![]() ![]() Hoff employs Piglet, Owl, Eeyore, Rabbit, and Christopher to show that qualities such as knowledge and industry, while traditionally revered by society, can stand in the way of contentment. ![]() His friends, lacking the requisite simplicity, also benefit from Pooh’s calm nature. Throughout the work, Pooh’s simple, intuitive approach to life serves him well. Those who fail to rely on intuition often find themselves discontent in their careers and unhappy in their relationships. Active or aggressive engagement is discouraged. In fact, Hoff stresses that intuition is to be valued in all things, as a natural and even passive approach to life. Hoff includes examples of each of the principles to guide readers toward an implicit understanding of Tao. Yet, he cautions that the truth will be obscured from the reader who tries too hard to understand. In addition to the Milne characters, Hoff includes other stories and parables to illustrate Taoist principles.Īt the outset, Hoff states the purpose of the book: “It’s about how to stay happy and calm under all circumstances” (x). ![]() Hoff populates the allegory with Milne’s characters, who variously represent both characteristics that should be developed as well as those to be avoided. Many of the book’s passages are devoted to Taoist concepts such as the Empty Mind, Wu Wei, and the Uncarved Block. ![]()
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![]() ![]() This is underscored in more ways than one when Elena finally gets a nod of acceptance from Raphael’s mother, the feared elder Caliane. ![]() Each pairing in the series is incredible, and these two definitely hold their own as they deal with their dark pasts and forge a future together.Īt the heart of the story is Elena’s continued evolution into her role as Raphael’s consort. ![]() Janvier and Ashwini, who kicked off the series in the prequel novella, Angels Pawn, finally have their story, and it definitely lives up in every way to the promise from so long ago. While the author gives us a deeper look into many of the characters who’ve been introduced along the way, we still have more questions than answers, and I, for one, am looking forward to learning a lot more, especially about Aodhan and Nasir’s back stories as the series continues. I actually had to read it twice before I picked up all the nuances. This novel, though, in my opinion, needs to be savored slowly to get the most out of it. Singh is an incredible writer and I feel blessed to have her novels be a part of my reading life. Urban Fantasy published by Jove 28 Oct 14 Veena’s review of Archangel’s Shadows (Guild Hunter, Book 7) by Nalini Singh ![]() ![]() ![]() Finally, the Absurd quest itself is traced extensively throughout Inherent Vice by following its main character, Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello. ![]() ![]() The Absurd quality of the California setting will be elaborated upon next. Then Humour of the Absurd, or Black Humour, central to Pynchon is described. The thesis will begin by discussing the relationship between paranoia, anti-paranoia and the Absurd, followed by the Absurd quest prevalent in Pynchon’s fiction. This thesis will seek to illuminate to what extent Pynchon instils paranoia within the absurd reality imposed upon the central character in Inherent Vice during his quest. Little discussion exists regarding the relationship between paranoia, anti-paranoia and the Absurd, and the combined influence they have on Thomas Pynchon’s central characters. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I was drawn to Piper right away - she's a sympathetic character, strong and sassy and a little self-deprecating. This is a story with a lot of heart and the tone's a really nice mix of humorous and serious. As Piper gets to know the five flavors of Dumb, she'll learn more about rock and roll and about herself than she ever would have guessed. It's everything she wanted - her ticket to fame and fortune - but she'll have to get them a paying gig before the first month is over or she's fired. And somehow she ends up accepting a job as their manager. ![]() She doesn't have to hear to know that they're completely not together, "all style, no substance". Maybe that's why she opens her big mouth after the newest winners of Seattle's Teen Battle of the Bands serenade everyone on the steps of the school one morning. Piper feels like no one listens to what she has to say and now that her dream of going to Gallaudet University, a deaf college in DC, is on precarious ground, maybe no one ever will. And, worst of all, she finds out that her parents "borrowed" money from her college fund to pay for her baby sister's cochlear implants - surgical devices that will give hearing to Grace. Her dad refused to learn to sign when she lost her hearing at the age of six, even though it's how she prefers to communicate. ![]() ![]() ![]() Honestly, I cannot state that this is the best Heinlein’s juvenile, there are a few I’d prefer, but it is quite solid if you like the author or have a nostalgia about good old SF, with not much sex and gore. There is a lot of edu-tainment, Heinlein style, a bit of hand-waving technology to advance the plot and, as usual for RAH, a lot of adventure in space and on the planet. Heinlein wrote an amazing string of novels which made the New York Times best seller list and shipped over a million copies each, including Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, Friday. ![]() ![]() The story takes place on overpopulated Earth, from which the protagonist and his family moves to the moon of Jupiter, Ganymede to settle a farm there. While today I can clearly see the severe censorship the author met in his juveniles, which are quite unlike either modern YA books or his own works for more mature audience, it is great how he overcome it to preach his vision on how a man (they are mostly for boys after all) should behave – honest, helping, independent and self-reliant. I enjoyed the novel then and I liked it now. I’ve read this book in Russian translation some 25 years ago and now re-read the original. The Earth is crowded and food is rationed, but a colony on Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter, offers an escape for teenager Bill Lermer and his family. ![]() ![]() ![]() Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As her and her mother really sat and thought about this news her mother threw a lot that comes with the baby into Novembers mind. One of Josh’s good friends named Jericho stepped in to fill in on Josh’s absents. November was upset at herself because she knew her life was coming to an end when this baby came. ![]() It was the worst thing she could ever hear from her own daughter, her mother was heartbroken. She would go to the doctor by herself and one time with a friend, then she finally came out and her told her mother. The only people she told were a few of her close friends. “Two months after Novembers boyfriend Josh dies of a hazing accident, her high school senior year she discovers she is pregnant.” It was hard for her to let her mom know that her own daughter was pregnant. She is a nice person but a bad influence when it comes to herself and loving someone deeply. A girl named November finds herself in some type of hole that she cannot get out of without help. ![]() ![]() ![]() His sons and one daughter were model children but his other five daughters were intoxicated with their wealth and could not see beyond that. There lived a rich merchant with six sons and six daughters in a land where trade flourished plentifully. ***** Everything below is a SPOILER ***** What happened in Beauty and the Beast? ![]() Visit her blog to read her reviews, and check the end of the review for a link to her Instagram. Sarina enjoys bringing forth a different perspective and encouraging a different way of thinking through her writing. Special thanks to Sarina Byron, a BSR contributor who wrote this great recap! Sarina is a British Author and Contributing Writer living in California. If you are wondering what happened in Beauty and the Beast, then you are in the right place! Read a full summary of Beauty and the Beast by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve right here! This page is full of spoilers, so beware. ![]() ![]() ![]() The novel was the only instrument that mattered. But he was essentially a monomaniac, a fanatic of fiction. ![]() His memoir of his father, “Patrimony,” is a beautiful book. ![]() Roth wrote some essays, and some of them are really fine. He would not cease from exploration he could not cease and the varieties of fiction existed in order for him to explore the varieties of experience. But I admired him above all other living American novelists because his life and work had the only quality that really matters: that of unceasing necessity. Lawrence, who seems Roth’s truer precursor in every way.) You could find him at times repetitive, only intermittently good you could certainly find his increasingly conservative politics resistible, and hope that, one day, he might represent relations between men and women as something other than purely erotic. (In the English tradition, that writer would be D. Maybe you have to go back to the very different Henry James to find an American novelist so purely a bundle of words, so restlessly and absolutely committed to the investigation and construction of life through language. And didn’t many of us assume that the public retirement was merely private retrenchment-that Philip Roth was still writing every day at home, because he could never not write? More than any other postwar American novelist, Roth wrote the self-the self was examined, cajoled, lampooned, fictionalized, ghosted, exalted, disgraced, but above all constituted by and in writing. ![]() ![]() ![]() But is his mission of separating Susanna from Lord Riverton simply a desire to save another unsuspecting lady from his sister’s fate, or something deeper?Īs Susanna helps Lord Westcott investigate her future fiance, she realizes she might have found what she was looking for all along. Driven by his own guilt and despair, the earl embraces this chance encounter as an opportunity for vengeance, for Lord Riverton is the very man whom Wescott suspects is responsible for the untimely death of his beloved sister. But still, Susanna longs for true, passionate love, the kind she grew up hearing stories about.Įnjoying a quiet walk with her insipid suitor one afternoon, Susanna is nearly trampled by the handsome Earl of Westcott as he rides through Hyde Park. To avoid a life of spinsterhood, she decides a loveless marriage to the dull and unromantic Lord Riverton is better than none at all. Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Booksĭespite being beautiful and wealthy, Lady Susanna Macalister’s marriage prospects are rather lacking. ![]() |