![]() ![]() Cassara immerses us in a New York that we may think we know from countless other novels and films, but which is, in fact, significantly more complex (and more urgently relevant to us today) than previously imagined. Based on the figures associated with the real-life House of Xtravaganza, the first Latinx house in New York’s 1980s ballroom scene, the novel follows a family of queer characters of various ethnic backgrounds and sexual identities through the tumult and crises of that time and place. The Puerto Rican drag queen is a recognizable personification of New York in the 1980s, the neighbor (and opposite) of the white, Gordon Gekko-style master of the universe with his slicked-back hair. In The House of Impossible Beauties, debut novelist Joseph Cassara brings this stock character into the foreground in order to recognize her humanity and her history. ![]()
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![]() VanderMeer authorized the Friends to design and sell an Area X T-shirt with all the proceeds going to benefit Refuge programs. Published in more than 35 languages, the series has given many readers worldwide an appreciation for the North Florida landscape. The setting of Annihilation in particular is based on the Refuge's 12-mile Deep Creek trail re-imagined to locate the lighthouse at its end. He has hiked the refuge since the early 1990s, when he moved to Tallahassee. Marks National Wildlife Refuge is the main inspiration for VanderMeer's popular ecological thrillers. ![]() ![]() The novels explore the mystery of "Area X," a pristine wilderness in which something strange has happened, something inexplicable and transformative. ![]() Florida author Jeff VanderMeer's NYT-bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy has reached hundreds of thousands of readers with a movie of the first book, Annihilation, released by Paramount Pictures in 2018. ![]() ![]() Things look good as they settle into their cozy cottage, with a rocky shore, enthusiastic seagulls, a just-right corner store, and a charming next-door neighbor. and off to Maine with Aunt Claire for the rest of the Penderwick girls, as well as their old friend, Jeffrey.That leaves Skye as OAP (oldest available Penderwick)-a terrifying notion for all, but for Skye especially. ![]() ![]() With over one million copies sold, this series of modern classics about the charming Penderwick family from National Book Award winner and New York Times bestseller Jeanne Birdsall is perfect for fans of Noel Streatfeild and Edward Eager.When summer comes around, it's off to the beach for Rosalind. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In some ways this is an oddly uneven book, in its structure, anyway, as it has one very long section set in 1962 and then a forty-page section bringing us up to date (and breaking our hearts) in 1971-76. It never quite slowed down so you could catch it, except by thinking back, and it left some people more important than others as it changed. She had come to the Greenway house two months before Emma was born, and it was all so strange, the way life went on and seemed the same even tough it was always changing. Seeing Emma sitting there, so trusting and goodhearted, such a happy-looking young woman, filled her with memory suddenly, until she felt too full. I bought this copy in April 2000 and read it in July of that year, along with “ All My Friends are Going to be Strangers” which I’d previously read in 1997 from the library I can only assume that as I bought them together, I realised the link and read them together which makes sense, although there’s more linkage between this one and “ Moving On“. The third of the Houston Series which forms the last section of my hugely enjoyable Larry McMurtry 2022 Re-reading Project, and I’m realising that you need to read the series as one whole work, weaving in and out of the time sequence, as this one takes us back to before Emma and Flap Horton have their two sons, then forward a decade and more. ![]() ![]() ![]() I had an incredible boss who encouraged us to experiment, gave us the freedom to learn in the field and bring our ideas to life – even the wacky ones. I was a kid with a camera, excited to see the world and somehow translate those experiences into videos. Weeks later, we were hanging with amateur rocketeers at a NASA-Ames parking lot, filming them firing rockets into the sky.īack then, digital video was still young. ![]() Seconds later he was blasting through dozens of ideas – each one more bizarre and fascinating than the last. ![]() After he submitted his article I somehow persuaded him that making videos could be fun. I ambushed the office – five desks and a frazzled Ashlee banging away on his keyboard crashing against a deadline for Bloomberg Businessweek. He had a hunch that Ashlee Vance might have some quirky ideas that would make for even quirkier videos. 10 years ago, my boss at Bloomberg suggested I pop into our Palo Alto office during an upcoming week of filming on the west coast, and introduce myself to "an interesting reporter character." ![]() ![]() ![]() They are a race given to blood feuds, and Smith was formerly an extremely successful assassin. It is the tale of Smith, of the large extended family of Smiths, of the Children of the Sun. The Anvil of the World is her first fantasy novel, a journey across a landscape filled with bizarre creatures, human and otherwise. ![]() She mixes adventure, history and societal concerns in just the right amount, creating an action-packed but thoughtful read," says The Dallas Morning News. Baker is the best thing to happen to modern science fiction since Connie Willis or Dan Simmons. So has her talent for clever dialogue and pointed social commentary with a light touch. Kage Baker's stories and novels of the mysterious organization that controls time travel, The Company, have made her famous in SF. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of one of his works, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, from the Aristeion Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago criticized institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant." José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE ComSE GColCa ( Portuguese: 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. ![]() ![]() “The book is…unequivocally amazing to look at…Mouse Guard is the total package, lovingly crafted on every level… Consider Mouse Guard highly recommended. “Petersen’s art is wonderfully textured and the story is a good one, suitable for kids.” – Purchase on Amazon:īest Publication for Kids – Mouse Guard Fall 1152 & Winter 1152īest Graphic Album Reprint – Mouse Guard Fall 1152 Their search for the missing mouse reveals much more than they expect, as they stumble across a traitor in the Guard’s own ranks in this first book of the Mouse Guard series. At the start of the Autumn season of 1152, Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam, three such Guardsmice, are dispatched to find a missing merchant mouse that never arrived at his destination. They do so with fearless dedication so that they might not just exist, but truly live. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Guard patrol borders, find safeways and paths through dangerous territories and treacherous terrain, watch weather patterns, and keep the mouse territories free of predatory infestation. Legends of the Guard is a new Mouse Guard anthology series featuring the work of artists and storytellers handpicked by series creator David Petersen, including Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl), Alex Sheikman (Robotika), Ted Naifeh (Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things), Gene Ha (Top 10), Sean Rubin (Redwall), Guy Davis (B.P.R.D.), Katie. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed: more than just soldiers that fight off intruders, they are guides for common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one hidden village to another. Mice struggle to live safely and prosper amongst harsh conditions and a host of predators. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Through civil war, economic catastrophes, foreign misadventures, social upheavals and plagues, the presidency has endured, but it – and the 45 men who have occupied the job – has been moulded and often humbled by the promise and perils of the office. ![]() ![]() The architects of the new republic meant for the president to preside over a citizenry well-endowed with rights, not to rule over cowed subjects.Ĭhief executives from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have been sorely tested by both the responsibilities and the limitations of the country’s highest, loneliest office. Born of Enlightenment theory, settler colonialism and 18th-century warfare, the US constitution gave the chief executive primarily an enforcement role, with the authority to lead armed forces in the event of foreign encroachment or domestic unrest but stripped of the capacity to legislate or issue judicial decisions. T he US presidency was supposed to be something different, something novel, compared with the fossilised monarchical rule that it supplanted after the American revolution. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However emissions continue to rise, and a gnawing feeling remains that central governments are dragging their feet on actions that meet the scale of the challenge.Įnter Mariana Mazzucato, and her timely new book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. The mood music seems to finally be shifting on green issues, with financial markets going green, the UK Treasury reporting on biodiversity and even Bill Gates weighing into the conversation. 2021.Īs the UK prepares to host November’s crucial COP26 climate summit, international governments are under pressure to deepen their carbon-reduction targets amidst a worsening climate crisis. Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. Mariana Mazzucato. If you are interested in this book, you can also watch a video of Mariana Mazzucato’s guest LSE lecture, recorded on 5 March 2021. This review was originally posted on the LSE International Development blog. LSE MSc Environmental Policy and Regulation candidate, Flora Parki n, reviews Mariana Mazzucato ’s new book, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, and questions whether it goes far enough to tackle the worsening global climate crisis. ![]() |