7/5/2023 0 Comments Dark tower wolves![]() The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower 2).The long, twisted road to the Dark Tower continues here, through an alternate version of The Magnificent Seven, in a small town called Calla Bryn Sturgis. All readers – those new to the Dark Tower, and those who have traveled the path before – are welcome to join the ka tet! Every second Wednesday of the month, the next book in the Dark Tower cycle will be reviewed and discussed here. Inspired by the results of our March Old School Wednesdays Idea Poll, starting in March of 2015, Thea is rereading one of her favorite series’ of all time: The Dark Tower by Stephen King. What better way to snap out of a reading fugue than to take a mini-vacation into the past? We came up with the idea towards the end of 2012, when both Ana and Thea were feeling exhausted from the never-ending inundation of New and Shiny (and often over-hyped) books. Old School Wednesdays is a weekly Book Smugglers feature. THIS MONTH ON THE DARK TOWER: Wolves of the Calla sees the return of the main storyline as Roland and his tet make their way through a provincial town in All-World… and face some child thieving wolves. ![]() ![]() Old School Wednesdays presents Thea’s epic reread of The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. ![]()
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7/5/2023 0 Comments Tiger parenting book![]() ![]() This interview has been edited for clarity and length. ![]() It is time for a more difficult unity that acknowledges the reality of group differences and fights the deep inequities that divide us.”Ĭhua spoke to Deseret Magazine from her office in New Haven, Connecticut. “Enough false slogans of unity, which are just another form of divisiveness. Her most recent book, “Political Tribes,” offers an unlikely solution to America’s partisan polarization. Chua’s grit and determination is a thread through most of her work, which first burst into the national consciousness with her international bestseller, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” That book, in which Chua refuses to let her daughter go to the bathroom until she masters a difficult piano composition, attracted both ire and fame for Chua, but she says her fiercest critics missed the central message: The most important thing for children is unconditional love. ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Edith pearlman books![]() ![]() These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one vintage selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. ![]() ![]() ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE, SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON ![]() WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Endlessly by Kiersten White![]() ![]() White' s 'New York Times'-bestselling Paranormalcy trilogy comes to a breathless conclusion with a signature mix of wit, romance, paranormal creatures, and a truly original heroine. ![]() An epic battle is looming, and the choices Evie makes will determine the fate of the whole paranormal world-and her own life. Even Evie's ex-boyfriend, the faerie Reth, can't reverse the dark magic. Prom is coming up, too-and, oh, yeah, her shape-shifting boyfriend has been cursed to fall into an enchanted sleep whenever he and Evie are in the same room. The Dark Queen is torturing humans and must be destroyed. Paranormals are begging her to open a faerie gate so they can leave the human world. In this third book in the series, Evie has way too much on her to-do list. The breathless conclusion to the sparkling Paranormalcy trilogy from Kiersten White, #1 New York Times bestselling author of And I Darken For fans of Teen Wolf, Buffy, and Supernatural, the Paranormalcy trilogy is a witty, fresh, and downright fun read that will capture your heart. ![]() 7/5/2023 0 Comments Books like ringworld![]() ![]() With a hard SF writer like Niven, the story emerges out of the world: the world and its rules and laws are what generate and drive and constrain the story. Hard SF works the opposite way - it allows its stories to be shaped by what we know about technology and the universe and how they work. ![]() ![]() There’s a school of science fiction where the writer decides where they want the story to go and then makes up a world or a technology or a branch of physics that will get it there. Hard SF - as I choose to define it, irresponsibly, with no reference to or knowledge of how other people define it - is SF that takes its science and engineering seriously. He was born in 1938 and fits into that generation in between Golden Agers like Bradbury and Asimov and Heinlein and the cyber-info-punks like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. I think it’s fair to say that Niven is the quintessential “hard” SF writer. You know who I don’t hear enough about? Larry Niven. So in case that one needs explanation, it basically means “refusing to shut up.”)Īnd I can crap on with the best/worst of them about Joyce and Woolf and Kafka and whoever else, but there’s already been plenty of crapping on about them. She’s Australian, and at this point I no longer know which idioms are American or Australian anymore. (“Crapping on” is one of my wife’s expressions. You know how it is with your literary heroes - you never want to stop crapping on about how great they are. Follow Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. ![]() ![]() ![]() They would always examine the Cheese to see if it was decreasing. Scurry and Sniff would wake up early in the morning every day to go to the station. One day, Scurry, Sniff, Hem, and Haw found their own Cheese at Cheese Station C. Change is hard but in the end, it turns out wonderful. The lesson of Who Moved My Cheese? may help people to discern changes as they mature. This paper focuses on my relationship with my father (Maze) and how it has affected my expectation of what I perceived to be the role of a father (Cheese). I found that the messages in Who Moved My Cheese? It can be applied to many aspects of real life. ![]() The character Hem was afraid of change, so he withstood and refused it while Haw learned to adapt to change. The characters Sniff and Scurry dealt with change successfully. Every day, the characters Scurry, Sniff, Hem, and Haw would wake up and go to the Maze looking for their own Cheese. It can be material, health, a healthy relationship, a business, etc. ![]() ![]() In this story, “Cheese is a metaphor for what you want to have in life”. This essay is a reflection on the book called Who Moved My Cheese? The story is about changes that take place in a place called Maze, were four characters were looking for their own Cheese. ![]() 7/4/2023 0 Comments Matt yglesias book![]() And the four books all reach the conclusion that, roughly speaking, we should do as little as is politically possible. Like several of Murray’s other books, including Losing Ground, In Our Hands, and Coming Apart, the basic subject of The Bell Curve is what should be done to help the disadvantaged in America. The Bell Curve - co-authored with Richard Herrnstein - is, after all, not a work of scientific research but rather a political book written by one of the most prominent conservative policy entrepreneurs in America as part of a larger ideological project. And Harris, for his part, sees himself as exclusively defending The Bell Curve’s empirical claims about IQ, which is fine, but it’s important to consider Murray’s work with a view toward actual American public policy, which has been deeply influenced by Murray over the years, and which Donald Trump is looking to take in an even more Murray-esque direction. Harris and Klein and Sullivan have, at this point, spilled plenty of words limning their disagreements. ![]() ![]() Andrew Sullivan, the punditocracy’s original champion of Murray’s thinking on genetics, decided to jump in as well. Charles Murray and his decades-old work on IQ and race, published in his 1994 book The Bell Curve, is back in the news because of a mini feud between “new atheist” author and podcaster Sam Harris and Vox’s own Ezra Klein. ![]() ![]() Good deeds, repentance, penance: none of this will save you: God had already decided your fate before you were born. Predestination is the idea that it has already been decided who will go to heaven and who will go to hell and there is nothing you can do about this during your time on Earth. This may seem an odd philosophy to kick-start an economic system based on the accumulation of ever greater wealth, but it does make sense – wait for it! ![]() The two features of Calvinism that Weber considered to be especially influential in the development of capitalism were ascetism and predestination.Īscetism is a philosophy of self-denial: the idea that Christians should lead an austere life, without luxuries. Weber identified features of the Calvinist protestant religion which he argued had the unintended consequence of playing a major role in kick-starting capitalism.Ĭalvinism was a protestant religious movement from the 16 th century. ![]() ![]() The focus of Weber's study was that religion was an engine of social change. Max Weber published his highly-influential work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1904. ![]() 7/3/2023 0 Comments Review magpie murders![]() ![]() Also, she may have annoyed some locals with her snooping, but not enough to drive anyone to murder. He confirms that she appeared to have fallen down the stairs and was dead when he arrived Brent had a key to the house. The detective takes the opportunity to ask the doctor a few questions about Mary Blakiston’s death instead. Kamal ( Sanjeev Kohli), who quickly clocks Pund’s terminal condition. He is taken to the office of the village physician, Dr. In Saxby-on-Avon, Atticus P ü nd has a fainting spell at breakfast. Both men are pressing her for a decision, and it appears she’s waiting for a solution to her dilemma to drop from the sky. In present-day London, Susan’s ambivalence concerning her job promotion versus moving to Crete is wearing thin for Charles and Andreas. But by now, we all know Conway is only interested in using others for his own gain and amusement. Katie seems pleasantly surprised that the author is interested in hearing about her and her family. Magpie Murder’s 4th episode begins with a flashback to a friendly catch-up between Susan’s sister, Katie, and Alan Conway in a coffee shop. ![]() ![]() ![]() The classical/liberal view pretends to be a scientific point of view, despite being unable to predict anything accurately and having almost all the founding hypotheses proved wrong. (unless you consider that Marx predicted the communist revolutions, but it looks more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than a prediction). The socialist view of the world doesn't even pretend to be scientific : it doesn't give any predictions. What's makes a science true is its ability to explain and predict the real world. Should we teach both evolution and intelligent design for the sake of neutrality ?Ī scientific theory shouldn't pretend it's «neutral»: biology isn't «neutral» since it's clearly again the religious believes of huge part of the humanity. ![]() |