![]() “In a land ruled and shaped by violent magical storms, power lies with those who control them.Īurora Pavan comes from one of the oldest Stormling families in existence. All I can say is that I wanted to like it and yet, I can’t say I actually did. ![]() I don’t think I have the appropriate words to put into sentences that could actually create coherent meaning for what I felt while reading Roar, the first instalment of the Stormheart series, by Cora Carmack. ![]() I wanted this post to be different, believe me, I really did! But when you read a book that seems like it has so much potential in the beginning, with a kickass princess, two kickass princes, hundreds of secrets that have the power to crumble empires and a fantastic realm where magical storms have the power to destroy cities and people’s lives, and all of a sudden this sort-of-world-building stops so abruptly, only to start building a different sort of story, with many more characters, a too annoying male lead, a squad that doesn’t actually seem like a lockstep team, and a villain we don’t actually get the chance to meet throughout the whole novel… Well, all you can feel is… MEH! ![]() ![]() Hello awesome creatures and welcome to the first book review, to the first bibliorambling of 2018! ![]()
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![]() ![]() I loved his idea of mandatory restaurant work for all Americans, like military service, only more random. They are, in no particular order: leprechaun, Kamikaze, prolapsed anus and punchbowl. There are a few words that will never be the same for me, due to Clinton’s unique usage of them. I became retroactively envious of Lisa, a high school friend who helped Clinton lay a guilt trip on a fetal pig, and Meredith, the Wendy’s cashier who withheld revelation of a crush from Clinton (because he’s a guy), but not Lisa. In sharing stories about his family and growing up in Port Jefferson Station, New York, the child behind the man is explicated, and who he is as a human being is revealed, sometimes hysterically. ![]() My favorite one, called “Clinton for President,” contains the phrase “…at which point she assumed I had a ‘special friend’ over,” which, for reasons I can’t go into without spoiling the story, had me hooting like a hyena. This collection of essays had me laughing out loud in places both public and private. ![]() ![]() She has also produced a number of videos in collaboration with John Lucas, including “ Situation One.” Her plays are Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue, commissioned by the Foundry Theatre Existing Conditions, co-authored with Casey Llewellyn HELP, which premiered in March 2020 at The Shed in New York City and was re-staged in March 2022 and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 at ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019. Rankine has edited numerous anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind (Fence Books, 2015) American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2007) and American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (Wesleyan University Press, 2002). Rankine is the author of several works, including Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020) Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014), which received the 2016 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Book Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry, and the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and Nothing in Nature is Private (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. ![]() Born in Jamaica in 1963, Claudia Rankine earned her BA in English from Williams College and her MFA in poetry from Columbia University. ![]() ![]() ![]() (Summary adapted from Wikipedia)įor further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit. This book outlines Bellamy's complex thoughts about improving the future, and is an indictment of industrial capitalism. has been transformed into a socialist utopia. ![]() And some possible solutions or at least threads to pull on to find solutions to today's problem of labor and capital. He finds himself in the same location (Boston, Massachusetts) but in a totally changed world: It is the year 2000 and, while he was sleeping, the U.S.A. Looking Backward is a wonderful bit of escapist literature, and, more importantly, gives us an insight into the minds of progressives of the 19th century. The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up more than a century later. ![]() It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Edward Bellamy’s early science fiction novel Looking Backward presents one attempt at envisioning a socialist society of the futurefree from war, poverty, advertisements, and other unpleasantries. Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy,, first published in 1888. When it was first published in 1888, its success was behind that of only Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. ![]() LibriVox recording of Looking Backward: 2000-1887, by Edward Bellamy. His novel Looking Backward is a widely regarded work of socialist Utopian fiction and was referenced in many Marxist publications of the time. ![]() ![]() ![]() The world he wrote about was recognisable but dialled up to dystopian levels, with gonzo reality shows such as How My Child Died Violently (in 2000's Pastoralia) or teenagers raised to speak in advertising slogans thanks to a "gargadisk" implanted in their head (in 2006's Persuasion Nation) or luridly named psychotropics like DARKENFLOXXTM (in 2013's Tenth of December) engineered to stimulate love or loathing. ![]() ![]() ![]() When he started writing, aged 37, after a career as a geophysical engineer, it was small-town America that held his focus, refracted – as in the novels of his contemporary, David Foster Wallace – through baby boomer concerns about the deleterious effect of a corporatedriven culture that Saunders both loved and hated. There are distinct themes we might have expected. While the clamour exposes some fairly flimsy prejudices about the relative value we put on different forms of fiction, it has been tantalising – a bit like when Bradley Wiggins said he'd do The Jump – to wonder how Saunders would manage the side-shuffle. A US headline a few years ago put it more bluntly: "George Saunders Needs to Write a Goddamn Novel Already". As far back as 2004, the American writer George Saunders admitted he "sometimes" felt pressure to turn from short stories to a novel. ![]() ![]() ![]() The “what if” at the center of the book seemed like a great starting place to me. I originally picked this book up because I have long held a fascination with the various religions of the world (I was actually a Religious Studies minor in undergrad). See the history of the world through the eyes of two souls who keep reincarnating in different cultures, struggling to better both themselves and their world that could easily have been ours. This is the world Robinson imagines, one where Buddhism and Islam rise as the two major religions of the world (with no religion a close third). Imagine a world where the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out the majority of the European population, rather than one-third of it. ![]() ![]() ![]() I am returning this audiobook and just reading the text from the book. ![]() You know those corporate videos that you have to watch at orientation before you start a new job? That's how the narration and the dialogue sound like here, it has that sing-song lilt that's supposed to keep new hires from falling asleep on their first day. Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Fran Tunno? I like the existential questions though and am curious to see how it unfolds. I should've stuck with reading it instead of listening. Frankly though, this animosity is largely because of the narrator of this book. The text gets repetitive and jumps from one point to another. So far, I don't think this is the best Coelho I've read yet. ![]() What did you like best about Veronika Decides to Die? What did you like least? ![]() ![]() ![]() The visual power of comics combined with the text of a business book summary allows readers to comprehend and envision main ideas, messages, and tips quickly. An executive business book summary in a comic version is the perfect solution for people on the go who want to get smarter, save time, and have fun in the process. To help change that, executive business books are now being summarized and illustrated into comic book format. They know that reading is important to their growth, but that reading takes time, and time is scarce. Right?Īs busy executives and professionals try to grow their business, they find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. They're "just for kids" or "just for fun," not for a business executive who wants to motivate them self in a limited amount of time. ![]() Assumed a child's medium, comic books are rarely picked up by adults, let alone thought of as a business book for adults. These are the main characters that most people will think of when the subject of comic books is brought up. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Career Research and teaching īrown has studied the topics of courage, vulnerability, shame, empathy, and leadership, which she has used to look at human connection and how it works. īrown completed a Bachelor of Social Work degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1995, followed by a Master of Social Work degree in 1996, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in social work at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work in 2002. In 2022, HBO Max released a documentary series based on her book, Atlas of the Heart.īrown holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and is a visiting professor in management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.īrown was born on November 18, 1965, in San Antonio, Texas, where her parents Charles Arthur Brown and Casandra Deanne Rogers had her baptized in the Episcopal Church. ![]() She appears on the 2019 documentary, Brené Brown: The Call to Courage, on Netflix. She has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books and hosted two podcasts on Spotify. Brown is known for her work on shame, vulnerability, and leadership, and for her widely viewed TEDx talk in 2010. Acompañar: A Grounded Theory of Developing, Maintaining and Assessing Relevance in Professional Helping (2002)Ĭasandra Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is an American professor, author, and podcast host. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "A nostalgic view of the United States is deliberately cultivated here," Kaplan writes, "as if to bind the uncertain future to a reliable past."įrom Fort Leavenworth, Kaplan travels west to the great cities of the heartland-to St. In a world whose future conflicts can barely be imagined, it is also the place where the army trains its men to fight the next war. Traveling, like Tocqueville and John Gunther before him, through a political and cultural landscape in transition, Kaplan reveals a nation shedding a familiar identity as it assumes a radically new one.Īn Empire Wilderness opens in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the first white settlers moved into Indian country and where Manifest Destiny was born. Having reported on some of the world's most violent, least understood regions in his bestsellers Balkan Ghosts and The Ends of the Earth, Robert Kaplan now returns to his native land, the United States of America. ![]() |