![]() ![]() I fear that new western readers could misunderstand the relationship dynamic of this couple due to mistranslations of the terms 'Yifu / Yizi'. ![]() However, this first volume won't have that much romance since we meet Chang Geng in his teen years, and he is being taken care of by Gu Yun, the nation greatest strategist and his yifu, by the late emperor's command. The main couple has my whole heart, they are so good to each other and the hurt/comfort makes you cry. Sha Po Lang is set in steampunk ancient china and even though the plot can be very complex and hard to follow at times, you can notice how much care the author put into this novel with all the political schemes and the setting (inspired by real China's history). ![]() Please, if you've loved the novels Seven Seas has already licensed, and you want to keep digging in this danmei world, you can't miss Priest's novels!!!! They are more plot heavy/centric than Mxtx's novels, but the romance is still there and it is so sweet and well-done. YES!!! CHANGGU AND PRIEST'S NOVELS ARE FINALLY COMING HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ![]()
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![]() ![]() It took a lot of hard work on their parts & some individual conferencing on a rough draft for them to get this far, but they got there! (I'm attaching a sample of one that just amazed me & that I got permission to share - but honestly they were all very good and I would say of publishable quality.) I'd also love to share with you the reviews they wrote because I was so impressed with them. ![]() Today I'm having them print their final reviews & am going to display them alongside the books they reviewed. This was so they could track their reactions and have raw material for the review. Then they had to read a book of their choice from the library and take at least 20 notes on their reactions - in whatever format they wanted - sticky notes, Google Doc, etc. They used Goodreads and Amazon reviews for this. My students just finished a long-term project on book reviews and they did such an excellent job that I think these could be posted to Goodreads (not requiring them to do this although one student was so proud of his he said he might).įirst they had to do the "Book Review Research" assignment which was to read 5 reviews of a book they were familiar with so they could get a sense of how reviews are written. ![]() ![]() ![]() GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Lee left the band in 1972 for a solo career. MONTANA RAY: She was really central to that movement and was hounded by the apparatus of the state police. Lee told The New York Times in 2001 that artists had to, quote, "be creative, but evasive, to avoid the repression." Montana Ray, a Spanish and Portuguese translator who teaches at NYU, says Lee refused to conform at a time when the regime demanded it. It was a countercultural scene that flourished during Brazil's military dictatorship. GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Combining rock, psychedelia and pan-Latin rhythms, the tripped-out trio formed part of the Tropicalia movement. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PANIS ET CIRCENSES") She played the piano from an early age and co-founded Os Mutantes as a teenager in the 1960s. ![]() But Lee became known for progressive politics as much as for music. ![]() Her father descended from American confederates who fled the South after the Civil War. GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Rita Lee Jones de Carvalho was born in Sao Paulo. ![]() OS MUTANTES: (Singing in non-English language). ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Rita Lee once told a Brazilian newspaper that her band, Os Mutantes, quote, "came from another planet to take over the world." That's kind of what it sounded like. NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento has this appreciation. Brazil's queen of rock, Rita Lee, passed away this week. ![]() ![]() At first glance it appears to be a more straightforward novel than Life After Life, though it shares the same composition, flitting back and forth in time so that a chapter from Teddy’s childhood in 1925 sits alongside a fragment of his grandchildren’s childhood in the 1980s, before jumping back to 1947, when Teddy and his wife Nancy, newly married, are trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the devastation: “The war had been a great chasm and there could be no going back to the other side, to the people they were before. One of those characters was Ursula’s much-loved younger brother Teddy who, in the final narrative, survives to become a bomber pilot in the second world war, is reported missing, presumed dead during a raid in ’43, but is given a reprieve by the author at the 11th hour, when he reappears at the end of the war having spent two years as a POW in Germany.Ī God in Ruins is the story of Teddy’s war and its legacy, “a ‘companion’ piece rather than a sequel”, according to the author. ![]() ![]() And these transformations influence how we all make choices. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. ![]() Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide.Įxploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and the coining of his famous term “conspicuous consumption”. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption-like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. NAMED A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST ![]() ![]() ![]() By alternating between different sides of Rockefeller’s personality without abandoning the book’s chronological and narrative structure, Chernow demonstrates the concurrent influences of The Spiritual and the Materialin Rockefeller’s life.įollowing the titan into his retirement, which lasted 40 years (1897-1937), Chernow examines Rockefeller’s revolutionary philanthropy. Finally, in Chapter 16 (“A Matter of Trust”) Chernow highlights Rockefeller’s legendary instincts and ingenuity in capitalizing upon the 1885 oil strike in northwest Ohio. Once the reader is convinced that Rockefeller was an evil monopolist, Chernow again shifts his focus in Chapter 15 (“Widow’s Funeral), where he humanizes Rockefeller by bringing his father back into the narrative following Eliza’s death in 1889. Then, in Chapter 14 (“The Puppeteer”), Chernow excoriates Rockefeller for acquiescing to Standard Oil’s most unethical practices and later disingenuously pretending that he never knew anything about them. ![]() Chapter 13 (“Seat of Empire”), however, portrays Rockefeller as an innovator who built Standard Oil’s monopoly on sound economic reasoning, as well as a benevolent manager respected by his employees. ![]() ![]() ![]() It continues to expand in later books as well, with the students even leaving their home nation briefly. ![]() ![]() The plot slowly grows wider and wider as events escalate, but always at a manageable pace, such that I didn’t get confused. And I live for it.Ĭorin and the supporting characters all feel genuine, with genuine relationships. Not what his father wants, but one that suits Corin, and allows us as readers into the nitty-gritty of rules that underpin the magic system. He doesn’t find his brother, he does find Keras (who has two series dedicated to him, they are great, go and read them), and gets the Enchantment attunement. Both to find his brother, but also to get his own power. Corin’s brother goes missing in a spire, and Corin, when he is of age, goes in. So here’s the plot - you get powers (attunements) ostensibly from the goddess, via blessings you receive in the spires. He is, as I image many of us think, how we would approach being a person in a magical world. ![]() I’ll make sure this review focuses on Book One: Sufficiently Advanced Magic.Ĭorin Cadence is one of my favourite main characters in all of fantasy. My rating is for the series as a whole as of writing. ![]() ![]() And if Mary’s secret is revealed, heads are bound to roll. Thrust onto the throne, Mary and Francis face a viper’s nest of conspiracies, traps, and treason. But things at the gilded court take a treacherous turn after the king meets a suspicious end. ![]() ![]() Luckily, Mary has a confidant in her betrothed, Francis. It’s a secret that could cost her a head - or a tail. Yes, reader, Mary is an Eðian (shapeshifter) in a kingdom where Verities rule. ![]() Mary is the queen of Scotland and the jewel of the French court. Welcome to Renaissance France, a place of poison and plots, of beauties and beasts, of mice and. Presenting an all-new historical trilogy about Mary, Queen of Scots! ![]() ![]() ![]() With this working model in mind, Harari sought to understand the history of humankind’s domination of the earth and its development of complex modern societies. But if you write a history of the whole world you can’t do this. ![]() I was taught that if you’re going to study something, you must understand it deeply and be familiar with primary sources. ![]() But in order to do so, you have to give up the most cherished tools of historians. Harari says: “It made me realise that you can ask the biggest questions about history and try to give them scientific answers. (Harari) credits author Jared Diamond with encouraging him to take a much broader view-his Guns, Germs and Steel was an enormous influence. And of course, Harari, a history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has noted that key influence and what it means to how he works: Near and dear to our heart, Sapiens is pure synthesis.Īn immediate influence that comes to mind is Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, and other broad-yet-scientific works with vast synthesis and explanatory power. It’s new and fresh but not based on any brand new primary research. It’s written for a popular audience but never feels dumbed down. Yuval Noah Harari‘s Sapiens is one of those uniquely breathtaking books that comes along very rarely. ![]() ![]() ![]() The story follows Ada and Evered, a brother and sister living in an extremely isolated cove in Newfoundland. I’ve truthfully never read anything like it and I’m really glad I had the chance to experience such an unusual book. The Innocents is an incredibly original book. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but their family’s boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to help them survive. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean and a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. In centuries past, a brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated outport cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline. ![]() |