![]() ![]() The gatherings were usually uneventful and low in attendance. Smoke rose from the tavern's single chimney, filling the air with a foul odor and signaling to the witches traveling to the creek that the meeting was about to begin. The midnight gatherings were held at the Witches' Brew, an old tavern made entirely of twigs and mulch that sat in the middle of the creek like a giant beaver dam. ![]() ![]() When corpses were found, the witches picked them apart like vultures, taking home what they needed in jars to stock their potion supplies. The dead bodies in the coffins were never identified, nor was who or what had sent them-not that any time was given for an investigation. ![]() And every time the rerouting occurred, coffins floated in from an unknown location. Every so often, without any warning or explanation, the creek redirected itself to flow uphill into the forest. The meetings were strictly for witches only, and they enjoyed making gruesome examples out of those who disturbed them.ĭead Man's Creek was shrouded in mystery, making it an ideal place for the witches to assemble. At midnight of every full moon, witches from the forests and neighboring kingdoms gathered at the creek. T he creatures of the Dwarf Forests knew to avoid Dead Man's Creek tonight if they valued their lives. ![]()
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5/24/2023 0 Comments Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker![]() ![]() ![]() Reason is, in the words of Saint Paul, that which allows us to know and conform to the moral law written onto all human hearts. As I’ve briefly written here, looking over the history of philosophy we find two primary usages of ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism.’ The classical tradition, advanced by the likes of the rationalist philosophers of antiquity and Christianity, maintain that reason is that which makes us like God because God is the source of Truth and it is human reason which allows humans to know the objective realities of the good and true and therefore live by that reality. “Opposing reason is, by definition, unreasonable.” Pinker’s book is filled with pithy phrases like this one which is meant to mystically capture the reader but provide no meaning to such statements. Notwithstanding his florid but unsubstantial rhetoric, Pinker’s book is the product of a juvenile academic who has become the poster boy of Liberalism’s historicist fantasies. In the midst of turbulent transformations and discontents, rather than try to understand the predicament of modernity and its possibility crisis brought forth by the very “Enlightenment” which Pinker subjectively, rosily, and merrily picked from, he doubled down on re-propagating the tired old myth of progress. ![]() Steven Pinker is the public face of contemporary neo-Whiggism. ~ Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Survive the night sager![]() ![]() She arranges for a ride home via a ride share, as she doesn't drive due to her parents dying in a car crash, and through this meets Josh. ![]() As she did not stop the murder and cannot provide many helpful details, Charlie is extremely guilt stricken. These hallucinations typically appear as film scenes. At the time Charlie had assumed that the murder was one of her visual hallucinations, something she is prone to experiencing, especially in emotional situations. Dubbed "The Campus Killer", the murderer had been picking off women on their campus. The book follows Charlie, a young woman who drops out of film college due to the trauma of witnessing the murder of her best friend Maddy by a serial killer. ![]() It was first published in the United States on Jthrough Dutton and centers upon a woman who realizes that she may be sharing a car ride with a murderer. Survive the Night is a 2021 thriller novel by American author Todd Ritter, under the penname Riley Sager. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Kelly oram cinder y ella![]() Hollywood sensation Brian Oliver has a reputation for being trouble. The only way she can think of to start healing is by reconnecting with the one person left in the world who’s ever meant anything to her-her anonymous Internet best friend, Cinder. ![]() If Ella wants to escape her father’s home and her awful new stepfamily, she must convince her doctors that she’s capable, both physically and emotionally, of living on her own. After a very difficult recovery, she’s been uprooted across the country and forced into the custody of a father that abandoned her when she was a young child. It’s been almost a year since eighteen-year-old Ella Rodriguez was in a car accident that left her crippled, scarred, and without a mother. ![]() ![]() This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of this review. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there. While her mother waits in vain for her husband's return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity and fun in the face of so much tragedy. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they "make them ugly"-cropping their hair, blackening their teeth-anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester. Jennifer Clement is the author of multiple books, including Widow Basquiat. Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. ![]() In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Her home is a village near the once glamorous port of Acapulco. She is part of a community, like so many in rural Mexico, that has been decimated by drug traffickers, government agricultural policies and illegal immigration. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. Prayers for the Stolen is a novel about Ladydi Garcia Martnez. Ladydi Garcia Martinez is fierce, funny and smart. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Confessions by Kanae Minato![]() ![]() She doesn’t say this, but as I’m reading, I can feel the class going silent around me, all of us hanging on her every word. She was murdered by some of the students in this very class. Then the shocker comes: her daughter is dead.īecause Manami’s death wasn’t an accident. ![]() She then goes on to ramble about teaching, about school protocols, and even tells us a little bit about her past, and how she ended up becoming a single mother to her 4-year-old daughter, Manami. Then, she announces that she will be retiring at the end of the month, meaning that after spring break, she will no longer be their teacher. She mentions that the free milk they’ve been drinking all throughout the school year was a random study that the Ministry had been conducting to see if the additional calcium would do the students any good. ![]() Translated into the English by Stephen Snyder in 2014Ī teacher (we don’t know her name yet) is speaking to her class on their last day of school. ![]() 5/23/2023 0 Comments Not That Bad by Roxane Gay![]() ![]() In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and best-selling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied” for speaking out. * Buzzfeed, “33 Most Exciting New Books of 2018” *Hello Giggles, “19 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018” ![]() *Huffington Post, “60 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018” * Boston Globe, “25 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018” * Elle, “21 Books We’re Most Excited to Read in 2018” * Harper’s Bazaar, “10 New Books to Add to Your Reading List in 2018” * Vogue, “10 of the Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2018” McKenna, Lisa Mecham, Vanessa Martir,xTx, Sophie MayerĮdited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, the New York Times best-selling and deeply beloved author of Bad Feminist and Hunger, this anthology of first-person essays read by all 30 contributors, including Gabrielle Union, Ally Sheedy, and Lyz Lenz, tackles rape, assault, and harassment head-on. ![]() Narrated by: Roxane Gay, Brandon Taylor, Emma Smith-Stevens, A.J. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In 2009, the magazine Oxford American voted Absalom, Absalom! the best Southern novel of all time (yep, it beat To Kill a Mockingbird – how about that!). Published in 1936, Absalom, Absalom! was one of the main reasons Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in literature. ![]() But don't let that scare you off: after all, it's a pretty big deal. William Faulkner's novel is so rich and complex that it can be tough to follow. Shmoop thinks it should have been something more like this: Absalom, Absalom!?! This story has it all – multiple narrators, mysterious characters, shifts in time – and that's kind of the problem. The exclamation point in Absalom, Absalom!doesn't quite do it justice. ![]() ![]() YOU BET YOUR BLACK LATEX SHIRT IT WAS, BATMAN.įorget letting this precious slip through my fingers. ![]() Holy cover art, Batman! Was this that holy grail of romance wtfery? An 80s romance? AND I SAW THAT GLORIOUS BEAUTY THAT YOU SEE BEFORE YOU! Then I changed my mind and decided to let my ARC expire, but first I went to Goodreads to check out the summary. I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that.īut I'm as basic as they come, and one thing us basic girls love is unicorns, and when I saw the word 'unicorn' in the title as I was gleefully scrolling for and requesting Netgalley ARCs, I one-clicked that book without even reading the summary. What's with the 1920s-style hairdos and outfits? It made me think this was going to be some lame period piece a la, "Oh, darling, I'll never forget that one summer in Tuscany, the one where we were both as wild and as free as wild horses! Truly, my love, it was the summer. First, the new cover doesn't do this book justice at all. This is either the best worst book I ever read, or the worst best book I ever read. For more info on this challenge, click here. ![]() ![]() □ I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: Fantasy Romance. ![]() 5/23/2023 0 Comments Perfect by ellen hopkins![]() My nose is too big, my breast are too small, Says the girl who is getting plastic surgery at age 16. ![]() I'm not skinny enough, says the anorexic or bulimic. ![]() Once again Ellen Hopkins has written an amazing book! This book, Perfect - is about how we struggle with many different things in our lives. Because everyone wants to be perfect, but when perfection loses its meaning, how far will you go? And Andre realizes that to follow his heart and achieve his perfect performance, he’ll be living a life his ancestors would never understand.Ī riveting and startling companion to the best-selling Impulse, Ellen Hopkins’s Perfect exposes the harsh truths about what it takes to grow up - and grow into our own selves. Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back in order to score his perfect home run - on the field and off. Kendra covets the perfect face and body - no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. For her, “perfect” means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. ![]() For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there.Ĭara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother spiraling toward suicide. New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins makes her Simon & Schuster Audio debut with the young adult novel, Perfect.Įveryone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. ![]() |