Bøger af Katie Jones

Hip to Be Square is a captivating novel penned by the talented Katie Jones. Published recently in 2022 by Hardie Grant Books (UK), this book has quickly gained attention in the literary world. The genre of the book is a secret that readers unravel as they delve into its pages, making it an exciting read for all. Jones has masterfully crafted a narrative that is as engaging as it is thought-provoking. Hip to Be Square is not just a title; it is an invitation to a journey that promises to be as intriguing as it is thrilling. So, buckle up and get ready for an unforgettable literary experience with Katie Jones's Hip to Be Square, a novel that is as unique as its title. Remember, it's hip to be square!

The foreclosure rate in the United States began to rise rapidly beginning around the middle of 2006 and has remained elevated ever since. Losing a home to foreclosure can hurt homeowners in many ways; for example, homeowners who have been through a foreclosure may have difficulty finding a new place to live or obtaining a loan in the future. Furthermore, concentrated foreclosures can drag down nearby home prices, and large numbers of abandoned properties can negatively affect communities. Finally, elevated levels of foreclosures can destabilize the housing market, which can in turn negatively impact the economy as a whole.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures home mortgages made by private lenders against the possibility of borrower default. If the borrower does not repay the mortgage, FHA pays the lender the remaining principal amount owed. By insuring lenders against the possibility of borrower default, FHA is intended to expand access to mortgage credit to households, such as those with smaller down payments or below-average credit histories, who might not otherwise be able to obtain a mortgage at an affordable interest rate or at all. FHA also traditionally plays a countercyclical role in the mortgage market. In other words, it generally insures more mortgages during periods when lenders and private mortgage insurers tighten their lending standards and reduce activity in response to market conditions, and it generally insures fewer mortgages at times when lenders and private mortgage insurers make mortgage credit more easily available. When an FHA-insured mortgage goes to foreclosure, the lender files a claim with FHA for the remaining amount owed on the mortgage. Claims on FHA-insured loans have traditionally been paid out of an account, known as the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund (MMI Fund), that is funded through fees paid by borrowers, rather than through appropriations. However, if FHA were ever unable to pay claims that it owed, it can draw on permanent and indefinite budget authority with the U.S. Treasury to pay those claims without additional congressional action. In recent years, increased default and foreclosure rates, as well as economic factors such as falling house prices, have contributed to an increase in expected losses on FHA-insured loans. This increase in expected losses has put pressure on the MMI Fund and reduced the amount of resources that FHA has on hand to pay for additional, unexpected future losses. This has led to concern that FHA may need to draw on its permanent and indefinite budget authority for funds from Treasury to hold in reserve to pay for these higher expected future losses, or, eventually, to pay insurance claims. An annual actuarial review of the MMI Fund released in November 2012 showed that, according to current estimates, FHA does not currently have enough funds on hand to cover all of its expected future losses on the loans that it currently insures. The results of this actuarial review heightened concerns that FHA could need funds from Treasury. However, whether FHA actually needs to draw funds from Treasury would be determined as part of the annual budget process, not by the actuarial review. FHA faces an inherent tension between protecting its financial health and fulfilling its mission of expanding access to mortgage credit. In addition, the share of mortgages insured by FHA has increased in the past several years as the availability of mortgage credit has tightened, further contributing to this tension. FHA has recently proposed or implemented a number of changes to its single-family mortgage insurance program that are intended to minimize risk to the MMI Fund while still allowing FHA to support the mortgage market and expand access to affordable mortgages. These changes have included increasing the fees that it charges to borrowers for insurance, modifying its underwriting criteria, and taking steps to increase oversight of lenders who make FHA-insured loans. While many of these changes were made administratively by FHA, some involved congressional action. Congress has also weighed additional changes to FHA's programs, and has considered additional legislation aimed at protecting the financial health of the MMI Fund. An example of such a bill is the FHA Emergency Fiscal Solvency Act of 2012 (H.R. 4264), which passed the House of Representatives during the 112th Congress. An identical bill (S. 3678) has been introduced in the Senate.

Sixteen-year-old Sophie Weston's life is turned upside down when her father inherits a dilapidated mansion in the Hamptons and her family leave their life in Brooklyn behind to renovate it. As a child, Sophie regularly visited her great-aunt Poppy and the house's other eccentric inhabitants, but why can she no longer recall her time there clear...

Disgust is a strong, immediate visceral reaction. While it may feel like a purely instinctive response, the cultural meanings ascribed to particular objects, bodies or behaviours play a significant role in determining whether or not they are experienced as disgusting. This interplay between bodies and ideas makes disgust a powerful source of metaphor in narrative fiction. For women's writing, disgust is particularly problematic due to a misogynistic tradition in which the female body has often been coded as disgusting. This book offers a comparative study of recently published texts by eight female authors writing in French and German - Marie Darrieussecq, Amelie Nothomb, Lorette Nobecourt, Alina Reyes, Sibylle Berg, Jenny Erpenbeck, Monika Maron and Charlotte Roche - in terms of an aesthetics of disgust and asks to what extent disgust can be seen as a useful tool for feminist criticism. Since the late 1990s there have been increasing levels of academic interest in disgust in various disciplines, ranging from clinical psychology to aesthetics and moral philosophy. As one of the first full-length studies to consider literary uses of disgust, this book both contributes to the emerging field of disgust theory and offers a new contribution to the study of women's writing.