The great alone audio book5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Narrated in Nicole Lewis' confident (and confidential) tone, Such a Fun Age is one of those best audiobooks that feels like listening to a friend confess the latest details of their own life. Thus begins a plot that could only happen in the present day, as Emira struggles to navigate racial issues and potential social media scandals, all while trying to hold together a job, a social life, and some semblance of sanity. One night, in an effort to keep Alix’s daughter out of the house during a family emergency, Emira takes young Briar to the grocery store, where they’re confronted by a security guard wanting to know what this Black woman is doing with a white child. Alix - white, married, successful in a private blogging enterprise - hires Emira to be a regular babysitter of her two kids. This thoroughly modern novel revolves around Emira, a 25-year-old Black woman desperately trying to make ends meet, and Alix, her peer by age but not by social status. ![]()
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Living wicca5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() These rules usually detail the duties of the high priestess and high priest. TRADITIONAL RULES OF WICCA APPLICABLE TO THE COVEN COVEN ORGANIZATION AND HIERARCHY: The second part deals with the laws that offer interesting possibilities for application for the solitary Wicca. The first details the laws that relate specifically to coven practices, which are of lesser importance to individual practitioners of Wicca. The following is a two-part analysis of the traditional laws of Wicca. All of these Wiccan precepts are based on this essential concept: Hurt no one.Įxamining these laws and reading some examples (presented at the end of this chapter) should provide all the material needed to adapt or write a set of rules for use in your tradition. There are several other variations, and some covens create a set of rules for their members to follow. ![]() ![]() (See Doreen Valiente’s book, “Witchcraft For Tomorrow,” a fascinating study of the likely origins of these precepts.) Published in various forms, the most famous of these systems comes from what we now call Gardnerian Wicca. ![]() Wicca has not one, but several such sets of rules. These precepts often reflect the true nature of the religion, which can hardly be defined by the behavior of most of its representatives. Almost all religious organizations establish a set of rules or a code of conduct for their adherents. ![]() A zavarelli reaper5/13/2023 ![]() ![]() Seriously bad things happen in these novels. Crow and Reaper (book 2) both have serious need for these. ![]() (If are not familiar with that title, you can click here to read my thoughts or here to read teresaelectro‘s thoughts.)Īt this point, I’d like to link to author Katee Robert’s clip about the need for caution/trigger warnings in romance. Well, except for Ice Planet Barbarians, and we all know how I felt about that. It’s really kind of fascinating and I haven’t had a bad suggestion yet. They often provide interesting insights about their recommendations or, if it’s a post from an author, explanations about why they went the direction they did. I now follow a combination of romance authors, book sellers, and readers with similar interests. So, please forgive me, but I’m going to start this review with a bit of a detour: If y’all aren’t on TikTok and following those hashtags, I really recommend your at least considering giving it a try. Zavarelli after seeing the first Book, Crow, recommended on SmutTok. ![]() Like so many of my reading choices lately, I began the Boston Underworld series by A. ![]() A Birthday for Frances by Russell Hoban5/13/2023 ![]() During his military service he married Lillian Aberman, who later became a writer and illustrator herself. After briefly attending Temple University, he enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served in the Philippines and Italy as a radio operator during World War II, earning a bronze star. His father died when Russell was 11, and Russell was thereafter raised by his mother, Jeanette Dimmerman. ![]() Hoban, was the advertising manager of the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward and the director of The Drama Guild of the Labor Institute of the Workmen's Circle of Philadelphia. Hoban was born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, to Jewish immigrants from Ostrog (now in Ukraine). He lived in London from 1969 until his death. His works span many genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magical realism, poetry, and children's books. ![]() Russell Conwell Hoban (Febru– December 13, 2011) was an American expatriate writer. ![]() ![]() Gundula Ahl (1975–2011) 3 children (Jake, Ben, Wieland).Lillian Hoban (1944–1975, divorced) 4 children ( Phoebe, Abrom, Esmé, Julia). ![]() Clive barker weaveworld review5/13/2023 ![]() For several months the maximum length has been around 400 pages. Weaveworld is the longest novel I’ve read for a while now. I have specific tastes in fantasy fiction I enjoy. ![]() I think it’s one of those genres it’s easy to write badly. Along with Science Fiction, it’s a genre I’ve never really been able to get into. I need to read a lot more of him to see if ever comes close to Weaveworld again. I think I might have underestimated Barker’s talent as a writer. Weaveworld is one of the best novels I’ve read for a long time. It is a triumph of imagination and storytelling, an adventure, a nightmare and a promise… Weaveworld is a book of visions and horrors, a story of quest, titanic-struggles, of love and of hope. It begins with a carpet in which a world of rapture and enchantment is hiding a world which comes to life, alerting dark forces and beginning a desperate battle to preserve the last vestiges of magic which Humankind still has access to. ![]() Weaveworld is an epic adventure of the imagination. ![]() First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() The Weirdness That is Haruki Murakamiįirst Person Singular Stories is a collection of first-person short stories that tell various stories of the narrators’ encounter with something bizarre that helped give them a new perspective on life, save for “The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection”, which is more of an autobiographical retrospective on Murakami’s life. One writer who is able to successfully maintain that balance, however, is the world-renowned novelist Haruki Murakami, and his most recent venture into the genre, First Person Singular: Stories, does as great of a job of keeping to that as his other works. The end result is a story that’s not fully realistic and not fully fantastical, something in-between all of that, and as a result, it ends up not only being confusing for readers to define but a challenge for writers to properly write while properly toeing the line between fantasy and reality. Magical realism is a rather tricky genre for people to get invested in, mostly because of how hard it is for the average person to define.Įssentially, magical realism is the telling of a realistic story with fantastical elements, but the fantastical elements are downplayed, sometimes not even real, and are used primarily to enhance the realistic aspects of the story. ![]() The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Sage's life changes when she meets and becomes friends with ninety-five year old Josef Weber, a former German teacher and baseball coach beloved by the community. ![]() Her relationship with a married undertaker (Adam) is a source of friction with her boss/best friend, Mary, but Sage does not feel she deserves any better. ![]() She welcomes the opportunity to work alone overnight because it helps her hide from the rest of the world, a habit she has formed since a car accident three years previously left her face scarred and her mother dead. Twenty-five year old Sage Singer works at Our Daily Bread bakery in her small New Hampshire hometown. Both the confession and the request turn Sage's world upside down, but eventually give her new insights into herself, her family, and the nature and purpose of forgiveness. When she forms an unlikely friendship with 95-year-old Josef Weber, she expects that all she will learn is to play chess with him, so it is a shock when he reveals that he was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp, and later that he wants her to help him die. In Jodi Picoult's novel The Storyteller, baker Sage Singer works alone on the night shift at a small bakery and avoids people during the day, in both situations concealing from other people both a facial scar and the guilt she feels about the accident that caused it. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Recognize mental and emotional health problems.In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in system steeped in racial bias. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today's world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care. Black people die at disproportionately high rates due to chronic illness, suffer from poverty, under-education, and the effects of racism. We can't deny it any longer: there is a Black mental health crisis in our world today. ![]() An unapologetic exploration of the Black mental health crisis-and a comprehensive road map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system. ![]() Quan the heart principle5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() And looking up in the night sky we can see a river of stars. The rings in an exposed log look like a whirlpool. ![]() Spiders build their webs, caterpillars their cocoons in water-like spirals. Even solid bones have lines of flow on their exterior and in their spongy interior. Thus we sense something similar in clouds, smoke, streams, the wind-blown waves of sand on the beach, the pattern of branches against the sky, the shape of summer grasses, the markings on rocks, the movement of animals. An earlier version of this essay was published in T’ai Chi: The International Magazine of T’ai Chi Ch’uan, September 1997Īll natural things curl, swirl, twist, and flow in patterns like flowing water. ![]() Four lost cities book5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() And when they try to imagine possible futures, they often draw on the ancient past.Īnnalee: And so, for example, if I'm writing about the world in 150 years, I like to look back 150 years and find out, well, how different things really were. ![]() One of their novels is called The Future of Another Timeline, a sci fi crime story that involves time travel, and they host two podcasts, one that's called Deep Futures, in which Annalee invites us to, quote, escape into the distant future to learn what's coming.įelix: So clearly, Annalee thinks a lot about the future, and the human species. ![]() Justine: Annalee Newitz is someone who talks and writes a lot about the future. I'm Justine Paradis here with producer Felix Poon.įelix: Hey! So today's episode is the second Outside-in Book Club featuring science journalist Annalee Newitz. Justine: This is outside in a show about the natural world and how we use it. Justine: Heads up, there are a couple swears in this episode. ![]() |