'Absolutely essential and heartbreaking reading. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.Ī chronicle of the past and a warning for our nuclear future, Chernobyl Prayer shows what it is like to bear witness, and remember in a world that wants you to forget. Her book, ‘ Chernobyl Prayer’ reads like a beautiful cascading waterfall of events imbued with oral history of horror. The startling history of the Chernobyl disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2015. Flames lit up the sky and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A new translation of Voices from Chernobyl based on the revised text - Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich review witnesses speak A revised edition of the harrowing monologues from survivors of the disaster brought together by the Nobel prize-winner The.
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I didn’t look back to see what was behind us. Everywhere around me other kids were panicking, all bolting the same way, to safety. I forced myself to run faster, the metal staircase rattling beneath my clumsy steps. Just one more flight of stairs, one more and I might make it. If the siren hadn’t been hammering at my eardrums, then I’d have been able to hear my breaths, ragged and desperate, unable to pull in enough air to keep me going. I couldn’t even see where I was going anymore, my vision fading as my body prepared to give in. My lungs were on fire, my heart pumping acid, every muscle in my body threatening to cramp. Summary: When fourteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, he becomes an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary, where brutal inmates and sadistic guards reign, boys who disappear in the middle of the night sometimes return weirdly altered, and escape might just be possible. Lockdown : Escape from Furnace / Alexander Gordon Smith.-1st American ed. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Copyright © 2009 by Alexander Gordon Smithįirst published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited, 2009 The plots of both books blend the solving of a current murder with Beth’s slow memory recall of her harrowing kidnapping experience and the search for the perpetrator. All make her useful in helping solve cases in her new (temporary?) home. She is also a well-known (by pseudonym) crime novelist. Growing up with the local police chief (her grandfather), she has a talent for crime scene measurement and an education in deduction. Beth Rivers has run away to the small (fictional) town of Benedict, Alaska to hide from her still-on-the-loose kidnapper. Thin Ice is book one which I’m reading out of order after enjoying the pre-release of book two (Cold Wind). I’m loving this new (to me) mystery series. From that limited exposure, I get the feeling this Lobster Johnson collection is pretty darn authentic to the classic style. My exposure to authentic 1920’s and 1930’s pulp novels is obviously somewhat limited given our current time frame, but I have read a few stories of The Shadow and I grew up with science fiction comics that clearly had influence from the original pulps. It’s easy to see how Hellboy got so caught up in the stories when there is so much action and adventure to be had, it’s also easy to see how Lobster Johson has influenced Hellboy’s sense of doing what is right and looking after those who need help. Lobster Johnson, long a hero to Hellboy, has remained somewhat an enigma… is he real or just a story? Lobster Johnson Omnibus Volume 1 HC presents a collection of Lobster Johnson stories to enjoy while you consider whether he is real or simply a comic within a comic. Yet, in spite of these recurrent shortcomings, Derting has a talent for building suspense into the action that keeps you turning the pages. In addition, the science fiction/paranormal aspects are dangerously close to being over the top. But Kyra’s “new” life is fraught with danger and mystery, nothing is what it seems to be, and except for Tyler, she doesn’t know who can be trusted.ĭiscussion: I like Kimberly Derting, although this first book of a new series displays some of the same flaws as her “Body Finder” series, such as an unrealistically perfect boyfriend. Her only ally is her former boyfriend’s adorable younger brother, Tyler, who now looks a year older than Kyra, and who of course always had a crush on her. Her boyfriend and best friend are off at college (and they are together now), her parents are divorced, her mom is remarried, and her dad seems to have gone off his rocker. She hasn’t aged a bit, but everyone around her has, and clearly time has passed for them even if it has not for her. The next thing she knows, she wakes up behind a dumpster and it is five years later. Sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew has a fight with her dad on the way home from a softball game, and insists he let her out of the car so she can walk the rest of the way. So much so, that in 2001, the Text and Academic Authors Association awarded both the McGuffey and the "Texty" Book Prizes to the Eleventh Edition of the text. By virtue of its comprehensive coverage, strong emphasis on context, and rich, accurate art reproductions, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES has earned and sustained a reputation of excellence and authority. With this book in hand, thousands of students have watched the story of art unfold in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, and thus deepened their understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. The market-leading text for the art history survey course, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES has served as a comprehensive and thoughtfully crafted guide to the defining phases of the world's artistic tradition. My favorite book of his is Watchers, which I implore you to read if you haven’t… and in his horror realm, I’d recommend Whispers and Phantoms. Koontz at his finest, in my humble opinion. Also, can we talk about her son and how awesome this kid is?!Īhhh – this just brings back so many good memories. What does this story entail? Time travel (PARADOX!), probably a bit of glorified stalking (ay-oooooooooo), Hitler, lightning (of course) and the story of Laura – from birth to *present* day (present as in 1989) and I am still grinning ear to ear. Would that have changed my love for this book? I really don’t think so! I also love just how short the synopsis is. I’m beyond thrilled to find that I STILL love this novel SO DAMN MUCH.ĭo I have things to say about certain parts of this book that may not have worked for me if I had read it for the first time today? Absolutely. I haven’t read this book in literal decades – the first being when I was soooo young and to be reading it now, 30+ years later (yes, I’m old), and through different, more experienced eyes. Ahhhh! Thanks to my co-Buddy Reads to Die For hosts for allowing me to choose one of my all time favorite Koontz books as our February book club read. And then there's Samantha's twin, Prince Jefferson. except the one boy who is distinctly off-limits to her. Nobody cares about the spare except when she's breaking the rules, so Princess Samantha doesn't care much about anything, either. They're American.Īs Princess Beatrice gets closer to becoming America's first queen regnant, the duty she has embraced her entire life suddenly feels stifling. Each child knows exactly what is expected of them. Like most royal families, the Washingtons have an heir and a spare. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on the throne. When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. This is the story of the American royals. Two princesses vying for the ultimate crown. Perfect for fans of Red, White, and Royal Blue and The Royal We! Here was the chance for the Once-ler and his family to be rich so he called them all up and started a business. So the Once-ler sold his first Thneed and he was in business. A Thneed’s a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!It’s a shirt. He begged the Once-ler to not chop down the Truffula Trees, but the Once-ler was convinced that his Thneeds were the things that everyone needs. When he chopped down the first Truffula Tree the Lorax came to his office to speak for the trees. Instead, the Once-ler saw the trees and thought of all the money he could make by chopping them down and knitting their tufts into Thneeds. The Once-ler was greedy though and didn’t see the natural beauty of the Truffula Trees. The Brown Bar-ba-loots were playing in their Bar-ba-loot suits and the Humming-Fish were humming. The forest of the Truffula Trees was very lush and full of life. Through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity-a pursuit without a terminus, requiring that women constantly attend to minute and often whimsical changes in fashion-female bodies become docile bodies-bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, “improvement.” Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress-central organizing principles of time and space in the day of many women-we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification. In a decade marked by a reopening of the public arena to women, the intensification of such regimens appears diversionary and subverting. For women, as study after study shows, are spending more time on the management and discipline of our bodies than we have in a long, long time. Such an emphasis casts a dark and disquieting shadow across the contemporary scene. It is also, as anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu and philosopher Michel Foucault (among others) have argued, a practical, direct locus of social control. The body-what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to the body-is a medium of culture. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. (Chapter 5 from Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body ). “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” 1989. |