![]() ![]() At other times, Rushdie’s brilliant plots disturb the universe, as in his reflections on migration and its aftermath in The Satanic Verses (1988), which led to a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, forcing Rushdie into hiding for a decade. Sometimes, as in Midnight’s Children (which won the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Best of the Booker in 2008), this universe helped a continent find its voice (as Clark Blaise put it in a review of the novel in The New York Times). Rushdie’s work, over the years, has also sought to squeeze multiple universes into his plots, containing the ambiguities, cruelties, pleasures and miracles of life. ![]() He felt he had “met" the old fool and his imaginary son, around whom his latest novel, Quichotte, takes shape.Ĭervantes’ novel contains a universe. Rushdie, now 72, is by no means a believer but he had a moment of epiphany. He would also be speaking about them during the double anniversary year. ![]() Sometime in 2015, on the eve of the 400th anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare (who died a day apart in 1616), Salman Rushdie was re-reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote to write an introduction to a collection of stories inspired by the two European greats. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Harry stared directly into hell and couldn’t look away.” His nose seemed to flatten to his face and grew ridged, like the convoluted snout of a bat, and one scarlet eye bulged hideously while the other narrowed to a mere slit. Needle teeth dripped slime and something moved in his gaping mouth which wasn’t quite a tongue. ”Still holding his victim, now the necromancer crouched down into himself and his jaws opened wide. ![]() Highly recommended! It brought back many memories to the 70s and 80s where I grew up! But if you overcome the first chapter (or the first 10%) you will be richly rewarded with one of the most interesting, innovative and spellbinding vampire stories I ever came across. This is the very first part of a long series and it absolutely got me hooked from the first chapter on. Will this uncanny man turn into a vampire? At the end there is a nailbiting showdown between Keogh and Dragosani (absolutely loved the Mobius continuum and the Mobius doors mentioned). Dragosani changes in the course of events (very eerie description). It is the real myth behind Dracula (incredibly compelling background story) he encounters. Who will win at the end? Dragosani often travels to Romania to meet a long buried evil there. Keogh has the talent of speaking with the dead (necroscope) and Dragosani is a necromancer. Set in the times of cold war (1976) you see the development of two different characters, Harry Keogh (west) and Boris Dragosani (east) with all the ingredients of a spectacular spy story. ![]() ![]() ![]() In The Dirty Life, Kristin discovers the wrenching pleasures of physical work, learns that good food is at the center of a good life, falls deeply in love, and finally finds the engagement and commitment she craved in the form of a man, a small town, and a beautiful piece of land. Every Friday evening, all year round, over a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the “whole diet”-beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables-produced by the farm. Kristin and Mark’s plan to grow everything needed to feed a community was an ambitious idea, and a bit romantic. ![]() The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of the couple’s first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through their harvest-season wedding in the loft of the barn. On an impulse, she shed her city self and started a new farm with him on five hundred acres near Lake Champlain. ![]() ![]() When Kristin Kimball left New York City to interview a dynamic young farmer named Mark, her world changed. From a “graceful, luminous writer with an eye for detail” ( Minneapolis Star Tribune), this riveting memoir explores a year on a sustainable farm. ![]() ![]() Accompanying the images are the photographer's accounts of adventures in the field - sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying, always vividly compelling. On page after page, stunning images reveal the skill and imagination of Geographic's photographers. Five chapters cover the Society's major themes: wildlife on land and underwater, cultures in the United States and around the world, and science - from astronomy to archaeology to the human senses. Many earlier pictures place the new ones in perspective, illustrating how the "Geographic" has created a unique photographic approach and maintained its tradition over decades, while evolving in response the changing realities that the photography documents. The images capture rare moments in nature and the lives of animals, along with defining events in the lives of people everywhere. ![]() ![]() ![]() "National Geographic: The Photographs" presents an amazing collection of award-winning "National Geographic" magazine photographs, the facts behind them, and the inside stories of the men and women who took them. Print "National Geographic" The Photographs ![]() ![]() ![]() This reading group guide for Gone with the Wind includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. A superb piece of storytelling, it vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Widely considered an American classic, and often remembered for its epic film version, Gone With the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage, in the pages of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell brings to life the unforgettable characters that have captivated readers for decades. This is the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, who arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life. ![]() Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind-winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time-has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel. ![]() ![]() ![]() I have a chance to start again, and this time, I make the rules. A very dangerous adventure that will change my life forever. Thankfully forty isn’t too old to start an adventure, because that’s exactly what I do. That is, until I learn what the house really is, something I never could’ve imagined. I’ll be taking care of a centuries old house that called to me when I was a kid. Age is just a number, after all, and at forty I’m ready to carve my own path.Įager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills. This time, though, I plan to do things differently. But when my husband of twenty years packs up and heads for greener pastures and my son leaves for college, that’s exactly what my life becomes. ![]() “Happily Ever After” wasn’t supposed to come with a do-over option. ![]() A cape wearing butler acting as the world’s worst life coach. ![]() ![]() ![]() But whatever the particular fears exploited by particular horror films, they provide viewers with vicarious but controlled thrills, and thus offer a release, a catharsis, of our collective and individual fears. From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. ![]() March 22, 1993, Princeton University Press. The ideology of horror has shifted historically according to contemporaneous cultural anxieties, including the fear of repressed animal desires, sexual difference, nuclear warfare and mass annihilation, lurking madness and violence hiding underneath the quotidian, and bodily decay. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. To do so, horror addresses fears that are both universally taboo and that also respond to historically and culturally specific anxieties. Horror movies aim to rudely move us out of our complacency in the quotidian world, by way of negative emotions such as horror, fear, suspense, terror, and disgust. It has also been a staple category of multiple national cinemas, and benefits from a most extensive network of extra-cinematic institutions. Men, Women, and Chain Saws Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. The genre of horror has been an important part of film history from the beginning and has never fallen from public popularity. Clover, March 22, 1993, Princeton University Press edition, Paperback in English. This paper offers a broad historical overview of the ideology and cultural roots of horror films. ![]() ![]() "I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children." And the ability to get an education, regardless of gender. The freedom to go to the store without needing a male escort. Reading this book reminded me of how much I take for granted every day: Freedom of speech. ![]() I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. ![]() ![]() When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. When I almost died it was just after midday. I come from a country that was created at midnight. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Johnno, the best man: “Being back together with that group of blokes again… We were all bonded by that place. Hannah, the plus-one: “I’m shocked by how much this place has already made me forget myself.” ![]() I’m not proud of the fact, but I have never found myself able to completely control it, though I’m getting better.” Mine has been known to get the better of me. Jules, the bride: “I have to keep a handle on my temper this weekend. ![]() Who was murdered? And who was the murderer? What was meant to be a happy celebration is surrounded by grudges, fear, shame, rage, and reputations to keep intact. The day before the wedding through the wedding night.Ī wedding of celebrity proportions taking place on a remote island, accessible only by boat and purported to be haunted.ĭuring the wedding reception and festivities a big storm encompasses the island and presents the perfect opportunity for murder. The entire book takes place between two days. įirst the premise of this book and then my thoughts on it. I had her book The Paris Apartment on my TBR but I’m debating if I read that one or not. Add to that the profanity and crudeness and it was not my favorite. I think this was a pretty average book for me. (I know… how many different reading challenges can I do at one time?!) A local librarian recommended it to me for the reading challenge I’m participating in with the library. This is a very popular book and my first from Lucy Foley. “It’s a strange thing when you consider that the dead on this island far outnumber the living.” ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Though she has no wealth, she trades her stories like currency with people who are kind to her. Eva is a naturally gifted and imaginative storyteller who meets people from all stations and walks of life. “A remarkable novel” ( The Washington Post) from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende’s introducing her most enchanting creation, Eva Luna: a lover, a writer, a revolutionary, and above all a storyteller.Įva Luna is the daughter of a professor’s assistant and a snake-bitten gardener-born poor, orphaned at an early age, and working as a servant. St Joseph's University (Brooklyn Voices Series). ![]() |