Teo Degas' Books & Decks

This is one of those books that everybody should have at home, whether a native English speaker or a foreign student.

Too many natives rely on their "nativeness" to write properly and, funny enough, they made many of the mistakes in orthography, spelling and word use described in this book. The book is great for foreigners, who will need to have explained many things that native speakers use by default without even thinking about or thinking why.

Practical English Usage is one of the best books in the market to help you write and speak English properly. You will find most of your doubts about the use of confusing words, orthography, sentence construction and structure, idiomatic preferences, grammar and writing etiquette, among many other things, clearly explained.

Practical English Language shows how a well-thought and structured index can make your consultation of any book and manual an enjoyable activity. Like diving. The book is structured in numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs with every entry and sub-entry in the index relating to those numbers (not the page numbers) -- the quickest easiest way to find anything. There is also a detailed table of contents at the beginning, but I rarely use that. The use of red epigraphs is just a hit with me, because it is just how things should make, red and black, black and red, so you have headings and important things popping up and saying hi to your eyes instantly.

The language terminology section is very useful if you have difficulties understanding some of the linguist and grammatical terminology used in the book. I would say that most people with a High School education would find most of those definitions unnecessary. Yet, great for primary school students.

I found the section on common mistakes in English (something that it is specially useful for foreigners), a bit disorganised, and too small to be of any use. There are specific books on this, that I would rather consult. The section has a bunch of common mistakes that primary, secondary, intermediate and advanced learners make. But the list is not structured within each group, so you have to read the whole section to find anything you are looking for. A waste of time, basically. I would rather have these pages removed and devoted to new entries, or just have them expanded and better organised.

The world of Internet and the digital era have changed the way we write, read and communicate at the speed of light. The book is, therefore, outdated regarding digital issues like writing emails, text messaging. tweeting, facebooking, tumblering, blogging or just reviewing online :O. Some of the things noted and stated in those sections sound like written for 90y.o. people who have never had access to the Internet and don't know how to write an email. I would have liked having a longer more detailed section on all Internet writing and more clear directives about email etiquette. There is not much email or online etiquette any time. We are all shrieks now.

This is an Oxford University Press book, always a sign of excellence to me. What is more, there is nothing as good online. You will find endless online forums, blogs and YouTube videos discussing and explaining English grammar and use, but many of them are not accurate, or are confusing or not clear enough, or they contradict each other. How to put it? I would not have spent my money on a hard-copy book if there was something as good online for free. 

I would love getting this book in Kindle format. I hope the OUP is working on it I am waiting. Tick tock tick tock.

Overall, I must-have manual.

Dataclysm is a fun popular approach to scientific data analysis and interpretation. This a very enjoyable fascinating reading.

There are many good things about this book: it deals with data  in a passionate and entertaining way,  and makes something a priori not that interesting to people who do not love data, really interesting! The book does so in a very clear and approachable language. Besides, Rudder is an insider who knows what he is talking about first hand so everything he says is worth listening to. After all he is not one of those lorikeets who repeat data analysis and statistics without understanding anything about them or even questioning the results. Rudder comes trough as a lovely chap, inquisitive mind, and passionate about the work he does. Most importantly, he comes through also as an unpretentious guy who wants to connect with the reader. We are connected now, baby.

Perhaps the main take from the book to me is that mathematicians and data analysts are coming down to something that Social Sciences and Humanities wanted them to come to decades ago, and, most importantly, they now have the tools to deal with humongous amounts of real-life real-people's life to do that. By reading the book, it became clear to me the need of interdisciplinary studies between Scientists and Social Scientists because, despite the a-priori bullxeet that the "academic establishment" has perpetuated for many decades, the contrary is  necessary. Dataclysm shows the many possibilities open to data analysis as a specific branch of Science and how data collection and interpretation affects us. It is like Mackos - I am loving it.  

The most interesting parts of the book, at least to me, are chapters 12 (Know your Place) and chapter 14 (Bread crumbs). The first because it shows, even at an embryonary level, that geographical maps are sometimes just lines drawn on a piece a paper, while other factors, beyond the place you live, have way more importance. The Dolly project seems to me the most fascinating thing in the world and I would have loved more details from the expert instead of having to go to  Mr Goo to ask him about it. The later chapter is, by far, the most interesting (to me) because Rudder is an insider and anything and everything he has to say about the collection, storage and use of our data or meta-data is relevant and important and needs to be taken into consideration. I would have loved that chapter way more developed and detailed. Rudder is just very clear about how things are and should be, or perhaps should not be, and I wanted more. Also, I wanted to know his opinion on the use of IP blinders, and the use of browsers like Mozilla or Duckduckgo, which are not that keen on recording our data or sharing it with anybody.

I am a critical reader, not a data muncher, so I tend to question or think about what any non-fiction writer says, as much as my limited knowledge allows me. I was pleased to find that some questions or objections that I found myself making to Rudder's statements while reading, were later presented and discussed. Those very questions are the ones are those that can make any researcher transcend data itself. In a way, Rudder has a Humanities sort of soul, which shines now and then when dealing with his mathematician core. I love the combo. 

I also loved al the details about data collection and use, and the games that Rudder and his pals at OkCupid playe, and especially Rudder's trends analysis examples. That is Rudder's forte and it does show! I loved some of his reflections on Google's auto-complete trends analysis, the healthiness of a couple by looking a the chart on dots interconnection on Facebook, or the discussion on racial attitudes in the USA.

The charts are beautifully presented and coloured, so many different styles and ways of organising the data. I am a tables kinda lady. There is nothing that cannot be presented in a table and be understood. And some of those were there. I love squares and red. So the book was visually enthralling.

Dataclysm could have been a better book on so many fronts that it is a pity that is not. Allow me the analogy - I have this distinct impression that, in a way, Rudder self-beheads himself for the sake of an applause in a reality show. That is painful to watch.  

TOMATOS OR TOMATOES?
The main downside of the book is the lack of a proper editor and of proper editing. A good editor can make wonders for any book, no matter how brainy you are. A good editor works not only on making the text more readable regarding spelling, sentence and paragraph structure, but also book structure, approach and level of focus, so the book is not only polished, but also makes sense and conveys the author's message better. Unfortunately, the book is not polished and the structure does not make Rudder any favour. Mind you, the use of verbal contractions is not advisable in a published book, unless you are translating or reproducing direct speech, while it is preferred in blogging. The use of long paragraphs with bad punctuation turns a stroll by the beach into a walk through thorny bushes. You get the image.

GOING BANANAS  - THE BOOK STRUCTURE
It is a pity that the author decided or was advised to present us with the current book's structure. I do not have a problem with general non-related chapters presented as such and bunched together in  three parts, because they make sense to me and they are well connected despite their diversity. However, I do have a problem with the general structure of the book, and the endnotes/notes system.

The chapter on sources and data is relegated to the end of the book, before the index. I consider this a big fall because Rudder is asking the reader to believe what he says with some sort of theological trust, while he could have easily earned the reader's trust and respect by just using the "coda" (Italian for tail or epilogue) at the very beginning. Why? Because this chapter explains exactly how he has approached data, and his methodology, what he has done and how he has done it. This is especially relevant in this book, because a good deal of its chapters are re-takes on his own blog posts, so it would have benefited him stating clearly, upfront, at the beginning, that those re-takes used new fresh data and the testing was done again from scratch and were not a copy-and-paste sort of thing. We have to wait to the end of the book to learn that. That is to me, a "going-bananas" sort of decision.

I am a bit anal about footnotes/endnotes while writing and while reading anything coming from academics or people with a high level of education. I also understand that if you want to write a scientific book on data for the general public you cannot do that, just for practical reasons. So, I consider sensible Rudder's restrain at using endnotes. Then, we get to the bottom end of the book, and we find this statement:

"We no longer live in a world where a reader depends on endnotes for “more information”or to seek proof of facts or claims. For example, I imagine any reader interested in Sullivan Ballou will have Googled him long before"

Yes, it is true, even I do that, but it worries me that any person coming from a decent University would say that or do that in a book. We are relying more and more on what the Wikipedia is saying or the Internet (who is the Internet here?) is saying, and not on what scholarly periodicals, books or encyclopaedias, peer-reviewed, properly edited and discussed, say about anything. I would strive to provide "serious" reference material, and add as many footnotes or endnotes or references as necessary.

Confession. I would have forgiven him for this, if then Rudder had not gone bananas again and contradicted himself by providing a "chapter" called "notes", right after the space devoted to the endnotes. Rudder wants to provide us with extra information on certain points mentioned in the book. Well, if that the case, add more footnotes/ endnotes. That is what they are used for, sweetheart! Those "notes" are actually embryo endnotes that Rudder birthed and give in adoption to himself. It sounds ridiculous isn't it?  It is. This is even more painful in the Kindle edition. The link from the note to the text works backwards, and takes you to the part of the text it relates to, but does not allow you to do so forward, because, hello Huston, there is not an endnote to do so properly. 

If this were my book, I would work on fixing this and introducing that information as endnotes in the text, properly. And also to link properly the references forward in the Kindle Edition.  

There it comes the Index, a proper scholar index, one of those beautifully made indexes that are so awesome to have in a book and so expensive to produce in printed books. There for us... Well, useful if you have a hard copy. Otherwise, no, because it is not properly linked in the Kindle edition, and therefore, useless. This is something easily fixable if you want to charge the client full price for any book.

To add to this going-totally-bananas sort of trance, the book, per se, ends when my Kindle showed 65% read. Yes, that is right. The rest is the footnotes, notes, index and info about the author and the publisher. I felt ripped off again.   

Why anybody with the brilliance of Rudder could self-behead himself is something that escapes me. And here it comes the main culprit for the failure of the book - Rudder's struggle to please both the general public and the academia. Mini-Miny-Miny-Mo sort of struggle (my impression). Many of his statements about methodology strive to convey a serious scientific way of work that matters and gets  the approval of his academic peers, because he is really a serious scientist. That struggle also explains why the "coda" and the "notes" were relegated to the end of the book but were not totally disregarded.

A scientist can present his findings and knowledge to the general public being rigorous and respected by their academic peers without trying to please both. Look at Kaiku, and the way he is able to do so with easiness. For that you have to be clear about who is the target of your book, and therefore what you have to sacrifice and what not. Not an easy task, but easier if have a good editor.

FLAW WITH ME
There are a few flaws in the a-priori reasoning used. Perhaps things were not explained sufficiently, so I give Rudder the benefit of the doubt, just because he is a gorgeous looking guy. Here some examples of those sort of arguments should be polished and looked at with a frowned forehead, if you know what I mean: 

+ Although most people are not on online networks and sites, most of them are or will be, so the analysis of the data and its result have some sort of universality. And well, Facebook and Google are the kings and everybody is there, not to say the phone and Internet companies, which are also collecting your data. Yes, it is true. However, my mini-me-on-the-shoulder sort of question pops up. Were do we put the gazillion Chinese on Planet Earth who do not use FB or Google or Western sites? What about Middle East Cultures, like, say Yemen, or Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Afghanistan? Do include them by default in the findings and analysis in the book and decide that we are all one?

+ Sometimes I had the impression that Rudder could not distinguish, although I am sure he does, that the USA is not the world, and that the Western World is not the whole world. For example,  are his analysis (which I really loved) about race in the USA pertinent, say, in Bolivia? in South Africa? in Botswana? Rudder probably never intended to imply that, for sure, but the book comes across as if the contrary was true at times. I think part of the epilogue should have been devoted to stating what he is doing and what sort of limits his analysis has. This is, unless he is using data from around the world from China to Bhutan, Uganda to Dafour. Then, I will vanish and disappear out of embarrassment. Of course there are some things that are universal because we are all humans, and we all have a human body, and want to relate: "no man is an island" However the other is there, in those places where life is most deeply affected by the religion you have, your gender, or the part of the world you live in. Way different. 

+ The author recognises that the important thing is not just what the data says about what humans do, but why they do it. Bingo! That got me excited. It was a quickie-sort-of excitement. Not for long, because beyond some truisms, nothing of substance is said or argued or even presented as a reply. That is because the data, to me, has a limit. It can reveal what we do, even that we do say something and do a different one, that hidden secrets of us "on the Internet", but cannot always explain why, or put the intention behind. Psychology, can be very helpful on that regard.

+ What a person searches for often gives you the person himself. Really? Well, sometimes, not always. For example, if I look up Google for skin rash photos I might be giving my me having a skin rash, or me studying dermatology, or making an assessment for High School, or my baby has a rash and I want to find what exactly is, or I have a sort of sickly morbid fascination with photos of skin diseases. You get the picture, searches on Google are never straight forward, or at least not all the time. Now, how do you interpret the intention behind the search?   

TRUISMS ARE TRUE NO MATTER THE HUE

Let me ask you some questions. Be honest with yourself. If I made the statements below, would you be surprised or think that a humongous amount of data has to be analysed, charted and studied for your to learn it? Would you be wowed?  
* Men usually prefer younger women, no matter their age.
* At the end of the day, looks aren't that important when you meet a person in real life, more the things you have in common.
* People say they are something but then they are another.
* People tend to hide or not to say things that are not politically correct regarding race, gender and what is not.
* Men-women connect better when they do not sea each other's photo.
* People vote for somebody and lie about at the exit of the polls booth, especially if the candidate is not popular.
* Asian Americans talk more about Korean pop or Korean films than white people, while the music that South American mention is Salsa or Bachata not as much as country music.
* With the Internet we all have a voice now and a larger audience.
* The better interconnected in the family a couple is, the more chances has of their relationship to succeed.
* And so on.

Yes, that is right. A series of truisms, common sense evaluations presented through flashy mathematically crafted charts, and complex data analysis. Isn't this a bit of a waste of the author's talent (to me undeniable) and time?

HIGHLIGHTED SENTENCE
"The era of data is here; we are now recorded"

Is that so new? Have you ever visited a historical archive? Yes, of course it is not the same, but I can envision Sumerian bookkeepers might have felt at the top of the world as Rudder does know, mind the volume of data, the detail and the people recorded of course. Yet, everything is relative. We have been recording our data and our data has been used for ages, literally, just a bit differently. Yes, Rudder possibly did not intend to imply this either, but we do not know. The flash is sometimes too bright to let us see properly.

BRIGHT IDEA
The cover of the book is dreadful. Go and get a decent designer Rudder! And another editor, did I mention that? 

FINAL CONFESSION
I would have not written such a long review if there wasn't something intrinsically good and thought-provoking in Rudder's book, so take it as it is. I still recommend the reading and I think it is really entertaining.

Paper Flow could be called an idiot's guide to organising your paperwork and papers at home, whether it is just your bills and receipts, a few important documents, or having your office a home properly set and organised.

If you are naturally very organised, you will find that you do most of what the authors recommend without even thinking about it. However, you still will find some items of advice and tips that can improve your system. I got some ahas and items of advice that have proven very useful for my work space. I especially liked some of the comments on the best ways to save family or historical documents, how to declutter stationary without putting things in the bin, or recommended periods to keep some documents.

If your paperwork is a mess and you don't know how to start or what to do, this is your book and it will certainly make wonders for you, your life and your place.

The book is very well organised and reads well as it is written in a very simple blog-like language, that can be understood by anybody.

The book is a bit anal about tidying up, but it is really helpful to get rid of all of your crap :)))

The authors claim that paper flow is the world best proven system to organise your papers. Isn't that pretentious? I am going to tell you what is the  paper flow system in even more simple terms... you will see that you already know what do you but you haven't realised it yet:

You have a basket with bananas and another with apples, so you keep them separate, but put them in a bigger basket called Fruit Basket. Then you have a container with chicken and another container with pork, so you keep them separate and put them in a bigger container called Meats Container. Then, you put those baskets and containers inside your fridge in areas that are the best to keep them at hand and ready for preparation. Then, you have other things that are tinned and bottled and do not need of them immediately, so you put them in your pantry, one shelf for beans, another for carbs foods, another for drinks, another for spices, another for pet food, etc. You put the heavy stuff below and the lighter above. Since you have just one basket for each thing and one shelf for each food category, you need to make sure that you don't buy more than your basket or shelves can fit in;  if you do, you will have to get rid of some of the old stuff to put the new one in, so your food is always fresh and healthy. If your food basket is no longer in season, you remove it from your fridge or replace it with another one in season. Then, of course, you have your cooking books, you put those at hand, as well as your cooking tools. You keep all neat and tidy and looking good because that creates visual harmony and you don't waste your time looking for things every time you are going to cook. 

Apply this to your paperwork management... that is the paper-flow system. Yes, this is it! Just common sense.

I found the appendix of the meaning of colours totally unnecessary. The meaning of colour varies from culture to culture, from person to person, from social class to social class, or from generation to generation, so let everybody choose what each colour means to them. There is so much written about the psychology of colour and the meaning of colours that an appendix of this sort is kinda embarrassing. It would be better providing the readers with some bibliographical serious references for them to consult if they are interested. That requires a bit of more effort and a more serious approach to the readers' intelligence.

I missed, on the contrary, two appendixes one on how to declutter in few simple steps (like a shortcut for messy people), and another on how to organise your paperwork and books if you tend to move between countries, states, cities or just houses frequently. This very fact has dictated what I buy on digital form or hard copy and much stuff I keep and store at home. I learned it the hard way, and it would had been handy learning that the easier way.  

I agree with the authors on the fact that the best way to organise your paperwork is to have the least possible, and to go paperless as much as you can. Therefore, virtual and computer paper flow is advised. You just have to replicate your paper-flow system in your computer. That is it. Is it? No, I don't thinks so. The authors fall too short because computer paper management (virtual or not) and digital technology put demands on us and our paper management that are completely different from those that real paper and hard copy books generates. Space is going to be rarely a problem in sorting out your paperwork in your computer with so many back-up cheap storage devices available. However, you have to synchronise your bookmarks, files, emails and important information in your computer and devices, get rid of some, archive others, decide on security issues.  How and where do you save your documents and emails safely? Which formats are more advisable long term?  How do you visually customise your virtual office? How do you store safely? How do you safeguard your identity? How do you save and archive different webmail accounts and then erase them if no longer need them still have them replicated with attachments in your hard disk (yes, this is possible)? Which sort of programs or resources can you use to keep your virtual archives clean, pretty and up to date? If you are not organised and find a problem dealing with your papers at home, you will find even more difficult to deal with those in your computer and I will need of more tools than opening replicas of your files in your computer. The book is not there yet!

I don't see the need of endorsing any storage shop or brand, as many of the items described and photographed in the book can be found anywhere. I love the brand mentioned, but any other office supplies shop can provide you with pretty little things to make your office good looking and tidy. I hate endorsement of brands in books I pay for. It is totally uncool. On the other hand, a few empty shoe boxes  can make wonders for you and your papers. 

This is a great book for people who tend to be messy and do not know where to start when dealing with their archives, projects and bookkeeping. It gives sound advice on how to manage your papers and how to take advantage of tiny space and little time to create a work station that suits your needs and to organise your papers in the best possible way for YOU. 

Consecrated phrases is a very approachable and useful dictionary for any student or professional who needs a reliable source to translate or just understand common Latin expressions, formulas and words used in theological and ecclesiastical texts (but not only in those). The book offers a great selection of entries, which are defined accurately but with an approachable and easy to understand language.

The dictionary might appeal to those lay readers who want to learn the original meaning of words that are commonly used in English and have a Latin and/or ecclesiastical origin.

On the other hand, I think the book is not comprehensive, as some common formulas used in titles related to Curia dignitaries, are not mentioned. To mention just one that I find a lot in my texts "in partibus infidelium" (in the land of the infidels). On the other hand, other words that are commonly known and understood by everybody are unnecessarily defined, for example, (singing) "a capella".

Having this sort of dictionary in Kindle format is just very handy, so I am very happy with my purchase. Still, the lack of complete justification of the text makes it look unpolished, and I find that visually annoying. However, the main sin of the Kindle version is the total absence of an alphabetic index in the table of contents (I had to use notes to do that), while the crossed references between entries are not linked either. The book is not cheap for Kindle, so a bit of more thought and consideration for the reader would have been great.

Alone Forever is a short book containing a selection of auto-biographic self-deprecating comic strips by Liz Prince about her dating life, or lack of, and how she is, lives and relates to people, men (and cats) in general.

Liz is a bit of tomboy in ways of relating, always hanging out with boys, and dresses very boyishly. Despite being taken for a lesbian often, she is very much straight and looking for love. She is a bit neurotic, vengeful, confused, loving, loyal, funny, nerdy, and magnetically attracted to cute bearded guys wearing strange bands T-shirts. The comic strips depict how she relates to the opposite sex, how she flirts, and how she dates. My favourite pages are those devoted to the narration of the dates she got with guys she met through the dating site OK Cupid. 

The drawing style is a bit sketchy, even childish, very charming, very e-zine in a way. Still, some of her images are really beautiful and great.The strips are very short, the longest occupies a page, so the degree in which they engage the reader varies. I found myself reading out loud at some of the strips, or just feeling in love with the version of Liz that Liz has created for the reader.

I recently read Jeff Brown's "Clumsy", and I found that Liz's and Jeff's have very similar books and ways of narrating. Although they are the flip side of the coin and of each other, they share the fact that they are not archetypal man and woman in their romantic relationships.

Take the style of Michael Moore's documentaries and old TV Shows, mix it with the explanatory style that you find in TED Animated Shorts on various scientific subjects, put it in comic form, add some personal graphic style. Voila! You have Science Tales. 

Science Tales is a book on what science does, how it does it, and why it is a reliable method of understanding and explaining the world. It is also a book on what Science is not. More importantly, it is a book on the importance of critical thinking to deal with any scientific or Fringe Science issue. His approach would also be valid for subjects that are not scientific, like History, or TV watching, for example.  

The themes discussed in Science Tales are: Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), homoeopathy, the case of Andrew Wakefield and the anti-vaccination nonsense, chiropractic, the landing on the moon hoax, fracking, climate change, evolution, and science denial. 

Cunningham  makes two terrific points in his foreword, which will help you to understand the way and passion he invests in explaining the themes discussed in the book:

Cunningham is a passionate author and graphic artist and you can feel that when you read Science Tales. He has the virtue of digesting scientific information that can be difficult to understand (all the fracking issue or the way genetic selection works for example) and present it in a visual and textual way that is easy to understand by anybody, a child in high school or your great-grandma.

I love Cunningham graphic style. It is very simple and schematic, a bit cubist!, but he has an amazing sense of colour and of aesthetics. Each chapter has a a different scheme colour that goes perfectly with the theme at hand. I always love such visual mindfulness! And some of the vignettes are very humorous as well. One of the things I did not like in the illustrations is when he inserts retouched or filtered digitalised images, which work well visually in some cases but not in others. Cunningham could have perfectly drawn those images himself, and the final result would have been more harmonious visually. 

Cunningham says that the reason why he choose the themes he discuses in his books is they were hot topics on any science blog or podcast when he wrote it. That is, they were mainstream topics of discussion. To me, that is one of the flaws of the book, that there is little that you would learn or have not heard of when reading the book as there are plenty of documentaries, scientifically backed, on some of the issues that Cunningham discusses. Why not focusing on other scientific topics that are less known to the masses? For example, how Statistics and are used to manipulate mass opinion, create false opinions and perceptions of the reality of certain social, cultural or ethnics groups. Or the use of psychology at the stock market to put down whole nations speculating on supposedly scientific mathematical/economical evaluations. What about the use of quantum physics to explain New Age religious stuff? What about magic diets backed up by doctors, which turn to be really damaging? Just giving some ideas, Cunningham!  

Also, using an episode of Mythbusters as a scientific reference defeats his own purpose or being, well, very scientific. Come on, hello hello, can't you see that?!Still, this is a very educative enjoyable book.

I am quite happy with the rendering of the book for Kindle. It is easy to read, the page to move around, zoom in and out. 

The Underwater Welder is a black and white fiction graphic novel that focus in the strange circumstances surrounding the life of 33y.o. Jack Joseph --an underwater welder who works in a rig--, and her expecting wife Susie. The accidental finding of an old forgotten childhood watch and an accident happened during a rutinary shift will bring Jack to question reality, his present and his past. 

Jack loves working and diving because down there he gets the solitude he craves, he is alienated from his mother and progressively alienated from his wife, whose most basic needs he finds difficult to tend to as the same pace that his mental confusion grows. He is obsessed with the death of his father, who died at his same age, in the night of Halloween, and sees progressively identified and mixed with his father's memory and "ghost". The isolated inhospitable rugged shores of Nova Scotia are a perfect setting for this intriguing novel.

The novel  has many of Lemire's themes and characters archetypes also present in other of his works: the role of memory in your present life, the thin line separating past and present in people's memories and emotions, lonely alienated characters who want to connect emotionally but are progressive frustrated by their lack of success at doing so, the line the separates reality from non reality.

The novel also shows again Lemire's drawing mastery and graphic versatility to convey into images stories and situations that are far from easy or straight forward to depict. Also common to Lemire are his wonderful landscape composition, and the framing and composition of his vignettes.

The novel reads easily and with gusto, and is very intriguing. However, it has a predictable ending that you can sense from half way the novel. Perhaps the tempo of the novel should have been different and some of the information provided at the beginning omitted so the reader would have had less clues to unveil the mystery. Having said so, the story is intriguing enough and odd enough to keep you interested. The characters are well sketched psychologically, especially Jack, although sometimes the reader, or at least me, wanted to know more about Susie.

Essex County is a critically-acclaimed multi-award graphic novel chosen as one of Top 5 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade. The Collected Essex County compiles three different separated volumes revolving about the lives, present and past of the same characters living in Essex County (Ontario) Canada: Vince, an ex-hockey player and his brother of Lou Lebeuf, also an ex-hockey player and tram driver who is in a age care asylum; Lester, a weird orphan kid and her uncle farmer Mr Kenny, and nurse Annie Quenneville.

Book 1 (Tales from the Farm), follows the friendship of Lester with Vince and his alienation from his uncle. Book 2 (Ghost Stories) tells the story of demented deaf Lou, who mixes past and present in his head; most of the story is set in Toronto in the 1950s. Book 3 (The Country Nurse) tells us the story of the nurse's grandma, and of the nurse's daily life. The book ends with some bonuses, the graphic story of the Essex Country Boxing Club, the mini-biography of The Sand and Lonely Life of Eddie Elephant-Ears and other scrap drawings.

The novel offers a post-modern multi-voice inter-connected story set in rural Canada, which will speak to both Canadian and non-Canadian readers. At a narrative level, his multi-voiced approach is far from new or innovative, but it works well for the story.

Lemire's black and white is glorious, his landscape compositions are simple but marvellous, his use of shadows masterly, as well as his depiction of snowy and night landscapes. The framing and POV of the images is very dynamic and cinematic and the pages flow with ease. Lemire's vignettes in this book are not just squared or have the same size or shape, making every page interesting per se, sometimes cosily crowded, sometimes minimal and tidy.

 I love the way Lemire composes some of his rural magical landscape images, sometimes a full-page image, some others a severed or slanted full page that allows the reader to focus on individual elements in the same image, while others the landscapes are semi-fractured images with different elements of action. Lemire can go from minimal composition and drawing, to the extreme detail with which he depicts the urban environment of Toronto in the 50s. His depiction of movement in sports is also fantastic, with the images on hockey playing really full of action and very dynamic visually.

I found most remarkable the way Lemire uses his versatile pen to visually describe how dementia feels in the mind of an elderly person, and how past and present are a fuzzy-line reality at times. Thus, the fully bodied tick black and white ink transforms into light pencil traces and sketched images, which allow the reader to dive into the same fuzzy territory that the  character does. 

The 500+ pages of Essex County are awesome. This is Comic with capitals, the sort of comic that you show to people who say that comics are for kids or freaks. The sort of comic lovers crave for. Lemire's talent and versatility are just wow.

The CD Room is great. It is easy to install, runs smoothly, requires little Ram memory and opens and closes at a good speed. I love the choice between standard display (mostly black and white) and the high-contrast one (dark background, coloured text) which is perfect for people with poor sight, and the increase/decrease font size buttons. You can bookmark your favourite entries, listen to the pronunciation of the main words, and copy and/or print the text of any entry.

The Concise is very handy.The entries are basic but clear, right to the point, the phonetic transliteration uses the International system, as well as the etymology (origin) of the word and a list of derivative words.

My main disappointment with this product relies on the fact that, although we expect a concise dictionary to be, well, concise, we also expect something a bit more elaborate and detailed. For example, the derivative words are not in separate entries, the entries do not have any example of contextualized use of the words or derivatives (unless the use is problematic per se), and there is not phonetic transliteration or pronunciation of the derivatives. All of this are shortcomings to me.

With so many online free dictionaries online, some of the Oxford's included, one expects those for sale to supersede the online ones regarding the information and details they provide. Unfortunately, the Concise Oxford on CD-Rom falls a bit short. It is not that is bad, it is that it could be much better.

Still, the Concise is perfect for Secondary School students or for basic consultations and look-ups.

Mind
The reference section is available in a PDF format file, and it can be found by pressing the "help & other documents" button.

I have had the Collins Advanced Learners Cobuild CD-Rom 2006 since it was launched. To the date, it is my preferred English Dictionary on CD and the best one for foreigners. I have barely used the hard copy because the CD is so good that it makes it unnecessary. This review is about the CD-Rom, not about the hard copy version.

There are so many reasons why I love the Collins Cobuild. If I had to be short, I would say it runs smoothly, it looks pretty, and the definitions are clear, simple and comprehensive.

The CD-Rom runs smoothly, it is fast and non-invasive in your computer's memory. You won't have the program hanging up or freezing ever. The only times I have re-installed it is when I have changed computer, and that is a lot to say for any software.

The blue, white and red interface is really elegant, pleasant, crisp and clear, and it can be customised by adjusting the font type an font size to your liking.

The definitions are clear, comprehensive, with different meanings and syntactic functions clearly shown and structured. Each definition or sub-definition comes with an example of use; if you need more, you press the WorldBank button and can find plenty of contextualised examples extracted from literary and non-literary texts. Moreover, British and American spellings and preferences are clearly shown, and many times the word comes with a synonym or antonym to better show the meaning. Each word comes with a native voice's pronunciation of the same (singular/plural and difference verb tenses), which is great for foreign students.

Extra features that I love are:
+ Copy and paste are available between the program and your Text or Word program.
+ You can create a personalised dictionary, yes! by adding words that are not in it. This is extremely helpful when you work with specific semantic fields with very specific vocabulary that you won't usually find in a general dictionary. Say, for example, mechanics, ecclesiastical terminology, sartorial language, etc. 
+ You can switch on/off the automatic pronunciation of each word.
+ You can choose whether you want the phonetics of the word shown or not.
+ You can record your own pronunciation of the word and compare it to the original. This is perfect for foreigners learning the language or just to have your best (native) friend pronouncing the words for you!

Things that I don't specially like are:
- The pop up feature, actually a reduction of the search area to a mini-window; you cannot switch to full display from there and have to close and reopen the program. Bummer!
- I don't like the phonetic transliteration system used as it is not the International phonetic system.

I use this CD-Rom all the time for personal and professional purposes and, eight years later I am still in love with it