![]() ![]() My only caution for the new reader is that Simmon’s books are long (the hardcover Olympos is 690 pages), contain complex plots, and do not always answer all of the questions that the prose poses. ![]() Because of how seamlessly the science fiction is interwoven into the multiple story points, and the inclusion of Shakespeare, Proust and other literary authors and their creations, Dan Simmon’s Ilium and Olympos should also be on that list. When people are recommending SciFi/Fantasy books to non-SciFi/Fantasy readers, books such as Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card or movie tie-in books are listed. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Nebula and Lambda Award-winning author Nicola Griffith returns with Spear, a glorious queer retelling of Arthurian legend, full of dazzling magic and intoxicating adventure.Ī Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com. And given that Menewood’s publication in less than six months will inevitably push Spear to one side, I thought. ![]() But I’m proud of my Little Book That Could. I forgot because I had a lot of other stuff to think about. And she will find her love, and the lake, and her fate. Last weekThursday 19th to be exactmarked the one-year anniversary of Spear ‘s publication. On her adventures she will meet great knights and steal the hearts of beautiful women. She grows up in the wild, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake come to her on the spring breeze, and when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she knows that her future lies at his court.Īnd so, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and, with a broken hunting spear and mended armour, rides on a bony gelding to Caer Leon. The girl knows she has a destiny before she even knows her name. This program is read by the author and includes a bonus PDF of detailed notes.Ī spellbinding and subversive queer recasting of Arthurian myth by the legendary author of Hild ![]() ![]() But despite their familiar presence, there's still much to learn about the eruption, growth, and decay of their secret, interconnected, world.Īliya Whiteley has always been in love with fungi-from her childhood taking blurry photographs of strange fungal eruptions on Exmoor to a career as a writer inspired by their surreal and alien beauty. They are unwelcome intruders or vastly expensive treats, and symbols of both death and eternal life. They can invade our bodies and live between our toes or our floorboards. Welcome to this astonishing world.įungi can appear anywhere, from desert dunes to frozen tundra. ![]() ![]() The Secret Life of Fungi Discoveries From a Hidden World Aliya Whiteleyįungi are unlike any other living thing-they almost magically unique. ![]() ![]() ![]() Often whimsical (nurse sharks are shown gliding about a patient in a hospital bed) or very dramatic (an extinct megalodon attacking a pod of prehistoric cetaceans), the images glow on the pages like mixed-media gems.” –School Library Journal However, the book’s greatest asset is the brilliant art bursting from the pages like jewels. ![]() Two pages of “Amazing Shark Facts” precede his “Shark Field Guide,” which carefully points out the non-sharks in his lineup, presenting data on size, color, range, status, and fascinating “general remarks,” all of which provide enough information for the merely curious and a sturdy launching platform for further investigations. In an introductory segment, Troll states that to make things “simpler” he is calling “all of the chondrichthyans sharks.” This arbitrary personal classification allows him to include such non-sharks as rays, guitarfish and chimaeras in his alphabet soup, sadly to the detriment of scientific purity. “An extraordinary alphabet of chondrichthyans from angel sharks to zebra sharks with a nifty intermingling of current and extinct species. Featuring Ray Troll’s spectacular fishy art, this book portrays sharks both living and extinct. ![]() ![]() A thrilling, chilling book for children of all ages. ![]() ![]() ![]() Katharine McGee just knows how to write this series in such a way that I eat up every single installment. ![]() I'm too excited to read book three to wait but am going to have to reread it through her narration as soon as it becomes available. She is so great at handling the multiple POV's of Beatrice, Sam, Nina, and Daphne. (Is that vague enough?) I still love him and can only hope he returns in some fashion for the next book.Īny time I hear Brittany Pressley's voice, I immediately think of this series. It made me have a little bit of a boo-boo lip reminding me once again I picked the wrong love interest in a certain love triangle. She explores in more detail the driving factors behind each girl's personality and what sets up her American Royals world. Katharine rewinds the story to the night everything seems to shake up for her cast of characters. Dipping my toes into this world again through this novella was the delightful listen I had to have to get back into the swing of things. ![]() Book two was so good but that ending made me want to strangle a certain character we all love to hate. I know I'm not the only one who about lost my mind when the third book for American Royals was announced. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Cold War that has so often been linked to Orwell’s novel ended with more of a whimper than a bang, but most of the issues of concern to him remain alive in some form today: censorship, scientific surveillance, power worship, the autonomy of art, the meaning of democracy, relations between men and women, and many others. The editors deliberately avoided Orwell scholars in an effort to call forth a fresh and diverse range of responses to the major work of one of the most durable literary figures among twentieth-century English writers.Īs Nineteen Eighty-Four protagonist Winston Smith has admirers on the right, in the center, and on the left, the contributors similarly represent a wide range of political, literary, and moral viewpoints. Does Nineteen Eighty-Four remain relevant in our new century? The editors of this book assembled a distinguished group of philosophers, literary specialists, political commentators, historians, and lawyers and asked them to take a wide-ranging and uninhibited look at that question. For more than 50 years, it has been regarded as a morality tale for the possible future of modern society, a future involving nothing less than extinction of humanity itself. ![]() George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is among the most widely read books in the world. ![]() ![]() He falls passionately in love with Lenina, but has convinced himself that any sexual contact between them would be a grievous sin-a stance that completely baffles Lenina who has been conditioned to enjoy promiscuous sex without any emotional commitment. Eventually the Savage becomes increasingly horrified by the "brave new world" and retreats into reading Shakespeare's plays. There they come upon a fair-skinned young man named John, who turns out to be the son of a Londoner, and Bernard brings John back to "civilized" London.įor a while, the "Savage" creates a sensation. Disaffected with the regimentation of society, Bernard and his girlfriend, Lenina, visit the American Southwest where Native Americans are permitted to live in an "uncivilized" state. The story, set in a futuristic London, focuses on the misadventures of Bernard Marx. ![]() In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley conjures up a horrifying, but often comic, vision of a future Utopia in which humans are processed, conditioned, regimented, and drugged into total social conformity. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brave New World Note to Teachers Themes: totalitarianism, individualism, technology, value systems ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Ketterley did not know this at the time, the dust was from the Wood between the Worlds).Īlthough the dust was from the Wood Between the Worlds, some of it, he discovered, always wanted to get back to the Wood, and some of it always wanted to get away. He finally found, by various magical tests and research, that the box had originated from the lost civilisation of Atlantis, and contained dust that had been brought from another world (although Mr. This feeling was likely emitted from the dust itself, and when Andrew did look inside, although it merely looked like sand, he knew immediately it was some higher force that he should avoid touching directly. For even before he had opened the box, or knowing what was inside it, he had felt a tingling sensation of magic just from touching it. ![]() ![]() When he first opened it, he found some kind of dust inside, which he instinctually knew was magic. She had made him promise her that he would destroy the box, only for him to instead end up keeping it, and spend years studying it, and trying to discover its secrets. The rings were created on Earth by Andrew Ketterley (in Earth-year 1900) from a magical dust that he had discovered in a box left to him by his godmother, Mrs. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was, Egan writes in his shocking, horrifying history, the “largest and most powerful of the secret societies among American men.” Klan members included ministers, politicians, judges, policemen, bankers, and businessmen, united in their belief in White supremacy and their virulent hatred of immigrants, Jews, Roman Catholics, and Blacks. By 1868, the Klan had 500,000 members “in every province of the former Confederacy.” By the 1920s, the Klan’s raids, beatings, lynchings, and arson had spread throughout the country. ![]() In 1866, in a small town in Tennessee, six White war veterans formed a secret brotherhood to share their disgust about the emancipation of Blacks. ![]() A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award chronicles a dark period when the Ku Klux Klan was ascendant. ![]() ![]() ![]() My memory flutters like the wings of a dragonfly hovering over a millpond,Īnd I’m conscious of losing the voices that are asking me toĪs the end to my path beckons, I wonder if it could be just one step or more? There was always time aplenty, but feel how it rips through my hands. Where once my eyes saw beauty now only ugliness stands. To give voices to the souls that are praying to respond. I cannot believe in magic, but I need a magic wand, The path I once thought clear is nothing but obscure. The world is so full of suffering for which I have no cure, Only my agonising madness is left untroubled to stand.Įscape is but honest fiction, there’s nowhere to abscond.Įxcept to a silent grave with no means to respond. The pain that did grieve me now walks closer to hand. ![]() The graves where silent voices are screaming to respond. My mind is at the doorway that will take me beyond, Now all my battles have been fought, and all my thoughts have died. It’s in the darkness of the shadows where I wish to hide. ![]() |