She also wrote a startlingly good book about the 1930s Abdication Crisis, called Gone with the Windsors (already one of the great titles…). It’s called The Importance of Being Kennedy, and there were a couple of entries on the blog. Graham has written a wide variety of novels, but my favourites have been the ones where she takes real-life historical events and tells a story via a fictional character who might have existed… so the perfect example is her book about the Kennedy family, narrated by a nursemaid from the household. Don’t be upsetting yourself.’Ĭommentary: I am a huge fan of Laurie Graham, and feel very strongly that she is an author who is not taken seriously enough just because she is funny and entertaining (just like Lissa Evans). She pulled her shawl around her, very satisfied with herself and Valentine murmured, ‘Let it alone, Miss Dot. She said ‘Only one thing a woman’d be on the streets for at that hour.’Īnd the other said, ‘Yes. Who was I, in my good serge coat and my velvet tam o’shanter, to know that type of person? So then they became quite interested in me. He said, ‘My friend knew the person who was murdered.’ One of the women said, ‘Except the type who met her end here.’ ‘This is a place of commerce, so after the hours of business very few people pass this way.’
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This was my first time reading from Ken Liu, and a deliberate choice. Included here are: The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary (Finalist for Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Awards), Mono No Aware (Hugo Award winner), The Waves (Nebula Award finalist), The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species (Nebula and Sturgeon award finalists), All the Flavors (Nebula Award finalist), The Litigation Master and the Monkey King (Nebula Award finalist) ,and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, The Paper Menagerie (the only story ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). This is the first collection of his work – sixteen stories that invoke the magical within the mundane, by turns profound, beguiling and heartbreaking. Ken Liu is one of the most original, thought-provoking and award-winning short-story writers of his generation. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, by Ken Liu I try to deal with, and if possible get rid of, the beginning novelist’s worries.” This book is for the beginning novelist who has already figured out that it is far more satisfying to write well than simply to write well enough to get published…. “I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of-serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive…. With a forward by Raymond Carver, who had been a student of Gardner’s in 1958, On Becoming a Novelist contains four sections: (1) The Writer’s Nature, (2) The Writer’s Training and Education, (3) Publication and Survival, and (4) Faith. And oh, my goodness, so much bang for that buck! If you’re not familiar with Gardner, here’s an interview with him in the Paris Review.) I can’t remember how I learned about this book, but I ordered a used library edition ( you can get one for less than a dollar) since I was spending my big bucks on Christmas gifts at the time. (Note: Gardner died in 1982, at the young age of 49. Today, it’s John Gardner’s 1983 work, On Becoming a Novelist. A few weeks ago I blogged about discovering Michener’s 1991 book, The Novel. Somehow I seem to keep finding treasures from the past-not the distant past, but still, books I “happen” upon that inspire and inform. Sacks was known for being a brilliant but often painfully shy man. Since the seventies, Sacks has written books on a large number of medical topics, including Migraine (1970), An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), Hallucinations (2012), and two memoirs- Uncle Tungsten (2001) and On the Move (2015). Sacks’s research on these patients, culminating in his use of the L-Dopa drug to revive them from their comas, formed the basis for his book Awakenings (1973). He worked as a neurologist at a hospital in the Bronx, where he came across a group of patients who had been comatose ever since the 1920s “sleepy-sickness” epidemic. Afterwards, he interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, followed by UCLA. Oliver Sacks was born in England, and received his medical degree from Oxford in 1960. The warning voice of the innocent boy is no longer here, because Dylan has chosen not to remain a boy. The words, the music, the tones of voice speak of regret, melancholy, a sense of inevitable farewell, mixed with sly humor, some rage, and a sense of simple joy. In this album, he is as personal and as universal as Yeats or Blake speaking for himself, risking that dangerous opening of the veins, he speaks for us all. Only the artists can help the poor land again to feel.Īnd here is Dylan, bringing feeling back home. There is no politician anywhere who can move anyone to hope the plague recedes, but it is not dead, and the statesmen are as irrelevant as the tarnished statues in the public parks. The signposts have been smashed the maps are blurred. We live in the smoky landscape now, as the exhausted troops seek the roads home. Remember that he gave us voice, When our innocence died forever, Bob Dylan made that moment into art. So forget the clenched young scholars who analyze his rhymes into dust. In the teargas in 1968 Chicago, they hurled Dylan at the walls of the great hotels, where the infected drew the blinds, and their butlers ordered up the bayonets. But of all the poets, Dylan is the one who has most clearly taken the rolled sea and put it in a glass.Įarly on, he warned us, he gave many of us voice, he told us about the hard rain that was going to fall, and how it would carry plague. He was not the only one, of course he is not the only one now. He had remained, in front of us, or writing from the north country, and remained true. ‘The timing is coincidental’ … Jeremy Thorpe’s biography. Though homosexuality was commonplace among the upper classes at that time, none of Jeremy’s school friends detected any overt signs of homosexuality in his early flamboyance. Ursula was an extremely domineering woman who also had several close relatives who were homosexuals. My research has also led me to believe that Thorpey was bisexual, while his two brothers were practising homosexuals. Jeremy was born in 1929, the son of Ursula and Thorpey Thorpe, neither of whom had quite as much money or talent as the other believed. Any delay that might have occurred was entirely due to my publishers’ tireless and painstaking search to find a senior member of the Liberal Democrats who was willing to write a foreword paying tribute to the man most responsible for reviving the political fortunes of the Liberal party in the 1960s and 1970s. My publishers have since assured me that the timing is coincidental and in no way connected to legal matters that may have arisen had Jeremy been alive. I t was with great surprise that I discovered Jeremy Thorpe had died just days before my book was rushed to the printers, though the manuscript had been completed some 20 years earlier. There’s a difference between providing necessary evidence/examples and driving the point home too hard.Įach chapter starts with a few paragraphs of writing and then goes into telling the story through the words of others and I found myself wanting more writing from the authors. While the book is clearly well-researched, some of it becomes a bit repetitive. That being said, when the writers are also fans it definitely shows – which is both positive and negative. Not only are they excellent writers, they are also fellow musicians and, unquestionably, huge fans of Vaughan. The details about the intricacies of Vaughan’s life as a person and an artist are captivating and heartbreaking because they are told through the memories of those who were there to witness his greatness, downfall, redemption, and tragic end.Īny book or movie that can pull off suspense even when the reader or viewer knows what happened is a feat in and of itself, and authors Alan Paul and Andy Aledort do just that. Written mostly as an oral history through quotes, anecdotes, and stories from the people who knew Stevie Ray Vaughan best, Texas Flood is a first and secondhand account of the guitarist’s life. She has virtually no money and lots of time. She is not a professional outdoors person. The loss of her mother sends her over the proverbial edge. She pushes away one man who could save her – knowing deep down she has to do it herself, and remains attracted to other men who will only make her feel worse. Ninety percent of success is showing up.Ĭheryl had a tough childhood with no fatherly support and made subsequently predictable choice regarding men. She was lost and she decided not to rely on someone else to pick her up, not to whine, not to accept her state complacently but to get the hell up and do something. Frankly, it’s a small sacrifice to have made in light of the enormity of her accomplishment both internally and externally. I’m guessing the remaining four were not visions of loveliness. They look very nice and I enjoy smiling down at them, but I can’t help feel a bit like a total spank. Taubes argues persuasively that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates (white flour, sugar, easily digested starches) and sugars - via their dramatic and longterm effects on insulin, the hormone that regulates fat accumulation - and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the number. Yet with more and more people acting on this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. In this groundbreaking book, the result of seven years of research in every science connected with the impact of nutrition on health, award-winning science writer Gary Taubes shows us that almost everything we believe about the nature of a healthy diet is wrong.įor decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Read Good Calories, Bad Calories, by investigative science and health journalist Gary Taubes. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. This file is to be used by the original downloader only. If you have any questions, I will reply within 24 hours.Ĭopyright © Josh Teaches Everything. If you enjoy this resource, please review it! This will help me make more resources. ☛ Printable pages for written responses in English and Spanish ✔ ☛ Sentence stems / frames for oracy and vocabulary development ✔ ☞ Strategic stopping points for questioning and close reading ✔ This lesson is focused on a theme of investigation, questioning, and inferring but can easily be modified for other uses. The printable prompts and activities designed to be glued into a notebook or as stand-alone activity papers are in English and Spanish. Frida is the title in English and can be found under the same title in Spanish and the lesson lends itself for either English or Spanish or dual language / dual immersion instruction. It also includes prompts for student responses in writing or thoughtful logs. The plans include a teacher script with strategic stopping points and questions for students. ✏ This is an interactive read aloud lesson plan for a 4-5 day Comprehensive Literacy Language Workshop for the mentor text book Frida by Jonah Winter. |