![]() ![]() ![]() And if anyone else were writing it I would doubt their sanity. He describes the way his mind works with powerful clarity. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.” “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. ![]() Reading his words made me realise how unique an individual he was. The things he could accomplish with the tech we now have would be astonishing. He saw the world in ways most people wouldn’t imagine. His ideas were brilliant and innovative, and there were probably very few people he could discuss them with. The real tragedy of his life and work is that so few people know of his enduring legacy. This quote here sums up much of his dealings with people: He spent so much of his time alone, detached from society and all others yet, he created some incredible things that altered civilisation as we know it. He clearly operated in a way that most men couldn’t handle. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() At 48, Evelyn Couch ""had gotten lost somewhere along the way."" By the time she had second thoughts about the Vietnam War, ""Jane Fonds had already moved on to her exercise class."" When she joined a consciousness-raising group, ""the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, and she never went back."" Overweight, menopausal and suicidal, Evelyn visits her mother-in-law at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, and there encounters 86-year-old, purple-haired Cleo Threadgoode (coiffed by a midget because ""I love a midget""). ![]() Former Candid Camera writer Flagg (Coming Attractions, 1981) has written a hilarious, heartwarming novel about the practical uses of nostalgia and the healing power of community spirit. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He is toughest on Asher hurt that his son shows more interest in drawing than in studying the Torah, that he has greater ambitions for his artwork than he does for his people.īut art is not an interest to Asher, it is a compulsion. Asher’s father is a well-known and very respected in the community for the work he does for the Rebbe, helping to bring Jews fleeing persecution in Soviet Russia to the U.S. ![]() His “hobby” is foolish, nice at best and a curse from the sitra achra at worst. Unfortunately for Asher, art and aesthetic beauty are not considered worthy pursuits by his family or community in general. He is also an extremely talented artist, which is apparent from the first time he picks up a pencil as a young child. Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jew in 1940’s and 50’s Crown Heights, Brooklyn (a neighborhood very close to my own!). ![]() ![]() Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father. Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. ![]() Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, "Ramma-Jamma". As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.Īfter graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. ![]() ![]() ![]() Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. ![]() ![]() Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in Weird Tales, starting with " The Call of Cthulhu" in 1928. Under Wright's control, the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks, it prospered over the next 15 years. ![]() The first issue under Wright's control was dated November 1924. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger, and refinanced Weird Tales, with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom went on to be popular writers, but within a year, the magazine was in financial trouble. ![]() The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. ![]() The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. ![]() ![]() Committed to Memory provides the first in-depth look at how this artifact of the fight against slavery became an enduring symbol of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance.įinley traces how the slave ship icon became a powerful tool in the hands of British and American abolitionists, and how its radical potential was rediscovered in the twentieth century by Black artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and curators. Printed as handbills and broadsides, the image Cheryl Finley has termed the "slave ship icon" was easily reproduced, and by the end of the eighteenth century it was circulating by the tens of thousands around the Atlantic rim. First published by British abolitionists in 1788, it exposed this widespread commercial practice for what it really was-shocking, immoral, barbaric, unimaginable. One of the most iconic images of slavery is a schematic wood engraving depicting the human cargo hold of a slave ship. ![]() ![]() How an eighteenth-century engraving of a slave ship became a cultural icon of Black resistance, identity, and remembrance ![]() ![]() I certainly wouldn’t start dipping my finger in random green slime emanating from walls and licking it. Could you live in a house where six people were murdered? Could you sleep in the same bedroom they died in? As someone who grew up in a haunted house, even I have to draw the line somewhere. It gets you thinking about the history of a house. ![]() All the windows in the room were wide open, and the bedroom door, caught by the drafts, was swinging back and forth.” ![]() “The blankets on the bed had been virtually torn from their bodies, leaving George and Kathy shivering. Hint: if looking to purchase a property and neighbours' shades are drawn on all the sides facing said house (but not other directions), it’s probably best to look elsewhere.īecause weird stuff will probably start happening. had previously killed his 6 family members in the house. They purchase it on the cheap, due to its tragic history. The book follows the events of the Lutz family, who move into 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville. I wasn’t a fan of my house making strange creaking sounds at night while reading either! The Amityville Horror does what it says, and provides the scares. Much has been said about whether these events were a hoax, but I don’t really care. ![]() ![]() It was scarier than the films and reads like an addictive novel. I was familiar with the story, having previously watched the films, but never read the book until now! This is the first time I’ve read a book for Halloween. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Hunting Party is presented through the perspectives of five of the characters – Katie, Emma and Miranda of the party, and Doug and Heather of the hotel staff. In order to properly explain, I need to break down the confusing structure of the book. That plot description makes this book sound like a whodunit, and it’s been marketed as a thriller, but it’s not really either. Entirely cut off from the outside, the group and the estate staff know that one of them must be the guilty party, but who is it? As the weather worsens, relations between the group begin to fracture – nostalgic ties and fake smiles soon give way to secret resentments, and soon someone on the estate is dead. They arrive at the end of December, just before an historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Just before New Year’s Eve, a group of old university friends head to an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands for their annual getaway. It boasts a strong sense of place and engaging characters, but the presentation choices really lessen the story’s impact. How do you seed the story, playing fair with your reader without giving too much away, and hold their attention throughout? I was thinking about this a lot after reading Lucy Foley’s debut crime novel, 2019’s The Hunting Party, because it tries something different and doesn’t quite land it. ![]() ![]() ![]() While the city’s most celebrated artists-Armstrong, Prima, Toussaint, Longhair, Irma Thomas, Dr. Many of New Orleans’ landmark artists have also picked their personal favorite local songs. Each entry has a capsule history that sheds new light on these classic songs, including fresh interviews with the artists as well as nuggets from OffBeat ’s extensive archive. The 300 entries (and then some) stretch chronologically from “Bamboula” (Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 1848) to “Justice” (Dumpstaphunk, 2017), and include everything in between: early jazz and its offshoots, the advent of blues and the rock ‘n’ roll it spawned the ‘60s heyday of New Orleans rhythm and blues and the birth of funk later that decade.Īll the riches of the city’s current scene-brass bands, bounce, modern jazz, rock and funk, singer-songwriters-are represented as well. In its first book, OffBeat Magazine’s 300 Songs for 300 Years lists and explains why and how these songs shaped the city’s musical history and changed the face of American music. From “Down by the Riverside” to “Hey Pocky Way” and beyond, New Orleans has a long history of iconic songs. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() What I discovered is that while reading, I could actually visualize his bizarre characters and settings in my head and it was sort of like walking through a gallery of surrealist paintings. There are twenty stories in this small book, obviously very short but definitely powerful. If I had to concisely summarize these little stories, I seriously couldn't think of a better way to do it than via Magritte's words. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us." "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. It bugged me most of the evening, until finally I was so exasperated with my memory that I had to go look it up and voilà: ![]() While I was reading this little gem of a collection, for some reason René Magritte (whose work I absolutely love) popped into my brain, but I could only remember part of a quotation of his, something to do with things being hidden and having an interest in wanting to see them. ![]() Small presses are a godsend to someone like me who seriously craves something beyond the ordinary, and I definitely got that in Mike Russell's Nothing is Strange. " We all already occupy the same space.It is just our centres that are at different points." (my copy from the publisher - thank you!) ![]() |