I'm hugely disappointed with the Blu-ray transition for Poirot... for the price paid, I would have thought that the conversion would have been more spectacular. Some of the shots are very grainy, and the picture still looks like I'm watching it on DVD... thankfully I didn't pay the $299 price tag that HMV was charging for their Blu-ray set.

Clue has always been one of my favourite movies, and when it finally came out in high def, I was stoked! Too bad Paramount didn't distribute this to major Canadian retailers (thanks to Blockbuster's bankruptcy, Paramount thought that all DVD/Blu-ray sales were moot north of the border, and that we're only interested in digital downloads)... anyways, I snagged Clue here on Amazon for a decent price... was hoping for improvements on the sound, but the picture was spectacular!

Great DVD collection... love this modern stone age family! What more could you want from Fred & Barney? Yabba dabba do!!

Great DVD collection... love this modern stone age family! What more could you want from Fred & Barney? Yabba dabba do!!

**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****

I saw this out in paperback and thought that I would give it a chance seeing as how it was written by another Stoker. I was thirteen years old when I was given the original novel by my aunt, and never really wanted to read it because I had seen the 30's and 90's films. Also the Victorian English, and small font, not to mention the thought of reading journal entries kind of deterred me from the desire to read it... however eighteen years later, I picked up Dracula and thoroughly enjoyed the book.

So coming into this, I thought what the heck?

The beginning started out great, with Seward tracking down Bathory and trying to warn Basarab (no surprises here by the way, as I saw through his character right away). I was intrigued that Dracula had taken on a young actor role to go into hiding, but I didn't buy the whole sympathetic character that Coppola's Dracula portrayed (which I think this book is really the sequel to). Then we have the torment which has wrecked havoc upon our original characters, and have turned them into either madmen, or raging alcoholics.

What really started to irritate me about the book was the inclusion of Bram Stoker and how it talked about the whole book within a book meta crap. This was where the story took a nosedive for me... Dracula was not really set in 1897??? Come on Dacre... how horrible for you to change the history of such a fine novel just to suit your own MacGuffin!!!

Then the deaths start happening... I could accept the deaths of Seward and Harker... but where I was ready to throw this book into the flames, was the total change of character of Van Helsing! Are we to take it seriosly, that a man who would fight to the ends of the earth to save not only Lucy, but Mina's immortal soul from the undead, was afraid of the gripping hands of time to succumb and accept the gift of the vampire? I'm sorry, but this is not the Van Helsing of Bram Stoker's creation!

The ending was cliched, and felt rushed... especially Winona's... um I mean Mina's "follow Dracula because I'm now truly alone" attitude. What the heck gives with not revealing who Bathory's mentor was? Is Dacre really planning a sequel to this? Because I really felt cheated by the whole thing.

The only reason why I gave this two stars, was because it was a vampire story which held lots of blood and gore... but other than that, if you want to read it, you might as well forget that the original Dracula story ever existed... because I think that's what Dacre did.

Book is perfect... Shipping time was faster than an item ordered the same day from right here in Canada. I will definitely be buying from this seller again.

Lately I have been very disappointed in James Patterson's books. Especially the Cross novels after Violets are Blue. Those three Cross stories, and the Lake House seemed like they were a rush of sentances, and a blur of action, leaving behind the character driven stories of the people we have grown to love in their previous outtings. However, with just finishing Honeymoon, and 4th of July back to back, I do have to say that James Patterson has gotten back to his roots of deep character driven stories. I have always loved the women's murder club series, and have felt that they have stayed true to the first novel, and every one following. Even though 4th is centered mainly on Lindsay Boxer, with brief showings of the other girls, Claire and Cindy, the book still managed to keep me interested enough to stay up until 3am (with work the next day at 7:30), to find out what the verdict of Boxer's trial would be. It is a touching story, that made me feel for Lindsay, and although I had guessed the first killer straight away, I was taken back by the others. I do highly recommend 4th of July to Patterson fans, and newly aquainted readers. Hopefully James will continue to give us the material we want, and not the contrived bits we've been seeing over the last little while.

I have read all of Rob MacGregor's, one of Caiden's (very poor Indiana Jones rendition in my opinion) and now all of Max McCoy's. First off I loved the early stories telling how Indy became an achaeologist, his college years, and the love of his life. Rob MacGregor captured the magic of Indiana Jones, and quite frankly the personality that we already knew from the three movies. He established a great continuity that I had hoped would follow over into rest of the books, but sadly did not once Martin Caiden took over the pen. I figured that Max McCoy would carry on with the continuity, but again I was disappointed. Something that Rob MacGregor made clear in Dance of the Giants, Seven Veils, and the Genesis Deluge was that Indiana Jones was married at one point in his life to a woman named Deirdre Campbell. In this book however, Faye Meskelyne asks if he had ever been married, and Indy replied "No I have never been married before." So whatever was established by MacGregor, was totally ignored by McCoy. Still Max gave out four really good novels, and I hope that in the future, if the Indiana Jones series is revived that the author sticks to the previous continuity of the other books.

I just started reading the Indiana Jones series and was quite impressed with Rob MacGregor's rendition of our favourite acheologist. His stories were quite interesting, and were able to keep me turning the pages as I delved deeper into his plots. However when I picked up Martin Caidin's Indiana Jones and the White Witch, I was terribly dissapointed with it. Not only was the storyline dull and long winded, but the character of Indy just isn't the same. He's incredibly moody here, and he doesn't even have a good chemistry with either Gale or Caitlin. To me, this novel was just 'blah'. Sure there were some action scenes, but nothing intrigued me like MacGregor could. To me, it seemed that Sky Pirates(also written by Caidin), and the "White Witch" focussed too much on technical and non-archeological adventures. To me, that does not sum up a very interesting Indiana Jones. One thing that I liked about MacGregor's books, was that they always had a referrence to Indy's earlier adventures. In two instances, Caidin does nodd to the novel "Dance of the Giants", but that is all. There are no fleeting thoughts of his friend Jack Shannon, or his deceased love Deirdre Campbell, and no mention of Marcus Brody. I like continuity, but Martin Caidin seems to throw it all out the window. All in all, I found this book to drag, and I forced myself to read it as fast as I could just so that I could move on to the next novel. I do hope that Max McCoy's novels will be somewhat more uplifting than Caidin's attempts.