Unworthy...

It is simply nothing like as good as the TV show. Way too superficial and childish (if you think the TV show is getting a bit silly nowadays, you certainly won't like the book - but if you think the show needs more silliness, then you just might like the book...)
As for content, they just seem to have put all the 'challenges' in comic-strip form (why not watch the DVDs) and thrown in a load of childish stuff about the Stig (isn't all the Stig stuff getting a bit long in the tooth nowadays, it used to be funny, but...)

Awaiting January......

This is a brilliant and very cheap little book. It doesn't take much reading and has all the area you could require for a simple garden. The A-Z of vegetables is clear; just what is needed to go with the month by month guide. It is also helpful to deal with any problems one might come across. All together a well rounded book! Some of the diagrams would perhaps benefit from some colour though. Carla x

An excellent little book

This little gem of a book should be in every backpackers back pocket. Concise, focused and descriptive you'll have no trouble identifying the plants and shellfish. There has been some comments about lack of information on animals to eat, this is probably because rabbits, pheasants and such are classed as game and will belong to the landowner. Whilst it's ok to pick a few plants, mushrooms and shellfish it will probably be frowned on if you start blasting away at the countryside or setting traps!

No"Making" involved!!

I was very misled by the title and the synopsis of this book. If you are looking for a book to"make" items from scratch this is definately not the book to buy. Each so-called"project" requires you to buy items ready-made and then just embellish them with designs in the book. For example, you have to buy a hot water bottle cover, a tea towel, a cushion cover, rather than make these from scratch. It would be far more fulfilling to make things from scratch and then embellish them. Very disappointing and would not recommend.

Doggone fantastic!

Love Martin Clunes, love dogs, loved his recent documentary about dogs - so all good. This book does tally with the tv programme about history of dogs but the bits I actually enjoyed best are his own personal history with dogs and his present day trials, tribulations and joys with them. Just one thing - I'd love to know how Mary is these days.

Me Very Impressed!

This is that rarity, a work of genius that's also accessible in all the right ways: hilarious, touching, cutting, thought-provoking and beautifully written, breathtakingly so at times. But fear not: the romance is constantly sauced with the simian hero's outrageous, turd-slinging wise-cracks and put-downs. Cheeta speaks in a lovely blend of street wisdom and naïve poetry that makes you want to listen to him for much longer than the book lasts. And his racy, piquant subject matter is utterly intriguing!

The brilliance here lies in several layers, beginning with the very idea of a celebrity chimp telling his tale in a mind-boggling combination of natural history (Cheeta's self-awareness leads to many"you'll know this from National Geographic" type references) and"urban jungle" adventure. Add in the period glamour of Hollywood and Manhattan, amongst others, for further seduction. Then there's the constant insider scandal and sly digs at various cinematic egos; plus the enduring friendship with cinema's greatest Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, here portrayed with an ultimate poignancy that is genuinely heart-wrenching.

The imaginative empathy of the"ghost writer" goes beyond anthropomorphism and achieves plausibility without liberties, emotion without sentiment: descriptions of the jungle life"of infanticide and cannibalism" from which his beloved humans rescue Cheeta are lyrical, realistic, violent, sad and laugh-out-loud comical. And when he reaches America it gets even better! The early escape (orchestrated by the macaques) from a Manhattan animal dealer (Cheeta thinks of it as"rehab") into the exotic setting of Depression-ridden New York leads to one of the funniest sequences I've ever read - and Kong makes an"appearance" you won't forget!

This is such an original premise that you might fear for its actual fulfilment: how could anyone sustain this level of invention! But the execution is so wonderful that Cheeta becomes, and remains, completely engaging, whilst his adventures and reminiscences more than fulfil the promise of the book's concept - indeed, they transcend it.

Our hero is, of course, affectionate and scathing in turns on human nature; and he tells us, in the most entertaining way, what is to be respected and despised in our behaviour, along with what we can learn from our primate cousins. Loving, forgiving and always fascinated, Cheeta's unique story gives us many deep insights into our own lives - and has us frequently weeping with laughter as he does it.

If you love films, animals, movie stars, gossip, satire, scandal and, above all, inspired writing, you will take this marvellous book and its innocent, wise, witty, irreverent author straight to your heart. And this is right at the top of my gift list for the humans I care about: I can't imagine a better compliment to anyone's intelligence, sense of humour and literary taste. Absolutely fantastic!

Not what I thought

This book is well written for the most part and almost appears to be an autobiography in places which is a plus for Milan fans.

However...

Having tried the techniques on my own dog I realised that they are not for everyone and should not be touted as such.

I also found the book to be more than enlightening on what these techniques ACTUALLY involve, which you dont get to see on the TV.

Unfortunately (and as an ex-fan I mean this whole-heartedly) it did not meet my expectations as a book for training advice, although it is still a good buy if you are looking for life advice or to know more about Cesar himself.

All you need to know about preserving.

Good, informative and really helpful book. Packed full of helpful hints and tips. Very useful and I'll be dipping into it time again.

A tome to be reckoned with!

If you're even remotely entertaining the idea of purchasing this book for yourself, your friend or your granny, then just go ahead and click the button.

Fantastic cookbook, yes, but also so much more than that. Here is someone who finally seems to love eating as much as cooking, and the whole process honestly excites him. You can't help but get swept up in his enthusiasm.

Recipes are broken down into easy to follow pieces, which work for budding cooks as well as those with more experience. Fantastically, he also does this without being condescending in the slightest.

If there were a version of Desert Island Books, this would most certainly be on my top 5 list!

A great book!

I was given this book as a gift and thoroughly enjoyed it. I concur with other reviewers so won't waffle on about how good it is. Why only 4 stars? There's nothing on the importance of companion planting when using organic methods and without this, my veg patch wouldn't survive. This info can be researched elsewhere, so other than that, I would recommend this book, especially for a beginner. I'm just about to buy another copy for my best friend who is just that!

Interesting, useful and funny

I'm not a French speaker or learner myself, but bought this as a gift for a friend who is tackling the language. I'm sure they'll enjoy it as it's quite fun compared to the dry language texts I had to wade through at school. It's interesting to see that some French idioms are quite similar to ours but have an unusual slant. For example, where we have 'Pushing up the daisies', they have 'Eating the daisies from the roots up'; we write 'Rubber cheques', and they write 'wooden' ones (like taking a 'wooden nickel'?). Others are quite surreal 'Falling backwards into apples' sound quite painful, but to the French this is a soft landing. Although it's amusing, the text is scholarly enough to be useful to the serious student and the cartoons are excellent. You can't argue with the price either: great value.

Feed Their Minds

It is amazing just how often we under-estimate the young mind’s hunger for knowledge and their ability to understand. My 4 year old son is vey curious about the world around him, everything from planets to electricity.

We now read the ’stories’in this book on a daily basis and he always insists on ’just one more’. It is easy to read with complementary graphics and is therefore a great way to introduce them to facts. I would strongly recommend it for parents who find themselves providing information to their children.

The Dambuster raid comes alive

There are many histories written about the Dams raid where you can glean the clinical facts - and there was the film ... but there's nothing like oral history to engage the imagination and bring you close to the people who were there. The Dambusters, far from being 'gung-ho' come over as men of enormous skill, courage and resourcefulness, with a strong camaraderie among the crews. Their own words ring true - some readily admit that Gibson wasn't universally popular - but none doubted his resolve and courage. The crews trained to the increasingly exacting demands by the designer of the new bomb - they recall hair-raising flying at just 60 feet, honing their bombing accuracy - and their accounts build the tension until, on the day of the raid, they learn their night's target and recall their emotions. The accounts of the flight out and the bomb runs on the dams are riveting as some aircraft and crews go down in flames - and as an added bonus, there are detailed recollections from Germans who found themselves under the breaking dams. It's a brilliant read and a great tribute to all involved in the raid, from Barnes Wallis and his work to develop the bomb, to Gibson and all his crews and ground crews of 617 Squadron. Can't recommend it enough.

This book has helped to keep me sane!

We got our puppy 4 weeks ago. Without this book, I would probably have gone crazy. With this book, we have managed to housetrain our puppy in around 3 weeks.
Some really good advice from the book:
1) get a puppy playpen for your puppy. This means that you can keep the puppy somewhere safe so that you don't need to watch it 100% of the time for 16 hours of the day. Otherwise, your puppy will wander all over your house and wee and poo everywhere. Having a puppy pen (NOT a crate) allows you to have a bit more control but still allow your puppy a safe area to play and sleep.
2) the book has a suggested routine for your dog. As this is our first puppy, we literally would not have known when to feed it and when to take it out to meet people and when to let it rest. So the routine was really useful in the first week. After the first week, we established our own routine - but in that first week, it gave us a valuable structure for how to look after our puppy and keep it safe and happy.
There's loads of great advice in this book and we've started teaching our puppy how to sit on command. And we have taught our puppy how to wee and poo in the garden and outside when it goes for walks now - all in just a few weeks thanks to this brilliant book!

Starting with veg

This book goes well with the TV series. It has a good section at the start to describe general principles of veg growing and then several pages for each type of veg giving info on varieties when to sow and so on. Its written in an encouraging way to make you want to have a try at every thing. Only negative is that the pests and diseases is more detailed for some veg than others, and when it does go wrong it's not so helpful to identify and resolve the problem. For example many people will have heard of potoato blight and know its a serious problem. It took Mon Dons The complete gardener to reassure that this doesn;t usually happen before July and The Vegetable and Herb expert by Dr D.G. Hessayon with loads of details on plant diseases to identify the problem

A must have for any cat lover!

The title of this review is a bit of a cliché, but its true!
I bought this calendar last year for someone as a Christmas present but loved it so much I bought myself one too. The photography is stunning - not just bog standard pictures of cats like you get in most calendars. The pictures are high quality and printed on good quality card. It says"page-a-day" but there is just one picture/page for a weekend (Saturday and Sunday) but that is fine with me. On each page there is a quote, hint, information etc on cats. The stand the cards are held in is very secure and easy to manage. Everyday you move the front card to the back of the pile to reveal the next days picture (you must do this in order daily). You do this for 6 months then you see a page telling you that you have come to the end, then all you do is take all the cards out of the stand and turn them all round at once, put them all back in the stand, then continue like you did before as each card has a picture/date on each side (I hope that makes sense). The calendar comes in a box and the calendar itself is wrapped in cellophane inside the box.

All in all, I think this is a wonderful calendar, much better than the monthly kind as you are getting more for your money! It's good quality and reasonably priced too.

Details about the 2nd WW that may have been forgotten or never properly told until now

A very readable book indeed, to be followed shortly by a television series. The really interesting parts are of course the relationship between the 3 elderly men who decided on the divisions following the war at Yalta + another easily forgotten or not discussed alliance between Stalin and Hitler prior to the war.

I was shocked when reading some of the early chapters that the scandalous invasion of Poland from the Soviet side was more or less allowed to happen and despite the heartfelt pleas from the Polish ambassador the mass killing and deportation of civilians was more or less allowed to go on freely. 'We have no quarrel with the Soviets' the British Government said. Behind the scenes though a tit for tat conspiracy was being carried out between Hitler and Stalin which left the poor unfortunate Poles compromised completely. This became a complex political situation that continued right through until the end of the war when it seems that Stalin had to be compensated for losing 27 million troops (yes 27 million compared with only 400 000 each for UK and US. Additionally Russia was by the end of the war occupying much of Eastern Europe, too bad for those tragic people who had to suffer another 50 years of dictatorial communist rule! Churchill and Roosavelt do not come out of this that well though their positions were completely untenable, they more or less had no option but to agree with the psycopathic Stalin who had helped them out.
I was however quite impressed by De Gaulle who refused to recognise the puppet government of Poland at the end of the war and the ever devious Stalin was impressed by De Gaulles
suspicions, respecting the French leader for his insight.

There is much to interest in this new book with some fantastic details, first hand witness reports and new information that makes this book a really good historical read.

worth while

Im not much of a person for writing or reading, more of a hands on sort of person, but i read this book and it was incredible. The author makes it clear and easy to understand, giving good diagrams along with step by step procedures. I would reccomend this book to anyone, as i hve done, its well worth the money.