Seveneves pages7/6/2023 ![]() Stephenson takes his time doing so, layering on a perhaps not entirely necessary game of intrigue involving a sly-boots “dusky blonde” of a president. The bad news is that it’s going to be messy.” The solution? Get off the planet fast, set up space colonies, perpetuate the human race using turkey basters-well, a “DNA sequence stored on a thumb drive,” anyway-and multiple moms, whence the title. Ever the optimist, Doob puts it this way: “The good news is that the Earth is one day going to have a beautiful system of rings, just like Saturn. ![]() ![]() ![]() Easy street gives way to a very rocky galactic road as Doob has to figure out why the heavens are suddenly hurling mountains of space debris at Earth in a time already fraught with human-caused difficulty. His latest opens with a literal bang as the moon explodes “without warning and for no apparent reason.” When the reason finally does become apparent, it’s cause to enlist steely-jawed action hero Dubois Jerome Xavier Harris, Ph.D., a scientist who makes fat bread as a TV science popularizer and sucker-up to the rich and powerful. No slim fables or nerdy novellas for Stephenson ( Anathem, 2008, etc.): his visions are epic, and he requires whole worlds-and, in this case, solar systems-to accommodate them. ![]()
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Black ice by anne stuart7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Her general outrageousness has gotten her on Entertainment Tonight, as well as in Vogue, People, USA Today, Women’s Day and countless other national newspapers and magazines. She’s won numerous awards, appeared on most bestseller lists, and speaks all over the country. ![]() ![]() Martins Press, Berkley, Dell, Pocket Books and Fawcett. Since then she's written more gothics, regencies, romantic suspense, romantic adventure, series romance, suspense, historical romance, paranormal and mainstream contemporary romance for publishers such as Doubleday, Harlequin, Silhouette, Avon, Zebra, St. Her first novel was Barrett's Hill, a gothic romance published by Ballantine in 1974 when Anne had just turned 25. Anne Stuart is a grandmaster of the genre, winner of Romance Writers of America's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, survivor of more than thirty-five years in the romance business, and still just keeps getting better. ![]() Alexander's very bad7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() And Anthony's girlfriend is self-centered and materialistic, but she's clearly not intended to be a positive role model. There’s some brief cyberbullying when a classmate takes a picture of Alexander and puts his picture on the face of bikini-clad women and spreads the photo around school. They demonstrate perseverance and teamwork when things get tough. ![]() Really, the terrible day helps them all admit and face up to their weaknesses and become stronger as a family. But ultimately they all support each other when the chips are down, and there's no question that they're a loving, caring, hardworking, down-to-earth group. During the terrible day, the worst in all of the Coopers comes out: Parents are distracted (dad Ben ignores the baby during a job interview and lets him eat a marker), important responsibilities are ignored (mom Kelly ignores her job for a long time after she creates a catastrophe at work), teens make big mistakes (texting while driving, drinking enough cough medicine to basically get drunk before going on stage, etc.), etc. ![]() ![]() ![]() By the age of 15, her fate is sealed, again, without her permission. As she grows older, she struggles to keep the harsh realities of World War II and abandonment at a distance through her sense of humor, imagination and determination. Her spirit trumps over adversity during the war times within and around her. She is able to forgive those who took so much away from her. The child witnesses and experiences many disturbing things from her uncouth, unsanitary living conditions to the failed paratroopers dangling from trees during the allied invasion. In wartime Europe, childhood does not exist. This time sickness, warfare and destruction are her enemies. ![]() After eight years, she returns home to find her childhood interrupted again. Less than 25 kilometers away her family leads a very different life. Her school is taken over by German soldiers and the things like bread and eggs that were once plentiful, no longer exist. The child grows up while WW II ravages the town. She shares her breakfast with goats and chickens while living in the shadow of fascism. She sleeps between a loving aunt and a deranged uncle. Tina lives in a one-room house in one of the poorest regions of Sicily. It was not an abduction nor was it an adoption. She spends the next eight years of her life absent from their lives. In Sicily, 1935 a four-year child walks away from her loving family, her mother, her sister and an infant brother, with a great-aunt for a vacation. ![]() Jordan hennessy call down the hawk7/6/2023 ![]() He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality. To use them, To trap them, To kill them before their dreams destroy us all. ![]() Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.Īnd then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. The dreamers walk among us…and so do the dreamed. Then I was introduced to The Raven Boys and now can’t get enough. ![]() ![]() I didn’t make it very far before putting it away, thinking that maybe The Scorpion Races was a one off for me and the author. I love The Scorpio Races and so tried to listen to Call Down the Hawk last year without knowing anything about it. ![]() The ralph nader reader7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() lawmakers and, of course, the follies and failures of the mainstream political media. The paper’s coverage centers on the issues that Nader had devoted his career to exposing - and which, in Nader’s view, the mainstream press refuses to touch: the growth of corporate influence on Capitol Hill, the steady erosion of congressional power, the perennial corruption of U.S. ![]() Since April, Nader has been working with a team of about fifteen freelance writers and journalists to publish Capitol Hill Citizen, a new print newspaper that provides a decidedly un-mainstream look at Congress. ![]() Instead, he’s decided to make one more bid for relevance using a medium that befits his old-fashioned approach to politics: the print newspaper. He keeps talking about corporate crime, why not a hearing?”īut Nader, now 88 years old, isn’t giving up. “ the chairman of the Budget Committee, and he hasn’t had a hearing about corporate crime. “I stopped by twice in her office, sent her emails and telephone calls - she never calls back.” ![]() ![]() KRAKEN is a primarily a narrative book of pop-science, but there will be a few black and white illustrations throughout. Like Mary Roach, Mark Kurlanksy, and Susan Orlean, Wendy Williams weaves a rich narrative tapestry around her subject, drawing powerfully on the passions and discoveries of scientists, fisherman, and squid enthusiasts around the world. In addition to squid, both giant and otherwise, Kraken examines the equally enthralling other cephalopod species, the octopus and cuttlefish, and explores their otherworldly camouflage and bioluminescent abilities. The pages take the reader on a wild narrative ride through the world of squid science and adventure, along the way addressing some riddles about how the human brain works, what intelligence is, and what monsters lie in the deep. With eighty percent of it still largely unexplored, it is endlessly fascinating. Kraken introduces one of the most charismatic, monstrous, enigmatic, and curious inhabitants - the squid, which has supplanted the whale as the sea creature that now obsesses people's imaginations. The ocean is the last remaining source of profound mystery and discovery on Earth. The oceans are perhaps the last remaining source of profound mystery and discovery on Earth, and are as such of perennial fascination. ![]() The big four christie7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Not even Melanie thinks we can do that and she still likes our chances in New York. One is to win all of the swing states - Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire. But here are the arguments that survived one meeting to the next. And here he is today, a massive coronary from the Oval Office. Is that possible? Ten days ago, Pence would not have been even in the top five. T keeps saying that we need to be less predictable. ![]() But what can Sessions do for us now? Bukes, basically. He gave us credibility in the Senate when the munchkins headed for the tall grass. By Tuesday night it was clear that Sessions was included for sentimental reasons only. Then there were the finals with the Big Four - Christie, Newt, Pence, and Jeff Sessions. And maybe it’s a New York Military Academy thing, but he loves uniforms It took us 36 hours to squash that banana. It was also clear from a one-hour whirligig with our policy guys that Flynn has no idea what he thinks about taxes, trade, gay marriage, abortion, energy independence, regulatory reform or various other subjects that just might pop up between now and November. Flynn’s a fine man with a good military record but, let’s be honest, he’s no Dwight Eisenhower. On Monday, which seems like two months ago, T told us that he was going with Mike Flynn as VP. It’s been a long week and maybe, just maybe, we’ve passed through the shadow of the valley of death. ![]() Vandermeer dead astronauts7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() He might have value,” an easy task given that one version of Chen has been blown “into salamanders,” as our duck can attest. Says one, Chen, of his semblable, “Keep him alive. Sometimes, indeed, everything dies even as it lives, which explains why those three astronauts, a nicely balanced blend of ethnicities and genders, are able to walk and talk even as their less fortunate iterations lie inert. In the ruin of the world that the nefarious Company has left behind after its biotech experiments went south, such things are commonplace, and nothing is quite as it seems, although everything dies. VanderMeer puts three in the middle of a strange city somewhere on what appears to be a future Earth, a place where foxes read minds and ducks threaten their interlocutors: “I’ll kill you and feast on your entrails,” one duck says, and, on being challenged about his lab-engendered ducky identity, spits back, “You are not a whatever you are.” All very true. ![]() ![]() VanderMeer ( The Strange Bird, 2018, etc.) continues his saga of biotech gone awry and the fearsome world that ensues.ĭavid Bowie had just one dead astronaut, poor Maj. ![]() Crashing the Net by Samantha Wayland7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() This Christmas is no exception, though Mike is having a hell of a time figuring out what, exactly, Alexei’s gift is.Īlexei knows his gift this year is going to blow Mike’s mind, but in the meantime, it’s pretty hilarious watching Mike try to figure out what it is. What he needs, though, is another matter entirely.Īfter four years with Alexei, there are things Mike knows with absolute certainty: he loves Alexei, Alexei loves him, and Alexei gives the very best gifts. All he wants is to keep to himself and play for the Ice Cats. Mike is broke, bruised, and covered from head to toe in cheap lube. He’s let people in before and it’s taught him that if he can’t have what he really wants, it’s better to be alone. He knows exactly who he is: a goalie on the ice, a prankster in the locker room, and a man who knows better than to share his private life with anyone. This is a very sexy and slightly kinky romance series with no cheating, no cliffhangers, and all the HEA anyone could want.ĭumping gallons of lube on the new kid is just another day at the office for Alexei. ![]() This is the boxed set of the first three books in the Samantha Wayland’s Crashing Series. ![]() |