The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2017 AND THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2017 THE...
The Labor of Job: The Biblical Text as a Parable of Human Labor
Antonio Negri, Matteo Mandarini and Michael Hardt
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In The Labor of Job, the renowned Marxist political philosopher Antonio Negri develops an unorthodox...
A Lawless Breed: John Wesley Hardin, Texas Reconstruction, and Violence in the Wild West
Chuck Parsons, Leon C. Metz and Norman Wayne Brown
Book
John Wesley Hardin! His name spread terror in much of Texas in the years following the Civil War as...
The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend
2.0
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A gripping retelling of the timeless epic of romance, enchantment and adventure, Peter Ackroyd's The...
The Master and Margarita
Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky and Mikhail Afanasevich Bulgakov
7.0
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Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is a fiercely satirical fantasy that remained...
The Nowhere Man
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That rare thing, a sequel which is better than the original, The Nowhere Man is a thrilling,...
Intimate Geography: Selected Poems 1991-2010
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Jennifer Maiden's "Intimate Geography" charts territory both personal and political, private and...
ClareR (6256 KP) rated City of Vengeance in Books
Mar 30, 2021
Cesare Aldo is an officer of the criminal court and a former soldier, and when we first meet him, he is riding home to Florence from Bologna with the Jewish moneylender he’s protecting. This is where we learn just how good Also is at this part of his job. His charge reaches his home safely, despite an encounter with bandits.
Thinking he has finished his job well, Also leaves the moneylender at his home and thinks nothing more of it - until the moneylender is murdered.
Also is tasked with finding the murderer within four days, which seems impossible. Especially when you factor in all the trouble that Aldo manages to get himself in to!
Meanwhile another constable of the criminal court, Strocchi, is investigating the death of a young man. The only problem, is that he was murdered whilst wearing a dress, and homosexuality is illegal. Finding his murderer isn’t high on the courts list of priorities - in fact, there are those who work there who believe that he has got exactly what he deserves.
There’s loads of mystery and intrigue in this book, as well as heaps of historical detail. It’s fast-paced and totally unputdownable. It shows the seedier, more difficult side of life at this time, especially when we get a look in to La Stinche - a notorious prison hellhole.
Both Also and Strocchi are characters that I’m looking forward to finding out more about - especially Aldo. There’s a lot more to him than we see in this, what I hope is, the first of a series (I’m totally guessing here - but it’s not a terrible idea!).
Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing me with an e-copy of this book to read and review through NetGalley.
Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated The Fate of the Furious (2017) in Movies
Jun 23, 2021
Like the last few films in the franchise, Fate tries to go bigger and louder with more action, guns, missiles, tanks and submarines although there is less time spent on the actual cars.
The film adds more of an element of mystery and questions the ties of family more than any of the other films when the team is betrayed by one of their own and they need to find out why,
I think 'Fate' has more stand out scenes than some of the other films in the franchise, mainly (and spoilers here) The prison break and Shaw shooting up the plane whilst carrying the baby.
I feel that we are now getting into the realms of 'more of the same', the first first few films tried to be a bit different but now we are getting 'The family gets hired by someone, mission goes bad, family need to sort it out' and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, trying to keep thing different is what lead to Tokyo drift, which most fans think is the worst of the franchise.
It's also nice knowing what you are going to get , a fast paced action film, with cars that is relatively safe for most people to watch. That is that, although there is some violence and peril, the language it quite tame, the humour is not to crude and, although there are plenty walking around with not much on, the franchise has never fallen into the trap of relying on sex to spice things up. Instead it keeps the pace fast, the story's (relatively) simple and the one liners fun.
Over all Fate of the Furious is a good addition to a franchise that is getting more over the top by the film.