6/6/2023 0 Comments Sweet tooth mcewanSerena's ambitions are unformed, and her ideology is largely borrowed (from a Cambridge history professor with whom she had an affair, and the Times' editorials), yet not too far into her dreary secretarial tenure, via a flirtation with a colleague named Max, she is invited to join a new, higher-level program.Ĭode-named Sweet Tooth, the project will surreptitiously fund English writers who appear to have the right sort of sympathies. Anyone who has seen the recent film version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" will have the right images to draw on - dim lighting, mustard-colored jackets, rooms full of smoke - as McEwan's heroine, Serena Frome, takes a lowly post in MI5's shabby offices shortly after graduating from Cambridge. McEwan's new novel, "Sweet Tooth," takes place against a vivid 1970s England unraveling with strikes and fuel shortages, in the murky corridors of the British intelligence agency MI5. And whether in fictions set in the last century ("Atonement," "On Chesil Beach") or contemporary morality tales ("Saturday," "Solar"), McEwan's characters are never far away from the possibility of violence and the threat of deceit. What could be a better match - Ian McEwan and a spy story? The English writer is a thinking person's best-seller, whose intelligent, tightly plotted novels, narrated in careful prose, address the pressing social and political issues of our days.
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6/5/2023 0 Comments I am legend mathesonHis constant struggle for sanity causes him to fluctuate between lucid purpose-driven activities that might lead toward a better world and a drunken madness borne of loneliness and despair. When Robert isn’t killing these night-time ne’er-do-wells he is repairing his home, researching ways to kill or potentially cure these creatures, and drinking. He resists them and spends his days finding them in their dark hideouts and killing them. What they want is his blood, which is in short supply now that the world is consumed by bloodsuckers. The women pull up their dresses to show him what he is missing and the men call him names and throw rocks. Sometimes the same ones come and sometimes new lunatics show up. These psychos come every night and wait just outside his small home and try to entice him to come out. The story is about the last “normal” human in a world full of night-roving lunatics out to kill him. I didn’t finish all the additional short stories but I am Legend is a quick read and contains no filler. These seem unrelated but add to the total page count for the book so I guess that was a marketing thing or something. It is really short and after the I am Legend story there are a bunch of really short stories. I read this book a while back but that was before I was writing book reviews and when I saw it on the shelf I thought that it should be included in my list of book reviews so I read it again. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats-leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. poignant, powerful, perfect." -Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife comes a story of courage on the prairie, inspired by the devastating storm that struck the Great Plains in 1888, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders, especially schoolchildren. 6/5/2023 0 Comments The incendiaries by ro kwonHe has an enigmatic past that involves North Korea and Phoebe’s Korean American family. Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is increasingly drawn into a religious group–a secretive extremist cult–founded by a charismatic former student, John Leal. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn’t tell anyone she blames herself for her mother’s recent death. Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet their first month at prestigious Edwards University. _ _ _ _ _Ī powerful, darkly glittering novel about violence, love, faith and loss, as a young Korean American woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea. ‘ The Incendiaries packs a disruptive charge, and introduces R. ‘ A sharp, little novel as hard to ignore as a splinter in your eye‘ WASHINGTON POST Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable’ CELESTE NG Kwon’s novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse‘ VIET THANH NGUYEN Everyone should read this book’ GARTH GREENWELL Readers will not only experience a non-stop thrill ride, starting in April, but a kickoff story that is as irreverent and hilarious as it is heart-bruised,” Percy promises. How do you follow up something like that? You keep raising the bar higher. “For ten weeks, the X LIVES OF WOLVERINE/X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE will take readers on an epic, time-shredding adventure that sets up the next era of the mutant books: Destiny of X. Featuring Wolverine and Deadpool at their most savage plus the return of a fan-favorite X-character to the Krakoan era! But that doesn’t mean Logan has to like it. But when Deadpool uncovers a dangerous plot that could mean doom for the mutants’ safe haven, it’s going to take a titanic team-up of the Best There Is and the Merc with a Mouth to quell the threat. Deadpool was the king of Staten Island - now he wants to be an honorary citizen of Krakoa. ‘If I Stay’ shows the transcendence of Mia from childhood into adulthood. Throughout the novel, Mia faced choosing between having to stay or leave, and though her pain was immeasurable, she still thought about how it was not as bad as she would have expected in the end, Mia made a choice, one that changed her future. Throughout the ‘ If I Stay,’ one theme stands out the most, choice. The book focuses on choices made due to circumstances. Mia’s final decision was nearly influenced by the pain she felt. In the book, Mia faces every form of pain, from emotional to physical, and she knew the pain was going to reshape her view of the world if she chose to stay. Pain is a primary theme that reoccurs throughout the entire novel. Mia realizes she has to choose between leaving or staying. ‘If I Stay’ is about 17-year-old Mia Hall, who faces a tragedy that leaves her family dead and makes her have an out-of-body experience. ‘ If I Stay’ is enriched with themes that perfectly describe how pain, suffering, and love define choice. 6/4/2023 0 Comments Daredevil 158As they were fully returnable, they would empty the comics off the shelf and replace them with this weeks delivery. Most stands didn't keep comics for more than a week. That issue begins a run that is probably top 5, all-time. I don't think about it much, though, because as long as I'm an active comic collector, I'd never sell it. I haven't looked at it in a long time, but I remember it being gorgeous, so I don't think mine was on the rack too long when it was new. I finally got a #158 at a local comic shop in 1990. That might actually equate to a better sell through rate of Daredevil issues that were produced during that nearly 4 year bi-monthly window, but those copies would've probably had more handling wear, especially those that sold closer to the end of the 60 day window. Since it was bi-monthly, and had been for almost 2 years by the time of #158, doesn't that mean each issue of Daredevil during that span was on the racks twice as long as most other Marvels which were monthly (and hence, replaced on the stands by the next issue more quickly)? The surprisingly rare phenomenon of adoption is as unique as every child, parent and family experiencing it. Until now, no memoir has so artfully described the difficulty abandoned children known as foundlings face when trying to find their genetic truth or the thrill they experience upon finally coming face to face with their Spitting Image. "item_description" : "A Stranger-Than-Fiction True Story of Closure and CompletionThe journey of finding biological family members can be a rollercoaster ride of peaks, valleys, unexpected twists and hairpin turns. Am I the only one who can see a slight similarity to Spider-man? Seriously, the job that he chose closely resembled Spidey's. I liked how they portrayed him, unlike some of the Justice League ones. This is not a good start for a Superman newbie. Everything that I know about Superman would be because of the movies and the TV series (animated). I don't think I've ever read a Superman graphic novel, or even a single comic book issue, so that's why I was expecting to enjoy this. I'm not a huge Superman fan, but I'm not among the haters. It's like Stracyznski didn't give Superman the proper introduction that he deserved. Forgettable at best.Īctually the whole thing felt a bit rushed. This story arc of Superman was not bad just to be clear, but nothing was interesting on the other hand. Maybe they should've made Geoff Johns do this series, because the Batman Earth One series is among my favorite graphic novels ever. This is a story of adventure, an encounter with the unknown, a knight's undaunted journey into the kingdom of death this is a story of the world you've always known, that first primer where "on page three a dog appeared, on page five a ball" and every familiar facet has been made to shimmer like the contours of a dream, "the dog float into the sky to join the ball." Faithful and Virtuous Night tells a single story but the parts are mutable, the great sweep of its narrative mysterious and fateful, heartbreaking and charged with wonder. You enter the world of this spellbinding book through one of its many dreamlike portals, and each time you enter it's the same place but it has been arranged differently. Faithful and Virtuous Night is no exception. Every new collection is at once a deepening and a revelation. Faithful and Virtuous Night Poems by Louise Gluck Hardcover, 96 pages purchase Louise Glck is in love with silence her poems strain towards nothingness. Her Poems 1962–2012 was hailed as "a major event in this country's literature" in the pages of The New York Times. Louise Glück is one of the finest American poets at work today. It is like a novel in its short vignettes with lines instead of paragraphs, though of course Glück’s language is tense, careful as ever, not prose. Winner of the 2014 National Book Award for PoetryĪ luminous, seductive new collection from the "fearless" ( The New York Times) Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Faithful and Virtuous Night may be Glück’s strangest work yet, the hardest to describe or put in line with the others. |