This is the only romance book I can remember where I was hoping against hope that couple didn't get together. Finally, I figured maybe they deserved each other. This was an utterly tiresome story. If you want to watch a relationship advance by slow, boring inches, this is your book. The guy actually says several times "Ashley, I'm getting more impressed with you". Who says that?? The magic part of the story was decent, and often funny. The rest was just bad, BAD writing...

When she was sixteen, Ashley Douglas declared her undying love for her brother's best friend Jordan Bennett, but everyone else laughed at her puppy love. Seven years later, Ashley still wants Jordan. However, he sees her as the out-of-control spending younger sister of Zach. Case in point: in there first meeting in several years, the extremely frugal Jordan watches her carry an old bowl she just wasted her money on buying.

Ashley's luck appears to have changed to include Jordan suddenly desiring her. Jordan, who just accepted the chef's job at the New Orleans' hotel where she is the assistant to the manager, cannot stay away from her. He knows that they are opposites as she cannot resist shopping while he still carries the scars of his family's fiscal problems. Only magic could find a way to close the gap. Then again, Ashley has purchased a magical bowl "ELVIS" that plans to teach her how to control her spending and help her attain her true love.

BEDAZZLED is a humorous, weird but definitely enjoyable contemporary romance. The story line focuses on two opposites falling in love with the help of a magical essence. Though Jordan and Ashley are an endearing couple, Elvis the gourmet bowl steals the plot. Fans who relish a touch of the absurd in their novels will be dazzled by Christine Holden's enchanting tale and demand the return of what is sure to be everyone's favorite bowl.

Harriet Klausner

This is definitely a great book for a first time dog owner. It gives great specifics.

This was a very interesting book. It starts off in the same way it finishes. There's only two catches though- it has no climax and it has rather heavy language throughout. In a way the main character,Holden Caulfield, is just writing another English report about what happened to him on Christmas vacation. I enjoyed it on the most part because it gave an insight in what he was thinking more so than what he did. Like he kept thinking about his old girlfriend Jane, but she never actually enters the story. I think the point I got out of the book is people aren't real. They try to put off that they're somebody else and unless you can read their mind, you'll never know who they really are. All in all, this was definitley a book worth reading, I guess that is why it made it pretty big. That or it's because the cussing.

This book is not only a personal slide show with over 150 images of the late Princess of Wales. It looks at Diana's life and her impact on other people. Using her own words and quotes from those who knew her, A Life and a Legacy presents an engaging tribute to a remarkable woman.

SUMMARY: This book presents a new approach to stochastic partial differential equations based on white noise analysis. The framework makes heavy use of functional analysis and its main starting point is the Wiener chaos expansion and analogous expansions on different functional spaces (Schwartz spaces).

A stochastic PDE is a PDE containing a random noise term, which may be additive or multiplicative. One of the problems when working with Stochastic PDEs is to define a notion of solution which is meaningfully extendable to the nonlinear case. Problems arises because the noise term is highly irregular: for each sample of the noise, one has a (nonlinear) PDE with a very irregular term in it. In physical terms, one may encounter "ultraviolet" divergences. So, one is first faced with an existence/ unicity problem for such equations. Additionally, one would like to describe probabilitic properties of such solutions.

The method proposed by the authors can be described as follows: first, one expands the noise term in the PDE using a Wiener chaos expansion. Truncating the expansion at a certain order n yields a "regularized" equation in which the noise is smoothened. This can be roughly described as an ultraviolet cutoff. The equation then has a unique solution in an appropriate functional space. The solution of the original SPDE is then defined as the sequence of truncated solutions. In some cases, this sequence may converge in some classical sense in an appropriate function space to a weak or strong solution defined in the usual sense. But, in general, this is not the case and the notion of solution defined by the authors may be different from classical notions.

Although the title contains the word 'modeling', it may look as the abstract definition of solution proposed by the authors may have little to do with the physical notion of solution. One feels a need for a justification why this definition of a solution is physically relevant at all, which I feel is lacking. The authors give some examples, such as the noisy Burgers equation and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, but the results predicted for the solutions seem to be different than the ones predicted for example by renormalization group analysis for example regarding the scaling exponents for KPZ. Also, it would be interesting to compare this notion of solution with more classical ones for example using the semigroup/ Green function approach.

The approach proposed bears a strong resemblance to ultraviolet regularization schemes used in renormalization group theory. In fact, this framework may be seenas a probabilistic setting for renormalization methods.Unfortunately there is little discussion of this point in the book.

The first chapters contain an interesting review of white noise expansions and chaos expansions, useful in their own interest.

Overall I recommend this book as interesting for researchers in mathematical and theoretical physics.

This predictable rags to riches story is about Herbert Mason, a fourteen-year-old boy who is left parentless with the death of his mother. He must fend for himself in the world. Being courageous and hard working, Herbert begins to earn money for himself in his small rural town.

However, he is adopted by a mean farmer who treats Herbert poorly. Herbert eventually finds the courage to run away. With the help of some friends, he goes to New York City to fend for himself. While there, he becomes gainfully employed and works his way up. During each tribulation (several robbers try to rob him, he is wrongly accused of stealing, etc) he "tries and trusts" in God.

If you've read other Alger books, you can probably guess what is coming next in this story. There are few surprises. However, the book was mildly entertaining and as always, Alger's characters are honest and forthright.

Oh, I am so sorry that you lost digits in an industrial accident. I was going to ask you to count on your fingers the GOOD books you have seen wriiten FROM a movie. Maybe you can still do it, because this book won't be on your list.

Wordy, plain, flaccid, vapid, artless... Who in the world hired this done?

If you INSIST on reading a copy, get one through your library, and donate the difference to charity!

Whether in film or in novel form, The Full Monty is a charming story. In an age of copious "chick-flicks," The Full Monty (finally!) presents its masculine counterpart. Though its themes are gender universal--financial hardship, self-image, and friendship, to name a few--here we get a believable, side-splitting glimpse into the male perspective. However, Wendy Holden's adaptation is stripped of all the character possessed by the screenplay on which it's based. The characters lack likeability, thus a story that is potentially rich in both tender and comedic moments falls short of successful. If you want to go The Full Monty, I recommend reading the screenplay or renting the video instead.

The book (on which the film was based) is, at the same time, tragic, funny and moving. Full of the dark, working-class humor of the north of England, it tells the story of a group of unemployed men who decide that emulation of the Chippendales would be a good way to turn a buck. Sadly, these anti-heroes lack the skill or the physique of their well-muscled counterparts but decide, nevertheless, to 'go the full Monty' and give it a try. The community is kept in the dark as our six heroes practice the routines and try to tighten up the flab.

The Full Monty highlights the fears and inadequacies of men who have begun to lose their self-respect and possibly their families. The confidence they need can only come from stripping bare the deeper issues that trouble their individual lives (pun intended). The result is a humane, idiosyncratic, triumphant comedy that has won the hearts of millions around the world. Maybe the first full-frontal fairy tale!

I've both read the book and seen the film. The book is better, taking time to examine in more depth the characters of Gaz, Dave, Lomper, Horse, Guy and Gerald.

I'm disappointed that this book does not describe in more depth Charles' role as a MODERN king-to-be. Britain was once one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen; in fact, most of its colonies have only been relinquished post-World War II. Yet, there is no sense of Charles as a truly modern man of the late 20th Century. He could be much more than a mere figurehead for England, and yet he has chosen to do no more than his mother does in terms of being a compass for England's winds of change. Charles seems to have absolutely no political, social or economic advisers surrounding him. Could this be because he is, as so many accounts have suggested over the years, a rather dim bulb? After all, the Windsors have never been known for being bright. Tellingly, Charles NEVER has any people of color as friends, or in his entourage. No one from Hong Kong or China or India or Kenya or Nigeria or Barbados or a couple dozen other former colonies of color is ever seen anywhere near the Prince, whether as a friend, confidant, or consultant. And yet there are hundreds of thousands of well-educated men and women of color from the former colonies, who've been educated at Oxbridge (Oxford and/or Cambridge) or the London School of Economics or Britain's other elite learning institutions, who are of an age with the Prince and could certainly fit into the Prince's circle. What an example he could set for an England still going through the pains of post-colonialism! But no. The King-to-be is as stuffy, conventional, and ultimately, as out of touch with the new England as his mother and father. This is the side of the Prince that warrants full examination . . . . . .

respect for his counrty's monarchy than he does.

I enjoyed reading parts of this biography, however, it does not put His Royal Highness in a good light. That is truely a shame since the PoW has no real peers. How can Mr. Holden judge Prince Charles so harshly, when the closest peer he has is HRH Prince Felipe Of Spain or some other heir to a throne? Besides that, he is heir to the throne by divine right, not public opinion. He should be shown respect at all times. On the other hand, I was LOL at some parts of it because it seems that the PoW does not have any common sense.

The chapter(s) on Charles' love for achitecture is downright BORING! And Poundbury? What was that? That chapter went over my head.

One more thing, does the author know how to write about BOTH sides of the story?

Although some may find fault with the author for criticizing Charles more than Diana, frankly Charles is more 'accident prone' so it's beyond me how any even-handed author could write anything about the Charles/Diana events without sounding too pro-Diana.

Though well intentioned at heart, Charles is a product of his breeding--not just the man warped by being surrounded by sycophants but a man who has inherited the Hanover/Windsor genetic faults. First among these is the fact that Charles, like his great-grandfather George V, is not too bright. Unlike George V, he wants to be seen as bright and this is what leads him into trouble. Charles's lack of focus and desire to meddle in politics is a fault he shares with Edward VIII--along with an overly long, dissolute bachelorhood and a penchant for choosing the wrong woman.

Diana has her faults too, but to paraphrase Jane Austen's comment about George IV, "She was bad, but she would not have become as bad as she was if he had not been infinitely worse."

All the author had to do was write from record and let the actions of the man damn him. This is what he did. Charles is his own worst enemy.

Charles will be king in due time, but for the sake of the monarchy, may Elizabeth II live a long time, may Charles gain a better sense of what a British monarch should do before he becomes king and may his reign be a short one.

I purchased this book so I could read several new author's work. ALL the stories were depressing, stupid, and not at all like the satsifyingly happy and well-developed good regency book. The character were usually unorigonal, and the ladies did not behave independently. The plots were fantastic and unrealstic. I hated it and when I was done I felt drained, depressed, and angry at myself for having read the stories. They did not portray the Regency Era as as a time that could be fun and full of adventure. Why couldn't Georgette Heyer have written more books?

A very disappointing read. I purchased this book in the faint hope that I could find a writer that equalled Georgette Heyer in wit and charm in this genre. There is nothing here that even approaches Ms. Heyer and a lot that will make any intelligent woman squirm. Do not waste your money. I would have accorded this book less than one star but that was the lowest option available.

A fine collection--witty, detailed, accurate, fun. What more can you ask for? I especially liked the story by Isobel Linton, "A Last Waltz."

From the beginning of Holden's study where he admits he did no preliminary research into the faith and progressing onward to the point he starts to throw the word "objective" into the mix Holden's study disintegrates into a manipulated, highly crafted mess.

If Holden had done research into the faith himself he would have found that paramount in importance to the religion's adherents is the stricture, oft repeated, that by word and deed Jehovah's Witnesses are not to bring "reproach upon Jehovah's name". In interviewing ONLY rank and file members and in the absence of critical analysis Holden presents ONE viewpoint of the faith to the reading public, a very sanitised version of what Jehovah's Witnesses WISH to present to the world at large.

It is one thing to use your research as an opportunity to give space to a group of people in order to voice their opinions an experiences. It is another to allow said group to present their version and then put it out as some kind of unvarnished "truth". Anyone who studies fundamentalist Christianity knows that the reality is a great deal more complicated than adherents would have you believe. Given Jehovah's Witnesses highly publicised battles with accusations of pedophilia and the blood transfusion issue it is careless in the extreme to allow one side of the story to be presented without exploring the complexities inherent in the narratives.

As a sociologist whose area of expertise happens to be fundamental christianity and who was a Jehovah's Witness myself for over 20 years I am appalled and dismayed that Holden's work is being held up a "major study". Holden obviously follows the old, old school of sociological research and thought where by he is the "objective" researcher through whom his "subjects" true meaning can be understood. Holden has illuminated nothing more than a maneuvered version of what Jehovah's Witnesses would LIKE us to believe.

Having read and written a number of ethnographies and also having been involved in the religion of Jehovah's Witneses both inside and outside of the group (I have served as a regular pioneer and I have also been disfellowshipped), I can say that this study does present many accurate highlights of Jehovah's Witnesses, their paradigm and what motivates them.

The other reviewer obviously didn't read the book carefully, because Holden does interview former members of the faith. He tries to be objective, claiming to use caution when listening to the stories told by the different people he talks to, but he chooses to believe (and makes the statement) that JW's quote scriptures out of context and misapply them. Apparently, the author doesn't realize that Jesus himself quoted scripture out of context, as seen by the Sermon on the Mount.

Curiously, he claims that JW's don't participate in juries and believe that the universe was created in seven days. I know that JW's can participate in juries if they so choose and also that they do not believe the seven creation days were seven literal days, but rather seven creative periods of time. One can't help but wonder how closely he was listening to the subjects of his ethnography. If he got these little details wrong, what else did he get wrong?

Holden attempts to make some original statements or insights about JW's but instead ends up quoting from other sociologists/ethnographers. I just finished reading the book last night and can't think of a single original thought he came up with.

The author recognizes that many JW's try to seperate themselves from the secular world by strictly limiting the kind and amount of worldly entertainment they watch. He comments that parents won't allow their children to read fairy tales or stories involving magic, but fails to explain what scriptures they base this on. It would have been more interesting if he had studied and questioned those JW's who do allow themselves to watch movies and TV shows that have magic as the subject matter. For instance, do they experience any cognitive dissonance (or, in JW terms, "does their conscience bother them?") when watching movies like, Shrek, or TV shows like the X-Files?

What about those witnesses who continue to watch PG-13 movies, all of which contain at least one profanity, something JW's are supposed to avoid?

I can't help but feel the other reviewer deliberately made false statements about the book in the hopes that Jehovah's Witnesses in good standing would read the book (and thereby the statements made by former members of the religion.)

Although Jehovah's Witnesses did have expectations and beliefs that didn't come true (for example, about certain years like 1914 and 1975) so did Jesus Christ's apostles (Luke 19:11, "they imagined the Kingdom was going to display itself instantly" and John 21:23, "In consequence, this saying went out among the brothers, that that disciple would not die. However, Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but: "If it is my will for him to remain until I come, of what concern is that to you?".") Jehovah's Witnesses have never claimed to be infallible, unlike the Pope.

Just because someone is anointed by holy spirit, doesn't mean that they will always get it right. The prophet Samuel, for instance, thought that David's brother would be the next king of Israel, but Jehovah God told him he was not the one. (1 Samuel 16:6, 7: And it came about that, as they came in and he caught sight of E·li'ab, he at once said: "Surely his anointed one is before Jehovah." But Jehovah said to Samuel: "Do not look at his appearance and at the height of his stature, for I have rejected him. For not the way man sees [is the way God sees], because mere man sees what appears to the eyes; but as for Jehovah, he sees what the heart is.)

If you choose to read this book, do so with a grain of salt and be aware that the author has his own beliefs and values. He is not free from ethnocentricity. I preferred an older sociological study, "The Trumpet of Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah's Witnesses" by James Beckford, which is the cumulative result of a group of people working together, unlike "Portrait", which is the work of one individual.