![]() ![]() Sputnik Sweetheart isn’t one of Murakami’s better known novels. In a sense this is one of the main reasons why people read books in the first place. He even dealt with this in his beautifully simple and personal ode to exercise W hat I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Every reader can relate to this theme as none of us have all the answers when it comes to life and we all desperately want to find our way in the world. ![]() His characters always seem to be trying to make sense of the world or just trying to fit in and get by. He often deals with self-identity as a theme. ![]() What is it about Murakami’s writing that inspires such devotion? This is my fifth Murakami read and I am starting to formulate some ideas without really being able to put them into words.Īt the very heart of his work, there is a beautiful simplicity. But, as any of them will tell you, it is simply only a matter of time before he gets the recognition that he deserves. Every year, this great man is linked with the Nobel Prize for Literature and every year his legions of worldwide fans are left disappointed. This is not the first time that I have raved about Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, nor will it be the last. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. “I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself anymore. ![]()
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![]() ![]() In summary, The Velvet Rage is a Book that I regard with ambivalence. Recognising this as a common experience released some of the guilt that I had been feeling about my behaviour. I had felt conflicted about it for many years. In chapter 4 Downs explained why a gay man might fly into a rage if he were questioned about his sexuality before he had ‘come out’. Conversely there were times reading the book when I was filled with excitement as Downs described something that I had lived through, and his reflections brought new insight to that experience. I found this occasionally jarring, especially when the behaviour was far from my own experience. Downs regularly uses the plural, “we” when explaining why certain behaviours or attitudes might exist. He walks a delicate line between the 90s stereotype of the gay man and behaviours so general they could apply to anyone in western society. ![]() Downs expounds upon tropes associated with the community and why gay men may be drawn toward particular attitudes or behaviours. ![]() ![]() The Velvet Rage is filled with insights about the lives of some gay men. Recognising oneself within the pages of a book can be a wonderfully validating experience. ![]() ![]() ![]() Remember the fear and revulsion we felt every time Father threw his indignant and furious tantrums at the din-ner table because the soup was too salty, reviling and insult-ing our mother as if she were a dim-witted imbecile."Īt age sixteen, Chekhov was left to fend for himself when his father moved the family to Moscow in order to escape debtor's prison. Despotism and lies have spoiled our youth to such a degree that it is loathsome and terrible to recall it. "I beg you to remember that despotism and lies destroyed your mother's youth. In a letter to one of his brothers, Chekhov later wrote: The tyrannical father did not spare the boys in any way, and Anton was an often-flogged little garbage man and bartender. The fam-ily rived in a miserable neighborhood and their one-story house had a shop in the front and a tavern in the basement. His father, a small shopkeeper, had been born a serf, but his grandfather had saved enough money to buy freedom for himself and his sons.Ĭhekhov had four brothers and one sister, and their needs were a primary concern for him during his entire life. ![]() ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV was born on January 17, 1860, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov. ![]() ![]() ![]() The novelist need answer to no one but Cervantes.’ Lionel Trilling observed: ‘It can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.’ Vladmir Nabo kov wrote: ‘ Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes’s womb. From Milan Kundera: ‘Cervan tes is the founder of the Modern Era… The debt owed to Cervantes by literature is immense. This Modern Library edition presents the acclaimed Samuel Putnam translation of the epic tale, complete with notes, variant readings, and an Introduction by the translator. ‘And yet, in our memory, what character is more alive?’ Widely regarded as the world’s first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth century Spain. ![]() ‘ Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being,’ said novelist Milan Kundera. ![]() ![]() ![]() When Remy disappears and the resistance cell they work for is betrayed, the records they keep in The Book of Lost Names become even more crucial to remembering the truth. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Remy, Eva realises she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember their own identities. Finding refuge in a small mountain town, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children escaping to neutral Switzerland. In 1942, Eva is forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. ![]() Perfect for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Librarian of Auschwitz and The Book Thief. In this instant New York Times bestseller, Kristin Harmel reimagines their story. ![]() Throughout the 1940s, forgers helped thousands of children escape Nazi France. ![]() ![]() ![]() Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women's sexual morality. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard's hand-and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After an affair with a prominent politician left her "ruined," Pollard brought the man-and the hypocrisy of America's control of women's sexuality-to trial. In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women's rights crusader. ![]() ![]() Gernot Böhme's more theoretical texts are just as accessible and offer a thought provoking approach to capturing atmosphere in physical construction. One word for it is Atmosphere.Īlongside Zumthor's writing is an excellent interview with Juhani Pallasmaa entitled Atmosphere, Compassion and Embodied Experience, demonstrating Pallasmaa's profound understanding of the wider cultural world we live in - a wider cultural world that some architects seem to forget when absorbed in design. What on earth is it that moves me? How can I get it into my own work? … How do people design things with such a beautiful, natural presence, things that move me every single time. ![]() Quality in architecture … is to me when a building manages to move me. What do we mean when we speak of architectural quality? It is a question that I have little difficulty in answering. Alongside this, the OASE team have visited his studio and interviewed him about the current relevance of his writing and how he captures 'atmosphere' in his design process. Zumthor, famous for his 1996 text Atmospheres, identifies and discusses "a series of themes that play a role in his work in achieving architectonic atmosphere". Weather is the conditions of the atmosphere over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere is over long periods of time. ![]() ![]() In OASE's 91st edition, Building Atmospheres, the elusive craft of creating, capturing and understanding 'atmosphere' in architecture is explored in a carefully chosen collection of themed essays by Peter Zumthor, Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Gernot Böhme. ![]() ![]() To my ear, they had also a peculiar music – melancholy, and elevating.”ĭr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s English literature and historical manuscripts specialist, said: “With the Brontës, our love of their work is very much bound up with our interest in their lives. “I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. “I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me – a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like poetry women generally write,” wrote Charlotte. It is the only surviving handwritten manuscript to feature some of Emily’s most famous poems, including No Coward Soul Is Mine, The Bluebell, and The Old Stoic, and was mentioned by Charlotte in her 1850 preface to Wuthering Heights, when she noted how she “accidentally lighted on a MS volume of verse in my sister Emily’s handwriting. ![]() There aren’t even really any letters out there by her, as she had no one to correspond with.” ![]() “Almost nothing of Emily’s survived – she essentially wrote Wuthering Heights and then parted the world without a trace. “It is the most important manuscript by Emily to come to market in a lifetime, and by far the most significant such manuscript to remain in private hands,” said the auction house. Sotheby’s described the manuscript of 29 poems by Emily as “incredibly rare”, valuing it at between £800,000 and £1.2m. ![]() The handwritten manuscript of Emily Brontë’s poems, with pencil corrections by Charlotte. ![]() ![]() ![]() He quickly gained renown as a scholar who viewed history as an art as much as a science, arguing that writing history was a matter of crafting narratives as much as assembling facts. From there he went to the University of Michigan, earning a doctorate in medieval history in 1956.Īlthough trained as a medievalist, during his long and illustrious career White focused on modern European intellectual history and historical theory. He joined the Navy at the end of World War II, and after his service enrolled in Wayne State University on the GI Bill, earning a BA in history in 1951. ![]() Young Hayden spent much of his childhood going back and forth between the two areas. He spent his early years in Tennessee then his father moved to Detroit in search of jobs in the auto industry. White was born on July 12, 1928, in the town of Martin, Tennessee. ![]() White, a leading intellectual and theoretical historian whose magnum opus Metahistory (1974) helped pioneer the linguistic turn in modern historiography, died on March 5, 2018, at his home in Santa Cruz, California. ![]() ![]() ![]() Horror Story of the Week – Mark Allan Gunnells: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Top 5 Creepy Episodes of Anthology Shows Read Kevin Wetmore’s ‘Halloween Returns’ Contest Winning Story “Ben Tramer’s Not Going to Homecoming!”ĭownload the ‘Halloween Returns: A Fan Fiction Anthology’ Now for Free!įive Reasons Drunks Will Always Survive Horror Storiesīloody Good Writing Volume 2: Does Sex Sell? Slenderman Video: Author Lee McGeorge Explores the Home of Slenderman!įear the Future: 10 Great Post-Apocalyptic Horror Novels Ranking Every Stephen King Novel, From Worst to First! Here are 10 Classic Scary Stories to Read for Free!ĥ Horror Authors You Have to Read and Follow in 2016! Is Stephen King Really the Greatest Horror Contributor of All Time? ![]() Jonathan Maberry, Ramsey Campbell and 16 Other Amazing Horror Authors Tell Us What Books Terrify Them! Interview: Jack Ketchum Talks Horror Roots and New Book ‘The Secret Life of Souls’ĥ Horror Novels That Deserve a Video Game Adaptation When in Paris, Revisit Gaston Leroux’s Timeless Masterpiece ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ Thrift Store Finds: Save the Last Dance for Me ![]() |