Amy and Lan
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Amy Connell and Lan Honey are having the best childhood, growing up on a West Country farm - three...
Literary Fiction Coming of Age
Sisters
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Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July and September. Desperate for a fresh start,...
Literary Fiction Gothic
Remarkably Bright Creatures
10.0
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After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night cleaner shift at the Sowell Bay...
Animals Magical Realism Octopus Literary Fiction
The List
8.0
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ONLINE RUMOURS. REAL LIFE TROUBLE. Ola Olajide, a high-profile journalist, is marrying the love...
Literary Fiction Feminism
David McK (3372 KP) rated Sherlock Holmes (2009) in Movies
Nov 1, 2020 (Updated Jan 13, 2024)
Unlike the more-contemporary set TV 'Sherlock', this is still set in Victorian times although, I have to say, that I never really took to the portrayal of Holmes in this film at all. It's also a completely-new (to the best of my knowledge) mystery for him to solve; not based on any of the Conan Doyle stories. That's both a good thing and a bad thing: it does mean that it's 'fresh' (unlike, say, another retelling of 'The Hounds of the Baskervilles'), but - I have to say - it also lacks the fun, the sense of mystery, the sheer enthrallment of the Conan Doyle stories.
Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated A Life of My Own: A Biographer's Life in Books
Nov 29, 2017
From an unstable childhood, moving from place to place during the war, with her family living across several countries, to having an unstable marriage. She describes her unusual relationship with her first husband, the renowned journalist Nick Tomalin, who was killed while covering the Yom Kippur war in 1973. His constant fleeting from his family to other women, and abusive behaviour is dark and quite a difficult read. In this instance, Tomalin appears to be stuck in a pattern of staying with her abuser for the sake of her children, a common occurrence in the 1960's. In between the chaos of her life, she loses a baby only one month old and has another who is permanently disabled.
In the same way, the dark, inexplicable suicide of her youngest daughter is laid bare, but out of it comes a change of direction of life dimension as Claire's vocation as a literary biographer floods in to fill the gap. These are, ironically, the most touching and well-written scenes. Through her own writings of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charles Dickens' affair with Ellen Ternan, we see Tomalin's own creativity and resilience. She copes because she must, and because she can.
The literary name dropping is everywhere because it is woven into the huge patchwork quilt of her long life. The candour of her resentment for the Murdoch empire is matched by the awe and admiration she has for Harold Evans and her mother.
One of the final scenes, in which she describes her father's great grandchildren dancing unknowingly on the bed, where he himself lay dead in his coffin only hours before, encapsulates the spirit of this beautiful book. A truly wonderful look into her life.
Cyn Armistead (14 KP) rated and Falling, Fly (Harrowing #1) in Books
Mar 1, 2018
After the first few chapters, there's no slowing down, because you're as caught up in what's happening as the characters are. I was transfixed by White's descriptions, which can make even ugliness fascinating.
<blockquote>We are traveling into time, burning two hours for every one I endure beside this babbling, cursed child of Greece. I see them all the time, these bastard half children of stories and mortals, trapped between worlds, the genetic lineage of myth reasserting itself across the inextricable ages. Helen of Troy is born the socialite child of a partial Zeus mated to half of a swan-loving Leda, the mythic DNA in each of them dormant until they breed and damn their offspring with its expression.</blockquote>
White's vampire mythos is like no other I've encountered. I found it far more believable than most of what's being printed over and over and over again. Another refreshing thing about the book is that there's no feeling of a set up for a series. Oddly, though, I'm now seeing the book identified as the first of a series called Harrowing, at least on GoodReads, but as far as I can tell, the second book has no characters in common with the first. Perhaps it's simply set in the same universe?
In any case, I've added [b:In Dreams Begin|7850577|In Dreams Begin|Skyler White|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1269478625s/7850577.jpg|10971303] to my to-read stack, and I'll be keeping an eye on [a:Skyler White|2977214|Skyler White|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1290046039p2/2977214.jpg].
Charles Dickens: A Life
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Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography by bestselling author Claire Tomalin Charles...
Southern Frontier Humor: An Anthology
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If, as some suggest, American literature began with "Huckleberry Finn", then the humorists of the...
The Southern Transjordan/Edomite Plateau and the Dead Sea Rift Valley to the West: The Bronze Age Through the Islamic Period (3800/3700 BC-AD 1917)
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Burton MacDonald presents an in-depth study of the archaeology and history of human presence over...