Aya love in yop city5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Switching back and forth between story lines allows readers to see the many difficulties each character is up against. The books function like a coming of age narrative in the style of a soap opera. ![]() From Moussa who frequently feigns confidence and conviction through his exaggerated puffed up chest to Hervé whose head is always angled forward in a slouch, you see the young men of the text displaying their sensibilities through their bodies more than their language. The careful drawing of each person gives a clear sense of each one’s character through the way they stand and react to others. Rich colors and shadow are used to place readers in the setting and tone of the text. He reacts to negative representations of Africa, falls in love with his roommate, and helps Seb come out to his parents. The second book, Love in Yop City, even takes readers to France as Innocent has immigrated there and looks to find his place in Paris. Through the three main women in the story, the tales branch out from the wealthy cities to traditional villages and everywhere in between. The episodic story moves through her and her friends lives as they experience setbacks, love, and ambitions as they grow into adults. Aya is a young woman with dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s Aya series starts in the Ivory Coast 1978. ![]()
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![]() ![]() The modern film The Birth of a Nation used the Nat Turner template as the basis of the film and gave a more principled take of Nat Turner. Styron's book did use the stereotypes that subsequently offended some people a few years after the book was released in 1967. To me when someone tackles the subject of Nat Turner I look at it as a Rorschach test. Was he a mad man? Was he a principled man? The documented "confessions" are not corroborated, so no one knows the truth about Turner's life and motivation. Basically the known facts are that Nat Turner and a band of slaves escaped and killed 55 white men, women and children in Southampton VA before being caught and hanged to death on November 11, 1831. Needless to say there are many gaps to fill and Styron created an imaginary story of a young slave who engaged in slave revolt in 1831. ![]() The written record of the real life Nat Turner is very scant because all there is is the "Confessions" recorded by his defense lawyer. Styron said that this book is not historical fiction, but rather a meditation on history. ![]() While I did not feel that Nat Turner was as good as Sophie's Choice I still highly recommend the novel. A few month's ago I read Sophie's Choice by the same author and was blown away, so I felt I had to read Nat turner as well. ![]() Venetia heyer5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() I have since discovered a few other things that make me want to be a part of this lovely club even more: Heyer fans are loyal to the author, each other, and their favorites they are highly intelligent and always willing to engage in sparkling conversation (much like Heyer’s characters themselves) about their favorite characters and stories and they love a handsome rake. ![]() By wonderful chance, I happened upon Venetia.Īt that time, I had no idea of the vast number of Heyer readers out there, each with their favorite of her 50+ novels. I believe it was the very next day that I went to the library and checked out a couple of her novels. I consider myself to be a relative newbie when it comes to Georgette Heyer I only “discovered” her work about two years ago after a trusted friend told me that Heyer’s Regency novels were “as witty and lovely as Jane Austen.” Being an Austen nut, a romance nut, and a library nut, my fate was sealed. ![]() The Insurgents by Fred Kaplan5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() From their perspective, there was more to fighting and winning wars than military power- which was traditionally defined as who could bringing the most modern and destructive weapons on the battlefield. Once established, it increasingly attracted culturally sensitive military officers who served on its faculty. The key to the plot to change military thinking was the Social Sciences Department at the US Military Academy at West Point. The latter, with its emphasis on the importance of cultural factors in the outcome of Britain's successful effort to put down the insurrection in Malaysia, had a profound impact on the evolution of the debate over how to fight and win wars. It incorporates works by a number of writers such as John Nagel's now classic work, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. This title is one of the most important books published on the US Army in the last ten or twenty years. Indeed, he essentially argues that this approach to military affairs is like a house of cards. However, Kaplan maintains that this new approach has limits. In some very important ways, it has changed how the army thinks and plans to fight and carry out military operations. Those who have not followed internal developments in the US Army may be surprised to learn that a revolution consciously led by General David Petraeus and a group of culturally conscious officers has taken place. ![]() Tananarive due series5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() At the beginning of the story, we are introduced to David and Jessica Wolde, who seem to have it all. As I've said before, I liked the original Vampire Chronicles, but this one was different. Read moreĪnother vampire story that on the cover is compared to Rice's Vampire Chronicles - but again, I must disagree. ![]() With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force that Stephen King called 'An eerie epic' is sure to win Due a legion of new fans. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. ![]() Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. ![]() Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. The award-winning master of horror, acclaimed author, screenwriter, and scholar Tananarive Due’s classic African Immortals series starts with an electrifying piece of dark fantasy, My Soul to Keep. ![]() Author of the secret barrister5/24/2023 ![]() CS: You argue you in your first book that, as a public, we don’t think about the way we administer criminal justice in the same way we administer education or healthcare. If wrongdoers routinely escape justice, or the wrong people are punished for their crimes, we are a hair’s breadth away from the breakdown of social order, and the rise of vigilantism and anarchy. Ensuring that the criminal law is upheld - that those who commit crimes are brought to justice, and that those who haven’t committed crimes are not wrongly treated as if they have - is essential to keeping our social contract intact. ![]() ![]() ![]() Crimes mark the most serious breaches of the code by which we all agree to live the wrongs that strike at the heart of our society and bring pain and suffering to others. Secret Barrister: Criminal justice underpins our civilisation. Harry Cerasale, 13 November 2020 Chambers Student: Could you briefly explain why it is important to have a robust criminal justice system? We talk to them about the injustices, the misconceptions, a system on the brink of collapse, and of course, their identity. ![]() SB, as they're affectionately known, has become one the nation's most prominent critics of the government's eight-year cuts to legal aid and their damage done to the criminal justice system. With an undercover persona instrumental in their rise to fame, the Secret Barrister is a prolific blogger, tweeter, and author behind two bestselling books, ‘The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken,’ and ‘Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies’. ![]() The royals next door karina halle5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() With careers, hearts, and friendships on the line, Piper and Harrison will have to decide what they're willing to give up for a chance at their own happily ever after. But when Piper finds herself smack in the middle of a royal scandal that rocks the island she'll need more than Harrison's strong arms to shield her-she'll have to do a little rescuing herself. But beneath Harrison's no-nonsense exterior lies a soft heart, one that could tempt a woman who's sworn off attachments into believing in white knights. Piper quickly realizes that one person's fairy tale is an ordinary woman's nightmare as a media frenzy takes over the island and each run-in with Harrison Cole is hotter and more confusing than the last. And she's happy with how things are-really-until British royals rent the property next to hers and their brooding bodyguard decides she's a security threat. ![]() She has a quiet, reclusive life, taking care of her mother, who lives with mental illness, avoiding her regrettable ex, who bartends in town, and trying to make inroads in the tight-knit island community that still sees her, five years in, as an outsider. Piper Evans: elementary school teacher by day-avid romance reader and anonymous podcaster by night. Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman: 9780593499832 : Books When a single dad meets the former rock-star crush of his youth, everything they thought they knew about happiness and love is thrown into chaos in this. ![]() One of PopSugar's Top Summer Reads of 2021! An ordinary summer goes royally awry when a prince and princess move next door, bringing their handsome bodyguard with them, from New York Times bestselling author Karina Halle. ![]() Mistress of rome series5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Nor even the enthusiastic delivery of a passionate and emotional Philippa Gregory. This isn't the warmly eccentric verbal embrace of a Mary Beard, or your friendly and engaging best mate Lucy Worsley. For the first time I understand the complex lineage of the family tree, and the various comings and goings (mainly goings!) of the Dynasty made complete sense - despite half of the people having very similar names! But, sadly, it is in the presentation of the documentary by the good Professor that I found the programmes wanting. The content is generally very good, based very much on Suetonius's "Lives", but extended appropriately by Historian Professor Catherine Edwards. And there is more than a courteous nod to Robert Graves's "I Clavdivs". The Suetonius tales of Roman lives are made very real. ![]() One is aware that the myth-like histories of events took place on those very spots. While the Forum and Curia are well known in documentaries, some lesser known, less frequently visited locations, such as the House of Livia on the Capitoline and the Mausoleum of Augustus, broaden the sense of history and revitalise the sense of Imperial Rome. The documentary is vividly brought alive by the locations of Ancient Rome used to illustrate the plot. ![]() The star of this programme is the camera operator/VT editor. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Todd's wariness about discussing the situation erodes the confidence of the board members of his church, and he is contacted by several members of the media. He also speaks of incidents with people he never met or knew about: meeting a great-grandfather who had died long before he was born, an unborn sister he never knew about who had died in a miscarriage, and having met Jesus.Ĭolton speaks about his experiences in Heaven, and Todd is faced with the dilemma of determining the legitimacy of his son's experience. He describes to his incredulous family about having seen the surgeon operating on his ruptured appendix, his mother calling people in the waiting room to pray, and his father in another room yelling at God to not let him die. ![]() Colton says he experienced Heaven during an emergency surgery after having acute appendicitis. Plot įour-year-old Colton Burpo is the son of Todd Burpo, pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska. The film has received mixed critical reviews, but nevertheless was a box office success, grossing $101 million against a $12 million budget, becoming the second-highest grossing Christian film of all time. ![]() The film stars Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Connor Corum, Margo Martindale, and Thomas Haden Church. Heaven Is for Real is a 2014 American Christian drama film written and directed by Randall Wallace and co-written by Christopher Parker, based on Pastor Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent's 2010 book of the same name. ![]() The poppy war series5/23/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() And on the way, she learns magic, and how to fight and love as she ends up meeting the infuriatingly charming Prince Liwei, the son of the very king who imprisoned her mother.ĭescendant of the Crane – Joan He Similarities – Chinese fantasy, vengeful protagonist Here are 8 more books like The Poppy War for you to feast on.ĭaughter of the Moon Goddess – Sue Lynn Tan Similarities – Chinese myth and fantasyĭo you like sci-fi sprinkled with fantasy and adventure along with romance? Then The Celestial Kingdom duology is for you as it has Xingyin travelling the moon, sky and earth to save her mother. So, if you want more similar yet different books, we’ve got you. Sounds familiar right?īut it’s the nuances in such books that make them so fun to read like the fact that The Poppy War is based in Far East Asia, Asian myths and cultural elements embedded in the plot and the most deranged protagonist that you know you shouldn’t root for but you do. ![]() Remember those types of books where a simple ordinary girl whose misfit personality trait turns out to be her trump card? She then hopes to just reach her goal of winning the games or getting into an academy or getting a job only to be swept up in a revolution to overthrow the government that will fail without her. ![]() |