Articles about the Study Books

I got this book with the aim of getting my 14 year old to cook, however my husband hasn't put it down yet and he has made nearly every recipe in the book. We needed to change the way we ate and this book has given loads of ways to do that. (In fact it was exactly the kick up the bum we needed to get away from ready made meals etc.)
Jamie, I want to thank you for writing this book!
Oh and I have given it away as a present... does that count for the pass it on???

Stick Man is a fantastic book which my 2 girls who are 7 and 4 and I love. It flows really well (something I didn't find with Tiddler) and the story is just great. This probably now equals Snail and the Whale as one of my favourite kids books ever.

If you love reading to your child, do not miss this book.

It is a delightful, humourous,dream-like surreal book, with a repetitive, poetic, chanting story.

It is (deservedly) a children's classic. Many reviewers here have tried to break down the different elements of this book.

What I would like to convey is the whole experience of reading the book which teaches a simple life experience to a child - which is highly spiritual, particularly the last pages where a riot of colour is the world through the eyes of a butterfly.

The story has optimism and beauty at its very core.

It has limitless opportunities for teaching and conversation. There is a colouring book of the fantastic illustrations which can be bought - the video and CD features lovely music and a calm and peaceful narrator.

Tops my list for children and grown ups of all ages.

Growing up with a Chinese mother who cooks the best chinese, I have developed a very good palate. I consider myself a foodie and relish in cooking, but always go back to the basics, which is Chinese.

This book is an excellent source of inspiration for people who can cook and also easy enough for beginners. A review here said the food was bland and I beg to differ. Growing up in Hong Kong, the Chinese I know relied on the freshest ingredients to deliver the best flavours. Spices were used minimally. Only when you travel inland to Szechuan do you truly encounter the fiery stuff.

Ching has given us classic recipes and more modern westernised ones. She allows you to use your common sense, you are able to add more or less of what you like. She is playful, personal, light and very likeable.

I didn't give it full marks as I found it lacked in the dessert department. The Chinese do make wonderful desserts and are excellent bakers. Other than that, this cook book is highly recommended.

This book is simple and tells 'the secret' very basically. Really you would need the DVD to go along with the book to get the full flavour of what is being talked about The Secret DVD I've tried out the practice they suggest and it does actually seem to work to some degree. I was hoping for more of the spiritual element but I was pleased with it anyway. K.Loys book Finding Reality 'Awakening to Spiritual Freedom' would be good with this to get a more deeper understanding of thought and spiritual experience.

This book is full of inspiring and easy to follow recipes, delicious photography and lots of personal touches and anecdotes which make it a 'real' book. I like the way the dishes are made using accessible ingredients as sometimes celebrity cook books are full of ingredients which are difficult to come by or expensive. In fact I love the old fashioned and 'simple food' element, but above all the recipes are for 'proper' good food, ideal for family meals and social gatherings without days of worry and preparation beforehand.
A must have for everyone who loves to cook good food with simple, quality ingredients.

Not quite the gripping read that the reviews had me believing it would be. I was expecting some tantalising narrative, imaginative characterisation and a poignant denouement - instead I got a load of electrical charts. Is this postmodernism gone mad?

Bought for my 2 year old daughter who is peppa mad, these are cute little books that keep her entertained. They are descriptive rather than actual stories describing areas that peppa goes or things she likes to do. My daughter loves them though and they aren't taxing to rely to her over and over and over...

This is a fabulous story about being friends with and helping each other, no matter who or what you are! It stirs emotions when the whale gets into a pickle, but all turns out well ;) Everybody pitches in to help, and isn't that the way it should be. This book essentially teaches your child important values relating to real life, and is an absolute pleasure to read.

It's also about travel, with plenty of creatures and land/sea features to hold the interest of any fidgety child.

All wrapped up with delightful and colourful illustrations which are just packed with interest, not to mention the lovely rhyme in which the story is cleverly told.

Do your child a favour, and buy this book! Read it aloud to your child, and it will be an instant favourite, I'm sure. My 4-year-old loves it.

Reading these reviews leads me immediately to the realisation that this work may possibly be little better than plagiarism. Siméon-Denis Poisson first examined the statistical modelling of low-probability events in 1838, within a much wider corpus of scientific research in pure and applied natural and social sciences. One immediate conclusion is that the probability of low-odds events occurring (where there is no impedement to frequent possible events) is much higher than normal binomial probability suggests. As this is the heart of Taleb's thesis, he's at best reinvented the wheel.
On the basis of his introduction, examining the work of Umberto Eco, I suspect he falls into a trap of his own pretentiousness, insofar as Professor Eco sometimes espouses hermetic doctrines in his fictional works established long before our days by the Vatican and other similar bodies. His is not the work of a freelance research student, but of an acolyte, affirmed by his other publications of a non-fictional character, displaying the formation of his mentation. It is not therefore appropriate to suggest that there is much of a serendipitous nature about his well-researched, yet doctrinally conformist, theses, and that disables Taleb's first shuffle.
I therefore conclude that as both foundations to his thesis, namely his starting point and the incremental progression thenceforward, appear to be weak, this may not arrive at any logically coherent conclusions at all. Those of a religious disposition might choose to develop that objection further, insofar as the inexplicable Poisson anomaly has sometimes been argued as a scientifically-rigourous case for a non-bounded ontological eidos (or in plain language, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Nicholas, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."), but each to his own: at the very least, he is not doing fresh research by a very long way, as this was very old hat in our market modelling in the 1980s.