![]() ![]() These two authors were telling the stories in completely different ways and taking different aspects of them. One was The Heroes by Charles Kingsley and the other was A Wonder Book/Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Scarlet Letter fame. I read two particular books, which I haven’t chosen because I think for modern readers they’re a bit too bowdlerised and preachy. How did you, personally, get interested in them? ![]() They’re a guide to life as well as being stories. So, for instance, Ixion, who commits the first murder, ends up in a fiery pit, tied to a wheel, forever revolving, because that was not a good thing to do. The stories also, perhaps, help explain how to behave and the consequences of certain actions - a bit like the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not…” or something terrible will happen. They have a lot of quirks and foibles and they do all the things that humans do: Zeus cheats and lies and he is the most appalling serial adulterer. ![]() ![]() They’re in Olympus but they’re recognizable to us. What’s so fascinating about the Greek myths in particular is that the gods are terribly human. It was easy to make a myth about it, and to say that it was down to the gods. What is a Greek myth? What is it about Greek myths that has attracted us to them down the ages?Ī Greek myth is basically a way of explaining the world, or it was a way of explaining the world to a primitive people who didn’t have any explanation of the sun or the moon or the disasters that happened - like earthquakes and floods and fire.
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![]() ![]() *I received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review* I can't wait to jump in to the next book! The story was addicting and I highly recommend it to Laura Thalassa's Four Horsemen fans. It was a short read and I flew through it pretty fast. It's so spooky and horrifying! The first book focuses on Coralie and her group planning to fight against the dark fae. Besides the dark fae's wrath, there's eternal darkness and a razored tentacle critters wandering in the dark sky. The world is even more brutal than the one in Dark Fae series. Unlike vale, Coralie comes from a privileged wealthy family and after the pandemic, she's on her own struggling to survive. I really loved Coralie! She's fierce, stubborn, and brave. ![]() The story follows Coralie who's been surviving with her own group and when the dark Fae finally finds them, she isn't ready to give up without a fight. The story takes place in Europe and our dark fae are on their usual job destroying every human village they pass through. I really loved Quinn's The Dark Fae series and it's good to be back in this brutal apocalyptical world with a new fierce heroine and a new villainous hero. ![]() Shadow Fae is the first book/novella in the Dark Fae Extinction series. ![]() ![]() ![]() Axis Of Evil invasions and Freemason-operated super-bunkers do not exactly go well with detailed, nominally realistic operations. I can’t blame a genuine veteran for writing what he knows, but come on. The first problem is that the action in this book is too realistic for its own good. ![]() Then they fight back with the aid of a Freemason counter-conspiracy. After the EVIL LIBERAL GUN GRABBERS have had their way with the US, the enemy alliance swoops in with computer attacks and unconventional warfare that naturally goes off without a hitch, save for the intervention of the special forces vets who’ve planned and built the lairs and stockpiled the equipment needed (against the advice of their nagging wives, of course). The plot is the same kind of basic invasion novel plot that was old when Teddy Roosevelt was young. The bad news about this book is that Lewis is a Special Forces veteran who brings his biases to it. The good news about this book is that Lewis is a Special Forces veteran who brings his knowledge to it. Robert Patrick Lewis’ The Pact is the tale of Special Forces operators representing the only viable defense against a Russian-Chinese-Iranian invasion of the United States. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman, hiding plenty of her own secrets.Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, where she discovers the body of her friend, Bella Furness. Anne, a botanist, sees the survey as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal.Rachael, the team leader, is still reeling after a double betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. The Crow Trap is the first book in Ann Cleeves' internationally bestselling Vera Stanhope series, now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn as Vera.Three very different women come together at isolated Baikie's Cottage on the North Pennines, to complete an environmental survey. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Not only is he a vampire-he knows what she did, and he's determined to make her pay for the crime. To settle her father's debts, she finds herself under the guardianship of the unearthly handsome Lord, Alaric Devereaux. Now, her father's debts will cost Clara her life. Since then, her father's squandering has cast them into financial ruin, forcing Clara to steal, cheat, and kill to survive. Vampires tore her life apart thirteen years ago. And any human claimed will live a half-life as a food source to one of those demon-cursed monsters. Every year the vampire court visits human cities for the Claiming. ![]() Dracula and Beauty and the Beast, meet Pride and Prejudice in THE VAMPIRE DEBT, a new adult, gothic fantasy paranormal, slow burn, romance. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Vampire in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a mortal snack. ![]() ![]() ![]() The attention to detail is eye-opening the proportions are just-right for small hands the fun is guaranteed. That’s because each volume features 12 iconic scenes, handcrafted in felt and pithily summarized in just a single word. And so will Star Wars fans of any age! The series launches with the original trilogy, and every word counts in these small but perfectly formed yarns. Publisher’s Synopsis: Jedi apprentices and little princesses will delight in this (heart)felt retelling of the Star Wars saga. “May the Fourth Be with You!” Star Wars Epic Yarns: A New Hope If you don’t find a book that you like from this list, you must be a member of the Rebel Alliance, and a traitor! Grab your favorite little droid and treat them to a galactic read-the force is strong in these books. ![]() The Children’s Book Review strikes back with the return of the Star Wars book list. ![]() ![]() ![]() Rabindranath's account seems to reflect the tensions present in the Brahmo Samaj during that time. Since the name of Keshab Babu ( Keshab Chandra Sen) is mentioned, it would appear that it is set in the time before that movement split in the 1860's. It is also quite clear from the historical references that the events described are taking place in a Bengal of a few decades earlier, when the Brahmo Samaj was a greater force in Bengali society than it was by the turn of the 20th century. Indeed there is enough earnestness in this work to make me wonder if it was not written by a much younger man than the 50-year-old Tagore was in 1910. Perhaps more Dickensian social overtones would have been welcome, and where Rabindranath uses irony, it seems insufficient. ![]() The overall flavor seems to have been touched by the feminine social and romantic mood of Jane Austen or the Brontes, or even Louisa May Alcott. translation, done in 1924 by W.W.Pearson, is in the literary English of the period and keeps the spirit of the original quite well. I started reading it 20 years ago in Bengali but never finished it. Written in 1910, this novel is sometimes said to be Rabindranath's masterpiece. Somehow or another I found myself reading Gora, which I found in the Gurukula library. ![]() ![]() Tense: ‘Swann’s Way’ uses the past tense to describe events and the present tense to provide philosophical insights.Genre: Modernism, Classic, Historical and Literary Fiction.In French, ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’. Book Series Title: ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (or ‘In Remembrance of Things Past’). ![]() Book title: ‘ Swann’s Way’ (Du côté de chez).Proust’s naturally pessimistic perspective on love, which he frequently treats as an illusion rather than recognition in his writing, enables him to relate the romance’s plot with the minute attention and upside-down dramatic scale of a clinician monitoring symptoms, even using words like “disease” and “convalesce.” In ‘Swann’s Way’ a family friend of Marcel’s is depicted as being hopelessly in love with Odette de Crécy, a coquette. An unnamed narrator who is assumed to be the author tells the story of ‘Swann’s Way’. This is volume one of a seven-volume French memoir that has been translated into English and made available in several editions. ‘In Search of Lost Time’ explores the passage of time and the absence of meaning in the world as it follows the narrator’s memories of childhood and experiences into adulthood in high-society France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ![]() ![]() ![]() Playing Dead: A Journey through the World of Death Fraud A riveting, unbelievable family epic told in exquisite, visceral prose-you won’t believe it’s not fiction.” “Equal parts appalling and riveting, The Woo-Woo proves that a sense of humour can get you through the most dire circumstances. –Sean Madigan Hoen, author of Songs Only You Know: A Memoir The Woo-Woo is both heart-wrenching and batshit insane, and is also beautifully rendered and fearless in its whip-smart humour.” “You’ll find yourself wincing and snickering and possibly weeping long after reading the last eloquent sentence. –Sarah Perry, author of After the Eclipse: ![]() ![]() After you read this book, you may be, too-in the best way.” Her black humour combines with compassion: she represents the realities of mental illness in her family while still telling us the story from their perspective: that of people haunted by the woo-woo. “That Lindsay Wong is even alive to write this book is amazing. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() To that end, she enlists Rooster Cogburn, former bank robber-turned-deputy marshal, a “one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland,” first encountering him outside the courthouse where Cogburn has been testifying to his latest murders in the name of the law. “People do not give it credence,” Mattie Ross recounts in the marvelous opening paragraphs of Charles Portis’s True Grit, “that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” It’s a voice that could define almost every Portis protagonist-a self-taught, partly untamed individual of weather-roughened accomplishments striving to articulate the story of their life while battering along the roads that carry them (briefly) away from home and (inevitably) back home again.Īfter the “coward” Tom Chaney senselessly murders Mattie’s generous father and absconds with his wallet and two gold pieces, she determines to bring him back to face trial, and recover both gold pieces while she’s at it. ![]() |