![]() “Whether or not the world is falling apart from a political perspective,” she writes, “scientifically, we’re living in a golden age. ![]() ![]() But after accepting the fact that our universe cannot “persist unchanged, forever,” thinking through the science of end times is actually a thrill, an opportunity “to dig deep into the question of where it’s all going, what that all means, and what we can learn about the universe we live in by asking these questions.” Mack uses humor, metaphor, and personal experience to offset her often technical descriptions, creating a delightfully unsettling narrative that explains big ideas in modern physics and cosmology through the lens of end times. A theoretical astrophysicist surveys five possible scenarios for the end of the universe, backed by the latest research in physics and cosmology.Īcknowledging the end of the universe is a grim proposition. ![]()
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![]() ![]() But now, spinning in the strong arms of the debonair and devastatingly handsome Benedict Bridgerton, she feels like royalty. Sophie Beckett never dreamed she’d be able to sneak into Lady Bridgerton’s famed masquerade ball-or that “Prince Charming” would be waiting there for her! Though the daughter of an earl, Sophie has been relegated to the role of servant by her disdainful stepmother. ![]() But I was looking forward to his story all the same because I love a Cinderella romance too! Summary ![]() Before I was even done with the second book though, I had downloaded all the rest of the Bridgerton novels and vowed to read them in rapid sucession.Īnd read them I did! This book is Benedict’s story and while the show depicted him as sexually ambiguous at this point, in the book he is very much a heterosexual man, though probably the least memorable of the Bridgerton clan. Anthony Bridgerton will probably reign for a while as as favorite romantic hero of mine. Well I swooned for the series and quickly nabbed a copy of The Viscount Who Loved me (Anthony’s story) which was incredible. I didn’t love The Duke and I but I liked it enough to consider reading the other books in the series, but I wanted to wait and see how the show was before I went back to reading the Bridgerton books. After binge watching the Netflix series, Bridgerton, I renewed my promise to read all the Bridgerton books immediately! I read The Duke and I when word of the show started circulating. ![]() ![]() In an interview with Sam Manzella of Them, Armfield said that the novel was in part inspired by a wish to explore the "crossover with queer women’s fiction and the sea," adding that the ocean is often used to symbolise both "something forbidden" and something that "can be many things at once." In an interview with Sam Franzini of Our Culture Mag, she stated that the novel was in part "about an anticipation of grief and losing someone," adding that part of the horror was from "the clanging bureaucracy of not being able to get an answer." Reception ![]() The novel tells the story of Miri, a grant writer, whose wife Leah has returned from a deep-sea research expedition that was marked by catastrophic failure and who is undergoing a physical metamorphosis as a result.Īida Edemariam noted themes of "transformation and return" in the novel, calling it "a kind of Orpheus story." Kirkus Reviews described one of the main questions of the novel as "What happens to a marriage when one spouse is no longer the person you married?" ![]() Our Wives Under the Sea is a 2022 British horror novel by Julia Armfield. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for 20 years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?ĭedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. ![]() ![]() In the novel, Grace’s discovery profoundly alters who she is and, more importantly, who she might become. This woman was never able to reconcile her true history. She was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family and only discovered she was actually the child of another man in adulthood, when he left his Paris apartment to her in his will. Grace’s story is based on a real woman’s story. How do they appear originally, and how do they change? What do you consider to be the significance of this in the story and how does it alter your opinion of them?Ĥ. Each of the main characters is not quite what they seem to be upon first meeting. ![]() Do you have a secret history in perfume? What three perfumes best describe different turning points in your life? Discuss the significance that perfume plays in your own life to alter mood or trigger a memory.Ģ. The three perfumes Andre Valmont creates for Eva mark significant turning points in her life and changes in her identity. The book is described as a secret history told in scent. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” uses many symbolic meanings. All that can be done is to use one’s own experiences. In life, there are roads that have to be taken and for every road, we take there is one left untaken. That when a decision is made he will not be able to go back. The roads diverging is the symbolism of the choices. The road itself in the poem is symbolizing the journey of life. The narrator came to a crossroads and had to make a major decision in life. It is a less used path and has overgrown. The line ‘because it was grassy and wanted wear’ is referring to the path the narrator chooses. The yellow color is a middle color and symbolizes the unsureness of the choice. He thinks of previous experiences and tries to make the best decision off his resources. The narrator stands there to ponder over his choices but both bend into the undergrowth. The narrator in “The Road Not Taken,” is walking until he comes to a diverge in a yellow wood. The poem “The Road Not Taken” relies on the metaphor and imagery to convey the twists and turns of real life. Forst’s poems also both have narrators traveling in them and this represents our life’s journey. They both present nature as the mysteries in life. There are themes such as civilization and nature. Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken” hide many imagery and symbolism. ![]() ![]() But when séances go wrong and suspicions mount, Haley finds herself facing the dark basement alone. Haley eventually meets a cute but cagey boy and some adventurous new friends who all seem willing to help her. It turns out that years ago, four girls disappeared without a trace, and only Haley and the little boy who lives across the way can see their ghosts. Haley is a talented artist who begins to lose consciousness, coming to only to find macabre images of dead girls she’s drawn. ![]() What’s worse, her new house is eerie, with a moldy, spooky basement where she hears unexplained noises. ![]() Haley is a city girl, and she hates that her family made her move from Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin. ![]() A 15-year-old moves into a haunted house complete with creepy neighbors. ![]() ![]() The book also takes you from the US to India, so it was nice getting to travel (via book pages anyway) to another amazing country! Definitely a book to pick up if you love novels with a literary bent, full of soul-searching and character growth, featuring a young woman’s experience about the definition of belonging.Īnd head over to my instagram page for the INTL giveaway. Even as adults, Preeti dropped everything to be with Neel when he needed her. ![]() As siblings, they shared a lot of agonises and joys - especially as kids, figuring out how to survive American schools when they were newly immigrated from India. Neel and Preeti’s bond is so strong and lovely too. I also really loved the side-characters, particularly Neel and his wife Dipti who go through so much and ultimately break your heart a bit. She’s forced to confront a lot of things she’s been running from (including feelings about her ex, Alex, and a lot of memories from her childhood) and figure out what she truly wants from life. ![]() Preeti’s journey has so many ups and downs, with both emotional tragedies and triumphs. This is a story of family and culture, of struggling to find your place in a world that constantly tells you that you’re not enough. ![]() ![]() Welcome to my MTMC Tours stop for The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shah!Ī family tragedy beckons a first-generation immigrant to the city of her birth, where she grapples with her family’s past in search of where she truly belongs. ![]() ![]() His life changed in 1992 when he read “ SantaLand Diaries,” a comic essay about his elf gig, on NPR’s Morning Edition. In the mid-eighties, he entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began giving readings from his diaries. At the heart of the book is his difficult, unresolved relationship with his father, who died in 2021, and the inevitable change and loss we encounter in life.īorn on Decemin Johnson City, New York, and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Sedaris dropped out of college and did odd jobs to support himself, including working as an apple picker, an apartment cleaner, and a Christmas elf at Macy’s. ![]() ![]() In his new collection of autobiographical essays, Happy-Go-Lucky, best-selling author and humorist David Sedaris writes about topics ranging from guns to teeth to siblings to the pandemic. ![]() The conversations in “ Between-States” explore bardo concepts like acceptance, interconnectedness, and impermanence in relation to children and parents, marriage and friendship, and work and creativity, illuminating the possibilities for discovering new ways of seeing and finding lasting happiness as we travel through life. The passage from death to rebirth is a bardo, as well as the journey from birth to death. In Tibetan Buddhism, “bardo” is a between-state. ![]() Between-States: Conversations About Bardo and Life ![]() ![]() ![]() Born with severe Cerebral Palsy, Brown was spared a life in convalescent hospitals by his parents, incredulous at the suggestion of anything other than personal care. The story of Christy Brown is as inspirational as it is curious. It was the basis of the Oscar winning film with the same title, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the author. ![]() Presentation copies of this astonishing author’s books are far from common, especially of this title indeed this is the first such copy we have seen. In addition, there are 31 other signatures on the half-title and rear free endpaper. First edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Ismay Phipps, Christy Brown 30/5 ’56″, and with Phipps’s bookplate to front pastedown also inscribed by the author’s mother on the same page, “Bridget Brown, best of luck”. ![]() |