Bonds Books

I own several hymnals and several other books about hymn writers. One hymn that is mentioned in this book is "Amazing Grace," and what Mr. Pipes tells the children doesn't line up with any of the other stories I've read, or with how the words to this hymn are credited in **any** of the hymnals I have seen or own. I've seen no indication anywhere that John Newton wrote the verse that begins "When we've been there 10,000 years . . .", and yet Douglas Bond credits Newton with this verse as if it were written to be part of the original poem. It makes me doubt the accuracy of the other, perhaps lesser-known hymns that are discussed in this book.

I read the Mr. Pipes books aloud to my kids when they were little, and though they liked the books at the beginning, they lost interest in the kids before the end of the book. My oldest was required to read one of the Mr. Pipes books again for high school, and she was completely uninterested in the back story of the kids and Mr. Pipes. The back story seems to be written for younger kids while the stories of the hymn writers themselves seem to be geared for an older audience.

We are thoroughly enjoying this book series. We are now reading book #3, 'Mr. Pipes Comes to America'. My children want to be read to every day with this series. It would be nice if a cd was made with each hymn discussed in the books. This way, for the people like ourselves who do not play an instrument, could sing along with them. These books should be read in order. Again, these are excellent!

I had to do a book report on this book. I liked it VERY much. It is so clever, it is never "Children, I will tell you the story of Isaac Watts today"... Read the other two books and Bond's other trilogy the Crown & Covenant series. A must read!!

I received this book as a reading assignment my freshman year of high school. I remember thinking, "What is this? This is a kid's book! I don't want to read this!" Not reading it was not an option however, so I reluctantly read the book. My reluctance soon wore off as I became bewitched by the stories.

Mr. Pipes, a saintly old British organist, meets two American children who are "stuck" in a small, rural British town for the summer. He teaches the children about the love of Christ through stories of hymn writers, including the great Isaac Watts. Throughout the book you learn about hymns, their writers, and music. The characters are intelligent, dynamic, and funny.

This book is good for all ages and is great for family reading. It is especially geared towards ages 11-16, but any age can learn from it and enjoy it.

This book is the first of a trilogy, and I recommend that you also purchase "Mr. Pipes and the Psalms and Hymns of the Reformation" as well as "Mr. Pipes comes to America." Enjoy!

Annie and Drew are "stuck" in Olney, England for the summer. Their mother brought them over, and leaves them pretty much to their selves except on the weekends. Everything in Olney is old, even most of the people, and the children are sure they are in for a boring summer. One of Drew's consolations is his CD player, which is constantly playing. One day they meet Mr. Pipes, so called because he is the church organist, and whom they find to be a great storyteller.

In each chapter, he tells a short and appealing biography of many of the hymn writers from Britain. As he teaches the children to fish or row his boat, the "Toplady", he tells of the childhoods and interesting facts of the hymn writers. Mr. Pipes goes on to recite or sing some of their hymns, and tells why he appreciates them. In Olney, he shows them places in the lives of John Newton and William Cowper, and in the last chapter, they take a trip down the river Ouse to Bedford, and hear of John Bunyan.

The children become interested in Mr. Pipes stories, and an affection grows between them. On one of the excursions with Mr. Pipes, Drew leaves his CD player somewhere, while he was listening to Mr. Pipes deploring modern music and praising these hymns of old. As Annie and Drew hear of God and learn the hymns (which their mother terms "dirges"), they see their sins and their need for God. They begin to desire a relationship with the Lord, and to serve Him in their lives. When they fly back to America, they will miss Olney, Mr. Pipes, and their other new friends, but they take with them their new knowledge and understanding of God.

I enjoyed this book, in which I learned new things about many of the hymn writers. It was very interesting, with just enough story and plot blended into the biographies to keep the reader's interest, even for young children who might be anxious to know what happened next to the children and Mr. Pipes. I think the book (the first in a series of four) would be excellent read aloud to a family, with young children along with more mature ones enjoying the whole journey. At the end of each chapter, the lyrics and music for several of the hymns mentioned are included. This was helpful to me, because I had memorized all the verses included in the hymnbook to several of the hymns, and I was delighted to find more wonderful verses to them.

This is a fascinating story about an Albanian Dictator (the Guide) and his Successor's controversial death. The story has been summarized already in numerous reviews so I'll refrain from that.

What is interesting is to see how well the author has captured the omnipresence of a totalitarian regime's oppression and the lingering threat of "relegation" for those who fail to follow "the Doctrine" of the Party. It is mind control, the rationalization of illogical ideas and/or motives and the destruction of the human being. It is analogous to the fanatical or misguided wing of a religion or corporation or group of people. An illuminating book worth consideration.

While I liked the book, I found it did not thoroughly engage me. Perhaps that is the result of it having been translated into English, through French from Albanian. Did the words capture the intention of the author or were they the technical language of the translator?

Although information on the book jacket of The Successor claims that Albanian author Ismail Kadare is acclaimed worldwide, few English-speaking readers knew of him until he won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Accessibility to his works is also hampered by the fact that for various reasons, the English translations are second hand, passing first through French.

From Kadare's introductory caveat in The Successor (" . . . any resemblance between the characters and circumstances of this tale and real people and events is inevitable") and the first sentence ("The Designated Successor was found dead in his bedroom on December 14"), the reader can quickly deduce that the novel is both historical and political. The simple plot presents the death as a mystery. Was the Successor's death suicide (the party line) or was it murder? It seems as though the Successor chose "to have himself hauled away by two black oxen . . .". Details are sparse, varied, and presented in flashback by potential murders and others. The country is Albania, but the year is not given. Most characters have titles but no names. The exceptions are a truly fictional daughter (the actual Successor had only sons) and another would-be successor Adrian Hasobeu. At this point, the reader who cannot tolerate ambiguity can consult the book jacket or more elaborate resources. Since this is a fictional account, facts might not be that important. The text explains, moreover, that Albania is governed by a Communist dictarorship; parnoid suspicion rather than truth reigns. Truth is not to be found, but the book presents an engaging read by holding out the bait. While the mysterious death of a leader is more prevalent in Communist countries, such deaths also occur in democracies--John F. Kennedy. Documented facts do not reveal the facts about such deaths. The style of this novel suits the subject well. It is a cross between The Trial and Rashomon (other reviewers have made the comparison). Kadare combines Kafka's nightmarish landscapes with subjectivity and folktale elements.

Like the Successor, Ismail Kadare is also hauled around by two oxen, but one is black and one is white. Because he had close but reputedly necessary Communist party connections, Kadare has received some controversial press from Albanians and other informed individuals. Interesting information about Kadare can be found on blogs. In the final analysis, however, he does write well.

This is a book that although fascinating as a mystery, fascinating as a book on Albanian by one of the worlds newest and greatest writers (most of his books have been recently translated also from the French) but the deepest value of the book written by a man who is a brilliant novelist and poet has to do with a global world where all that is solid melts away and truth is defined by dominance and brutality and thus dividing a nation and also confusing individuals and as now after the cold war so much of the world is placed under these conditions..whether in the Balkans, the Middle East or in parts of North and South America this book takes on massive significance....a must read.

Kadare may be the most intriguing and maddening writer to emerge from the other side of the Wall - or, more accurately, from one of the wall's more peculiar chinks. He can write clumsily, as he proved in Three Elegies for Kosovo, and The Successor lacks the lyric grace of the literary heavyweights Kadare upset in winning the International Man Booker Prize (unless the problem is with the two rounds of translation from Albanian to French to English), but Kadare concisely captures the mood of glasnost - a short hand term for the disappearnce of central authority, replaced by deep ideological uncertainty.
The chestnut of a murder mystery is really a parlor game played by the aging, increasingly paranoid Enver Hoxha (renamed Number 1 in The Successor), while the human tragedies caused by Communism's labyrinthine party politics (the successor's daughter is unable to marry, the architect of the successor's house is guilt-ridden over the secret passageway he constructed between the houses of #1 and the successor) only presage the book's disquieting ending. In the Successor's fragmentary recollections through a medium we glimpse a reversion to a primitive future that may be just as bad as totalitarianism, likewise dominated by the basic human - and inhumane - drive to power.

This novel is based on actual events: the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha ("the Guide" in this book) denounced his long-standing premier and presumed heir, Mehmet Shehu ("the Successor"), who then was said to have shot himself. Whether he was murdered or committed suicide is the question at the centre of this book, and Kadare offers an ingenious answer in the last chapter. The whole book is suffused with the fear and paranoia prevailing in a country ruled by suspicious and devious tyrant: the terror felt by those near to him and by their families; the sycophantic rivalry for his favour; the dread felt by people like doctors or architects asked to work for someone in the government in case their work is dangerously caught up in some unpredictable political manoeuvre; the cautious and nervous gossip of the population; the attempt of foreign governments to make sense of what was happening in that hermetically sealed country.

Kadare has been fortunate in his translators. Most of his books have been translated from the Albanian into French and then from the French into English - in this case by David Bellos. This is the eighth novel of Kadare's that I have read and between them there have been at least seven translators - but they all capture Kadare's unmistakeable clean and simple style.

This is a really good book. It was pretty funny because they do some weird stuff. Plus there are some awkward characters. This book can get pretty boring, but there is a huge twist in the book. I can relate to the characters and the stuff they do.
I do recommend this book. I'm not a big book reader, but I actually read this book. So if I liked it anyone else who reads it I bet will like it, too. It's cool that the two kids, Edgar and Ellen, know how to play lots of funny pranks and know how to take care of themselves. It's exciting to see what they're going to next. I highly recommend you read this book!

Has anything weird ever happened to you? Well, in Nod's Limbs weird things happen all the time because of the twins named Edgar and Ellen. The title of this book is Edgar and Ellen Tourist Trap, the genre is fiction and the author is Charles Ogden.
This book is about twins that live in a mansion alone because their parents left them there. The twins are pranksters and have a graveyard/dump next to their house that they call Gadget Graveyard because they get most of their things they use for pranks there. The mayor wants to destroy Gadget Graveyard to create a hotel. To do so he must invite celebrates and famous news reporters to Nod's Limbs to give them a tour of the town so that they will give their town a good review and tourist will come. When Edgar and Ellen find out Gadget Graveyard is in trouble they become the tour guides and then very terrible and gross things happen.
The twins are some very interesting characters. The twins always are causing trouble and confusion. I like the twins because of all the things they do like when they let Berenice their Venus fly trap bite there feet and when Edgar throws crab apples at the celebrates.
I like this book because it is very funny. I like when the celebrates ate the sandwiches that were filled with bugs and Edgar said "Compliments of Berenice's lunch pail." I think it was also funny when the twins said "Oh they rather like the escapees." I thought that was hilarious. At times this book is boring but then a surprise comes right around the corner. I am very pleased with this book.

I first became interested in Edgar and Ellen after clicking a link to their site- I had first heard of them only by the minicartoons that I saw on TV. Anyway, this was the first E&E book I read because I couldn't find Rare Beasts at the store. Well, let me say first of all, if you are a down to earth, no-nonsense, everything must be real type preson, you might find these stories to be a bit childish. But, if you can hack through the disgusting mental shell that people force so carelessly over the minds of people, you can truly enjoy this story. I found myself cheering for the anti-heros even as they pranked their own town, and despising anyone who got in their way.
The storyline is like this:
-The twins find a plot that the mayor wants to take their junk yard and make it into a hotel, but they love the junkyard and the carnivorous plant in it.
-They decide to find all the high-class tourists and take them on a town tour that makes Nod's Limbs look horrible.
-I won't tell you if they succeed.
It only took a few hours to read the whole book, but I really enjoyed it, especially the twin's pet furball- Pet- and their creepy, mysterious caretaker. Four stars because I found some of the events just a bit too... they were farther out than the rest of the story. Still, it was a great book.

It is a great book, funny, hilarious, and great for kids. Very imaginative. I loved reading it.

In this second addition of the edgar & ellen series the book starts out with how the delightful little town of Nod's Limbs had been erected. Then it talks about edgar and ellen, two mischievious twelve-year-old twins, who live in a tall mansion next to the gadget graveyard, a graveyard and junkyard combined.
But the pompous mayor has plans to change the twins' gadget graveyard into a hotel! He also arranged VIPs to visit and make Nod's Limbs a tourist atraction.
So Edgar and Ellen act as tour guides but instead bring the VIPs on a tour of insanity that will make tourists stay away forever!

I liked the story of this book better than the first. Also, in this book it gave me a very good discription of the picturesque town of Nod's Limbs and all of the goody-goody residents. Charles Ogden writes very interesting Lemony Snicket-oriented stories, except with the children being the predators. Rick Carton also makes great drawings that are dark and somwhat like the addams family.
Another thing a liked better about this book aside from the first was that edgar and ellen succeeded in their evil plot.

This book is chock full of wonderful suggestions for time away for bonding with your best girlfriends. When I bought the book, I found that I had already covered about fifteen of the trips with one friend or another, so I can attest to the suggestions' being right on the mark. It's given me some great ideas for future getaways. Marybeth Bond knows what things are important to a group of women who want to eat, drink, tour, shop, and enjoy new and exciting (but safe) places -- and know that these things are often best experienced in the company of your good friends. She also recognizes that sometimes you want to embrace nature, sometimes you want retail therapy, and other times you want to just relax and be pampered. She has suggestions, well researched (she must have had a lot of fun researching this book!), for every preference. Highly recommended!

The book is well written, and organized to help make travel planning easy. Haven't traveled yet to rate the experience, but loaded with great ideas!

I bought this for my mom and she's found some really great things to do with her gal pals in it...I think I'll borrow it eventually.

This is an interesting and informative book. If you need a girlfriend's getaway, you are sure to find the perfect place. I especially like the breakdown of places to go, see, visit, eat, etc. You won't be disappointed in this purchase.

As a former resident of San Diego, I can name the two most touristy, and therefore useless, shopping venues in the city. And yet, these are the exact two places the author lists in the "shopping" category of the San Diego section. These are places that the tourist buses unload, food prices are jacked up, and the stores hold the same useless "made in China" knicknacks that you can get anywhere in America. Had the author done some research, she would have steered you to Cedros Design District in Solana Beach, home of SOLO and Zinc Cafe, or at least, for those looking for more traditional shopping, to Fashion Valley. When I go to another city to go shopping, I'm looking for something a little different, something I can't find just anywhere. This particular listing in the book makes me doubt the usefulness of the rest of it!

BEHIND THE RED DOORS links three extraordinary shops that market scent, jewels and lingerie. Through these doors wishes come true. These searing tales should not be reserved just for Valentine's Day. Indeed, readers who enjoy anthologies with a united theme and story line will absolutely treasure BEHIND THE RED DOORS.

Door #1 - "Heaven Scent" by Vicki Lewis Thompson
In an innovative marketing ploy, customers uncomfortable browsing have the option to use computer kiosks to order their favored items and pick them up on their way out the door. To ascertain men's preferences and offer suggestions to shoppers, Jamie Ruskin asks long time friend and secret crush Dev Sherman to fill out a questionnaire. Certain his sister is somehow involved, Dev gives opposite answers, never suspecting that Jamie will use his own answers against him. The result is a sizzling, yet playful romp that combines erotic fantasy and aromatherapy in a sent-sational combination.

Door #2 - "Diamond Mine" by Stephanie Bond
Valentine's Day went desperately wrong between Faith Sherman and Carter Grayson when she expected more than just a friendly dinner. When a diamond on loan requires increased security, Carter reenters her life. Only this time he claims a fiancé and soon Faith finds herself recommending diamonds for someone else. Bond's characteristic flair for combining romance and humor truly sparkles.

Door #3 - "Sheer Delights" by Leslie Kelly
Conned into a photography session by her cousin, schoolteacher Meg O'Roarke becomes an inadvertent sexy model for lingerie. Her gasp of shock when she sees her body plastered on the store's kiosk screen brings an unexpected rescuer. But Joe Santori will be hard pressed to explain that the lingerie hanging in his closet was for her-a fantasy woman he had not even met. Kelly's dynamic storytelling ability truly results in an unexpectedly sheer delight.

So the three stories here are all linked- 3 gals- one store as the central thing that ties the stories together.
1- Vicki Lewis Thompson's tale is pure sex, wit, comedy and fun!
2- Stephanie Bond- some danger, crossed wires, a hero who needs to grow up and quit being a guy and more of a man to get the woman. This one is not your typical guy meets girl again story- much meatier than I expected from a short novella.
3- Leslie Kelly- bashfully buxom nice girl is the star of men's fantasies at a naughty lingerie shop! And the guy she meets is one of her biggest fans.... sensitive handling of how being built like Dolly Parton when you are not a country western singer is handled well.

There should be a follow up to this book! Plenty of characters introduced here could be expanded on for more.

For more reads - I recommend the Vicki Lewis Thompson Blaze titles and Nerd in Shining Armor.
I love the Stephanie Bond Harlequin Temptation and Harlequin Love & Laughter titles- esp WIFE is a 4 Letter Word.
Leslie Kelly is improving- her more recent offerings are better than her earlier ones.

BERFORE i start the first story really really did it for me...
If you enjoy a fun, sassy read with three great heroines and three even hotter heroes, than this is the book for you. The stories all tie together nicely, yet easily stand alone.

...Ms. Blake but I've got to disagree. While I enjoyed the first two stories (especially Ms. Thompson's) Leslie Kelly's was by far the best. I recently discovered her and have since snapped up her backlist which I found to be wonderful. These three writers wrote an online continuation of the Red Doors story on eharlequin and Ms. Kelly's was again my favorite. I love her humor and her skill with character and dialogue. She is definitely a writer to watch.

Behind The Red Doors, has something for every romance lover. I enjoyed all the stories. The characters, dialogue, and plots in all of them are both steamy and entertaining, and will satisfy even the most die-hard romantic!

John Savoy
Savoy International
Motion Picture Inc.
Beverly Hills, California

I enjoyed this book very much. I love Mrs. Whiteside's writing style and the imagery she creates! A good read.

Anyone know of any hot romance books where vampires turn into bats? I've always been a werewolf-type person with paranormal books. I just love the part where man(or woman) becomes beast. So, any paranormal romance books that have a vampire character(s) that transforms into a large bat?

I liked this book, but, I liked the first one better. However, I will be reading the next in the series. I am hooked.

After reading all of this author's books, I thought I had a better handle on her style of prose. This one caught me by surprise. Typical in this series is the mish-mash of languages--French. Spanish, Imaginary--and the heaviness of the writing. I believe there is aspiration towards literary fiction because the prose is intense, thickly written and nothing you can causally read through. That said, doggone it, I liked her characters and the detail she builds into them. Although sometimes I wanted to smack the book against the wall for ponderous writing--check out the first seduction scene and the e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y it takes for the knickers to scoot. That's not sexy--that's tedious. But I kept with it because I liked the characters, each very well defined and with a story of their own waiting to be told. This author remains an auto-buy for me, but I do it with heavy sighs knowing it's going to be a loooong read.

During the French Revolution, Jean-Marie St. Just met Helene d'Agelet in Paris. They fell in love, but were fated to separate as he was turning into a vampire and she was a mortal. However, he remained unaware that after he left her she was changed over too. Over the next two centuries fate seemed to intervene keeping them apart.

In the present, Helene is stunned to see a photo of her beloved Jean-Marie that indicates he is alive. She searches for him so that they can finally share eternity together. However, they still have issues between them as Jean-Marie has been assigned the task of killing the wicked vampire Queen of New Orleans Hélène's sister, Madame Celeste.

Although much of the story occurs before the first tale (see BOND OF BLOOD) the second of Diane Whiteside modern vampire trilogy is an exciting horror thriller. Readers obtain a bit of the history that led to the vampire kingdoms that carve up much of modern day America. Interestingly the lead couple spends much of the two hundred plus years (and most of the book) separated to the chagrin of romantic fantasy purists; yet the look through time strengthens the final showdown making BOND OF FIRE an entertaining read.

Harriet Klausner

Hanif explores the underworld created by an arbitrary dictatorship and the evil created in America's zeal to bring down the Soviet Union through surrogates in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The story of an Air Force cadet, his roommate and their plots against Zia, framed by the dictator's actual death in a plane crash, is particularly compelling. But ultimately we want to find out more about the cadet and less about Zia. Zia's scheming cohorts, however, are quite funny.

Absolutely hilarious book that had me laughing out loud. A very fast and very fun read. Highly recommended.

Great fun. Funny and fearless and totally grounded in the wild and wonderful world of military-ruled Pakistan. The image of General Akhtar and General Zia as two dogs on a glacier is pure magic. The scene in which someone is shot on the well watered lawns of the Lahore fort hits you like a real bullet. The caricature of Brigadier TM is a tad too sympathetic(maybe even the cynical author was taken in by the heroic image of the late lamented paratrooper, or he decided to go easy on at least one of the military characters?). And the last chapter tends to drag; logic and character-continuity break down as Hanif struggles to bring his assassination threads together, but still a must-read...especially for anyone with memories of the Pakistani armed forces academies and their graduates..and the reverse selection that brings the least talented of them to the top.

This started out as a very amusing and unusual narrative, and I enjoyed it for about one third of the way into it.

It then deteriorated into a long, boring and depressing litany of torture, childish intrigue and improbable plots.

It did continue to be somewhat amusing now and then, and a sad commentary on the politics of Pakistan, but was too much for me. I made it about half way through and then reluctantly closed it and did not finish.

Hanif is a very good writer, but desperately needs a good editor who will wield a blue pencil with vigor, and teach the author how to tighten up the verbiage.

This debut novel by Mohammed Hanif is witty, humorous and entertaining. What is astonishing about this novel is that many of its characters are real; a few of its important characters were alive until a decade ago, but have since departed. Also, many of the incidents and events narrated in this novel actually happened, and so those are based on fact; but the author has chosen to interpret these actions and events with humor, and painted them with unabashed sarcasm, and colored them with prodigious wit, and thereby he has transformed the grave incidents into very funny vignettes.

At the center of the novel is the death of Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who was president of Pakistan from 1978 to 1988. On August 17, 1988, a C-130 Hercules plane carrying Zia ul-Haq crashes. On board were several Pakistani army generals, Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan, and all of them perish. They were returning to Islamabad from Punjab, where they had been to witness a tank demonstration. A few crates of ripe mangoes were loaded onto the plane before take off. Did one of the crates contain a canister of poison gas? The author wonders.

The main narrator of the novel is Ali Shigri, an Air Force Junior Officer, in the Pakistani Military. Ali Shigri's father, Col. Quili Shigri, has committed suicide, but Ali is convinced that his father did not commit suicide, and that he was actually murdered by General Zia. And so quite determined to kill the general, Ali hatches an elaborate plan to carry it.

In a very funny vignette, a lanky, bearded young man named OBL from Saudi Arabia attends a Fourth of July party given by Arnold Raphel in Islamabad. (He was invited to the party by the Americans!) OBL works for "Laden and Co. Constructions." Among the invited guests is the local C.I.A. chief, who tells Osama, "Nice meeting you, OBL. Good work, keep it up."

There is also an astonishing vignette about Zainab, a blind woman who is convicted of the crime of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, even though the adultery occurred when she was gang-raped. (I have read a similar incident in another Islamic country. There was international protest when the woman who was raped was sentenced to death by stoning.)

Mohammed Hanif's prose is spare but lucid. Even though it lacks the grandeur and splendor of Yann Martel's or Salman Rushdie's prose, it is spontaneous and highly readable:

"Anybody who breaks down at the sheer volume of this should stay in his little village and tend his father's goats or should study biology and become a doctor, and then they can have all the bloody peace and quiet they want. Because as a soldier, noise is the first thing you learn to defend yourself against, and as an officer, noise is the first weapon of attack you learn to use."

Because the author worked for the Pakistani Air Force for several years, his descriptions of army life and how Pakistan's army officers behave sound realistic and authentic.

This magnificent novel is born of an enormously talented writer. I understand that he is already working on his second novel. Reading "A Case of Exploding Mangoes" was a great joy.

There are much better choices for learning about investing in bonds. Reasonable explanations of the concepts that are covered, but some important concepts aren't included, and, ultimately, there is not enough advice contained to act upon. Disappointing.
Data is old (e.g., federal tax rates from 2003).
No information on bond ladders (how they work, how to build one).
Sections on treasuries and inflation risk contain no information on, nor references to inflation protected bonds (TIPS).

This book is written in clear, understandable English and no technical jargon. Where terms need definition or explanation, they're kept simple and concise. Where appropriate, simple examples are given.

If you want to have a better understanding of bonds, the bond market and how the bond market works, this is the book!

A good overview of bonds. I have been dabbling in stocks for several years but avoided bonds because I really didn't understand them. This book provides a concise and easy-to-understand description of bond investments. Even better, it is one of the least expensive books available.

I found this book an easy read and quite informative for someone who is not well versed in bonds. I had often considered bonds to be a part of my portfolio but I didn't know enough about them to make an intelligent decision. This book helped me decide how best to purchase bonds (mutual funds, closed-end investment companies, individual bonds) and what things to consider. I highly recommend the book for someone thinking about adding bonds to their investment portfolio

I have read a few books in the David Scott's Guides series and find them to be very well written, with understandable terminology and examples. He's a very good teacher and doesn't assume you know all the jargon of investing. In this book he builds a solid foundation for what the various kinds of bonds are, why they are issued, how to value them, etc. All your questions are answered clearly and he includes several Web sites to visit to get more information. Buy it, keep it handy, and enjoy the overlooked (by me, anyway) world of investing in bonds.

In the 1970s Harold Bloom focused on poetic misprision. This is the intentional or unconscious misunderstanding of a master, poetic or philosophical, who has occupied so much ground that s/he must be distorted in order to create a space for the follower. This distortion, named in the most basic form (after Lucretius) clinamen -- the swerve -- misrepresents the parent text, allowing the subsequent to proclaim a mastery over the parodic picture presented as the original. While Badiou is very important, smart, and interesting in his own right, this re-packaging of Deleuze is a projection of his own program's need for "Lebensraum." While Badiou does not give us Deleuze's own letters to him (perhaps out of "respect"?), he usually quotes D out of context and by leaping from work to work to create a pastiche of the Deleuze he wishes to construct. Even the bit used for his title -- the clamor of being - is only part of the sentence without its modification and ripped from a two page paragraph. All this is interesting but not high fidelity: read it like an Oedipal assault or like Griswold's treatment of Poe. However, I do not think it is a fair, accurate, or even valid treatment of Deleuze.

I wish to concur with the first reviewer on the intelligence and importance of this volume.

I also wish to suggest that there is a downside to it, namely that Badiou vastly underestimates the work Deleuze did with Guattari, and seems to underestimate the importance of this work for Deleuze himself. Insofar as there is a classical philosophical side to Gilles, there is also a thoroughly anarchistic, antiphilosophical, schitzophrenic side, which must not be underestimated, and which often leads him to talk about things he does not totally grasp. This side to Deleuze is underplayed by Badiou who largely attempts to sanitize Deleuze, to rehabilitate him into the core of continental philosophy and disregard, to a certain extent, that Deleuze himself would

Badiou's attempt is not misguided; on the contrary, it is largely correct. Deleuze occasionally becomes the most analytical French thinker of his generation (see his Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example), writing only too clearly and consistently. Badiou reads this way of thinking correctly, understanding it as indicative of Deleuze's relationship to his intellectual genealogy and environment.

Nonetheless, Badiou's attempt is insufficient and incomplete. So, unless you are trying to fit Deleuze into the straightjacket of the more classical philosophical tradition (as opposed to, perhaps, a more postmodern one), you should be advised against considering it your only guide to his work. On the other hand, if you are trying to erase any connections between Deleuze and his "predecessors," and insist on his "wacky" side as "cool," be advised to return to this book again and again, as well as to return to the traditions he emerged from, an emergence to which this is a fairly good guide.

In any case, read this book. You'll learn a lot. And you'll fight with it a lot, only to come out much improved, and not only insofar as reading Deleuze is concerned.

To begin, i should note that prior to reading Badiou's book, much of Deleuze's earlier work had remained mysterious to myself. Thus, i am not in much of a position to offer any real challenge to Badiou's interpretation of "Difference and Repetition" and "The Logic of Sense." Regardless, if nothing else, the interpretation that Badiou gives is clearly presented. Although this sounds trivial, the clarity in this book is appreciated in a genre where clarity if usually disregarded, and unfortunately, often for mere stylistic (and not philosophical) reasons. Thus, because of this "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being," although dealing with difficult topics, can be understood by anybody with some knowledge of Deleuze, even if this knowledge is not extensive.

The clarity of the presentation, however, almost seems too obvious. That is, the way in which Badiou describes Deleuze's "philosophy of the One," and the quotes that he extracts to demonstrate this claim, make this thesis to be obvious to anybody who has read Deleuze. However, clearly this is not the case, as Badiou himself recognizes that this book should shock those who take pride in Deleuze's "schizophrenic" aspect. Thus, merely taking Badiou's interpretation of Deleuze, and the fact that so many thinkers have overlooked what he presents as information that should be clear to any reader, this gives me the uneasy feeling that he, and not these other thinkers, has missed something fundamental in Deleuze's thought. This, of course, necessitates a re-reading of Deleuze's own work, something that "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being" necessitates, i believe, for anybody who overlooked the first time around what Badiou reveals as self-evident to any acute reader.

As a previous reviewer pointed out, Badiou gives little interest to Deleuze's work with Guattari. However, although there definitely is a schizophrenic aspect to this work (especially in "A Thousand Plateaus"), it seems as if the fundamental concept of the Body Without Organs corresponds in most, if not all, ways to the concept of the virtual/ the One. Badiou does occasionally use ideas expressed in Deleuze's work with Guattari, especially "What is Philosophy" concerning the status of philosophy, however, he fails to cite these sources.

Additionally, it seems to me as if the interpretation that Badiou gives to Deleuze's work indicates more of a pantheistic vision that one that indicates transcendence. Of course, there is a bit of irony to write that Deleuze has "transposed transcendence beneath the simulacra of the world, in some sort of symmetrical relation to the `beyond' of classical transcendence," but regardless of the irony, the very idea of Being as univocal and as One chimes much more with eastern worldviews than western Platonic and Christian ideas of transcendence. This especially seems to be the case when we consider Deleuze's work with Guattari in which all strata (that is, all different properties of the world that surrounds us) are merely "coagulations, slowing-downs on the Body without Organs."

Finally, even if Deleuze's ontology indicates "heirarchical thought," this doesn't mean that Deleuze's task, therefore, is to "submit thought to a renewed concept of the One." In fact, it seems to me as if there is a crucial distinction in his work with Guattari between "methodological" claims and ontological claims. Rather than encouraging us to employ reductionist schemas in our analyses of any given system, the very title "a thousand plateas" indicates that we need to take into account as many different aspects at work as possible-- biological, economical, polotical, geological, etc. (this distinction between a methodology of multiple aspects of reality and an ontological expressing only One fundamental reality is continued in Manual Delanda's appropriation of Deleuze and Guattari's thought in "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.")

Despite these further considerations that would have been made necessicary had Badiou taken into account Deleuze's work with Guattari, "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being" provides a tremendously useful, and strikingly clear, interpretation of Deleuze's independent work to the point that it necessitates a re-reading of this work.

I urge anyone interested in Deleuze to read this book, which is a interesting critical assessment of G.D.'s thought. Deleuze would be flattered and irritated to see his work read as he has read other thinkers. Badiou transforms Deleuze's work into that which it was not, while ever maintaining the singularity of Badiou's own project. Suggestive but polemical Alain Badiou struggles to step from out of the shadow of his only true precusor -- he admits as much in the introduction. In a move that should make Harold Bloom proud, Badiou produces a "strong misprison" of Deleuze's work, casting him in the ranks of a crypto-theo-philosopher. Taking a great many cues from Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn" by Dominique Janicaud, who compared Badiou's L'etre et l'evenement to Being and Time, Badiou is more interested in reducing Deleuze and his work to a form ascesis. A reduction that shifts the points of engagement between Badiou and his most formidable precusor away from mathematics and the idea of the multiple to nothing more -- and little else -- than a kindly father confessor is a strategic move that may render "his" Anti-Oedipus blind and pious, but defies the logic of sense.

Postmodernism. What are we supposed to make of the stuff? It's all written in a stream of consciousness style by obsessive compulsives. And most of their arguments are circular and utterly unconcerned with facts. Well, here's the best start. Badiou explains everything Deleuze wrote on his own simply and coherently, which many of Deleuze's disciples do not. And best of all, he doesn't do it in a superior, combative tone. He even explains why Deleuze's disciples are all so combative and superior. (Something to do with cynicism on Deleuze's part.)

Though I will say, if you're a science studies type and you're rigorous in your thought, you'd best do to steer clear of this book. Because your rigor usually comes from willfull blindess.

Caveat to any scientific types: Badiou is an unabashed vitalist. I don't know what his defense here is. The way they usually defend themselves sounds a lot like that line "If I have a choice between the state and my friend, I hope I have the good sense to choose my friend." That is, he appeals to raw uninterpretable first-person experience over third person points of view. With the fact that the Flynn effect remains unexplained and preformationism has turned out right (all life is, literally, is just the result of folds in DNA), this may not be such a bad thing.

Now for fun, once you've read this book, you can read Derrida's Postcard and see why it's one of the most compulsively amusing books ever written. (The difference between Deleuze and Derrida? Derrida is flat-out hilarious and provides the raw uninterpretable experience that he describes.)

Mabel Maney is a great writer, full of exuberance and wit. So many books these days are so glum, it's a pleasure to enter Maney's world and see the colors and sights jump off the page. I will definitely read any other books she has coming out!

Mabel Maney, yeah, YOU! Keep writing PLEASE! And do a tv show or a cartoon or something! Or how about a video game, breakfast cereal, or a school snack? This is just another marvelous Mabel Maney masterpiece! Mabel Maney wrote the book on inside jokes in queer fiction. Please bring Midge and Velma back in another Nancy book and lots more Jane! Thanks for the fun!

If God is in the details, Mabel Maney is surely going to heaven in a diamond-studded dog collar! The research it must have taken her to get this parody oh-so-right boggles the mind. I no longer wish I were around in the sixties to see Vegas in its heyday because Maney has recreated the scene(s) to such hilarious perfection and detail that I don't need to taste the fondue to know it was disgusting.
As for Maney, all her books are a fun romp filled with joy, silliness, and chutzpah, and Girl With The Golden Bouffant is another notch in her lipstick case.

I am a huge Mabel Maney fan, but I was disappointed in this book. There's no light hearted romance in this book--just endless inventories of horrible 1950s pop culture items, and tiresome characters beating each other up. Jane spends the entire book in drag with a glued-on unibrow. Way too much of the book is about Cedric and his unappealing love interest. I kept waiting to be entertained and charmed, as I inevitably am by Maney, and instead I felt just slightly ill. Read the Nancy Clue books or the original Jane Bond parody, but borrow this one from someone who will take it back.

Mabel Maney is in cahoots with her reader and trusts them to get the jokes, and this James Bond parody abounds with them. She's a hugely intelligent writer, but don't let that stop you. There's a gem lurking in every sentence--her writing bears close inspection. Maney's sly social commentary sneaks up on you, and her own sense of laughter is infectious. Wonderful foolishness combined with a keenly observed sense of the world we live in.