![]() ![]() This adaptation is leaner than the original, making the action continuous and fast paced while preserving the major plot points and journeys of the hilarious characters. ![]() ![]() A glorious rendition of mistaken identity, Wilde's play is sure to get people of all ages and social class grinning, if not realizing themselves the importance of being earnest. In this play, young Jack Worthing and his good friend Algernon find themselves in a ridiculous situation after their fiancées learn they are coincidentally engaged to the same man. The play is often called a "comedy of manners," because in the world Wilde knew and wrote about, late 19th century British high society, manners were everything. Since its premiere in 1895, it has given joy to generations of theatergoers. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is Oscar Wilde's most perfect, and most popular, play. ![]()
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![]() ![]() The author convincingly argues that such attitudes “subtly discourage” women from achieving equality with men and accessing the full citizenship they deserve. Even in the U.S., women are often told to be grateful for the rights they have. ![]() In “Inheritance,” Lalami extends the concept of conditional citizenship to include not only nonwhites and non-Christians but also nonmales. The author reminds readers how white supremacist attitudes have always existed by recalling the historical treatment of other nonwhite communities. Suddenly, the “slice of citizenship apple pie” she had been extended was withdrawn as hate crimes against law-abiding Muslim Americans spiked and presidential bans against certain nations eventually became a new normal. ![]() In the opening essay, “Allegiance,” Lalami writes about the frightening attitudinal changes she witnessed as a new Muslim American citizen in the wake of 9/11. To make her points, she uses the concept of “conditional citizenship,” a state of partial (and revocable) acceptance/integration into American society based on factors such as race and faith. ![]() The award-winning novelist gathers eight essays that examine the meaning of citizenship in 21st-century America.ĭrawing on history, politics, and her own personal experience, Lalami, a creative writing professor and American Book Award winner, explores the “contradictions between doctrine and reality” that problematize what it means to be an American. ![]() ![]() ![]() I received a copy of The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker from Walker Books Australia in exchange for an honest review, all thoughts are my own ![]() Because who knows what grudges people have been holding onto for millennia, just waiting for a reckless girl to give them the chance to get vengeance. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy. As she learns more about their community, Harriet is willing to do anything to unleash her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. What if death is only the beginning? When Harriet Stoker dies falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a world of ghosts with magical powers – shape-shifting, hypnosis, or even the ability to possess the living. Genre: Young Adult Fantasy, Thriller, Paranormal, Supernatural, Urban Fantasy. ![]() ![]() ![]() presents the latest findings in a topical field and is written by a renowned expert but lacks a bit in style.ħ – Good. ![]() A helpful and/or enlightening book that has a substantial number of outstanding qualities without excelling across the board, e.g. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning.Ĩ – Very good. ![]() Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone.ĩ – Superb. A helpful and/or enlightening book that, in addition to meeting the highest standards in all pertinent aspects, stands out even among the best. Here's what the ratings mean:ġ0 – Brilliant. Books we rate below 5 won’t be summarized. Our rating helps you sort the titles on your reading list from solid (5) to brilliant (10). We rate each piece of content on a scale of 1–10 with regard to these two core criteria. Helpful – You’ll take-away practical advice that will help you get better at what you do. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria:Įnlightening – You’ll learn things that will inform and improve your decisions. At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Falk wasn’t welcomed back to town, not that he expected to be after the way things were when he left, but things were even worse than he would have imagined. ![]() Hadler’s parents were like family to Aaron as a boy so when they ask him to look over Luke’s financials to see if he can see anything that looks suspicious he can’t bring himself to say no, and Luke’s dad has an ace up his sleeve just in case he’s tempted to say no.Ī one night stay in Kiewarra to attend the funerals before heading back to Melbourne extended out to a couple of days, then to a week. The murder/suicide rocks the small town of Kiewarra and brings Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk back for the funerals in a purely personal capacity.įalk and Hadler were childhood best friends and they kept in touch, sporadically, after Falk and his father were run out of town two decades earlier. The drought is taking it’s toll on the land, the town and the people so it’s utterly devastating when Luke Hadler, one of their own, turns a gun on his wife and child before himself. Set in a small outback farming town suffering terribly through the drought we find that things are not always as they seem. With a debut this convincing Harper will be a name to watch. The Dry is a gripping suspense debut by Australian Jane Harper, and it was captivating. ![]() ![]() When an event like this happens, the lights of social media turn on with grand and ill-considered luminance. The London Marathon, like most marathons, gives you a medal that simply states that you were ever there and that is the medal that Frank is returning. ![]() It is not last, but it is not anything else either, it is just the middle where everyone that is not on the podium exists. Which is not first or even second or third or in the top ten. While it is true that Glenique Frank ran in the women’s category of the 2023 London Marathon and placed ahead of some 14,000-odd women, what information would turn the head of this line is that Frank placed 6,160th overall. ![]() But there is a headline, because there is always a headline, that reads Transgender female runner who beat 14,000 women at London Marathon offers to give medal back and I know we are lost. Once I was young innocent and naive and allowed myself to think that surely not all of this is true, that there are simply bigger and more important and better things to concern ourselves with in a world so set ablaze and hurtling towards the infinite abyss. ![]() There is no longer a limit to the things I can allow myself to believe, even as an agnostic I am all too aware that the one true faith is conversations held in bad intentions. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in El's stead, and everyone she saved is at risk again with a full-scale enclave war on the horizon. Peace and harmony have enveloped all the enclaves of the world. Instead of killing enclavers, she saved them, and now the world is safe for all wizards. And what's more, she didn't even have to become the monstrous dark witch she's prophesised to become to make it happen. The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out - not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way.īut that impossible dream has somehow come true for El and her classmates. ![]() Saving the world is a test no school of magic can prepare you for in the triumphant conclusion to the Sunday Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate. ![]() ![]() “The Guts” is twice as long as “The Commitments,” and its size is a representation of the way aging attracts barnacles of duty and disappointment. Though he’s made a bundle with a Web site dedicated to music by obscure but beloved Irish punk and pop acts, the recession has cut into sales. As the story opens, he’s 47, married with four kids and recently diagnosed with bowel cancer. The hero again is Jimmy Rabbitte, the manager of that ill-fated band, and in the second decade of the new century, he’s mainly just feeling ill. ![]() “ The Guts,” Doyle’s moodier, black-humored sequel to “The Commitments,” is about how hard life will work to whomp all that upbeat stuff out of you. “The Commitments” is pugnacious, funny and brisk, but its biggest thrill comes from watching how the characters’ horizons broaden the moment the lights go down and the amps fire up. In imagining a short-lived Dublin band playing soul covers, Doyle knew that music’s chief virtue as a novelistic subject is that it’s a pathway to identity. Novels about pop music too often are weak riffs on fame and celebrity, or (worse) opportunities for the author to show off his discographical knowledge. ![]() Irish author Roddy Doyle caused a sensation with his first novel, “ The Commitments” (1987), and rightly so. ![]() ![]() ![]() And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. Odell sees our attention as the most precious-and overdrawn-resource we have. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. One of President Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019 Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process"-īook Synopsis ** A New York Times Bestseller ** NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time - The New Yorker - NPR - GQ - Elle - Vulture - Fortune - Boing Boing - The Irish Times - The New York Public Library - The Brooklyn Public LibraryĪ complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.-Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review ![]() About the Book "When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as.doing nothing. ![]() ![]() ![]() As crowded as a Bruegel painting, it moves from mud-bound Galician villages to Greek monasteries, 18th-century Warsaw, Brno, Vienna and the luxurious surroundings of the Habsburg court. Over a thousand pages long, dense with history and incident, it is vast enough to make this reader’s knees buckle. The Books of Jacob by the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk is an epic chronicle of the life and times of Frank and his followers. Furthermore, the course of his turbulent 80-year life coincided with huge political and philosophical changes in Europe, as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and traditional religious beliefs were usurped by the rival claims of science. Charismatic, transgressive and downright loopy, Frank comes across today as a Monty Python mashup of Osho, David Koresh and Mormon leader Joseph Smith, but he was highly influential in his time. ![]() |