Reviews for Business Mathematics for Colleges

The average rating for Business Mathematics for Colleges based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-13 00:00:00 Dustin Fowler Movies have ratings. TV shows have ratings. Music and video games are even rated sometimes. All for the shocking purpose of warning consumers away from things they are likely to find offensive. If only books had a similar rating system. It might go like this: S -- Smutty F -- Frequently Foul Language Po -- Poorly Written I -- Incredibly bad or nonexistent plot Pr -- Pretentious use of Austen-era dialogue that totally misses the mark B -- Badly conceived, badly delivered E -- Emotionless, while trying to provoke the most intense of emotions I could go on. But I've been trying to stifle my sarcastic streak. Ahem. If such a rating system existed, The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin would be plastered with all of the above warnings. I picked it up on a whim because I wanted a new book to read and I happened to be standing in a bookstore. Makes sense to buy a book, no? The one I wanted to buy (Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith) was sold out. Perhaps I should have made the connection between a very popular and well-written book being sold out... and a table full of unwanted books that they were trying to con people into buying. Sucker. I fell for it. It looked promising so I bought it. Never again! This book was so boring at most points that I had trouble keeping my brain focused enough to follow the slowly plodding plot. I found myself distracted by Dora the Explorer--Dora for pete's sake! If that's not sad, I don't know what is. I almost didn't post the title on this blog, lest somebody get curious and actually buy it themselves. Then they would come to ME complaining about my reading habits. This book had no redeeming qualities that I can remember. It used controversy to shock--by which I mean, they threw in all sorts of plot elements that added nothing to the plot but were very modern and and edgy. It included a love triangle between an old man, his live-in-bisexual-partner-for-life and a 16-year-old girl. I think I'm gonna go vomit. It included verbal abuse. Emotional abuse. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. It had romantic encounters so thoroughly portrayed that I blushed as I tried to skim past them. Complete smut. I can put up with edgy elements to a story if they are put in the proper light and show the true duality of human nature. I can handle the fact that this world ain't always pretty. But this was just cheap entertainment of the worst kind. It is an insult to Jane Austen that the author read Emma to try to get a feel for the dialogue of the day. The dialogue sounded forced and out of place. I could go on, mostly because I need to expel the nastiness of reading this book from my mind. But for now I'll summarize by saying this is the first book I can remember actually throwing in the garbage can. Grade :: F My apologies to Emma Darwin, great-granddaughter of the Famous Darwin. If you're reading this, you have every right to mutter, "Bloody American! What does she know!"

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-31 00:00:00 Robert Gurley I ‘discovered’ this book by accident, while browsing the author tables at the Historical Novel Society conference in London. I was intrigued by the blurb; I have an instinctive interest in debut novels, even though this one has been out for several years, and my work-in-progress is also set in two time periods. Enough hooks there for me to buy a copy, and it proved to be an intelligent, beautifully written book that kept me reading late into the night. I found myself re-reading some passages purely to appreciate the prose. Both main characters are finely drawn. The book opens in 1819 as the Peterloo massacre is witnessed by a crippled officer, a survivor of the Napoleonic wars. The story of his wartime traumas, and of his lost and secret love, is interwoven with the story of a rebellious, teenage girl in 1976. She has been parked with an uncle in the crumbling mansion that was once the officer’s home. Both characters are written in the first person, a technically challenging approach that works well in this book. Ms Darwin has also managed to write very convincingly from a male as well as female point of view. There are one or two minor implausibilities that somehow added to my enjoyment of the book. The officer is much more explicit in his memoirs than, I suspect, any Regency gentleman would be, even in private, and the 1976 teenager is wonderfully articulate for a girl of her background. The character of Lucy is probably more fiercely independent and liberal than any Regency lady would be allowed to be, given the restrictions of that era, but her character is delightful for those traits and by the end of the book I was perhaps a little in love with her myself. However, some of the interactions in the 20th century sections would today be given the label of ‘abuse’, even though they are written with immense tenderness through the eyes of a willing ‘victim’. That conflict was the only discomfort that remained as I finished a thoroughly satisfying read. I shall certainly look out for more of Emma Darwin’s work.