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Amy Poehler recommended A Tale of Two Cities in Books (curated)

 
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens | 1859 | Fiction & Poetry
7.3 (22 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"When stories become iconic, you sometimes forget what made them so special in the first place. They can become the punch line to a joke. But A Tale of Two Cities not only has the best first line ever written—’It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’—it’s got everything! The novel has wine, guillotines, revolution! It has the storming of the Bastille! It has Madame Defarge, one of the best villains in any literary novel. At the end, it’s got a little romantic switcheroo: One man stands in the place of another and dies for the woman he loves. The first line is fitting right now. It’s a very have and have-not time. It’s certainly the most hopeful period for our country but also a very bleak one for a lot of people"

Source
  
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David McK (3623 KP) rated Moving Pictures in Books

Jul 11, 2021  
Moving Pictures
Moving Pictures
Terry Pratchett | 2005 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
Discworld Industrial Revolution #1
<2021 update>

I hadn't realised that this book had the first appearance(s) of Ponder Stibbons, Arch-Chancellor Mustrum Ridcully alongside that of Gaspode the Wonder Dog! (well, maybe I knew the latter)

<original review>

Book #10 in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which (for my money) stands alongside Soul Music as one of his best works, perhaps because these are the two books it is easiest to catch the many allusions in!

This is the one where Discworld discovers the magic of the Motion Picture, culminating in a not-quite-right scene of a giant lady carrying a screaming ape up a tall building (Ankh-Morpork's Tower of Art in the Unseen University), and is also, perhaps, the only book where CMOT Dibbler is actually a major character rather than an extra.
  
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ClareR (5996 KP) rated The Good Women of China in Books

Nov 4, 2017  
The Good Women of China
The Good Women of China
Xinran | 2017 | Biography, History & Politics
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
An unflinching view of the lives of Chinese women in communist China. (0 more)
Eye opening
Xinran was a radio journalist in China who collected the stories of women who had stories to tell. This is a side of China that we don't really hear of: women who had lived through the cultural revolution and the damage it had inflicted on their lives. How women were still pretty much regarded as chattel, homosexuality was a criminal offence, women were sexually coerced, raped and unwillingly married off to high standing officials. This is just a small selection of the lives of women in these stories. You can hear the voices of these women as though they're in the room with you. The stories are often heartbreaking. I'm so glad I picked this book up - and all because the authors name began with an X (for an alphabet reading challenge!!).