Bridge: 25 Ways to Take More Tricks as Declarer Book

Trash! Written by Dorothy Hayden Truscott, and published by Devyn Press, Inc. in 1998, this book is an introduction to the bidding and playing of the contract bridge card game. Ms. Truscott is an acknowledged expert on the subject, and her books are non-controversial and educational. Unfortunately, I read this 110-page treatise in the Adobe e-Pub format on my NOOK Tablet, and I was greatly disappointed. The editing is of such poor quality that it is mostly impossible to follow the author's examples of bridge hands and bidding. Most of the time, the fourth hand or bid that is being displayed is simply truncated'cut-off on the right side of the page so that the reader is unable to see all four of the hands, or all four of the bids.

When hardcopy books are scanned and converted to electronic format, a process called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used. Unfortunately, OCR is not a perfect technology, and scanned works must be carefully edited by hand in order to correct scanning errors. It appears that the publisher of this book failed to take that necessary step, and the result is that a goodly portion of the book is just plain incomprehensible. The book is rife with uncorrected scanning errors. There are hand diagrams that are missing altogether, but that are then discussed in the subsequent text, making it very difficult to grasp the point the author is trying to make. In some places, the number "4" is displayed in place of the correct ♦ symbol. In other places, the capital letter "V" is displayed in place of the ♥ symbol. An upper case "I" is frequently displayed instead of the correct number "1." Also, the ♣ symbol is sometimes displayed instead of the expected (and correct) ♠. It's all very confusing, and there are sequences that are sometimes several pages long that are largely indecipherable on my NOOK Tablet e-reader. Many bidding sequences simply bleed off the right side of the page and can be only partially seen, or cannot be seen at all. I can't imagine that any beginning bridge player could come away after reading this book with anything other than confusion.

This e-book has some other major deficiencies. One of them is the lack of a Table of Contents (TOC). A TOC would be especially useful in a book of instruction, such as this one. A second deficiency is the lack of an index. Although not as important as a TOC, an index would have been helpful for readers to find specific instructions and examples in this what-could-have-been great book. There were a couple of lessons in the book that I would have liked to be able to return to . . . if I could only find them.

I have no doubt that this is an excellent book on the bidding and play of the game of contract bridge'IN HARDCOPY FORMAT! In the Adobe e-Pub electronic format, however, it is practically useless. The publisher (Devyn Press) did author Truscott a great disservice by publishing this book in an unfinished electronic format. The author did not write trash, but the publisher chose to publish trash. How unfortunate! Read the book but not in the electronic format. Because of the extremely poor e-book formatting, I can award no more than a single star for this book. Save your money and don't purchase the e-book version (nor even borrow it from your library). Acquire the hardcopy version and I believe you might appreciate it a lot. I believe that the author attempted to present valuable information and instruction on the topic, and she might very well have succeeded in the hardcopy version of the book. Not so much with the e-book.