![]() ![]() At seventeen, charming rather than beautiful, Victoria already "showed signs of wanting her own way." Albert, the boy who had been groomed for her since birth, was chubby, self-absorbed, and showed no interest in girls, let alone this princess. The cousins first met as teenagers for a few brief, awkward, chaperoned weeks in 1836. The love affair that emerges is far more captivating, complex, and relevant than that depicted in any previous account. Here the author turns this familiar story on its head, revealing a strong, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working together to build a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, qualities neither had seen much of as children. Traditional biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naive teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and master. It was the most influential marriage of the nineteenth century, and one of history's most enduring. ![]()
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![]() Guinn's lucid and well-researched history lends substantial detail to such an awareness of the complexity of Jones, the religious group he led, and its ultimate fate. In popular perception "Jonestown" became and has remained a terrifying symbol of the dangers of "cult" membership, as in Rabbi Maurice Davis' early assertion that "the path of the cults leads to Jonestowns." Readers of Nova Religio are likely to be well aware of the exaggerations and simplifications that undergird such perceptions. ![]() ![]() After the more than 900 deaths in the jungle of Guyana at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Mission, both Jones and the religious community that he founded were understood primarily through the prism of those events. Before the tragic events of November 1978, Jim Jones and Peoples Temple were well known almost exclusively to those with whom they came into direct contact. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As the personal lives, loves, and betrayals of the three queens are manipulated by their supporting factions, the intricate machinations of the plot never overwhelm the vivid, complicated characters of the queens and those closest to them while it’s impossible not to sympathize with each, it is equally difficult to root for any of them. Blake has constructed an insular, all-white, matriarchal society from convincing intimate details. ![]() Although kindhearted Mirabella shows some reluctance to kill, both headstrong Arsinoe and abused Katherine are more than ready to employ any tactic to live.and win. But this time only the elemental Mirabella has yet displayed any power, as the naturalist Arsinoe and poisoner Katherine are deemed weak and giftless. The opener to a pitch-black epic fantasy series horrifically upends the bonds of sisterhood.Įvery generation, magically gifted triplet girls are born to rule Fennbirn, and it is the duty of each young queen to try to murder the others once they come of age. ![]() ![]() Which is really sweet, unless you know that I encountered him in an internet chatroom one day when I was very bored in 1999, and that we never met. That my copy of this book bears a heartfelt message from a boy who says he loves me. I believed that it contained all the secrets of the universe, and would inspire me to be the kind of person I wanted to be. ![]() I am very glad I never was made to prove this.Īnd then that I used to have a framed pack of Camel cigarettes hanging on my wall. ![]() I’ll start with the fact that makes me want to die the least (honestly): I used to claim that all the wonderment of literature in general was contained within this one book, and if it was the only book left on earth, all the best things about literature would still remain. JRereading Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins ![]() ![]() ![]() As a result, your life as a parent will be easier, and your parenting will become more effective. Using these techniques, you can discipline your children in a way that's high on relationship-building, high on respect, and low on drama and conflict. Complete with candid stories and playful illustrations that bring the authors' suggestions to life, No-Drama Discipline presents clear messages in a practical and inviting format. Based on recent discoveries about the brain that give us deep insights into the children we care for, what they need, and how to discipline them in ways that foster optimal development, this book offers a 'relational' approach that builds on children's innate desire to please their parents and get along well with others. ![]() What do you do? No-Drama Discipline provides an effective, compassionate road map for dealing with such tantrums, tensions, and tears - without causing a scene. Or you get a call from the headteacher's office for the third time this month. Or one of your kids threatens a younger sibling. A breakfast bowl gets thrown across the kitchen, splattering milk and cereal all over the wall. The pioneering experts behind the bestselling The Whole-Brain Child now explore the ultimate child-raising challenge: discipline. ![]() ![]() ![]() The film's more artistic approach gels well with its medieval roots, and The Green Knight received overwhelmingly positive reviews practically across the board. Where other attempts to adapt tales from Arthurian legend have been predominantly action-fantasy affairs, The Green Knight is more a historical fantasy drama than anything else, carving its own distinct niche into wider cinema. This approach had previously seemed unthinkable to Hollywood, who have always done their utmost to inject action and excitement into every property imaginable, and it appears that now would be the perfect time for King Arthur to finally get a cinematic universe. This demonstrates that audiences enjoy the legends presented in keeping with their original stories. ![]() This fresh take on the tales of King Arthur and his knights is particularly interesting because it offers a very different perspective to many other modern adaptations of the legends. Related: Why The Green Knight Did Better At The Box Office Than Expected Gawain then sets out on a quest across England to find the knight and fulfill his destiny, encountering bandits, ghosts, and giants along the way. After beheading the mythical fighter, Gawain is shocked to learn that the knight will wait for him in one year's time at the Green Chapel, where he will inflict the same blow on him. The Green Knight follows the saga of Gawain (played by Dev Patel) a hard-drinking member of the King's court who attempts to prove himself in battle against the titular Green Knight. ![]() ![]() By 1980, Joanna became a full-time author. She began writing ‘to fill the long spaces after the children had gone to bed’ and for many years combined her writing career with working as a teacher. But, I was very well taught, however, and I think I sensed this, even then.’Īfter winning a scholarship to Oxford University, Joanna joined the Foreign Office and then became a teacher of English. No school can be blamed, however, it was more my childhood and adolescent sense of being an outsider, of not belonging (a very formative sense, I now know, for being a writer) that made me miserable at a time when 99.9% of children long to conform. ‘I only really started to enjoy education when I got to university. Joanna spent her school days in Surrey, but by her own admission, Joanna is not someone who loved her schooldays. ![]() ![]() She has been described as one of the most insightful chroniclers and social commenters writing fiction today.īorn in her grandfather’s rectory in the Cotswold village of Minchinhampton in December 1943, Joanna says: ‘Being born somewhere with a strong local sense, like the Cotswolds, gave me not just a sense of rootedness, but a capacity to value landscape and weather and the accessible richness of community life.” ![]() Joanna Trollope has been writing for over thirty years and is well known for her enormously successful contemporary works of fiction. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The only person who hasn’t closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna’s daughter.īut if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna’s life, both would risk losing the trust of everyone important to them. A troubled young mother yearns for a shot at redemption in this heartbreaking yet hopeful story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover.Īfter serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter.īut the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild.Įveryone in her daughter’s life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself. ![]() ![]() ![]() With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. Brown advocates for the “A” in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer–despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. ![]() In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. ![]() The notion that everyone wants sex–and that we all have to have it–is false. ![]() Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. ![]() |