Plants of the East Bay Parks

Book Description

Each book in the for Less guidebook series contains up-to-date information on events, attractions, hotels, and restaurants; a foldout street map; and a unique discount card that offers savings of 20 percent-70 percent at the city's best places. Unlike other guidebooks for the money-conscious traveler, this series does not limit its coverage to inexpensive places, but rather details all the popular places in every price range-from pizzerias to trendy Italian restaurants and from budget motels to posh hotels.

Customer Reviews:

Carried it every day.......2000-05-10

I used London for Less in conjucnction with the Eyewitness London guide which had more up to date prices. I definitely saved with the discount card and vouchers included in London for Less. The map included in the book was a very good one for central London.

Definitely buy this book and save money.......2000-03-15

This book works a bit differently from other guidebooks in that it includes a card for discounts at a number of restaurants, tourist attractions, shops, etc. While not everything covered in the guidebook participates in the discount program, there are a fair number of places that do. We saved A LOT of money on the discounts offered in this book. I highly recommend purchasing it if you are going to London. However, the actual guide itself doesn't have as much information as some of the other guidebooks, so I would buy another guide (i.e. Frommers, Fodor's, Lets Go, etc) to use in conjunction with this one.

A book which pays for itself can't fail you.......1999-12-02

I bought "London for Less" after I had spend about $6 on a London Streetwise Map. I discovered a map in a back flap of the book which would have been fine for my needs. Then I used the book a LOT for very specific info about getting to and from different London airports. It also had details of all the flea markets as well as the usual store, restaurant and sightseeing suggestions. The 90 minute city tour for 2 saved us money over the cost of the book and was a good tour. The coupons weren't to the biggest places but by that time, who cared? Now I'm hunting for "Paris for Less". DONT BUY THE COMPACT VERSION. Buy the one with the little "credit card" icon on the front. It is a picture of an actual green plastic card you can use for discounts.

Average customer rating:

Compact Guide Disappointing

London for less - Compact Guide
Metropolis
Manufacturer: Metropolis Pub.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1901811751

Book Description

Covers a popular European or North American destination and contains coupons that enable visitors to obtain big discounts at the top attractions and museums in each city. These discounts - usually 50% or 2-for-1 deals - ensure that each book can pay for itself in one day. A fold-out map, which includes a vicinity map and a detailed street index and links to the 100 pinpoint maps in each guide, makes getting around easy.

Customer Reviews:

Compact Guide Disappointing.......1999-07-27

After reading reviews of the London for Less earlier editions I looked forward to taking this "compact" guide with our family on our trip. The maps included with each book (we purchased the one for Paris too!) were good. However the coupon selection was fairly minimal and usually limited to one user. Many of the coupons were hardly for what one would call "the top attractions" in London. IF you are going to use the London for Less book do not buy the "compact" guide.

London for Less (For Less Compact Guides)

Average customer rating:

London for Less (For Less Compact Guides)

Manufacturer: Metropolis International (UK) Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

London for Less Compact Guide

Manufacturer: Metropolis International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1842490141

Book Description

Filled with a wealth of information on the must-see sites in London, this guide also provides travelers with the chance to save a lot of money during their stay, with a unique discount card that entitles visitors to 20 percent discounts at top attractions. These big discounts-usually 50 percent off or 2-for-1 deals-ensure that the book pays for itself in one day. Written by experts, this guide provides up-to-date information about attractions, history, museums, restaurants, nightlife, shops, annual events, and tourist activities. Included are a foldout map, which includes a vicinity map, a detailed street index, and a subway map, making getting around a breeze.

Amazon.com

At age 28 Emma Donoghue is already a marvel. The author of two critically acclaimed novels, a fascinating work of lesbian history, and a series of successful stage plays, Donoghue can apparently do anything. With Kissing the Witch, a collection of revisionist fairy tales, she has proven once again that she is a great writer. In these 13 interconnected tales she finds new meanings in old stories: Cinderella runs off with her fairy godmother, Snow White's awakening is more erotic than romantic, and Rapunzel discovers that her freedom, although not her salvation, is in her hair. Donoghue writes about women, some lesbians and some not, and makes them the center of her fantastical world. The bold, daring boys of the Grimm tales are not here, but in their place are vibrant, knowing, and brave women and girls who are finding out what the world holds for them.

Book Description

Thirteen tales are unspun from the deeply familiar, and woven anew into a collection of fairy tales that wind back through time. Acclaimed Irish author Emma Donoghue reveals heroines young and old in unexpected alliances--sometimes treacherous, sometimes erotic, but always courageous. Told with luminous voices that shimmer with sensuality and truth, these age-old characters shed their antiquated cloaks to travel a seductive new landscape, radiantly transformed.Cinderella forsakes the handsome prince and runs off with the fairy godmother; Beauty discovers the Beast behind the mask is not so very different from the face she sees in the mirror; Snow White is awakened from slumber by the bittersweet fruit of an unnamed desire. Acclaimed writer Emma Donoghue spins new tales out of old in a magical web of thirteen interconnected stories about power and transformation and choosing one's own path in the world. In these fairy tales, women young and old tell their own stories of love and hate, honor and revenge, passion and deception. Using the intricate patterns and oral rhythms of traditional fairy tales, Emma Donoghue wraps age-old characters in a dazzling new skin.

2000 List of Popular Paperbacks for YA

Customer Reviews:

What a gem!.......2006-12-04

I love different takes on familiar stories, and am esp enchanted by changes in fairy tales. Of all of the stories I've read, I think this collection is the finest. For one thing, Donoghue's writing style is the same with short stories as it is with her novels - readable storytelling with compelling characters. In this set of stories, she takes fairytales and has one charcter from each form the start of the next story. Some of the tales twist and spin like so much twine, and sometimes you wonder where the knots will come in - but they don't. Her stories are seamless, and don't miss a beat from one to another. And the characters she writes are so much more interesting then the ones in real fairy tales! The only quibble I have is that I wish it was longer, but thats the style of her writing - she is sparse, saying what needs to be said. And in fairytales, thats all you really need.

For readers who love fairy tale re-tellings.......2006-09-07

This is a wonderfully imaginative re-telling of mostly familiar fairy tales each of which are linked to the next. Each tale tells of the liberation of its female character. It will especially appeal to women who read the traditional tales as girls and long for new endings. Emma Donoghue is a talented, witty and entertaining writer. I hope she does more of this kind of thing!

Intriguing, but I admit to reservations.......2006-04-14

Virtually all the other reviewers have commented on the books wonderful and novel takes on these stories. And they are actually, quite interesting. And there are some amusing references to recent popular retellings of the tales -- the witch in the version of the Little Mermaid is rumored to be "an octopus below the waist." Sound familiar?

But I have to admit to some problems. One of them might be my own unfamiliarity with some of the stories -- I can't figure out, exactly, what fairy tale "The Tale of the Bird" is supposed to be, for example. Also, while the linkage of the stories is interesting, some of them defy easy understanding; I find myself wondering how, exactly, Rapunzel became the horse in the story of the Goose Girl, to say nothing of how the Little Mermaid turns into a version of the bad fairy in Sleeping Beauty. Which in and of itself begs the question, in a collection of stories that includes a talking horse's skull, why does the author feel the need to demystify the Little Mermaid into a fisherman's daughter?

And ultimately, I feel like I've read half a book. The nested structure only takes us to the point where one of the characters asks another for her story, without explaining what then happened to the first character to bring her into the story where she was asked, and so on, and so forth. (I think I'm probably not being as clear as I could be, but so it goes.)

Still, this is an excellent and subversive retelling of stories that probably could stand a bit of subverting; I wish that I could like it better than I do.

Spellbinding.......2006-03-04

Emma Donoghue rewrites a handful of fairytales into an enchantingly woven collection of stories about strong and fascinating women. These stories are not simply for feminists or for women but for anyone who has ever loved fairtales. The simple and sensuous writing flows from one end of the book to the other, and was consumed in a single sitting.

Incredible.......2005-10-29

I read this book in one sitting and cried because Donoghues tales are so beutifully spun. This is the way fairy tales should be written and told!

Kissing the Witch (Old Tales in New Skins)

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Kissing the Witch (Old Tales in New Skins)
Emma Donoghue
Manufacturer: HarperTrophy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEWNAC

Average customer rating:

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
Emma Donoghue
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEFEXA

Book Description

Half a billion years of evolution have turned the eye into an unbelievable pattern detector. Everything we perceive comes in delightful multicolored forms. Now, in the age of science, we want to comprehend what and why we see.

Two dozen outstanding biologists, chemists, physicists, psychologists, computer scientists and mathematicians met at the Institut d'Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. They expounded their views on the physical, biological and physiological mechanisms creating the tapestry of patterns we see in molecules, plants, insects, seashells, and even the human brain. This volume comprises surveys of different aspects of pattern formation and recognition, and is aimed at the scientifically minded reader.

Book Description

There are numerous books on Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Soft Computing for Complex Multiple Criteria Decision Making concentrates on providing technical (meaning formal, mathematical, algorithmical) tools to make the user of Multiple Criteria Decision Making methodologies independent of bulky optimization computations. These bulky computations up to now have been a necessary, but limiting, characteristic of interactive MCDM methodologies and algorithms. This book removes these limitations of MCDM problems by reducing a problem's computational complexity. The book systematically applies the approximate — soft — treatments to major MCDM solving methodologies. As a result, it provides a wider and more functional general framework for presenting, teaching, implementing and applying a wide range of MCDM methodologies. The book seeks to provide a stimulus for a broader development and application of MCDM methods.

Customer Reviews:

True Decadence.......2004-06-10

This strange little tale of a young man's descent into cocaine addiction is less interesting for it's portrayal of the youthful anti-hero's chemical use as his astounding philosophical insights. Vadim does not actually use cocaine until the end of the novel ('the beginning of the end', as it were) and the novel is mostly composed of his Dostoevskian self loathing and inability to relate to his peers on any level. It is almost an exercise in depressive solipsism; while Vadim's peers play a large role in the novel his inner world is so tortured and miles apart from them that the author might as well have portrayed him as a complete misanthrope. In the opening we get a feel for where his moral compass is swinging; he gives a venereal disease to a young woman in full cognizance of what he is doing. He agonizes over it, but this does not prevent him from actually doing it. The most catching scenes in the novel are when his classmates, thrown into a kind of cocaine induced revolt against the orthodoxy of the school they attend, verbally attack priests and teachers. Burkewitz, a character we encounter later in the book, gives a particularly interesting speech to the headmaster priest of the school in the middle of a sermon. There are thoroughly disturbing scenes; Vadim strikes his mother, steals from her, all the while recognizing her basic goodness and frail attempts to relate to him. Vadim wants to consider himself exceptional, a unique student and son, and at the same time loathes himself. Many of his self evaluations strike a schizoid note. His entrance into the world of cocaine use is preceded by his rejection of a girl with whom he was too fearful to consummate his relationship. Like everyone else, she has a false image of him and rejects him entirely when he fails to live up to it. We are only given blurry pictures of the lengths to which he goes to obtain cocaine after a few seamy scenes in which his 'friends' instruct him in the mechanics of use. "My son is a thief", his mother wails. Vadim's disturbing coke dreams are not of the usual variety; far from being visions of grandiosity, they are unconscious and violent recognitions of his own guilt and wretchedness. I wouldn't hesitate to say that this is one of the most bizarre novels I have ever encountered. It oscillates between philosophy, self loathing and insanity, and does not strike an even balance. I would recommend it to anyone, not for knowledge of a cocaine addict's world (this is not a realistic depiction) but as a jolting primer for any study or enjoyment of the literature of decadence.

Uneven, and only Mildly Interesting.......2002-05-24

This book had been so built up by other people who had read it that I expected more. The writing is uneven and the first two thirds of the book seem to have almost no relation to the last third.
The first two thirds of the book gave a few interesting details of life in Russia just before the Revolution, but other than that I foundit very uninteresting. It is not until alomst the end of the book that the element of cocaine is even introduced and when it is the book quickly winds to its unsurprising end.

Existentialism without the pompousness of Camus & Sartre.......2000-08-10

Having already been a fan of Dostoevsky & Tolstoy, it was Charles Bukowski who pointed me back to the Russians as being the only producers of literature that's worth reading. "A Novel with Cocaine" is a fine example of a novel that has something worthwhile on its pages.

Might we say that it's existentialist in it thinking? The individual caught in a universe that really doesn't give a damn about the individual... and the individual's struggle to find something to do, and a place to fit.

Camus and Sartre are puny little runts compared to Ageyev! Ageyev gives us the moment-to-moment REAL stuff that actually matters. One character goes up in front of his high school math classs to work out a problem... he sneezes and boogers are hanging out of his face while the class laughs. How does he deal with this?

Ageyev keeps his work as something regular folks can identify with. Not all of his situations deal with boogers (or things just as gross), but they're all common enough to keep a reader's interest without drawing the reader into pompous brain-teasers that few of us can access.

Conversely, Camus and Sartre take us into a high-minded realm which is interesting, but when will I ever have to think about whether or not to kill a wheelchair-bound guy because he doesn't have the nerve to do it himself? How many of our lives are impacted by such decisions?

Ageyev is much more interesting. He's a great writer. He's got a great sense of humor and he's FIRMLY rooted in common existence.

Though the book is titled "A Novel with Cocaine," sure there's a great deal about the main characters travels through the underworld of drugs and drug people and the activities between them. But, I think that this is more of a way for the writer to access his more interesting ideas--as opposed to writing a book that's really about cocaine.

Why mess with an Overcoat?

.......1996-08-08

Losing his "nasal virginity" in an adventure into the wonders and horrors of cocaine addiction, the central character finds his answer to insecurity and social ineptitude in a potent white powder as his peer in The Overcoat seeks the same comfort in a dark, tattered garment.

If the pseudonym doesn't give it away, this anonymous author provides another dim glance into nineteenth century St. Petersberg that seems a brushstroke within the same portrait alongside those by Gogol and Dostoevsky. Imagine the Underground Man not tormenting his maid, but out in the streets snorting cocaine, searching for a female companion.

Novel with Cocaine is not essential reading, but it is another worthwhile glimpse at the literary products of desperate and dark nineteenth century St. Petersberg. Glorification of drug use is a problem in the late twentieth century. Novel with Cocaine will force you to think again with grave reluctance that neither McInerney nor Ellis have been able to posit in the minds of their readers.

Average customer rating:
Novel with Cocaine
M. Ageyev
Manufacturer: Pan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0330285599

Average customer rating:
A Novel with Cocaine (Russian Language Edition)
Mark Ageyev
Manufacturer: Geleos, Russia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
Russian | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
All Russian Books | Russian | Foreign Language Books | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 5818904253

Product Description

A Novel with Cocaine is one of the supreme masterpieces of the Russian literature in XX century. For many years Vladimir Nabokov, a great literary hoax creator, was considered to be its author. But now the truth emerged: it was discovered, that a pseudonym M. Ageyev hid a talented Russian story-teller Mark Levi. His literary works area is close to Nabokov's one a search for a thin edge, which divides love and evil, chastity and profligacy. The novel, written to the maximum extent of sincerity, was published in many countries.

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Novel With Cocaine -
M. Ageyev -
Manufacturer: E. P. Dutton Publishing -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PRYHXO

Average customer rating:

Novel With Cocaine -
M. Ageyev -
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OC2JDU

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