![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude. Delightful and informative but never didactic: a splendid debut. The appealingly furry, wide-eyed, fawn-colored bats have both scientific precision and real character they're displayed against intense skies or the soft browns and greens of the woodland in spare, beautifully constructed (occasionally even humorous) compositions. Her illustrations, in luminous acrylics and color pencils, are exquisite. With a warm, nicely honed narration, Cannon strikes just the right balance between accurate portrayal of the bats and the fantasy that dramatizes their characteristics. Dutifully, she tries to accommodate-she eats insects, hangs head up, and sleeps at night, as Mama Bird says she must-but once Stellaluna learns to fly, it's a huge relief when her own mother finds her and explains that the behavior that comes naturally is appropriate to her species. Attacked by an owl, Stellaluna (a fruit bat) is separated from her mother and taken in by a bird and her nestlings. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Not recommended to grumps and grouches who have no sense of humor. Recommended to readers who think history is boring. Released in an updated third edition in April 2012. But hardly any! You probably won’t even notice them. Guaranteed free of those annoying split infinitives and dangling participles. With footnotes that are admittedly unnecessary, but how could we do without them? Passed by the grammar police. ![]() ![]() As Edgar Johnson said, "Satire is enjoyable compensation for being forced to think." This book is ideal for multitaskers who would like to laugh and learn at the same time. Lots of history here, between the laughs. These personages took part in real historical events: the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the Petticoat War, the Dreadful Decade, the porkless Thursdays of World War I. Is there a more entertaining way to learn history? This is nonfiction, fact-based satire. To understand them is to understand the world they created. Because historical personages were real people, as nutty as the rest of us. Sure it can be boring in the abstract, when seen in terms of political or economic isms, of territorial boundaries or dates or battles but on the human level, the up-close and personal level, it becomes a cavalcade of psychological case histories. This book proves that history can be fun, when viewed through the lives of the jokers who made it. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Bald John Donne: A Life from the 1970s remains the standard scholarly biography: dusty? yes dry? yes but all the detail we need for studying Donne is here and meticulously referenced. ![]() Maybe the very complexity of Donne and his various metamorphoses is too much for a biographer to capture because this is the fourth biography I've read and none of them feel complete. ![]() Rundell's vast enthusiasm is almost there in his place, a kind of simulacrum for the man. Rundell's writing is the star of this show: it's sparky and textured, original and alive - if she wrote a novel I'd read it like a shot - but, somehow, Donne the man sort of slips between the floorboards of this biography and never really emerges as a fully-fleshed (ha!) person. ![]() ![]() ![]() Satomi is an eleven-year-old girl being raised by her mother, Akiko. Although mothers in her book are hardly sweet and nurturing, Mockett moves beyond the anger to explore daughters’ quest for their mothers. ![]() Few authors, however, deal with the complexity of those relationships as well as Marie Mutsuki Mockett. Only a couple of decades ago, mothers and daughters were seldom the focus of literature, but now that more women writers have emerged, they are everywhere. At a more universal level, the image suggests the process of finding and retaining what is true and important from the past for each of us. Subtly it is a major theme in the book, symbolizing the search for the piece of one’s mother that a daughter carries forth into her own life. It is critical to one of the subplots in this book. “Picking bones from ash” refers to the traditional Japanese practice of carefully removing the bones from ashes, with chop sticks, during special rituals involving cremation and burial. Graywolf Press (2011), 320 pages.Ī spectacular and totally absorbing novel about several generations of Japanese woman seeking to find and reestablish connections with their mothers and their pasts. Picking Bones from Ash, by Marie Mutsuki Mockett. ![]() ![]() ![]() How the Swift theory was bornĭespite doubt being cast upon the theory, there were several reasons why Swifities were speculating that the book could be a Swift memoir: its title and author reveal on June 13th (Swift has very publicly claimed this as her favorite number), its 544-page length (as those three digits add up to13), and Swift’s All Too Well: The Short Film music video showcasing her reading an autobiography. There’s been online buzz that suggests it could be from K-Pop supergroup BTS, in accordance with June 13 being the group’s musical debut date and July 9 being the 10-year-anniversary of the formation of their ‘ARMY’ fanbase. A post on anonymous entertainment gossip page DeuxMoi suggests the book could be by another musical act. There are several theories as to who else besides Swift might have written the book. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.Īfter expanding on the story in Neuromancer with two more novels ( Count Zero in 1986 and Mona Lisa Overdrive in 1988), thus completing the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson collaborated with Bruce Sterling on the alternate history novel The Difference Engine (1990), which became an important work of the science fiction subgenre known as steampunk. ![]() Gibson coined the term " cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story " Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans-a "combination of lowlife and high tech" -and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This virus wants us to take perfume away.Īccording to the quote I have started this article with, who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men. If the mask can filter viruses, obviously, as a consequence, it can filter molecules of herbs and scents which are bigger than viruses. Therefore, now we must try to protect our breath by wearing a filter mask that should have the purpose of preventing the very small viruses from coming into our mouth and our nose. The main reason of the emergency is due to the loss of sleeps in intensive care and to the great demand for ventilators for assisted breathing. The most of deaths is caused by breathing difficulties. ![]() The Covid-19 is a virus that causes pneumonia. If we can survive without touching (at least for a little while), we cannot live without breathing W e cannot shake a hand, hug each other, exchange a sign of peace. Yesterday I wrote about the fact that the touch sense has become forbidden, at least as far as the contact with our people is concerned. ― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.” And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. Together with breath it entered human beings, who couldn’t defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. ![]() ![]() ![]() Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. Taught from their infancy, that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Women are everywhere in this deplorable state for, in order to preserve their innocence, as ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any strength. The picture reflects Mary Wollstonecraft’s views in The Rights of Women. Laredo The Debutante (1807) by Henry Fuseli shows a woman, the victim of male social conventions, tied to the wall, made to sew and guarded by governesses. ![]() ![]() Mary Wollstonecraft, From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792). ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Gene denies Westover's attempts to seek normality in her life. Faye consequently homeschools the Westover children. Gene was paranoid about hospitals, public education, and the government, partially due to the siege at Ruby Ridge. Westover is raised in isolation in Buck's Peak, Idaho by her parents, pseudonymously referred to as Gene and Faye Westover respectively. It won a 2019 Alex Award and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. She explores her struggle to reconcile her desire to learn with the world she inhabited with her father.Īs of the September 13, 2020, issue of The New York Times, the book had spent 132 consecutive weeks on the Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list. ![]() She started college at the age of 17 having had no formal education. She details her journey from her isolated life in the mountains of Idaho to completing a PhD program in history at Cambridge University. Westover recounts overcoming her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college, and emphasizes the importance of education in enlarging her world. Educated (2018) is a memoir by the American author Tara Westover. ![]() ![]() ![]() Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created-a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in-or stand up, come out, and risk everything. But just as Riley’s starting to settle in at school-even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast-the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley’s real identity, threatening exposure. ![]() On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it’s REALLY like to be a gender fluid teenager. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in uber-conservative Orange County, the pressure-media and otherwise-is building up in Riley’s so-called “normal” life. The thing is…Riley isn’t exactly out yet. ![]() Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. The first thing you’re going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl? ![]() |