![]() ![]() ![]() Some readers may be slightly confused as the timeline suggests that The Maidens may have taken place before the events of The Silent Patient, but, again, it isn’t too distracting. While there is a brief return of some characters from The Silent Patient, the references are light and not essential to the storyline, so if you haven’t read The Silent Patient don’t fret. ![]() Readers who love the recent themes from Greek mythology that are taking the book world by storm (think Circe and A Thousand Ships, among others), will love this thriller rife with Greek mythology references. Her main suspect is Greek tragedy professor, Edward Fosca. The novel follows Mariana Andros, a grieving widow and a group therapist, who becomes obsessed with a series of murders that occur at Cambridge. Another thriller, The Maidens, takes place in England, primarily on the Cambridge campus. *If you are new here, WELCOME! For The Maidens, I provide your book club with a brief summary, food ideas, and discussion questions in that order! The Maidens Book Club Questions and Food IdeasĪfter his wildly popular debut, The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides has finally released his sophomore novel, The Maidens. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Dave Grohl The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music (Image: Dey Street Books) Honestly this is something I wish had occurred to me before we bought my kid this drum set that takes up half of his bedroom. He was greatly influenced by heavy metal and the DIY Punk scene coming out of DC in the early 80s, and taught himself to drum by playing his bed pillows. Divided into five, loosely organized sections, stories about Adult Dave are intertwined with formative episodes from his youth. ![]() The book careens through various scenes in Grohl’s life at the same breakneck speed he roams the stage at Foo Fighters shows. ![]() When you read Grohl’s memoir The Storyteller it is immediately evident that a life without music was never in the cards for this manic pixie drummer dude. But make more music? How could he? HOW COULD HE? Taken up teaching, or meditation, or something. But after Nirvana helped flip the 90’s music scene on its head and then Kurt Cobain died in that horribly tragic way that broke so many hearts, it felt like something of a betrayal for Dave Grohl to go and do something that was so….popular? Good? Not-Nirvana? How could he possibly think musical lightening would strike twice? He should have just puttered off into the mists of the Northwest like Krist Novoselic. On the contrary, they consistently churn out some good rock n’ roll. Not because they’re a bad band, or make bad music. I’ve been successfully ignoring the Foo Fighters for about 26 years now. Dave Grohl on the back cover of The Storyteller (Image: Dey Street Books) ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() On the other hand, the plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. ![]() Here her gifts for social satire and character analysis are shown to good advantage and her writing is powerful and evocative. The best parts of the book occur after the second murder, when Tartt describes the effect of the death on a small community, the behavior of the victim's family and the conspirators' emotional disintegration. Finally they reveal to Richard that they accidentally killed a man during a bacchanalian frenzy when one of their number seems ready to spill the secret, the group-now including Richard-must kill him, too. Despite their demanding curriculum (they quote Greek classics to each other at every opportunity) the friends spend most of their time drinking and taking pills. Almost too easily, he is accepted into a clique of five socially sophisticated students who study Classics with an idiosyncratic, morally fraudulent professor. Narrator Richard Papen comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the ``hermetic, overheated atmosphere'' of Vermont's Hampden College. ![]() Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution. Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge (592 pages) rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. ![]() ![]() In a recent interview, she said: ““I’m lucky to have such an empty piece of land to describe because in Polish literature there are no legends or fairy-tales about it.” Nowa Ruda, a Polish mining town of medieval origin, with this history is recreated in Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night. Olga Tokarczuk lives in rural Lower Silesia, a region of Poland that was first integrated into the country after the Second World War. An ordinary place for one person might be a sacred place for another. Only afterwards does my mind add the spectral presence of people, names and detail. What comes first when I think of the place where I spent my childhood is the uniform, relentless glare of a tropical sun, surrounded by an endless tangle of every shade of green, then comes the encompassing smell of the humid air and the gurgling jungle sounds. ![]() ![]() It is through the gift of our senses that we conjure up a place. ![]() No place carries a stronger spirit of place in our memory than the places where we spent our childhood years. ![]() ![]() ![]() Let’s look closer to see which ones we should invest time in controlling. This first view is the gravel between and adjacent to an actively used path at a driveway gate: ![]() This discussion will focus on principles of disturbance and where to focus attention using a few examples. This week we have many possible candidates that should be controlled before going to seed. Perhaps we could change our focus to understanding their utility – thinking of them as “wild urban plants” as defined by Peter Del Tredici in his book, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, Cornell University, 2010. Weeds build soil organic matter to make it easier for perennials to follow in subsequent seasons. Often annual, they produce impressive amounts of seed that float off to find bare soil, sites free from competing plants. ![]() From an ecological perspective, they are colonizers of disturbed soil. What is a weed? Emerson said they are plants whose utility has yet to be found. ![]() ![]() ![]() Earlier this year, he completed a memoir about his wartime service, his son said. Six decades after it was first published, Eight Men Out remains the most popular account of the 1919 White Sox throwing the World Series. ![]() ![]() A novel, "Final Judgment," is due to be published later this year, his son said.Īsinof was himself a minor-league ballplayer, briefly playing in the Philadelphia Phillies organization before joining the Army and serving in World War II. The Manhattan native wrote more than a dozen books, included 1968's "Seven Days to Sunday," for which he spent a year traveling and living with the New York Giants football team. The book was made into a 1988 movie by the same name starring John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and Christopher Lloyd. ![]() He spent more than three years exhaustively researching the book, his son said. The Ancramdale resident died at a hospital in Hudson of complications from pneumonia, said his son, Martin Asinof.Īsinof was best known for "Eight Men Out," his 1963 retelling of the "Black Sox" scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. Eliot Asinof, an author who invited readers behind the scenes of the sports world with books including "Eight Men Out," died Tuesday at the age of 88. By Eliot Asinof, Stephen Jay Gould, ISBN: 9780805065374, Paperback. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() PART 1: The Sixteenth to Eighteenth CenturiesĪ. ![]() The Fashion of Romantic Friendship in the Eighteenth Century. Little frightens a conventional women more than to be thought a lesbian that fear, as Professor Faderman brilliantly shows, is used by the male-dominated society to keep women’s power to live freely and to love freely exclusively in male hands. The Revival of Same-Sex Love: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. A classic of its kind, this fascinating cultural history draws on. Surpassing the Love of Men is an important book, above all because it makes us understand what is involved when women choose to love women. Buy a cheap copy of Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic. ![]() Faderman takes a look at the traditional view of lesbianism, drawing on love letters, trial records, pornography and the ‘experts’ proclamations, and shows how shifting theories of female sexuality makes some things acceptable and others taboo. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A scene from a 1920 production of Oliver Twist. Dickens was also widely celebrated for his idealized depictions of domestic bliss and as a moralistic upholder of virtuous behavior. ![]() In his writing, Dickens was the champion of such physically abused women as the sympathetic prostitute Nancy in Oliver Twist (whom the smitten Oliver of the musical so sweetly serenades). Perhaps that is why, when I reopened it this time, I was not only surprised anew by Dickens’ demonization of Fagin “the Jew,” I also could not ignore the depth of a second disconnect between Dickens the author and Dickens the man: his treatment of women. I must also admit that I chose to mostly avoid being reminded of Fagin by only infrequently taking my copy of Oliver Twist off the shelf. In 1865, after being admonished for his anti-Jewish portrait of Fagin, Dickens created a very positive - and rather forgettable - Jewish character in his final complete novel, Our Mutual Friend.Īnd so, over the years, I came to regard Fagin as a stain but not an obstacle to my vast enjoyment and admiration of Dickens’ great literary genius. ![]() Still, I must also give Dickens credit for his late-in-life attempt to offset his demonic portrait of Fagin, even if it took almost 30 years ( Oliver Twist was published in 1838 as his second novel). ![]() ![]() ![]() Meg’s attitude is just as sarcastic as ever, and she is constantly fighting with her quick temper. Meg's adventures are not meant to be outwardly hilarious as she seeks to clear her friends and relatives alternately accused of the crime, but they often end up quite humorous none the less. She steps up her efforts when she is convinced the deputy has arrested the wrong man. Meg does her own snooping both in front of and behind the scenes. ![]() Seems half the battlefield might have a grudge against this corpse, so the local sheriff appoints a deputy to take charge of the investigation. ![]() Those who are not are fined by the “Anachronism Police.” Unfortunately, murder appears to be timeless, and a dead body turns up behind the curtains in Meg’s booth. Waterson’s first in running the fair, and she has demanded that all who attend be dressed in full authentic period costumes, including as many tourists and customers as possible. If only she could convince Michael Waterston’s mother of her worth as a mate for her son. Her extensive family helps by buying and talking about her fine craftsmanship. Meg Langslow is a blacksmith by trade, selling her wares at craft fairs and on commission. Yet the battle is only the climax of a vintage Donna Andrews mystery. It takes place over a weekend of reenacting the Battle of Yorktown in full dress garb and period authenticity. ![]() The third Meg Langslow escapade is truly an adventure. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is, he says, “the only city that could have given birth to Lovecraft, not just physically but in terms of his mythology.” Hobbs cited the number of intact Lovecraft reference points around the city, as well as the creaky, socially stratified New England setting of many of Lovecraft’s tales. in biology at the University of Rhode Island, sees it as a celebration of Providence as much as a celebration of the weird. ![]() Convention director Niels Hobbs, a research scientist working toward a Ph.D. It was the last day of NecronomiCon Providence, billed as “The International Conference and Festival of Weird Fiction, Art, and Academia.” Bumper stickers encouraged everyone to “Keep Providence Eldritch.” It was almost time for the Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast to begin.įounded in 2013, NecronomiCon is a biannual event that brings about two thousand visitors-including many from Europe, Central and South America, and beyond-to Providence for four days, in an otherwise sleepy stretch of the calendar, when many college students are still home for the summer. Two cloaked and hooded men swept past, bearing fruit cups. I scuttled down Steeple Street, entered the Art Deco Biltmore Hotel, and took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. At seven-thirty on a recent August morning, Providence was shrouded in mist. ![]() |