![]() ![]() Although written nearly forty years ago, Seven-Day Magic has a timeless feel, even if the adventures seem a bit tame by modern standards. The children return the book to the library and wonder who will find it next. Disaster almost strikes again when the friends wish themselves at a television rehearsal and it nearly costs one of their fathers his job on a show. Bodecker includes books Half Magic, Knights Castle, Magic by the Lake, and several more. ![]() Another adventure starts when the children are transported back in time with grandmother and nearly perish in a blizzard. The Tales of Magic book series by Edward Eager & N.M. Along their way, the children meet a dragon, a wizard, and the baby and little girl from Half Magic, another Eager book. Five children discover a mysterious red book at the library and eventually they discover that it's writing the story of their own wishful adventures-a story they make up as they go, and then witness coming to life in the red book's pages. However, Seven- Day Magic can just about stoop to the challenge. It's hard for any book with magic in it not to pale next to the Harry Potter phenomenon. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America with Interruptions (2002), a travelogue narrating a railway journey around the United States, is the winner of the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Jenny Diski is also the author of two television plays, A Fair and Easy Passage, written for Channel 4 television, and The Ultimate Object of Desire. The Vanishing Princess (1995) is a collection of short stories.She published a volume of autobiography, Skating to Antarctica, in 1997, which was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction, and a book of essays, Don't, in 1998. ![]() Subsequent novels include Rainforest (1987), in which a female anthropologist is shocked by her discoveries about human nature Then Again (1990), a complex narrative exploring the life of a persecuted Jewish girl living in fourteenth-century Poland Happily Ever After (1991), the story of the relationship between an eccentric old woman and her landlord, a middle-aged alcoholic and The Dream Mistress (1996), set in contemporary London, about three women whose stories are loosely connected: Mimi, Leah - the mother who abandoned her -and Bella, a tramp who Mimi saves at the beginning of the novel. Her first novel, Nothing Natural, the story of a single parent locked in an abusive relationship, was published in 1986 (reissued 2003). She is a regular contributor to The Observer and the London Review of Books. She was educated at University College, London, and worked as a teacher during the 1970s and early 1980s. ![]() ![]() ![]() Tardar was born on April 4, 2012, and although she's said to have some ragdoll, snowshoe and Siamese in her line, her mother is a calico cat and her father is a gray-and-white tabby cat. "She looked unique, as did her brother, at birth, with a flat face, bubble eyes, and a short tail." "Tardar has what looks kind of like an underbite," owner Tabatha Bundesen of Morristown, Ariz., told Fox News. Many users suspected that the feline's frown had been Photoshopped, so her owners shared some videos of her to prove that Tardar's face really does look a bit cranky. The mixed-breed cat became an Internet sensation when her photo was posted on Reddit in September. The Internet knows her as "Grumpy Cat," but Tardar Sauce - "Tard" for short - isn't actually all that grumpy. ![]() ![]() ![]() And, hey, so what if realizing her full potential means that Mae needs to completely reorient her habits, her ideas, and her personal values? Nothing good is without sacrifice, right? She can bid sayonara to her sucky 9-to-5 at the utilities company in her hick hometown, and she can start to realize her full potential on the most immaculately landscaped tech campus the world has ever seen. The novel gets underway when 24-year-old Mae Holland lands a job at the main campus of the world's most innovative and prestigious tech company, called-you guessed it-the Circle.įor Mae, the job is a dream come true. ![]() But what would happen if, someday, all that data got turned against us? What if the people in charge of it started using it to control us? It's convenient, right? And we like to share. We give up tons of data about ourselves every day without really thinking about it. You probably already know that tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter know a lot about everything you do. ![]() ![]() Yet with a fanciful and morbid father like hers, it’s no wonder Martha feels so uncertain about everything. In other words, she’s a typical teenager. She is anxious, moody, and most of all, insecure. ![]() Martha, on the other hand, is wary - she describes the house as something out of a dream, “not quite real, not quite safe….”Īs her behavior early on would suggest, Martha is a handful. Stevenson loves the place he’s a writer fascinated by macabre things. Making the transition even more uncomfortable is the fact that her stepmother Sally bought them a creepy old house outside of town. The Chicago-raised teen is not the least bit happy about the sudden move to the middle of nowhere, or her having to get used to a new family. Martha Stevenson’s life is turned upside down when her father first elopes, then relocates his daughter to a small town called Bedford. As everyone else around her is doubtful of her misgivings and claims, or they’re simply too unavailable to help, the main character counts down the days until something inevitably dreadful happens on Halloween. The first of these seasonal offerings, Richie Tankersley Cusick ’s 1989 book Trick or Treat, centers around a teenager who’s deathly afraid of her own home. ![]() ![]() The Point Horror line made every day feel like Halloween, but the Scholastic series had only a few books specifically set around the October holiday. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Through the book he appears in search of survivors of every era in the architecture (Lutyen’s Delhi, the settlement of Trilokpuri, Chandni Chowk Havelis, The Tughlaqabad Tomb, Fraser’s house etc), the people (Balwinder Singh, Marion and Joe Fowler, the Hijras), the practices (calligraphy, cock-fighting, Unani medicine), the experts (Dr Jaffrey, Dr BB Lal) and the written accounts (Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire, Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali, Muraqqa’-e-Dehli by Kuli Khan and many others).īut it is the author’s journey of discovery that becomes the agent to move the book along, told as a narrative account of his research and chronologically faithful to the year he spends doing the research in Delhi. Dalrymple is trying to unravel Delhi as a city made up of many cities that existed in the various periods and its many different lived realities. As he moves in a chronologically reverse direction from his present day, each subsequent period is established through the multiple imperialist regimes that established their capitals in Delhi. The book is simultaneously an autobiographical account of his research on the city as a historian and a travel guide book. Dalrymple is a Journalist and a Historian is a visitor to Delhi and the book is as much a chronicle of his year spent in the city as a text on its history. ![]() ![]() ![]() Morgan is a bored, spoilt rich boy whose eyes and life are opened when Adalia crosses his path. What will Morgan do when he discovers that the woman he has fallen in love with is a runaway slave?įrom Adalia’s daring escape from her terrible enslavement, to deathly gentleman duels, island rescues and battles at sea – this book had me captivated and on the edge of my seat.Īdalia is brazen and good intentioned, but her character falters over an issue so familiar to us all – the approval and acceptance of others. ![]() But when Morgan, the handsome son of a prominent family, sweeps her into his glamorous world-a world in which the truth about Adalia’s heritage would ruin them both-suspicions and petty jealousies are aroused. Terrified her secret will be discovered, she settles into a quiet life making herbal remedies for a local doctor. ![]() Be swept away to Charleston of 1811, a city bustling with immigrants like Adalia, who is a runaway slave so light-skinned that no one guesses her past. ![]() ![]() ![]() We see the army work hard to capture the remaining good heroes and also let loose a super villain alien onto the world in the hope it will stop Plutonium. We know the plot - Plutonium is out of control, so when we see him do some more out of control stuff, it isn't as novel. Okay - so the premise has been established - where does the writer go from there? Can they keep up the interest? My verdict - it was good but not as thrilling as the first volume. The dumbass should have fessed up immediately & shown them the bullet, but given how both of those douchebags overreacted to the affair, I sort of understand her hesitation.īecause dead people! Billions of dead people!Īlso notable: The government calls in a mother-fucking demon! ![]() Of course, what Bette didn't do was the actual bad thing. Seriously, Gil? You're a thousand years old and you've never fucked up?Īnd of course, there was Plutionian's reaction to the affair, which was to build a shrine to Bette and then do rapey (or just plain weird!) stuff with other women while making them dress up as his teammate.Īfter all the buildup, I kind of thought there would be a bit more to the story. ![]() A one night stand while she and Gil were dating but not yet married. It sort of read like a white-bread husband's worst fear that had somehow been blown waaaaaaaay out of proportion by both the men. This one basically deals with the whole Bette Did Something Bad plotline.īut to be quite honest, I can't say she did anything all that bad. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The early part of his life was spent travelling all over the world, because his father and then his stepfather were both in the Royal Air Force. Philip was born in Norwich on 19th October 1946. He has published nearly 20 books in total, and when he’s not writing he likes to play the piano (badly), draw and make things out of wood. In 2007, The Golden Compass became a major Hollywood film starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. In 2003, His Dark Materials came third in the BBC’s ‘Big Read’ competition to find the nation’s favourite book, and in 2005 he was awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world’s biggest prize for children’s literature. ![]() He is best known for the trilogy of books known as His Dark Materials, which won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Philip Pullman is probably the world’s most acclaimed living children’s author, whose bold, brilliant books have set new parameters for what children’s writing can say and do. ![]() ![]() ![]() While Hitchcock's entire career is looked at (including the very early days), the documentary spends more time on two Hitchcock films than any other: Vertigo and Psycho. But we admittedly also get a clear understanding as to why the book was much more than just a book for Truffaut and that it was as important as any film he made. But let's be clear: this documentary is mostly about Hitchcock, and at times it feels that the book simply serves as an excuse to examine Hitchcock. Couple of comments: first and foremost, if you are a movie aficionado, you are in for a finger-lickin' good time, as two of the giants in movie history dissect Hitchcock's oeuvre in a manner that we have not seen before, and along the way we also get a fresh and better understanding of Truffaut's oeuvre. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see it for yourself. As the movie opens, we are given a quick historical context within which these conversations took place, and the various contemporaries (Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, etc.) provide their further perspectives. The book was essentially a transcript of a week-long interview/conversation between directors Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut. "Hitchcock/Truffaut" (2015 release 80 min.) is a documentary based on the book of the same name, originally published in 1966. ![]() |