![]() ![]() If you want to see how multiple perspectives can be done properly and interestingly, you should pick this up. If you liked Fangirl and want something similarly adorable, you need to pick this up. Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. ![]() Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common-they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. ![]()
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![]() ![]() He happens to be out of town when Evelyn borrows his Lexus without permission. Her employer is a dangerous and frightening person named Frank Leroy. Evelyn is at the door, and she is frantic with fear. ![]() On a snowy day, Richard is driving home, when his car rear ends another car, driven by Evelyn. Richard is a college professor, who has recruited Lucia from Chile to teach a class in his department. The story revolves around three people: Richard Bowmaster, Lucia Maraz, and Evelyn Ortega. This novel might disturb some readers and break the hearts of many, many more. It is the story of South American refugees streaming north for a better life in the United States. Her latest novel, In the Midst of Winter, spins a tale so relevant today. Her most noted work is The House of Spirits, my favorite with The Japanese Lover a close second. ![]() Isabelle Allende is a Chilean writer whose novels often slip over into magic realism. I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies. Chilling story of the horror resulting from the migration of refugees from South America. ![]() ![]() ![]() I didn’t find it all that easy to transition to the way they speak and the lack of quotation marks. The manner of speaking in BRR was definitely an adjustment on my part. ![]() No earth shattering lessons will be learned or bestowed upon me, but I might find myself enjoying a different type of read with some fun romance involved. Am I happy I decided to read it? I can’t be sure yet, because I feel like something good can come from reading the series even though I’m not sure what yet. While it didn’t live up to my newfound expectations based on stellar reviews, I feel as though it might be leading to a much bigger and better plot or storyline-possibly with more action, peril, and romance. This last week or so, my GR friend suggested we read this, so I decided to give it a go despite my earlier passing of the book. I had passed over the title a long time ago and didn’t think I would be missing out on much. I think this is yet another case of overhyped-ness (yes, I’m considering that a word). Ultimately, I found this book to be a disappointment. ![]() ![]() ![]() The success of Voltaire’s satire relies on a dry combination of both witty humor and heartbreaking tragedy to deliver his critique of the human condition. Candide and his traveling companions also engage in frequent philosophical dialogues, debating a range of Enlightenment-era topics. The text features a series of nested stories, wherein the main storyline pauses while various characters recount their own stories. Candide’s plot is fast moving and picaresque, plays with cliches, and is told by a narrator who does not exaggerate but presents events in a straightforward manner. Candide is regarded as his magnum opus and typically considered part of the Western canon. Voltaire was a prolific author, using polemic prose to rhetorically engage with contemporary philosophy and social critique. ![]() ![]() One would never yoke them to draw plow through field. Usually, however, it is the case that poetry lists are show horses. Today, editors at large houses will sometimes take on books of poetry as auxiliary or personal projects. Only those who could read could also afford to purchase books, a very cozy market if one is willing to tolerate the overbearing moral attention paid to the printed word. Conversely, literacy was confined to a drastically more narrow band of society than it is in the first world today. In that age, a book was a luxury item rather than a disposable airline read or stage of a multifarious marketing plan it cost considerably more, largely due to the binding, and its purchase could be compared roughly to that of a microwave oven or decent futon in our economy. It is true that some of the English Romantic poets (certainly not the lone genius William Blake) made very real fortunes from their books, fortunes that allowed them to enjoy lives of supreme decadence by the standards of most living at the time. ![]() ![]() Whether this was the result or cause of bad behavior was not (and is still not) entirely plain. ![]() Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins.Īmong the many impediments to which contemporary poets much admit, Dana Gioia wrote in his vital essay “Can Poetry Matter?” of notoriously poor sales figures. ![]() ![]() Wolf is ably assisted by his legman, the noir mystery-lite Archie Goodwin, who also narrates the books. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, it centers on the mysteries solved by the vastly overweight genius detective Nero Wolfe, who rarely if ever leaves his Manhattan brownstone. An inveterate re-reader, I can ignore my overflowing TBR pile for days, weeks, even months at a time as I slip back into the comfort of ground already tramped and worlds already explored. ![]() And I tend toward series, because it feels natural to hop from the end of one to the beginning of another. ![]() ![]() As a writer myself, when I’m immersed in my own writing projects, I gravitate toward books that it easy on my cerebrum. So the fact that Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series has been part of my “comfort reading” for many years now is in itself a mystery.īut let me first define what I mean by “comfort reading.” It’s a rare day that I’m not reading something, generally a novel, and I find it hard to fall asleep without a book in my hand. But I do have genres I avoid, including horror and mystery. ![]() I tell my writing students at The Writers Circle that I’m an eclectic reader, and it’s true. ![]() ![]() ![]() At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. ![]() It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() English lends itself to this but context usually makes it clear. There were a couple of shocking mispronunciations that irritated me more than somewhat and made nonsense of what was being said. What didn’t you like about Jane McDowell’s performance? I enjoy this book very much so the time wasn't wasted but the narrator let the story down. Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not? ![]() PLEASE restore or re-commission new readings of the Sayers books, and don't let this woman loose on any books again. The book delighted me, but the reading made me scream with frustration and irritation. Why on earth was she recruited as a reader?ĭid you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry? ![]() I will avoid any book she is reading - she could spoil any book! She pauses irritatingly after every few words, at inappropriate places, she stresses the wrong words to make sense of a sentence, and she frequently mispronounces words - even homophones, such as 'bow' are pronounced incorrectly (revealing that she has little understanding of what she is reading. How did the narrator detract from the book? If you could sum up Gaudy Night in three words, what would they be?Ī Continuation of the ongoing story of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, as well as a love-letter to Oxford and a detective story. Awful performance nearly spoils good book ![]() ![]() ![]() This listing is for the following three books and associated bonus items, which can be seen from the photos: 1) DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE: This is an exclusive UK first edition hardcover published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2020 AND SIGNED BY LAINI TAYLOR. A heavy set, extra postage will be required. The series has received an array of nominations and awards, and a planned movie adaptation of 'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' is under development. The trilogy follows Karou, a seventeen year old art student living in Prague and concerns an ancient war between Seraphim and Chimaera in a parallel universe. ![]() ![]() Laini Taylor's acclaimed fantasy trilogy. All have some slight edge wear to top and bottom of jackets and spines, corners very slightly rubbed, some slight yellowing to page blocks, none are price clipped (all £14.99), no inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall vg+ copies 'Daughter' (2011, 420pp), 'Starlight' (2012, 517pp), 'Monsters' (2014, 646pp). 'Daughter' and 'Starlight' are first editions, first impressions with '1' on copyright page, 'Monsters' is a first edition, third impression with '3' on copyright page. Three separate vols of 'The Daughter of Smoke and Bone' Trilogy. ![]() ![]() We are trapped in the flow of the story the way she's trapped in the middle of the desert. You trapped me easily, drew me toward you like I was already in the net. And I had wings fluttering away inside me all right. Paging through the paragraphs of text and finding little to no white space kind of gives us an idea of how Gemma must feel looking out from the tree in the Separates: "horizon, horizon, Separates, horizon, horizon … nowhere to run" (30.6). You trapped me there like that, kept me stuck to that spot of Bangkok airport as though I were something small drawn to the light. As a result, the presentation of Gemma's ordeal mimics the relentlessness of the actual events-we wait and wait and wait for a chapter break so we can grab a Coke or go pee, but the story just goes on and on. Just like these great authors before her, Lucy Christopher takes the novel-in-letters format and puts it to work-with a twist.įor one thing, Stolen is not made up of a series of letters but is rather one gigantic letter broken up into 113 sections. Hinton's The Outsiders, and Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower are just a few examples of modern classics that employ this style.īut enough with the history lesson. ![]() ![]() While the form was frequently used in the 18th and 19th centuries in works like Samuel Richardson's Clarissaand Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, letter-based novels as a genre kept on chugging right into the 20th century and remain a popular format today. An epistolary novel is a big, fancy name for a work of fiction told in letters. ![]() |