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Tana french the likeness review5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() She’s deeply unhappy with the work and her new partner. Cassie has moved to the Domestic Violence unit in the wake of Operation Vestal. The book picks up some months after the end of In the Woods (as always, if you haven’t read the spoilers tag on the post, it’s your own fault). She weaves these complicated relationships in slow, intricate waves. If it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have gotten through it. It was a long process from start to finish. And then I was too tired to read at night (which is when I get a lot of my reading done). Then life happened and I wasn’t able to read a lot. Then when I came back to it, it took me a little while to get back in the groove. To meet the timeline, I had to put this one aside. I was about 100 pages in when I received an advanced copy of French’s newest book. I think part of the reason I didn’t like it as much is because I kept getting interrupted while reading it. Not as much as the other two but it was still very good. This is my third Tana French book since July, but it’s actually the second in the series. ![]()
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Sophie's Choice by William Styron5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Poetic in its execution, and epic in its emotional sweep, Sophie’s Choice explores the good and evil of humanity through Stingo’s burgeoning worldliness, Nathan’s volatile personality, and Sophie’s tragic past. Their entanglement in one another’s lives will build to a stirring revelation of agonizing secrets that will change them forever. Winner of the National Book Award and a modern classic, Sophie’s Choice centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor and Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor who is Nathan’s lover. This award-winning novel of love, survival, and agonizing regret in post–WWII Brooklyn “belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces” ( The Washington Post Book World). ![]()
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Henry thoreau5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() "Civil Disobedience" was included in the Riverside Edition of 1894 (in Miscellanies, the tenth volume), in the Walden and Manuscript Editions of 1906 (in Cape Cod and Miscellanies, the fourth volume), and in the Princeton Edition (in Reform Papers, the third volume) in 1973. The essay formed part of Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers as edited by British Thoreau biographer Henry S. It was included (as "Civil Disobedience") in Thoreau's A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, published in Boston in 1866 by Ticknor and Fields, and reprinted many times. Having spent one night in jail in July of 1846 for refusal to pay his poll tax in protest against slavery and the Mexican War, Thoreau lectured before the Concord Lyceum in January of 1848 on the subject "On the Relation of the Individual to the State." The lecture was published under the title "Resistance to Civil Government" in Elizabeth Peabody's Aesthetic Papers, in May 1849. Thoreau's "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers".Selected Chronology of Thoreau's Writings.Emerson's "The Divinity School Address". ![]() Selective Chronology of Emerson's Writings.Forms of Expressing Transcendental Philosophy. ![]()
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The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton's former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who' s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts-and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he'd left behind. Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. ![]() But now two forces vying for the treasure have learned that it is not at all what they thought it was-and its true nature could change the modern world. until the Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the earth, their hidden riches lost. ![]() hard to put down without reading one more page." - The Florida Times-Union The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes. ![]() Now two forces vying for the treasure learn that the Knights' true nature could change the modern world in this "New York Times" bestseller.īook Synopsis New York Times BESTSELLER - "Exciting. About the Book The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes-until the Inquisition, when they were wiped from the face of the Earth. ![]()
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Severance novel5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() The piece itself is a fairly straightforward book review that never actually name-drops the coronavirus, which makes its accompanying tags all the more striking: “China health emergency,” “China virus,” “coronavirus,” and, amusingly, “unwind.” Since then, the connection has increased in volume and explicitness, especially in American media-spreading from references in think pieces to quarantine reading lists. The first online article that suggested the connection between Severance and the coronavirus seems to have appeared in late January, on India’s CNBC website. Unlike the coronavirus, however, the “Shen Fever” in Severance is uniquely fatal: Its victims become zombies of repetition-endlessly brushing their hair, applying and reapplying face lotion-until their bodies disintegrate. Similar to the coronavirus, the fictional virus in Ma’s novel is a flu-like virus that first appears in a major Chinese economic center (here, Shenzhen instead of Wuhan) and quickly moves outward, leaving no one unaffected. What is the difference between a real-life pandemic that originates in China and spreads globally and a fictional pandemic that originates in China and spreads globally? Ling Ma’s apocalyptic 2018 novel Severance-which might be accurately described in terms of the latter-has resurfaced due to its uncanny anticipation of our current global crisis. ![]()
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Book decision points5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() He had to imagine his way into the center of American society from a very unusual point on the periphery, to invent an identity for himself that felt comfortable, to find a way to love parents whom one would more naturally resent for having been so often absent. ![]() And there is a sense, in the case of Obama, in which his life did depend on it, sociologically and psychologically. To pull this off requires not just vocal ability but an intensity of observation of other people-a quality of attention, of absorption-so fierce it’s as if one’s life depended on it. He can do men and women, old and young, foreign accents and street slang. Again and again he will encounter a character and deliver the material that appears within quotation marks on the printed page in the character’s voice. His regular speaking voice is by now in all our heads, but in the spoken version of the book we also get something that has had to be put away from public display: Obama’s uncanny gift for mimicry. It’s worth listening to the audiobook version of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, because not so long ago Obama had both the time and the inclination to spend many hours voicing the recording himself. ![]()
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Caught in the Act by Joan Lowery Nixon5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Unfortu nately, this revelation does little to ex tend the dimension of these two flat characters who approach ethnic stereo types. The puzzle is believably pieced togeth er as the motivations of father and son are revealed at story's end. ![]() The imagi native youngster's suspicions are ag gravated when his best friend Reuben, an educated farmhand, disappears after a loud altercation with the overseer. When Mike overhears Frie drich and his kind-hearted wife discuss ing their fear of retribution over a man's death, he suspects foul play. The focus here is on 11-year-old Mike Kel ley, who is placed with a German immi grant farmer more interested in acquir ing cheap labor than a new family member. ![]() Grade 4-6 This is Nixon's second book that chronicles the adventures of six Irish-American siblings who have been sent from the slums of New York City to new homes on the Frontier in the years just prior to the Civil War. ![]()
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The day you begin book review5/24/2023 ![]() ![]()
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![]() But as unusual as it is to read about this earlier era, and while cars and phones matter to pastoring today, the reality of how people act does not feel too distant. ![]() There is one scene where the priest is given a ride on a motorcycle. Part of what I enjoyed was the look at the strain of being a country priest in an era before the widespread use of phones or cars. There is also a free PDF that just scanned and not a very high-quality version. But it looks like there has been a copyright change, and now there is a $0.99 Kindle version. Until recently, the 1936 novel has not been available for a price I was willing to pay. I do not think that I started looking for the book until it was listed in Eugene Peterson’s book about books he recommends to read. I do not know when I first heard about the very famous novel Diary of a Country Priest. ![]() Set in the post WWI era, it feels connected to the modern world and distant from our modern world. Summary: A novel describing the thoughts and life of a young country priest in France. ![]()
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Malamander book review5/23/2023 ![]() ![]() He has a small cubbyhole in the hotel’s Reception and a large basement room full of one hundred year’s worth of lost property. The action begins in the Grand Nautilus Hotel where the town’s adopted son, Herbert Lemon, found as a boy in a crate of lemons, works as the hotel’s “Lost-and-Founder”. The author, Thomas Taylor, has obviously had great fun with the names he has used for his cast and the buildings which feature heavily in the plot, all of which add to the enjoyment of reading. ![]() On top of the mystery, the book is written in a playful style, breaking the fourth wall in a manner that reminded me of Lemony Snicket. ![]() It is populated by a cast of wonderfully inventive characters, the descriptions of the town alongside the perfect map mean that you can picture every wind-battered location and the story has more twists and turns than an eel racing through the brine. This book sinks its fangs and claws into you and will not release you until the final page. Welcome to the mysterious seaside town of Eerie-on-Sea, a desolate place in the winter months where the sea mist hides a multitude of secrets! ![]() |