Naturally Sassy: My Recipes for an Energised, Healthy and Happy You - Deliciously Free from Meat, Dairy and Wheat
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"My aim is to make changing the way you eat easy, attainable and non-threatening. I want to take...
Banged Up: Doing Time in Britain's Toughest Jails
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The wartime double agent with a transmitter in his cell to contact suffragettes; the doctor hanged...
Pleasures of the Garden: A Literary Anthology
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This collection of classic garden writing celebrates the garden as a place of solace in a busy...
Hunter's Desire (Dark Reserves #2)
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What if you can’t feel anything anymore? Hunter is many things: a tough cop, an ex-army ranger...
Matched By My Rival (Thrust Into Love #2)
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Simon Prentiss: ex-football star, bitter rival, and...falling for the enemy? I hate my teammate,...
Contemporary MM Romance
Shouting Match (Amore Matchmaking #1)
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After the death of his father, Capone Lombardi was tasked not only with keeping his father’s...
Cyn Armistead (14 KP) rated Wolf Who Rules (Elfhome, #2) in Books
Mar 1, 2018
I guess it's just been too long since I read <i>Tinker</i>, but I don't really remember any hints of polyamory there at all. In this book, though, it's made very clear that elven society has found monogamy to be an unreasonable model for people who normally live thousands of years. Anybody who hasn't read Tinker shouldn't read this review, because there are spoilers for that book - but hey, that's to be expected in the review for a sequel. Just knowing that certain characters live and marry is a spoiler!
Anyway, Tinker may be an elf now, but she was raised as a human, and apparently the half-elven quasi-nursemaid Tooloo who has always been part of her life either doesn't know about the difference in societal expectations, or never saw fit to mention it. That isn't so surprising, as Tooloo is depicted as several tacos short of a combo plate. But why, when some of the elves (especially Stormsong) are shown to be familiar with human culture, haven't any of them anticipated this as a source of trouble in Tinker and Wolf's marriage? Why doesn't anybody ever just sit down and say, "Look, honey, the rulers only choose guards with whom they get along well, and with opposite-sex guards, that can mean getting along with sexually. Your new husband has had sex with all of his female bodyguards in the past, and it's expected that you'll eventually take your own male Sekasha as lovers, too. Deal." (I'm not even starting on how very heteronormative everything is. You're telling me there's all that lucious pretty and thousands of years in which to experiment, and nobody ever crosses those streams, so to speak? Yeah, right.) There's a perfect opening for such a speech in the book, a point when the need for it is made very, very obvious--but I suppose having it all out in the open would remove a source of conflict.
Why are so many authors so bloody timid about laying things out like that, about showing healthy communication between people? Yes, we can imagine the most amazing advances in technology, and societies very different from our current ones, but by Goddess we must continue to show people screwing up their relationships in exactly the same way as in Shakespeare's day or nobody could relate to them!
Erika Kehlet (21 KP) rated Station Eleven in Books
Feb 21, 2018
This book is, at its heart, a story of survival and resilience. It starts at a point in time just as the flu pandemic is beginning. We meet a variety of individuals at a performance of Kind Lear, and then follow several of them both forward and back ward in time, learning about their past, and watching as their futures unfold in the new world. The author's main focus is on the characters, what drives them, what mattered to them before the collapse of civilization and afterwards, and their personal relationships more than the disaster itself.
Kirsten Potter does an excellent job with the narration - her voice and timing were a pleasure to listen to.
I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook, and would recommend it to fans of almost any type of fiction or word lovers in general. It was so full of memorable quotes, that I caught myself jotting them down to read later, and that isn't something I normally do. Since I have them though, I'd like to leave you with a few of my favorites....
Hell is the absence of the people you long for.
It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape.
What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more youve lost.
First we only want to be seen, but once were seen, thats not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.
She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.
There are certain qualities of light that blur the years.
"Before you fully enter into our world, you must remember it’s all a game. What happens beyond this gate may frighten or excite you, but don’t let any of it trick you. We will try to convince you it’s real, but all of it is a performance."
Meet Scarlett and Tella Dragna - two sisters living in an island, governed by their father, who shows up to be such a cunt. He punishes them without any mercy. Beat and torture them and even kill a man to teach them a lesson. But Scarlett found their only way out from this bloody island- she gonna marry to a governor. Although it is an arranged marriage she can see clearly the situation and to understand that this is the only salvation for her and her sister. But life has other plans for them. When they received three tickets for the annual Caraval show, Tella kidnapped her, with the help of mysterious sails man, to the mysterious show’s island. And then the game began.
The Caraval is ruled by a man called Legend. Nobody saw his face, nobody knows his name. He is only known for his passion for games. Although his games can draw people to madness, everybody wants to play. And this year award is so tempting that nobody can resist. Who doesn’t want to get a wish come true?
It’s a magical book that took me away from reality for couple hours. But it’s not fully developed. There is not a built world, just some islands in the middle of somewhere. No world named, or government, nothing. This came as drawback for me, I missed the illusion that actually this world does exists. Another shortage for me is that the characters are not fully developed as well. I liked the way that Scar describes her feelings in colours, but there is almost nothing personal to learn about her. The major thing in the book is the Game. In some points I believed that everything that happened is true. All decisions are life treating. I’ve got lost between the pages, absorbed by the magic. I probably forgot that “it’s only a game”.
The Art of the Burger: More Than 50 Recipes to Elevate America's Favorite Meal to Perfection
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The essential book to have on hand before you fire up the grill this summer. In any city around the...