Recently I was asked by someone from Packt Publishing to review the new book " Oracle APEX 4.2 Reporting " - in exchange for a free e-copy. When I saw the table of contents, I already thought: " This is covering a lot... ". And that turns out to be true - and one of the main points of criticism I have. It starts off with a whole chapter about Installation and Configuration . The title of the chapter doesn't say that, because it's called " Know your horse before you ride it ". Thats one of the other points of criticism: The author is now and then to be trying to be funny and entertaining (in his own way). Another example: after a paragraph about installing the APEX Listener he writes: " APEX now has ears ". And there are much more examples - to me it's annoying and distracting. But the major part of that chapter is very well covered by the installation documents that come with the different products. Another remarkable note is