Customer Reviews

Wild Flowers Worth Knowing

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Firstly, the smug "you get what you pay for" crowd can go sip tea with your pinkies out. I understand that this is a free version of a book, converted by volunteers, but that doesn't mean it HAS to be inferior to what it COULD be. If you believe your volunteer work can be substandard just because you're donating your time, maybe you should stick with paid work.

The "community of volunteers" that "converted (this book) from its physical edition to the digital format" not only wasted their time by producing the Kindle version of this book, they have managed to waste the time of everyone who bothers to download this version. It is beyond me why anyone thinks it's worthwhile to publish only the text of a book that relies heavily on illustrations or photographs. Rather than continue to post these idiotic, frustrating versions of "FREE" illustrated books (minus the pictures) for the Kindle, it would be much better for Amazon to simply post a page that says, "Don't bother downloading this if you would like to see the images described by the text."

If you're interested, you can find the illustrations from this book in the HTLM .zip at Project Gutenberg. While I appreciate the efforts of the "community of volunteers", I wish they would quit posting books for the Kindle until it has been properly and fully converted -- including images -- in the form the author intended.

I can't help but wonder how much Amazon has to do with publishing, or at least not discouraging, Kindle books like this (with necessary images not included.) They love to shout about the availability of "free books" in their Kindle ads, and allowing junk like this definitely adds to the number of free books.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able use this book, as there are no illustrations. I need some drawings to help identify the plants.

This book was published in 1917, a year before the author's death. It the preface it states, "...Flowers have distinct objects in life...The means they employ to accomplish these ends are so various and so consummately clever that, in learning to understand them, we are brought to realize how similar they are to the fundamental aims of even the human race...of adapting oneself to one`s environment, of insuring healthy families,...of founding new colonies in distant lands...of laying up treasure in the bank of future use, of punishing vice and rewarding virtue..." It is what you might expect, written in her verbose, poetic style of the day. As you would guess for its (free Kindle) price, it lacks illustrations that would enhance the text very much.

I don't believe that this book is a "waste for everyone" like another reviewer (see my comment under that review on deleting titles on the Kindle). If you look over the rest of my reviews, I am not averse to rating wastes of time - I have rated two, including an insect book, which I am partial to. But I AM a horticulturist, and ALL plant books hold some interest for me.

This Kindle edition of September 1, 2005 is reasonably well edited and worth a skim (for me, at least). It is just very dry, especially without illustrations, so bear that in mind. I am not going to finish it, as I have many other, more readable flower books in my (hardback) book collection. But I won't begrudge its space and mention in my Kindle archive....I just have more interesting reads in my Kindle to spend my time on...