![]() Literary Hub, one of Nicole Dennis-Benn's 26 Books From the Last Decade that More People Should Read ![]() The Book of Harlan brilliantly explores questions about agency, purpose, freedom, and survival. It's complex, real, and raw.McFadden intricately and purposefully weaves history as a backdrop in her fiction. McFadden took me on a melodious literary journey through time and place in her masterpiece, The Book of Harlan. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music.īernice L. ![]() Simply miraculous.As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. McFadden uses the experiences of her own ancestors as loose inspiration for the life of Harlan, whom she portrays from his childhood in Harlem through imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and his struggles afterward to put his life back together. ![]() ![]() WINNER of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Fiction)Ģ017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee (Fiction) McFadden has been named the Go On Girl Book Club's 2018 Author of the Year ![]()
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![]() ![]() With the spirits that cursed Watson Island centuries ago awake and more dangerous than ever, she finds an unlikely ally in the haunting and enigmatic Obadiah, whose motivations and power she still can’t read-or trust. ![]() ![]() To do that, she must heal the rifts that have split the families of the island apart for three hundred years, unravel the mystery of the Fire Carrier and the spirits he guards, and take control of forces so deadly and awe-inspiring they threaten to overwhelm her. Barrie must rescue her beloved and her family from evil spirits in the masterful conclusion to the Heirs of Watson Island trilogy.Ĭaged by secrets all around her and haunted by mistakes that have estranged her from Eight Beaufort, Barrie Watson is desperate to break the curse that puts her family in danger-without breaking the beautiful magic that protects Watson’s Landing. ![]() ![]() ![]() And please beware of minor spoilers if you haven’t read After Atlas! If you haven’t yet read After Atlas, I would not pick this up until you do. The events start a few months after the shocking ending of After Atlas, so even though I’ve always said that each book in this series can be read as a standalone in any order, Atlas Alone is the exception to that rule. This is the first book in the series that actually feels like a sequel. The nitty-gritty: A mesmerizing and dangerous thriller where reality and fantasy merge.Įmma Newman’s Planetfall series has been a wild ride, but if I’m reading the ending correctly, that ride isn’t over yet. ![]() This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. ![]() I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. ![]() ![]() ![]() Writer Donald Ross soon realises after speaking to the real Jane Wilkinson that it is a different woman then the one he met at the dinner, after she is ignorant and rude about his Play that Carlotta liked when she was impersonating Jane. Jane then poisons Carlotta's drink and murders her so she won't be able to blow Jane's cover once the investigation starts into her husband's murder. ![]() Later that night after murdering her husband in cold blood, Jane invites Carlotta round for drinks to celebrate the fact that no one even suspected that the Jane Wilkinson at the dinner wasn't really Jane Wilkinson at all. In order to give herself an alibi, she hires American actress Carlotta Adams to dress up as her and impersonate her at a dinner while she murders her husband. He won't let Jane get a divorce from him, So Jane stabs him to death. Jane Wilkinson alias Lady Edgware is married to Lord Edgware a rude and controlling man. Jane Wilkinson (Helen Grace) is the hidden main villainess from the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode "Lord Edgware Dies" based on the book "Thirteen at Dinner". ![]() Jane Wilkinson The manipulative and evil Jane Wilkinson ![]() ![]() The book suggests that the western depiction of the Mongols as savages who destroyed civilization was due to the Mongols' approach to dealing with the competing leadership classes. Howorth have argued that the Mongol empire contributed to opening up intellectual interactions between China, the Middle East, and Europe. In 1979 Paul Ratchnevsky wrote about the Khan's knack for forging alliances, his fairness in dividing the spoils, and his patronage of the sciences. Weatherford made use of three major non-Western sources: The Secret History of the Mongols, the Ta' rīkh-i jahān-gushā of Juvayni and the Jami al-Tawarikh of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani. In the last section, he reviews the historiography of Genghis Khan in the West and argues that the leader's early portrayal in writings as an "excellent, noble king" changed to that of a brutal pagan during the Age of Enlightenment. Weatherford provides a different slant on Genghis Khan than has been typical in most Western accounts, attributing positive cultural effects to his rule. It is a narrative of the rise and influence of Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his successors, and their influence on European civilization. ![]() Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004) is a history book written by Jack Weatherford, Dewitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. ![]() The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire ![]() ![]() And it shows how society would need to cope without services like water supply, lighting, heating, phones, computers and fuel, all of which rely on electricity to work. It also underlines just how reliant so many of our everyday sources and suppliers are on computer systems that need a reliable electricity to operate effectively. ![]() The novel explores the bigger picture as we go behind the scenes with the military, governments, service providers, hospitals and power stations facing their problems and trying to deal with the crisis. We all take electricity for granted until a power cut when we have experienced minor or major inconvenience. ![]() This doomsday scenario reads like a movie script in print with short scenes switching from country to country as the situation worsens. Step up Piero Manzano an Italian IT programmer who has a history of hacking and offers his expertise to the authorities. The story follows the impact of an international electricity blackout that threatens the world, caused by a hacker attack on the computer systems controlling power stations and the distribution grid. ![]() Blackout is the first thriller by Marc Elsberg, originally published in 2012 in Germany. ![]() ![]() ![]() There he hath made himself to his intent Weak enough, now into our world to come. Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment. Ere by the spheres time was created thou Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother Whom thou conceivest, conceived yea, thou art now Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother, Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb. Salvation to all that will is nigh That All, which always is all everywhere, Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear, Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die, Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie In prison, in thy womb and though He there Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear, Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try. 'Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high Salvation to all that will is nigh. The first last end, now zealously possess'd, With a strong sober thirst my soul attends. ![]() The ends crown our works, but Thou crown'st our ends, For at our ends begins our endless rest. ![]() But do not with a vile crown of frail bays Reward my Muse's white sincerity But what Thy thorny crown gain'd, that give me, A crown of glory, which doth flower always. Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise, Weaved in my lone devout melancholy, Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury, All changing unchanged Ancient of days. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Part II ('On the Man Called Christ'), Chesterton argues that if Jesus is really viewed as simply another human leader and Christianity and the Church are simply another human religion, one is forced to the conclusion that he was a bizarrely unusual leader, whose followers founded a bizarrely and miraculously unusual religion and Church. Chesterton's thesis, as expressed in Part I of the book ('On the Creature Called Man'), is that if man is really and dispassionately viewed simply as another animal, one is forced to the conclusion that he is a bizarrely unusual animal. You have to give in to the Chestertonian style, but if you do, be careful - you might just be converted." Overview Īccording to the evolutionary outlines of history proposed by Wells and others, mankind is simply another sort of animal, and Jesus was a remarkable human being, and nothing more. ![]() The author Ross Douthat credits that, "Chesterton's somewhat loosey-goosey outline of history doubles as the best modern argument for Christianity I've ever read. Chesterton detailed his own spiritual journey in Orthodoxy, but in this book he tries to illustrate the spiritual journey of humanity, or at least of Western civilisation. Wells' The Outline of History, disputing Wells' portrayals of human life and civilisation as a seamless development from animal life and of Jesus Christ as merely another charismatic figure. It is, to some extent, a deliberate rebuttal of H. The Everlasting Man is a Christian apologetics book written by G. ![]() ![]() ![]() Luckily for me, understanding the philosophical underpinnings behind our decisions doesn't have to be a dreary tear-inducing slog. ![]() I would prefer to remain ignorant.” And so I did, I dropped it, and yet here I am years later, and I finally realized that understanding how and why we make decisions, particularly moral and ethical ones, well, it's kind of very important. ![]() I was like, “Questioning all of my values and assumptions and relationships? No, thank you. And at the end of the first lecture, the professor said, “If you feel happy and content in your life, if you don't want to question all of your values and assumptions and relationships, then this is not the class.”Īnd so, I walked outta that lecture hall and immediately dropped the class. When I was in college, I signed up for an intro to philosophy class. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. ![]() ![]() Margaret Atwood wrote the book longhand.Ģ019 Glamour Women Of The Year Award / Theo Wargo/GettyImages “I experienced the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject, the oblique ways in which people might convey information, and these had an influence on what I was writing,” Atwood recalled. It was during this time, and through her visits to several other Iron Curtain countries, that the Republic of Gilead began to take shape. ![]() ![]() “I was living in West Berlin, which was still encircled by the Berlin Wall,” Atwood wrote in The New York Times. The book’s oppressive themes were partly inspired by the fact that Atwood began writing it while she was living in Germany in 1984, at the height of the Cold War. Officially, The Handmaid’s Tale is set at some point in the not-too-distant future (from whenever you’re reading it). ![]() The Handmaid’s Tale was partially inspired by Cold War Germany. Even if you’ve binge-watched the Emmy Award-winning TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, there’s still much to be learned from, and about, the book. ![]() The novel follows one such handmaid, Offred, as she struggles to acclimate to (and, perhaps, to resist) her new reality. Because so few women in the Republic of Gilead are fertile, “handmaids” are enlisted to bear the children of the ruling class. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a discomfortingly familiar future, where a newly installed theocracy has instituted a sweeping series of misogynistic laws and practices. ![]() |