![]() ![]() Over the course of months, the lights are flicked on and off at whim as each character strives to win the war over the office lights.Ī collection of short stories. ![]() Take for example, The Necessary Changes Have Been Made, an amusing story about Randolph, an employee at a university who gets locked into a passive-aggressive battle with his office mate, Isabella over whether the office lights should stay on or off. Heads of the Colored People, through its different styles of storytelling, will give you a snapshot of the varied lives of black people in America. And if it’s as good as Thompson-Spires’ debut, there is every reason to keep reading. ![]() Frankly, this is the beauty of short story collections – the freedom it gives to readers to pick up and put down again at a whim. It’s a short story, part of a collection of stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires called Heads of the Colored People. As uncomfortable as this ‘molding process’ was to read, as someone who used to be often referred to as a ‘coconut’, I actually identified with Fatima’s frustration. I am so bloody late, but the good news is I’ve just finished reading, Fatima the Biloquist, whose protagonist, a young lady called Fatima from a well to do family, is taken through a make-shift ghetto finishing school of sorts by her more ‘culturally aware’ bestie Violet, who is determined to make her ‘more black’. I’m sitting on a Southeastern train, heading to our Kent office for work. ![]()
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![]() Ode to Odin captures something ineffable, something universal, something beyond time. A friendship with a man who lives as a deity is subject to the slightest whim. ![]() Working with Odin can be a dangerous occupation. The enterprise largely depends on the charisma and genius of Odin, charming and fierce, handsome and capricious, the embodiment of self-belief, a man who lives as a God even as he pursues the origins of religion. Yet no success is guaranteed in a land of violence and corruption, of unforgiving deserts, populated by vodka-soaked and acrimonious Russians, Turkomen, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tatars and Karakalpaks. Their quest, to audaciously reach out for the cryptic origins of God, is an intellectual pursuit of the highest ambition. The two men forge a friendship on the anvil of the deserts of Central Asia as they embark on a search for the homeland of Zoroaster the Prophet, arguably the progenitor of monotheism. ![]() A young British archaeologist makes a deal with the devil, the brilliant but dangerously unpredictable Odin. I saw a man of grand plan and action, friend and foe, angel and demon, dualistic in nature, representing life in all its facets, both good and bad and at the same time neither. ![]() ![]() ![]() Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. Son remains a classic of twentieth-century literature.Īs well as an illuminating introduction, this edition also provides a series of fascinating appendices including extracts from Philip Gosse's Omphalos and his harrowing account of his wife's death from breast cancer.ĪBOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. A key document of the crisis of faith and doubt a penetrating exploration of the impact of evolutionary science an astute, well-observed, and moving portrait of the tensions of family life: Father and Father and Son - Edmund Gosse The Year 1907 Father and Son by Edmund Gosse Classic and tragic detailing his childhood under naturalist Phillip Henry Gosse (and Emily Gosse) who was part of the Open Brethren. ![]() In it Edmund Gosse recounts, with humour and pathos, his childhood as a member of a Victorian Protestant sect and his struggles to forge his own identity despite the loving control of his father. ![]() ![]() 'This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs.'įather and Son stands as one of English literature's seminal autobiographies. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() If Vast Black was an examination of how faith pushes one to act, Forsaken Stars is a much more somber meditation questioning said faith. Will the sisters ever know peace again? And can their faith survive the empty black of space without the foundation of the church itself? ![]() And all the while, the stories of these nuns and their deeds on Phoyonga III spread across the outer colonies, bolstering the more rebellious tendencies of those persecuted by Earth and the Church. As the drums of war echo throughout the systems of humanity, a biological sister of one of the nuns requests asylum, while another woman seeks to join them. Resources are tight because they are no longer officially a part of the Catholic Church, and they have to be careful about who they trust. They are slowly acquainting themselves within their new living ship updating its systems with what little they scrounge together. ![]() Picking up some time after their defiant actions on Phoyonga III, the now nameless convent has replaced its mother superior, and is in hiding. Fortunately, Rather has decided to continue the story of this small order, who are now on the run in Sisters of the Forsaken Stars. Lina Rather’s debut in the novella scene captured my imagination and heart and left me wanting more. Back in the olden times of just over two years ago, I read Sisters of the Vast Black, a charming novella about a small convent of nuns in outer space. ![]() ![]() ![]() It is not simply a question of the broad outlines being well-worn, but of the numerous tropes deployed: the mad scientist releasing the virus the millenarian cults and cannibal gangs the survivors subsisting, ironically, on throwaway consumer items the tech-noir and cyber-punk stylings flooded cities the vine-wrapped skyscrapers. All this will seem troublingly unoriginal not just to hardened SF fans, but to anyone with an average movie-going habit. ![]() The dystopian world that existed before the pandemic is seen in flashback: a nightmare of all-controlling corporations, out-of-control scientific innovations, ecological catastrophe and social breakdown which is equally familiar, from the likes of Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Hunger Games and countless others. I use Survivors – itself a remake of a 1970s series – as an example, but the post-apocalyptic sections of Atwood's books have many precursors, from Mad Max to The Omega Man and 28 Days Later. ![]() ![]() A mad scientist working for an evil corporation releases a virus that wipes out most of humanity the survivors must scrape a living from the ruins of industrial civilisation, fighting against feral gangs and sometimes each other. It is a peculiarity – a series of books written by a wonderful and justly venerated novelist, with a generic SF plot that closely recalls, say, the unloved recent BBC1 series Survivors. Banks's thoughts came back to me while I was reading Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, which concludes with this novel. ![]() ![]() ![]() But for the most part, it got me thinking about my own relationship with God, how I treat him, and how he treats us. It is a work of fiction and therfore there are some elements which I had to go and cross reference myself. Yes, I know for the most part God is portrayed as a Woman (which is not biblical), but it explained why in the book. Any additional comments? Don’t be turned away by the sound of this book. Christian / Classic & Allegory, Religious, Thrillers / Suspense, Mystery & Detective. Mackenzie Allen Philips youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted. Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you? Definitely the part where. Young FREE Shipping for Club Members Paperback. And the way he reads it as if the character is figuring it out for the first time really helps me to engage with the events in the story. What does Roger Mueller bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book? His timing is spot on. Would you listen to The Shack again? Why? I would definitely listen to The Shack again because even though it is based on fiction, it helped me explore my biblical understanding of God, his workings, and plans for us. ![]() ![]() The storyline was engrossing and I was engulfed in the world of the Five Points family. This book is packed with action and romance. She is thick but he loves her curves and helps her to accept her body as beautiful which she has not in the past. Another reason I loved Finn is because of the love he has for Aoife. It was interesting to see the intricacies of that mafia family. First it is about the Irish mob of New York which is rare because most mafia books are about the Italian or Russian mob. Once he has her he knows he will never want anyone else. ![]() He makes her an offer she can’t literally refuse. So they send in the top man Finn to “convince her”. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.Īoife runs a small tea shop in Five Points territory and they want the building. This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. ![]() This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence. ![]() ![]() The name itself may have been inspired by 'clackers', the term for operators of mechanical computers in William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's steampunk novel The Difference Engine it is also a play on the word 'fax'. Sprague de Camp novel Lest Darkness Fall. A similar telegraph system is described in the L. Both are based on the real-world optical telegraphs used in the early 19th century before electrical telegraphy made them obsolete. 'C-commerce' is also carried out on it.Ī possible influence for the clacks system is the similar semaphore network in the Keith Roberts novel Pavane or the hoodwinker towers in The Blue World by Jack Vance. ![]() While the system structure is that of a telegraph, elements of it are often described as similar to the Internet for example, it threatens to make the Post Office obsolete in Going Postal (which also features a group of clacks hackers) and is sometimes described as 'c-mail' (a clear reference to email). ![]() It was introduced in The Fifth Elephant and has become the Discworld's first telecommunications network. ![]() The clacks in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels is a network of semaphore towers stretching along the Sto Plains, into the Ramtops and across the Unnamed Continent to Genua. ![]() ![]() ![]() She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer-books themselves the gay community that presented a new model of what else gender, family, and joy could mean and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West.īeyond being a memoir, Solnit's book is also a passionate argument: that women are not just impacted by personal experience, but by membership in a society where violence against women pervades. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher, and of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself. In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. ![]() ![]() An electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent ![]() ![]() ![]() Jake has finally found peace and a family with the man he loves. Read the reviews! Impact Velocity – Conclusion to the Physics of Falling Trilogy! Read a sample: Fighting Gravity, Chapter One And fighting his own execution would mean betraying the man he loves. Jacob may have won the emperor’s heart, but it’s no protection when he’s accused of treason. His growing scientific renown draws the attention of the emperor, a young man Jacob’s own age, and they find themselves drawn to each other in an unlikely, and ill-advised relationship. When Jacob Dawes is Selected for the Imperial Intellectual Complex as a child, he’s catapulted from the poverty-stricken slums of his birth into a world where his status as an unclass is something no one can forget, or forgive. ![]() ![]() Fighting Gravity – Book One, The Physics of Falling ![]() |