![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms-at long last-with the other. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.īut if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. ![]() And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. “Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” -Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book ReviewĪ New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceĪ CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Monthįor more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Table of contents : Cover Title Page Copyright Acknowledgments Dedication Contents Preface 1 Rational Fascism Plutocrats Choose Autocrats Whom Did the Fascists Support? Kudos for Adolph and Benito The Rational Use of Irrational Ideology Patriarchy and Pseudo-Revolution Friendly to Fascism 2 Let Us Now Praise Revolution The Costs of Counterrevolution Presumptions of Power Whose Violence? Free Market for the Few The Freedom of Revolution What Measure of Pain? 3 Left Anticommunism Genuflection to Orthodoxy Pure Socialism vs. ![]() ![]() Ugly Love isn’t Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, but it is certainly up there, and as soon as you start reading it, you’ll find yourself unable to put it down. They thought they could handle it, but *spoiler alert*, they can’t. Things will be fine, as long as Tate sticks to Miles’ rules. ![]() From the get-go, Tate and Miles do not get along, they aren’t friends, but there is no denying that they feel an attraction to one another.Īfter confronting their attraction to one another, they seem to come to the perfect arrangement: no romance, just physical relations, and two rules: never ask about the past, and don’t expect a future. When Tate Collins moves in with her brother, she meets Miles Archer for the first time.Īnd it is far from love at first sight. ![]() As the name suggests, Ugly Love is a romance novel, and it is one for any fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope. ![]() ![]() ![]() Irene is as mean as she is beautiful, so Scottie makes a point to keep her distance. High school nemeses fall in love in Kelly Quindlen's She Drives Me Crazy, a queer YA rom com perfect for fans of Becky Albertalli and Casey McQuiston.Īfter an embarrassing loss to her ex-girlfriend in their first basketball game of the season, seventeen-year-old Scottie Zajac gets into a fender bender with the worst possible person: her nemesis, Irene Abraham, head cheerleader for the Fighting Reindeer. “A little sweet, a little sharp.” - Booklist, starred review ![]() ![]() ![]() I know the book itself is considered a parody of the rural romance novels which were popular in the 1930s, but sometimes I think this aspect was overdone. This is done by asterisks which mark the purplest of prose, which makes the text annoying to read. In her cringing foreword, dedicated to a fictional mentor, she says that she has drawn attention to the paragraphs she considers the best bits. One of the things I didn’t like about the book was the author’s fictionalised ego. In addition to the entertaining plot and wonderful characters, there’s some sparkling dialogue and the whole book feels fresh somehow. The characters are larger than life and although I didn’t take to them at first, I grew fond of them as the story progressed. ![]() ![]() It’s a fairytale where everyone has a happy ending. She sets about fixing their problems and confidently steering them into better life choices. They’re very different from her, being rough, emotional and set in their ways. The story follows 19-year-old Flora Poste, a sensible modern Londoner who, having lost her parents and not wanting to get a proper job, goes to live with her country cousins, the Starkadders, who dwell in misery on Cold Comfort Farm. It only seemed right to revisit her most famous book. Since then, I’ve read several of Stella Gibbons‘ novels which have recently come back into print. In fact, I was left cold and without comfort. When I read it back in 2010, I didn’t find it that funny. This 1932 novel often appears on ‘funniest book’ lists. ![]() ![]() ![]() I looked to the door with its curving slash of extraordinary stained glass just as a loud banging that was not dulcet in the slightest came on the heels of the bell. Muted chimes that rang dulcetly through the space as if they were precisely what they were, carefully crafted to belong right there. Hearing it then, I was surprised it was just as stunning and elegant as the rest of the house. In buying the house long-distance without looking at anything but photos, I’d obviously not heard my doorbell. The problem with that was, to do it, I needed to backtrack and rectify past mistakes.Īs if the biggest mistake of all could be conjured by my thoughts, I heard my doorbell ring. ![]() I stood in the middle of the huge room, the long, high wall of windows showing a grayed view of the Atlantic Ocean foaming against the cliff rock, my furniture (mostly) where I wanted it, the rest of the space was taken up with boxes stacked high. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. ![]() Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. ![]() ![]() In the same year, he also began working at the hospital of Saint Germain en Laye as a physician. In 1739 he accompanied the expedition of César-François Cassini de Thury and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille to extend the Meridian of Paris and documented mines and the geology and botany along the route. Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier worked in physics, geology, medicine, and botany. Louis-Guillaume's older brother was the astronomer Pierre Charles Le Monnier. ![]() He was born near Vire as the son of Pierre Le Monnier (1675–1757), who was a scientist himself and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. ![]() Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier (sometimes written as Lemonnier) (27 June 1717 – 7 September 1799) was a French natural scientist and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected - she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid's Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA listeners. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Benjamin Franklin's lifetime, he kept good record of his life and travels, and although Franklin was never a president, he still plays a crucial part in our American history. One of the leading figures of early American history, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was a statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor and diplomat. ![]() ![]() Download cover art Download CD case insert The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Version 2) ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The success of that novel propelled him to write a biker lit trilogy about the Brethren Motorcycle Club, which has recently been optioned as a series for television in the UK. ![]() Armed with a MBA degree, Iain first worked in insolvency and business restructuring in the UK and Africa, where he began work on his first thriller The Liquidator. After working at a London dispatch job delivering parcels on a motorcycle, he built his first chopper in his bedroom at university, undeterred by the fact that the workshop was upstairs. He became obsessed with motorcycles at an early age, taking a six hundred mile cross-country tour to Cornwall as soon as he bought a moped at the tender age of sixteen. Iain Parke imports industrial quantities of Class A drugs, kills people and lies (a lot) for a living, being a British based crime fiction writer. ![]() |