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Shopaholic (novels)
''Shopaholic'' is a series of novels written by the UK author Sophie Kinsella, who also writes under her real name Madeleine Wickham. The books follow protagonist Rebecca Bloomwood, an idealistic, but intelligent and hard-working financial journalist through her adventures in shopping and life. Each book typically centers around a large shift in Becky's personal or work life and details the trouble that ensues as a result of her quirky personality and unrealistic goals. As of October 2019, the series has ten books. The novel series has been optioned by a Hollywood studio, with the first Shopaholic film being released 13 February 2009. The Books *''The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic'' (2000) also published as ''Confessions of a Shopaholic'' (2001) *''Shopaholic Abroad'' (2001) also published as ''Shopaholic Takes Manhattan'' (2002) *'' Shopaholic Ties the Knot'' (2002) *''Shopaholic & Sister'' (2004) *''Shopaholic & Baby'' (2007) *''Mini Shopaholic'' (2010) *''Shopaholic on H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Dancy
Hugh Michael Horace Dancy (born 19 June 1975) is an English actor who rose to prominence for his role as the titular character in the television film adaptation of ''David Copperfield'' (2000) as well as for roles in feature films as Kurt Schmid in '' Black Hawk Down'' (2001) and Prince Charmont in ''Ella Enchanted'' (2004). Other film roles include Joe Conner in ''Shooting Dogs'' (2005), Grigg Harris in ''The Jane Austen Book Club'' (2007), Luke Brandon in '' Confessions of a Shopaholic'' (2009), Adam Raki in ''Adam'' (2009) and Ted in ''Martha Marcy May Marlene'' (2011). On television, he portrayed criminal profiler Will Graham in the NBC television series ''Hannibal'' (2013–2015), Cal Roberts in the Hulu original series '' The Path'' (2016–2018) and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in the Channel 4 miniseries ''Elizabeth I'' (2005), the latter role earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Dancy currently portrays Senior Assistant District Attorney Nolan Price on NB ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novel Series
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher. Publishers' reprint series Reprint series of public domain fiction (and sometimes nonfiction) books appeared as early as the 18th century, with the series ''The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill'' (founded by British publisher John Bell in 1777). In 1841 the German Tauchnitz publishing firm launched the ''Collection of British and American Authors'', a reprint series of inexpensive paperbound editions of both public domain and copyrighted fiction and nonfiction works. This book series was unique for paying living authors of the works published even though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century. Later British reprint series were to include the ''Routledge's Railway Library ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conspicuous Consumption
In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term ''conspicuous consumption'' to explain the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury commodities (goods and services) specifically as a public display of economic power—the income and the accumulated wealth—of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer, the public display of discretionary income is an economic means of either attaining or of maintaining a given social status. The development of Veblen's sociology of conspicuous consumption also identified and described other economic behaviours such as invidious consumption, which is the ostentatious consumption of goods, an action meant to provoke the envy of other people; and conspicuous compassion, the ostentatious use of charity meant to enhance the reputation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supply of goods would grow beyond consumer demand, and so manufacturers turned to planned obsolescence and advertising to manipulate consumer spending. In 1899, a book on consumerism published by Thorstein Veblen, called ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'', examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" at the beginning of the 20th century. In it, Veblen "views the activities and spending habits of this leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both relate to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness." In economics, consumerism may refer to economic policies that emphasise consumption. In an abstract sense, it is the consideration th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weighted Arithmetic Mean
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The notion of weighted mean plays a role in descriptive statistics and also occurs in a more general form in several other areas of mathematics. If all the weights are equal, then the weighted mean is the same as the arithmetic mean. While weighted means generally behave in a similar fashion to arithmetic means, they do have a few counterintuitive properties, as captured for instance in Simpson's paradox. Examples Basic example Given two school with 20 students, one with 30 test grades in each class as follows: :Morning class = :Afternoon class = The mean for the morning class is 80 and the mean of the afternoon class is 90. The unweighted mean of the two means is 85. However, this does not account for the difference in number ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film ''Léolo'' (1992). Since January 2010, Rotten Tomatoes has been owned by Flixster, which was in turn acquired by Warner Bros in 2011. In February 2016, Rotten Tomatoes and its parent site Flixster were sold to Comcast's Fandango. Warner Bros. retained a minority stake in the merged entities, including Fandango. History Rotten Tomatoes was launched on August 12, 1998, as a spare-time project by Senh Duong. His objective in creating Rotten Tomatoes was "to create a site where people can get access to reviews from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normalization (statistics)
In statistics and applications of statistics, normalization can have a range of meanings. In the simplest cases, normalization of ratings means adjusting values measured on different scales to a notionally common scale, often prior to averaging. In more complicated cases, normalization may refer to more sophisticated adjustments where the intention is to bring the entire probability distributions of adjusted values into alignment. In the case of normalization of scores in educational assessment, there may be an intention to align distributions to a normal distribution. A different approach to normalization of probability distributions is quantile normalization, where the quantiles of the different measures are brought into alignment. In another usage in statistics, normalization refers to the creation of shifted and scaled versions of statistics, where the intention is that these normalized values allow the comparison of corresponding normalized values for different datasets i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999. The site provides an excerpt from each review and hyperlinks to its source. A color of green, yellow or red summarizes the critics' recommendations. It is regarded as the foremost online review aggregation site for the video game industry. Metacritic's scoring converts each review into a percentage, either mathematically from the mark given, or what the site decides subjectively from a qualitative review. Before being averaged, the scores are weighted according to a critic's popularity, stature, and volume of reviews. The website won two Webby Awards for excellence as an aggregation website. Criticism of the site has focused on the assessment system, the ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isla Fisher
Isla Lang Fisher (; born 3 February 1976) is an Australian actress and author. Born to Scottish parents in Oman, she moved to Australia at age six where she began appearing in television commercials. Fisher came to prominence for her portrayal of Shannon Reed on the Australian soap opera '' Home and Away'' from 1994–97, for which she received two Logie Award nominations. After various appearances on television and stage, Fisher made a successful transition to Hollywood with her portrayal of Mary Jane in the 2002 live-action adaptation of ''Scooby-Doo'', and has since played prominent roles in films such as ''Wedding Crashers'' (2005), '' Confessions of a Shopaholic'' (2009), ''Bachelorette'' (2012), ''The Great Gatsby'', '' Now You See Me'' (both 2013), and ''Nocturnal Animals'' (2016). Her other notable credits include ''Swimming Pool'' (2001), ''I Heart Huckabees'' (2004), ''London'' (2005), ''Wedding Daze'' (2006), '' The Lookout'', '' Hot Rod'' (both 2007), ''Definitely, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophie Kinsella
Madeleine Sophie Wickham, known by her pen name Sophie Kinsella, is an English author. The first two novels in her best-selling Shopaholic series, ''The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic'' and ''Shopaholic Abroad'', were adapted into the film '' Confessions of a Shopaholic'' (2009). Her books have sold over 40 million copies in more than 60 countries, and been translated into over 40 languages. Early life Madeleine Sophie Wickham is the eldest sister of fellow writers Gemma and Abigail Townley. She was educated at Putney High School, St Mary's School near Shaftesbury, Sherborne School for Girls, and New College, Oxford, where she initially studied Music, but after a year switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics ( PPE). She worked as a financial journalist (including for ''Pensions World'') before turning to fiction. Life and career At the age of 24, Kinsella wrote her first novel, which was published when she was 26. ''The Tennis Party'' was immediately hailed as a succ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mini Shopaholic
''Mini Shopaholic'' (2010) is the sixth book of Shopaholic series. It is a chick-lit novel by Sophie Kinsella, a pen-name of Madeline Wickham. It focuses on the main character Rebecca (Becky) Bloomwood, her husband Luke Brandon and their daughter Minnie. Plot summary Rebecca Bloomwood and her husband, Luke Brandon, want to buy a home of their own so that they do not have to live with Becky's parents anymore. Their young daughter, Minnie, exhibits behavioural problems and seems to be incapable of being controlled by either parent. For example, she has been banned from four different Christmas grottos because of her naughty behaviour. Minnie's inability to behave properly gives Luke doubts about having a second child. He tells Becky that they are already having trouble controlling Minnie and he is unable to even contemplate having another child. In addition to the difficulties of raising Minnie, Becky is also planning a surprise party for Luke. In her efforts to keep it a secr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
