Practical Readings in Financial Derivatives

Book Description

Practical Readings in Financial Derivatives is a collection of 20 articles spanning major developments in the field in theory and practice. Two central themes govern the content. These are the pricing of financial derivatives and their application in risk management. Section I, Instruments and Pricing, sets forth the derivatives and the principles for pricing them. Section II, Risk Management Applications, illustrates how financial derivatives may be used singly, or in combination, to manage the types of risk encountered in business today.The applied orientation and contemporary selection make Practical Readings in Financial Derivatives a strong supplement to any course on futures, options, swaps, or financial engineering. Readers will welcome the accessible nature of the articles which approach financial derivatives from a real world perspective, rather than a strictly technical view.

Average customer rating:

A must have for T&D managers

Excellent book for all interested in learning at work.

Highly Recommended!

Very highly recommended reading for corporate managers

A First Rate Book On How To Organize for Employee Learning

Developing Employees Who Love to Learn: Tools, Strategies, and Programs for Promoting Learning at Work
Linda Honold
Manufacturer: Davies-Black Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)

ASIN: 0891061509

Book Description

This much-needed book is filled with innovative learning strategies for any organization that wants to stay competitive by creating opportunities for employees to advance themselves--and their businesses--by learning to learn.

Customer Reviews:

A must have for T&D managers.......2006-01-27

Do your employees have the knowledge, information, and skills to make decisions and take action? According to the author, the answer to such a question lies in one word: learning. The author argues that a workforce of employees in a learning mode is the key to a company's success both now and in the future.

This book addresses four key issues that workplace learning must address: learning stages, context, learning styles, and desired outcomes. These issues are addressed with a learning system, for which the author presents a five-phase plan to creating such a learning system: exploration, envisioning, planning, development, and implementation/improvement.

The author also includes a sample of specific tools for developing an interest in learning, strategies, and programs for individual learning, learning in groups, one-on-one learning, and learning integrated into work.

Excellent book for all interested in learning at work........2002-04-05

'Linda Honold has produced the best book in its field. She shows clearly how learning and development can be a real force for positive change in organizations. The book is especially useful in focusing on practical, usable methods that can be applied in real life situations. It's also valuable because the approaches the book suggests are tried and tested. She comes from a background in organizational life so it's not some arm-chair theorising by an academic. Indeed I'd wish that the theoretical 'learning organization' folks would take note of this book. We need more practical, concrete approaches to improving learning not meandering theories.

This is a book that all trainers and developers should own.'

Highly Recommended!.......2001-08-23

Linda Honold describes a system for helping everyone in your company learn to become more creative, responsive, efficient and team-oriented. She describes various techniques, including methods for developing an interest in learning and in self-knowledge, individual learning tools, mentoring, coaching and peer learning as well as strategies for helping people learn in groups. She pays particular attention to learning styles, drawing on the Myers-Briggs personality type system. This book speaks primarily to human resource professionals and to executives who might be setting up learning systems for their own companies. Others may find the book dry and overly concerned with the details of systematizing the serendipity of informal learning. But we [...] recommend this book to HR practitioners, and also to professionals delving into knowledge management, who will certainly benefit from this theoretical look at how people in companies actually learn.

Very highly recommended reading for corporate managers.......2001-03-19

Developing Employees Who Love To Learn: Tools, Strategies, And Programs For Promoting Learning At Work shows how any business scan create and implement a successful learning system that will improve employee performance and enhance company profits. Linda Honold (president and founder of Empowerment System, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) draws upon her years of experience and expertise to provide step-by-step, "user friendly" instructions on laying the groundwork for, and implement, the activities and programs that will generate meaningful, applicable employee learning. The informative text is augmented with numerous illustrative examples and features "The Learning Toolbox", a compendium of ninety practical tools and resources for creating a dynamic environment for both individual and group learning. Developing Employees Who Love To Learn is very highly recommended reading for corporate managers and human resource directors.

A First Rate Book On How To Organize for Employee Learning.......2001-03-10

This book came to me just as I was grappling with the problem of providing a fresh learning experience for some 40 managers in a major retail company located near Los Angeles. The book was just what I needed to develop a learning plan that goes well beyond classroom-type training. The book provides a sophisticated learning model that is easy to understand and very practical.

The book is well organized. Ms. Honold provides a useful and up-to-date review of adult learning theory, but quickly moves on to present an impressive array of tools aimed at meeting the needs of people with widely varying learning styles. When it comes to learning one size does not fit all. (We seem to accept this idea for adults -- why not for younger students?)

This is a user-friendly book of great value to anyone who is looking for a fresh perspective on how to share information in an organization. There is a major emphasis on motivating the learner, a key point that often gets short shrift in books like this. Finally, and most importantly, Ms. Honold is obviously an experienced practitioner in creating enthusiasm for learning in a work setting. That experience is reflected throughout this excellent book.

Book Description

Get the most out of the new Medicare drug coverage!

Everyone wants to get the most out of their retirement benefits -- not to mention the best medical coverage and prescription drug benefits. Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions clearly explains what the different benefits are, and shows you how to claim what you've earned, including:

the new Medicare prescription-drug coverage

Social Security retirement and disability benefits

Social Security dependents and survivor benefits

Supplemental Security Income

federal, state and local government pensions

Medicare and Medicaid

medigap insurance and Medicare managed-care plans

veterans benefits

The 12th edition is completely updated to provide the latest information: Learn about "Medicare Part D," which now provides coverage for outpatient prescription drug costs -- understand what it covers, how to apply for it, and how to use it. You'll also find the latest on Medicare, Medicare HMOs and other managed care plans, as well as the 12 types of medigap health plans.

This plain-English book is a must-have for anyone age 60 or over, and anyone who helps care for an elder.

Customer Reviews:

An outstanding, basic reference suitable for any public library........2007-09-02

he 12th edition of Attorney Joseph Matthews with Dorothy Matthews Berman's SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE & GOVERNMENT PENSIONS: GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR RETIREMENT AND MEDICAL BENEFITS provides the latest instructions on getting the most from Medicare, social security and government and veterans benefits. From uncovering benefits and when and how to claim them to qualifying for programs and combining them, this provides an outstanding, basic reference suitable for any public library.

Social Security, Medicare and Pensions: Get the Most Out of Your Retirement and Medical Benefits (6th ed)

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Adequate & Annoying
Significant error in VA section
Could reading about federal regulations be entertaining?
Great summary of the Social Security system!

Social Security, Medicare and Pensions: Get the Most Out of Your Retirement and Medical Benefits (6th ed)
Joseph L. Matthews , and Dorothy Matthews Berman
Manufacturer: Nolo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0873372891

Book Description

Everyone wants to get the most out of their retirement benefits -- not to mention the best medical coverage.

Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions clearly explains what the different benefits are, and shows you how to claim what you've earned, including:

* Social Security retirement and disability benefits

* Supplemental Security Income

* government penisons & 401(k)s

* Medicare and Medicaid

* new medical insurance options

* dependents and survivor benefits

* veterans benefits

* and more

Completely updated to provide the latest information and changes in benefits, this plain-English book is a must-have for anyone who is retired or about to be.

Customer Reviews:

Adequate & Annoying.......2004-03-03

The authors' explanation of the workings of the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc systems is adequate but is not particularly well written and often lacks clarity. This is certainly not one of NOLO's best offerings.

Especially annoying was the authors' frequent and tedious editorializing. I suspect most readers of this book want the facts, not the authors' socialistic, simplistic opinions.

Significant error in VA section.......2002-08-17

page 10/7: "E. Medical Treatment....And dependents and survisors of a veteran who has a service connected disabilities, or who receives a veterans pension, are entitled to care in VA facilities if they are unable to afford private care."

I have been a VA employee for 16 years. The above is WRONG. There IS a pilot program in a handful of VA hospitals allowing dependents to use the VA hospital. Otherwise, this is NOT the case.

..."The VA can also pay for long-term care of an elderly or disabled veteran in a private nursing facility if there is no space in a VA facility."

This is also not entirely correct. The operative would is CAN. However, the VA is only obligated to pay for the care of veterans who have a certain percentage of Service-Connected Disability. If they pay at all for any others, most VA's only pay for care for a VERY limited period of time.

Could reading about federal regulations be entertaining?.......2001-05-04

The authors of this comprehensive guidebook come close to achieving this feat. As they point out, many Americans are not receiving all the benefits they deserve under our current system. By explaining the various benefit programs and laws in conversational English, they hope to help readers ensure they are getting everything to which they are entitled. It's also helpful that the text is presented in a visually interesting two-column format with plenty of headings, boxes, and even the occasional illustration.

Each chapter explains a different benefit program or set of laws designed to protect the rights of older Americans. Security and Medicare take up more than half the book. The discussions of Medicare claims and appeal procedures are particularly thorough, complete with samples of Medicare summary notices explaining what the sometimes confusing columns of numbers mean. There also are chapters on Medigap policies, Veterans benefits, private pensions and 401(k) plans, and federal civil service retirement benefits. However, if you're looking for in-depth information on Medicaid coverage of nursing home costs, this is not your best resource. While Medicaid's basic eligibility rules are briefly discussed, the complexities of transferring assets to qualify for Medicaid benefits are not.

The authors mainly stick to the facts, but every once in a while they reveal their view of our society's tattered safety net. For example, they call our failure to enact a comprehensive, universal health care plan a "national disgrace."

Great summary of the Social Security system!.......1999-08-04

This happens to be the best all-around book concerning the difficult subject of Social Security that I have read. Understandable and very well written. The sections regarding disability are filled with just the info I needed to know.

Book Description

The series of texts on Classical Theoretical Physics is based on the highly successful series of courses given by Walter Greiner at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the volumes in the series provide not only a complete survey of classical theoretical physics but also an enormous number of worked examples and problems to show students clearly how to apply the abstract principles to realistic problems.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent supplementary book.......2006-08-18

Simply stated, I don't consider this "the book" on the subject, but it is a most-have. It begins by developing some of the mathematical foundations needed to solve the problems; followed by some Newtonian mechanics (basic concepts: force, energy, motion in 1D-3D, and many examples and applications), and ends with special relativity. The topics are presented in a clear and straight-forward manner, although some of them were too simple and not as thorough as I wished.

This book corresponds to a regular 1st semester in mechanics. It should be complemented with the second book (Classical Mechanics) which deals with non-inertial reference frames, systems of particles, rigid bodies, Lagrange equ. and Hamiltonian Theory.

I give this book 4.5 stars (I'm a tough grader)

The Structure of Physics (Fundamental Theories of Physics)

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The Structure of Physics (Fundamental Theories of Physics)
Carl F. von Weizsäcker
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1402052340

Product Description

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäckers ""Aufbau der Physik"", first published in 1985, was intended as an overview of his lifelong concern: an understanding of the unity of physics. That is, the idea of a quantum theory of binary alternatives (the so-called ur-theory), a unified quantum theoretical framework in which spinorial symmetry groups are considered to give rise to the structure of space and time.

The book saw numerous reprints, but it was published in German only.

The present edition, in English, provides a newly arranged and revised version, in which some original chapters and sections have been deleted, and a new chapter about further insights and results of ur-theoretic research of the late 1980s and 1990s, mainly by the work of Thomas Görnitz, has been included, as well as a general introduction to Weizsäckers Philosophy of Physics.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker also enjoys high esteem by a much broader audience for his socio-cultural, political and religious thoughts and writings.

In him the intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue has found one of its most important proponents: a great thinker who combines the perspectives of science, philosophy, religion and politics with a view towards the challenges as well as the responsibilities of our time.

Book Description

Enzyme catalysis is a topic of fundamental importance in organic, bio-organic and medicinal chemistry. This new edition of a very popular textbook provides a concise introduction to the underlying principles and mechanisms of enzyme and coenzyme action from a chemical perspective.Whilst retaining the overall structure of the first edition - preliminary chapters describe the basic principles of enzyme structure and catalysis moving through to detailed discussions of the major classes of enzyme processes in the later chapters - the book has been thoroughly updated to include information on the most recent advances in our understanding of enzyme action. A major feature of the second edition is the inclusion of two-colour figures of the active sites of enzymes discussed in the text, in order to illustrate the interplay between enzyme structure and function. Problems, with outline answers, at the end of each chapter give the student the chance to the check their understanding of the material.As a concise but comprehensive account, Introduction to Enzyme and Coenzyme Chemistry will continue to prove invaluable to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of organic, bio-organic and medicinal chemistry.Tim Bugg is professor of biological chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick, UK.Also Available from Blackwell PublishingExperimental Organic Chemistry: Standard and MicroscaleSecond EditionL M Harwood, C J Moody and J M PercySoftback (0 632 04819 0), 728 pagesHeterocyclic ChemistryFourth EditionJ A Joule and K MillsSoftback (0 632 05453 0), 608 pagesIntroduction to Free Radical ChemistryA F ParsonsSoftback (0 632 05292 9), 248 pages

Customer Reviews:

Excellent summary of basic biological reactions..........2005-02-04

Bugg has done an excellent job of elucidating the unique characteristics of families of enzymes and reactions. Mechanisms are clearly and plainly represented, complete with pertinent active site amino acid residues.
This book is a formidable adjunct to any biochemistry student's (grad or undergrad) bookshelf. In addition, those interested in nutritional chemistry may find this book interesting.

Good on the more advanced material..........2005-01-08

This book provides a concise and readable account of the mechanisms of action of the main classes of enzyme-catalysed reactions; organic chemists familiar with mechanisms for hydrolysis, redox reactions, making and breaking carbon-carbon bonds, and so on, will readily recognize their counterparts in enzyme chemistry. The problems at the ends of the chapters are a particularly attractive feature, as thought has been given to making them intelligent and challenging. At the end of chapter 6 on redox chemistry, for example, the six problems occupy two full pages of the book, enough space being taken to set them out properly without trivializing them; the thoughtful answers given to the same six problems at the end of the book occupy almost another page.

Though in general I liked the last two-thirds of the book, it is worth commenting on a missed opportunity to illustrate why it is useful to know about the different kinds of enzyme inhibition. The well known herbicide glyphosate ("Roundup") acts by inhibiting 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase, but I don't believe that its toxicity is due to the inability of treated plants to make lignin; it kills plants much too fast for that to be plausible, and it seems much more likely that they are killed by the huge increases in the shikimate concentration produced by the type of inhibition, which is uncompetitive, not competitive.

Another attractive feature is the intelligent use of colour in the structural drawings. Some books use colour just because they can, and the essential point of an illustration is lost in a gaudy mass of irrelevant colour. Here, in contrast, the structures are mainly presented in shades of grey, with red and black used to draw attention to particular features. To my mind this works very well, and probably far better than expensive use of a wider range of colours would have worked. Having said this, I'm not sure how far the author really agrees with me, because at the beginning of the book he refers wistfully to the "wide range of colours" available on the computer screen, contrasting with the "only red and black" used in the book.

So far I have concentrated on the things that I liked. Unfortunately the introductory chapters at the beginning are much less satisfactory than the later ones, and I should be reluctant to let a student read these without supervision. The description of the structures of aminoacids could have come straight from a book of the 1960s, and vagueness about ionic structures persists throughout the book.

The treatment of elementary kinetics is similarly unsatisfactory, and includes the common student blunder of supposing that the standard Michaelis-Menten treatment assumes that product formation is irreversible. On the same page, the curve that purports to illustrate Michaelis-Menten kinetics approaches its asymptote too quickly -- another common student error, still encouraged by a depressing number of textbooks. Two pages later we are told that the limit can be "roughly visualised" from the plot of rate against substrate concentration, so presumably the author has been misled by his own drawing, unless by "roughly" he means "very roughly indeed."

Book Description

Originally published anonymously in 1844, Vestiges proved to be as controversial as its author expected. Integrating research in the burgeoning sciences of anthropology, geology, astronomy, biology, economics, and chemistry, it was the first attempt to connect the natural sciences to a history of creation. The author, whose identity was not revealed until 1884, was Robert Chambers, a leading Scottish writer and publisher. Vestiges reached a huge popular audience and was widely read by the social and intellectual elite. It sparked debate about natural law, setting the stage for the controversy over Darwin's Origin. In response to the surrounding debate and criticism, Chambers published Explanations: A Sequel, in which he offered a reasoned defense of his ideas about natural law, castigating what he saw as the narrowness of specialist science.

With a new introduction by James Secord, a bibliography of reviews, and a new index, this volume adds to Vestiges and Explanations Chambers's earliest works on cosmology, an essay on Darwin, and an autobiographical essay, raising important issues about the changing meanings of popular science and religion and the rise of secular ideologies in Western culture.

Customer Reviews:

A true science time travel.......2003-08-12

This is one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. It's a true time travel through pre "Darwin-Wallace" natural history, and even more, since it deals with theories as the Nebular Hypothesis. This was, at his time, an all best-seller, specially if you consider it was a science book and not a novel. Robert Chambers style is exquisite, it certainly was a pleasure reading this book, and as in all books from certain epoch, this one is no exception, you can clearly read between the lines and learn a lot about what victorian society believed and what prejudices did they had. Delightful, but if you don't enjoy classics, please dont' even try this one, this is only for classic lovers.

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings

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Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings
Robert Chambers
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOSLC6

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Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings
Robert Chambers James A. Secord
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOWFRS

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings Â… Edited with a New Introduction by James A. Secord.

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Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings Â… Edited with a New Introduction by James A. Secord.
Robert. CHAMBERS
Manufacturer: University of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VHYXI2

Book Description

One of the key aspects of this volume is to cut across the traditional taxonomy of disciplines in the study of alloys. Hence there has been a deliberate attempt to integrate the different approaches taken towards alloys as a class of materials in different fields, ranging from geology to metallurgical engineering. The emphasis of this book is to highlight commonalities between different fields with respect to how alloys are studied. The topics in this book fall into several themes, which suggest a number of different classification schemes. We have chosen a scheme that classifies the papers in the volume into the categories Microstructural Considerations, Ordering, Kinetics and Diffusion, Magnetic Considerations and Elastic Considerations. The book has juxtaposed apparently disparate approaches to similar physical processes, in the hope of revealing a more dynamic character of the processes under consideration. This monograph will invigorate new kinds of discussion and reveal challenges and new avenues to the description and prediction of properties of materials in the solid state and the conditions that produce them.

Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids (The Language of Science)

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Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids (The Language of Science)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids 2

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Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids 2

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0306464985

Book Description

The triennial International Alloy Conferences (IACs) aim at the identification and promotion of the common elements developed in the study, either experimental, phenomenological, or theoretical and computational, of materials properties across materials types, from metals to minerals. To accomplish this goal, the IACs bring together scientists from a wide spectrum of materials science including experiment, theory, modeling, and computation, incorporating a broad range of materials properties. This volume of proceedings contains the papers presented at IAC-2, that took place in Davos, Switzerland, on August 8-13, 1999.
The papers in the volume were assembled into the following categories: Microstructural Properties: Ordering, Kinetics and Diffusion; Magnetic Properties and Elastic Properties. The editors have juxtaposed apparently disparate approaches to similar physical processes, in the hope of revealing the dynamic character of the processes under consideration. The hope is to invigorate new kinds of discussion and reveal challenges and new avenues to the description and prediction of properties of materials in the solid state and the conditions that produce them.

Complex Inorganic Solids: Structural, Stability, and Magnetic Properties of Alloys

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Complex Inorganic Solids: Structural, Stability, and Magnetic Properties of Alloys
Turchi Patrice E. A.
Manufacturer: Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBTV8E

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Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids.

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IBIE0O

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Properties of Complex Inorganic Solids.
Antonios Gonis
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSYCFC

Amazon.com

Readers who survive the first 20 pages of this dense and playful novel, with its three different openings, constant jokes, and crowded cast of characters, will find themselves rewarded with a leisurely postmodern romp through the student ferment and bodily indulgences of the early 1970s. Although the publisher has called Emotionally Weird a comic novel, it is essentially unclassifiable, both further-reaching and less "meaningful" than it first appears. Kate Atkinson's book begins with chapter 1 of a bad murder mystery being written by Effie Andrews for a creative-writing course at the University of Dundee in 1972. But the action soon shifts to a wintry island in the Hebrides, where Effie is trying to elicit the story of her parentage from her single mother, Nora, while spinning a humorous first-person narrative of her college life. Only near the end of the book does she finally wrench the story from her mother: Effie's bizarre origins; the identity of her father; and the whole unlikely tale of her mother's family.

Like a Borgesian labyrinth, with other stories thrown in, including a laughably convenient introduction of magic realism, it is impossible to know what to take seriously--or "jocoseriously," to paraphrase another of Atkinson's influences: the Joyce of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In her third novel, much of Atkinson's humor is incidental, even parenthetical. (We are told in passing, for example, that Effie's dissertation is called "Henry James: Man or Maze?") She is at her best when introducing her eccentric characters, such as the elderly Professor Cousins, who is sometimes lucid, sometimes not. "As with anyone in the department," Effie explains, "it wasn't always easy to distinguish between the two states. The university's strict laws of tenure dictated that he had to be dead at least three months before he could be removed from behind his desk." Professor Cousins, like the author, enjoys word games along the order of those in Alice in Wonderland, and Atkinson's use of Scottish idiom comes to function as a sort of word game. She also brings in a few killjoys (a militant feminist, a militant Christian, a literary theorist) to complicate an already loopy narrative and to spike the punch.

Janice smelt of piety and coal tar soap. She had recently become a Christian, a neophyte of a student Christian fellowship whose members roamed the corridors of Airlie, Belmont and Chalmers Halls looking for likely converts (the afraid, the alone, the abandoned) and those who needed to use the Bible to fill in the spaces where their personalities should have been.

As Emotionally Weird develops, Atkinson relies more and more on the postmodern gag of characters commenting on the unfolding action. There is no telling how she finally draws these disparate threads onto a single spool, but in the end, even the slightest subplots are neatly tied up and the most transient characters accounted for. --Regina Marler

Book Description

Critical acclaim for Kate Atkinson:

"Startlingly original" (Johanna Stoberock, The Seattle Times)

"Really comic, really tragic, bracingly unsentimental." (The Boston Sunday Globe

"An effervescent, affecting delight." (Rebecca Radner, The San Francisco Examiner Chronicle)

"Atkinson's language is a joy." (Valerie Sayers, Commonweal)

"Full of ambiguities and neat surprises." (Katharine Weber, The New York Times Book Review)

"Vivid and intriguing...fizzes and crackles along." (Penelope Lively, The Independent)

"Luminescent...sure and sophisticated, poetic and darkly comic." (Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe)

On a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear-like who her real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons are as real as the French and the Germans.

But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Why is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog?

In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece.

Customer Reviews:

Charming and Funny.......2007-06-03

I completely enjoyed Emotionally Weird. I think I giggled from start to finish. The major part of the book is a very funny sendup of university life, as applicable now as in the 70s, just replace Klingons with Xbox, or other games. All the professors are skewered as well, and everyone, it seems, is a writer (doesn't it seem that way, though?), except for the vampiric Terri, who proves to have one, and only one, soft spot. Excellent characterizations, by the way, so it's not just a comic novel. The "main" story, which actually occupies only a small part of the novel, of the girl and her mother on the island, is my least favorite part, although it serves to tie things together. I'd have been happy with just the college life parts, and I think the author realized this, as she keeps the rest of the stories to a minimum. Read this and giggle.

A modern Faulkner?.......2007-04-08

This book is rather unconventional. While many others have each chapter be a different story with all the stories usually converging in the end, Ms. Atkinson takes 4+ stories and cuts and pastes them together in each chapter. Around 200 pages I almost quit reading as I was getting frustrated as I couldn't figure out what was real and what was just a story. After finishing the book I'm still not so sure if I know what was real. The obsession about the main charachters parentage is the main theme of this book and I'm pretty sure the conclusions are actually real and not a story the mother and daughter make up. I wish you all the best in reading this. I've never been a great appreciator of modern art and I suppose this is "modern literature."

Weird and funny.......2005-02-27

I had a hard time getting into this book - too many characters introduced all at once and so briefly that I couldn't keep them straight. I'm glad I stuck with it though because about halfway through, I got drawn into the story and the strange and quirkly happenings. Atkinson is a really funny writer and I laughed outloud several times throughout the book. Although I really enjoyed the second half of the book, I was disappointed in the ending - well not the ending itself but the way the last chapter gives you all the answers to everything instead of giving more hints along the way so the reader could figure it out.

Clever but weird.......2004-12-16

This is a REALLY strange book...undoubtedly very clever but strange. A mother and daughter are temporarily trapped by bad weather on a remote island off the Scottish coast and, to fill in the time, decide to tell stories of their lives. At this stage I thought that they were recounting real happenings about real people but, as time went on, I was no longer sure. Some of the characters are just too flaky to be convincing and on face value appear to be the grubbiest people on earth and with such bad diets that it's a wonder that they're not all suffering from scurvy! I also do like to feel an empathy with some of the characters in any book and in this, the only one I liked was a slightly batty old professor at the university where the daughter was half heartedly studying for a degree. I'll try another of M/s Atkinsons' books to see if we're at all on the same wave length...doubtful!

Emotionally Wierd - Kate Atkinson.......2003-08-06

This book was a total load of rubbish. I have started to read it twice but after eventually arriving at page 103, I have had to put the book down as the story does not seem to be going anywhere.

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