![]() ![]() In Heavy, the scene occurs in 1987, not 1982 in North Jackson, Mississippi, not white suburban Maryland. “Train” rape was part of the culture, according to another victim who came forward to recall what happened on both sides of the closed doors at unsupervised parties in the Reagan-era summers. It was new to plenty of Americans, too, when Brett Kavanaugh was credibly accused of having committed sexual assault as a teenager, among similar accusations that suggest a hideous pattern: that when he and his friends victimized girls, they did so customarily as a group. The term is new to the worried kid who asks his questions. ![]() During, the two others at the small party wonder about what is happening in the bedroom. After, someone will seek cover there, and when the coast is clear, the same someone will run outside and somehow make it home and tell no one. Across from the closed door is a bathroom. A fifteen-year-old girl, wearing her one-piece bathing suit under her clothes, is tricked into a bedroom with boys who are seventeen and bigger than her. ![]() I’m writing this on the first day of October 2018, and last week millions of us watched the hours of retraumatizing and indignant testimony concerning an episode nearly identical to Heavy’s opening scenario. The tragedy of the formative opening episode in Kiese Laymon’s memoir, Heavy, is an American one, never more identifiably so. ![]()
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![]() ![]() I think my first scary house story might have been a Goosebumps novel. Everyone knows at least one story like this, where a house is haunted and practically has a mind of its own. Nevertheless, David Nicol (who I thank for sending me a copy of his story to read and review) does a fantastic job making me just a little more paranoid and jumpy today, even though it's the middle of the day and I know I'm safe. I just had that expectation in the back of my mind that I think threw me off more than anything. It did after all earn 4 out of 5 stars in my book for giving me the creeps even though I read it in the middle of the day, on a treadmill no less. Not, of course, that I dislike short stories or was anything short of impressed by Hannibal House. ![]() I was expecting a longer, full-length type of novel. My first comment regarding this book was that I was rather surprised to see it was only 40 pages. If you're interested in reading this story for yourself, grab a copy here for a great price! ![]() ![]() ![]() The book is written in fragments, searing images of her childhood, her affair at fifteen with a Chinese businessman, and the devastating violence of her family life. It does not run smoothly but emerges, moment by moment, crystalline and glittering. It is in flux, as it is in life in all of us, as we remember. Reading Duras’ memories of the boat to Saigon, her fifteen-and-a-half year-old self standing on the deck, about to meet the man who would utterly alter the fabric of her life and experience, memory is not something to be merely recounted as this happened, then this, and then this. The memory is held up in the very moment of its reclamation and loss, all at once. Even the future is already present and decided. On the very first page of her most famous and autobiographical novel, The Lover, Marguerite Duras seems to capture in one line the most powerful aspect of the book: “Very early in my life, it was too late.” In this line, recollection, loss, the time that causes it, and the past and present, all exist simultaneously. ![]() ![]() As a communist, he started blaming his society for his unhappiness: “it was not much I myself that was to blame for my unhappiness, but the society in which I lived” (133). Yet he acknowledges: “It was not the right conversion, but it was a conversion. ![]() In the course of time, however, he turned to communism, “a step to moral conversion” (131). Merton describes himself, in his early years, as “an extremely unpleasant sort of a person-vain, self-centered, dissolute, weak, irresolute, undisciplined, sensual, obscene and proud” (132). An important theme that runs through the book is his quest for happiness. In this piece the author chronicles his spiritual journey from the world to the monastery. Merton completed this book in 1946 at the age of thirty-one, and published it in 1948. ![]() ![]() He is particularly well-known for his autobiographical work, The Seven Storey Mountain, an account of his life from 1915 to 1944. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948, 429 pp., hardcover.īorn in France in 1915, grew up in the U.S., and died in Thailand in 1968, Thomas Merton, is regarded as one of the most celebrated Catholic writers of the twentieth century. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Throughout these pages, there are icons that direct readers to a special YF&B domain on Suze's website that offers more specialized information, forms, and interactive tools that further customize the information in the book. ![]() Concisely, pragmatically, and without a whiff of condescension, Suze Orman tells her young, fabulous & broke readers precisely what actions to take and why. The Money Book was written to address the specific financial reality that faces young people today and offers a set of real, not impossible solutions to the problems at hand and the problems ahead. This generation has it tough, without a doubt, but they're also painfully aware of the urgent need to take matters into their own hands. ![]() They live off their credit cards, may or may not have health insurance, and come up so far short at the end of the month that the idea of saving money is a joke. The goals of their parents' generation - buy a house, support a family, send kids to college, retire in style - seem absurdly, depressingly out of reach. They're called "Generation Debt" and "Generation Broke" by the media - people in their twenties and thirties who graduate college with a mountain of student loan debt and are stuck with one of the weakest job markets in recent history. The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke is financial expert Suze Orman's answer to a generation's cry for help. Be sure to catch Suze Orman's latest PBS special based on The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke, which will air the weekend of March 4th on stations across the country. ![]() ![]() ![]() So y’all know A Whispered Darkness also includes a little twist of YA horror…and the easiest way I can personally connect with scary stuff is…well, horror movies. But is Claire strong enough to fight off the evil spirits, or will they claim her and her mom before it’s all over? They want a taste of freedom, and she’s their key to getting it. They aren’t content to moan and scream inside Claire’s house, or even control her mom. ![]() ![]() As she chooses one boy over the other, something dangerous is unleashed, and the spirits make their move. In an attempt to save her mother and their new home, Claire enlists the help of two boys, each of whom is interested in Claire for different reasons. Just as things start to pick up in Claire’s love life, her mother becomes possessed. But as the nights grow longer and the shadows take on substance, Claire wonders if the strange sounds and occurrences might be more than the house showing its age. The old house creaks and whistles, and smells well - like it’s been abandoned for years. Author: Vanessa Barger When Claire Mallory’s father leaves, her mom moves them to a new town and into a dilapidated Victorian house. ![]() ![]() ![]() Can the kids and Yeti help Nanny X halt a major crime? Alison and Jake alternate narration duties in Rosenberg’s tale of neighborhood espionage in suburban Washington, D.C. Alison’s skepticism deepens, but as the gadgets come out of the diaper bag (baby-bib GPS tracker, sippy-cup listening device) and the investigation continues, she’s slowly won over. One of Alison’s friends is accused, and Nanny X swings into action, revealing that she’s a member of the Nanny Action Patrol. When she takes the kids to attend a rally to save their neighborhood park from becoming a factory, the mayor is beaned by what appears to be a rock. Both are a bit grossed out by what’s in their lunch sacks: peanut butter–and-anchovy sandwiches. Nanny X arrives clad in a motorcycle jacket and straw hat fifth-grader Alison is not impressed, but Jake is intrigued. ![]() When Jake and Alison’s mom returns to work as a lawyer, they, their toddler sister, Eliza, and their enthusiastic dog, Yeti, get a new nanny. Lots of nannies are special this one is a special agent. ![]() ![]() He had always loved to write, but it was only then that he realized he had a talent for it. When young Brian refused to falsely say that he had copied the story, he was caned as "a liar". Brian's teacher could not, and would not believe that a ten year old could write so well. ![]() John's foreshadowed his future career as an author given an assignment to write a story about animals, he wrote a short story about a bird who cleaned a crocodile's teeth. ![]() At the age of ten, his very first day at St. John's School, an inner city school featuring a playground on its roof. ![]() Along with forty percent of the population of Liverpool, his ancestral roots are in Ireland, County Cork to be exact.īrian grew up in the area around the Liverpool docks, where he attended St. Brian Jacques (pronounced 'jakes') was born in Liverpool, England on June 15th, 1939. ![]() ![]() " It is Mary who you will miss like a sister. ![]() when the final page is turned." The Australian gives savour to a highly enjoyable and unusual yarn" Sydney Morning Herald Swinging from Mary's hopes and disappointments, both domestic and romantic, to the challenges that beset their tiny whaling operation, Rush Oh! is a celebration of an extraordinary episode in Australian history, when a family of whalers formed a fond, unique allegiance with a pod of frisky Killer whales - and in particular, a Killer whale named Tom. But hers is not the only romance to blossom amidst the blubber. It's a season marked not only by the sparsity of whales and the vagaries of weather, but also by the arrival of John Beck, an itinerant whale man with a murky past, on whom Mary promptly develops an all-consuming crush. When Mary Davidson, the eldest daughter of a whaling family in Eden, New South Wales, sets out to chronicle the particularly difficult season of 1908, the story she tells is poignant and hilarious, filled with drama and misadventure. "Hugely funny and peopled with a cast of characters I came to treasure like my own friends, Rush Oh! reminded me why I love reading." Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites The stories could not, arguably, be more different, but whilst reading both I could relax, knowing that I was in the capable hands of a great author. ![]() The captivating debut novel from the winner of the Camera D'Or I so enjoyed Australian author Shirley Barrett's The Bus on Thursday that I immediately borrowed her debut novel, Rush Oh, on my next visit to the library. ![]() ![]() Standouts include a riveting story, “The Forbidden,” which became the brilliant horror film Candyman several evocative scenes from Barker’s underrated visionary novel Sacrament (1996) and memorable passages from two masterpieces: Cabal (1988) and The Damnation Game (1987). “Doorways,” for example, presents entries into other worlds, in a florid (and lurid) passage from the play Paradise Street and a chilling snippet from the novel The Great and Secret Show (1990). ![]() ![]() “Private Legends,” Barker’s detailed introduction, offers interesting revelations about pivotal moments in his youth that influenced his development as writer, painter, and filmmaker it also firmly distances the author from the realistic tradition and sturdily defends what he rather grandly calls “the fantastique.” The book is arranged in 13 sections representing favorite themes. ![]() A mega-anthology of (mostly) excerpts from novels and plays by the popular and critically acclaimed horror writer whose increasingly ambitious work keeps pushing against genre boundaries. ![]() |