The resulting adventure is replete with colorful characters, hair-raising action and enough raw machismo to knock over an elephant. He solicited the help of several seasoned riders and began an intensive training process to prepare for the race. For his next move, he decided to make good on an offhand comment about entering the Dakar Rally. Boorman, a part-time British actor and motorcycle enthusiast, had a brief moment in the limelight with a reality-TV show and later a book ( Long Way Round, 2005) that chronicled his adventures with pal Ewan McGregor as they circumnavigated the globe on their bikes. The Dakar Rally is an insane 15,000-kilometer chase across the desert to Dakar, Senegal, that involves dirt, death and a voracious African weed called “camel grass.” Professional riders and venturesome journeymen from all over the world enter the event every year, hoping to prove their mettle, and some of them never make it home alive. A struggling actor enters one of the most dangerous motorcycle races in the world and kicks up a lot of dust.
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Tayari Jones, bestselling author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, in O MagazineĪn unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes and explores their histories - reaching back to the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 - and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. This poignant tale of choices and their aftermath, history and legacy, will resonate with mothers and daughters. In less than 200 sparsely filled pages, this book manages to encompass issues of class, education, ambition, racial prejudice, sexual desire and orientation, identity, mother-daughter relationships, parenthood and loss.With Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson has indeed risen - even further into the ranks of great literature. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST, in The AtlanticĪn exquisite tale of family legacy.The power and poetry of Woodson's writing conjures up Toni Morrison. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARĪ spectacular novel that only this legend can pull off. For this adaptation, Polk returns to his hometown of Hattiesburg Mississippi, where the film is set. Blackbird is based on the novel of the same name by Larry Duplechan, published in 1986. Polk is the creator of the groundbreaking series about young Black gay men, Noah’s Arc, which ran on Logo for two seasons from 2004-2006, culminating in the theater-release 2008 film Jumping the Broom. This journey is the basis of Blackbird, a 2014 film by Patrik-Ian Polk that deserves a revisit during Pride season. And if acknowledging their queer spiritual offspring is difficult for congregations, for religious LGBTQ youth themselves, the journey to self-acceptance can take them through hell. Church communities are often delighted with their queer kids-until they come out. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that “religious precociousness is one of the unacknowledged features of queer childhood.” For LGBTQ kids brought up in the church, musical performance, altar serving, and church drama, scripture reading, preaching, or testifying, can be opportunities to unleash the fabulousness of queer performance. She is introduced to professor Yeardley, who gives her a stack of books to read, and told that Katya, another Fall faerie, has agreed to tutor her. At the Academy, Laurel is surprised to learn that it was her home, not just a school. Jamison welcomes her back to Avalon and tells her that the gates were made by King Oberon (at the cost of his life) and that Winter faeries are the only ones who can open them. Tamani, who is still disappointed that she chose David over him, meets her and escorts her to the gate. Laurel has summer vacation and has been summoned to spend eight weeks at the Academy of Avalon. Six months have passed since the events of the first book. It also debuted on the Indie Bestsellers list. Spells was released in the United States on May 4, 2010, and debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list. It is the sequel to Pike's #1 New York Times best-selling debut, Wings, which introduced readers to Laurel Sewell, a faerie sent among humans to guard the gateway to Avalon. Spells is a fantasy novel by author Aprilynne Pike. “The disappearance of the iconic mass-market edition is very disappointing to us, especially as we understand this could force a difficult situation for schools and teachers with tight budgets who cannot afford the larger, higher priced paperback edition that will remain in the market,” said the email from Hachette, which also claimed that “more than two-thirds of the 30m copies sold worldwide since publication have been Hachette’s low-priced edition”. The Hachette edition retails for $8.99, compared to the $14.99 and $16.99 larger trade paperback editions sold by HarperCollins, and has sold over 55,000 copies since the start of the year, more than double the sales of the trade paperback editions, the New Republic reported. According to emails obtained by the New Republic, Hachette, the US publisher of the mass-market edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, informed booksellers across America on 4 March that Lee’s estate would no longer allow publication of the mass-market paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird. The book's themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. Although controversial when first published in 1978, the book's hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. In this groundbreaking work, three experts-a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian-argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. The dangerous voyage eventually takes them to an island (known now as Skellig Michael). They assemble their small boat with supplies, but overload the vessel and must leave most of this essential cargo behind. The three men set out on a pilgrimage to locate this island with the intention of establishing a monastic retreat. One is Trian and the other Cormac, an older monk who played the lyre the previous evening. In the middle of the night Artt wakes the abbot to tell him that he’s had a dream: a vision of an island in the sea where he sees himself with two others. Moreover, he is not just a scholar priest Artt has also spread the light of God, and is rumoured to have converted whole tribes across Europe. Esteemed by all the other monks, Artt is ‘said to have read every book written, and has copied out dozens’. Also at the meal is Artt, a travelling monk with ‘the bearing of a warrior king’ and the most exciting visitor Trian has ever beheld. We are introduced to Trian, a 19-year-old monk who is ‘still growing, and always hungry’. In a small seventh-century monastery on the coast of Ireland, the monks are celebrating the first fast day after Easter. Exploring this microbial past presents exciting opportunities to recover some of their lost chemistry.ĭirectly studying these metabolites in archaeological samples is virtually impossible because of their poor preservation over time. The microbial species alive today represent only a tiny fraction of the vast diversity of microbes that have inhabited Earth over the past 3 billion years. Because of the diverse functions bacterial natural products have, many have been used as medical treatments such as antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs. These metabolites provide the microbes major evolutionary advantages, such as allowing them to interact with one another or their environment and helping defend against different threats. (THE CONVERSATION) Microorganisms – in particular bacteria – are skillful chemists that can produce an impressive diversity of chemical compounds known as natural products. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.īut the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?įour years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. When Celaena reports to the king, he gives her the name of her next target: Archer Finn, a very handsome and popular courtesan.Ĭelaena spends the next several weeks following Archer and learning more about him and the alleged rebel movement. The novel opens with Celaena on such a mission, but she stages the target’s death and lets him go free. Calaculla-the mine where the King of Adarlan sends Eyllwe’s rebels-is to the south.īy winning the king’s tournament in Throne of Glass, Celaena is bound to serve as the King of Adarlan’s assassin for four years. Endovier-the mine where Celaena works after being captured in Throne of Glass-lies northwest of Rifthold. The novel references two labor camps: the Endovier Salt Mines and Calaculla. Other areas of significance are Eyllwe to the far south of Adarlan, Anielle to the west, and Terrasen to the far north. Rifthold, Adarlan’s capital, sits on the kingdom's southern border, with the Great Ocean on its east and the River Avery on its south. Adarlan lies on the east-central coast of the continent, bordering the Great Ocean. The novel’s plot centers on the continent of Erilea in the kingdom of Adarlan. |