The Girl's Got Bite : Unofficial Guide to Buffy's World

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The Girl's Got Bite is like a lengthy TV magazine special on the wonderful action-drama-comedy show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Because the book is not affiliated with the show, the author, Drew Carey biographer Kathleen Tracy, dwells on quotations from the stars and Joss Whedon, the show's brilliant creator, not quotes from the show itself. About half the book is devoted to synopses and discussions of the first 33 episodes, including bloopers and a sharp-eyed insider's observations, such as the bumper sticker for the rock band Nerf Herder glimpsed inside Willow's locker and the reason Buffy's estranged dad looks so familiar in the ninth episode, "Nightmares." (Nerf Herder performs the show's theme song, and Buffy's dad is played by Dean Butler, who married Melissa Gilbert on Little House on the Prairie.) Tracy spices up the episode guide, and the whole book, with fun facts about vampires in literature, onscreen, and in life. Did you know that nasty Countess Nasdasdy in 17th-century Transylvania actually bathed in the blood of 40 murdered maidens? Or that if Angel and Buffy had a half-vampire baby, it would be called a "dhampir," and would probably take after its slayer mother?

The most interesting stuff in the book is its journalistic history of the Buffy film (starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry) and the very distinct TV show. Tracy gets good, insightful quotes from everybody, most crucially from Whedon, who loathes the Buffy film (for which he wrote the screenplay) and defines the TV show as "The X-Files meets My So-Called Life." He's right.

Book Description

Buffy Summers is just your average teenager with everyday problems except for one teeny tiny thing-she's the Vampire Slayer. Balancing homework with her duties as the one chosen to rid the Earth of evil forces sometimes puts a crimp in Buffy's social life, but she manages. That the buff high schooler can annihilate vampires and other monsters while remaining fashionably dressed and cutely dressed illustrates the dichotomy that is Buffy.

This companion guide covers all aspects of the Buffy phenomena-from the 1992 feature film starring Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry, to the development and production of the current hit TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Based on interviews with the show's creator, producers and principal cast members, the book includes cast biographies, critical summaries of each episode, trivia, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and more. Like the series, the Buffy book combines the thoughtful (an essay on slayer mythology throughout history) with the frivolous for a frightfully good time.

Customer Reviews:

Loved It!.......1999-04-10

I looked at it in a library and you had to peel me away, I'm just so glad I'll be able to buy it now!

A must-have for any Buffy Fan!!!!!!!.......1999-04-04

This book is an awesome Buffy Bio! Kathleen Tracy is an awesome writer and nailed, or should I say staked, every point (no pun intended) perfectly. I loved he book and have read thought it a number of times. As a HUGE Buffy fan, I must say that it is one of the best!!

Pretty awesome book on the really awesome show!.......1999-02-21

It's a really good book!! I was surprised to find some great info on the cast and show, and I loved the section on bloopers! This book definately deserves 4 stars, if not 5!

Good book for what the author had to work with.......1998-11-29

This book was the first book on the market about the show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". At the time it greatly fed my hunger for information on what has become my all-time favorite show. Since then, "The Watcher's Guide" has become tops on my list for Buffy books. The author of this book basically pieced together interviews from various sources for the actor biographies. Also, the episode guide turned out to be more interesting than I had expected seeing that the author did not have access to as much inside information as the authors of the official guide did ("The Watcher's Guide"). The one thing that sets this book apart from the other Buffy books is its coverage on the Buffy movie from 1992. That movie was not very good, and it does not come close to being what the TV show is. However, I did enjoy reading about the beginning of the whole Buffy phenomena. I am just glad that the author did not devote more time and pages to the subject. All in all, it is a very good book about "Buffy", but it is not the best one available.

A Great Book! Any Die-Hard Buffy Fan Should Buy It!.......1998-11-28

The Book was Very informative. I found out things that I didn't know and I found that hard to believe because I have read every book, seen every show, and seen all her movies. (Including her part as Kendall opposite Susan Lucci in a daytime soap opera. I recomend this book to anone from die-hard fan to beginning watcher. Go buy the book and see for yourself!

The Girl's Got Bite: The Unofficial Guide to Buffy's World

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The Girl's Got Bite: The Unofficial Guide to Buffy's World
Kathleen Tracy
Manufacturer: Renaissance Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NQH392

Book Description

The SUZUKI METHOD of Talent Education is based on Dr. Shinichi Suzuki's view that every child is born with ability, and that man is the son of his environment. According to Dr. Suzuki, a world-renowned violinist and teacher, the greatest joy an adult can know comes from developing a child's potential so he/she can express all that is harmonious and best in human beings. Students are taught using the mother-tongue approach. Suzuki Bass School Materials include: Bass Parts (Vol. 1-3) * Piano Accompaniments (Vol. 1-3) * Cassettes (Vol. 1-3). Suzuki Method Core Materials available for piano, violin, viola, cello, string bass, flute, harp, guitar, and recorder.

Suzuki Bass School, Volume 2 (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

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Suzuki Bass School, Volume 2 (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0874873797

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Suzuki Bass School Piano Acc. (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

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Suzuki Bass School Piano Acc. (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Suzuki Bass School, Volume 1 (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

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Suzuki Bass School, Volume 1 (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 087487369X

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Suzuki Bass School Materials include: Bass Parts (Vol. 1-3) * Piano Accompaniments (Vol. 1-3) * CD (Vol. 1-3) * Cassettes (Vol. 1-3)

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Suzuki Bass School, Volume 3 (Suzuki Method Core Materials)

Manufacturer: Alfred Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 0874873800

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Customer Reviews:

Developing a Child's Potential!.......2006-01-14

This is the perfect book for the long road of Suzuki's philosophy of developing a child's potential.

A valuable investment in every way.

Highly recommended.

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A great resource for magic

Pick and Choose -- There is a lot of helpful material here!

Another great d20 product by FF

A great addition

Spells & Spellcraft: Compendium of Mystic Lore (Legends & Lairs, d20 System) (Legends and Lairs)
Fantasy Flight Games , and Various
Manufacturer: Fantasy Flight Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Path of Magic: A Character Resource for Bards, Sorcerers, and Wizards (Legends & Lairs, d20 System) (Legends & Lairs)

Path of the Sword: A Character Resource for Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, and Rangers (Legends & Lairs, d20 System) (Legends & Lairs)

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Spell Compendium (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying)

ASIN: 1589940253

Book Description

Spells & Spellcraft is the fourth volume in Fantasy Flight's Legends & Lairs line of d20 System sourcebooks. This 176-page hardcover book will offer scores of new arcane and divine spells, new feats, rules for alchemical research and arcane libraries, and rules for new magical traditions. Spells & Spellcraft will be an invaluable resource for both players of spellcasting characters and DMs looking to expand the boundaries of magic in their campaigns.

Customer Reviews:

A great resource for magic.......2006-03-14

This is the third book I've purchased by Fantasy Flight Games. If Spells and Spellcraft is an indicator of the quality of the rest of their books, I think I'll be adding a few more of their titles to my collection.

First off, the spells are very creative and well balanced. None of them seemed too weak or too powerful for their level. The section on building constructs is great. It is very detailed and presents well thought out options for spell casters looking to build them.

The Glyph Eggs can be used as the D&D equivalent of Holy Hand Grenades and are a welcome, and somewhat humorous, addition.

All in all, Spells and Spellcraft is a wonderful addition to my d20 library.

Pick and Choose -- There is a lot of helpful material here!.......2004-02-04

Fantasy Flight Games scores big with this one. Subtitled "A Compendium of Mystic Lore," it is a treasure trove of magical options for D20 System gaming, which are mercifully NOT interlinked, allowing GMs to pick and choose what they like and what helps their campaigns.

The new spells range from the terribly useful (for example, a gradually enhanced spell series for restoring writings ranging from single documents to whole tomes) to the simply terrible (for example, "Burrowing Bony Digits," a Necromantic spell which sends forth up to five skeletal fingers to burrow their way into the bodies of targets who fail their Reflex saves, doing 1D6 impaling damage plus 1D6 additional burrowing damage for each three levels of the caster -- yecch!).

"The Craft of Magic" (one of my favorite parts) has sections on library construction, bookhunting (always necessary for that on-going Arcane research!), ideas for conducting magical research, constructing laboratories, new ideas for spell foci and components, and an extensive section on Bardic and Sorcerous magic, with new feats, PLUS a section on Ceremonial and Ritual Magic, both arcane and divine.

"New Types of Magic" introduced are "Ward Magic" (location-based enchantments used with "ward tokens" -- an idea once dealt with in "Volo's Guide to the North"), "Chaos Magic," "Cooperative Magic," and a long section on "Religion," dealing with new types of divine spell casters and "Small Gods," the "minor" deities which are so significant in the "real world" but which get such short shrift in gaming worlds. Also introduced is "Place Magic," the magic of arcane locations and nexuses of magical power, including religious shrines.

"The Mundane Made Magical" deals with Alchemy, Constructs, Magical Materials, and Familiars (with wonderful ideas on empowering them, making them finally WORTH the risk of having around). My favorite familiar must now be "the Grimoire," a tiny construct; suitably tinkered with, it is easily imagined as an autonomous, intelligent presence in the spellcaster's library, reading and interrogating other books to aid its master in research; I can readily imagine a canny sage having an entire library of mutually-referant books serving as so many processors in a library-sized magical "computer," with a Grimoire familiar as the interface!

"Magic Items" include Glyph Eggs (the weakest contribution of the book, in my opinion -- just another vehicle for storing magic spells) and Personal Growth Items (Open Gaming Content!), which are items which advance along with their owners, gaining powers and experience (and presumably becoming the original source of many magic items which may now be created with feats: before they were made as "created items," many had to "grow up" to be magical). There is also an Open Gaming Content section on Relics and the obligatory New magical Items section which every single D20 System book seems to have (although this one adds nine new Ioun Stone types).

"Spells & Spellcraft" is not an essential book, by any means, so I have only given it four stars, but, for those who like to play around with magic in their games, it is very, very, very fun and inspirational. I used someone else's copy for a while, but I simply had to buy one for myself so that I could access it whenever I wanted some quick inspiration on matters arcane. I give it a strong personal recommendation.

Another great d20 product by FF.......2002-08-24

The Legends & Lairs series by Fantasy Flight focuses on D&D 3E.

I've checked out just about every major D&D 3E publisher's material. Fantasy Flight is one of the best out there. Why? Since d20 came out, many, many would-be game designers have started making products. Like any saturated market, only a few rise to the top as real stars. Publishers like Fantasy Flight, Malhavok Press, Swords & Sorcery, etc. are among the d20 stars. Fantasy Flight is very creative from cover to cover, and they have a really sound grasp of mechanics. That is a rare combination, especially the good mechanics.

Features of this book:
* Spells! Lots of cool spells for every spell-casting class. Almost all are well-balanced and stylish.
* (Magical) libraries, special spellbooks, laboratories.
* Rituals & ceremonies
* Wards
* Chaos magic
* Expanded familiars
* Places of magic (shrines, standing stones, etc.)
* Alchemy items & cool non-magical materials

DM's: This book will help (no matter how experienced you are) add flavor to all manner of magical goings on in your campaign, and that's usually a big part of most campaigns.

Players: Woe be unto the monster on the receiving end of some of these spells.

5 stars. One of the few products I've added (almost) in its entirety to my game. Almost forgot, check their website for errata -- it's already out.

A great addition.......2002-04-30

This Book has many great additions to D&D 3rd. Ed. magic. The thing I enjoyed most was the new rules for creating your own magical constructs. The new feats are good, but there's not many of them. The spells are great! There are some that every magic useing charecter I make from now on will have them! There is also details on new types of magic. Take chaos magic for example. When you cast a chaos spell it replicates the effets of one of sereveral spells, choosen randomly. The new kind of magic items are great as well. Over all, this is a great additon to any third edition Dungeons and Dragons library.

Book Description

The key to successful financial research is the ability to access and manipulate accurate data. This book, and its cutting edge, completely Internet-based trading system--that can organise and evaluate any market data, with all parameters set by the researcher--introduces a new way of doing just that. The Hirsch name is known for time tested and successful research and analysis, and The Almanac Investor will share valuable Hirsch theories and strategies with investors.

Trusted advice and techniques that can improve any reader's overall trading efficiency.
Contains data, indicators, and patterns needed to understand how and why the stock market fluctuates.
A companion Web site will host a revolutionary Web-based system to evaluate and improve trading practices.
Includes a step-by-step tutorial, which supplements every study in the book.

Customer Reviews:

Must have for an investment library.......2006-12-08

This book is a must have for its research in patterns. Weekly, daily, monthly, and presidential election patterns are all examined to show you the probabilities in trading in specifies time periods. From the data shown it is essential to stay in the market for November and December this is where 40% of the gains have come in the past 80 years. The stock market tends to decline on Thursday and Friday with traders getting out of their positions for a stress free weekend and then the market generally rises on Monday and Tuesday with the reentries. It is essential to fully invest in the stock market in the year before the presidential election, they have returned over 20% in the S&P over the past 4. Stay out of stocks in August and September, they are historically terrible months.

Also the chapter on the cyclical stocks shows you what sector to buy in what month and when to sell. For example :buy consumer stocks in May and sell in September. I can tell you from watching my company's stock over the past 4 years that this is true and one of the best ways to make money in the market. The graph with all industry sectors and showing the buy and sell months is worth the price of the book.

I have returned an average of 20% in my investments over the past 4 years and I can tell you if I would have had this book I could have increased my returns by at least 10%. I would have also decreased my losses during the bear market years by 10% by staying out of the markets in the worst 3 months.

Buy this book and read it to increase your probability of trading success dramatically. I promise you the book will pay for itself in one trade using its principles.

Comprehensive Guide to Stock Market Seasonality and Patterns .......2006-03-29

The Almanac Investor is a welcome addition to Hirsch's long-standing and indispensable annual Stock Trader's Almanac. Jeff Hirsch has co-authored the almanac with J. Taylor Brown, a VP at the Hirsch Organization. The 500+ page soft cover almanac provides investors and traders with useful insights into the stock market's performance over almost six decades. There are recurring patterns in the stock market and those who study history can put the odds in their favor. The Almanac is divided into three parts:

Part I covers indicators and patterns (e.g., weekly, monthly and annual data, the 4 year presidential cycle, the decennial cycle, bull and bear markets since 1990, and how war and peace impacted the markets).

Part II reviews seasonal sector investing and focuses on the best months to own 19 sector indexes (e.g., semiconductor, real estate, oil, and healthcare products) and their performance statistics. Each sector's performance is tracked on four pages pinpointing the performance during the best seasonal periods compared to buy-and-hold, a price chart typically ten years in duration, the top stocks of the index, the best and worst months performance, and the performance by each month of the best monthly time period. At a glance the reader can easily spot the trends that are persistent over time.

ETFs have grown tremendously in volume and importance over the past few years, and the almanac provides detailed information on most of them in Part II. There is a separate chapter devoted to almost 200 ETFs, including a description of the ETF, its top ten holdings, top sectors, and recent price chart. An index lists all the ETFs alphabetically, as well as by their category (e.g., large cap, Latin America, software, etc.) for those investors who want to compare the ETF composition and performance by category.

Part III is a vast database of monthly price history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard and Poor's 500 from 1950 through June 2005, the NASDAQ Composite since its inception in 1971, and the Russell 1000 and 2000 since 1979.

Investors and traders who are looking to put money into the stock should definitely consider the eye-opening patterns and seasonality that have occurred in the stock market for decades. Realizing that there is no guarantee on Wall Street that patterns will persist into the future, the knowledgeable investor/trader will benefit from this encyclopedic array of information. Individuals purchasing this almanac are offered a free 60 trial of the The Almanac Investor Online Research platform which is updated continually. Overall, the almanac is a "must have" for any serious investor or trader.

Some Useful Information Worth Knowing.......2006-03-12

If you study the markets, you will come across all kinds of 'cycles' and 'effects' that have correlations to whether the market goes up or down. In many instances, why these correlations and patterns exist is unclear. With that being said, just because we don't know why something happens does not mean we should just ignore it.

This book provides information on many patterns and seasonal effects that seem to correlate to the market. While you may not want to use these patterns as your primary investment decision making tool, to ignore them is to ignore patterns that exhibited high probabilities (70%, 80% even 100%) of repeating, just as they have, in many instances, for 100 years or more. If the market has gone up in every year ending in the number '5' (1995, 2005) for the last 100 years, do you really want to bet it will go down the next time?

This book is mostly a reference guide that contains interesting and useful information about patterns that occur on different time frames --- daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. If you want to 'stack' the odds of a successful trade as much as possible in your favor, you probably will benefit from having this as a reference book.

Not a 5 star.......2006-02-02

It seems to me that the Almanac Investor works on both superstition and statistics. The only real helpful part I found was on the JB (January Barometer). The author goes on to describe the other 11 months but it almost seems muttled together. I do believe that it is worth taking a look at. Again this seems to work more off of superstition, but has some statistics to back it up.

A Detailed Guide for Trading Seasonal Patterns.......2005-12-14

As someone who maintains two free trading websites that attract a reasonable amount of traffic, I am regularly asked to review (read: promote) various trading services, software programs, books, and other products. The vast majority of these requests I decline. Almost everything I review is something that I have used or currently use myself and have found helpful to my own trading. In this review, I will bundle two related books: Stock Trader's Almanac 2006 by Yale and Jeffrey A. Hirsch and The Almanac Investor by Jeffrey A. Hirsch and J. Taylor Brown. Although there is inevitable overlap between these volumes, they meet different needs.

I am a short-term trader by design-my holding periods average minutes, not days or weeks-so the information found in the Stock Trader's Almanac is most helpful to me as context. The Almanac is a spiral-bound book that is designed as a desktop companion for traders. Much of it consists of a calendar annotated with historical trading tendencies for that day, major holidays and market-moving events, and thought-provoking quotes. A typical notation in the calendar, for example, reads, "Week After Triple Witching Dow Up 11 of Last 14". Next to days that have significant historical directional tendencies, there is a picture of a bull or bear. That is the kind of context that is helpful to a short-term trader.

Where the Almanac shines, however, is in its pattern-based research. Among the broader patterns described in the book are market tendencies following bullish and bearish Januaries; best performing months in the market; best performing days of the week; and best performing months of quarters. Such information is useful context to longer-term investors as well as traders. Literally dozens of seasonal patterns are detailed in the book. It's a true research accomplishment.

This brings us to The Almanac Investor. It's a larger book, subtitled "Profit from Market History and Seasonal Trends". The first part of the book is organized month by month, reviewing the seasonal and historical patterns associated with that month's trading. As such, it is an organized review of the major findings of the Almanac. The next segment of The Almanac Investor is arranged by time frame and details trading patterns that range from half-hourly to weekly, monthly, annual, and beyond. A fascinating section revisits George Lindsay's "Three Peaks and a Domed House" pattern-something probably unknown to many newer traders who never experienced Lindsay's pioneering work. (For the record, his observations on "separating declines" and "middle sections" of moves might be more valuable than his more eye-catching peaks and dome pattern).

The next section of the book is where it really shines. There is a detailed accounting of the seasonal patterns associated with various market sectors, using long-term historical data with sector indices to establish the tendencies. For instance, The Almanac Investor tells us that the banking sector tends to be strong from October through June, but natural gas issues trade well from February to June. From these data, seasonal trading strategies with sector-based portfolios can be constructed. A very useful compilation of all available exchange-traded funds (ETFs), along with their price histories and major holdings, is designed to help readers implement such portfolios.

If I had to put it in a nutshell, I'd say that the Stock Trader's Almanac is a day-to-day desktop tool for staying on top of daily and larger market patterns; The Almanac Investor is a tool for trading those historical and seasonal tendencies. Both are clearly organized and well-written. My only caveat is that the analyses do not include actual statistical tests of significance, which is understandable given that they are not academic treatises. If you set alpha (the probability of chance occurrence below which you're willing to say a finding is significant) at .05 and then run analyses on every day, month, season, and year, you're bound to identify a number of tendencies that occur by chance alone. For that reason, I would not trade any of these patterns mechanically. I do, however, focus on the most robust patterns and utilize them as context for trade ideas. That alone makes both volumes highly worthwhile.

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