES!!! I LOVED IT!!! DO GHOSTS REALLLY EXIST??? IS THIS REALLY BASED ON TRUE SCIENCE??? WHO KNOWS???? READ THIS AMAZING BOOK...I DARE YOU TO START IT AT NIGHT AND NOT CONTINUE ON UNTIL DAYBREAK!!!! I LOVED THE SURPRISE ELEMENT IN THIS BOOK AND WAS GLAD THAT IT HADN'T BEEN MENTIONED IN ANY OTHER REVIEW AS THAT CHOICE TIDBIT WAS AN ADDED ELEMENT TO THIS NON-STOP ACTION BOOK!!! I HOPE TO SEE THESE VERY INTERESTING CHARACTERS IN FUTURE BOOKS AND I TRULY HOPE THAT WE WON'T HAVE TO WAIT LONG!

I hate this book. I'm finally almost finished with it and then I'm throwing it away. It is one of the worst I've read. Try Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner for a good read.

"Bad Heir Day" is the classic beach book: entertaining, easy to read, fun and escapist. Heroine Anna gets dumped by her jerk of a boyfriend, secures a job as nanny to a hateful & spoiled ten-year-old, then flees her young charge by agreeing to marry a man she barely knows & live in his family's Scottish castle. As you can doubtless glean from this plot summary (and from the title of the book), Jane Austen this ain't. Yes, most of the characters are shallow stereotypes; the plot is unbelievable; the writing tries too hard to be clever; and worst of all, main character Anna comes across as a rather, well, boring and passive drip. But "Bad Heir Day" is still likeable and enjoyable, perhaps because it has no pretensions that it is any more than a fun, fast, fantasy-strewn read.

I love Wendy Holden novels. But, this one left me with an empty feeling. The characters are not developed enough to give you any emotional connection to them. When things happen to the characters I am left wondering why I should care. The story revolves around Anna, a want to be written. Anna starts work as a nanny for a wealthy couple under the hopes that she can help the wife write. This turns out to be a moot point since they need a nanny more than she wants help writing. Anna then re-meets a Scottish man and the story takes you to a castle in Scotland. Needless to say the only interesting character is Cassandra the evil boss who Anna is a nanny for (which I do not think was the intention of the novel). Descent story but lacking the luster of her other novels.