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The unforgiving mining of other’s personal lives for stories such as the writer Leon Posen does with Franny Keating. The dying parents and anxious eagerness to share stories and memories before they finally fade away with death. The mother managing her step children and trying to figure them out. The single working mother trying to manage a brood of children. And yet there are many more subtle layers to this magnificently elegant novel. Families where the lives and secrets of the brood of half-brothers and sisters comes together as it would for any other family. A family where the parents have separated and built their lives separately with other partners and children again. Bookseller and award-winning author, Ann Patchett’s seventh novel, Commonwealth is an extraordinarily beautiful ode to daily life in America. 6/6/2023 0 Comments Bel kaufman booksIn Kaufman’s introduction to 1991 edition she outlines the origins of the book and her own career as a high school English teacher, first in the gray area of a “Per Diem sub” when the Board of Education repeatedly flunks her on the oral portion of the licensing exam because, as the child of Russian immigrants, she had practiced too well- apparently they feared she would make her students’ pronunciation too affected. In 2017, there may also be fewer H-Bomb drills than in 1964. Right down to the draconian dictates on the raising and lowering of classroom shades. It’s only fair to state at the outset that I come to Up The Down Staircase with a bias- like Bel Kaufman, I am a Hunter College alumnae who teaches in the New York City school system, so I feel I can answer with authority the question of the hour: how much, exactly, have things changed in the last 50 years? This month, the June selection, Bel Kaufman’s Up The Down Staircase. As all of the four selected titles have filmed adaptations, we will be looking at the movie versions as we go along. ( Click here for information on the 2017 edition of Molly’s Imaginary Summer Book Club Featuring Classics of Women’s Literature. 6/6/2023 0 Comments A clockwork princessWill is being his usual antisocial, angsty self: “I need someone who can keep up with me, not some sickly creature that looks as if he’s doddering off to the grave.” Oh Will. One of the first scenes in this book is Charlotte introducing 12-year-old Jem to 12-year-old Will. Appreciate the writing, the plot, the literary references, the characters for what they are and what they can teach you. If you haven’t read this series yet, what are you doing? Go pick it up! If you have, I encourage you to reread it again but take your time. □ It feels as if I, myself, had been a member of the London Institute–sharing in their joys, grieving during their sorrows, fighting alongside them in battle. I’m honestly going to miss reading these characters that I’ve truly grown to love. The next 25% was very slow-paced in comparison, but the last 25% was when everything came full circle and all the little bits and pieces were tied together. I would be so enraptured by the plot that I would glance down at the percentage bar line on my Kindle and be surprised that I was only 30% into the book. I would say that the first 50% of the book was super intense and fast moving. This book felt long because SO MUCH WAS HAPPENING. If Clockwork Angel was 10/10 and Clockwork Prince was 8/10, Clockwork Princess was for sure an 11/10!!! □Ĭlockwork Prince felt so long because nothing was happening. I’m all choked up with feels at the moment. Ely, Jesse and Robin’s Guide to Asexuality.O’Connacht (a secondary POV character is ace)ĭealers by Jenna Rose and Katey Hawthorne (one ace author) (two POV The Faerie Godmother’s Apprentice Wore Green.Shape Shifter Chronicles (series) by Lauren Jankowski (multiple ace chars) If you know of any I missed, I’dĬhronomancer Chronicles (series) by Reilyn J. (or at least a point-of-view character) and were written by an ace-spec author.Ĭlick the links for more info and discussion. Thinking about this, I ended up making theįollowing list of all the books/series I could find that have an ace-spec MC Point of view, and I believe authors who are ace themselves are best equipped Ace sideĬharacters are always great, but I really love getting the ace character’s Interested in reading ace main characters written by ace authors. When it comes to asexual representation in books, I’m most Books by ace-spectrum authors with ace-spectrum main characters Fanny Brawne: her quiet, middle class girlhood is transformed and immortalized by a disturbing encounter with genius. Lady Caroline Lamb: born to fabulous wealth and aristocratic position, who risks everything for the ultimate love affair. Mary Shelley: the gifted daughter of gifted parents, for whom Passion leads to exile, loss, and a unique fame. In this electrifying novel, those lives are explored through the eyes of the women who knew and loved them intensely, scandalously.įour women from widely different backgrounds are linked by a sensational fate. In the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, three poets Byron, Shelley, and Keats come to prominence, famous and infamous, for their vivid personalities, and their glamorous, shocking, and sometimes tragic lives. Theirs was a world of obsession, genius, and above all The stepfather proves to be more violent than Aida’s own father, Raul. They are all able to settle in Douglas on the strength of a short-term border-crossing card, which gives Mexicans the right to visit the United States for 72 hours. citizen who turns out to have fathered two of the children. When she is eight, in 1996, her mother Luz suddenly yanks her and four siblings across the border to join Saul, a U.S. The pseudonymous Aida Hernandez begins life in Agua Prieta, Mexico, the twin city of Douglas, Arizona. By delving into the life of a particular asylum seeker, he provides a wealth of detail far exceeding what is available to the immigration judges who decide these cases. The author, Aaron Bobrow-Strain, is a cultural geographer and activist who is careful to get the backstory. give refuge to women fleeing murderous husbands and other forms of gender discrimination? Both asylum advocates and skeptics can test their assumptions by reading The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez. Gender violence is one such criterion for asylum-should the U.S. President Trump’s open bigotry isn’t making it any easier-nor are the new, more generous grounds for asylum being proposed by human rights advocates. But who actually deserves this kind of protection, and what to do when large groups of people ask for it en masse, have never been easy questions. Many Americans like the idea that anybody in the world can show up at the U.S. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, 432 pp., $28Ī liberal democracy treasures the right to asylum. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the life story of one young woman born at the end of the twentieth century and raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression that are relevant to us all. Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn't get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night. Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own. Who is Kim Jiyoung? Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy. THE MULTI-MILLION-COPY SELLING SOUTH KOREAN SENSATION THAT HAS GOT THE WHOLE WORLD TALKING Writing became his path out of that old life. When that was uplifted, I had to find something else." My entire life up to that point was predicated on the pursuit of this or that narcotic experience. "I suddenly had 16 hours a day to fill with something new. "The oldest recognizable poem in my book ranges back to when I got sober," Akbar says his debut collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, came out this past September. The site grew out of Akbar's own life in poetry, and his struggles with addiction. Every other Monday, he posts a new interview transcript. It's packed with profiles of writers like Morgan Parker, Ocean Vuong, Wendy Xu, and Max Ritvo - to name just a few. How?Īkbar runs DiveDapper, which focuses on interviews with major voices in contemporary poetry. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Calling a Wolf a Wolf Author Kaveh Akbar 6/4/2023 0 Comments Addict by Matt DoyleA nasty documentary about the tragedy of hard drug abuse. Although he is known to some as a rock and roll star, we learn the truth, that he is a sad person who lives with and depends on his parents, and who causes disgusting harm to his body due to his substance use disorder (SUD), which eventually kills his career and is the reason that Pentagram are not a very well known band, despite a great metal sound. It is utterly disgusting and a total tragedy, stronger than any PSA. The documentary’s big reveal comes when he rolls his sleeve up, and we see that he has dug a gigantic hole in his arm big enough to fit a fist into. Because of this, the lead singer is constantly scratching himself, digging holes in his skin, in a frantic search for non-existent bugs. Heroin releases histamines which causes the skin to itch, and cocaine abuse can cause users to believe they are crawling with bugs that are hiding under the skin. The documentary focuses on the desperate life of the band’s disturbed singer, Bobby Liebling, who is a crack and heroin user who lives in his parents’ sub-basement and relies on them to get through the day. Last Days Here is a documentary about the 1970s metal band Pentagram. |