6/26/2023 0 Comments George the overlanderLike the Percy Jackson and Book of Three and Wrinkle in Time middle grade series, these are based around a quest. I actually thought I might have missed a section when I realized I was almost at the end (I didn’t). And yet again, I will say I tend to not like middle grade books nearly as much as young adult books.īut this is one that moved quickly and in spite of the fact that it is over 300 pages (or 6 and a half hours of audio) I finished it in just over a day. Gregor the Overlander is clearly a middle grade book, one of that in between age that is neither children’s nor young adult. I have been trying to spend less money on books lately (I have a baby coming) and trying to check more books out of the library and read more from the To Read Pile that I already own, so I picked this up because it was at the library. I first noticed the Underland Chronicles when looking to see what Suzanne Collins had written beside the Hunger Games Trilogy. Summary: An 11 year old boy and his sister get suck to a world beneath and realize that their missing father needs them to find him.
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6/26/2023 0 Comments The sea around us bookThis classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. It remained on the list for more than a year and a half and ultimately sold well over a million copies, has been translated into 28 languages, inspired an Academy Award-winning documentary, and won both the 1952 National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal. Rachel Carson's rare ability to combine scientific insight with moving, poetic prose catapulted her book to first place on The New York Times best seller list, where it enjoyed wide attention for 31 consecutive weeks. Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. 6/26/2023 0 Comments Gettysburg by Allen C. GuelzoGuelzo faults Lee’s uncoordinated command style for the failure to follow up the attack on Cemetery Hill on July 2, and suggests that Jeb Stuart’s absence did not have the baneful effect attributed to it afterward. Richard Ewell to take Culp’s Hill on that first day. Hill, who had prematurely brought an end to the fighting on July 1 and, worse yet, for not pressing Lt. He is also not shy about offering his judgments. Abner Doubleday or John Gibbon are to be believed.īy having mastered the vast primary and secondary sources, and writing with clarity and force, Guelzo gives coherence to a story that, by its nature, is fraught with contradictions. For example, separate observers described Pickett’s Charge as a single line, two lines and perhaps even three lines or four, if Union Gens. Other facts are likewise subject to conflicting testimony. Precisely when events occurred is not known because synchronized time did not exist. William Faulkner famously wrote, “For every Southern boy fourteen years old…there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863.” In this masterful work, Allen Guelzo points out that the time of attack, like everything else we claim about the Battle of Gettysburg, was an approximation. America’s Civil War Book Review: Gettysburg- The Last Invasion Close 6/25/2023 0 Comments Forge by Laurie Halse AndersonShe shook her head violently and pulled me back down to my seat, a shaky finger on her lips to quiet me. I stood, legs quivering, head pounding, heart leaping. Rowed us away from Manhattan, the British army, and those who owned us. She’d rowed a boat, this ancient boat, all night long. Isabel had freed me from the Bridewell Prison. Like a flint hitting steel, a memory sparked, then flared. The handles of both oars were bloodstained where she had gripped them. Isabel’s hands lay in her lap, bleeding from torn blisters. I blinked for the third time and took a deep breath. Before me sat a girl, her right cheek scarred by a branding iron, her eyes swollen with fatigue. The air here was cold but clean, without the stink of jailed men and death. In truth, I am still a prisoner of the war in the Bridewell. This is a fantastical dream created by my fever. I closed my eyes and struggled to think past the ice cluttering my head. The cold was a beast gnawing at my fingers and toes. I was sitting in a rowboat half pulled onto a snowy riverbank. I blinked against the bright light and squinted. THE BIRTH - DAY OF A NEW WORLD IS AT HAND.ĬAN YOU WALK?” SOMEONE ASKED ME. WE HAVE IT IN OUR POWER TO BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN. This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, She quoted a popular paraphrase of a Psalm London soon became the centre of a burgeoning demand for foreign delicacies, and new and tantalizing tastes. The proclamations were largely ignored, though, and the well-to-do flocked to fashionable London - to its theatres, coffee shops and markets. This absence from home provoked Parliament to issue proclamations urging landowners not to shirk their duties, but to to return home. From the beginning of the seventeenth century this affluence (for the few at least) enabled more trade and travel abroad, and more visits to the capital, allowing foreign influences and the fashions of the Court to spread. Medieval monastic ideas of managing the land were swept away, and new and prosperous estates created. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the previous century, vast swathes of land were sold off and developed by landowners, creating a new breed of landed gentry. 6/25/2023 0 Comments Fire and blood hardcoverWith all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fire & Blood is the the first volume of the definitive two-part history of the Targaryens, giving readers a whole new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of Westeros. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed. Fire & Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. Martin Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game. Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen-the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria-took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (A Targaryen History) (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. 6/25/2023 0 Comments 4 3 2 1 by paul austerOne dies at 13, struck by a falling tree limb during a thunderstorm his sections after that are left blank. They're the same person, in a way, but their lives follow dramatically different paths. (Auster himself was born in the same city, exactly one month earlier.) Each chapter is divided into four numbered sections, corresponding with each different version of Ferguson. The Ferguson quoting Voltaire to his girlfriend is just one of four Fergusons: "Identical but different, meaning four boys with the same parents, the same bodies, and the same genetic material, but each one living in a different house in a different town with his own set of circumstances."Ĥ 3 2 1 follows all four Fergusons from their births to a Jewish family on March 3, 1947, in Newark, N.J. And he shares this belief with the three other iterations of him that make up Auster's bold, remarkable novel. It's hard for Ferguson to believe that he's living in the best of all possible worlds. "Everything always happens for the best - in this, the best of all possible worlds." Toward the middle of Paul Auster's new novel, 4 3 2 1, young Archie Ferguson, recovering from a car accident that could have killed him, quotes the satire Candide to his optimistic girlfriend. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title 4 3 2 1 Author Paul Auster 6/24/2023 0 Comments Hurricane season fitzcarraldoThe people that the Witch used to hang out with: women who would come to her house during the day for love potions, for clandestine abortions, or just to talk about their problems “ because the Witch listened, and nothing seemed to shock her.” At night, a group of young men would come to the Witch’s notorious parties fuelled with drugs, alcohol and costumes. This murder mystery is revealed throughout the book as we read in each chapter the testimonies and thoughts of the people involved with the Witch in one way or another. Rumour has it she kept gold coins in a secret place. The corpse belongs to a woman known as the Witch –possibly a transvestite– who lived in a house she inherited from her mother, also known as the Witch. It begins with the discovery of a corpse floating in the canal of La Matosa, a small village in Mexico forgotten by the state and society. The narrators of this novel have a raging voice, each of them carrying a hurricane inside as devastating as a hurricane so are their lives rife with poverty, superstition, gossip and lack of opportunities. Hurricane Season has been described as murder mystery, horror fiction, noir detective, political: it is all of them in its own original way. 6/24/2023 0 Comments A dowry of blood goodreadsI should specify that the name Dracula never appears in the book. The rest of the story backtracks to say how we got there. I wanted to dash myself against your rocks like a wave, obliterate my old self and see what rose shining and new from the sea foam.” She also kills him within the first pages of the book. She is overwhelmingly in love with him: “And God, how I adored you. She was dying as a casualty on a battlefield when he came in as her savior, turning her and nursing her back to health. We see this relationship through Constanta’s eyes, who was his first bride. This is a M/F/F/M polycule, and each of the four characters are bisexual (or pansexual). In case you need more convincing, though, I will forge on ahead. This is a meditative look at this relationship, so it’s easy for me to give away more than I mean to–the relationship doesn’t even turn into a polycule until about halfway through. If you, like me, are already intrigued, I recommend reading this without knowing much more about it, as long as you are aware that it depicts unhealthy and abusive relationships and includes descriptions of gore. You liked me best when I was like an oil painting perfectly arranged and silent.Ī Dowry of Blood is a queer polyamorous reimagining of Dracula’s brides. 6/24/2023 0 Comments Rage becomes her bookOn the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yes, yes it would.Ĭontrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help” and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change. |