![]() ![]() She is without question one of our most important living writers. In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as Kudos reaches a profound and beautiful climax. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. ![]() New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2018 - Amazon Editors' Top 100 of 2018 Rachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos, a novel of unsettling power. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() When Handspring came over from South Africa, I took the puppeteers down to Devon and we spent some time on a farm, so they could get a sense of what horses are like. It was worked by three men and I remember feeling so moved by this creature, how it somehow breathed life. Tom knew I wasn't convinced, so he invited me to London to see a video of Handspring Puppets in action – a giraffe. I thought to myself: there is no way that puppets can enact the seriousness of the first world war. But then they told me the bad news: they wanted to use puppets. ![]() He rang me up and told me he wanted to make War Horse into a play. But then his mother heard me on Desert Island Discs, wittering on about this book I had written. He didn't find anything he liked for quite some time. Tom was determined to do a show with Handspring Puppets, but because of its talent for lifesize animal puppets he needed something with an animal hero. ![]() ![]() ![]() "I was hoping you weren't going to ask that," said the cat. Even my husband loved this collection of stories. Highly recommended - Cat-loving kids (and old folks like me who love to read children's books) will adore Slinky Malinki and Scarface Claw because they're so very, very true to the reality of the kind of mischief and silliness that cats get up to. The fifth story is about Scarface Claw and what a tough cat he is, except when he sees his own reflection - the only thing he's afraid of! ![]() Slinky Malinki's Cat Tales contains a variety of stories about Slinky Malinki stealing things, causing all sorts of chaos when Slinky Malinki figures out how to open doors, playing outside with other cats at night, and waking his family (then going for a nap after they all rise). I have to wonder how many other non-Australian cat lovers rushed online to see if they could find a Slinky Malinki book or two to read, as I did. It's a huge cat group with over 150,000 members from around the world. Slinky Malinki and Scarface Claw were mentioned in my cat group by an Australian cat lover who thought cat lovers from other countries might be interested in the cat books Australians grew up with. ![]() ![]() In The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, Du Bois argued against the conciliatory position taken by Booker T. from Harvard University, Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. The first African American to receive a Ph.D. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk is an eloquent collection of fourteen essays that describe the life, the ambitions, the struggles, and the passions of African Americans at the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. ![]() ![]() One of the most influential books ever published in America, W. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In the poem "Aubade with Burning City," I took Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," the lyrics, and wove it through a scene about the collapse of Saigon. In a sense, all Vietnamese farmers were poets, because while they were working, they sang, and the songs helped the rhythm of the harvesting and the seeding of the fields.īut, also, the daily news of life, and ultimately, when the war came, where the bombs were falling, information started to come into the rhyming couplets in the poems and the songs. One needs to have the body - in a way, the body is a book, that one needs the body to remember the poem, sing the poems and pass them along. In Vietnam, there's much dependency on the body. ![]() They were not documented.Īnd it's interesting how poems are carried from one culture to another. OCEAN VUONG, Author, "Night Sky With Exit Wounds": Sometimes, people say, well, how does it feel to be the first poet? And I say, I'm not the first poet. His new book, "Night Sky With Exit Wounds," explores the legacy of the Vietnam War and the power of oral history. Tonight, Ocean Vuong, recently chosen for the prestigious Whiting Award. Finally, the latest in our occasional series on poets and what inspires them. ![]() ![]() In the end, Yertle the Turtle King is only king of the mud. So he commands the other turtles to pile themselves up into a tower so that he can see more, and thus be king of more: “I’m king of a house! I”m king of a cow! I’m king of a tree!”Īs his hunger for power grows, a turtle at the bottom of the pile comes up with a plan to topple the mighty king’s tower. It’s the story of a turtle who is king of his pond, of all he can see, but yearns for more. Seuss, but it seems more poignant than most of his stories. My seven-year-old has even started asking to read it. ![]() ![]() Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle, which seems appropriate in this political climate. ![]() My three-year-old son has recently become interested in Dr. ![]() ![]() Atomic Habits by James Clear (re-read this for pandemic new year inspiration).That and a new daily note habit are part of my ongoing fight against the forgetting curve. A fraction of those highlights typically then find their way into my digital brain archive and some eventually become posts on this very site. It’s a practice I encourage, especially if you can jot down a few notes to yourself about your thoughts afterward (I read most of my nonfiction on my Kindle because of the very handy highlight feature, which helps). ![]() ![]() ![]() It turns out that this was the eighth year that I’ve kept track of at least the book-reading fraction of my entertainment consumption. ![]() ![]() □□□ “Don’t absorb criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice.” ![]() In addition, Haig tells us how we can continue our lives despite the bad experiences we have had in the past, how to appreciate imperfections as a natural part of our existence and how to accept our mental health and just allow ourselves to live. Matt Haig talks about his mental health and the way he has struggled with it his whole life while giving you different recommendations for feel-good movies, recipes, and music. I think it is going to be on my nightstand for some time for I would love to go back and read his words again and again. I found myself reading most of the lines multiple times to appreciate them fully. Though it can be a quick read, many of his words are so deep that you’d want to pause and savour it slowly. □□□ “Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.” You would still find it comforting and relaxing. ![]() As the author mentions, you can read page by page from cover to cover, or flick to any random page and dive straight in. It is quite difficult to rate and review this book because there is no one way to read it. ![]() And honestly, I didn’t know I needed this book until I picked it up. ![]() The Comfort Book is a collection of thoughts, quotes, recipes, playlists, one-liners, memories, wisdom, and so much more. At our lowest we find the solid ground of our foundation. The bit that can’t be broken down further. □□□ “The best thing about rock bottom is the rock part. ![]() ![]() Sometimes, however, I felt a scene was not necessary for the plot. Lots of action kept me on my toes, devouring every word. The Warrior Heir is definitely worthy of attention. Jack is one of the last Warriors, and his life is about to change forever. A tournament has been called, an ancient tradition in which both houses select a Warrior who will fight to the death against the other player. The White and Red Roses are the two feuding houses that control most of the Weir. Jack is Weirlind, a member of a secret society of magical folks. He later learns a startling truth about himself. One day, Jack decides to skip the medications in the morning, and that afternoon at his soccer tryouts, he almost kills another player. Jack isn’t quite sure what the medicine is for, but his mother reminds him to take them anyways. Jack had had heart surgery when he was a child, and he has to take medications every day. ![]() Jack Swift, age 16 years old, lived a fairly unremarkable life in the small town of Trinity, Ohio. ![]() ![]() This was followed by other fiction that dramatized the Quit India movement in 1942, the clash between East and West and the tragedy that resulted from it, or the problems facing ordinary middle-class Indians-making a living, finding inner peace, coping with modern technology and its effects on the poor. Nectar in a Sieve was her first published work, and its depiction of rural India and the suffering of farmers made it popular in the West. Kamala Markandaya belonged to that pioneering group of Indian women writers who made their mark not just through their subject matter, but also through their fluid, polished literary style. Other novels include Some Inner Fury (1955), A Silence of Desire (1960), Possession (1963), A Handful of Rice (1966), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977), and Pleasure City (1982/1983). Known for writing about culture clash between Indian urban and rural societies, Markandaya's first published novel, Nectar in a Sieve, was a bestseller and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. ![]() ![]() ![]() After India declared its independence, Markandaya moved to Britain, though she still labeled herself an Indian expatriate long afterward. A native of Mysore, India, Markandaya was a graduate of Madras University, and afterward published several short stories in Indian newspapers. Pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist. ![]() |