![]() Nothing made me feel more special than hearing an audience cheer for a character I had written. Even better? I got to read it out loud to my classmates, who laughed at the funny parts and cheered when Superbox fought off the evil potato chip can that was his mortal enemy. One story, SUPERBOX, was about a crime-fighting shoe box. But writing stories was fun! And often people liked what I wrote.Īt Oakbrook Elementary, I wrote lots of poems and stories. I tried ballet dancing and singing and playing musical instruments, but I wasn’t very good at any of those things. Other times, though, I wanted to be different - to shine, to have people see me as special. ![]() ![]() It made me feel normal, when I worried I wasn’t. ![]() I was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in a suburban house that looked like all the others on my street. This was from the About Me section at Linda Urban's website. ![]()
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![]() Tragic, thought-provoking, and affecting! In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal, and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. As she follows the case of Meena-a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man-Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. ![]() Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. ![]() ![]() ![]() In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide. ![]() ![]() ![]() I particularly liked how Hennessy used Annabel's character to highlight all of her character's thoughts so as a reader you were learning at the same pace as Annabel as each part of the plot unfolded. As a consequence- this book has some really positive messages for young adults who are struggling with body confidence. ![]() It was also refreshing to read about such insecurities and problems in a younger person as most of the books I have read- the central character is a lot older. The chapters are short so if you are tired by the time your head hits the pillow like I am you can still happily read a few chapters each night. The thing I liked most about this book was its originality- books have been published before about diets and low self-esteem, just as books have about people in the afterlife helping those who are still living but never before have they been combined- so it was a breath of fresh air. Julia Jacobs is overweight and in need of help and Annabel is assigned to her to find the cause of her overeating, which isn't as easy as she thought it would be.Īnnabel needs to spend time getting to know Julia and peel back the layers- but as she does it makes her think more about her own choices before she died and those people she misses most. Annabel has died, she's not thrilled about it- but she is dead nevertheless. ![]() ![]() ![]() Written loosely in a third-person perspective, the novel is set in an alternative history of our world, shortly after Charles Darwin has published On the Origin of Species. ![]() The codename for it is Nation." Synopsis Context It could be set in this world 150 years ago while still more or less being a fantasy. If it needs to be Discworld it will be Discworld. Pratchett said in February 2007, "At the moment I'm just writing. He has said "I want to write this one so much I can taste it", and that he's been ready to do it for four years. Pratchett took his editors by surprise by writing it before the previously scheduled Tiffany Aching conclusion. The book received recognition as a Michael L. Nation is a low fantasy set in an alternative history of our world in the 1860s. It was the first non- Discworld Pratchett novel since Johnny and the Bomb (1996). Nation is a novel by Terry Pratchett, published in the UK on 11 September 2008 and in the US on 6 October 2009. ![]() ![]() One of the most gifted and exciting young writers in America, she shows us uncomfortable things, and makes us look at them forensically – until we find, suddenly, that we are really looking at ourselves. The flesh is weak the timber is crooked people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful, but beauty comes from strange sources, and the dark energy surging through these stories is oddly and powerfully invigorating. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet all yearning for connection and betterment, in very different ways, but each of them seems destined to be tripped up by their own baser impulses. There’s something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something almost dangerous while also being delightful – and often even weirdly hilarious. Themes in the collection include unhappiness/longing, the art of manipulation. The stories are united by a sense of longing, though this longing is often undefined. An electrifying, prizewinning short story collection from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. In her collection of short stories, Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh presents a parade of quirky characters who deal with life in a decidedly different way than normal. ![]() ![]() ![]() When Mary next met the tall, frail-looking, elegant Percy, on, she viewed him as a generous young idealist and as a budding genius. Therefore it was not long before Shelley was supporting Godwin financially. Percy Shelley shared Godwin's belief that the greatest justice is done when he who possesses money gives it to whomever has greatest need of it. In November 1812 at the age of 15, Mary met for the first time Godwin's new, young, and wealthy disciple, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his wife, Harriet Westbrook Shelley. This version became so popular that it was republished in 1830 in an edition illustrated by Robert Cruikshank. Mary's favourite pastime as a child was to "write stories," and in 1808 her thirty-nine-quatrain reworking of Charles Dibdin's five-stanza song Mounseer Nongtongpaw was published by the Godwin Juvenile Library. ![]() ![]() Mary Shelley's attachment to her father was to become intense and long lasting. Without a mother, Godwin immediately became the chief object of Mary’s affections. Eleven days after Mary’s birth, her mother died of puerperal fever. Mary’s maternal grandmother Elizabeth Dixon was born in Main Street Ballyshannon, Co. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. ![]() ![]() " The Dud Avocado follows a charming, if blundering, 21-year-old Missouri native, Sally Jay Gorce, who spends two postcollege years sipping Pernod on "la plus belle avenue du monde," the Champs-Élysées staging William Saroyan and Tennessee Williams with an American theater troupe, and fumbling terribly at love." - The New York Sun "Before Bridget Jones, deeply sweet and recklessly intimate Sally Jay Gorce trolled for love (Parisian style) in novelist (and sometime wife of theater critic Kenneth Tynan) Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado, a madcap read from 1958 that's finally back in print in the United States." - O Magazine ![]() ![]() "Already singled out in O the Oprah Magazine and named an 'mover and shaker, ' this edition will.introduce a new readership to the unforgettable Sally Jay Gorce, described by one reviewer as a cross between Carrie Bradshaw and Holden Caulfield." - Los Angeles Times "Basically, if you were to set Henry James' Portrait of a Lady near the Sorbonne, untangle the sentences and add more slapstick, sex and champagne cocktails, you're getting close." - Rosecrans Baldwin, NPR's "All Things Considered" ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Great Circle lays out the story of Marian and Jamie Graves, orphaned at an early age, then deposited with their eccentric, artist uncle in Missoula, Montana in the early 1900s. Great Circle is a masterpiece and I cannot recommend it strongly enough. To say that this was the best book I have read in a long time, is an understatement. The characters had become my friends and I didn’t want to have to leave them forever. Despite the slowness with which I read it, however, I found myself consciously slowing down as I came to the end of the book. Quiet times for reading were few and far between. But while I was reading it, I had five weeks of the delightful company of my L&L co-editor and her two small children. And I read it at a pace slower than any book I can remember reading in my recent past. ![]() There is no question that Great Circle requires a commitment-at 589 pages. ![]() ![]() ![]() The ATAR Notes Text Guides cover everything you need to know for your set texts.
![]() The ersatz missile in his hand for a moment, considering it, then whipped Paperweight smacked into it, accompanied by a yelp of " Shit! He barely had time to throw up his hand before a hurtling He won't get a face or a personality until Double Down and he won't get an actual name until High Fidelity.Īlmost eleven in the morning by the time Simon slammed open the door to At this point he's just a nebulous force, a voice on the phone, and the keys to the FBI's vast pocketbook. who am I kidding? They totally stole it from someone. Who on earth was stupid enough to give Simon's team a glass paperweight?. ![]() Here's where I slow down enough to let you get a vague idea of who everyone is and what their personalities are like, and also to introduce the constant juvenile banter and violence that characterizes their interactions. Compromise! A whole bunch of setup, character development, and flirting. ![]() |