Holden Reviews

This book starts out with an implausible premise and only gets more ridiculous as it goes on. The whole "communicating by letter" routine gets old very quickly. Christine Holden is a psuedonym for two authors writing as one. In this case, two heads are NOT better than one. Pass this one by, even if you're a die-hard Regency fan.

Okay, okay, I was suckered in by the attractive cover...I was convinced this would be a "good read." Was I wrong! The writing was pedestrian and the plot was implausible! As I read, I thought "I teach high school students who can write better than this!" The protagonist's goal to go to med school was never believable and characterization was weak. I do not recommend this book...read regencies by Joan Wolf, Mary Balogh, Elizabeth Thornton if you want to read about characters you can care about.

I must admit, I was hooked on this book from the first page. The beautiful Lady Arielle Stanford has a dream. Her dream is to become a licensed physician in a time where there were no female physicians. Then Lady Arielle hears about Lord Braxton and that he is well known for helping people make their dreams come true. So starts the correspondence between Arielle and Hunter, as well as the romance. Lord Braxton promises to help Lady Arielle achieve her dream. He even goes so far as to set up an interview for her with a college, even though he does not approve. When Arielle is turned down for admittance to the college, she becomes very discouraged, but still does not want to let go of her dream. Then Arielle's father blackmails Hunter into marrying Arielle. At this point, she simply postpones her dream, while helping to fix-up Hunter's home. Then, she comes across some love letters in the attic and the fun really begins.
I really enjoyed this book, it was filled with all kinds of subplots, which added to it. I could only wish to receive the type of letters Arielle runs across.

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."