Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have had this book for a few months now. Initially I started out with a 3-star review, which I have decided to come back and bring down to a 2-star review. The original review is below the break, but I am adding additional complaints as I am increasingly disappointed in the production and editing of this book: First, there is no pictorial overview. This blows my mind. There are apparently 211 techniques scattered throughout the book, but there is no graphical thumbnail index to glance through. This means you really have no idea what is in this book except that you flip page-by-page to visually compare CO/BOs. Ridiculous. The thumbnails they use to simply adorn whitespace in the table of contents, intro pages, and on the front/back covers are the same graphics repeated over and over; they don't even switch it up (terrible marketing on the editor's part), so in the places it might have been possible to get an at-a-glance overview, they failed. They could have fit 20-25 fairly large thumbnails on a single page. What pattern book does not have an at-a-glance overview? Secondly, reinforcing my complaints about missing page numbers and poor editing: in the very beginning of the book, page 5, you find How to Choose a Cast On or Bind Off. The first 3 sentences state: "In choosing which to use, you need to keep several things in mind. Function is probably the most important consideration. What's the purpose of the edge and how will it be used?" The editor shoots herself in the foot here by claiming the most important consideration is function and then on the following charted page, provides absolutely zero page number references (see more on this below). ______________________________________________________ I agree with most of these positive reviews, but have a specific gripe that will irritate me every time I turn to this book. It's the "How to Choose a Cast On or Bind Off" reference tables on pg. 6-7, and it is where this book actually, surprisingly, sadly competes with the recently-published, inferior book "Cast On Bind Off 54 Step-by-Step Methods," and fails (I also reviewed that book). What it comes down to is book organization and ease of finding information. Important stuff, right? While "54 Methods" is a good reference book, but poor instruction manual, it is extremely well organized with a main Table of Contents, and also a secondary "Good For" table of contents, which is conveniently placed on the inside flap of the book, each entry referencing a CO/BO and associated page. This little "Good For" reference, for me, will usually be the first thing I flip to when looking for a CO/BO for any project I'm starting. The problem with "211 Ways" is that their version of this "Good For" table is severely lacking. Specifically? PAGE NUMBERS. Seriously? Page numbers. It appears that every single CO/BO in this book is listed, comma delimited, but without an effing page number (user photo uploaded). Adding insult to injury, there is PLENTY of space on the pages to have added the page numbers and elongated the tables. In my mind, this has got to be one of the most important pages in the book (how can you get information if you can't find it?), and while you can look up all these CO/BOs in the appendix, it is a PITA to do so when you are trying to quickly flip through several (211?) to find one you want to use. As far as I can tell, throughout the instructions wherever a CO/BO is referenced, it is done so with a page number. WTF? Let me put this in perspective: in the page-numberless reference tables, just in the section for "Elastic," 17 different CO's are listed PLUS a reference to "all Tubulars." That's 17 times you'll turn back to the index, hunt for CO, turn to the CO, turn back to the reference table, repeat, then go to TOC, find Tubular, sift through tubular. How did the editor miss this?? Lady writer, it takes long enough to start a knitting project as it is. This book could have easily been 5 stars, but the lack of proper reference in the secondary table of contents costs -2 stars for me, though right now I feel like taking a third star.