Cartech makes the most beautiful, detailed car history books and this is another in that tradition. The images are plentiful and detailed and Boyce's writing is very clear and deep. I am not an expert on the subject matter but after having read this book I feel like I am pretty close!

Man, you cannot go wrong with CarTech books. These guys always knock it out of the park and this example by Greg Banish does the same. If you simply want to know EVERYTHING about ODB-I and ODB-II then this is the right book. Honestly it went into depths that I couldn't follow but that's a limitation of myself, not the book. As always with CarTech the book itself is high quality with thick pages and very detailed images. Good stuff!

I've had this book for over a year now and I just cannot get into it.

I had fun trying to guess what would happen next! There were some really interesting concepts in this book that seemed new and different to me. I very much enjoyed it!

The title says "definitive" and they are absolutely correct on that. This book is beautiful, full of helpful pictures and with a depth of knowledge I doubt could be found elsewhere. If you need information about Chevelles in this time period this is the book you want.

So...I am a hack mechanic. I have a very basic understanding of things like airflow (car need air, make fire! Go fast!) so I had a concern that I wasn't going to really understand this book. Once again CarTech knocked it out of the park though. Super easy to understand, lots of rich illustrations and photos and keeping the page design so it wasn't a wall of text that I would keep hitting my head against made this a great book to read. I have yet to come across a CarTech book that hasn't been phenomenal though.

David Kimble is a freaking legend. I grew up marveling over his art in Road & Track magazine. What we have here is a detailed description, in his own words, of how he makes his art.

This is a great book. It's published by CarTech who are well known for their very well produced and built books. The illustrations are vivid and the writing is very detailed and well thought out.

My only complaints are that the captions can be a bit long and redundant, often covering the same territory that was covered in the text. Also, I was expecting more art and less text. Not that the text is unwelcomed, it's just that I could look at Kimble's cutaway art all day.

An enjoyable read with a few sections where the pacing threw me off. Overall story and characters were very good. A few more runs through the editing process would have made it a 5.

I've been puzzling over this review for awhile. The content of the book is good. The quality of the book is fantastic (Cartech makes excellent quality books) but, it turns out Hot Rods of the 30s-60s just don't interest me that much, that was something I didn't know before reading this book. If there is another volume from the 60s to now I'd be much more interested. But that's just a personal preference. If you like that era this would be a great book for you.

I was a bit disappointed with this book. It was more of a high level, introductory history of video games than something that really went into depth on the subject. The seemed to pick games more for popularity than for aesthetics. Honestly, it read like the authors were surprised they were getting to write a book like this. I was surprised at the lack of depth because one would assume the audience for a video game art book would already have a background in video game history. The art they chose seemed to be there because it was recognizable, not because of it's artistic quality. Ultimately, I think "High Score!" did a better job with the art and "The Ultimate History of Video Games" did a better job with the history.

So, I am a very entry level archer. I'm not even sure if I could classify myself as an archer. I'm a guy who likes to play with bow and arrows. This book was great for me. It doesn't just go over how to shoot, it goes over EVERYTHING. And it does so with great attention to detail and excellent diagrams, photos and tables. Make no mistake, this is a textbook. If you were taking an archery class I expect this would be the assigned reading. Because of this it's a bit dry. But, from a rank amateur, this book has everything I wanted to know and more to become a better archer.

I know a lot about video games. Really. I have extensive knowledge about the history, economics, culture, etc of video gaming. My brain contains a plethora of fairly useless information on this topic. I also have a degree in English. This means I can mix drinks and I have more than a passing understanding of academia. I wanted to point that out to give you an idea of where I am coming from with this review. I know exactly what this book is, a vanity project. It was created by a professor for a specific class, and if you are not in said class it is of no use to you. It is INCREDIBLY dense and contains the most navel-gazing essays on the subject I have ever read. Why this would be offered to reviewers is a bit baffling to me. I expect this book will only be purchased by people taking the aforementioned class because they have to buy it. I doubt anyone else will ever look at these essays. Nor should they, the book lacks the context to make it understandable.

Full disclosure, I am not a mechanic. I just work on my Jeep in my garage. Strictly amateur.

Man is this book pretty. Seriously. SA Design really goes all out. The quality of the text, the images, the pages, the binding. It's phenomenal. In a world where I have to read the inky ugly text and dark black and white pictures in a Chilton's or Hayes' manual, this is what automotive texts should look like.

The information provided is also very detailed, if a bit dense. There is a LOT of information here but it might take a couple read throughs to really get it. If you are looking to rebuild your diff, this would be a great resource.

So...I'm conflicted about this book. The reviews themselves are occasionally enjoyable and I respect the amount of work that went into this. But it has a number of flaws that would have kept me from buying it.

1. As a reviewer the author should establish they are an authority on the subject. For instance. This review that I'm writing shouldn't hold that much weight because I'm just some mope on the internet. For a book of reviews I expect someone with more gravitas. Matt Fox never explains why his opinion matters more than someone else's, he never offers any credentials. I couldn't even find him online...but that is partly because of how many hits the OTHER Matt Fox has.
2. The photos in the book are just random screenshots in a center photo section. They don't seem to serve any purpose.
3. The reviews often go into little asides that I didn't see the value of.
4. The reviews are arranged alphabetically. Not, what I would think would be the more logical method, chronologically.
5. The author doesn't seem to know how to handle series of games. Sometimes it will review the first game in the series and then jump to review the 4th game. Sometimes he reviews all of them. Sometimes he reviews a series under a single title.
6. The book is incomplete and the games that are reviewed seem to be chosen at random.
7. Reviews for all of these games can be found for free on the internet from established sources in a more searchable medium with more detail.
8. Nostalgia and historical show more significance seems to hold more value than game-play in some of these reviews.

Now, I don't claim to be an authority on the subject. But I have worked for several game review sites as a reviewer in the late 90s early 00s, I personally have a collection of over 75 game systems and several thousand games. Take that as you will.

EDIT: I just found out the list price on this book on Amazon, $55!!!! That is absolute madness! show less

Before reading this book I knew nothing about ratrods, neither the cars nor the culture. Now, after reading through this book I want to build my own. The writing is very compelling and interesting and the photography is gorgeous.

I received this book as part of the early reviewers program. I admit I didn't notice it was either a Christian nor young adult book when I added it to my list. I think I may have judged a book by it's cover. The early reviewer program must have been light on Fantasy/Sci-Fi the month this was offered. I'm not sure what publishers are thinking when they offer the fifth book in a series to reviewers. I don't know what happened in the first four. Do you really want someone to review your book with none of the back-story? Doesn't seem like a bright idea to me.

Since I'm not familiar with the genre, I find it hard to critique this book. Are the obvious and ham-fisted comparisons between the King and his Son (always capitalized) to the Christian God and Jesus par for the course? Is the lack of any real character development or explanation of basic motivation normal to the young adult genre? I don't know. I read the Chronicles of Narnia again fairly recently. This is also a young adult Christian series and it doesn't seem nearly as blatant and obvious as this novel. There is zero subtlety here. If your child is a bit slow and you want to hit them over the head with the idea that blind faith is a good thing then maybe this series is for them.

One thing did surprise me though, the latent man-boy eroticism subtexts. It was a bit creepy.

Wow, that was a really great book. I have a pretty extensive fantasy collection but somehow I missed The Last Unicorn up to now. It's more fairy tale and Lord of the Ring but it's an excellent story and very beautifully written. I also really like how it's displaced in time.

What a lame ending for a series that started out great and then took a nose dive. The Guardians of the Flame series pretty much plays out this this. The first four books are great though they have huge time gaps between them. The next three are okay but are closer connected. The last three (the "Not" trilogy) are garbage with "Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda" being the worst. Essentially it's an extended epilogue where nothing really happens. The main characters in the first 7 books are essentially ignored and none of the story threads are ever tied up. Instead it focuses on characters who seem to belong in a different series entirely. It's almost as if Rosenberg wanted to do a new trilogy but figured the books would sell better if he used a known universe. When the hell is Jason going to get the sword and destroy Pandathaway and the Guild Council dammit?!?

"Diary" is probably the weakest of Palahniuk's works. The style is compelling (as to be expected from Palahniuk) but the story itself is disjointed and the "twist" seems like a cheap gimmick. It seems like the novel was phoned in, as if Palahniuk just said, "Well, this worked before." and cranked it out. Thankfully the next book he wrote, "Rant" was a return to form so this can just be considered a hiccup. Although some of the more supernatural/sci-fi elements did carry over in that book. I haven't read "Pygmy" yet but I am interested to see if the trend continues. NOTE: all of the place names on the Island seem to come from the Long Beach Peninsula in southwest Washington state.

Good book, but it is far longer than it needs to be and doesn't seem to do much to help the over-arching story of the Dark Tower move forward. It seems like King is unwilling to let his characters reach their goal.

I liked this book but it's kind of uneven. The first section is made up of stories about Stallone's history with fitness and it's quite good. There are some funny stories there. The man can write, but anyone who watched Rocky knows that. Then it goes into the muscle building program, and that's a bit confusing. Then it goes into proper diet and that's also confusing. At that point the book kinda wanders around not knowing what should come next until it eventually ends. I'm going to try the workouts and diet plans and see how well they work for me. The stories in the first section of the book are the best part though and worth the price of admission. Based on what was there I'd love to read a Sylvester Stallone autobiography.

Disappointingly short, this took me about an hour to read. Much better than Lyra's Oxford though.

$6.99 for a book that took me 30 minutes to read...seriously.

The main characters are uninteresting and difficult to differentiate. Their motivations are questionable at best. The story constantly falls off into either quasi-science rants or short unrelated throw-away stories about things back on Earth. The ending is totally unsatisfying. Don't read this book.

I've been aware of SiP for years but never really go into it. It's a very involved storyline and in the past I had tried jumping in but it was far to difficult to start in the middle. I have become a fan of Terry Moore's "Echo" and when I saw this book in the used bookstore I figured I'd give it another shot. Terry Moore illustrates the most beautiful, expressive women in comics. Though the writing in this volume was inconsistent at times, the extra non-illustrated prose sections were a bit jolting and the poetry seemed distracting the main story is fantastic. I look forward to buying the next book.

Side note: This is a pocket book? I've never seen a pocket big enough to hold it.

I started reading this at 10pm one night and was still reading it when the sun came up. This was back in 1997 back before Wikipedia. It's probably less relevant now that the internet allows people to look up the answers to bizarre questions on their own but the whole series is still very informative and massively entertaining.

This is a genealogy book designed for the owner to fill out with their own family tree. It serves it's purpose.

It is difficult to review this book because it is the second book of a trilogy and the author has left us waiting for the third book for more than ten years. If I give it a bad review am I just venting my frustration? If I give it a good review am I just hedging my bets on the third book? I love Rawn's other series' but I suggest not reading any of the Exiles series until it is completed, if it ever is completed.

Woefully out of date but still fun to look through.

Awful awful awful book by the guys who created "Talk Like a Pirate Day." This is just a pathetic attempt to cash in on their limited fame. The book is just a smattering of random pirate "facts" most of which sound like they were stolen from a Wikipedia article.