![]() ![]() I’ve come to admire the way romance writers excel at plot and story. (My friend Leigh Kramer wrote a great post that I now think of as Romance 101: read it here.) And, according to the conventions of the genre, it must have a happy ending. If you like love stories, good news! The first category in this year’s Summer Reading Guide is “Wholly Unexpected Love Stories.” But a romance goes a step further, in that to meet the conventions of the genre, it must have a central love story. But a few savvy readers with great taste convinced me that a good book is a good book, good writing is good writing, and romance writers are some of the best writers out there.Ī romance novel isn’t just a love story. And it’s true the genre is (sadly) much maligned. ![]() I didn’t used to read romance, largely because I (wrongly) assumed serious readers didn’t. Readers, it’s been so much fun helping you fill up your summer TBRs with our Summer Reading Guide. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() When Sir Happy is unjustly accused of attacking a well respected man and finds himself a fugitive, it is up to Mister Marmee and a menagerie of animal friends to come to his rescue and clear his name. When evidence of faerie mischief begins to intertwine among the deceased, Sir Happy strikes out on his own to dig up the truth. ![]() As the bodies pile up in what the local authorities are calling "unfortunate accidents," the detective duo begins to suspect there is much more to these mishaps than meets the eye. At the Hanover country estate, as Mister Marmee and Sir Happy Heart take a much needed respite from the rigors of London life, they discover the wicked never go on holiday. ![]() ![]() It’s a polemic about how and more pertinently why our market based economic systems fail and fail again. Here’s the thing though, despite Robinson’s just reputation as a (the?) leading climate change novelist, New York 2140 isn’t about climate change really. Robmatic: I’m not aware of any other novels that are set in a future flooded New York. What a stunningly original idea for a story. In the comments on Adam Roberts’ Guardian review we find the following exchange: Robinson’s characters live co-operatively mostly in one building, the former Met Life skyscraper, but exist in a variety of colliding worlds outside. ![]() ![]() Coastal cities are therefore largely underwater. Kim Stanley Robinson’s fascinating and provocative 18th novel New York 2140 is set several decades after two major climate events have raised sea levels hugely. ![]() ![]() Well, let’s just say that it may change the way you think about everything.įetch – if you have the guts! Friedrich Nietzsche Biographyįriedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, poet, composer, classical philologist, and all-around cultural critic. You need another reason to read “ Beyond Good and Evil”? There’s probably no philosopher who writes better – or more poetic – than him, no writer who has exerted more influence on the history of ideas.Īnd very few intellectuals have ever been more controversial or more misunderstood than him. (Although it’s hard to talk about Nietzsche and not mention them, right?) ![]() Who Should Read “Beyond Good and Evil”? And Why?įriedrich Nietzsche is a cultural icon for a reason – and we’re not talking about his iconic mustache. “There is no such thing as moral phenomena,” writes Friedrich Nietzsche, “but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.”Īnd in “ Beyond Good and Evil” he tries, in his poetic and aphoristic best, to put a question mark over the historical validity of the latter. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hisġ957 review of the Citroën DS famously begins, " I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great GothicĬathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not ![]() Thought hard about ordinary things - the first serious anatomist of pop culture.Īnd one of the things he thought hard about was automobiles. Part anthropologist, part philosopher, part journalist (the part that couldn't get a good table at a restaurant), Barthes Neil, The Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2004Įven though the great French critic Roland Barthes has been dead for nearly 25 years, I bet he The Mercedes E500 4Matic puts us in a philosophical mood. Larry David and other great philosophers weigh in on the semiotics of vehicle type. The record, the fellow liked the new Mercedes station wagon. full of references to semiotics and other really I read them all the time, and I came across a review today ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It's an utterly unique powerhouse of a book by the Newbery Medal-winning author of Kira-Kira. Told in part through the uncanny point of view of a German shepherd, Cracker! is an action-packed glimpse into the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of a dog and her handler. They need to be friends before they can be a team, and they have to be a team if they want to get home alive. He's going to have to prove himself to her before she's going to prove herself to him. When Cracker is paired with Rick, she isn't so sure about this new owner. Maybe he should have just stayed at home and worked in his dad's hardware store. But sometimes Rick can't help but wonder that maybe everyone else is right. There, he's going to whip the world and prove to his family and his sergeant - and everyone else who didn't think he was cut out for war - wrong. ![]() Sometimes Cracker remembers when she was younger, and her previous owner would feed her hot dogs and let her sleep in his bed. She's a Big Deal, and she likes it that way. The fate of entire platoons rests on her keen sense of smell. CRACKER IS ONE OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY'S MOST VALUABLE WEAPONS: a German shepherd trained to sniff out bombs, traps, and the enemy. ![]() ![]() Or try this link to use Google to search the subreddit. Find a Bookįind all-time favorites and popular recommendations on our subreddit resources page and check out our New Reader guide. ![]() No complaints about author identities or over-generalizing about author or reader gendersįor more detail on the rules, please click here.įor our guidelines on how to write a book request that follows the rules, please click here. Mark your spoilers and warn us about books without a HEA/HFN No discrimination, bigotry, or microaggressions towards marginalized groups Requests must be text posts and post titles must be specificīook requests must be specific and follow our guidelines ![]() A place to discuss M/M romance books, including book requests, reviews and recommendations, non-book media, and general discussions of the genre. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father-also a writer-in the iconic passage that gives the book its title: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” - The New York Times Book Review For a quarter century, more than a million readers-scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities-have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. ![]() Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" ( Los Angeles Times). The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. ![]() ![]() It seems like a typical publishing snafu-until the author is found dead after jumping off the tower of his stately country estate. Or is he? Much to Susan’s dismay, the final chapters are missing. ![]() He’s been threatening to bump off Pünd for years, and with the delivery of his latest manuscript, it seems he’s finally pulling the plug. But Susan’s not the only one bored-so is the author. The truth is, the series is what’s keeping tiny Cloverleaf Books, owned by Susan’s boss Charles Clover, afloat. ![]() His long-running series featuring Poirot-like sleuth Atticus Pünd is such a success that no matter how formulaic the series occasionally becomes-or how much she personally dislikes him-his long-suffering editor Susan Ryeland keeps her mouth shut. For those pining for the Golden Age of Mystery (British edition), with all it’s oh-so-proper country estates and sleepy English villages, plucky amateur sleuths, gentlemanly detectives, and fiendishly twisty puzzles, it’s always a treat to discover a new author who “writes them the way they used to.” And that’s what Alan Conway, the puzzle-loving fictional author at the center of this briskly paced book-within-a-book head-spinner does. ![]() ![]() He turns to the blackboard and dashes off a short sentence in ancient Greek. When she’d seen it in their first lesson, she’d thought of it as marking where tears had once flowed.īehind pale-green lenses, the man’s eyes are fixed on the woman’s tightly shut mouth. The woman gazes up at the scar that runs in a slender pale curve from the edge of his left eyelid to the edge of his mouth. ![]() The sleeves are a bit short, exposing his wrists. His dark-brown corduroy jacket has fawn-colored leather elbow patches. A faint smile of restrained emotion plays around his mouth. He is slight, with eyebrows like bold accents over his eyes and a deep groove at the base of his nose. The man standing by the blackboard looks to be in his mid- to late thirties. ![]() ‘My,’ ‘our.’ ” The three students read, their voices low and shy. He moves his gaze over the baby-faced university student who sits in the same row as the woman, the middle-aged man half hidden behind a pillar, and the young postgraduate student sitting by the window, slouching in his chair. ![]() “Let’s all read it together.” The man cannot wait for the woman any longer. Han Kang on how language misses its mark. ![]() |