![]() ![]() His inherently dramatic tale is the basis for Julie Orringer’s thoughtful and absorbing new novel, The Flight Portfolio.įor just over a year, Fry and a core staff of Jewish and non-Jewish expats focused their efforts in the south of France, collaborating with an extensive network of forgers, blackmailers and petty thieves. ![]() Stationed in Marseilles in 1940, Fry procured visas, created false passports and sought out escape routes on both sea and land for almost 2,000 people, including Marc Chagall, André Breton and Max Ernst. His primary goal was to prevent notable artists, writers and political exiles, many of them Jewish, from being interned in concentration camps. Varian Fry was a young Harvard-educated journalist and editor who worked for the American Emergency Rescue Committee during World War II. ![]()
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![]() On the other hand, she’s an awesome activist because she’s breaking down academic walls by attending university, proving that women are just as academic-minded as men. Bringing Down the Duke by Evie DunmoreĪnnabelle is sort of a reluctant activist, because she’s a suffragette primarily because she has to be in order to afford going to Oxford. ![]() Her home is a station on the Underground Railroad, she is an activist and leader in her community, she only buys products made by people who are anti-slavery (even though she’s on a budget and it would be cheaper not to), and she’s doing just fine. This week: Activists Indigo by Beverly Jenkins ![]() This list is organized in roughly chronological order. To celebrate Women’s History Month, every Saturday in March we’ve prepared a Saturday Smutty Six list of some of our favorite heroines. ![]() ![]() ![]() “Will you make a blue ocean for my boat?” Berry asks quietly, and that’s all it takes to change Red’s life. A Greek chorus of grown-up crayons lined up across a black spread makes patronizing comments: “He’s got to press harder.” “Really apply himself!” Only when Red is at his wit’s end does he meet Berry, a crayon who actually sees him. ![]() Really!” But a page turn reveals two rows of strawberries, one scarlet and the other. ![]() Hall ( It’s an Orange Aardvark!) has a fine ear for dialogue, and the overly cheerful encouragement Red endures will sound familiar to any child who’s struggled to perform: “I’ll draw a red strawberry, then you draw a red strawberry,” coaches the scarlet crayon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s a poor performer in school, where his drawings are expected to be red. Red is a crayon, and children will see his problem right away: his label reads “red,” but he’s blue. ![]() ![]() The chicks are not identical, but vary slightly, with the lower chick having more carved detailing to the feet and more delineation to the feathers along the wing and side of the body. The two finely carved chicks are shown in profile, standing one above the other, the remains of the carved surface at the edges giving the impression that they are set within a frame. It is a sculptor’s trial piece or model, or perhaps a teaching piece, and measures 22 cm high by 11.5 cm wide. It is object number E11129 in the Musée du Louvre, Egyptian collections in Paris, and can usually be found in room 644 of the Sully wing. One such item is this stunning limestone relief plaque of two quail chicks, which probably dates to the late period (664-332 BC) or Ptolemaic period (332-30 BC) in Egypt. Quail chicks in relief, limestone plaque. ![]() It is often the little things in museums that will fascinate you the most, so it is always worth stopping to look in the myriad of cabinets and displays that you may miss if you are going straight to the Mona Lisa or Van Dyck paintings. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ‘The Crystal World’ (1966) was JG Ballard’s fourth novel, and the last of his ‘quiet apocalypse’ quartet, following ‘The Wind From Nowhere’ (1961), ‘The Drowned World’ (1962) and ‘The Burning World’ (1964) – and on the brink of his New Wave experimental work commencing with ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ (1969). He interacts with apostate priest Father Balthus, who seems to take his name from the Polish/French artist whose fetishistic eroticism bears a disturbingly surreal edge. In ‘The Crystal World’ JG Ballard’s central character is Dr Edward Sanders, a name that is surely more than just coincidental. The Korda film, taken from an Edgar Wallace story, features RG Sanders, a British colonial district official played by Leslie Banks. He lived in a small semi-detached house in Shepperton for close on half a century, from 1960 until his death in 2009. Oddly, some of the scenes for the Zoltan Korda movie ‘Sanders Of The River’ (1935), supposedly featuring Nigeria, were filmed at Shepperton, Surrey, a location that figures highly in JG Ballard’s personal life-mythology. ![]() ![]() Orner’s solution is to start again from the beginning to slow the inevitable heartache. He stops reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring three quarters of the way through because he knows that finishing the novel will leave him bereft. In his mother’s copy of A Coney Island of the Mind, he’s stopped short by a single word in the margin, “YES!”-which leads him to conjure his mother at twenty-three. ![]() Covering such well-known writers as Lorraine Hansberry, Primo Levi, and Marilynne Robinson, as well as other greats like Maeve Brennan and James Alan McPherson, Orner’s highly personal take on literature alternates with his own true stories of loss and love, hope and despair. She seldom responded, leading him to plead in 1945, “Another day and still no word from you.” Seventy years later, Peter Orner writes in response to his grandfather’s plea: “Maybe we read because we seek that word from someone, from anyone.”įrom the acclaimed fiction writer about whom Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote, “You know from the second you pick him up that he’s the real deal,” comes Still No Word from You, a unique chain of essays and intimate stories that meld the lived life and the reading life. Stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Seymour Orner wrote a letter every day to his wife, Lorraine. A new collection of pieces on literature and life by the author of Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the NBCC Award for Criticism ![]() ![]() ![]() Book 3 The final chapter of the series spent a very long time, and completely unnecessarily mind you, doing a character reshuffle that simply turned out to be lumbering and graceless. This doesn’t particularly detract from the middle chapter but certainly does set-up the final chapter for crushing boredom. Continuing with a slightly heated storyline with the occasional somewhat juicy scene, the plot begins to steer into unnecessary directions. There’s not a lot to be said on development, as it doesn’t really differ much from the first. Book 2 The second part is simply an extension of the first. ![]() It’s gentle tension building and teasing that is well done. The characters are not terribly deep but that is a good thing in a story like this because it avoids clumsy chapters that aren’t relevant to the, lets be honest, soft-core fun. Book 1 – The story begins with some effective character introductions, which moves the level of writing beyond the smut of most erotica. To split this up into three separate items is, well, a bit of a con to the audience. This story is part of the Beastly Tales series and as such should be reviewed as all three “books” because frankly they’re all the same book. Fan fiction writer's almost successful experiment ![]() ![]() It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. ![]() He is everything she needs right now.Ĭleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art-and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn't even have money for cigarettes. ![]() Sure, she's at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. ![]() Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice' PANDORA SYKES, author of How Do We Know We're Doing It Right ![]() 'A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage. ![]() ![]() ![]() He saw his fellow soldiers die horrifically and he blamed leadership, but not necessarily the power structure. He leaves the service after witnessing a genocide he blames on the U.N. Protectorate-the Earth based government that keeps order in the galaxy. In the novels, Kovacs is still an Envoy, but Envoy's are the Special Operations Forces of the U.N. In the show, Kovacs is the “last Envoy,” the lone remaining member of a revolutionary group that wants to overthrow the ruling elites and eliminate the technology that keeps everyone alive forever. This started in the first season with Takesh Kovacs, the main character. The novel Jaws is based on has an entire subplot about the local Mafia that landed on the cutting room floor for the film.īut Netflix’s Altered Carbon feels like it butchered its source material. ![]() Sometimes adaptations make large changes from the source material for the better. I think the Lord of the Rings films are better than the novels. Game of Thrones did a mostly great job of adapting George RR Martin’s books. Television is a different medium than books and things are going to change, I understand that. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Rousseau argues that it is absurd for a man to surrender his freedom for slavery thus, the participants must have a right to choose the laws under which they live. In this desired social contract, everyone will be free because they all forfeit the same number of rights and impose the same duties on all. A state has no right to enslave a conquered people. He concludes book one, chapter three with, "Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers", which is to say, the ability to coerce is not a legitimate power―might does not make right, and the people have no duty to submit to it. The stated aim of The Social Contract is to determine whether there can be a legitimate political authority since people's interactions he saw at his time seemed to put them in a state far worse than the good one they were at in the state of nature, even though living in isolation. The epigraph of the work is "foederis aequas / dicamus leges" Let us set equal terms for the truce. Title page of a pirated edition of the Social Contract, probably printed in Germany. ![]() |