All it takes for a big accounting firm to set up an office in Brazzaville or Vladivostok is for a partner to move there, so one can find a competent book-keeper almost anywhere.But he that filches my good name...NGOs depend on publicity for donations.
Their children play more sports than mine, they are academically more competent, they read books all the time, they are constantly on playdates, they are popular, witty, funny.
In fact, the only truly competent character in the book is Micah, a little boy.
Parker's book argues that competent mothering requires two conflicting impulses — to protect and nurture the child, and to push the child out into the world — and suggests that ambivalence is the engine of achieving these dichotomous objectives.
That passage should have followed the sentence beginning "The book is a competent cut-and-paste job" and should have read: "As the chapters march through the decades, Mr. Levenstein sets the stage with a few cultural or political generalities, and then gets down to the business of stringing quotations together, often making the same point a half-dozen times.
So now instead of just being confident that I can write a book, I feel competent.
We could, however, be persuaded to look at pictures if a competent photographer compiled them in book form.
They stood out above other titles [submitted] – books by perfectly competent and more than competent poets, but which we felt had some kind of holding pattern there".
Some so-called vanity books were written by competent writers who just couldn't find a way into the mainstream; others were exercises in ego building -- the books were sold or given away free to family members, friends and colleagues.
Thus far the book serves as a clear, competent history of an expedition; the second half, though, more resembles a novel.
These books by Weintraub and Perry are both competent studies.
