![]() What I've always liked best about them is that they aren't black-and-white. On one level, they are quite simple, but there's some complex ideas floating around at deeper layers. While it's true that his accents shift around a bit, and not all of his interpretations match what I had in my head, by and large I find his reading excellent, for one key reason: it sounds very much like these are stories Mr Beierle truly enjoys, and understands, and wants to share and not just like something he's reading as a job. ![]() These audiobooks (for I've listened to the whole series, now) do a remarkable job, for me, of bringing the stories to life in a new way, having read and reread them over the years. Some people love Mr Beierle's interpretation some really don't. First, I want to say that, reading others' reviews, it becomes clear how very subjective preferences in narration style and voice can be. ![]()
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![]() ![]() He is no antihero, no handsome, tortured stranger who shares an immortal love with the heroine. He can be identified in Sesame Street’s puppet Count von Count and the cartoon on the cereal box for Count Chocula.īut what draws us to this king of the undead? How has he become such a prolific and contradictory figure of evil and seduction, glamour and horror, pathos and comedy?Īs he appears in Stoker’s text, Dracula is hardly the figure new readers might expect him to be. He is an African prince, the leader of the monster squad, Gary Oldman in a top hat, a nemesis of slayers such as Buffy and Blade, and even (heaven help us) Adam Sandler as a hotel proprietor. But he is also a handsome Hungarian man in a tuxedo and cape. He is a balding, long-fingered, shadowy ghoul. He is a menacing spectre in a foreign castle. He is, as he is called in Bram Stoker’s 1897 text, the King Vampire. They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world Abraham Van Helsing Dracula stars in more than two hundred films, appears in numerous television shows, has taken to the stage not only in drama but also musicals, ballet, and opera, features in video games and comics, and, of course, appears in many vampire fictions in addition to the original novel that bears his name. There are few names from literature and popular culture that are as well known as that of Dracula. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Trace Mohan's evolution in the course of his travels with Smita.As strange as the customs and traditions described in this book may seem to an American reader, did you recognize any common touchpoints across the two cultures? What aspects of the novel reminded you of life in America?.How do their cultures inform their relationships: the level of intimacy, communication, decision-making for each woman? If you are in a committed relationship, how do you think it would have been affected if it had begun in a different culture? Why didn't Smita's father change their name back to their family name after settling in America? Do you understand why he didn't?.What do you think of a system where the village council and the head of that council have so much power? What are the consequences of those positions being held by men?.What do you think it will take to change this cultural practice? Honor killings are a fact of life in many parts of the world. Meena's brothers think they are doing the moral thing, the right thing, by punishing their sister and her husband.Why do you think the author chose this point of view? ![]() Meena relates her story to us directly, in the first person.How is Meena's India different from Smita's? What explains the differences?.Smita tells Mohan that her India is not his India. ![]() ![]() The high-octane adventures will continue for a total of ten exhilarating books written by well-known authors over two years. Join Amy and Dan as they begin the hunt for the 39 Clues in Book One: The Maze of Bones. ![]() Books are going to a new place, but you have to follow the clues to get there. Think you've gone everywhere books can take you? Think again. Immediately, they are cauht in a dangerous race against their own family members. ![]() or get the first clue and begin the search? At the reading of their grandmother's will, Dan and Amy are given this choice - and they take the clue. What would happen if you discovered that your family was one of the most powerful in human history? What if you were told that the source of the family's power was hidden around the world in th form of 39 clues? What if you were given a choice - take a million dollars and walk away. ![]() ![]() ![]() The big defender cackles softly when I suggest that the publishers of his gripping book, Back From The Brink, might have opted for a more sensitive venue for this interview. McGrath looks what he is - a man trying to stay "dry" in a place of pitiless temptation, a man who uses the word "well" time after time to nail the life-saving need for him to stay sober. In the bar of the Hotel du Vin, among elegant decor punctuated by row upon row of green and black bottles, all uncorked and drained of champagne and wine, the 46-year-old alcoholic licks his lips and asks for a sparkling water. ![]() Even the name of the swish hotel in Birmingham, where the battered old Irish footballer talks so movingly of his lost life, reminds us of his demons. A s we go down into the darkness, sinking towards the depths of Paul McGrath's harrowing story, everything slows and tilts until it seems as if we are looking out at the world through the bottom of an empty bottle. ![]() ![]() ![]() Perfect for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds, Amp It Up is a must-have resource for anyone who seeks to unleash the growth potential of a company and scale it to heights they never thought possible. ![]() Amp It Up provides the first principles to guide that change, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around them. Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission. What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day. ![]() Slootman shows that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model - and they don't need to bring in an army of consultants to do it. The secret to leading growth is your mindset Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech worlds most accomplished executives in enterprise growth. In Amp It Up, he shares his leadership approach for the first time.Īmp It Up delivers an authoritative look at what it takes to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading Data Domain and ServiceNow to exponential growth and the public market before that. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Legs in the air, for a better chance at conception, Hannah scans fertility Reddits while Johnny dreams about propagating plants-kale, tomatoes-to ensure they have sufficient sustenance should the end times come, which, given their fragile democracy strained under the weight of a carceral state and the risk of horrible war, doesn’t seem so far off. They're currently living and screwing in the back of a truck, hoping for a pregnancy, which seems like it will never come. Her husband, Johnny, is a stay-at-home pothead working-or "working"-on building them a house before the winter chill sets in. Hannah is a thirty-something wife, home-health worker, and antiwar activist. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel! 30 best of the year and best of the decade nods from The Guardian, Wired, NPR, and more! ![]() ![]() ![]() When Giulia's involvement with him ends with his murder, she's drawn into a treacherous web of espionage and deceit involving the forces of Rome, Naples, and a man known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. But the talismans are not what they seem, and neither is the Magician. ![]() She accepts the job and begins smuggling his talismans throughout the city. But his identity is secret-he is known only as the Magician of Florence-and he is in need of an assistant. The man claims to be a cabalist, a student of Jewish mysticism and ritual magic, who works for the most powerful families in Florence. Now, after spending two years as a successful pickpocket, an old man catches her about to make off with his purse, and rather than having her carted off to prison he offers her a business proposition. She chose neither, and after refusing an elderly suitor, Giulia escaped onto the streets of Florence. ![]() Raised in Florence's famous Ospedale degli Innocenti, her probing questions and insubordinate behavior made her an unwelcome presence, and at the age of fifteen, she was given an awful choice: become a nun, or be married off to a man she didn't love. ![]() In this irresistible historical novel set in the turbulent world of the Medicis, a young woman finds herself driven from pick-pocketing to espionage when she meets a mysterious man. ![]() ![]() ![]() I can't help but noticing how often the word "pretentious" has been thrown around in the reviews for this book. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes an introduction from author and professor Luc Sante, as well as a pulp novel-inspired cover from Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist of Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers.įirst, a brief harangue. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and nothing but a cache of novels, plays, and poems. ![]() Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission, as well. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. ![]() He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. The New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster’s work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.” Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. The remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels – from the author of 4 3 2 1: A Novel ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A formulation which has been used as an interpretive tool in accounts of the transformation of the Late Early Modern public sphere. Numerous historical studies have cited Anderson’s work and adopted aspects of his theorised ‘Imagined Community’, perhaps most prolifically his delineation of ‘print capitalism’ as an origin of national consciousness. Since its original publication nearly forty years ago, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism has become canon and not just in the author’s primary field of sociology. However, in our increasingly connected and globalised world, the internet provides us with a shared digital culture that allows us to communicate with one another across the globe. In the latest LSE International History blog, Trinity College Dublin PhD candidate Joel Herman discusses Anderson’s model in relation to COVID-19 – can it be reimagined to explore the creation of a global community in the present? ![]() In Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’, he argued that the novel and the newspaper were the key mediums of the imagined community. ![]() |