Football Coach Pro
Sports and Productivity
App
Football Coach Pro is a play editor, practice designer, and team management app for American or...
ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Beasts of Paris in Books
Oct 1, 2024
There’s Victor, the assistant vet at the Menagerie; Anne has been an inmate at the women’s Salpetriere asylum for many years, provided entertainment for paying Parisians thanks to the immoral Dr. Jospin, and now comes to work as the Chief Vet’s maid at the Menagerie; Ellis is hiding his trauma from the American Civil War where he was a doctor, and is attempting to become a poet; and Lawrence is a Canadian Photographer.
We learn of the horrors of the siege and the further horrors of its aftermath. The descriptions of these events and how the Parisians both live through and cope with deprivation and fear, are emotional and engaging.
I was left wondering who exactly the Parisian beasts were; those inside or outside the menagerie?
Just an excellent story.
Banff Lake Louise Yoho GyPSy Guide
Travel and Navigation
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GyPSy Guide GPS driving tour of the Banff, Lake Louise and Yoho areas is a great way to the see some...
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated American War in Books
Sep 27, 2017
And it’s FANTASTIC.
El Akkad did an absolutely amazing job of weaving together the North/South rivalry of the US, climate change, the changing nature of energy generation, and US wars in the middle east to write an all-too-plausible novel about the US, seventy years from now.
Alternating between narrative chapters following his protagonist, and “historical documents” about the time period, he masterfully tells the story of how a terrorist is made. Because that’s what Sarat, his protagonist, is. Let’s make no bones about that. She is a terrorist. But she is a terrorist whose reasoning makes sense to us. Perhaps because the territories and the peoples are familiar to us, perhaps because we see how she grew up and what drove her to it – but the end result is a terrorist act on an unheard-of scale.
I’d like to think this book would make people look at refugees and terrorists in a new light – with more understanding and compassion and maybe with ideas to help actually combat the attitudes and circumstances that lead to terrorist acts. But I doubt it. I doubt this will change any minds that don’t already understand the underlying reasons.
My only quibble with this book is while he manages to weave together so many other issues facing our country right now, he doesn’t really wrap in racism. And I have a hard time believing our country is past racism 70 years from now.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find the protagonist is a bisexual, gender non-conforming woman of color. How awesome is that? And her bisexuality isn’t mentioned, it’s shown, her one on-screen sex scene (and it’s only barely on-screen) being with a woman. (She’s also attracted to a man in the book.)
The author was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, and lived in Canada, earning at least one award for his investigative reporting while working at The Globe and Mail. He’s one of the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s 17 writers to watch this year, and I see why. American War is definitely one of my favorite books of 2017.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
Topo Maps for iPad
Navigation and Travel
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* The iPad is a fantastic map viewer, and Topo Maps for iPad gives it access to over 70,000 USGS and...
Having - inadvertently - previously saved the life of Prince Khoosie of the state of Jhamjarh, this novel starts with Bandy travelling to that continent to help them set up their own air force: an air force that is viewed with some misgivings by the (British) powers-that-be, who are convinced that it will be used against them and who refuse to heed any warnings about an uprising that is planned by another Indian state, even going so far as to take their side against Jhamjarh.
As things turn out, of course, the British government have it all backwards …
As I've said before, I found the quality of these novels to have declined in direct proportion to their settings: for my money, the earlier books (set during and just after WW1) are far superior to these later instalments. Having said that, I did find this one to be more enjoyable than its immediate predecessor, with a few laugh-out-loud moments and a further insight into just how Bandy's First World War experiences have affected him
Cruelty-Free
Shopping and Lifestyle
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Know which brands are cruelty-free while you're on the go! Use this handy shopping guide to find...
The Daily Telegraph Book of Military Obituaries: Book 3
David Twiston Davies and Bramall
Book
David Twiston Davies's latest and highly entertaining collection of 100 Daily Telegraph military...
Jacob-Isaac Segal: A Montreal Yiddish Poet and His Milieu
Pierre Anctil and Vivian Felsen
Book
Born in the Ukraine in 1896, and settling in Montreal in 1910, Segal became one of the first Yiddish...
The Millennial City: Trends, Implications, and Prospects for Urban Planning and Policy
Markus Moos, Deirdre Pfeiffer and Tara Vinodrai
Book
Millennials have captured our imaginaries in recent years. The conventional wisdom is that this...