A kaleidoscopic guide to everything we're missing - NAOMI KLEIN A brilliant, eye-opening work of wonder - MATT HAIG This book will tear through your preconceptions like a meteor through space. In Ziya Tong's hands, we learn that it can be joyous, too, with thrilling facts, questions and juxtapositions on every page. It is not just a book that tells a story of humanity it is a gentle but highly effective wake-up call * * Guardian * * In a time of mounting global crisis, the kind of radical curiosity that fills this book - a commitment to probing the unseen, unknowable and unthinkable - has become essential to our survival. It feels like being shown around a fascinating exhibit by an enthusiastic curator. Considering how much she gets through, the tone is light and accessible.
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Though the book could have succumbed to monotony due to the repetitive nature of events, the shocking twists manage to keep it afloat. But it is the final voice that delivers a truth that has a rug-pulling impact - a revelation that is both shocking and saddening, followed by an epilogue. The alternation of voice is a complimentary feature. The book opens with a letter by Sae, followed by a speech from Maki leading to a conversation with Akiko and Yuka respectively - each narrating their life after the incident. The four girls, separated after the incident, are each living their versions of disturbed adolescence and practising a self-chosen penance. Acing it all, the words of the dead girl’s mother, spoken in angst and desolation three years after the incident, have a major life-changing impact for them - resounding years after the fateful afternoon. The horror of the unthinkable incident and guilt of their inability to save their friend or remember the features of the murderer changes their lives forever, turning them into psychologically complex characters. It follows the lives of four girls, Sae, Maki, Yuka, and Akiko who witnessed a murder as children. Penance is a psychological thriller with a strange murder at its centre, depicting how home environments shape children’s reactions to situations and the perception of circumstances. The revised section replaces the pigs reference with: “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”Ī further lengthy passage describing Bond’s night out in Harlem, including an argument between a man and his girlfriend conducted largely in accented dialogue Fleming describes as “straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in”, has been entirely removed. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. The original passage read: “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. In the sensitivity reader-approved version of Live and Let Die, Bond’s assessment that would-be African criminals in the gold and diamond trades are “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” becomes – “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”Īnother altered scene features Bond visiting Harlem in New York, where a salacious strip tease at a nightclub makes the male crowd, including 007, increasingly agitated. References to the “sweet tang of rape”, “blithering women” failing to do a “man’s work”, and homosexuality being a “stubborn disability” also remain. Dated references to other ethnicities remain, such as Bond’s racial terms for east Asian people and the spy’s disparaging views of Oddjob, Goldfinger’s Korean henchman. I was also reminded of some books I haven’t thought about for about 20 years…for example, Love and Betrayal and Hold the Mayo (anyone?!) Of course not all of Mangan’s choices were familiar, but it’s so well written that it feels like a friend recommending you great new reads. It was also wonderful to hear echoes of my own adult reservations about some of the books I loved as a child – growing up really does put some of them in a new and unflattering light! It was lovely to hear her take on old favourites, such as The Borrowers and Goodnight Mister Tom, as well as many books that I loved as a child and have recently shared with my own children. Being a similar age to Mangan, a lot of her book choices are cosily familiar and she writes with humour and passion. I’m always keen to read about the experiences of one of my own tribe of book obsessives and was anticipating a blast from the past of my own childhood reading. ‘Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading’ by Lucy ManganĪs a life-long bookworm, I could not wait to get my hands on Mangan’s book about her childhood reading. Links are affiliate links that I earn commission on at no extra cost to you – thank you for supporting my blog. With this in mind, I thought I’d introduce you to some of my favourites! I recently reviewed ‘Dear Reader’ by Cathy Rentzenbrink (you can see the review here) and many of the comments I received were about the fact that people really love books about books! Hyde almost like a master, continuing Utterson’s anxiety. He goes to Jekyll’s house and, finding Jekyll absent, asks Poole, a servant, about Mr. Finally one night, he sees Hyde approach and confronts him and senses the same air of evil about the man that Enfield described. So, Utterson decides to spy on the strange house, the scene of the crime. He has nightmares of Jekyll being woken in his bed by this blackmailing fiend. Hyde, causing Utterson to worry even more about Jekyll’s safety. Lanyon, an old friend of Jekyll's who has had a falling out with Jekyll over what he considers to be his old friend's unscientific methods. Jekyll, has recently made a will and has left everything to a Mr. Enfield agree that it is best not to talk any further about the matter but Utterson is deeply affected, because he knows the person that Enfield describes who trampled the girl. He disappeared into this very house and revealed a check signed by a well-known and respected name. Enfield tells the story of a horrible incident, in which a man trampled a young girl and, when apprehended, seemed remorseless but agreed to pay a large check when threatened by the police. One Sunday, as the pair is taking a walk, they come across a somber looking door belonging to a house that Enfield knows well. He is reserved but kind and is known for loyally sticking by his friends even when they do wrong. It is taut with the tensions between a teen son and his father even before Katrina arrives. My synopsis above barely scratches the surface of this novel. I saw this on several best books of the year lists and had to try it. As the situation deteriorates and gangs of thugs appear in the Superdome, Miles and his family must decide whether to just take care of themselves or to risk themselves to help strangers. They spend the length of the storm there, in stifling heat, among crowds of people, and with broken toilet facilities and little food and water. He and his father, a jazz musician who often pays more attention to his music than his son, and his uncle try to drive out of New Orleans before the storm but when their car breaks down they are forced to head to the Superdome. Miles has been living with his father for a few months in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hits. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.Īfter serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Daughters never forgive.įor the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. “Sensationally good - two complex characters power the story like a nuclear reaction.”-Lee ChildĪ most anticipated book of 2020 by Newsweek ∙ Marie Claire ∙ Bustle ∙ Shondaland ∙ PopSugar ∙ Woman’s Day ∙ Good Housekeeping ∙ BookRiot ∙ She Reads "If you enjoyed The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, read Darling Rose Gold." - Washington Post THE USA TODAY AND EDGAR AWARD NOMINATED BESTSELLER As Put tries to put the pieces of their family history together in the midst of heartbreak, she'll confront the idea of life debt and inherited trauma along with love and duty. Their relationship fractures when Put announces her upcoming marriage, to a woman, at the age of 40. But achievement and expectation do not inhabit the same house, especially when Put comes out in her 20s. For many years, Put tried to repay in kind, making choices that would befit a good Cambodian daughter while building a successful career as an award-winning journalist. Put's life was then saved by the American military nurses and doctors that Ma had rushed her into the arms of, a story which, repeated constantly over the years, became family legend. Putsata Reang's family fled Cambodia when she was just 11 months old, spending nearly three weeks aboard an overcrowded Navy vessel before making it to an American naval base in the Philippines. (Kiedis has been sober for almost four years.) Though not generally as articulate as Marilyn Manson's similar autobiography, Kiedis's story of childhood drug use, adolescent fame and hard-won maturity will strike a chord with fans of Drew Barrymore's Little Girl Lost. In Scar Tissue Anthony Kiedis, charismatic and highly articulate frontman of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recounts his remarkable life story, and the history of the band itself. But while Kiedis fails to scratch beneath the surface of his fast-lane life, his frankness is moving, especially toward the end of the book, when his mea culpa turns into a full-blown account of recovery and redemption. The frank, shocking and inspiring autobiography of Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - the worlds biggest band (MOJO). Though he peppers his book with little known facts (for instance, the author narrowly missed being named Clark Gable Kiedis), the punk-funk rocker dedicates too few pages to his introspective music-writing process and too many to his incessant drug use and revolving door of girlfriends (which included actress Ione Skye, singer Sinéad O'Connor and director Sofia Coppola). Raised in the 1960s and '70s by a drug dealer father who first introduced his preteen son to drugs by mashing them into bananas, the high school delinquent and UCLA dropout seemed destined for a life of rabble-rousing until his high school band-cofounded by close friends Michael "Flea" Balzary and Hillel Slovak-took off and became one of the most popular groups of the 1990s. Here’s the synopsis for Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis:įor a musician who has spent the better half of his life either intoxicated or on a drug high, Kiedis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, has produced a surprisingly detailed account of his life. So that’s when I decided for my brother to get a cup of porridge,” Mutesi told CNN.Īlthough she was unfamiliar with the game, as is most of Uganda, Phiona worked hard, practicing every day for a year. “I was living a hard life, where I was sleeping on the streets, and you couldn’t have anything to eat in the streets. This was the program that would come to change Phiona’s life and turn her into “The Queen of Katwe”. Of his program, Katende has said that he had started it hoping to teach analytic and problem-solving skills that the children could apply to succeed in their own lives. The slum where Phiona lives is called Katwe, and it is located right in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, where veteran and refugee Robert Katende began a chess program for children, giving them food in return for completing a lesson. This was exactly the situation that teenager Phiona Mutesi found herself in when she started learning chess. There is little food to split between you and your family and you are a minority in your age group because you have regularly attended school before. |