A Historian in Exile: Solomon ibn Verga, Shevet Yehudah, and the Jewish-Christian Encounter
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Solomon ibn Verga was one of the victims of the decrees expelling the Jews from Spain and Portugal...
A Victorian Scientist and Engineer: Fleeming Jenkin and the Birth of Electrical Engineering
Gillian Cookson and Colin Hempstead
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This title was first published in 2000: In a life of only 52 years, Fleeming Jenkin established his...
Amnesties, Pardons and Transitional Justice: Spain's Pact of Forgetting
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In a consolidated democracy, amnesties and pardons do not sit well with equality and a separation of...
Arab Orthodox Christians Under the Ottomans 1516-1831
Samuel Noble, Constantin Alexandrovich Panchenko and Brittany Pheiffer Noble
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Following the so called "Arab Spring" the world's attention has been drawn to the presence of...
Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby
Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss
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How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make...
Enterprise Content Management, Records Management and Information Culture Amidst E-Government Development
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This book identifies key factors necessary for a well-functioning information infrastructure and...
Great Railway Maps of the World
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From Mark Ovenden, the author of London Underground by Design and Metro Maps of the World, comes...
Karen Gillan recommended Funny Games (2007) in Movies (curated)
ClareR (5561 KP) rated Luckenbooth in Books
Feb 14, 2021
Luckenbooth piqued my interest as soon as I saw the cover photo - and then I read the synopsis. How could it possibly NOT appeal to me? I mean, the devils daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin to work for the Minister of Culture. I was hooked. It’s not all about her though. The book is split into three sections, each section revolving around three different characters, and we see glimpses in to their lives. There are people from all walks of life: strippers, spies, maids, a black human rights lawyer with a bone mermaid, drug addicts, poets, a medium. These are all people who live on the edge of society (within No. 10 Luckenbooth Close, anyway!), people who have little - and they live in a tenement that has been cursed by the devils daughter.
The stories seem not to be linked to one another, and their only link is the fact that they all live in the same tenement building. I really enjoyed these snapshots, any one of them could have been longer and I would have enjoyed them just as much. This fed my love of short stories though, and I really liked how reality was mixed with the more supernatural elements.
I will have to dig out my copies of Fagans books The Sunlight Pilgrims and The Panopticon, languishing in my Kindle library - this has really made me want to read her other books.
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book through NetGalley.
Sarah (7798 KP) rated Onward (2020) in Movies
Oct 5, 2020 (Updated Oct 5, 2020)
A Pixar film with a fantasy setting, what's not to like? It's a great take on elves, wizards and mythical creatures and also relevant to today's society with it's cultural references and technological advancements. And unicorns acting like stray cats? Genius. The plot itself is exactly the type of quest you'd expect in a fantasy, with your typical Disney/Pixar tropes (dead parent). However this story doesn't necessarily turn out the way you'd expect and I have to commend Pixar for not being predictable. Like Frozen before it, this plays out in a rather emotional and heartwarming yet fairly unexpected way. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get any "feels" watching this!
There's no real need to say that this film looks amazing. I think it'd be more surprising if a Pixar film didn't. It also has a great voice cast although my only real negative of this film is that I felt like the cast could've been given more to work with. It may have just been me not paying attention, but I struggled to even notice John Ratzenberger (which is like missing the late Stan Lee in a Marvel film).
Onward is an unusual Pixar film. For me it falls between the aforementioned categories. It's not "bad" enough to just be very good but it's not quite brilliant, although I did enjoy it very much and laughed a lot more than I was expecting.