![]() Smith could hardly have guessed that he was present at the birth of a literary legend as powerful as that of Marlowe’s murder or Chatterton’s suicide. Her younger sister Anne had a manner “curiously expressive of a wish for protection and encouragement, a kind of constant appeal.” Emily, the middle sister, had remained at home in Yorkshire, where she kept house and fed the dogs. Smith as “too large for her body” she might just as well have been a missionary, or even a cook. ![]() Charlotte was undistinguished, with a head that struck Mr. Smith’s most famous author was a woman-and a provincial woman at that. ![]() ![]() “It was addressed to me.” So it was that the secret of the Brontë sisters was revealed. “From the post office,” Charlotte Brontë replied. It was addressed to Currer Bell, the somewhat notorious male novelist best known as the author of “Jane Eyre.” “Where did you get this from?” Smith asked her. In July, 1848, the publisher George Smith found waiting for him in his London office two “rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking.” The smaller and plainer of them, wearing glasses, came up to him with a letter in her hand. ![]() It is one of the most charming stories in English literary history. Art work by Patrick Branwell Brontë / Photograph from Getty ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() For example, Mama is the once who loses her temper over dealing with the cubs’ messy room and almost throws all of their toys away until Papa steps in and points out that what the kids need is a way to organize their room better so it’s easier to keep it neat. Most of the morals and lessons are delivered by Mama Bear, although once in a while, Mama also has a lesson to learn. The books follow a familiar pattern, beginning with a short poem that introduces the moral or theme of the story and ending with a restatement or demonstration of the moral after the characters go through the process of learning it. ![]() Some books tackle bad habits, like poor manners, having a messy room, neglecting school work, watching too much tv, or eating too much junk food. The focus of the stories is usually on a lesson or moral that the bear children learn, and topics of the book range from learning not to be scared of going to the doctor to learning how to making friends. The bears all dress and act like people, and the children go to school with other bear children and learn the same sort of life lessons that human children learn. The Berenstain Bears series is about a family of bears who live in a bear community called Bear Country. ![]() 7/6/2023 0 Comments Junie b jones book 14![]() Seriously, she thought there would be a "meatball" at the bottom of the Valentine's Day box? Even my daughter asked me why she would say that! My only answer was that the person who wrote that book must have thought kids are not very smart. This author really makes kids look stupid, which they are not. Daughter thinks it's hilarious, though, but mostly because she saw me fuming at every purposeful grammar error. Why have the grammar mistakes, children wouldn't notice, only adults would! Who was it written for? Educational Value fail as far as I'm concerned. This book is full of grammar that doesn't make sense! And there is lots of name-calling, and promotes the myth the extent of expectation for boys and girls in school is to tease and name-call, and of course it's because they have crushes. She thinks it is funny, but I purchase kids books for her to learn how to read. ![]() ![]() Now, in second grade, my daughter is reading it. Purchased this book through school book fair for first grader. ![]() ![]() ![]() They are usually troubled, lost and insecure, but as they slowly stroll through my worlds, they eventually find their happy ending. I won't say that the handsome men walking through my imagination have everything a reader might want. Somehow out of love for reading a writer was born. It was only natural that my fingers followed my thoughts and I came to a point where men only ogled men and women became side characters. My current reading habits take me daily into the world of men, where kink is preferable and angst the realistic side of life in my dose of fiction. But with the years also came that wish for something edgier. In time, vampires and shifters took the place of knights in shiny armors and I still searched for that happy ending. ![]() My father had all but forbade me to breathe, and now that he is dead, I am ushered into a whole new and unknown world where surely some horrors are. 'You do not know your duties' 'I don't know anything. When in reading I always reached for happy ending romances that helped me deal with the bad side of the world, while in my short stories characters died and their life usually reflected the reality that surrounded mine. It prompted me to look up and all the widened eyes I saw made me scared. First when I tried writing down the plots of the movies I found overwhelming and later in the form of a very dark blog that connected me with people I still consider very good friends. My fascination with books goes way back into the past when I didn't even know I could read something that wasn't given to me in school. I would say that I am first a reader and then a writer. ![]() ![]() When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Shirley Jackson's chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. The creeping unease of lives squandered and the bloody glee of lives lost is chillingly captured in these tales of wasted potential and casual cruelty by a master of the short story. In these stories an excellent host finds himself turned out of home by his own guests a woman spends her wedding day frantically searching for her husband-to-be and in Shirley Jackson's best-known story, a small farming village comes together for a terrible annual ritual. ![]() 'Shirley Jackson's stories are among the most terrifying ever written' Donna Tartt ![]() This is the definitive collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories, including 'The Lottery' - one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century, and an influence on writers such as Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. ![]() 7/6/2023 0 Comments The bad feminist book![]() ![]() There are writers who can show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don’t know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay. We should all be lucky enough to be such a bad feminist. With prodigious bravery and eviscerating humor, Roxane Gay takes on culture and politics in Bad Feminist-and gets it right, time and time again. Presidential Endowed Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University How can you help but love this author? Melissa Harris-Perry, Host MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” As a result, we complete this book both more powerful and more vulnerable, just like Gay herself. ![]() Gay gives us permission to take up the sword of feminism while laying down the shield of policed authenticity. ![]() This is the text for those of us who constructed our feminism from the pages of teen chick lit as much as from the musings of post-modern theorists. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Though it may not be as crime-orientated as we’d expect from this collaboration, Sean Phillips’ art remains impressive despite the lack of action, with his blend of facially expressive characters and murky surroundings. For a piece of crime fiction, there is rarely any tension towards the dangers the two lovers go up against. Even the book’s opening, with a small meeting in rehab where the addicts tell their perspectives of each other’s stories, never goes beyond them being a joke, let alone showcasing the actual tragedy out of their addictions. With this problematic protagonist at the center, you have this lone voice that doesn’t have much to say about the world around these flawed people. ![]() ![]() Despite her self-awareness, Ellie is rather unlikable in her motives and although it is explained at the conclusion, a lot of her backstory is told through a common problem in Brubaker’s work: the over-extensive internal monologue. For most of the story, Ellie is always about having romantic ideas about drug addicts, in particular the many musicians she name drops, leading to this shallow assumption that great art can come from substance abuse. Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!Īs funny as that title might be, it not only sums up what’s wrong with its central character, but the book in general. ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Pajtim statovci crossing![]() ![]() ![]() When Bujar’s father dies, his sister is kidnapped by sex traffickers and his mother is unhinged by grief, the boys run away from home and live on the streets of Tirana and coastal Durrës. The only consolation left is to smoke ceaselessly, or risk their lives by emigrating illegally to Greece or Italy. ![]() Europe’s rubbish dump, Europe’s backyard, Europe’s largest open prison”. Like My Cat Yugoslavia, on one level the novel follows a coming-of-age narrative, involving Bujar and his brilliant cross-dressing friend Agim, who are growing up at the end of Enver Hoxha’s 40-year dictatorship.Īs post-communist Albania slides into social collapse, with children being sold into slavery, organ-harvesting and prostitution (this is not dystopian fiction – it was reality), the two boys feel that “we lived in a place that time could not reach. The key setting is Albania (the Finnish title is Tiranan Sydan, “Heart of Tirana”), and the predicament of the ambiguous hero, Bujar, is rooted in the harsh fate of his homeland. The book expands and complicates Statovci’s central theme of youthful revolt – against conventional belonging, pre-determined identities, nationalities, families, origins, against life as a tyranny foretold. Crossing packs a still more devastating punch: it is the work of an accomplished novelist. ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Black athena volume 1![]() ![]() ![]() In Black Athena, an audacious three-volume series that strikes at the heart of today's most heated culture wars, Martin Bernal challenges Eurocentric attitudes by calling into question two of the longest-established explanations for the origins of classical civilization. ![]() Could Greek philosophy be rooted in Egyptian thought? Is it possible that the Pythagorean theory was conceived on the shores of the Nile and the Euphrates rather than in ancient Greece? Could it be that Western civilization was born on the so-called Dark Continent? For almost two centuries, Western scholars have given little credence to the possibility of such scenarios. ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Boot Camp by Todd Strasser![]() ![]() Additionally, students report on each others' infractions and abuse those who are making little progress. The staff is authorized to use any force necessary to alter the students' negative behaviors this can include Temporary Isolation (24 hours of lying face down on the floor of a concrete cell), being shackled outdoors overnight, and a blaring drone of propaganda during meals. While most camp attendees are there because of problems with drugs or violent behavior, Garrett's high-powered parents have enrolled him largely because he refuses to stop dating Sabrina-his former math teacher, eight years his senior. ![]() Upon his arrival at Lake Harmony, he is told that his parents have paid for his stay at the facility, “a highly structured boarding school specializing in intensive behavior modification,” until he learns to act like a respectful son. Following a middle-of-night abduction, 15-year-old Garrett Durrell finds himself being driven to an unknown location in upstate New York. ) delivers an indictment of boot camps used to control unruly teenagers. N his latest novel, Strasser ( Can't Get There from Here ![]() |