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I'll hear Irons in my sleep for some time to come
Overrated, perhaps?
One of the greatest of the 20C
One of the most enthralling and provocative novels of all time
Words to play with

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Pale Fire
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ASIN: 0679723161
Release Date: 1989-03-13

Amazon.com

Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake

Book Description

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Customer Reviews:

I'll hear Irons in my sleep for some time to come.......2007-06-12

I first discovered that the well known name and label Lolita was not what I had thought while reading comments and watching interviews about my favorite Lolita (though that label really does not fit), Alizée.
I borrowed this audio version from the library and am quite glad that I did. Jeremy Irons gave a spectacular performance in reading the novel to me. His voice will forever color the way I see Humbert Humbert. I may have to go back and read it again some day, probably with an annotated version to get all those various references and especially the French phrases, but I just don't know if I could bear to go through all that again. Though, I'll definitely watch the newer movie with Irons as Humbert.
Yes, this is one of those books that is difficult to tell most people that I even read. Trying to describe it is likely to cause misunderstanding. As people have said throughout the decades, it is the witty quality of writing that makes the book so great and the expression of the incredible obsession of love and lust that consumed our protagonist. In the first half I would say that the story line was not really even that interesting compared to the more typical fantasy stories. It was really just so much of ordinary life, albeit not typical. By the end, I realized that was one of the things that is so incredible about the story. It's so real. By the end of the book, I have been convinced that to really have given it a chance, one must read it to the very last word (or listen to Jeremy narrate it in this case). This was some real 'quality' writing. It does beg the question, how does one come up with this stuff? This book will leave you thinking, for sure.

Overrated, perhaps?.......2007-06-12

Maybe this book was just too hyped up before I read. Maybe I came to the book with my expectations to high, but I think this book is overrated. I found most of the book to be repetitive and redundant. I understand the author is trying to show the level of obsession that the narrator has, but the book bogs down as he uses page after page after page after page to drive this obsession down our throats. It really disturbs the flow of the book, and I found it to be irritating after page after page after page.

I've heard this book billed as the greatest love story ever told, but come on, does anyone really buy that? I didn't even find the story all that shocking. Others have done similar things, perhaps they didn't devote an entire book to man on child loving, but it has been done. How far does shock value really go any way?

I will give him credit that the book does have something to say of the human condition, and when the writing is not repetitive it is good, possibly sneaking up on very good in places. I found myself enjoying about 280 pages.

I also liked evolution of the main characters, but none of this was able to redeem the book in the end. How about I give him the title of the greatest author of a book about pedophilia (perhaps a dubious distinction but a distinction none the less) ever written? I will now humbly accept my bashing from those who believe that I have just blasphemed against the best book ever. Bash away.

One of the greatest of the 20C.......2007-05-29

I recall when I read this in college and was thunderstruck by the imagery, the allusions, and the bizarre humor. For years, it stood out in my mind as one of the greatest novels I had ever read, and it started me on a binge of Nabokov reading of novels that never quite equalled this one. So it was with great anticipation that I re-opened after over 30 years from the first reading. I am happy to say that, as with all truly great works of art, my experience of it today was completely different than my initial one. That, for me, is the mark of great literature: there are innumerable possible readings and ways to see it and put it together as a reflection of reality: it grows along with one's mind and in accordance with one's experience. As such, it is an endless resource for the imagination.

This time around, I did not see it as a book about obsessive love, but about a very sick man trying to control a young person absolutely, to conform to the images and needs of a deteriorating mind. While learned and funny, HH is a horrible person and is twisting Lolita at a crucial point in her early adolescence, damaging her permanently. It is sad and frightening, pathetic and full of despair amidst spurts of (never smutty) ecstacy.

Beyond the incredible intricacy of the plot - a patchwork of clues and deadends - what is a great wonder is the consistent texture of the language, which radiates confusion, lack of direction, and alcoholic depression. SLowly, HH loses his grip on reality and begins to live in a nightmare of dissolution, nihilism, and pain.

This is so good and rich that it will live forever as a classic, with all the layers of Stendahl or Joyce, but written in the Nab's inimitable style. It occured to me that a friend of mine described the Nab's work perfectly: none of the characters, he said, ever feel normal emotions. What the Nab gives us is a way to feel and see these things, all while toying with the reader and occasionally misleading them. It is incredible how different the Nab's books are from eachother, each with some strange, unimaginable central character and HH is perhaps his best.

I will have to read this again...every time, one sees more, makes more connections. If you can stand it.

Recommended with enthusiasm.

One of the most enthralling and provocative novels of all time.......2007-05-19

Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" is one of the most interesting pieces of writing in all the world of literature. It's beautiful prose and highly cerebral--not to mention likeable--main character lends an air of sophistication to the work, a sophistication which effectually raises the novel above and beyond its touchy subject matter.

I myself must admit that I was put off at first by the subject matter of the novel. A story where the main character is a habitual pedophile is something most readers would turn down in a heartbeat. However, you would be remiss in turning this novel down.

Humbert Humbert, Nabokov's main character, is tormented by nymphets (young girls). Although a pedophile, Humbert Humbert is--as is realized unexpectedly as you swiftly flow through the 300+ pages of the novel--likeable. Many would cringe at the prospect of siding with a pedophile, but the fact is, while reading "Lolita" the reader can do nothing but love Humbert for his cynical remarks and passionate behavior.

The story of "Lolita", in essence, is a love story unlike any other. Humbert Humbert pursues the affection of a young girl, which ends in a deep, sickeningly satisfying way. And like all love stories, this tale has its fair share of twists and turns along the way.

From the first sentence, this novel grasps the reader by the hand and carries him or her through the escapades of Humbert Humbert. Not only is it a fast read, but it is also highly addictive. Despite the touchy subject matter, the reader feels compelled to return to "Lolita" again and again. This novel speaks to our fascination with the grotesque. Much like (excuse the terrible analogy) the way our eyes remain glued to the scene of a horrible car crash, the reader's eyes seemingly ache to return to this clever novel and see what happens next.

Although the subject matter of "Lolita" is taboo in today's society, it is a novel that no true literature enthusiast should miss. Truly this is one of the greatest novels in all of literature. All readers should read this novel at one point in their lives.

Words to play with.......2007-05-17

Early in the book, Humbert Humbert, the narrator of this story of sexual obsession, writes: "Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!" And again, towards the end, "I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art." Passion recreated in words; passion that can only be assuaged by more words. Words -- but there is nothing that Nabokov can not do with them.

When I first read this book 50 years ago, buying a banned copy in Paris, it was frankly for titillation; its pornography was oblique, to be sure, but to an adolescent with no experience whatever, it seemed to open a whole world. And the fact that Lolita was so very young was scarcely shocking to a reader not that much older. Now 50 years on, I have a daughter of my own, and Humbert Humbert's nympholepsy appears as the horror that it is. But LOLITA is more titillating than ever -- only verbally, not sexually. Solely by the use of words, Nabokov keeps you reading, through the horror, through the dread, drawing you in, stirring your sympathies, moving irresitably towards a conclusion that is clear from the beginning, even though reached by an upredictable path. Despite everything Nabokov does to reveal his hand (even writing a preface explaining what will happen to the characters after the story ends), this is more suspenseful than any suspense story. Despite having a psychopath for a hero, it says much about normal human psychology. It is a perfect time-capsule of postwar America, satirical but gently so. It is a virtuoso feat of linguistic juggling, a witty paean to the English language. It is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

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Best introduction to SNA methodology
Plain-English guidance for excellent software
The digital version is a joke!
A really exellent textbook and manual

Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)
Wouter de Nooy , Andrej Mrvar , and Vladimir Batagelj
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521602629

Book Description

This is the first textbook on social network analysis integrating theory, applications, and professional software for performing network analysis (Pajek). Pajek software and datasets for all examples are freely available, so the reader can learn network analysis by doing it. In addition, each chapter offers case studies for practicing network analysis. The book will enable the reader to gain the knowledge, skills, and tools to apply social network analysis in all social sciences, ranging from anthropology and sociology to business administration and history.

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This is the first textbook on social network analysis integrating theory, applications, and professional software for performing network analysis (Pajek). Step by step, the book introduces the main structural concepts and their applications in social research with exercises to test the understanding. An application section explaining how to perform the network analyses with Pajek software follows each theoretical section. Pajek software and datasets for all examples are freely available, so the reader can learn network analysis by doing it. In addition, each chapter offers case studies for practising network analysis. In the end, the reader has the knowledge, skills, and tools to apply social network analysis in all social sciences, ranging from anthropology and sociology to business administration and history.

Customer Reviews:

Best introduction to SNA methodology.......2007-03-05

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has a number of different ways of doing analysis that depend on the point of view one is taking about the data. Different types of analysis make sense to answer different types of questions. For instance, it may be interesting to find paths from node to node, it may be interesting to see how nodes (representing many things: people, organizations, teams, businesses or countries, for instance) cluster together. One might want to see the links between clusters and much more. It can be bewildering to choose the right method and then use software do to the analysis. Since there are so many choices, any software that does SNA will be complex.

Each chapter of this book highlights an important type of analysis and takes the reader through doing the analysis step-by-step using the freeware software package Pajek (Slovenian for "spider"). Pajek allows the user to do a huge range of analysis and visualize it. It can work with large networks. Tho book does not assume knowledge SNA and explains the motives for the types of analysis so that after going through the book the reader has the basic skills to both do SNA and understand the studies that have been done using SNA.

Plain-English guidance for excellent software.......2006-05-12

This book comes so highly recommended because it lowers all the barriers for the student. The text is easily absorbed, the software is free, and the datasets are there. Many guides on Social Network Analysis (SNA) seem like they are written for someone who already knows how to do SNA. The original Pajek manual is one example (Pajek is pronounced pai-yak). This book is like the missing manual. It guides the novice carefully through the analysis process. The free software, Pajek, is one of the best Social Network programs currently. Although Pajek was initially just for visualizations of large networks, and it still only has a subset of the UCInet functions, the algorithms are fast and plentiful. The book and software should keep a student busy until they add more programmatic SNA tools to their toolkit (e.g. R-project sna).

The digital version is a joke!.......2005-11-21

It does not allow paid customer to read it in another computer or print a hard copy. To be exact, it allows paid customer to print 5 pages every 28 days. The book has more than 300 pages, so go figure how long it takes to print your book. The purpose of buying a manual is to learn to use the software while reading it. How do you expect your customer to use the software when he is reading the book on the same computer? And this is hurting the eyes! This is damaging Amazon's reputation too!

A really exellent textbook and manual.......2005-09-23

I am dipping my toe into the world of networks analysis and this was the perfect way to learn about them and to learn how to use an excellent software package (which is free!) The book is well written and structured with examples to play with and excellent data sets to download from the web.

Thin Film Solar Cells: Fabrication, Characterization and Applications (Wiley Series in Materials for Electronic & Optoelectronic Applications)

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Thin Film Solar Cells: Fabrication, Characterization and Applications (Wiley Series in Materials for Electronic & Optoelectronic Applications)

Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0470091266

Book Description

Thin-film solar cells are either emerging or about to emerge from the research laboratory to become commercially available devices finding practical various applications. Currently no textbook outlining the basic theoretical background, methods of fabrication and applications currently exist. Thus, this book aims to present for the first time an in-depth overview of this topic covering a broad range of thin-film solar cell technologies including both organic and inorganic materials, presented in a systematic fashion, by the scientific leaders in the respective domains. It covers a broad range of related topics, from physical principles to design, fabrication, characterization, and applications of novel photovoltaic devices.

Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977

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Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters 1940-1977
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971, Revised and Expanded Edition
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ASIN: 0156936100

Amazon.com

If Vladimir Nabokov's fiction merits any criticism, it is for its iciness. The master himself declared in a 1977 BBC interview, "My characters cringe as I come near them with my whip. I have seen a whole avenue of imagined trees losing their leaves at the threat of my passage." Nabokov's correspondence, however, reveals a far warmer individual, though one ever-ready with a verbal shiv. This volume begins with a 1923 letter to his mother, written while he was a farmhand in the French Alps, and ends with a 1977 letter sent to his wife, Vera, for Mother's Day: "My dearest, your roses, your fragrant rubies, glow red against a background of spring rain..."

Nabokov's son, Dmitri, and Matthew Bruccoli have created the fullest, and by far the most amusing, portrait of the serious artist as trickster. There's the famous letter to Burma-Vita, in which Nabokov offers the company an advertising jingle (alas, they turned him down). There's the best, and most amusing, account of "l'affaire Lolita." Here is his response to his New Yorker editor, Katharine White: "Let me thank you very warmly for your frank and charming letter about LOLITA. But after all how many are the memorable literary characters whom we would like our teen-age daughters to meet? Would you like our Patricia to go on a date with Othello? Would we like our Mary to read the New Testament temple against temple with Raskolnikov? Would we like our sons to marry Emma Rouault, Becky Sharp or La belle dame sans merci?"

In another letter, however, he takes care to thank White for a "chubby check." (One wishes this phrase had gained greater circulation.) Nabokov again and again comes off as a difficult author, challenging his publishers left, right, and center over issues large (and there were many) and as well as those that were niggling. Calling the British paperback cover of Laughter in the Dark "atrocious, disgusting, and badly drawn besides having nothing to do whatever with the contents of the book," he tells his U.K. publisher, "I would appreciate if you would use your influence and have them substitute a pretty dark-haired girl, or a palmtree, or a winding road, or anything else for this tasteless abomination." Still, one is most often convinced that he's right, even when he makes the large claim that the French film Les Nymphettes infringes on his rights, "since this term was invented by me for the main character in my novel Lolita."

Not only is this volume endlessly quotable, it also reads like a great epistolary novel--fraught with high thought, high drama, and the delightfully unexpected. Who would have guessed that Nabokov would ask Hugh Hefner, "Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of your Bunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on one hindwing?"

Book Description

Over four hundred letters chronicle the author's career, recording his struggles in the publishing world, the battles over "Lolita," and his relationship with his wife.

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Essential Reading
If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov...
Lo. Li. Ta.
Astounding Command of the English Language
The Ultimate Narcissist

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140264078

Customer Reviews:

Essential Reading.......2007-05-06

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Nabokov writes great prose, and actually twists your mind into thinking what Humbert is doing is not really all that wrong. It makes you sick, but you start to feel for Humbert. It's a fantastic read, even if you think you already know the story, or if you've seen one of the movies. This is am amazing book, one that I would recommend to everyone.

If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov..........2007-03-19

As I grow old and older, I ask myself all too often why I bother? Haven't I eaten enough toast? Haven't I bent over to tie enough shoes? Then I come across an author like Vladimir Nabokov and a book like *Lolita,* an author and a book that, although Ive read thousands and thousands of books in my time, I somehow never read before. Maybe it was his name, or fame, or the fact that a movie was made of his most famous novel. There are books that you feel you've already read, even though you havent, just because they are so famous, or infamous. This is one of those books. But if you havent read it and think you know what its all about, youre wrong, utterly and 100% wrong, and youre missing one of the great joys of a reader's life: the prose of Vladimir Nabokov.

This book is fiendishly good. It undermines everything we "ought" to feel, then it makes us feel it; finally it pulls the rug out from under us altogether. Nabokov's narrator, Humbert Humbert, is a child molestor, that's what we'd call him in the bald and unfancy terminology of today. He's a sick, abusive, predatory[...]. Yet it's his voice that entertains us throughout *Lolita,* and entertains us it does. Humbert is urbane, intelligent, self-deprecating, cynical, and laugh-out-loud funny. He's a poet and a romantic. He's the English professor we all wish we had. He knows that what he's doing is wrong. He's the first to admit it. He's the first to admit everything, including that he can't help himself. He is, you see, in love, hopelessly and authentically and obsessively in love. The problem is that she's [....]
Now the truly devilish thing about *Lolita* is that of all the characters in the novel, including even Lolita herself, its Humbert that draws our "sympathy," so to speak. Sympathy for the devil, it is, in spite of ourselves, in the sense that we see the world most vividly from his point-of-view, in the sense that he seems more alive than anyone else in the novel, more perceptive, more uncompromisingly self-honest, more human and, in the end, the most tragic of all the characters. He's a man with an indelible flaw, he's a man in love, no matter how misguided, no matter how criminal, and its Nabokov's "evil" genius to get us to accept Humbert Humbert as our sick hero, man who we might send to prison for fifty years, but who we couldn't help feeling more than a twinge of regret having to do so.

One would be hard-pressed to come up with a prose-stylist whose voice is smoother, more casually erudite, and more post-contemporary than Nabokov...and this in a novel that is already half-a-century old! An amazing text from an author who has after 300 pages of pure reading bliss, shot instantaneously to the top of my favorite author's list, *Lolita* is a book I should have read a hundred years ago, but instead sat wasting my time in graduate literature courses! What are they teaching in schools anyway? I'm ordering up some more Nabokov novels immediately, if not sooner. You should too.

Lo. Li. Ta........2007-03-17

Nabokov's Lolita is simply an incredible book.

Humbert Humbert is infatuated with 'nymphets', oddly beautiful girls aged 9-14. Upon arriving in the United States, he lodges with Charlotte Haze; he takes the lodging after spotting Charlotte's nymphet daughter Delores (Lolita). In order to stay close to Delores he weds Charlotte, who is in love with him. Due to tragic circumstances sometime later, Humbert claims Delores and the duo embark on an extensive road trip across the states.

The voice of humbert is so intriguing - Nabokov has created a narrator that is depraved, yet intelligent and somehow sympathetic. His depravity and awful behavior is often forgotten or ignored because of Humbert's incredible wit, charm, taste and physical beauty; Humbert Humbert is successful in gaining sympathy and amity for his narrative is magnificent and loaded with intellectual and cultural references that are often both smart and humorous.

Due to Nabokov's eloquent, intelligent and much layered prose, Lolita is one of the greatest, most tragic yet strangest love stories of all time. A beautiful book.

Astounding Command of the English Language.......2007-03-14

This is an amazing book. As I read it, I realized how powerful language can be, because Nabokov bedazzles you with his story. You feel yourself going along with his main character's opinions/justifications as he ingratiates himself in Delores' mother's life, seduces Delores.... even when you know that what he's doing is wrong/illegal/unethical.

Most people can't write this well in their FIRST language. From what I understand, English is Nabakov's third!

Be prepared to be disturbed by this story, even as you wonder at how well it's told. After reading, I started to understand how people can be led astray by charletons.

The Ultimate Narcissist.......2006-12-01

Narkissos saw his image reflected on the surface of a pond, fell madly in love with what he saw, dived into the pond to consummate the apparition and promptly turned into a flower (i.e., the narcissus). This is why we say the narcissistic personality is in love with himself. And in real life, he operates that way. Come on now. You know what we are talking about. We all know a smarty pants when we see one.
The narcissist is never wrong. He is so spoiled, he expects to be given whatever he wants no matter what it means to others. He can be demanding and indignant if he is not treated the way he thinks he deserves. He is arrogant, haughty, snobbish, and downright bitchy. Even when he knows he is being outrageously pretentious, grandiose and entitled, he expects admiration, attention, recognition and VIP treatment. That's just the way he is. But under all that puffery, he is a vulnerable child. His self-esteem is extremely fragile. Despite his fantasies, (Yes, dear reader, fantasy. Or, do you also believe Nabokov wrote Annabelle Lee and not Poe?), he actually does know that he is an overbearing little twit. Indeed, he has become an expert at practicing "extreme twitness" so as to test those around him. But, here's the rub. Just because he's a twit, does that also make him a pedophile? I don't think so.

The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra (Annals of Communism Series)

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what i think
Final Record Invaluable to Romanov Enthusiasts
Fascinating but only for the true fanatic
Chilling monotony

The Last Diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra (Annals of Communism Series)
Tsaritsa Alexandra
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300072120

Book Description

The last Tsaritsa of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, was murdered with her family on the night of 16-17 July 1918 by agents acting on behalf of the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The recently declassified 1918 diary of Alexandra-published here for the first time in its entirety-provides something no other account could do: a glimpse of the Tsaritsa`s thoughts and activities from 1 January 1918 until the night of her death. The introduction by Robert Massie places Alexandra in the historical context of the Revolution, her marriage to Nicholas, and the tragic events that encompassed her, her family, and her nation.

Customer Reviews:

what i think.......2002-06-20

Alix's diary is a most important document,
it reveals her , but in a very different way to say
how her letters do.in her diary, it is of chief importance
to note the things she leaves out, and how laconic the
text itself is.this tells as much about her at the time
than had she written pages about her feelings and experiences.
This is an extremely important book, the last page is
agonising - the "ex-Tsarina" has written in a fine and clear
hand "July 17th" - but the page is blank. We have to read
what Alexandra didnt write - between the lines.her last
diary reveals her final states of mind, her humaness, her fear,
in those last terrible words, in the entry for July 16th.
Alix has written her own memorial here, and it is a just tribute.

Final Record Invaluable to Romanov Enthusiasts.......2000-01-26

It is ironic that, being the most private of persons, many of the last Tsarinia's most intimate thoughts are now available in several books, including this recently declassified diary of her final days. However, readers who search out this book are probably sympathetic, and will find her daily entries of interest and sometimes moving. Alexandra wasn't writing a best-selling novel -- simply a daily account of the tedium of their imprisonment, and how she, her family, and attendants passed the time -- but for those interested in Alix, her husband, and children, this book is a valuable link to their final days. The introduction, essay by Jonathan Brent, and other sections are all appropriate accompaniment. It will be interesting to see if excerpts from the children's diaries also are eventually published; several books compiled and edited by Russian archivists already have quoted from some of those diaries.

If you are interested in the last tsar and his family, I invite you to contact me at whitcombj@juno.com.

Fascinating but only for the true fanatic.......1999-07-04

As many reviewers have said, the very monotony of Aleksandra's last diary gives it an eerie significance. However, beyond that, there is little to recommend it. Entries, spaced one to a page, mostly consist of a single brief paragraph, and the content is boring-- notes on the weather, her health, the health of her children. "Sat for 10. m[inutes] on the balkony [sic]." It is a very short book, and a very quick read. Only for the true Romanov fanatic (of which I am one), I'm afraid. Aleksandra's letters and the letters & diaries of the others who shared her captivity are far more interesting.

Chilling monotony.......1998-01-07

Tsaritsa Alexandra had no idea, of course, that this was her last diary or that anyone besides herself would ever read it. Since we know the ultimate fate of this unhappy woman the banality and monotony of the last few months of her life have an unintentional sense of tragedy. How sad, for example, that she took the time to note the birthdays of various royal connections, people she would never see again and who in some cases (such as George V of England) had abandoned her and her family to their fate. A brief but compulsive read

Real Options, Revised Edition: A Practitioner's Guide

Average customer rating:

Excellent intro for students
Useful but hard to understand
Excellent book for the practitioner
Cecilia Gaye Uruguay

Real Options, Revised Edition: A Practitioner's Guide
Tom Copeland , and Vladimir Antikarov
Manufacturer: Texere
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Real Options Analysis: Tools and Techniques for Valuing Strategic Investment and Decisions, 2nd Edition (Wiley Finance)
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Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World (Financial Management Association Survey and Synthesis Series)
Modeling Risk: Applying Monte Carlo Simulation, Real Options Analysis, Forecasting, and Optimization Techniques (Wiley Finance)

ASIN: 1587991861

Book Description

This revised edition of the highly successful book, Real Options, offers corporate decision-makers the ability to assess the profitability of their ventures and decide which avenue of expansion or investment to go down and, crucially, when to take that leap. The reader goes on a journey through real options, from the basics to more advanced topics such as options and game theory. It provides expert guidance on how to implement the theory to maximize investment opportunities by utilizing uncertainty as an asset and reducing downside risk.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent intro for students.......2006-04-29

I regret not requiring this text for my students this semester. While there are a few typo's, that is not the point, as the problems are all easy to work out and solve.

A very, very good book. If you are teaching a senior level course that uses even just a few weeks of real options (like my engineering economy course) use this book! You can cover the whole book in 10 or 12 lectures. The end of chapter problems (while a trifle scant) are well done!

Useful but hard to understand.......2005-10-08

I use this book as a required book in a course on my graduate study. It is hard to understand and writen like a novel. However, it is very up-to-date. Readers should have a bit strong background on options, finance and investment.

Excellent book for the practitioner.......2005-08-21

I would rate this 5 stars from a practitioner's perspective, which is the intended audience. But, in terms of actual coverage of real options, Trigeorgis is better. However, Copeland and Antikarov do a great job with this book in introducing real options. There are sufficient examples and you get a good understanding of the topic off the bat. Copeland is a very good author, and he is one of my favorites. It's a good thing that there is a revised edition already, because the first one just had many typos.

Cecilia Gaye Uruguay.......2004-10-14

Copeland and Antikarov, demonstrate in excellent form that NPV is flawed and tends to undervalue the investment opportunities. NPV is a static calculations that fails in the consideration of the many opportunities that management has over the lifetime of a project. Unfortunately the intent of the authors of offering solutions to the questions posed at the end of each chapter as well as real options models, flaw since www.etexere.com/realoptions doesn't exist.

The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

Average customer rating:

Adds a new dimension to a novel I admired already
If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov
Good story, bad annotaions
Annotations Not Within Text
Important Note about the Annotated Version

The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
Vladimir Nabokov , and Alfred Appel Jr.
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679727299
Release Date: 1991-04-23

Amazon.com

In 1954 Vladimir Nabokov asked one American publisher to consider "a firebomb that I have just finished putting together." The explosive device: Lolita, his morality play about a middle-aged European's obsession with a 12-year-old American girl. Two years later, the New York Times called it "great art." Other reviewers staked a higher moral ground (the editor of the London Sunday Express declaring it "the filthiest book I've ever read"). Since then, the sinuous novel has never ceased to astound. Even Nabokov was astonished by its place in the popular imagination. One biographer writes that "he was quite shocked when a little girl of eight or nine came to his door for candy on Halloween, dressed up by her parents as Lolita." And when it came time to casting the film, Nabokov declared, "Let them find a dwarfess!"

The character Lolita's power now exists almost separately from the endlessly inventive novel. If only it were read as often as it is alluded to. Alfred Appel Jr., editor of the annotated edition, has appended some 900 notes, an exhaustive, good-humored introduction, and a recent preface in which he admits that the "reader familiar with Lolita can approach the apparatus as a separate unit, but the perspicacious student who keeps turning back and forth from text to Notes risks vertigo." No matter. The notes range from translations to the anatomical to the complex textual. Appel is also happy to point out the Great Punster's supposedly unintended word play: he defends the phrase "Beaver Eaters" as "a portmanteau of 'Beefeaters' (the yeoman of the British royal guard) and their beaver hats."

Book Description

The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.

Customer Reviews:

Adds a new dimension to a novel I admired already.......2007-05-07

It's hard to imagine a better qualified person to annotate Nabokov's Lolita.
Appel has an extensive knowledge of Nabokov's life and work. He met Nabokov, on several occasions, and used those opportunities to find out information that only the author could know.

Appel uses this knowledge to add new, profound and, sometimes just simply amusing insights into a novel that I always admired but also felt frustrated by the mystery shrouding it. To be sure, even after reading Appel's Annotated Lolita enough mystery still remains to keep me intrigued and also to renew my appreciation for Nabokov's amazing mind.

The Annotated Lolita contains a lengthy introduction by Appel that covers other Nabokov's works, his life and his philosophy. The, sometimes dense, annotations are scattered through the text very unobtrusively so that it is quite possible to read the novel with or without Appel's help.

If Satan took up literature, he'd write like Nabokov.......2007-03-19

As I grow old and older, I ask myself all too often why I bother? Haven't I eaten enough toast? Haven't I bent over to tie enough shoes? Then I come across an author like Vladimir Nabokov and a book like *Lolita,* an author and a book that, although Ive read thousands and thousands of books in my time, I somehow never read before. Maybe it was his name, or fame, or the fact that a movie was made of his most famous novel. There are books that you feel you've already read, even though you havent, just because they are so famous, or infamous. This is one of those books. But if you havent read it and think you know what its all about, youre wrong, utterly and 100% wrong, and youre missing one of the great joys of a reader's life: the prose of Vladimir Nabokov.

This book is fiendishly good. It undermines everything we "ought" to feel, then it makes us feel it; finally it pulls the rug out from under us altogether. Nabokov's narrator, Humbert Humbert, is a child molestor, that's what we'd call him in the bald and unfancy terminology of today. He's a sick, abusive, predatory pervert. Yet it's his voice that entertains us throughout *Lolita,* and entertains us it does. Humbert is urbane, intelligent, self-deprecating, cynical, and laugh-out-loud funny. He's a poet and a romantic. He's the English professor we all wish we had. He knows that what he's doing is wrong. He's the first to admit it. He's the first to admit everything, including that he can't help himself. He is, you see, in love, hopelessly and authentically and obsessively in love. The problem is that she's twelve years old.

Now the truly devilish thing about *Lolita* is that of all the characters in the novel, including even Lolita herself, its Humbert that draws our "sympathy," so to speak. Sympathy for the devil, it is, in spite of ourselves, in the sense that we see the world most vividly from his point-of-view, in the sense that he seems more alive than anyone else in the novel, more perceptive, more uncompromisingly self-honest, more human and, in the end, the most tragic of all the characters. He's a man with an indelible flaw, he's a man in love, no matter how misguided, no matter how criminal, and its Nabokov's "evil" genius to get us to accept Humbert Humbert as our sick hero, man who we might send to prison for fifty years, but who we couldn't help feeling more than a twinge of regret having to do so.

One would be hard-pressed to come up with a prose-stylist whose voice is smoother, more casually erudite, and more post-contemporary than Nabokov...and this in a novel that is already half-a-century old! An amazing text from an author who has after 300 pages of pure reading bliss, shot instantaneously to the top of my favorite author's list, *Lolita* is a book I should have read a hundred years ago, but instead sat wasting my time in graduate literature courses! What are they teaching in schools anyway? I'm ordering up some more Nabokov novels immediately, if not sooner. You should too.

Good story, bad annotaions.......2007-03-12

My one star is for the annotations in The Annotated Lolita. Do yourself a favor and buy a different edition. Mr Appel is a fan boy of the worst sort. His annotations are frequently long, off topic and silly. He assumes you have read Lolita two or three times already and contently spools the story by discussing what is about to happen. I soon stopped reading the annotations, except for the French translations.

Lolita is a well written novel and I do recommend reading it, just not this edition.

Annotations Not Within Text.......2006-12-02

In the Annotated Lolita the annotations are treated like endnotes...they are given a number at the margin and then you can reference them in the back of the book. This will disappoint any reader who likes the annotations interspersed while they read.

Important Note about the Annotated Version.......2006-11-21

Greg Hullender's review (which is a Spotlight Review as I type) is dead on, especially insofar as he points out that all but the most erudite reader will miss out on most of what is going on beneath the surface of the page without reading the annotations. But...

It should be emphasized that, if you read the annotations during your first time through the book, you will completely and totally spoil the story. Put otherwise, the outcome of the whole book is given away in the first few annotations, and repeated many times thereafter. Unless you're the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first, don't read the annotations the first time through.

Also, I think it is helpful to know that Nabokov was no fan of symbolism or allegories... so don't waste time and energy looking for them in Lolita, because the author himself said that they're not there.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church

Average customer rating:

an ever-greater plenitude,
Superb and Serious
Lossky is brilliant
This work gets at the heart of Christian mysticism
The best technical introduction in English

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
Vladimir Lossky
Manufacturer: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Orthodox Way
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ASIN: 0913836311

Book Description

In his classic exposition of the theology of the Church, Lossky states that the Eastern Tradition..."has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed bu the Church." The term "mystical theology" denotes that which is accessible yet inaccesible' those things inderstood yet surpassing all knowledge.

Customer Reviews:

an ever-greater plenitude,.......2007-03-25

"...the mystical approach is set up against systematic theology, the contemplative against the liturgical, the saints against the Church." V. Lossky

"An ever-greater plenitude, in which knowledge is transformed into ignorance, the theology of concepts into contemplation, dogmas into experience of ineffable mysteries" Edward Moore

All Theology is Mystical:
Lossky has carried his contradiction to great lengths, against the historical reality which forced Western theology into a preconceived pattern of Scholasticism and the Reformation. Lossky stresses that, "an ever-greater plenitude,, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation. On the other hand, mysticism is frequently opposed to theology as a realm inaccessible to understanding, as an unutterable mystery, a hidden depth, to be lived rather than known; yielding itself to a specific experience which surpasses our faculties of understanding rather than to any perception of sense or of intelligence." V. Lossky
Thus the mystical approach is set up against systematic theology, the contemplative against the liturgical, the saints against the Church. Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, declared that 'Sermons and Addresses', 1844, as expressed in Lossky's own words, "We must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other."

God became man that men might become gods:
It is the Christian East, or, more precisely, the Eastern Orthodox Church, dominate the field of mystical theology. This limitation is somewhat artificial since, 'Christian theology is always in the last resort a means: a unity of knowledge serving an end which transcends all knowledge. This ultimate end is union with God or deification, Established by the Alexandrines as 'God became man that men might become gods', and advanced as the theosis of the Greek speaking Fathers. It may seem paradoxical, that Christian theory has a practical end; mystical as it is, it eventually aspires to the supreme goal of union with God.

Mystical Theology of East & West:
Lossky expressed it best, "In reality, since the cleavage between East and West only dates from the middle of the eleventh century, all that is prior to this date constitutes a common and indivisible treasure for both parts of a divided Christendom. The Orthodox Church would not be what it is if it had not had the Latin fathers. No more could the Roman Catholic Church do without St. Athanasius, St. Basil or St. Cyril of Alexandria. Thus, when one would speak of the mystical theology of the East or of the West, one takes one's stand within one of the two traditions which remained, down to a certain moment, two local traditions within the one Church, witnessing to a single Christian truth; but which subsequently part, the one from the other, and give rise to two different dogmatic attitudes, irreconcilable on several points."

Eastern Orthodoxy & Jungian mysticism:
In a recent study, it has been argued that, one touchstone of scientific validity is the universality of observations independently made. A comparison of the cosmological, theological, and anthropological assumptions that underlie the mystical traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church and those of Jung's mystical observations about the universe, God, and humankind, the common ground of the two divergent systems of Eastern Orthodox and Jungian mysticism, by Bishop Chrysostomos and Thomas Brecht, suggests a universality and scientific validity in Jung's assumptions about the great unknown (Apophatic) .

BOOK REVIEW:
Lossky explores the roles of apophatic, or negative, theology, and kataphatic, or positive, theology in the Orthodox tradition, and the manner in which their union leads to an ever-greater plenitude.
Edward Moore, an Orthodox expert wrote a compelling theological analysis, of 'The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church,' on Theandros - An Online journal of Orthodox theology and philosophy; Read it on: [...]

Superb and Serious.......2005-09-29

Vladimir Lossky's "Mystical Theology' is one of the most profound books ever written about Christianity. It is a superb volume for armchair theologians, clerics of every stripe, those seeking a greater understanding of God in Trinity and human nature, and those wishing a lucid explanation of the differences between the Holy Orthodox Church and more occidental, rational, and secular forms of Christianity.

Mystical Theology revolves around several themes such as God's Love, the centrality and inexplicability of Mystery, the importance of the early Church fathers (and mothers), and man's relation to the Godhead.

Lossky was one of the great apologists for Orthodoxy in the west from 1923-1958 and his scholarship is peerless. Reading Mystical Theology is profound and profoundly rewarding, but it takes effort. No; the book is NOT poorly written- it is clear. But the concepts presented cause one to go slow, to stop, to ponder, and to pray, sometimes for days.

Are you ready to think about the difference between Eastern and Western notions of Grace, about the three hypostases of the Trinity and how the Son is begotten of the Father while the Spirit proceeds from Him? Are you interested in St. Gregory of Nyssa's intriguing view of Hell and how that relates to the concepts of uncreated energy described by St. Gregory Palamas?

If so, you will just love this volume. It might even be life-changing for you! Man can never comprehend the Godhead, as Lossky himself points out, but this book will allow us to understand more than we otherwise ever would!

Lossky is brilliant.......2004-07-15

This was one of the first books I tackled in my conversion process to the Orthodox Catholic Church. Orthodoxy is so profound, so deep, so mystical... it makes all man-made theologies look like shallow charicatures.

If you're looking into Orthodoxy, I would recommend this book with the following warning: This book is not really what a professor of mine would call a, "soup and salad" book. That is, it is not one that you can just buy and skim through; it is not light reading.

That having been said, for people out there like myself, who really want to know why the Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church considers herself to be just that-- THE Church, then this book is for you.

This work gets at the heart of Christian mysticism.......2003-07-22

While this title appears on many recommended lists of books on Eastern Orthodoxy, it would not be easy reading for someone uninitiated to mystical Christian writings (from either the east or the west). It also helps to have at least a passing knowledge of Greek as many of the terms appear in Greek.

Lossky spends over half the book laying a foundation on the Eastern understanding of apophaticism (describing God by what He is not), asceticism, the Holy Trinity, uncreated energies of the Godhead, image and likeness, the "economy of the Son" and the "economy of the Holy Spirit," before discussing the goal of Christian mysticism which is theosis or union with God, the Divine Light. To me, the heart of the book is in the chapter on "The Way of Union," but it would be meaningless without the preceding chapters.

Lossky quotes profusely from the great mystical theologians of the Eastern Church, from various epochs and geographic locations to display the inherent unity of thought on mysticism in the Eastern tradition.

Readers who need an introductory work before tackling Lossky might want to try "The Illumined Heart" by Frederica Matthewes-
Green, "Beginning to Pray" by Anthony Bloom or "The Art of Prayer" by Igumen Chariton of Valamo.

The best technical introduction in English.......2003-07-11

Far from dry theology, Lossky interacts with the Orthodox tradition with expertise knowledge and a genuine faith in the reality of the Father's activity in this world through His Son and Spirit, in the context of the Church. The book is worth buying just for the introduction, which outlines the meaning of theology in the Orthodox Church. Is Christian theology just neo-Platonism? Is God transcendent just because we are limited in our understanding? Is grace created or uncreated? Is deification (theosis) a Hellenic leftover or the meaning of union in Christ? Why was Christ incarnate and what does the Holy Spirit do? What do we say about how God is in Himself and how God is in relation to creation? Lossky tackles these and other pertinent subjects in this masterpiece. You will not read this book and remain unchanged, not because Lossky is such an original and innovative thinker (he is that), but because Lossky faithfully interprets the Tradition. The rest of this review is taken from the jacket of the book itself.
"Vladimir Lossky established himself as one of the most brilliant of Orthodox scholars in the years between his departure from Russia in 1923 and his death in 1958. His uncompromising faithfulness to Scriptural and patristic tradition, coupled with his constant concern for an articulate Orthodox witness in the West, make his works indispensable for an understanding of the theology of the Eastern Church today. In this classic study of Orthodox theology, Lossky states that 'in a certain sense all theology is mystical, in as much as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation...the eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology, between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church.' The term 'mystical theology' denotes in the realm of human experience, that which is accessible yet inaccessible; those things understood yet surpassing all knowledge."
While it is not an easy read at all, it is well worth the time spent in praying and thinking through the subject from an Eastern perspective.
Other books of interest include: "The Orthodox Way" and "The Orthodox Church" by Kallistos (Timothy) Ware; "Byzantine Theology" by John Meyendorff; any Georges Florovsky books; "The Roots of Christian Mysticism" by Olivier Clement; The Gospel of St. John; Jaroslav Pelikan's 5 volume series "The Christian Tradition"; "New Seeds of Contemplation" by Thomas Merton; "The Mountain of Silence" by Kyriacos Markides. Enjoy!

The IMO Compendium: A Collection of Problems Suggested for The International Mathematical Olympiads: 1959-2004 (Problem Books in Mathematics)

Average customer rating:

The IMO Compendium
Outstanding collection of problems
Rare collection of IMO problems/solutions in one volume
This book arrived too late for me

The IMO Compendium: A Collection of Problems Suggested for The International Mathematical Olympiads: 1959-2004 (Problem Books in Mathematics)
Dusan Djukic , Vladimir Z. Jankovic , Ivan Matic , and Nikola Petrovic
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0387242996

Book Description

The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) has within its almost 50-year-old history become the most popular and prestigious competition for high-school students interested in mathematics. Only six students from each participating country are given the honor of participating in this competition every year. The IMO represents not only a great opportunity to tackle interesting and challenging mathematics problems, it also offers a way for high school students to measure up with students from the rest of the world.

The IMO has sparked off a burst of creativity among enthusiasts in creating new and interesting mathematics problems. In an extremely stiff competition, only six problems are chosen each year to appear on the IMO. The total number of problems proposed for the IMOs up to this point is staggering and, as a whole, this collection of problems represents a valuable resource for all high school students preparing for the IMO.

Until now it has been almost impossible to obtain a complete collection of the problems proposed at the IMO in book form. "The IMO Compendium" is the result of a two year long collaboration between four former IMO participants from Yugoslavia, now Serbia and Montenegro, to rescue these problems from old and scattered manuscripts, and produce the ultimate source of IMO practice problems. This book attempts to gather all the problems and solutions appearing on the IMO, as well as the so-called "short-lists", a total of 864 problems. In addition, the book contains 1036 problems from various "long-lists" over the years, for a grand total of 1900 problems.

In short, "The IMO Compendium" is the ultimate collection of challenging high-school-level mathematics problems. It will be an invaluable resource, not only for high-school students preparing for mathematics competitions, but for anyone who loves and appreciates math.

Customer Reviews:

The IMO Compendium.......2007-06-12

A problem book written for the not so ordinary mortal mathematicians. A problem book for the above ordinary students and teachers as well. I like this book and I would treasure this book in my lectures. Similar books like this is what I like to pass on to my wards. Many thanks and more power to you! Do email me on books of similar content. An extra-ordinary book containing jewels of mathematical thoughts for students and teachers alike. I love this book.

Outstanding collection of problems.......2006-11-28

This book contains roughly 1900 problems in 45 years of IMO history. Most of the problems are accompanied with a solution. This is an excellent resource for anyone preparing for a high calibre math contest such as olympiads or the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.

This book also has an extremely comprehensive collection of definitions and theorems which span from analysis to algebra to combinatorics in the first part of the book, which is a nice summary of tools useable on math contests and in math courses.

Rare collection of IMO problems/solutions in one volume.......2006-10-31

46-year compendium of all the IMO shortlist and longlist problems. This is a rare book as none of the other IMO problem books so far covers both long and short-list problems.

The book has a complete listing of all long and short list problems but only provides solutions to shortlist problems as the book is already thick enough as it is. Would be great if the authors could expand the book or have a sequel to cover the other equally interesting longlist problems.

As expected, this is a very expensive Springer-Verlag book. Highly recommended though.

This book arrived too late for me.......2006-08-06

When I participated in the IMO I had to download the past IMO problems from the Internet and of course I had no access to the short list problems. Too bad I didn't have this before 2002, but I still like the IMO-type problems and I had to buy this. Of course you must have this book if you're training for the IMO.

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