The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister6/23/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() But the past eventually caught up with her in a smoky theater in Chicago, and Ada faced a tough decision. Ada soon learned the subtleties of her art and, adding more ambitious acts to her repertoire, took over the show. Unfortunately, his actions proved questionable, so she left him, at least for a time. During a journey that culminated with a job in a touring magic show, Ada made her way to New York City with a young man who won her heart. Fearing for her safety, she gathered the courage to run away. ![]() ![]() Launching into an autobiographical dissertation, Ada protests her innocence and describes how she was once tortured by her stepfather’s sadistic nephew, which led to her remarkable discovery of her body’s ability to heal itself quickly. And Ada obliges and obliges and obliges-throughout the course of one very long, dull night. Eager for information that might bolster his chances of continuing his career, Holt handcuffs his prisoner to a chair at the station and encourages her to talk. A man identified as the husband of The Amazing Arden, aka Ada Bates, has been hacked up like a ham at Christmas, and Ada, the logical suspect, has just landed in Holt’s custody. Janesville, Iowa, police officer Virgil Holt worries that an injury could mean the end of his law enforcement career, but a stroke of luck offers hope. A female illusionist is questioned about a murder in Macallister’s debut, set at the turn of the 20th century. ![]()
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Woke Racism by John McWhorter6/23/2023 ![]() ![]() McWhorter takes a rather unconventional approach to anti-racism activism and discourse by treating it as a new religion he refers to as “Woke Racism.” As Vox ’s “A History of Wokeness” documents, the concept of being “woke,” or more accurately “staying woke,” can be traced to the early 20 th century as a constant reminder to African Americans to be aware of the current social and political climate.Īs “stay woke” gave way to “being conscious” or “consciousness-raising” during the 1960s, the metaphor maintained its meaning as a directive that things aren’t always what they seem. McWhorter will surely find a receptive audience as many find the confusing and sometimes contradictory rules for anti-racism (and other issues related to social justice) a dizzying array of dos and don’ts. ![]() People all over the political spectrum have criticized the policing of speech and virtue-signaling. McWhorter is far from alone in his dismay at what seem to be the new rules of the road regarding public discourse. ![]() ![]() * In this relatively slim volume, as the title makes quite clear, McWhorter takes aim at wokeness and its adjacent cancel culture to bemoan what he perceives as social justice activism run amok. As American society remains embroiled in an endless shouting match over cancel culture and canceling cancel culture, Columbia professor of linguistics and American Studies John McWhorter has entered the debate with his latest offering, Woke Racism: How A New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. ![]() Nine lives new orleans6/23/2023 ![]() that “Who’d have thought that after watching all that video we’d come upon a fresh visual way to experience Hurricane Katrina? Josh Neufeld’s drawings - and his tender, dead-honest dialogue - brought it all back in a way that made me feel it in my gut."Īnyway, it's my turn to repay the compliment. ![]() Fortunately, many have agreed, and in fact no less than Baum himself recently wrote about A.D. I really felt that comics was a groundbreaking way to explore the Katrina story in a way that the magazine stories, photographs, news footage, and even documentaries could not. In my career as a cartoonist I've come to treasure the many things that comics can do to bring a fullness to storytelling, that unique combination of words and pictures which bring a tale to life. Sound familiar? Yeah, on the surface, the premise is similar to A.D.'s, but Nine Lives is much more than a Katrina book. Published this past March (right around Mardi Gras), in alternating, rigidly chronological chunks, the book follows a diverse group of New Orleanians and their disparate paths through Hurricane Katrina. I recently finished reading Dan Baum's remarkable book, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans. ![]() Ready player one series6/22/2023 ![]() ![]() By now, the book was a New York Times bestseller and producer Donald De Line set up the adaptation at Warner Bros., where Cline had already submitted a few drafts of his own. Penn realized that his nostalgic 2014 documentary “ Atari: Game Over” - in which Cline was a subject - was perfect preparation for adapting this cinematic valentine to ’80s pop culture. Two years later, the writer of MCU movies like “X-Men: The Last Stand” and “The Avengers” reconsidered. It appealed on a visceral level, but as a job, ‘This isn’t going to happen.'” ![]() This guy sucked every interest I have in my brain and put it into a book. “It was so enormous, the scope was so huge,” Penn said in a phone interview. When screenwriter Zak Penn read galleys in 2011 for Ernest Cline’s “ Ready Player One,” he had a thought: “This will never get made.” The sprawling novel was wall to wall with ’80s references, everything from movies “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” “Batman” and “Back to the Future” to video games Halo, Minecraft, Tomb Raider, and Dungeons and Dragons. ![]() Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald6/22/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Discusses the French conquest up to the Geneva Conference of 1954, which the U.S. Contrasts the differences between the North & the South, & shows how Ho was more successful in the North rather than the South & why. view of China right up to Ho's time, was to reject Chinese political domination but adopt Chinese political culture. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Writer points out that the traditional Viet. In his failure Nhu had withdrawn so far into himself that in the end his face was a mask that no longer opened onto the real world. The village was modelled on the Vietnamese family, & the village served as a model for the state. This concept is carried over to the institution of the village, which figures so important in traditional Vietnamese society. For a Vietnamese, equal justice was secondary to social harmony. Writer discusses how the notion of Communism repels American intellectuals, but for Vietnam society, the notion is not so radical. Traces the development of the society from the 10th-century Chinese conquest through the organizing efforts of Ho Chi Minh in the north, & the abdication of French figurehead Bao Dai, in the south. Writer suggests that the reason for American failure in Vietnam was due to a lack of understanding of the country & its people. ![]() ANNALS OF WAR about Vietnam, Vietnamese history & Vietnamese culture. Frances FitzGerald is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize, among others. ![]() Trinity by leon uris6/22/2023 ![]() ![]() He serves in an ANZAC outfit commanded, among other officers, by scions of an Ulster peer named Roger Hubble, who's loyal to the Crown and a nasty piece of work to boot. Eventually, underage Rory (who's been having an affair the older married Georgia Norman, a noble and sensual nurse) marches off to WW I under an assumed name. Despite an inability to express any paternal feelings for Rory, father Liam and uncle Conor (an itinerant Republican who figured prominently in Trinity) convey to the young man their love of country. Although he enjoys great success as a New Zealand sheep-rancher, the squire misses his homeland. At the heart of the narrative is Rory Larkin, a wild colonial lad whose father (Liam) fled the Emerald Isle's grinding poverty during the mid-1890's. A sequel to Trinity, Uris's 1976 bestseller, that's as great and chaotic a muddle as Ireland's lengthy struggle for independence - which again serves as backdrop for what's essentially a multifamily chronicle. ![]() Harry dresden peace talks6/22/2023 ![]() ![]() Please include the word "Spoiler(s)" and the book title that the post will have spoilers about in your post's title. ![]() ![]() We ask that you are mindful of fellow readers who may not be at the same point you are in the Files. If you see a post or comment that violates the rules please click on the report button, and send us a message with a link to the the post or comment, and a description of why you believe the post violates the rules. Please take a moment to review our RULES. Reddit's Home for the Dresden Files book series by Jim Butcher.įeel free to discuss the books, television series, comic books, RPG, and other works by Jim Butcher (such as Codex Alera and Cinder Spires, et al.). Welcome To r/dresdenfiles! Please read the below if you're a first-time visitor. The newest chapters in The Dresden Files from best-selling author Jim Butcher are Peace Talks(out now!) and Battle Ground (September 29, 2020). ![]() Deep lane by mark doty6/22/2023 ![]() You can see immediately why such an experience might lead one to blog less frequently. She described the desolate view from her motel room when she went to give her talk the next morning, the professor who had invited her rose to give the introduction and quoted her post. ![]() The imagination doesn't really like to be accountable A friend tells the story of going to give a talk at a college in a town she found dismal. If I write a dismissive description of, say, the boardwalk at Atlantic City in a poem or essay, there's a lag-time before anyone will read it by the time it appears in print, I'll have lived with that passage awhile, and if I keep it then I'm prepared to stand behind it, and don't feel the vulernability I might should it have appeared on screens in the homes of interested people the day after I wrote it. This is often wonderful, sometimes just interesting, and occasionally quite uncomfortable. ![]() Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis6/21/2023 ![]() ![]() She has studied whales in Prince William Sound, the Kenai Fjords, and Alaska's Aleutian Islands for the past twenty-four years. Both an elegy for one orca family and a celebration of the entire species, Into Great Silence is a moving portrait of the interconnectedness of humans with animals and place-and of the responsibility we have to protect them. Eva Saulitis was the author of the forthcoming book, 'Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas,' (Beacon Press, 2012). With the intellectual rigor of a scientist and the heart of a poet, Saulitis gives voice to these vital yet vanishing survivors and the place they are so loyal to. ![]() Science entwines with matters of the human heart as a whale researcher chronicles the lives of an endangered family of orcasĮver since Eva Saulitis began her whale research in Alaska in the 1980s, she has been drawn deeply into the lives of a single extended family of endangered orcas struggling to survive in Prince William Sound. Over the course of a decades-long career spent observing and studying these whales, and eventually coming to know them as individuals, she has, sadly, witnessed the devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989-after which not a single calf has been born to the group. ![]() Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle6/21/2023 ![]() ![]() I got too close to the kind of evangelical religiosity depicted in this fictional book about a radically successful gay conversion camp. Chuck Tingle, the life-giving energy behind 'LOVE IS REAL', knew about the secret bullshit going on behind evangelical closed doors and was exposing it. It was validating and soul-edifying to read this book knowing that the author behind it all, Dr. This book is extremely important as an in-depth, fictionalized (but realistic) intimate look at the dangers of heterosexual-white-American-evangelical-monotheistic purity culture and their dogmatic beliefs. I started "deconstructing" my faith and now I no longer identify as a Christian but I'm still on a faith-based journey to personalize where I stand. ![]() ![]() In 2020 while churches were closed, I realized I never wanted to go back. In marriage, I started attending an evangelical church with my husband and eventually identified as a Christian even though I still held to my liberal views on everything and felt like an outcast in some Christian circles for my "radical beliefs". I was raised agnostic by parents who leaned, atheist. What You Need to Know: It will be interesting to see how readers with different religious backgrounds engage with this book. Writing Style: Character-Driven, Brisk Pace, Subgenre/Themes: Coming-of-Age, Cults, Human Monsters, Psychological, Small Town Horror, Religious Stuff, ![]() |