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**Winner of the 2013-2014 Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature****2015 Sakura...
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This portable, user-friendly Tagalog language guide, phrasebook and dictionary is the cheapest and...
The World of Myth: An Anthology
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Since its publication in 1991, The World of Myth has provided thousands of students with a...
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R. Barton Palmer and Amanda Ann Klein
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With sequels, prequels, remakes, spin-offs, or copies of successful films or franchises dominating...
Zwilling J.A. Henkels Complete Book of Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to Use, Techniques & Care
Jeffrey Elliot, Zwilling J.A. Henckels and James P. DeWan
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Every home chef needs a knife skills book. Cooks who know how to choose a knife, how to maintain it...
Battleships of the World: Struggle for Naval Supremacy 1820 - 1945
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The battleships of the world's navies in the 1820s were descended directly in line from the Revenge...
ClareR (5686 KP) rated Build Your Home Around My Body in Books
Jul 28, 2021
Winnie is a lost soul - she has gone to Vietnam to stay with family while she teaches English to Vietnamese students, hoping to find herself, but she seems to become more and more lost as the story progresses. She struggles with her dual identity as her mother is American, and her father is Vietnamese. The fact that she seems to deliberately sabotage her own life is the most tragic thing about her.
The time does jump around a bit, but this didn’t confuse me at all - the chapter headings made sure of that - in fact they gave some interesting history lessons (e.g. French colonialism, Japanese occupation).
It’s a weird and wonderful one (my favourite kind!), sometimes bordering on the grotesque (ditto). Bodily functions and food that I wasn’t sure about, galore! (I’d still try the food though, although I draw the line at dog…).
The supernatural elements showed that these things are still very much a part of Vietnamese culture (spirits and demons both feature).
Some parts are achingly sad, some made me feel a bit ill, and others were actually quite amusing. I couldn’t put this book down. The joy of it was that I didn’t know, couldn’t predict, what was going to happen next!
I’m really interested to see what Kupersmith writes next if this is her debut - what an imagination!
Many thanks to Jellybooks for giving me the chance to read this wonderful book.
Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated High and Low (1963) in Movies
Jan 28, 2021
It plays like two films for the price of one, the first a claustrophobic mood piece with a staged feel, reminding me of Hitchcock’s Rope, and the second a frantic chase movie where the forensic evidence is picked apart in intricate detail, like a less graphic Seven. The print on BFI is not great, so it actually feels older than it is. It is also pretty long at 143 minutes, and feels like it takes an age to get going. Therefore, although some moments and key images have stayed with me, I can’t honestly say I felt gripped or tense in any way. The stakes didn’t feel as high as I would have hoped for, and tonally it is a little uneven. In conclusion, it has much to offer and details in isolation are very impressive, but for me it was something of a let down.