The Seven Ancient Wonders in the Early Modern World
Inmaculada Rodriguez and Victor Minguez
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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have had a lasting impact upon the intellectual landscape of...
Read Harder
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This volume collects the finest essays from the second half of the Believer's decade-long (and...
The Dybbuk: A Play in Four Acts
S. Ansky, Henry G. Alsberg, Winifred Katzin and Gilbert W. Gabriel
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The Dybbuk, regarded as the classic drama of the Yiddish stage, has long frightened yet fascinated...
Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording Music and Its Effect on Music
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Repeated Takes is the first general book on the history of the recording industry, covering the...
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic in Books
Jan 12, 2018
In Nora Fischer, we have a modern, independent, feminist woman transported to a place and time where women are inferior (by nature, most think.) There are even linguistic influences that make them inferior; women speak with a lot of "um" and "well" type words in their speech, while men don't. When Nora protests that this makes women's speech sound weaker, she's told that that's "just how women speak." Seeing her confronted with the sexism ingrained within the medieval style culture, and seeing her confront Aruendiel with how sexist it actually is, was a wonderful sub-plot of the book.
The main plot was well-paced and interesting - after being kidnapped by Ilissa at the beginning of the book, and enchanted into being a beautiful, love-struck little ninny, Nora recovers herself with the help of Aruendiel, and spends the rest of the book evading re-capture and finding her place in this new world. The descriptions are colorful, the characters are deep and fascinating, and the land and culture itself shows just how much thought went into creating this world. This is an absolutely spectacular debut novel, in my opinion, and I cannot WAIT for the sequel, since Barker did leave a few questions unanswered at the end of the book. I really can't rave about this book enough. If you like fantasy, (or Pride and Prejudice, since this book, while not attempting to be a retelling or anything, had a lot of the same feel) you should really pick this one up.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird
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Turkey vultures, the most widely distributed and abundant scavenging birds of prey on the planet,...
Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human
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In Biocultural Creatures, Samantha Frost brings feminist and political theory together with findings...
Pacific Odyssey
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The South Pacific Islands conjure dreams of romantic charm and escape from the pressures of modern...
Corporate Insolvency Law: Perspectives and Principles
Vanessa Finch, David Milman and Sandra Frisby
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This new edition of Corporate Insolvency Law builds on the unique and influential analytical...
Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre
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Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its...