![]() Her mother and brothers remained in Iran for an additional six years until 1986, when they left Iran for Paris. She describes her early separation from her mother at the age of 11, when she and her sister were sent off to Sacré Coeur boarding school in Austria before escaping to America (under the guise of a vacation) to live with their maternal uncle in Virginia Beach, Va. Born in Tehran the second of four children (she has an older sister, Afsaneh, and two younger brothers, Ali and Amir), Latifi, 35, narrates the tale with a mixture of distance and honesty. It tells the story of the family’s struggles to survive as they lived in fundamentalist Islamic Iran after the death of the father, later moving to Europe and eventually America. The book was written as a tribute to her mother, Fatemeh, who just turned 60. All time does is occupy your mind with other stuff, so maybe you don’t sit there and think about the loss every second of the day.” It’s you that has to start the healing process. “You know how people always tell you, ‘Time heals everything,’” she says. Afschineh Latifi’s book, “Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution and Leaving Iran,” opens with the 1979 assassination of her father, a highly ranked military officer, at the hands of Ayatollah Khomeini’s soldiers-an event that understandably haunts the author to this day. But real life doesn’t always work out so neatly. ![]() NEW YORK - Classic storytelling often begins on a placid note, and builds up to a pivotal moment. ![]()
0 Comments
6/10/2023 0 Comments Ashes by Philip Hemplow![]() The novel has shades of Lovecraft too, it seems, but those shadows form so faint a skein over the proceedings that they’re barely there at all and don’t intrude on the narrative or overstay their welcome. This is the author’s most recent work and it’s a very effective modern-day supernatural chiller, with historical threads, set in and around the Yorkshire Moors the historical aspect comes from a callback to Elizabethan times thanks to the device of an centuries old, age-damaged diary found at the heart of the broken 16th Century house around which the story revolves. As Hemplow’s work has progressed over time, it’s been pleasing to note that the subtlety of the Mythos overlay has been even more deftly employed in later works. ![]() ![]() I’d read a number of Philip Hemplow’s previous novels before now, notably The Innsmouth Syndrome and Sarcophagus and I’d enjoyed both of those works, as they take well-traversed Lovecraftian paths and twist them subtly to work in a contemporary setting. ![]() 6/9/2023 0 Comments Storm of locusts book![]() ![]() ![]() Roanhorse has the knack for getting you into the action quickly-essential in urban fantasy, in my opinion. In fact, I found this one eminently satisfying: I read it in a single Sunday afternoon! Roanhorse drops the major details here and there, but she is restrained with the exposition-usually a plus, and to be honest, you don’t need to remember all the details of the first book to follow this one. I actually remember very little about the plot of Trail of Lightning. The mission goes sideways in a big way, and Maggie picks up the pieces and finds herself responsible for a young woman, Ben, with some clan powers, a chip on her shoulder, and nothing left to lose-remind you of anyone? Maggie, Ben, and other allies have to leave Dinétah to find the White Locust-as well as Kai Arviso, Maggie’s onetime love and the man she killed to save the day last time. Maggie agrees to help the Thirsty Boys apprehend the White Locust, a strange cult leader buying up explosives. Storm of Locusts picks up not too long after Trail of Lightning. Rebecca Roanhorse bottled lightning once, and now she is back to do it again ![]() ![]() ![]() But what makes them such an effective creative team? Why is there almost something magical about their works? They’ll get you hooked, and you’ll spend the rest of your days waiting for Brubaker’s Substack newsletter announcing their next project. That’s how good writer Brubaker and artist Phillips are. In fact, despite the size of the stack next to me, I can’t help but think about the comics they’ve done that I don’t have. ![]() Many would tell you that these two are the kings of noir comics. Those names are Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. These comics cover a range of subjects: a vigilante in New York being hounded by a demon, a seedy crime world that no one seems to inhabit by choice, gritty superheroes, the underbelly of old Hollywood… But there are two names that tie all of these stories together. Volumes of Kill or be Killed, Criminal, Sleeper, and The Fade Out. Next to me, I have a stack of comics that’s about a foot high. ![]() 6/9/2023 0 Comments Partition by Urvashi Butalia![]() ![]() She contextualizes the stories by also narrating an official history of partition that covers the major events, including the story of her own divided family. In Butalia’s oral histories both perpetrators and victims of the violence in Punjab reveal amazing stories of complicity and action. In this book, Urvashi Butalia turns to oral histories to tell the real story of the violence in Delhi and across North India in 1947. ![]() In response, South Asian scholars began to see for the first time, the holes in the official narratives of India’s 1947 partition into independent Pakistan and India. Delhi-ites were horrified to discover both the inaction of the local authorities to provide safety and security for citizens, and the failure of the media to report the atrocities taking place. In the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguard, the citizens of Delhi unleashed a murderous campaign of violence on the Sikh community as a whole. Urvashi Butalia’s remarkable book on India’s partition emerged out of the terrible violence that gripped Delhi, not in 1947, when the partition took place, but in 1984. ![]() 6/9/2023 0 Comments William Etty by Sarah Burnage![]() What happened at Byam Shaw is, in microcosm, an extreme example of what is happening to our art colleges. ![]() The Byam Shaw has just celebrated its centenary by witnessing its own obliteration. Personally, I was told I was not needed for “unit delivery”. Subsequently, many artists that taught there, along with technicians and administrative and maintenance staff, were cut in a managerial cull. Students supporting the institution in which they studied became a major threat. University of the Arts let the occupation run its course, but later its anger was expressed by destroying any autonomy left for the college. ![]() Foreseeing its destruction, students admirably took over the school, occupying its buildings in February 2009 and proclaiming it the Byam Shaw People’s University in an attempt to save it from annihilation. ![]() Totally inappropriate marking systems were introduced by a clueless management of non-creative number crunchers who wouldn’t have lasted five minutes running a baked bean factory. In the past decade, the school stupidly allowed itself to be absorbed into Central Saint Martins, part of University of the Arts, London. ![]() ![]() ![]() I started to think maybe I was misremembering the end of the second book. It didn't seem to be touched upon at all. I wanted to know what happened from there. I just couldn't get into it and also, I was confused.Īll I could think about was that amazing cliffhanger from book two. Taking over 20-days to finish a book in this genre is pretty unusual for me. ![]() I picked Heat Wave up on July 2nd and finished it this morning. I couldn't wait to get my hands on the next book in the series. There was a cliffhanger ending to the second book that left me with hives and my jaw on the floor. Additionally, I was having a lot of fun just being back with the characters I had grown to love. While it started out a little slow, by about 40% we started getting some startling new revelations that really helped to build the intensity. The second book in the series, Flash Fire, which I read in 2021, wasn't quite all the stars for me like the first book, but I still really, really enjoyed it. It was such a fun story and concept, with a great friendship group at the middle. It was my first time reading from this author and I loved how rapid-fire and intelligent the writing was. When I read the first book in this series, The Extraordinaries, in 2020, I was blown away. I feel let down after anticipating this release for so long. This hurts me, so I'm not going to beat around the bush. ![]() 6/8/2023 0 Comments Over the edge magellan![]() Oneok expects the acquisition to boost its annual per-share earnings by 3.0% to 7.0% from 2025 through 2027. Versus the start of the year, Magellan Midstream stock is up roughly 25% at writing. This acquisition creates a more resilient energy infrastructure company that is expected to produce stable cash flows through diverse commodity cycles. Magellan shareholders will receive $25 a share in cash and the remaining 63% will be paid to them in Oneok stock. The transaction is expected to complete in the third quarter of the current year and will create an oil and gas infrastructure giant with a pipeline network spanning over 50,000 miles. ![]() ![]() Shares of Magellan Midstream Partners LP ( NYSE: MMP) opened 15% up on Monday after Oneok Inc ( NYSE: OKE) said it will buy the petroleum products distributor for $18.8 billion. ![]() ![]() ![]() Was it not something of a similar order that took place in New York on September 11? Its citizens were introduced to the ‘desert of the real’-for us, corrupted by Hollywood, the landscape and the shots of the collapsing towers could not but be reminiscent of the most breathtaking scenes in big catastrophe productions. Žižek weaves the hollywoodian comparison further, and argues that those who experienced the event on television felt something akin to what is presented in the movie The Matrix (1999) when “the hero awakens into ‘real reality’ sees a desolate landscape littered with burnt-out ruins,” what the movie exposes as “the desert of the real” 1 (15): ![]() ![]() The plane becomes “the ultimate Hitchcockian blot, the anamorphic stain which denaturalized the idyllic well-know New York landscape” (14-15). 1 The reference to “the desert of the real” in The Matrix is to Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Sim (.)ĢAs Žižek explains “the endless repeated shot of the plane approaching and hitting the second WTC tower” can be viewed as “the real-life version of the famous scene from Hitchcock’s Birds” in which Melanie’s head is hit by a bird. ![]() 6/8/2023 0 Comments Eragon audio book![]() ![]() The sky was clear and dark, and a slight breeze stirred the air. He was amazed she had made it so far without a wolf or bear catching her. His target, a small doe with a pronounced limp in her left forefoot, was still with the herd. The prints told him that the deer had been in the meadow only a half-hour before. ![]() Now his choices could save-or destroy-the Empire.Įragon knelt in a bed of trampled reed grass and scanned the tracks with a practiced eye. Gifted with only an ancient sword, a loyal dragon, and sage advice from an old storyteller, Eragon is soon swept into a dangerous tapestry of magic, glory, and power. ![]() Eragon by Christopher Paolini is now in paperback! Fifteen-year-old Eragon believes that he is merely a poor farm boy-until his destiny as a Dragon Rider is revealed. ![]() |