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Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() The first eight-part collection is a dazzling display of meta-fiction, and any reader wondering where writers like Enrique Vila-Matas inherited their style should look no further. For the Argentinian maestro, ten pages is a fairly long tale. Despite this, Fictions is a short work, clocking in at just over 150 pages – mainly because Borges’ creations don’t tend to outstay their welcome. You see, if you’re going to start reading works translated from the Spanish, there’s a name you’ll come across sooner or later – a certain Jorge Luis Borges…įictions (translated – mostly – by Anthony Kerrigan: with some stories translated by Alastair Reid, Anthony Bonner, Helen Temple and Ruthven Todd) brings together two of the writer’s first collections of short stories, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices. Today’s post features another stop on my Spanish-language literature self-education journey (courtesy of my wonderful library), and it’s one I’ve been looking forward to for a while. ![]()
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Dr Johnson's London by Liza Picard6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Her informality breathes life into dry descriptions, and her sharp eye lends itself to shrewd selection from source passages. ![]() Picard's conversational style, as bursting with rhetorical questions as a primary teacher, belies the breadth of her reading and research. This goes some way to redressing a balance which historically has tended to favour the rich and famous, who left behind the majority of buildings and ephemera. Starting with a "virtual" sedan-chair tour of the city, she proceeds to elucidate every aspect of urban life, with particular attention paid to the poor, and the "middling sort", a fledgling middle class. ![]() She pursues them solely for their era, stretching 30 years from 1740 to 1770, pivoted on the publication of Johnson's Dictionary in 1755. Samuel Pepys gives way to Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, though, entertainingly, she shows no affection for the pair. The lives that once thronged its streets are the stuff of her books, and Dr Johnson's London updates her 1997 volume, Restoration London, by one hundred years or so. Liza Picard certainly isn't tired of London. ![]()
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The Gathering Storm by Robin Bridges6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Suddenly Katerina's strength as a necromancer attracts attention from unwelcome sources. But when she uses her special skill to protect a member of the Imperial Family, she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue.Īn evil presence is growing within Europe's royal bloodlines-and those aligned with the darkness threaten to topple the tsar. ![]() Katerina considers her talent a curse, not a gift. Not the tsar or anyone in her aristocratic circle. As she attends a whirl of glittering balls, royal debutante Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg, tries to hide a dark secret: she can raise the dead. I in the Katerina Trilogy, reimagines the lives of Russia's aristocracy in a fabulously intoxicating page-turning fantasy. VOYA said "Bridges could become a worthy successor to Libba Bray with this historical fantasy."Lush and opulent, romantic and sinister, The Gathering Storm, Vol. ![]()
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Lord of the silver bow6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() Now fate is about to thrust these three together-and, from the sparks of passionate love and hate, ignite a fire that will engulf the world. ![]() Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts. ![]() Scornful of tradition, skilled in the arts of war, and passionate in the ways of her order, Andromache vows to love whom she pleases and to live as she desires. Sample Lord of the Silver Bow Troy, Book 1 By: David Gemmell Narrated by: Thomas Judd Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins 4.8 (295 ratings) Try for 0.00 Pick 1 title (2 titles for Prime members) from our collection of bestsellers and new releases. Andromache is a priestess of Thera betrothed against her will to Hektor, prince of Troy. Dispatched by King Agamemnon to scout the defenses of the golden city of Troy, he is Helikaon's sworn enemy. Like all of the Mykene warriors, he lives to conquer and to kill. Argurios the Mykene is a peerless fighter, a man of unbending principles and unbreakable will. For there is a darkness at the heart of the Golden One, a savagery that, once awakened, can be appeased only with blood. Strong, fast, quick of mind, he is a bold warrior, hated by his enemies, feared even by his Trojan allies. Some call him the Golden One others, the Lord of the Silver Bow. With this first masterly volume in an epic reimagining of the Trojan War, David Gemmell has written an ageless drama of brave deeds and fierce battles, of honor and treachery, of love won and lost. ![]()
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Review the nineties klosterman6/29/2023 ![]() Concerns and anxieties were omnipresent, but the stakes were vague: Teenagers were allegedly obsessed with angst, and the explanation as to why was pondered constantly without any sufficient answer. “The internet was coming, but slowly, and there was no reason to believe it would be anything but awesome. “There were still nuclear weapons, but there was not going to be a nuclear war,” writes Klosterman. ![]() Not a particularly inspiring bridge, though. Those who remember the decade as a Clinton-era wash of roaring economy punctuated by the laughs and tears of “Seinfeld,” “Titanic” and the slacker grunge-rock of Nirvana will be reminded by Klosterman in mordant style that the 1990s were our bridge to the big now of the 21st century. ![]() Serving up the moments and meanings of a modern decade in a few hundred pages is no easy task, but Chuck Klosterman has managed to boil a hearty stew of insight with his new book “The Nineties” (Penguin Press, 384 pp., ★★★½ out of four, out now). Watch Video: Banned books: What a new wave of restrictions could mean for students ![]()
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John steinbeck and charley6/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() 2.3.1 Reading Guide Questions for pages 74-94.2.3 Upstate New York and Niagara Falls (74-94).2.1.1 Reading Guide Questions for pages 19-42.2.1 Long Island to Connecticut (pages 19-42).His whole trip encompassed nearly 10,000 miles. His trip was one that outlined the border of the United States, going all throughout the North, through the Pacific Northwest, down into his native Salinas Valley, across to Texas, up through the Deep South, and then back to New York. He started his travels in Long Island, New York. He traveled throughout the United States in a specially made camper called Rocinante, named after the horse of Don Quixote. However, he found that the "new America" did not live up to his expectations. He had many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today". He wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level, since he made his living writing about it. It documents the driving trip he took with his poodle, Charley, around the United States in the 1960s. Travels with Charley: Search of America is a travelogue by American author John Steinbeck. ![]() ![]() You can help by adding new material ( learn how) or ask for assistance in the reading room. A reader requests expansion of this book to include more material. ![]()
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Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis6/28/2023 ![]() Get The Book: Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis available now on Amazon.ĪLSO READ: 30 Motivational Quotes from Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis 30 Quotes from Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel HollisĪ goal is a dream with its work boots on. Scroll down to read 30 Inspirational Quotes from Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis. With a challenge to women everywhere to stop talking themselves out of their dreams, Rachel identifies the excuses to let go of, the behaviors to adopt, and the skills to acquire on the path to growth, confidence, and believing in yourself. ![]() Many women have been taught to define themselves in light of other people-whether as wife, mother, daughter, or employee-instead of learning how to own who they are and what they want. ![]() Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis is a timely wake-up call for women of all ages. ![]()
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Paradise tender triumph6/28/2023 ![]() Kolesnikov’s extensive use of both piano pedals occasionally resulted in muddled or muffled sounds. Fleeting moments of exuberance in three Chopin Nocturnes were subsumed by an overarching aura of pensiveness. It was just one of the many meaningful echoes reverberating through the entire performance. The awareness of the latter, on top of what sounded like delicate dragonfly wings fluttering, was the main distinctive trait in the rendition of Darknesse Visible, Thomas Adès’ short piece based on a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost. The perception of birdsongs and tolling bells was consistently palpable. He brought forth Messiaen’s very particular harmonic language, textures, and complex rhythms in the three pieces spanning the composer’s entire career. The pianist seemed to suggest that expressing emotions can bring one to the same end point, irrespective if they are anchored in 19th century melancholy or inspired by deep religious beliefs. ![]() ![]() The first part of the recital was a veritable potpourri, mainly intertwining works by Chopin and Messiaen and underlining the Romantic – Lisztian, Chopinian – roots of Messiaen’s output. Building his own musical constellation, creating uncommon musical juxtapositions, between works both well-known and rarely played, Kolesnikov attempted to create a soundscape where the piano navigates between clearly defined havens, but the overall trip is full of mystery, governed by invisible forces and energies. ![]()
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Books similar to the hating game6/27/2023 ![]() The Hating Game is the book you would see twice at the cinema, buy the DVD, then buy another DVD with special features. It’s pretty much all of the things that you’d look for in a good romantic comedy in book format. It’s sweet, funny, sexy, realistic, far-fetched and loads of fun. I love good dialogue, so I jumped on this book straightaway. More recently, said internet started going gangbusters over this book from the snappy conversations to the OMG-ness of the hero. Many months ago, I added The Hating Game to my book wish list notebook (yes, I have such a thing) after it was more than likely mentioned somewhere on the internet. ![]() Why I chose it: Begged Hachette for a copy because everyone on my feed has been raving about it. The not-so-good: I cannot work out where this story is set and it bugs me. The good: The wit of the conversations between Lucy and Josh crackle with sexual tension. It’s all about getting one-up on him until she realises the hating game might not be the right one to play… He’s a colour-coordinated, diary marking devil. Except for Joshua Templeman who sits opposite her. ![]() In brief: Lucy is pretty sure she has it all and then some at work. ![]()
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Mythologies 19576/27/2023 ![]() ![]() See also cognitive estrangement ostranenie. French cultural critic Roland Barthes deployed this principal in Mythologies (1957), translated as Mythologies (1972), which is a spirited attack on everything that appears ‘natural’ in modern life in the era of late capitalism. Thus he would discourage actors from ‘becoming’ their characters and using that to elicit the empathy of the audience, preferring that they create a sense of ‘distance’ between themselves and their character that would put the audience in two minds about what they were watching (Brecht's ideal manner of viewing, he famously said, was that of the sports fan evaluating a boxing match). Brecht's principal means of doing this was to stage theatre in such a way that the viewer is denied the habitual comfort of forgetting that they are watching a play and becoming (what psychoanalytic film critics call) sutured into the events on stage. In Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes argues that myths are a language system that naturalize history and immobilize the world by prohibiting man against inventing himself (270). ![]() ![]() Its purpose is political because it aims to overturn the paralysing sense that things have always been ‘this way’ and therefore that there is nothing that can be done to change them. Bertolt Brecht's term (also sometimes translated as alienation-effect) for the moment in a work of art when that which used to appear natural suddenly appears historical, when that which was thought of as timeless and eternal is seen as deliberately caused and altered across time. ![]() |