These ideals of beauty - thin, fair, young, delicate – are taught to women every day in myriad ways, which makes it even harder to spot where they truly stem from: large industries that profit from women’s insecurities. Naomi Wolf, in her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth speaks about these relentless, insidious ideals of beauty that are used to undermine women, especially at a time when they are breaking barriers in order to succeed. I have never been this aware, and uncomfortable about the demands I have for myself. This ‘fantasy’, or myth, is a cage, and quarantine has shown me that I’m still within it, no matter how much I believe I do not need to conform. Now, the longer I spend alone in my own house, dressing up for my computer and mirror, the more I question the fantasy I’m supposed to aspire to be. Before, it felt normal to feel inadequate. I have never been this aware and uncomfortable about the demands I have for myself. Shaving my arms and legs offers some semblance of the ‘pretty’ I am looking for, but still falls short. These days, my eyebrows feel bushy and my leg hair is curling at the ends. When I look in the mirror, I recognize myself as the “before” picture in my own life and I long for a time before it became unsafe to get waxed, plucked, threaded, shaved, made up and more – like clockwork every month. It has been months of social distancing and self-isolation for most of us.
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Can you imagine the first one? It was pathetic. I remember going to the first National Coaches’ Convention up in New York and you’d make contacts and people gave speeches and you’d buy some equipment from a bloke with a suitcase. Years later I met a taxi driver in Dallas who’d played in that very league! And that’s what I ended up doing everywhere I went in the US. When I left for Dallas after a couple of years I handed it over to the YMCA and they started the Summer Soccer League. But after a year things got bigger and more kids came around, it grew and grew. Anyway, we hammered in two goals in the end without a cross-bar, but that was the start of my exploits in seeing what had to be done in a country like the US. Then Saturday morning came around, but somebody had ripped the goalposts down and broken them into bits. So I got the job of making a set of goalposts, because there were no goals. I used to joke that there had been two very important carpenters in history – Jesus Christ and me. But then we had to find balls, refs, a place to play and I thought, ‘What have I got myself into?’ I’d worked five or six years in the docks as an apprentice and so I was a carpenter. We put an ad in the paper and a whole load of kids showed up and I thought, 'Bloody hell, what am I going to do with this lot?' But in no time at all we started a league. Kent invites Beatrice to stay at her home while awaiting her interview.Īlso visiting the Kents that summer are their nephews, Hugh, a medical student, and Daniel, a poet. To hire a woman for this position is a radical departure from tradition. Her main concern in the summer of 1914 is to get the grammar school’s board of governors to approve Miss Beatrice Nash as the Latin teacher for the fall. Agatha Kent of Rye, a quietly progressive woman involved in many local projects, is certain that her husband, John, and his colleagues in the Foreign Office will be able to smooth matters over. Simonson’s characters, like most people of the era, were vaguely aware of tensions in the Balkans but not of their worst-case consequences. True, the triggering factor was the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Serbia, but the root cause was the imperialist rivalry between Britain and Germany. The Summer Before the War is about the way England sleepwalked into war with Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany in the summer of 1914. In Major Pettigrew, the real story was about overcoming racism. In fact, both have serious themes which elevate them above and beyond pleasant summer reading. Both novels seem, on the surface, to be comedies of manners set in rural and small town England. Readers who enjoyed Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand will be happy that Helen Simonson has written a second novel, The Summer Before the War. The truth of her marriage reveals itself, too horrific for her to face. Now Marissa races to stay ahead of a bloodthirsty killer and save her friend. Yet Tristan has no relation to the victims. When Marissa unearths the dark secrets of her husband’s mysterious past, she questions everything she knows - and begins to fear for her best friend’s life. When two women are murdered, the evidence implicates the fastest rising business leader in New England - Marissa’s husband, Tristan.Īnother body is found in the woods outside of Medford. Marissa is leading an idyllic life on The Cape – until a terrifying revelation tears her life apart. What if you discovered your husband is a serial killer? SEVERITY promises to be just as addicting: His novel CRAWLSPACE is a fantastic read, one I ripped through in almost a single sitting. SEVERITY by Dan Padavona – Dan consistently puts out great stuff. A couple days ago, my summer camp slasher/creature feature novel, KILL HILL CARNAGE, hit the market, and in honor of that I’ve decided to recommend a few slasher/creature feature novels that I’ve enjoyed, or some new releases from authors whose work I really dig. Which means you’ll also be browsing Amazon for some new reads, something to bring with you, something to murder kill a little downtime. August is just around the corner and you’re probably gearing up for a family vacation, that precious escape before sending the kiddos back to school. The heat is almost unbearable and my A/C is working overtime. In a perfect world, what is there left to fear? A chilling and thought-provoking sci-fi novel from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman.Ī dark, gripping and witty thriller in which the only thing humanity has control over is death. Readers who love bold and challenging themes (such as death) as well as brilliant character development and fascinating concepts explored well. Keep in mind there may be minor spoilers for the story within! Enjoy our chats and look out for another co-read very soon. I think we both agree that Scythe was not only a badass novel but it was tense, thought-provoking and had some of the best reveals of a novel yet. I will share a short review at the bottom of this post and Beth will share hers on her blog. We chatted about the book at several intervals throughout the read but kept in relatively spoiler free. Beth made my first foray into the YA genre so much fun and we certainly had a laugh while experiencing this addictive and sensational novel together. I was extremely grateful to have this opportunity to read Scythe alongside Beth from the epic book blog BiblioBeth. She gives a very up-close picture of living in China where sensitive artistic emotions are blocked by the relentless tide of the Cultural Revolution. Her previous works, Simple Recipes, Certainty, and Dogs at the Perimeter, have won prizes in North America and Berlin, and have been translated into twenty-five languages. First, the excerpts from The Book of Records are so compelling that they have succeeded in drawing two people togetherSwirl and Wen meet because they are both obsessed with the story. She spent some years in Vancouver and now lives in Montreal. Here, Thien illustrates the importance of storytelling in two ways. Madeleine Thien is the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada. Shostakovitch’s music comes into the story and the trouble it ran into in Communist Russia where it was condemned as dangerously bourgeois. We learn of three particular musicians who were brutalized by the government and told their art was a shameful indulgence. This woman is grieving her father’s death by suicide in China. It stretches from Shanghai in the 40’s to Mao’s Cultural Revolution and then from 1980’s Beijing and the Tienanmen protests up to today where the heroine of the story lives in Vancouver. Madeleine Thien’s new book tells the story of two musical families in revolutionary China and how they survived. Includes Boulder the Construction-Bot, Blades the Flight-Bot, Heatwave the Fire-Bot, and Chase the Police-Bot figures. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Smash Changer 23cm Optimus Prime Action Figure. Your little hero will save the day with this Rescue Bots hero Its easy for his little hands to convert his Salvage figure from fierce robot warrior mode. Transformers Legacy Evolution Breakdown Action Figure. Playskool Heroes Transformers Rescue Bots Academy Chase the Police-Bot Converting Toy, 4.5 Inch Action Figure, Toys for Kids Ages 3 and Up £17.80£17. Transformers Rescue Bots is a trademark and copyright of Hasbro. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Beast-Mode 25.4cm Optimus Prime Action Figure. Manufactured under license from TOMY Company, Ltd. Look for other Rescue Bots figures for more team-up fun! (Additional figures sold separately. Robots and humans saving the day, working together the Rescue Bots way! These 4 figures are sized right for little hands and feature Easy 2 do conversions, making them a great option for big imaginations. Turn Boulder the Construction-Bot into a bulldozer, Blades the Flight-Bot into a copter, Heatwave the Fire-Bot into a fire truck, and Chase the Police-Bot into a police car. Little heroes can get the 4 core Rescue Bots figures that convert into their classic vehicle modes all in 1 pack! When the mission calls for a rescue, convert the Rescue Bots figures from robot mode to vehicle mode. Recognizing the tragic trajectory while it’s still unfolding, Linda exhorts her cynical son Biff - once the object of Willy’s pride, now a reflection of his failure - to stop tearing down his father before it’s too late. But the limited range helped drive home the limited options of his character, whose eagerness to win prevents him from seeing that he’s been playing the wrong game.Īs time catches up with Willy, the old salesman loses his job, his self-respect and, eventually, his life. Dennehy pounded the same note with different degrees of intensity. The power of the performance, as with much of the actor’s impressive body of work, didn’t derive from great variety. The bravado of the salesman, in Dennehy’s barreling rendition, couldn’t conceal the shame of a husband and father who fell agonizingly short of his own grandiose expectations. His Willy, a salesman aggressively trapped in a delusive way of thinking, would rather die a martyr than admit to being sold a bill of goods about success. How could it not be? As the pandemic lays waste to the economy, the play reminds us of the unchanging truth of an American dream dangled for the many but obtainable only by a ruthless few.ĭennehy, a prodigious actor drawn to prodigious roles, delivered a battering ram of a performance. Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” had been on my mind even before the death of Brian Dennehy, who won a Tony for his portrayal of Willy Loman in the 1999 Broadway revival. Inside, is the woman who had completely taken his breath away at just the sight of her months before, and she is crying. Feeling utterly desolate, Vane goes wandering the streets of New Orleans, and finds himself in front of a boutique window. His father tried to have him and his brother, Fang, killed, and Fang barely survived the attack and has been in a coma for eight months. Despised by both his mother and father, he never truly had a pack to call his own. Vane Kattalakis is a lone wolf, a Were-Hunter who has no place that he really belongs. Evernight Teen Summer Kick-off Blog Hop. Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin Launch. This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback. A Dubai royal prince seeks to purchase two. Jonas reluctantly agrees, and David is off to Dubai for the summer of his life, not realizing that he is being set up to lead an expedition that will hunt down and capture the most dangerous creatures ever to inhabit the Earth! MEG HELLS AQUARIUM Four years have passed since Angel, the seventy six foot Megalodon, birthed a litter of pups. Fortunately, a Dubai royal prince who is building the largest aquarium in the world seeks to purchase two of the runts-if Jonas Taylor's twenty-one year-old son, David, will be their handler. Tanaka Institute, Monterey, CA: Four years have passed since Angel, the 76-foot, 100,000 pound Megalodon, birthed a litter of pups far too numerous and aggressive to keep in one pen. Vast and isolated, the Panthalassa is inhabited by nightmarish sea creatures long believed extinct. Hidden beneath its primordial crust lies the remains of the Panthalassa, an ocean that dates back 220 million years. The Philippine Sea Plate: The most unexplored realm on the planet. The most fearsome predators in history.are no longer history. New York Times bestselling author Steve Alten's Meg: Hell's Aquarium continues his thrilling action adventure series-the basis for the feature film The Meg, starring Jason Statham as Jonas Taylor. |