When I saw this book in the store, I had the same thought as previous reviewers. I thought that I would rather have actual cards instead of words in a book. But it actually works pretty well for me. The book is designed such that you fold the corner of a page when you master the word. So, after I complete a certain number of words, I go back through them randomly, skipping some, but always going over the pages that are not folded.

The good thing about the words being in a book is that I can actually take all of the words with me. There is no way I could carry 500 flash cards and study in the car, at the doctor's office, etc.

Of course there is a chance that you will memorize patterns, but you can lessen that chance if you vary your study methods. Flashcards is never enough.

I purchased last year's edition, where you bought an entire book (the same size as a regular GRE review book) which had nothing but pages full of pull-apart flashcards. I much prefered that format as you could actually tear the cards out and have small flashcards with all of the information on them. I do not like the flipbook method of studying vocabulary becuase then you begin to remember paterns, not definitions.

As other reviews have said, the "flipbook" method is just entirely inefficient when it comes to memorizing words. Even back in elementary school when I was using flashcards, I realized my brain often does not memorize the word itself as much as the order, and with this book it is no different. Also, the two words per page is kind of annoying, and I just don't see why they could not just give us normal, real flashcards. They are so much more efficient! Overall I really would not recommend this. It's too bad there really aren't any good GRE flashcards for sale; Thankfully it won't really matter after next summer when the GRE changes to be more about actual verbal intelligence and less about memorizing words that hardly anyone uses...