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anonymous

Blues 4 Kali Musing About 2012 Reincarnation Mystery And Madness - 0 views

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    Many of us have heard about the predictions that the world would end, or that major changes would be taking place in the year 2012. What is your take on this? Me? Well, I don't believe that the world will end in 2012, but I have been fascinated with the topic since I was a school kid and I read about the Central and South American Indian cultures.
selfpub books

Book Brings AIDS-Prevention Message to Kids - 0 views

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    AuthorHouse self-published author Arrey Emmanuel Enow has made it easier for children to understand HIV/AIDS prevention in his book "AIDS Free Generation Book: A Guide to HIV /AIDS Prevention." The Cameroonian writer used children's poems, songs, and comprehension exercises to deliver his advocacy message, including tales of ages 3 to 18 afflicted by the life-threatening disease. Enow is an assistant manager for the Last Great Ape Organization, an international NGO on wildlife law enforcement. He also holds officer posts in various NGOs.
thinkahol *

Half of the Facts You Know Are Probably Wrong - Reason.com - 3 views

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    yes, Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. :D
jimmy4559

Brilliance by Anthony McCarten (book review) - 0 views

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    Short of money, the inventor Thomas Edison is captivated by the charismatic figure of J.P. Morgan, the world's greatest banker. Accepting Morgan's glittering offer of almost unlimited cash in return for helping the man change the way the world does business, Edison sees himself descend from being the godlike inventor of electric light to being complicit in the invention of the electric chair. Ever more enmeshed in Morgan's personal life, he becomes infatuated by a world of privilege and power, where duty and desire, faith and immorality are thrown into conflict, ultimately threatening his own spiritual and creative survival.
jimmy4559

Verruca Music by Stuart Estell (book review) - 0 views

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    It is absurdist comedy of the very blackest kind, informed by a love of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Peter Cook and The Goon Show. Featuring the Fibonacci sequence, floors that open up without warning, a powerful laxative, and a duvet that periodically changes colour, 'Verruca Music' charts the narrator's emergence from a state of fearful near-immobility assisted only by entertainments of his own devising. A most usual (and surprisingly accessible and funny) book if you're willing to stick with it.
jimmy4559

Apricot Jam and Other Stories by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (book review) - 0 views

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    Written in the years between Solzhenitsyn's return from exile to Russia in 1994, and his death in 2008 this new collection of stories from the Nobel Prize-winning author is available for the first time in English. Mostly written in his late binary style, the stories in APRICOT JAM present a series of striking portraits of a Soviet and Russian life across the twentieth century. Through their unforgettable cast of military commanders, imprisoned activists and displaced families, these stories play out the moral dilemmas and ideological conflicts that defined the century.
jimmy4559

Gonzo Republic: Hunter S Thompson's America by William Stephenson (book review) - 0 views

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    The first academic book on Thompson in twenty years, designed for both students and scholars. A critical study of the writing of Hunter S Thompson. It doesn't skirt over the controversies involving his life as these give his writing context but it does keep to its intended purpose of focusing on his work.
jimmy4559

This is Life by Dan Rhodes (book review) - 0 views

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    This is Life is a missing baby mystery and an enchanted Parisian adventure. Hand in hand with lovable heroine Aurelie Renard, you will see life as you've never seen it before, discover the key to great art, witness the true cost of love, and learn how all these things may be controlled by the in-breath of a cormorant. Chock-full of charming characters and hilarious set-pieces this is a hugely enjoyable novel that will make you see life anew.
jimmy4559

So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away by Richard Brautigan (book review) - 0 views

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    So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away is hugely underrated in the Brautigan canon. The narrative is laced with a sense of sadness for a lost way of life, the loss of childhood and the death of the American gothic, something Brautigan blames on television for the way it "crippled the imagination of America and turned people indoors and away from living out their fantasies with dignity". Whereas in earlier works, Brautigan's characters viewed the world with child-like fascination, in this last book he reverses the process by examining a child's world through an adult's sad and diminishing gaze. It's a summation of all that Brautigan had previously achieved but in the harsher, colder climate of the late 20th century.
jimmy4559

The Levels by Peter Benson (book review) - 0 views

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    Drove House has always loomed large over village life. Boarded-up for years, it is reputed to be brimming with ghosts, and is shunned by the locals - all except Billy, for whom it has been the site of childhood dens and secret adolescent adventures. When the captivating Muriel moves in with her bohemian mother, they sweep out the ghosts and breathe new life into both the house and Billy's quiet rural existence. After an idyllic summer, though, Muriel returns to her life in London, and the newly empty Drove House becomes the backdrop for Billy's struggle to reconcile the vanishing agricultural lifestyle he has inherited with the glimpses of a baffling new way of life Muriel seemed to offer. Charting the conflict between these two competing worlds, Peter Benson's award-winning first novel is at once a lyrical portrait of the landscape of the Somerset Levels and a touching evocation of first love.
jimmy4559

Scenes from the Life of a Best-Selling Author by Michael Krüger (book review) - 0 views

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    This is a funny book, funny-strange and funny-ha-ha. All the writing leans towards the absurd but mostly without the capital A. These are the kind of pieces where you want to go right back to the start of a story once you've finished it to see what you missed. They are slight but tightly written and they treat the reader with respect. Krüger leads you along the garden path and then leaves you to find your way home yourself. That may annoy some readers but I was far from annoyed and I'd happily read this guy again.
jimmy4559

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (book review) - 0 views

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    Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it s up to her. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart.
jimmy4559

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (book review) - 0 views

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    A squad of soldiers get caught on camera by a Fox news team. The video goes viral. They were already heroes. Now they become celebrities. For two weeks at least. The army seizes on an opportunity to get some good press and sends these soldiers on a 'Victory Tour' culminating in an appearance in front of millions on TV at a Dallas Cowboys football game. What exactly were these men fighting for? "The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom's apple pie. That's what everyone's fighting for." That's what Yossarian says in Catch-22. Billy Lynn is no longer so sure.
jimmy4559

Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare (book review) - 0 views

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    WW2 is about to start but life for a young boy in a small town in Albania is still a game. Yet, as the town falls to the Italians, the Greeks, then the Nazis, the boy grows up. Falling in love with unattainable women, seduced by magic and literature and finally forced to flee, his existence changes from marvellous, terrifying and extraordinary into a primitive world where the severed arm of a British airman becomes a talisman and girls vanish-possibly killed by their own fathers. Forging the unexpected and terrible link between childish playfulness and a horrifying political future, Kadare has created a story with a depth and brilliance characteristic of the master story-teller.
jimmy4559

Milligan and Murphy by Jim Murdoch - 0 views

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    There are no reasons for unreasonable things. Following in the footsteps of Samuel Beckett's tramps from 'Waiting for Godot' Milligan and Murphy finally cut the ties to their ma's apron strings and head out into the big bad world. But they are not alone. Someone is looking after then. Someone else is cycling after them. Will they get to see the sea and once they have what then? Scottish author Jim Murdoch's new novel is an existentialist delight.
jimmy4559

Can You Eat, Shoot and Leave? by Clare Dignall (book review) - 0 views

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    For anyone who bought and enjoyed reading 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynee Truss, felt guilty for five minutes after finishing it that their own punctuation skills were lacking and then put the book on a shelf and went back to their haphazard ways Harper Collins have now released a workbook called 'Can You Eat, Shoot and Leave?' Written in s similar style and tone to the original book this is a timely and necessary help for those of us who feel their school English lessons slipping away.
jimmy4559

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé (book review) - 0 views

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    A collection of fantastic tales by the French writer Marcel Aymé including his most famous story which has been filmed several times. Reminiscent of Borges in many ways he tells tales of men who can pass through solid objects, women who can replicate themselves, about governments who legislate leaps in time or who ration life all presented, in the best magic realism tradition, as the most ordinary things in the world.
jimmy4559

It Choose You by Miranda July (book review) - 0 views

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    In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing a screenplay. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out - or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of sellers, glimpsing 13 surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.
jimmy4559

Ugly to Start With by John Michael Cummings (book review) - 0 views

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    In some respects this is just another book about growing up. We all have to do it and none of find it easy. Growing up in a small town in America is bad enough but growing up in one of the most beautiful spots in America probably accentuates how ugly the rest of life can get. In these interlinked short stories we get to see one boy's struggles as he tries to understand the world about him and why he isn't always attracted to the beautiful things in his life.
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