maranGraphics Development Group

I'm a very visual person, so I'm a big fan of the "Teach Yourself Visually..." series. A knitter first and foremost, this was the first book to make me finally understand crochet techniques. The pictures are clear and in color, making it much easier to follow the accompanying step-by-step instructions.

The patterns could be organized better--they're tacked onto the end of each chapter based on the techniques learned. If learning knitting were about reading a book in order from cover to cover, show more this would work, but many people skip around when learning new techniques. Keeping the patterns centralized in one or two chapters would've been far more helpful.

Also, it says "Knitting and Crocheting", but there's really only two or three crochet patterns, making it more of a knitting book than a crochet book. Still, as I mentioned above, despite the lack of more crochet patterns, the crochet instructions are spot on. show less

I liked this book, with a few reservations. The photos were exceptional, very clear and detailed. The explanations were lovely, and I had no quarrel with the exercises for the most part. I'm not a big believer in isolating eensy muscles like hip ab/adductors, but I know lots of people prefer to work one muscle at a time. The routines struck me as not particularly challenging, and certainly nothing that would encourage a lot of growth (to the credit of the authors, they did explain how to show more modify said routines). My biggest complaint about the book is that the female models had no visible muscle development at all. Maybe a little ab striation. And in the pictures, the women are shown using 2 or 5 pound weights. I disapprove. Most emphatically. show less

Maran Illustrated Dog Training is a beautiful large paperback with one or two photos on just about every page. It's so pretty that you could call it a coffee table book, the sort of book that if it's lying around, adults and children alike will pick up and browse a little.

The text is organized in two-page spreads, making it easy to spend just a little time and to focus on the topic that is on your mind at present. I think anyone would enjoy this book, and people who learn visually would love show more it. It sells at a very reasonable price considering all the color photos and the size of the book.

With all these pluses, which are evident within five minutes of picking up the book, I wondered what approach the book would take to dog training. I was very pleased that it takes a positive approach. While it doesn't cover clicker training, it does advocate similar methods and you could easily add the use of a clicker to their methods.

You can actually browse this book online... the publishers have made it available. It's not a PDF but a graphic representation of the whole book, at
http://maran.com/edogtraining.html show less

A bit of a fogy factor, but a good reference for a variety of techniques. And there are excellent pictures -- the worth of which in a knitting book it is really impossible to overstate.