![]() ![]() I was happily back to my enjoyment of The World According to Garp (1978) and The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), both of which I read when they were newly published. I loved the first hundred pages or so, which introduce us to the characters who inhabit the small New Hampshire town of Gravesend, and tell the story of Owen and Johnny’s childhood friendship, their shared quest to find the identity of Johnny’s father, their adolescent adventures. His story is told by his best friend Johnny Wheelwright, who doesn’t have a lot to distinguish him from any other child of an old New England family, except that his mother never revealed the identity of his father and she herself was killed in a bizarre Little League accident when he was eleven. From an early age Owen has a profound belief that he is an instrument of God, and he has a vision of his own death, including the exact date and some of the circumstances. It tells the life story of Owen Meany, a young man who is tiny in stature and huge in voice like the hero of Gunther Grass’s The Tin Drum (which I haven’t read, though I’ve seen the movie). ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() ![]() Roy Johnson, a former Holt schoolteacher and now head of the state system of two-year colleges, provided the loyal opposition in the House with the considerable help of the Alabama Education Association and its powerful (as much now as then) head, Paul Hubbert. George Wallace was governor Jere Beasley was lieutenant governor Joe Fine, a state senator from Russellville who became a University of Alabama trustee, was the power behind the throne in his role as Senate speaker pro tem and Joe McCorquodale, a state representative from Jackson, was Speaker of the House. ![]() I covered the last day of a session of the Alabama Legislature for the first time 30 years ago, and my/svisit last Monday to the climactic day of the 2005 regular session brought back a lot of memories - some of them even pleasant.īack then, the spacious high-tech Alabama Statehouse hadn't even been thought of yet and the House and Senate were meeting in the historic old Alabama Capitol, where a brass star above the steps facing Dexter Avenue still marks the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy. ![]() ![]() ![]() I could talk ad nauseam about how my demisexuality has shaped the way I perceive romance and attraction, especially in literature. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realised that I was demisexual and also gray-ace. Growing up and as a teen, I struggled to connect and understand how my friends talked and felt about romance and attraction. When I was younger and learning about what it meant to be queer, one of my earliest labels – and the only label I feel any real connection to – was ‘demisexual’. Find the introduction post for Pride Month at The Quiet Pond here. ![]() ![]() Pride Monthis a month-long event at The Quiet Pond, where during the month of June, queer authors and bookish content creators are invited to celebrate being queer, queer books, and their experiences of being a queer reader. Our Friend is Here! is a guest feature at The Quiet Pond, where authors, creatives, and fellow readers, are invited to ‘visit’ the Pond! In Our Friend is Here! guest posts, our visitors (as their very own unique character!) have a friendly conversation about anything related to books or being a reader - and become friends with Xiaolong and friends. ![]() ![]() Her refusal to take her medication and her onset paranoia find her fleeing her home and seeking solace in a bed & breakfast owned by an older couple. The "Jenna" storyline concerns the titular character, a college student struggling with mental illness. Regardless of how the sequels have panned out and how the remakes will fare, the original Hellraiser film is still worth a watch for the gratuitous scenes of violence and the mysterious air that the Cenobites bring in their time on-screen. Many of Hellraiser's sequels were commercial and critical failures, but incoming TV and film remakes hope to turn the tide of the franchise's reputation. ![]() The original Hellraiser is much more than a simple horror movie, as it inspects elements such as the "lusty/wicked woman" archetype, religion, women's agency, the pleasure-pain dynamic, greed, ambition, hedonism, and sexuality as the " connective tissue" in the battle between good and evil. ![]() Pinhead was even recently featured in the horror video game Dead By Daylight as a playable killer. This character would prove enduringly popular and would become the face of a franchise spanning nine more movies as well as spinning off into comic books and novels. The most vocal of these three creatures is known as The Hell Priest according to Barker and Pinhead ( Doug Bradley) according to most fans as well as the film's production crew. Pursuing Frank are the mysterious and masochistic Cenobites. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It is an American (and American-based Israeli) centric book. Rather, it is a personal intellectual history, supplemented by stories, anecdotes and occasional reposts to past combatants. And I would question whether this is a book that outlines the making of behavioural economics. Thaler, arguably the world’s leading behavioural economist and one of its early pioneers, perhaps feels as though his career has been a 40-year odyssey of misbehaving in relation to the mainstream economics community, but given that he has devoted himself to the study of how people actually make, rather than ought to make, decisions, one could make a case for deleting ‘Mis’ from the front of the title. I begin this review of Richard Thaler’s new book with a gripe, or rather a double gripe, about its title. ![]() Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics. Reviewer Adam Oliver finds that Richard Thaler’s new book, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics, covers the core concepts of behavioural economics, but finds that this book is more a ‘personal intellectual history, supplemented by stories, anecdotes and occasional reposts to past combatants’ that misses two important issues ‘relating to suggestions for the future development of behavioural economics’. ![]() ![]() "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title. ![]() An appendix includes more historical information, such as a popular song of the day and pictures of the architecture and fashions.?Rebecca O'Connell, Carnegie Library of PittsburghĬopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. : So Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, An Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847 (Dear America Series) (9780590926676) by Denenberg, Barry and a great selection of similar New, Used and Collectible Books available now at great prices. Denenberg works in the natural and political causes of the Irish potato famine, the dangers and discomforts of overseas passage, and class differences in 1840s America, among other themes. Despite the book's shortcomings, it is chock-full o' historical facts and background. Unfortunately, the effort does not convey the rhythm of Irish speech. The author uses expressions and Irish-like syntax to give the effect of an Irish's girl's language. ![]() The purpose of using a diary format seems to be to allow enough white space on the page to keep readers from being daunted by the flat language and plodding plot. The story of 14-year-old Mary Driscoll's escape from the famine in her native County Cork, Ireland, and her new life working in a textile mill in Lowell, MA, is presented in brief diary entries dated from April to November 1847. ![]() ![]() Once Annabel heals, she’s stunned to realize she is falling for the seductive man who saved her. But when he becomes the unexpected savior of a rival club’s captive, Rev makes it his personal mission to nurse Annabel back to health-and to shelter her from the nightmares that torment her. But she finds herself living a nightmare when she’s kidnapped and transported into a hell on earth she never could have imagined.īorn and bred into the Hells Raiders MC, Nathaniel “Reverend” Malloy lives and dies for his brothers. Looking for a walk on the wild side, Annabel Percy, the daughter of a powerful politician, starts dating a biker she knows is completely wrong for her. The New York Times bestselling author of Vicious Cycle plunges readers into a world of danger and desire in her newest in the Vicious Cycle motorcycle club romance series. ![]() ![]() ![]() Of his paintings, no authenticated specimens survive, although there is evidence of his work through influences on later paintings and descriptive accounts of his paintings. Of his poems some four hundred survive: these were first collected and originally edited into a corpus by his next-youngest brother, Wang Jin, by imperial command. Wang Wei is especially known as a poet and painter of nature. In this holy book of Buddhism, which is partly in the form of a debate with Mañjuśrī (the Bodhisattva of Wisdom), a lay person, Vimalakīrti, expounds the doctrine of Śūnyatā, or emptiness, to an assembly which includes arhats and bodhisattvas, and then culminates with the wordless teaching of silence. Wang chose the courtesy name Mojie, and would sign his works Wang Weimojie because Wei-mo-jie was a reference to Vimalakirti, the central figure of the Buddhist sutra by that name. His family name was Wang, his given name Wei. ![]() ![]() Many of his poems are preserved, and twenty-nine were included in the highly influential 18th-century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. He was one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his time. ![]() Wang Wei (Chinese: 王維 699–759) was a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman. ![]() ![]() ![]() Matt and Marie's romance is a decadent slow burn. I felt like Penny didn't just write a standard romance (not that I was expecting that), she dug DEEP and wrote a romance that was layered, smart, well thought out, and authentic. A way that will make me remember every moment of this novel. It hurt in way that I felt pain everywhere. And ooohhhh, did it make me feel ALL THE FEELS. I certainly haven't read all of Penny's books, only several in this series, but I don't remember them being this crazy hot. ![]() And Penny Reid had her couple getting down and dirty for her readers. I mean, hey, hey, heyyyyyyyy, hottie Matt! ::waggles brows:: My jaw dropped. ![]() These characters are quirky and charming, funny and sweet and also, REALLY SEXY! Yes, sexy as in "whoa, baby!" I was WOWED by the sexy times. So the fact that I sat down, did not get distracted, and finished this novel in less than 12 hours tells you just how fantastic it is.Ģ. Here are some of the things I am thinking! (Sorry, I have to structure my thoughts because they're a mess of a million and one things when it comes to this book!)ġ. In fact, this is the most HEARTFELT novel I have read this year. You'll ache, feel devastated at times, but it will leave you so happy and fulfilled. One that'll have you laughing and crying, swooning and wanting, needing all good things for these characters. A standalone novel that will surprise you with its depth and intensity. I'll tell you this, Dating-ish is a guaranteed book hangover. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When Lady Eudoria had not returned by evening, suspicions are aroused when her absence begins to extend one day at a time, the worst is naturally feared. On her fourteenth birthday, Enola, who lives with her mother and two servants in the ramshackle Ferndell Hall, awakens to be told that Lady Eudoria, a.k.a “Mum”, has gone out for the day, leaving gifts for Enola to open with elderly retainer Lane and his wife. Is 2006 so distant that the landscape for juvenile crime fiction has altered this much in the intervening years? I wouldn’t have thought so, but here we are. There’s much in Springer’s creation which is enjoyable and understandably appealing, but at the same time, having it as an ebook, it does feel like half the file was missing given the frank slimness of the endeavour when compared to so much being written for younger readers these days. Having now read series opener The Case of the Missing Marquess (2006) I find myself…conflicted. I think I’ve been dimly aware of Nancy Springer’s series centred on Enola Holmes, much younger sister of the more famous Sherlock and Mycroft, for a number of years, but it was only the recent(ish) filming of the first book which brought the series more firmly into my orbit. ![]() |