We own the city book6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() I suppose you never saw the landing-lights” Richie’s Picks: WE OWN THE SKY by Rodman Philbrick, Scholastic Press, September 2022, 208p., ISBN: 978-9-8 ![]() He and his wife divide their time between Maine and the Florida Keys. ![]() His recent novels for adults include 'Dark Matter', 'Coffins', and 'Taken'. Philbrick, a screenwriter as well as a novelist, is the author of a number of novels for young readers, including 'The Fire Pony', 'Max the Mighty', 'REM World', 'The Last Book In The Universe', 'The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds' and 'The Young Man And The Sea'. The book was adapted to the screen in 1998 as 'The Mighty', starring Sharon Stone, Gillian Anderson, James Gandolfini, Kieran Culkin, and Elden Henson. Inspired by the life of a boy who lived a few blocks away, he wrote 'Freak The Mighty', the award-winning young-adult novel, which has been translated into numerous languages and is now read in schools throughout the world. Dantz' he has explored the near-future worlds of genetic engineering and hi-tech brain control in books like 'Hunger', 'Pulse', 'The Seventh Sleeper'. The Private Eye Writers of America nominated two of his T.D.Stash series as best detective novel and then selected Philbrick's 'Brothers & Sinners' as Best Novel in 1993. For many years he wrote mysteries and detective novels. Rodman Philbrick grew up on the New England coast, where he worked as a longshoreman and boat builder. ![]()
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Love Anthony by Lisa Genova6/10/2023 ![]() Beth, a stay-at-home mother of three already living on Nantucket, is also recently separated after discovering her husband's infidelity. With her marriage badly strained by years of stress, she has come to the island recently separated, trying to understand the purpose of her son’s short life. Olivia is a thirty-something mother whose eight-year-old, nonverbal autistic son has recently died. Love Anthony is the latest novel from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice and Left Neglected, about an accidental friendship forged between two women on a Nantucket beach a friendship that provides peace to one, validation to the other. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. ![]() The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. This reading group guide for Love Anthony includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Lisa Genova. ![]() Barbara kingsolver's the poisonwood6/9/2023 ![]() ![]() HarperFlamingo, 1998), onto the cultures of the Congo region, which inįact are probably borrowed from other parts of the African continent. ![]() Kingsolver inscribes in her novel, The Poisonwood Bible (NY: ![]() There are at least two practices and beliefs that Barbara
![]() ![]() It's an equal to "gay" or "lesbian" or "straight" (which term I dislike because its connotation is "as opposed to 'bent'" and that doesn't thrill me) not a way-station on a road heading one way or the other. What Author Shaw does is build a good case, based on research and science, for the existence and validity of the identity "bisexual" as a separate thing. ![]() When that erasure comes at you from all sources and angles, including the one with a letter for your identity in its public face, that can feel disheartening and rejecting. ![]() And bisexuality, being by its nature focused on sexual activity, is simply not an acceptable identity in the heteronormative prescriptivist world.Īuthor Shaw, who also includes a lot of other identities in her discussion, corrects this misperception with an assertion that bisexuality is in fact an identity and to diminish that is to indulge in bi erasure. No one ever explains to you, "oh, I'm straight" because we assume they are unless they make a point of not being. And that's what Author Shaw has set out to correct.that sense of non-inclusion that heteronormative society, whether straight or gay, attaches to labeled people. When one says "bisexual" without the modifier "man/male" the presumption is one's referring to a woman/female. My Review: I've contended publicly that bisexuality is the disrespected stepchild of the QUILTBAG community. I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up for the "Bidentity List" ![]() Tai-Pan by James Clavell6/9/2023 ![]() ![]() Fleischer was set to direct a big-screen adaptation of James Clavell’s Tai-Pan for Swiss producer Georges-Alain Vuille, and he wanted Fraser to write the screenplay. In the late 1970s, Fraser was contacted by film director Richard Fleischer. George MacDonald Fraser is best-known as the author of The Flashman Papers, but he also had a prolific career as a screenwriter and his memoir The Light’s on at Signpost covers his time in the movie biz. I am, of course, referring to the big-screen adaptation of James Clavell’s epic bestseller Tai-Pan. ![]() ![]() The making of this film is a tale of titanic ambition, missed opportunities, horrendous luck, botched compromises and warring egos. ![]() I recently came across a film that is the equal to all of the above in terms of never-ending difficulty or, as we might say today, ‘development hell’. I’ve always had a fascination with the concept of a ‘difficult’ production – whether they be unmade films ( White Jazz), forgotten or considered-lost productions ( Where is Parsifal?and The Devil’s Crown), films that weren’t released until forty years after they were shot ( The Other Side of the Wind) or the downright bizarre, how-the-hell-did-that-get-made picture ( Bond director Terence Young’s cinematic love letter to Saddam Hussein is a notorious example of this genre). ![]() ![]() Three top writers continue the bewitching adventures begun in one of science fiction's most beloved novels. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure. 3.95 1,640 ratings49 reviews At last-the sequel to The Witches of Karres. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. No good deed goes unpunished, and those harmless-looking young ladies were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And then he made the mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). ![]() On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous! Pausert thought he had made good with his battered starship, successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes no one else could sell. The Witches of Karres is an old-fashioned science-fantasy space opera, written with a light, sure touch and with Schmitzs distinctive panache. ![]() Blazing interstellar adventure by the creator of Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee.Ĭaptain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. ![]() Weaveworld by clive barker6/8/2023 ![]() "Time"Barker puts in strands of Joyce, Poe, Tolkien, and King himself, and emerges with the one ingredient that all good rugmakers and storytellers have in common: an irresistible yarn. "The New York Times Book Review"Prodigious talent.Barker creates a fantastic romance of magic and promise that is at once popular fiction and utopian conjuring. And he informs everything with an imagination so powerful that it creates its own reality. He infuses his villains and horrors with such venom that they are overwhelming. He writes with a lyrical intensity that transforms some passages from prose to poetry. A book of dreams recalling William Blake instead of Lewis Carroll.Barker borrows a great many themes from literature, folklore, and religion, and makes it completely his own. The mixed, tricky world where fantasy and horror overlap has been visited before - though not very often - and "Weaveworld" will be a guide to everyone who travels there in the futureĪ powerfully imagined, fully executed fantasy. "Weaveworld" is pure dazzle, pure storytelling. ![]() ![]() Prodigious talent.Barker creates a fantastic romance of magic and promise that is at once popular fiction and utopian conjuring.īarker puts in strands of Joyce, Poe, Tolkien, and King himself, and emerges with the one ingredient that all good rugmakers and storytellers have in common: an irresistible yarn. Synopsis: Susanna, granddaughter of the last caretaker, Calhoun Mooney, and Immacolata, an exiled witch intent on destroying her race, vie for a rug into which the world of Seerkind has been woven ![]() The betrothed kiera cass6/8/2023 ![]() I hate saying that, because I certainly wasn’t expecting it, but she’s characterized as perfect and can do no wrong. Hollis is the epitome of a Mary Sue character. Nor do we know what they see in her besides perhaps her beauty. We truly have no idea what Hollis sees in the two love interests besides a crown and a set of pretty eyes. This is the type of story we pick apart in writing workshops because the bones aren’t bad but there’s no flesh on them.įor every character that’s introduced, we know nothing about their personalities, their wants, their desires, what motivates them. ![]() This is the epitome of a bland, tell and not show story. ![]() I keep going back and forth between rating this 2 stars or 3 stars. And when she meets a commoner with the mysterious power to see right into her heart, she finds that the future she really wants is one that she never thought to imagine. Capturing his heart is a dream come true.īut Hollis soon realizes that falling in love with a king and being crowned queen may not be the happily ever after she thought it would be. After all, she’s grown up at Keresken Castle, vying for the king’s attention alongside other daughters of the nobility. ![]() When King Jameson declares his love for Lady Hollis Brite, Hollis is shocked-and thrilled. I listened to the audiobook of this one, but also received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Review of The Betrothed (The Betrothed #1) by Kiera Cass Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ![]() The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah6/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Either way, this book will leave you thinking. If you get that choice, it is a great option. The reader, Polly Stone, does a fabulous job with adding a French flare to just the right places. I was actually able to listen to it on audiobook, which was fantastic. And, a book with a steady plot full of twists and turns. The Nightingale is an all-encompassing experience that wears you out by taking you through the full range of emotions and leaves you contemplating life. ![]() And, after reading it, I thought THIS is exactly what a good story should be for a reader. I had been reading and studying fiction for a while when I decided to read The Nightingale. In fact, it was the book that stirred the passion in my heart again for reading and story telling. If you haven’t read The Nightingaleby Kristin Hannah, I highly recommend it. The Nightingale Book Club Questions and Recipe ![]() Sweet tooth mcewan6/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Not only does the supposed narrator (“beautiful and clever” Serena Frome) look back at an exotic period in politically tense London right after she graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Mathematics, but, better still, with words and phrases like “undoing,” “secret mission,” “ruined,” and “disgraced” appearing in the first paragraph and “MI5,” “recruiting,” “selfless cruelty,” “a journey with no hope of return” closing off the chapter, we’re enticed with the murky color scheme and sullied motivations popularized again last year with Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 bestseller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That beginning is engrossing because it’s so promissory. Adept at the genre, Ian McEwan opens à la John Banville in The Untouchable, with a wily operative recalling a scandalous distant past, though with notable differences: the narrator is female her bit role in minor Cold War machinations was short-lived and we see (and, over the novel’s twenty-two chapters, learn) virtually nothing of her circumstances after 1973. Page-turner thrillers of all stripes trade on nimbly accelerating plot mechanics and narrative sleights-of-hand that highlight the gap between what eventually transpires and what readers (and, often, the intrepid hero) initially believe or anticipate.Īt the onset, Sweet Tooth’s essence appears to be literary thriller. ![]() |